from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-04-04

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20997).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: cu clt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: thannae...

body:
I received this abusive and threatening email from a Wikipedia admin
(User:Thunderboltz) after I edited an article he created. Please look at the
article to see the edits I made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah%C3%A9_River
 Please see User:Thunderboltz's frantic reactions  on his User Page and Talk
Page. Also note that he deleted my User page and put sock template on it and
protected both User Page and Talk Page.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Deepu Joseph <deepu.joseph1 at gmail.com>
Date: Apr 3, 2007 9:24 PM
Subject: thannae...
To: cu clt <abcclt at gmail.com>

thannae polae olla aalkaarae naatil oru peru villikum. ha! thaan thane
thaniku oru asalu peru ittitondalo!

thaan aaranado thante vicharam? thaniku njan ente phone numberu
thannathalaedo? thanikku enae kondu vallo prashnam undenkil atu nerittu
aanungalae polae samsarichu teerkannam. allandu orumaathiri.... njan onnum
parayunnilla.

poyi chaavado. angane enkillum thannaekondu ee nadinnu oru gunam undakate.

I dont care even if you post this email onto wikipedia or take this to the
police. It's just so sad to be you. You must brood over urself often. How
sad. Only stuff like this can give you the lulz to go forward.

oh, and one more thing. Take it as a threat or whatever. Never ever dare to
post a message on my talk page again. For ur own good.

The effects of one fking email you sent is yet to be over. Do you even care
about other people? Do you know what all I've been through? What YOU put me
through? Do you find so much fun in torturing ppl who are nearly half your
age? How desperately did I beg at ur knees when I asked you to phone me? Ha!
and he replies saying he doesnt trust me! Do you think everyone has minds as
screwed up as yours?

Honestly, it's best for you if you never happen to see me in real life.

ciao


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Article hit rates -- research at the University of
	Minnesota

references:
<460AEC5D.90004@umn.edu> <euf3bh$hj7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<460BF81E.5080207@umn.edu> <eunqro$vi5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70704031638k4fb58b26t6dba980ef65f82f1@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 04/04/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can I be the first to say "holy crap!"

You're really that shocked?

Rob Church


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Klingon Wiktionary closed

body:
Hoi,
When having only 60 articles is a criterion for deletion of a Wikipedia
project, there are many more projects in the danger zone. 50 of the current
250 Wikipedias do not have this number of articles. This is as far as I am
concerned no valid reason.

The Klingon was ended because of the many people who were of the opinion
that it was a blemish on the reputation of Wikipedia. When the end of this
project was announced people cheered..  The good thing is that it ended an
issue that people were quite happy  to ask for it to be ended again and
again.

Given that the tlh.wikipedia was ended by the board, it is and was final.

Thanks,
     GerardM

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

On 4/4/07, Muke Tever <muke at frath.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 31 Mar 2007 17:20:29 -0600, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> > Oldak Quill wrote:
> >> I, for one, object to the closure of projects based on elitist
> >> concerns as to the origin of the language. What matters is the place
> >> of the language in the world now. This language is, crucially,
> >> recognised as a language by the International Standardisation
> >> Organisation
> >
> > There is no sense of "recognition" in the ISO code designations. As they
> > say for the 693-3 codes, "it is a goal for this part of ISO 639 to
> > provide an identifier for every distinct human language that has been
> > documented, whether living, extinct, or constructed, and whether its
> > modality is spoken, written or signed." There are 7,589 currently.
>
> tlh is also in ISO 639-2 as well, whose scope is more limited, codes being
> added to it "when it becomes apparent that a significant body of
> literature
> in a particular language exists."
>
> The full criteria are here:
> http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/criteria2.html
> (in brief, "that there is a significant body of literature in the language
> or describing the language".)
>
> > So I repeat, your choices are either to have a dictionary define
> wordsusing words it does not define (Klingon words) or to define words
> (Klingonwords) that cannot be attested according to normal dictionary
> standards.
>
> First off, what kind of attestation are you seeking here?  There are
> published
> reference books on the language and several translations into Klingon have
> been made:
> Gilgamesh and a couple of Shakespeare plays are in print; online of course
> there's
> more, such as extensive selections from the Bible (linguist Nick Nicholas
> has
> the full text of the book of Mark on his website, among other
> things)...  This is
> as much as if not more than many minority natural languages have.
>
> I agree with Oldak about "elitist concerns as to the origin of the
> language".
> If Klingon (or any other language) is to be rejected it should be on at
> least
> moderately objective criteria, which would pertain to the language's
> present,
> not its origin--the bar can be higher for a constructed language, but it
> should
> at least be presented an opportunity to rise above its birth.
>
> It seems [from what I can tell now] that the Klingon Wikipedia was closed
> down not
> because of any demerit in the language itself, but chiefly because it was
> not being
> used (having 60 articles at time of closing).  tlh.wiktionary, it seems,
> has at
> least two currently-active users (its admins) and 2,311 content pages.
>
>         *Muke!
> --
> website:     http://frath.net/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 04/04/07, Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> Muke Tever wrote:
> > I agree with Oldak about "elitist concerns as to the origin of the language".
> >
> I apologize if my concern that the Wikimedia Foundation, the charitable
> organization we  volunteer for, be used for significant, educational
> purposes, as it is intended, appears elitist. That does not fit my
> definition of elitism, however, and bandying about the term is just an
> ad hominem distraction. This is the most important point. There is a
> reason that the MuppetWiki (a fine project, expanding rapidly) belongs
> on a non-WMF site like Wikia.

Huh? Since when does "education" preclude the Klingon language? How do
you define "significant"? How is the suggestion of elitism a
distriction? I consider it a problem for Wikimedia that should be
solved. When elitism results in the closure of harmless projects that
could potentially bring more people to Wikimedia (and maximise the use
of our content), it is a problem for the Foundation.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bruce McMahan

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:

>On 3/29/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I'm troubled here by the shifting argument. First it's from a
>>tabloid. Except it's not from a tabloid - it's from a reputable paper
>>that did original research. But then when it's pointed out that NOR
>>isn't relevant to this either it becomes insignificant.
>>
>>Still not the case - if we're having an article on the guy, this is a
>>sensible thing to put in it.
>>
>>
>I wholly agree.  We don't have a policy of avoiding scandalous or
>unfavorable information about living persons - we have a policy about
>being strict about our sourcing.
>
I have no problem with including scandalous information as long as it's
verifiable, and, because of the potential for repercussions doubly
verified rather than merely verifiable.  It is inevitable that those who
spesak for us in the media will be blinsided by questions about these
articles, but with 1.7 million articles there is no way that such a
person can be familiar with every possible problem.  When a problem is
raised one can only promise to have people familiar with the subject
look into it to ensure that the information it contains is accurate.  We
should not be promising political correctness.

>This story was published by a paper that yes, is alternative and local
>- but not a tabloid by any means - and was republished by other
>alternative-press papers including the Village Voice.  These are
>sources that exercise editorial judgment and fact-checking, and they
>are big enough to be vulnerable to lawsuits if they publish libellous
>untruths, just like the major press.
>
Absolutely.  The paper press is paper.  Even if the New York Times
supports the motto, "All the news that's fit to print," it is still
constrained by the realities of the paper medium.  It follows from that
that certain issues will be covered by publications with a more local
distribution.  A topic that is local in its notability is still notable
to the locals.  Most would not be publicized far and wide, though local
newspaper do get mailed to a town's former residents who have moved
away.  Most of us are completely uninterested in local scandals in
somebody else's community, but some people are.

>Stories like this rarely make the major press simply because they are
>not the kind of stories they're interested in.  In my experience,
>personal scandal like this is generally not reported in the local
>mainstream press unless real-world consequences occur - criminal
>prosecutions or dismissals, for instance - and even more rarely in the
>national or financial press unless the individual is of national
>significance and the scandal has grown to have substantial real-world
>consequence.  The tabloid and celebrity press is generally not
>interested in businessmen unless they're stupendously rich or a media
>whore a la Donald Trump.
>
It's also not unusual for the mainstream press to have a big front page
article when the subject is spectacularly arrested.  But it's damned
boring for them to sit through a trial that finds someone innocent.

>IMO, this is using BLP as a hammer to beat scandal and negative
>stories out of Wikipedia, even a well-sourced one, and I suspect that
>it is done out of a belief that Wikipedia should not be reporting on
>such - that it is 'unencyclopedic'.
>
I do have a book titled "Encyclopedia of Serial Killers."  There is some
interest in this kind of thing!  Enough to make it encyclopedic.  While
I don't think there is much honour in extensive reporting on this kind
of thing I think we do just as much if not more harm bringing it to
people's attention by arguing over it.  By all means remove the
information immediately when it cannot be substantiated.  If the
argument is only over its importance to the subject, we do much better
waiting a couple of months before removing it quietly.

