body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> The content belongs to its original copyright owners, and increasingly,
> the Wikimedia Foundation is their official copyright agent.

Please avoid statements like this, as they are potentially misleading.
While it is theoretically possible that at some point in the future, the
Foundation might take legal action against people who misuse content
taken from Wikimedia in violation of the licensing terms, contributors
do not assign their copyrights to the Foundation, and the Foundation
does not assume a duty to protect these rights. The sense in which the
Foundation is an official agent for copyright issues (actually the agent
is Jimbo personally) is with respect to third parties who have
complaints about their copyrighted material being infringed by use on
Wikimedia projects.

There is some language in [[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] about
appointing the Foundation as an agent for downstream copyright
compliance issues. That page is a draft, most of it now more than a year
old, and has never been adopted as official policy. As things currently
stand, contributors have every right to enforce their own copyrights
against outside parties as they see fit, and don't need for the
Foundation to get involved.

--Michael Snow


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: what is partnership ?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Do we have a partnership with Ourmedia?

body:
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 08:52:32 +0000, David Gerard
<fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
> > Oh, what other non-partner partners do we have?
>
> Our name is obviously worth something. What was the trademark status
> again?

At the very least, we should convince them to use the Wikimedia logo
instead of the 'pedia logo. Though the latter has more brand
recognition.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Nathan Wong

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Putting Wikipedia on a CD or DVD

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Please please please let's not start this all over again.
>
> If you have a specific proposal, post it on meta, otherwise
> 1) yes, we know it's an issue for many people,
> 2) no, there is still no consensus as to what to do about it.

Sorry - I didn't intend to make a specific proposal, or any proposal.
And I wouldn't really dare do so - I was just trying to reply more fully
to Tom; though I probably wrote more than I need.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Julien Francoz CoCoZ

subject: [Wikitech-l] Migration of wiki

body:
Hello

Sorry for my bad English, I'm French.

I need to migrate a mediwiki from a server to another. What is the best
way to do it ?

I have done a migration of the database (dump + import), the I put the
mediawiki archive on the new webserver, and I run the installation script:

the result:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

MediaWiki 1.4.0 installation

Please include all of the lines below when reporting installation problems.
Checking environment...

     * PHP 4.3.8: ok
     * PHP server API is apache; ok, using pretty URLs
(index.php/Page_Title)
     * Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
     * PHP's memory_limit is 8M. If this is too low, installation may
fail! Attempting to raise limit to 20M... ok.
     * No zlib support.
     * Turck MMCache not installed, can't use object caching functions
     * Couldn't find GD library or ImageMagick; image thumbnailing
disabled.
     * Installation directory: /data/httpd/fr
     * Script URI path: /fr
     * MySQL error 1045: Access denied for user: 'root at localhost' (Using
password: NO)
     * Trying regular user... ok.
     * Connected to database... 4.0.20; enabling MySQL 4 enhancements
     * Database wikifr exists
     * There are already MediaWiki tables in this database. Checking if
updates are needed...
...linkscc table already exists.
...hitcounter table already exists.
...querycache table already exists.
...objectcache table already exists.
...categorylinks table already exists.
...logging table already exists.
...user_rights table already exists.
...have ipb_id field in ipblocks table.
...have ipb_expiry field in ipblocks table.
...have rc_type field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_ip field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_id field in recentchanges table.
...have rc_patrolled field in recentchanges table.
...have user_real_name field in user table.
...have user_token field in user table.
...have ur_user field in user_rights table.
...have log_params field in logging table.
...already have interwiki table
Updating indexes to 20031107: Query "ALTER TABLE recentchanges ADD INDEX
rc_timestamp (rc_timestamp), ADD INDEX rc_namespace_title (rc_namespace,
rc_title), ADD INDEX rc_cur_id (rc_cur_id)" failed with error code
"Duplicate key name 'rc_timestamp'".

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know what it means and how to finish the installation.

Thanks

Julien Francoz

--
Formateur du laboratoire SUPINFO des technologies GNU/Linux
http://www.labo-linux.org
http://desktoplinux.labo-linux.org


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
I apology because I am probably going to ask you something not very
pleasant to do. However, this is required by the firm Actualys, which
considers the edit to be false and detrimental to their firm.

In the following discussion page, there is a paragraph which should be
permanently removed from the database.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discuter:Fournisseur_d%27acc%C3%A8s_%C3%A0_Internet&oldid=1646720

The paragraph begins by  "Le nom m?me de l'association se limite ?
fournisseur d'acc?s d'autres pages du m?me site utilisent ? plusieurs
reprises acc?s ? Internet l'Internet "

and ends by "J'aurais aussi pu parler de la qualit? du design de la page
[47] Izwalito 17 fev 2005 ? 16:55 (CET)"

It was written in several times during the day of 17th.