>I don't think that point of view
>has strong consensus.
>
The point may not have strong consensus, but that's no deterrent to the
supporters from pushing that point of view.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt & other banned users posting still

body:
Rich Holton wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>This is not about Brandt or the bloody-minded obsession that some have
>>expressed about Brandt.  This place is about building an encyclopedia,
>>and that should take precedence over who happens to have made the edit.
>>
>>I am often appalled by the lack of understanding for principles of
>>fundamental justice in some people's attitudes.  A person whose
>>character is questioned in a public forum needs to have an equivalent
>>right to defend himself in an equally public forum.
>>
>>
>Agreed as well. Of course, the banned user will have a *very short*
>leash even on the talk page about them. But they must be allowed to
>speak on their own behalf to correct a clear error on a page about them.
>
I can live with the short leash.  I did suggest a while back that there
be a place in an article for a living subject to respond relatively
freely.  This got shot down because it restricted the rights of others
to edit what he was saying.  Some of the other complaints about it
probably have easy fixes.  Something of the sort would likely go a long
way to addressing the frustrations that some subjects must feel when
their rights to set the record straight about their own personal
information   A prohibition against their talking about anyone else in
the protected section would keep the leash short.

Ec


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Thesaurus Posted enwiki-20070206

body:
A machine generated thesaurus constructed from interwiki and wiki links
and tags contained in the XML dumps has been posted at

ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus.

This build analyzes the 20070206 enwiki dumps and contructs a thesaurus
based upon relationships between wiki links and
interwiki links contained within the XML dumps.  Included are raw files
of links, lexicon, and XML dump created based
upon the embedded Thesaurus inside of Wikipedia.

Text file of stripped links and interwiki links with tags:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus/wikipedia-thesaurus-20070206.links.bz2

Machine generated text lexicon of stripped links and interwiki links:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus/wikipedia-thesaurus-20070206.lex.bz2

Machine Generated XML MediaWiki dump which can be imported as a basic
Thesaurus has a few title problems, I will finish it
up in the morning and post to the thesarus area.

Jeff


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Thesaurus Posted enwiki-20070206


from_name: Muke Tever

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Dmcdevit wrote:
> (...)
>> Your notion that Klingon, the language of a fictional alien race on a
>> popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
>> from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
>> present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
>> nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.
>
> I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it all.

It is not an argument, it is rhetoric.  And very weak, at that.  It can be used
with equal force by the other side, e.g.
    >> Our language is considered linguistically unimportant, functionally
    >> nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the more imperative
    >> that we produce a dictionary in it.

Prejudice like that against a natural language (which is very often expressed in
the world) would, I hope, never stand here against the opening of a wiki.  The only
remaining part of the agreed-with argument is that it is a constructed language, and
we have not been deleting wikis merely because they belong to constructed languages.

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question for copyright savvy folks

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>I have just uploaded a scan of the first page of Bernstein's
>Chichester Psalms.  I believe this satisfies fair use in illustrating
>the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichester_Psalms and I am
>confident it does not interfere in any way with the publisher's
>ability to profit from their intellectual property.  This particular
>scan includes the copyright statement, which is a bonus.
>
>Acceptable?  I would be very surprised if not.
>
>Next up: Durufl? Requiem.  Problem: not much happens on the first
>page, the obvious target for a scan here is the first page of Movement
>II, the Kyrie.  This does not have the copyright statement, although
>of course I put it in the image description.
>
>Acceptable in illustrating an article on the Durufl? Requiem?
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_%28Durufl%C3%A9%29 Probably OK, I
>would say.  Yes?
>
I don't see a problem with either of these.  The presence of the
copyright symbol should not matter.  If something is protected by
copyright it is so with or without the symbol.  Similarly, a wrongly
claimed copyright is not made valid by addition of the symbol.

>OK, I have a pretty extensive library of scores, and most of them I
>can find a single page, usually the first, which illustrates the work
>well and does not in any way interfere with the copyright owner's
>ability to profit.  But there are some hard cases.
>
>* Works where the work is listed in a section in the article on the
>composer. In order not to overwhelm the article I would be inclined to
>scan a single system, but that does not fundamentally change matters;
>it would not have the copyright on the scan, but it would be on the
>description page, the question is, would fair use justly apply to use
>in illustrating a discussion of the work in an article on a wider
>topic?
>
When applying fair use, or the more rigid fair dealing, credit needs to
be given to the source.  Adding this to the image caption would be enough.

>* Works where there are multiple editions, for example Copland's Old
>American Songs.  Here I have one of a number of different versions,
>and available in different keys.  Simple Gifts, an iconic melody (it's
>the melody in Appalachian Spring), probably the best known of all the
>American songs he collected.  Melody by Trad, filtered through
>Copland, filtered again by the editors of my edition.  Valid?
>
Traditional songs themselves are not copyrightable.  Copland's
arrangements would be copyrightable, but if he failed to renew the
copyright (in 1972 for a 1944 work) it would have gone into the public
domain.

>Clearly in the case of a short work like windmills of your mind (theme
>from the original Thomas Crown Affair, keep up at the back there) a
>full page is too much for fair use, a single system or two systems is
>the most one could justify.  Would the same apply to Summertime?  It's
>a short work, but part of a whole opera.
>
Gershwin died in 1937.  Were his copyrights renewed?

>I have few reservations about the Messiah, the Watkins Shaw edition is
>now pretty much ubiquitous and Novello publish both that and Prout
>anyway.  Beethoven Missa Solemnis,no problem, only one edition I know
>of.
>
>Mozart Requiem - a problem.  The Novello edition, completed by
>Sussmayr, is far and away the most widely used in the UK, but there is
>a newish critical edition completed by Robert D. Levin which includes
>an amen fugue taken from sketches by Mozart.  Would a single system or
>two systems from that be acceptable in discussing that critical
>edition in the article on the Mozart requiem?
>
It's important to know when and where these editions were originally
produced.  The original work by Handel, Mozart and Beethoven is
obviously in the public domain.  Publishers' arrangements may
nevertheless be protected, but republications do not restart the clock
except to the extent that they add new material.

>What of scores from ChoralWiki?  That is public domain, I guess we can
>borrow at will?  Or should we restrict ourselves to the same level of
>caution?  Note that some of the stuff on ChoralWiki is actually
>copyright, it's externally hosted, so I would have to watch that of
>course.  Most of them are in PDF format.
>
I don't do anything in music so I'm not familiar with the site.  While
it's good to check their copyright analysis, the presumption is that the
material is usable.

>Finally, does anyone have a good, cheap or free converter from jpeg /
>tiff to a more efficient format?
>
Sorry but I know less about these technicalities than I know about
copyright.

Ec


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] What can be done to let users fix it themselves?

body:
On Wed, 4 Apr 2007, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I don't think much good will come from telling people to fix libel in
> their own articles. Because
> a) They shouldn't have to
> b) It will quickly get confused and sound like you can change
> *anything* in your own articles
> c) It will probably cause an argument, especially because it will
> always be a newcomer who doesn't understand wikipedia, and things will
> end badly.
>
> It's much better the existing way, where libelees complain to OTRS or
> something, and something with a clue handles it.

Letting people fix it themselves, though, has one advantage: it's removed
*immediately*, not when some volunteer gets around to it.  Moreover, figuring
out who to complain to is itself something that newcomers may find difficult
to do.

It's stupid to tell people "you can edit anything in Wikipedia except the
one thing which is affecting your life.  You must figure out the proper
bureaucratic procedure to use and go through that instead."


from_name: Denny Colt

subject: [WikiEN-l] idea: BLP clean up category

body:
On 4/4/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> This is the one case in which we actually want people to make drive-by
> deletions, and ask questions afterwards. That's one issue. A second is that
> creating a template that says 'potential libel here, come look' could have a
> downside.
>
> Charles

I thought about the potential of the attracting unneeded attention... but
the people who are likely to edit with a mind to enforce BLP are likely to
just nuke the outright offensive material. But not everyone is also an
admin. Non-admins can't do that, and there might be an article that *should*
exist for whatever reason--notable subject, say--but the current article is
a complete mess that the person maybe feels they don't have the time or
ability to clean themselves. A well sourced article but an attack
themselves--where perhaps POV pushers are fighting back...? Doc Glasgow on
WP:AN made a great example of this better than I did at first

On 4/4/07, Doc Glasgow wrote on WP:AN:
>
> There IS merit in this. Unsourced negative material must simply be
> removed, period. We don't need to draw attention to such cases, just
> ruthlessly clean them out. However, often an article may have well-sourced
> information but be written entirely one-sidedly. We increasingly get
> complaints about hatchet jobs. OTRS ops have not the time to re-write
> articles and look for sources giving the other side of the story. In such
> cases, what is needed is precisely to draw the article to the attention of
> the wider community and ask people to do that as a priority. It will also
> often involve battling with some POV pusher who is jumping up and down when
> the well-cited but partially chosen material is removed by an angry subject.
> Perhaps we need a more specific category here: {{POV bio}}? - and give
> barnstars to people willing to take them quickly in hand.--Doc<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Doc_glasgow>
> g

--
- Denny


subject: [WikiEN-l] idea: BLP clean up category

body:
On 4/4/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A template is probably not such a great idea for that reason :-)
>
> There's the BLP Noticeboard, WP:BLPN, which I've found just the place
> for not-utterly-urgent cleanup.
>
> Drive-by deletion should be fine, there are 1000 admins who can look
> over the deleted article (and erroneous speedies can be reversed
> without fuss *if* it isn't actually a problem). I've occasionally
> taken an article out and shot it, and listed objections on the deleted
> page suggesting interested admins double-check me just in case.
>
>
> - d.