It was written by Izwalito, who is a banned editor.

Unfortunately, there were many edits afterwards. I asked the two
authors, Treanna and Marc Mongenet whether they would agree for the
simple deletion of the version from the 17th of february and up.

Unfortunately, Treanna has not answered to my request (thank you
Treanna) and Marc Mongenet asked that the following discussion be
preserved as explaining the current state of the article.

Hence, I would like to ask only for the deletion of the defaming paragraph

I hope some one will be able to do this promptly.

Thanks.

Anthere


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Neutrality NPOV/Abuse of Administrator Power

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:

>I've unblocked this user as it does look like a content dispute rather
>than vandalism.
>
I would like to hear from Neutrality on this.  I left a note today, but
have not heard back.  Unless we hear some quick backpedalling, this kind
of behavior should lead to indefinite suspension of sysop privileges.
The last thing Wikipedia needs is this kind of face toward anons.

Tom Haws


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Alexander Sigachov

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Congratulations are in order (an
	overlooked	milestone)

body:
>>>http://portal-test.mediawiki.org/extract2.php?template=Www.wikipedia.org_template/temp

>>>A comment regarding the Cyrillic version of the
>>>name used in the background: it is intentionally based on the
>>>Ukrainian version rather than the Russian version because at the
>>>moment Ukrainian is higher in the list of largest Wikipedias.

Yes

There are 13? articles in Russian Wikipedia, and 16? in Ukrainian

But

There are 3.0? words in Russian Wikipedia, and 2.0? in Ukrainian
158? links in Russian Wikipedia, and 71? in Ukrainian
21% >2K articles, and 8%
10 very active wikipedians and 3
etc

:)

>>The background is far too heavy.

Yes, it's very dark and contrast.

--
Cxion la plej helan,
ajvol


from_name: Frederik Eaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] looking for way to convert mediawiki markup to html

body:
> >Has somebody written a script to convert mediawiki markup to html? I'd
> >need something which works with embedded latex. Looking at the
> >mediawiki source it doesn't seem like it should be *that* hard but I
> >haven't tried yet.
>
> Yes, we've written one; it's called "MediaWiki". It's written in PHP,
> and uses a helper program 'texvc' to handle LaTeX fragments and pass
> them to the renderer.

The intent was to have something which didn't depend on a database,
but could take wiki markup on say standard input...

> If you can't or don't want to try to use MediaWiki's parser, there are a
> huge number of more or less somewhat-implemented clone parsers in
> various languages: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers

I'll look at these.

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Unfortunately, there were many edits afterwards. I asked the two
> authors, Treanna and Marc Mongenet whether they would agree for the
> simple deletion of the version from the 17th of february and up.
>
> Unfortunately, Treanna has not answered to my request (thank you
> Treanna) and Marc Mongenet asked that the following discussion be
> preserved as explaining the current state of the article.
>
> Hence, I would like to ask only for the deletion of the defaming paragraph

We don't really have a good way of doing that.

My recommendation would be to delete the page and restore the
surrounding discussion.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: phase3/extensions/ee - New directory

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Update of /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/extensions/ee
> In directory sc8-pr-cvs1.sourceforge.net:/tmp/cvs-serv1360/ee
>
> Log Message:
> Directory /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/extensions/ee added to the repository

Wrong place for the extension. The "extensions" directory in module
phase3 is just a place holder. Extensions should be commited to the
"extensions" module.

That speed up cvs updating of the core mediawiki package ;o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
Servers in trouble ? noc (at) wikimedia (dot) org


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: How to remove the writing "From Wikipedia,
 the free encyclopedia." from all articles

body:
Karthik Gopalakrishnan wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm relatively new to Mediawiki and PHP.
>
> I installed Mediawiki in my local computer running
> Fedora Core 3
> PHP 4.3.10
> MySQL 4.0.24.
>
> I also loaded the current english wikipedia dump onto the MySQL.
>
> On all articles just  below the Article Name there is a writing
> "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia."  and in the Edit Page too.
>
> I was wondering is there anyway to remove this writing and add another writing.

Edit [[MediaWiki:Tagline]]

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Unfortunately, there were many edits afterwards. I asked the two
> authors, Treanna and Marc Mongenet whether they would agree for the
> simple deletion of the version from the 17th of february and up.
>
> Unfortunately, Treanna has not answered to my request (thank you
> Treanna) and Marc Mongenet asked that the following discussion be
> preserved as explaining the current state of the article.
>
> Hence, I would like to ask only for the deletion of the defaming paragraph

We don't really have a good way of doing that.