BLP being such an important issue, my other thinking was that an ultra-easy
way to flag an article for attention would be helpful (yes a notice board
isn't *hard*, but if you don't have the time/energy/get POV pushing
blowback/perhaps abiltity to fix it a tag is an easy workaround to draw
attention), especially for non-admins, who can't delete stuff. See my last
email as well. :)

--
- Denny


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ref Desk makes Boing Boing

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 30/03/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Wikipedia's reference desk gets a nice mention on Boing Boing:
>>
>>http://www.boingboing.net/2007/03/30/nyt_changes_backdate.html
>>
>>It also claims that the New York Times changed a published article
>>without mentioning it on the page or issuing a correction. That's very
>>interesting in the context of the recent discussion on the reliability
>>and durability of web-based citations.
>>
>>
>It deserves recognition. It is one of the most useful and effective
>tools on Wikipedia to our users. Seems to work very well too: even
>relatively complex questions are answered quickly and fully.
>
>Thanks for the link.
>
I agree.  Certain elements in the established press are all too happy to
exagerate the importance of Wikipedia's errors.  Regularly highlighting
situations where the myth that traditional sources are always reliable
is brought into question can have some positive effects.

It's an effective counterplay to defending our own articles in that it
tends to level the playing field.  It helps too when we maintain a
record of our own corrections.

Ec


from_name: Dmcdevit

body:
Muke Tever wrote:
> Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
>> Dmcdevit wrote:
>> (...)
>>
>>> Your notion that Klingon, the language of a fictional alien race on a
>>> popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
>>> from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
>>> present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
>>> nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.
>>>
>> I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it all.
>>
>
> It is not an argument, it is rhetoric.  And very weak, at that.  It can be used
> with equal force by the other side, e.g.
>     >> Our language is considered linguistically unimportant, functionally
>     >> nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the more imperative
>     >> that we produce a dictionary in it.
>
> Prejudice like that against a natural language (which is very often expressed in
> the world) would, I hope, never stand here against the opening of a wiki.  The only
> remaining part of the agreed-with argument is that it is a constructed language, and
> we have not been deleting wikis merely because they belong to constructed languages.
>
> 	*Muke!
>
You are under the misimpression that I don't like Klingon *because* it
is a constructed language. Nowhere have I said that. I have given actual
reasons, including its lack of speakers, lack of literature, lack of
significance, lack of educational use. On the other hand, if your
argument *is* "Our language is considered linguistically unimportant,
functionally nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the
more imperative that we produce a dictionary in it" that's not a
problem. The problem would be using that argument to create an
admittedly "educationally useless" dictionary as a WMF project rather
than on an external site. Inclusion guidelines are not prejudice; if you
are against any vetting of supposed languages at all, I think you are
fighting a losing battle. Wiktionary is not for promotion of your pet
project, so this is beginning to sound rather like the sort of argument
I hear when I delete some kid's protologism on Wiktionary, of some high
school band on Wikipedia ("The world doesn't know about it/us yet;
that's why we need an article!"). In fact, it *is* important that our
work support educational purposes, and it's not unreasonable to demand that.

Dominic


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Not to mention that the subject and other people will differ in opinion on
what is libellous and than you still have the fuzzier "undue weight" which,
while cited spends half an article talking about controversies that are
barely relevant.

Mgm

On 4/4/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/4/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> > After a post here mentioned it, I went to WP:COI and WP:AUTO.
> >
> > These two articles seem to promote the view that you're not supposed to
> edit
> > an article about yourself.
> >
> > However, WP:BLP seems to suggest that you can to remove libel or
> unsourced
> > material, and it's a common refrain to complaints about Wikipedia, "why
> didn't
> > you just fix the article yourself?"
>
> Can we focus this debate on what we believe the correct situation
> should be, then update policy to match that?
>
> I don't think much good will come from telling people to fix libel in
> their own articles. Because
> a) They shouldn't have to
> b) It will quickly get confused and sound like you can change
> *anything* in your own articles
> c) It will probably cause an argument, especially because it will
> always be a newcomer who doesn't understand wikipedia, and things will
> end badly.
>
> It's much better the existing way, where libelees complain to OTRS or
> something, and something with a clue handles it.
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

references:
<460AEC5D.90004@umn.edu> <euf3bh$hj7$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<460BF81E.5080207@umn.edu> <eunqro$vi5$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 4/1/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> sending logs, so streams are certainly easier for us. We get somewhere on
> the order of 1.5 billion requests per day, and the simplified log line

Can I be the first to say "holy crap!"

Stvee


body:
On 04/04/07, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not count of pageviews, but http requests, is it?

That's right.

Rob Church


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] idea: BLP clean up category

body:
"Denny Colt"

> How about something like "Living persons clean-up" or some similar wording,
> which can be used with a variant clean-up template on BLP articles. I.e., if
> you see one that needs it, but either don't know how, don't have the time
> to, or whatever reason, can immediately flag an article as Very High
> Priority for clean-up.

This is the one case in which we actually want people to make drive-by deletions, and ask questions afterwards. That's one issue. A second is that creating a template that says 'potential libel here, come look' could have a downside.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

body:
2007/4/4, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com>:
> On 4/4/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 04/04/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Can I be the first to say "holy crap!"
> >
> > You're really that shocked?
>
> Had I sat down to think about it, perhaps, perhaps not. But I've never
> heard of a daily pageview figure expressed in *billions* before.

It's not count of pageviews, but http requests, is it?

AJF/WarX


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] deleting unsourced articles ..... gradually

body:
On 4/1/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The whole argument about deleting unsourced articles ignores the
> experience
> we have had with image uploads - being forced to pick a license tends to
> push people towards just picking any one license.
>
> I came across an unsourced (and unwikified) article about a town in
> Trinidad
> today.  It was only a one-sentence article, so I fixed it up a little, but
> didn't really expand it.  I looked around for some references online, but
> couldn't find any quickly.  What I did find was mention of a book at
> documentary about the town, done by a notable historian.  I feel confident
> that the book covers the information in the article (there's so little,
> and
> much of it is commonsense), so it would be pretty safe to cite the book as
> a
> source.  Safe, but dishonest, since I have never seen the book.

This also shows how pushing too hard on the Sourcing issue promotes a bias
against the third world and the like which have a lesser internet presence.

In addition, the presence of a source is no guarantee of accuracy.  If I had
> known the book well enough, I could have added it as a reference.  Then
> suppose someone else came along and added some more material.  Someone
> else
> comes along later, checks the page history, and realises that some of the
> material came after the source.  There is no way for them to determine if
> the person who added the source had seen the new material (and left it,
> because it was in keeping with the source), or if they missed the edit,
> and
> have no idea that this material has been added to the article.  A casual
> reader never even looks at the page history, so they see both the original
> statements and the additions, and they seen a reference.
>
> Sure, stable versions could fix this.  Deleting unreferenced articles, on
> the other hand, could not fix this (and would encourage people to add
> spurious references, just to prevent the article from being deleted).
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Thesaurus Posted
	enwiki-20070206

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com>
Date: 04-Apr-2007 11:30
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Thesaurus Posted enwiki-20070206
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
<foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia developers
<wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

A machine generated thesaurus constructed from interwiki and wiki links
and tags contained in the XML dumps has been posted at

ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus.

This build analyzes the 20070206 enwiki dumps and contructs a thesaurus
based upon relationships between wiki links and
interwiki links contained within the XML dumps.  Included are raw files
of links, lexicon, and XML dump created based
upon the embedded Thesaurus inside of Wikipedia.

Text file of stripped links and interwiki links with tags:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus/wikipedia-thesaurus-20070206.links.bz2

Machine generated text lexicon of stripped links and interwiki links:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/thesaurus/wikipedia-thesaurus-20070206.lex.bz2

Machine Generated XML MediaWiki dump which can be imported as a basic
Thesaurus has a few title problems, I will finish it
up in the morning and post to the thesarus area.

Jeff

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] idea: BLP clean up category

body:
On 04/04/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Denny Colt"

> > How about something like "Living persons clean-up" or some similar wording,
> > which can be used with a variant clean-up template on BLP articles. I.e., if
> > you see one that needs it, but either don't know how, don't have the time
> > to, or whatever reason, can immediately flag an article as Very High
> > Priority for clean-up.

> This is the one case in which we actually want people to make drive-by deletions, and ask questions afterwards. That's one issue. A second is that creating a template that says 'potential libel here, come look' could have a downside.

A template is probably not such a great idea for that reason :-)

There's the BLP Noticeboard, WP:BLPN, which I've found just the place
for not-utterly-urgent cleanup.

Drive-by deletion should be fine, there are 1000 admins who can look
over the deleted article (and erroneous speedies can be reversed
without fuss *if* it isn't actually a problem). I've occasionally
taken an article out and shot it, and listed objections on the deleted
page suggesting interested admins double-check me just in case.

- d.


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hello,

Dmcdevit wrote:
(...)
> Your notion that Klingon, the language of a fictional alien race on a
> popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
> from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
> present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
> nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.