My recommendation would be to delete the page and restore the
surrounding discussion.

Brion

-----------

Okay.
Then I will copy the expurged version of the page somewhere. I would like you to delete the page afterwards. Then I will recreate a new page and paste the discussion on it. Is that procedure okay with you ?

Now, I thought it was possible to remove part of texts. It is important to know it is not possible. So, if I understand well, only entire page, or individual versions can be deleted ?

If so, we should be very careful when we see a potentially illegal comment on a page such as the pump. Because we will not be able to remove it by other means than deleting all subsequent versions made by other editors where the comment is still visilble. It may be no big deal on a discussion page, but I do not exactly foresee deleting the pump...

Though...perhaps an idea to explore to clean up the pump here

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!


from_name: John Fader

subject: [WikiEN-l] A friendly Wired Article

body:
Wired liked Enron too
(http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.06/wired_index.html?pg=13).

If you cannot afford an attorney, a really bad one will be provided for you.
John Fader


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

body:
-------------- Original message --------------
> To the list,
>
> I will be assisting this person in private with his or her grievance.
If you find during the course of this, that it was a personal abuse of administrator power, it should be brought back out in public, on the request for arbitration page.  It should be easy to add the evidence to one of the on going cases neutrality is involved in.  Neutrality was editing that same page, and  should have called another admin to review the evidence, but  he did not think he was personally involved in the particulars of what was going on, so did not think there was a conflict of interest.

                         -- Silverback


body:
> What is the next step ?

Hoi,
I think, that when we DELETE the article and then copy back those parts
that are proper, we will only lose the history of the article. For
moderators and for legal reasons we will be still able to show what was
there. To the public there is nothing to be seen of the content that
should not be there. In my opinion this is an acceptable solution.

There could/should be some mention of this in the talkpage to explain
that/how this issue is resolved.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Okay.
How do we do this when the comments are on the pump ?
And are now in ... say... 40 or more subsequent versions ?

Ant

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] [172] George Kennan

body:
Wikipedia editors:

I just posted a new article on the late George F. Kennan. Aside from this
brief return earlier today, I still no longer intend to return to Wikipedia
as an editor, so I have to announce here on the mailing list that I can be
reached for questions/comments/feedback on this very important article (see,
e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_a_press_source_2005#March_21-31)
via this email address. Also, thanks to everyone who posted those kind words
of encouragement on my talk page after my depature.

Thanks for the understanding,

172

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
I've unblocked this user as it does look like a content dispute rather
than vandalism.

Theresa


from_name: Rick

body:
--- Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Theresa Knott wrote:
>
> >I've unblocked this user as it does look like a
> content dispute rather
> >than vandalism.
> >
> I would like to hear from Neutrality on this.  I
> left a note today, but
> have not heard back.  Unless we hear some quick
> backpedalling, this kind
> of behavior should lead to indefinite suspension of
> sysop privileges.
> The last thing Wikipedia needs is this kind of face
> toward anons.
>
> Tom Haws

Oh, please.

Why is it every time an admin does something that
somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
hounds and the torches and go raging after them with
the rest of the mob?

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:40:35 +0200, Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:
>>Of course I did. More than that: I've tried to load it up
>>on a PC from which I have never logged in before :) Still
>>the same. I have no slightest idea where does it resurrect
>>from.
>
>
> Wild guess: object cache?

User CSS (from User:<Username>/<skinname>.css) would not be stored in
the object cache, so far as I can tell. However, CSS is marked with
*very* aggressive client-side cache options and hitting the 'refresh'
button in many browsers is not enough by itself.

MediaWiki:<Skinname>.css might be taken from the message cache stored in
the objectcache table, however.

 > That was the culprit when I kept getting old
> versions served on the RecentChanges feed. Turns out we only keep _one_
> timekey for _two_ feeds, so if an edit happens and the RSS cache gets
> updated, the Atom version won't be (and vice versa).

Did you just discover this, or did you forget to report the bug? :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Now, I thought it was possible to remove part of texts. It is
> important to know it is not possible. So, if I understand well, only
> entire page, or individual versions can be deleted ?

Hypothetically we could alter the contents of individual revisions, but
a) this is very hard to do right now
b) this will get much much harder in the future
c) it may become more or less impossible in the future (technical
requirements for immutable revision contents to make the storage backend
work and replicate cleanly)
d) tampering with the contents of historical revisions strikes me as
morally repugnant, even if it's legal. It sets a precedent for altering
history according to whim. It's the *edit history*, not the *current
public version*, for a reason.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions

body:
( Cc:ing wikipedia-l, since it is important to have broad community feedback.
Also the translators list, because the sidebar of the open-questions
page should be translated. )

That's a great page of questions, Angela.  It is a *long* page, but I
hope many people will chime in with their thoughts, particularly
people who do not usually contribute their ideas on meta.