I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it all.

> Dominic

Best regards,

Yann


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
Hi!

> Yes.
>   In Japan, the age is 20.
> In Egypt, the age is 21.
>   If you think it important,

In Citizendium it is 25, and you have to hold bachelor's degree.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research or common sense inferral?

body:
On 4/4/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> I also had a response from the school, who state that the symbol "is a
> logo, as was the previous version". So. This is relevant information,
> but how can I cite emails I have received in the article? Thoughts
> appreciated.

Quite simply, you can't.  Personal communications can't be cited as
sources for Wikipedia articles.

-Matt


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

body:
On 4/2/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/1/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> > for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> > articles.
>
> Any proposal based on an assumption like "people spend X hours a week
> working on Wikipedia, and if only we could stop them wasting those X
> hours working on something silly" is flawed.

I don't think that's the assumption.  Rather, the assumption is that
the people who spend X hours a week *cleaning up* new articles, would
be perfectly content cleaning up existing articles instead.

But that leads me to an idea.  What if new article creation was still
allowed, but only logged in users could see those new articles?  This
might be enough to put those new articles into a lower-priority bin
while still allowing those who *want* to work on them the freedom to
do so.

One problem is this really doesn't lend itself to a "three months
only" solution.  Another problem is who would be allowed move articles
into the full public view, and under what rules?  If the solution
winds up creating more work than the problem, then it's not really a
solution.  The final problem is, it requires code, albeit probably not
that much.

I don't know if I support this idea or not.  I'm presenting it as a
brainstorming activity, not as a proposal.

Anthony


body:
On 4/4/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> Yes, I understand that. How then is one supposed to add unpublished
> true facts that have been obtained personally? (As opposed to original
> research, which this is not.)

By getting them published somewhere.  Unpublished true facts are
original research by the generally accepted Wikipedia definition.

-Matt


from_name: Guettarda

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia groups on Facebook need monitoring for
	vandals

body:
On 4/4/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 4, 2007, at 12:53 PM, gjzilla at gmail.com wrote:
>
> >>
> >> This is worrying. We should probably try and keep an eye on these
> >> places.
> >>
> >>
> > Probably. Either they're just a lot of hot air, or serious. Anyone
> > willing
> > to be a double agent on one of these?
>
> Why? It's just vandalism. Even if they block out the bulk of the
> normal RC patrol and CVU it'll get stopped quickly and undone. Yes,
> it'd be a bit of work to undo. But it would be far less work than
> trying to watch every place vandals might be planning something.
>
> -Phil

Yeah - especially these days, the effort it takes to get one admin account
is probably
enough to dissuade almost anyone who wants to get one to do evil.  Trying to
get 10 of them would take an awful lot of effort.

Of course, trying to take out RC patrollers is probably one of the least
efficient ways to do harm with an admin account.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
christophe.henner at wikimedia.fr wrote:

>On 31/03/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>to my opinion, should be over 18 of age.
>>
>>Anthere
>>
>>
>And reveal there identity publicly.
>
Not necessarily, as long as it's known to key people.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


body:
On 4/4/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 04/04/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Can I be the first to say "holy crap!"
>
> You're really that shocked?

Had I sat down to think about it, perhaps, perhaps not. But I've never
heard of a daily pageview figure expressed in *billions* before.

I had a webpage once. It got 400 pageviews in a year.

Steve


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Feature request: Random article in specified
	category

body:
On 3/22/07, demute <mannet at kth.se> wrote:
> It would be really nice if wikipedias Special:random-function could take
> arguments, making it possible to get a random article from user-specified
> categories.

It won't really work as expected until we have a way of defining which
subcategories are "real" subcategories. You can either select a random
article only from that category, which will skew things badly for
certain types of categories, or you can select a random article from
the hierarchy of all subcategories, which will be useless for some
leaky category trees.

Steve


body:
On 3/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> For the questions on fair use of the scans: do the scans add something
> to the article that you really just can't get any other way? With
> album and book covers, it's *the* cover for the album. Is a score
> regarded that way?

A section of a score, especially with the main theme, would be a
*huge* addition to many articles about pieces of music. A lead sheet
for jazz compositions would be awesome.

I don't see why a short excerpt wouldn't be fair use, but I'm probably
used to Australian copyright law in this regard.

Steve


from_name: Earle Martin

body:
On 02/04/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure it's so much "require authorisation" as making the point
> that it *isn't* a shield of arms. It looks like one, it feels like
> one, but it *isn't* one. My understanding is that if you're using it
> as a shield, it has to be authorised; in this case, it isn't, so it's
> simply a pretty and confusing logo.

Well, the school is using it everywhere that it previously used its
traditional shield; that would seem to imply that it is in fact a
shield. I have sent an enquiry to the school and will update the
article when I get a response.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
On 03/04/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> It strikes me that this information can be checked. Also, the harm done if it is wrong is minimal.

Yes. As I just commented to Guy, I've sent a query to the school; I've
also sent one to the College of Arms. We'll see if anything comes out
of it.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
These seem like good ideas for someone to try on a fork of Wikipedia. Kind
of like John Galt leading the few good Objectivists into the mountains to
get away from the dreck of common human civilization.

I'm not even being sarcastic; I think forks off of Wikipedia trying
radically different models for content creation and management are healthy.

On 4/4/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 4/2/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/1/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Why don't we lock new article creation in the main namespace entirely
> > > for three months? Or six months? Demand that people fix existing
> > > articles.
> >
> > Any proposal based on an assumption like "people spend X hours a week
> > working on Wikipedia, and if only we could stop them wasting those X
> > hours working on something silly" is flawed.
>
> I don't think that's the assumption.  Rather, the assumption is that
> the people who spend X hours a week *cleaning up* new articles, would
> be perfectly content cleaning up existing articles instead.
>
> But that leads me to an idea.  What if new article creation was still
> allowed, but only logged in users could see those new articles?  This
> might be enough to put those new articles into a lower-priority bin
> while still allowing those who *want* to work on them the freedom to
> do so.
>
> One problem is this really doesn't lend itself to a "three months
> only" solution.  Another problem is who would be allowed move articles
> into the full public view, and under what rules?  If the solution
> winds up creating more work than the problem, then it's not really a
> solution.  The final problem is, it requires code, albeit probably not
> that much.
>
> I don't know if I support this idea or not.  I'm presenting it as a
> brainstorming activity, not as a proposal.
>
> Anthony
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: improving quality on enwiki

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:

>But the key issue, I think, is simply this: prescriptive collaboration
>models do not, as a general rule, work on Wikipedia.  The vast
>majority of editors make content contributions on topics of their
>choice; if they're told that they *must* work on article X, they'll
>simply refuse.  This proposal, basically, assumes that there's a
>supply of editors somewhere willing to do work (which happens to be
>"not fun" in a major way) according to some central bureaucracy's
>dictates; in my experience, there simply isn't such a supply
>available.
>
Prescriptive collaboration is an oxymoron.

Ec


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] EDP: US servers loophole?

body:
On 4/3/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/3/07, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:

> [snip]
> > But one could say, that Hungarian copyright law doesn't make it
> > illegal to upload these images to servers located in the United
> > States. By doing so you're not breaking any laws.
>
> I'm reasonably confident that you will not find a single jurisdiction
> with effective copyright law where the act of uploading to someone
> elses website isn't considered a reserved right under copyright law
> (in most places it will likely be consider just another form of
> copying, although some laws may special case it in order to have extra
> harshness for infringements created online).

Greg, i'm not sure I understand you here (Speaker of English as a
foreign language ;-)) so let me try and rephrase what I understood and
please correct me if I'm wrong.

you seem to be saying that there is probably no juridiction that will
allow the uploader to break the local copyright law by letting them
argue that they're uploading on servers that are set under a different
set of local laws and run in another jurisdiction.

In clear, if you live in Hungary and are subject to Hungarian laws,
uploading copyrighted material on an American server where it is
allowed won't keep you from being sued in your own country. Is that
right?

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Now, this is how to do paid editing

body:
http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2007/04/linguist-lists-wikipedia-update-vote.html

(Turn Wikipedia into "semi-employed grad student deathmatch"!)

- d.


body:
On 4/4/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> After a post here mentioned it, I went to WP:COI and WP:AUTO.
>
> These two articles seem to promote the view that you're not supposed to edit
> an article about yourself.
>
> However, WP:BLP seems to suggest that you can to remove libel or unsourced
> material, and it's a common refrain to complaints about Wikipedia, "why didn't
> you just fix the article yourself?"

Can we focus this debate on what we believe the correct situation
should be, then update policy to match that?

I don't think much good will come from telling people to fix libel in
their own articles. Because
a) They shouldn't have to
b) It will quickly get confused and sound like you can change
*anything* in your own articles
c) It will probably cause an argument, especially because it will
always be a newcomer who doesn't understand wikipedia, and things will
end badly.

It's much better the existing way, where libelees complain to OTRS or
something, and something with a clue handles it.

Steve


body:
Hi,

And claiming the Klingon should be supported by Wikimedia without giving
any information about numbers of speakers, is not rethoric???
I think we don't have the same definition of this word.

Regards,

Yann

Muke Tever wrote:
> Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>> Dmcdevit wrote:
>> (...)
>>> Your notion that Klingon, the language of a fictional alien race on a
>>> popular American television show, has some kind of existence separate
>>> from its origins is absurd. It only needs to be rejected for its
>>> present: which is as a linguistically unimportant, functionally
>>> nonexistent, and educationally useless language to write a dictionary in.
>> I agree with the closing of this Wiktionary, and this argument says it all.
>
> It is not an argument, it is rhetoric.  And very weak, at that.  It can be used
> with equal force by the other side, e.g.
>     >> Our language is considered linguistically unimportant, functionally
>     >> nonexistent, and educationally useless. It is thus all the more imperative
>     >> that we produce a dictionary in it.
>
> Prejudice like that against a natural language (which is very often expressed in
> the world) would, I hope, never stand here against the opening of a wiki.  The only
> remaining part of the agreed-with argument is that it is a constructed language, and
> we have not been deleting wikis merely because they belong to constructed languages.
>
> 	*Muke!


from_name: gjzilla at gmail.com

body:
On 4/4/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> I recently joined facebook.com, the social networking site. Facebook
> allows people to form groups, and there are numerous ones matching
> "Wikipedia". (I quite liked the one called "fricken wikipedia, its
> 4am!") The majority are silly ones titled with variations along the
> lines of "Everything I know I learnt from Wikipedia", but there are
> also some anti-Wikipedia or even pro-vandal groups, like this one:
> http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2205217096 (sorry, you may not
> be able to see that without an account) - "GLOBAL Wikipedia Vandals".
>
> People are posting comments like this:
>
> [[
> Personally, I wish we could all collaborate on a mass group edit.
> Imagine if we each created 50-100 sockpuppets, had access to a few
> different computers each, and ran some scripting programs to speed up
> our work for us...the only way i think it could be any better, is if
> we actually had, say 10 admin accounts and could block the entire
> recent changes patrol as well as the counter-vandalism unit, then go
> about editing on a massive scale. Personally i think that would be a
> testimony to the power of individual free-speech, not to mention an
> intriguing social experiment.
> ]]
>
> and this:
>
> [[
> I've played around with the idea of doing a lot of legit edits with
> one account to apply for adminship eventually. It's something I'd like
> to have done by the summer.
>
> As for the mass vandalism idea, I love it. We should get some
> interested parties. Whoever wants in, message me on Facebook (we'll
> try not to leave most of the plan out in the open).
> ]]
>
> This is worrying. We should probably try and keep an eye on these places.
>
>
Probably. Either they're just a lot of hot air, or serious. Anyone willing
to be a double agent on one of these?

Seriously.

~~~~


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Apr 4, 2007, at 12:53 PM, gjzilla at gmail.com wrote:

>>
>> This is worrying. We should probably try and keep an eye on these
>> places.
>>
>>
> Probably. Either they're just a lot of hot air, or serious. Anyone
> willing
> to be a double agent on one of these?

Why? It's just vandalism. Even if they block out the bulk of the
normal RC patrol and CVU it'll get stopped quickly and undone. Yes,
it'd be a bit of work to undo. But it would be far less work than
trying to watch every place vandals might be planning something.

-Phil


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Review Committee

body:
Again, you are poorly informed, and simply ignoring me is not doing
you any good.

There is already a _requirement_ that there be native speakers before
a Wikipedia can be started. The people who have complained here are
(mostly) not actually making their own requests, but are dismayed that
the requests of others (who are, in fact, native speakers) have been
put on hold for over a year.

Arbeo, myself, and David Gerard do not (at least I'm pretty sure none
of us do) know a single word of Latgalian, but we have seen that this
Wikipedia has several native contributors lined up and that they have
been waiting for a very long time now. These people would certainly be
capable of translating a message file, but what is being questioned is
the utility of having it before the actual Wikipedia is allowed to
begin especially since this requirement was created several months
after their request was intially "approved".

Again, if you are going to respond to an e-mail that I sent in the
first place and make veiled attacks on me, it's extremely rude to
ignore my responses.

Mark

On 03/04/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Robert Horning wrote:
>
> >I would have to agree that native speakers ought to be given some
> >consideration, particularly at the early stages of a project.  And
> >respect for the culture of those native speakers should also be given a
> >very high priority.  But as mandatory requirements for creation and
> >participation I have to respectfully disagree.
> >
> >-- Robert Horning
> >
> >
> >
> I think the issue is related to being fluent enough in the language to
> complete
> the messages file. Cultural issues are also very important.
>
> Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Probably not on living bios, but if those who wish to raze much of
>>Wikipedia to the ground in order to save it have their way, this would
>>be better than utter destruction.
>>
>>
>I don't see any need for living bios to be singled out. This policy
>would be in addition to WP:BLP.
>
Living bios draw the most complaints, and have the greatest potential
for libel.  Why not wait until the situation is stabilized in BLP before
expanding the scope of these activities.

Adding a source-needed tag to an article, deleting it or blanking it are
all very easy tasks that take no research whatsoever.  A large number of
such actions can be done in a single hour.  Only a fraction of them can
be properly researched and sourced in the same amount of time.  Those
who are pushing these extreme measures would be more credible if they
committed themselves to finding sources instead of just putting up tags
and generating work for others to do.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On 4/4/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Wikipedia allows fair use of copyrighted material, and furthermore it
> follows American copyright law rather than British so even if the BBC
> claims "the list is copyright us, don't touch!" and a British lawyer
> says "they're right, you know" that doesn't necessarily mean we can't
> include the list. It may be uncopyrighted in the US, and at the very
> least I expect it's easy fair use.

I suspect so too.  Of course, Wikipedia's US hosting doesn't affect
the legal liability of British contributors, who must follow UK
copyright law.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On 4/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> OK, the OTRS ticket is 2007031910019141.

That ticket references the UK music charts, not this BBC Top Gear thing.

As far as the music charts go, their copyright status in the US would
be questionable.  If the charts are actually simply a sales analysis -
as they claim to be - such facts would not be copyrightable, since
nothing creative goes into producing them.  As such, I find the
automatic deletion of them based on a questionable copyright claim
troubling.

I don't think their UK copyright status enters into it, as far as the
legality of hosting it on Wikipedia.  As I understand it, UK copyright
law allows the copyrighting of uncreative works.

-Matt


body:
doc wrote:

>Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>
>>Gah. #1 was sensible. #2-3 are terrible. People's own sites are
>>reliable sources for information about them. It's perfectly
>>reasonable to use a person or company's own site as the primary or
>>even sole source for a stub or relatively short article. Yes, when
>>they get to good and featured length they'll need more, but it's
>>perfectly possible to have an embryonic article that relies entirely
>>on the subject's own pages. The sole useful effect of #2 and #3 is to
>>make it possible to do incontestable deletions of articles that some
>>people have notability problems with. Absolutely not.
>>
>>And lest anyone think I'm being hysterical here, have a look at
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ferrero. (Found though random
>>pages. Took me about 20 to find a good example.) This is a prime
>>example of the sort of article our sourcing fever doesn't really
>>think through. It's a stub or barely above a stub. It has more or
>>less purely factual information, and has a link to the subject's
>>official site. Anyone who wants to know about Carlos Ferrero is well
>>served by this article - they get a general overview and a link to
>>his website. Less useful if you don't speak Spanish, but I'm guessing
>>we'd be hard pressed for comprehensive English-language sources on
>>him anyway. (We'd get a good number, but most of them would be
>>incomplete and writing an article out of them would involve a lot of
>>very messy stitching together.)
>>
>>The article is firmly in the large class of articles that is good
>>enough to keep up but not good enough to call done. It should not be
>>speedied, prodded, or deleted through any other means. It should be
>>edited. If that takes a while, it takes a while, but that's OK
>>because the article is serving a useful purpose right now. (Heck, I
>>just learned something from it!)
>>
>>-Phil
>>
>>
>And it would take you under a min to find a second citation for
>that..... so it is a poor example.
>
>Yes, with any policy change, someone is going to be able to dig out the
>odd example where it would not really help. If we don't act because of
>marginal damage, then we will never change anything. When we have 1.5
>million articles we need to think bigger than that - and consider net
>impact on the project, not one or two cases.
>
>Whatever we do, the status quo is not an option.
>
It likely took you a minute to write your last comments.  You could just
as easily taken the same time to find the second citation yourself.

Ec


body:
>
> Another interesting group: "Abolish Abstinence-Only Wikipedia
> Education" (97 members):
>
> "Is anyone else tired of listening to clueless teachers bash
> Wikipedia? They complain that it can't be used for research because
> it's "not a source." They tell you that anyone can write whatever they
> want, so it must be wrong. I've even heard teachers say that "the
> author" makes stuff up.
>
> Our schools say "Sex is bad, but we're going to tell you how to do it
> safely just in case." Why don't they apply the same policy to
> Wikipedia-- teaching students about the proper way to use it instead
> of indiscriminately banning it. These teachers are well aware that
> students are going to continue using Wikipedia anyway. I'm convinced
> that they just don't understand what Wikipedia is or how to use it."
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)

My feelings exactly.


body:
Gwern Branwen wrote:

>"Andrew Gray" writes:
>
>
>>I did this some time ago for the contents of   [[Category:Rapists]] and
>>
>>
>>its ilk; unsourced claims were removed, and in the few cases   where
>>
>>
>>they constituted the entirety of the article, were replaced with   a
>>
>>
>>prod tag saying "no verifiable assertion of significance is left   after
>>
>>
>>defamatory unsourced assertions removed, so a contentless   article", or
>>
>>
>>words to that effect.
>>
>>I suspect I had about a one in three success rate and a lot of people
>>
>>
>>screaming about disruption... and sourcing their articles.
>>
>>
>I wouldn't draw too many conclusions from that - people are
>willing to *briefly* do heroic feats of editing, if they feel it
>will satisfy one maniac and just get him off their and their
>articles' collective backs, but to expect them to do it again and
>again as a routine matter of course is quite a stretch.
>
The category that Andrew chose to work on is one where one could
reasonably expect a lot of unsourced nonsense.  This would not be so
easy in a more respectable category where more good but unsourced
material may be found.

Ec


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>On Mar 31, 2007, at 3:58 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>
>>This proposal didn't suggest deleting something because it was
>>foreign. If
>>it's a legitimate Andorran political party, there will be secondary
>>sources
>>although they are in French. English sources are preferred but
>>French or
>>Peruvian ones are acceptable if those are the only ones the editor
>>working
>>on it can find or understand.
>>
>>
>You miss the point - it's not that these articles can't get sources.
>It's that they don't have sources now and have a very small pool of
>editors working on them who would be overwhelmed, if not driven off
>entirely, by the demand to source all of the articles or see them
>deleted.
>
The demand is not simply to source all those articles, but to do so in a
very short time.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question ("compilation copyright")

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Apr 2007 01:46:12 -0700, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> With the exception of fair use, of course - which is in fact more
>> useful AND more defensible in text than in pictures.  (For UK
>> contributors, of course, replace that with 'fair dealing' which is
>> much more restrictive, but I believe DOES still allow for criticism
>> and commentary - though someone better versed in it would be useful)
>
> Indeed.  So some examples would be fine, and a discussion of the
> process would be fine.  I am completely behind both.  What is not
> fine, in any case I can think of, is reproducing the content *in its
> entirety* as part of that.

The Cool Wall is only a small portion of the show, as is my
understanding, and there's more to it than simply the name of the car
that winds up on the board. It is ridiculous to claim that including a
listing of cars that have been on it is reproducing the show *in its
entirety*. You're stretching really hard here.


from_name: Emanuel Nordrum

subject: [Wikitech-l] If/then

body:
Are if/then statements enabled for use in templates in the latest
version of MediaWiki, as they are in Wikipedia? It's getting to become
a bit of a chore having tons of empty fields in my At a Glance lists,
and I'm wondering if it's worth going through the hassle of having my
MySQL databases updated so I can run the latest version of MediaWiki.

Emanuel

--
"The best journalism is the first draft of history."
- John Pilger

http://www.hackwurld.com


body:
Phil Boswell wrote:

>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>
>>I'd like to see some study done that checks how many people would actually
>>participate in a massive spring-like cleanup that would involve sourcing
>>lacking articles.
>>
>>
>Sadly I think what you would attract is those who would prefer to spend 5
>seconds pasting "DELETE THIS UNSOURCED MONSTROSITY NOW!!!" over each and
>every article rather than the few who could afford to spend much longer
>actually finding proper sources and formatting them sufficiently to appease
>the citation police.
>
>We would be in the position where we were overwhelmed by articles tagged for
>deletion, rather than by those tagged for sourcing, and much less time in
>which to attempt to deal with them.
>
>
Then too when simplistic policies are adopted that offer a panacea to
some major problem there is no shortage of idiots willing to enforce the
policy literally and strictly.

If Jimbo speaks of "crap unsourced articles", the idiots will
immediately draw the conclusion that all unsourced articles are crap.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Common Interwiki links

body:
I have update list of pages with many interwiki links but NOT to a
certain language.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Common_Interwiki_links

These might constitute some kind of 'missing pages' for these
Wikipedias, or just pages that are not linked to.

The lists are based on English Wikipedia interwiki count (German
Wikipedia interwiki count for English).

In Russian Wikipedia we have special project about similar list
http://tinyurl.com/246gf9

--
Amike kaj kunlabore,
Alexander Sigachov


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Tue, 03 Apr 2007 04:31:05 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>> What, like the personal essays on character traits of various
>>> characters in video games?  I would say that is *objectively* crap :-)
>
>> You'd be wrong.
>
> Not really.  Personal essays are not allowed by policy, after all.

You're shifting the goalposts from the subject of the article to the
quality and style of the writing in it, reread the part of my response
that you snipped and that should be clear. It's a fallacy along the
lines of "pies laced with arsenic are dangerous, ergo we should ban pies."

An article about a video game character that's in the form of a personal
essay should be rewritten to match our manual of style, not necessarily
deleted. There could well be plenty of useful information in it retained
in the resulting article so the original essay isn't necessarily "crap".


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] If/then

body:
On 04/04/07, Emanuel Nordrum <solers at gmail.com> wrote:
> Are if/then statements enabled for use in templates in the latest
> version of MediaWiki, as they are in Wikipedia? It's getting to become

{{#if}} is a parser function, and is one of the "classics" provided in
the ParserFunctions extension; see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions for download and
installation instructions.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>> (And what are we doing using British copyright laws in a Wikipedia run in the
>> US anyway?  Surely the BBC won't tell you if it's copyright under *American*
>> law.)
>
> The BBC will tell me whether they assert copyright over the list
> itself.  If they do not assert copyright, then it essentially does not
> matter.  If they do assert copyright, then we should respect that, per
> our mission, our copyright policy, and not being foolish.  The issue
> is not so tremendously important that we should risk breaking the law
> to include it.  Hell, Top Gear don't even bother putting it on their
> website! It really is pretty trivial, as facts go.

Wikipedia allows fair use of copyrighted material, and furthermore it
follows American copyright law rather than British so even if the BBC
claims "the list is copyright us, don't touch!" and a British lawyer
says "they're right, you know" that doesn't necessarily mean we can't
include the list. It may be uncopyrighted in the US, and at the very
least I expect it's easy fair use.


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:31:41 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> It is ridiculous to claim that including a
>> listing of cars that have been on it is reproducing the show *in its
>> entirety*. You're stretching really hard here.
>
> And indeed I did not.  I claimed that we were reproducing the cool
> wall list in its entirety.  A chapter in the book that is Top Gear, if
> you like.

Or like the first page of a copyrighted musical score, perhaps?


from_name: phoebe ayers

body:
On 4/3/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> > Date: Tue, 3 Apr 2007 13:09:50 -0700
> > From: "phoebe ayers" <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>
> >
> > A nice example :)
> >
> > Well, the OED, generally recognized as the gold standard in
> > etymology, lists
> > the first use of the term in a figurative sense ("leading to
> > disaster")  in
> > 1951: *"1951* J.
> > FLEMING<http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-f.html#j-fleming>
> > *Man who looked Back* x. 132 You go off down the slippery slope;
> > it'll do
> > you good." There are two more quotations, one from 1964 and one
> > form 1979.
> > There are of course earlier uses of the phrase but they are not
> > meant in the
> > same way. Seems to me that to really make your case based on your
> <snip>
>
> But new retrieval technology, namely Google Books, lets me do better
> than Safire.
>
> I found an 1878 reference by one Bernard O'Reilly: "It is not with
> them we are concerned: they will not be taught or reformed; so, they
> will go down the steep and slippery slope on which the heartless
> move, to perdition!"
>
> I think that's unquestionably an example of usage to mean "a course
> that leads inexorably to disaster." (Of course, I'd never draw such
> an inference; I'd just quote it and let the reader decide. The
> reference is: The Mirror of True Womanhood, A Book of Instruction for
> Women in the World, 2nd Edition, Dublin, M. H. Gill and Son,
> "Reprinted from the Thirteenth American Edition." p. 136." Actually
> the question of the year is complicated because the Google Books
> image is from an 1883 edition, but the 1883 edition says it's from
> the Thirteenth American Edition, which was published in 1878. Whether
> it was in earlier editions I don't know. But it's older than 1951 and
> by golly it's older than 1909.
>
> And I found an 1837 reference that does not actually use the phrase
> "slippery slope," but does say: "There are points where the Christian
> must always stand on guard. His danger is seldom found in gross
> offenses... but in small indulgences, and weak compliances, where
> conscience rather doubts, than condemns. These gradually draw him
> nearer and nearer to the world, till the line of separation is lost.
> Many a Christian has glided down this slope to perdition." Osler,
> Edward (1837), Church and King," Smith, Elder and Co., London, p. 13

Well, it should be pointed out that the OED* lists the first figurative use
of "slippery"  in  1586: "*1586 *
SIDNEY<http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-s2.html#sidney>
*Arcadia* III. (1605) 235 The ground he stood vpon being..slippery through
affection, he could not hold himselfe from falling into such an error."
There are several other uses of slippery in a similar meaning (figuratively
treacherous). This is slightly later than the date of 1570 given for the
first reference to "slippery," meaning unreliable, given in a book called
"English through the Ages" by one William Brohaugh (pub. 1998). I didn't
track down any more information on the etymology of slippery slope, but did
find a reference to it (in the "course leading to disaster" sense) in a 1983
"Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English".

At any rate, Google Books is nice for searching but shouldn't be considered
anything like definitive; much like Wikipedia, they are in the midst of
building their collection and are very much 'unfinished'. As we speak, they
are pulling truckloads of books out of library storage for scanning; I'd
check back and run your search again in a few months.

-- phoebe

* the online edition, which is the current revision, or what's known as the
3rd ed.


body:
On 04/04/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> Yes. As I just commented to Guy, I've sent a query to the school; I've
> also sent one to the College of Arms. We'll see if anything comes out
> of it.

I have now received a response from the wonderfully-titled "Bluemantle
Pursuivant" of the College of Arms, who says:

"I have made a brief search in the records of grants of Arms to
corporate bodies and can find no indication that this school is
entitled to bear Arms. This is an anomaly which should be corrected;
if the school decided to petition for a grant of Arms, as have a great
many other independent schools, they would no doubt be successful."

I also had a response from the school, who state that the symbol "is a
logo, as was the previous version". So. This is relevant information,
but how can I cite emails I have received in the article? Thoughts
appreciated.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:42:01 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>>>> What, like the personal essays on character traits of various
>>>>> characters in video games?  I would say that is *objectively* crap :-)
>>>> You'd be wrong.
>>> Not really.  Personal essays are not allowed by policy, after all.
>
>> You're shifting the goalposts from the subject of the article to the
>> quality and style of the writing in it, reread the part of my response
>> that you snipped and that should be clear. It's a fallacy along the
>> lines of "pies laced with arsenic are dangerous, ergo we should ban pies."
>
> Not really.  I was treating the concept as a whole: personal essays on
> the character traits of video game characters.  Every such essay I
> have seen has sucked royally.  I don't discount the possibility that
> properly cited encyclopaedic treatment of the same subject may be
> possible, and it would be quite refreshing to see such a section.

And again you've snipped the portion of my reply where I addressed that
very issue. Go ahead and rewrite the essay, I've never had a problem
with that. My objection is to your claim that you can determine the
objective crappitude of it. A well-written personal essay could well
contain plenty of useful material to be incorporated into the article,
and even a poorly-written one could have a few tidbits. Outright
deletion is not the best approach.

Also, could you perhaps explain how this is relevant to the university
crest and top gear issues? We seem to be drifting here.


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:54:35 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> Or like the first page of a copyrighted musical score, perhaps?
>
> Unlikely.  The test, as I understand it, is significance, and whether
> the use impacts on the rights owner's ability to profit from the work.
> The rights owner in this case does publish derivative works based on
> the Cool Wall.

Cite? I thought you said they considered it so trivial they didn't even
include a listing on their homepage, part of your "original research"
claim on this subject. Now it's a major revenue stream instead?


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Apr 2007 16:48:48 -0400, "The Cunctator"
> <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I thought you said the Cool Wall  list doesn't ever appear in its entirety
>> on the show.
>
> Not as text, it appears as a pictorial representation.

What if we were to include a screenshot of that?


subject: [Foundation-l] A successful request not yet fulfilled

body:
There was some debate about this regarding Ancient Greek.

Should Ancient Greek texts be put on the Greek Wikisource, since the
interface is by default in Modern Greek, which will be difficutl to
understand for some people looking for texts in Ancient Greek? Should
it have its own Wikisource with an interface in Ancient Greek?

Nobody suggested housing it at Oldwikisource... but I for one was in
favor of having a new Wikisource with an interface in Ancient Greek.

Mark

On 05/04/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >
> >>On 4/2/07, *Birgitte SB* wrote:
> >>
> >>    Due to past conversations I have had with people
> >>    involved with incubator, I read the comment about
> >>    "merging processes" differently than you did.  Perhaps
> >>    I am mistaken, and that is not what was meant in this
> >>    case.
> >>
> >>
> >This clearly shows the misunderstanding of what Wikisource is and what
> >[[:oldwikisource:]] is meant for.
> >
> >Although some Wikipedias will remain small for a long time because of
> >lack of contributors, some Wikisources will never get more than a few
> >dozen or hundreds of pages, simply because the original content in that
> >language doesn't exist. Another example is Sanskrit (a bit more than
> >1700 pages) which could qualify to have its own subdomain because of the
> >amount of content, but does not because of lack of contributors.
> >Although we could dream to have the whole of Shakespeare and Victor Hugo
> >translated in Sanskrit, the quantity of existing Sanskrit texts will
> >never be more than a few thousand pages. For some other languages, it
> >will ever be much less, so creating and *maintaining* a wiki for only a
> >few pages is quite a waste of work and time. That's why
> >[[:oldwikisource:]] exists and will continue to do so. In that sense,
> >this interwiki name is also badly chosen.
> >
> Of course the fundamental difference is that a Wikipedia is there for
> the benefit of those who currently write in and work in that language.
> A Wikisource contains texts in its language even if it is a dead
> language.  Old English texts do not need a complete interface in Old
> English.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Klingon Wiktionary closed

body:
Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> And claiming the Klingon should be supported by Wikimedia without giving
> any information about numbers of speakers, is not rethoric???
> I think we don't have the same definition of this word.

I'm sorry, where in this discussion have I claimed Wikimedia should support Klingon?

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia groups on Facebook need monitoring for vandals

body:
I recently joined facebook.com, the social networking site. Facebook
allows people to form groups, and there are numerous ones matching
"Wikipedia". (I quite liked the one called "fricken wikipedia, its
4am!") The majority are silly ones titled with variations along the
lines of "Everything I know I learnt from Wikipedia", but there are
also some anti-Wikipedia or even pro-vandal groups, like this one:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2205217096 (sorry, you may not
be able to see that without an account) - "GLOBAL Wikipedia Vandals".

People are posting comments like this:

[[
Personally, I wish we could all collaborate on a mass group edit.
Imagine if we each created 50-100 sockpuppets, had access to a few
different computers each, and ran some scripting programs to speed up
our work for us...the only way i think it could be any better, is if
we actually had, say 10 admin accounts and could block the entire
recent changes patrol as well as the counter-vandalism unit, then go
about editing on a massive scale. Personally i think that would be a
testimony to the power of individual free-speech, not to mention an
intriguing social experiment.
]]

and this:

[[
I've played around with the idea of doing a lot of legit edits with
one account to apply for adminship eventually. It's something I'd like
to have done by the summer.

As for the mass vandalism idea, I love it. We should get some
interested parties. Whoever wants in, message me on Facebook (we'll
try not to leave most of the plan out in the open).
]]

This is worrying. We should probably try and keep an eye on these places.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
Dmcdevit <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
> You are under the misimpression that I don't like Klingon *because* it
> is a constructed language. Nowhere have I said that. I have given actual
> reasons, including its lack of speakers, lack of literature, lack of
> significance, lack of educational use.

Indeed, but none of those--nor even the lot of them at once--are reasons not
to have a wiki.  Though if it *is* because it is a constructed language as well,
then I can see the argument.

> On the other hand, if your argument *is* "Our language is consideredlinguistically unimportant, functionally nonexistent, and educationallyuseless. It is thus all the more imperative that we produce a dictionaryin it" that's not a problem.

I'm sorry, that's not my argument.   That was intended to be an example of
how neutral your original statement actually was, in response to the idea
that it was some kind of killing blow.

> Inclusion guidelines are not prejudice; if you are against any vetting ofsupposed languages at all, I think you are fighting a losing battle.

What?  I have been for inclusion guidelines for constructed languages through
this whole discussion.

> Wiktionary is not for promotion of your pet project, so this is beginningto sound rather like the sort of argument I hear when I delete some kid'sprotologism on Wiktionary, of some high school band on Wikipedia ("The worlddoesn't know about it/us yet; that's why we need an article!").

I'm sorry, I have no special interest in Klingon.

> In fact, it *is* important that our work support educational purposes, and it'snot unreasonable to demand that.

Of course it's not unreasonable.  But demanding our work support educational purposes
has nothing to do with the matter at hand--unless you mean our work support educational
purposes _only_, which is a statement with much more far-reaching consequences than the
mere rejection of Klingon.

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/


body:
> Then the native speakers who are from the culture that concerns the language
> should be the ones setting up the wiki, running the wiki, and deciding
> who will or will
> not be contributors.  It should not be done by folks who do not speak
> the language or do not know the culture.

They *are* the ones doing this. The discussion here is about
restrictions being placed on these people. Nobody is trying to run the
Latgalian Wiki or decide who will or won't be a contributor (however,
the Foundation does seem to have an idea that anyone who contributes
in good faith and is not disruptive should be allowed to contribute,
and I would think that any exceptions to that need to be addressed
individually - I do realise that there may be cultural reasons for
changing rules or allowing exceptions, but I also feel that
fundamental differences from the rules that have until now been
applied to all Wikis need to be documented and discussed).

What we *are* discussing is whether or not these people should be
burdened with translating LanguageBat-ltg.php before they even get
their own Wikipedia. Nothing more, nothing less. The people wanting to
create these Wikis do not seem to want to

> By way of example, there's a lot of Dine folks who are interested in working
> on Wikipedia projects,  but in my discussions with them, they have
> little interest in
> getting involved with non-natives with their language, and a lot of it
> deals with control issues
> and the lack of desire to interact with people outside of their culture.

If they wish to work on the Navajo Wikipedia, I would see no problem
with finding a suitable sysop who is a native speaker of that
language, and if they wish I would be willing to leave right away.
There is no need to deal with non-speakers or non fluent speakers or
"outsiders".

> There are a number of reasons for this, and I will not address all of
> the, here.   Suffice to say its an
> issue of having sufficient "will" to be interested in dealing with non
> speakers, and the balancing the peer pressure
> many native groups deal with in self-reinforcing constraints imposed by
> their beliefs and society.   I live inside such a
> world the dine live in (though not as closed), and I feel the pressure
> from my peers, but our culture is more open than
> many other native cultures to outsiders and always has been.
>
> To the dine, you and I are outsiders and always will be (though being
> native, my interactions with the Dine are less stressful
> and more open than a non-native person would probably experience).   The
> "rules" and attitudes of the English Wikipedia culture which
> permeate other projects are not the same views other cultures have.
> Without those views from inside the culture, you simply have no basis
> to understand or comprehend the needs of a culture with such a project
> or opportunity as wikipedia, or even how to respond to it.

I'm not sure what your point is here. I have realised several times in
the past in dealing with certain groups that promote specific American
languages that while they may be willing to share their language with
outsiders, it is often on a limited basis or only with people they are
comfortable with on a person-to-person level. Certain groups are
unwilling to have public resources in their languages.

I learned this a couple of years back when studying (in a group that
was made up, besides myself, of only native people) the O'odham
language at the O'odham Piipaash Language Center at the SRPMIC. After
the classes concluded, I asked the people at the Language Center if
there was any interest in offering the Tribe's website in O'odham and
Piipaash versions. They responded that yes, it would be a possibility,
but only if they could limit access to tribal members and others at
their own discretion. (This attitude however is not universal; for
example at the start of the trail for the petroglyphs at Picture Rocks
there is a sign that gives information about the history of the area
and the petroglyphs in English, Spanish, and O'odham and this is
certainly not "password-protected").

I was later reminded of that situation when I heard about the interest
in creating an extracurricular class in the Hopi language at Tuba City
HS. The Hopi parents were very interested in the idea of their
children getting Hopi classes at school, but were dismayed when they
found out that Arizona law required that the class be offered to all
interested students, which would have included non-Hopi students
(mostly Navajo students). At that point they decided not to pursue the
option further. (It should be noted though that the Hopis are one of
the more extreme groups in regard to cultural isolationism; when
Hopiikwa Lavaytutuveni was published, the publishers were sued by a
group of Hopi although the dictionary was endorsed by the tribe and
several Hopi were involved with its publication; this is largely due
to the unique religious beliefs of the Hopi).

Although it was discussed earlier about a hypothetical Hopi Wikipedia
(a Wikipedia for a very small community of speakers and how the
dynamics would be very different there), I doubt that will happen
anytime soon for the reasons we have both outlined.

Although some Navajo (and that *is* the term overwhelmingly used in
English - see www.navajo.org or google "i am dine" and then google "i
am navajo") may want to keep their language guarded or secret, it is
too late for this. It's difficult to keep secret such a widely-spoken
language.

> I think the same applies to any non-english, non-european culture who
> has to interact with the English speaking world.

I agree, but I do think you exaggerate things a bit.

Mark

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Arbeo, myself, and David Gerard do not (at least I'm pretty sure none
>of us do) know a single word of Latgalian, but we have seen that this
>Wikipedia has several native contributors lined up and that they have
>been waiting for a very long time now. These people would certainly be
>capable of translating a message file, but what is being questioned is
>the utility of having it before the actual Wikipedia is allowed to
>begin especially since this requirement was created several months
>after their request was intially "approved".
>
>
>
Then the native speakers who are from the culture that concerns the language
should be the ones setting up the wiki, running the wiki, and deciding
who will or will
not be contributors.  It should not be done by folks who do not speak
the language or do not know the culture.

By way of example, there's a lot of Dine folks who are interested in working
on Wikipedia projects,  but in my discussions with them, they have
little interest in
getting involved with non-natives with their language, and a lot of it
deals with control issues
and the lack of desire to interact with people outside of their culture.

There are a number of reasons for this, and I will not address all of
the, here.   Suffice to say its an
issue of having sufficient "will" to be interested in dealing with non
speakers, and the balancing the peer pressure
many native groups deal with in self-reinforcing constraints imposed by
their beliefs and society.   I live inside such a
world the dine live in (though not as closed), and I feel the pressure
from my peers, but our culture is more open than
many other native cultures to outsiders and always has been.

To the dine, you and I are outsiders and always will be (though being
native, my interactions with the Dine are less stressful
and more open than a non-native person would probably experience).   The
"rules" and attitudes of the English Wikipedia culture which
permeate other projects are not the same views other cultures have.
Without those views from inside the culture, you simply have no basis
to understand or comprehend the needs of a culture with such a project
or opportunity as wikipedia, or even how to respond to it.

I think the same applies to any non-english, non-european culture who
has to interact with the English speaking world.

Jeff


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] InstantCommons demo

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 4/3/07, Platonides wrote:
>> A good  method, but... How would we now when it came from the site
>> users? It's almost impossible.
>
> Not at all impossible, it would just take a little work.  We setup a
> landing page they they direct their upload to commons link to, ... it
> sets a cookie indicating the site they came from (either one landing
> page per site, or grab the referrer. Make upload grab the cookie and
> stuff it in the database someplace..
>
> I think that this would be very useful data even among our own
> projects. SUL will reduce the need for it internally, but it would
> still be useful with instantcommons.

I thought on it, but i found several problems:
-Most wikis will also allow local upload, not only commons.
-Upload instructions will say something like "You need to upload to
Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org" ie. they won't provide
an esoteric extra parameter.
-Even if they provide, some people will go directly, not getting the
cookie / not providing the referrer.
-Asking to provide their local wiki url won't be popular.
-Some sites will have several wikis, wanting to use it on all (eg. a
local wikia and wikia central).

However, i like the idea of having a "landing page" where we can give
information to InstantantCommoners (commons scope, licenses, delays...),
set cookies, etc.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: thannae...

body:
On 4/4/07, cu clt <abcclt at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I received this abusive and threatening email from a Wikipedia admin
> (User:Thunderboltz) after I edited an article he created. Please look at
> the
> article to see the edits I made.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mah%C3%A9_River
> Please see User:Thunderboltz's frantic reactions  on his User Page and
> Talk
> Page. Also note that he deleted my User page and put sock template on it
> and
> protected both User Page and Talk Page.

FYI for others looking into this, this appears to be [[User:Nosons]]. His
userpage, before it was deleted, claimed that he was the banned
[[User:Kuntan]]. [[User talk:Nosons]] has since been protected for
vandalism, although I can't find any vandalism in its history.

Johnleemk


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 4/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:31:41 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> >It is ridiculous to claim that including a
> >listing of cars that have been on it is reproducing the show *in its
> >entirety*. You're stretching really hard here.
>
> And indeed I did not.  I claimed that we were reproducing the cool
> wall list in its entirety.  A chapter in the book that is Top Gear, if
> you like.

I thought you said the Cool Wall  list doesn't ever appear in its entirety
on the show.


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bruce McMahan

references:
<grsl03tvq058c3anqijb6bt1tqkv592tqr@4ax.com>
	<79F48F7E-1A56-4540-A993-E28AE456F908@gmail.com>
	<0rtm035qqrihehpr920clatnqpgd0v2gpv@4ax.com>
	<165821F0-1F67-4B0F-BF02-B788CE60F929@gmail.com>
	<mesn03dsvnennoajpklmfer1vb0tpb2pnd@4ax.com>
	<D566EB4C-0F22-4444-8DAF-80BF49F3857D@gmail.com>
	<m60o035nfl688ukj3a06la90rihp49ckjp@4ax.com>
	<B00892B7-B2E0-408F-910B-F76E5D5420D6@gmail.com>
	<42f90dc00703301036l2ddd1447id60a2c133e5209d3@mail.gmail.com>
	<ud3813hh8or0uiphekbr5bd8pa87r3h0ht@4ax.com>

body:
On 4/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> That's not how I see it.  I see it as preventing Wikipedia from being
> used as the primary vehicle for publicising barely-known negative
> material about barely-known living individuals.

I'd say that if anyone knows about Bruce McMahan, it's because of this
issue.  The top six Google results for his name are about this
scandal.  I feel that having an article about someone and ignoring the
most publicized thing about their life is rather too whitewashing for
my preferences, especially when there are newspaper sources to cite.

On the other hand, it could be argued if the best known thing about
the guy is this, and it's not THAT well known, then he's a nobody who
doesn't need an article at all.

-Matt