Let me add that our community has an untapped depth of talent in
fields where we currently "need" skilled help.  I hope that we work to
find better ways to ask our community of active editors and readers
for help, before deciding that any particular problem cannot be solved
through distributed effort and broad collaboration.

+SJ

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 12:30:21 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are a lot of unanswered questions and issues currently facing
> the board, and I would appreciate your help with these.
>
> If you have any thoughts on the following topics, please see
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions> and give
> your answers and suggestions, either on that page, or by email to me
> if you would prefer to reply privately.
>
> 1 Hosting
> 2 Trademarks
> 3 Membership
> 4 Money
> 5 Developers
> 6 Communication
>
> If you feel there are further questions that need to be addressed,
> please add those to the page.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Angela.
>
> --
> Angela Beesley
> Not necessarily reflecting the views of the Wikimedia Foundation.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Open questions


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Now, I thought it was possible to remove part of texts. It is
> important to know it is not possible. So, if I understand well, only
> entire page, or individual versions can be deleted ?

Hypothetically we could alter the contents of individual revisions, but
a) this is very hard to do right now
b) this will get much much harder in the future
c) it may become more or less impossible in the future (technical
requirements for immutable revision contents to make the storage backend
work and replicate cleanly)
d) tampering with the contents of historical revisions strikes me as
morally repugnant, even if it's legal. It sets a precedent for altering
history according to whim. It's the *edit history*, not the *current
public version*, for a reason.

Well, best to know what we can and can not do, so as not to pretend we can do something when we cannot. I certainly made a mistake in saying Actualys the comments would be deleted permanently; my mistake. Next time, I will not.

I do not like anymore than you the idea of altering history. But I feel that if someone can sue us due to lies being on Wikipedia, it is worth doing it. It is not only a legal perspective. It is only showing readers that we have a certain ethic, and that if someone says the worse crap on them, we will try to restore the truth rather than propagating it.

For the record, I do not appreciate at all the term "whim" applied to my request, nor the qualification of morally repugnant, Brion. I understand you do not like doing this, but it is a very very very poor feedback for the pain and time I spent with Izwalito case.

Anthere

http://fr.wikipedia.org
http://anthere.shaihome.net/

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.


subject: [Wikitech-l] paragraph deletion

body:
Erreur interneUn article de Wikip?dia, l'encyclop?die libre.
Can't delete this article because it contains block-compressed revisions. This is a temporary situation which the developers are well aware of, and should be fixed within a month or two. Please mark the article for deletion and wait for a developer to fix our buggy software.
------------
So, now, what do I do ?

Anthere

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!


subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of paragraph

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I do not like anymore than you the idea of altering history. But I
> feel that if someone can sue us due to lies being on Wikipedia, it is
> worth doing it. It is not only a legal perspective. It is only
> showing readers that we have a certain ethic, and that if someone
> says the worse crap on them, we will try to restore the truth rather
> than propagating it.

That's already been accomplished by removing the comment from the page.

> For the record, I do not appreciate at all the term "whim" applied to
> my request, nor the qualification of morally repugnant, Brion. I
> understand you do not like doing this, but it is a very very very
> poor feedback for the pain and time I spent with Izwalito case.

I would not consider it your whim, but rather the whim of some company
which would prefer to make threats against third parties about a
negative comment on an internet forum, which has already been relegated
to the depths of the edit history of a discussion page.

What exactly is at issue here? For what would we throw away our
independence and editorial integrity? Even if it were easy to do, there
would need to be some very serious problem at hand to even consider it.

I have to assume there's something *very serious* at issue, but I'm not
at all sure what it is. Maybe it's just that it's very late and I'm not
a native speaker, but I can't imagine what in that paragraph would be
considered actionable under any circumstances; mostly it's a terminology
dispute between editors, and also someone apparently isn't too impressed
by this company's web design.

So what? What am I missing?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
>>Did you just discover this, or did you forget to report the bug? :)
>
> I tracked this down yesterday. It's so blindingly obvious when you
> look at the code that I suspected it might be intentional. For my own
> installation, I just cut $expire down by a few orders of magnitude.
>
> While I was debating whether I should still report it or write a patch,
> along came a list message that allowed me to sneak in my discovery and
> off-load responsibility.

Please do! File a bug at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ to make sure we
don't forget about it.

> Btw, is there a deeper reason why the limit on RC entries is encoded
> twice in the URL (previous and current value)?

Stupidity? Forgetfulness? :)

Looks like it's just taking the whole current URL and tacking on the
additional parameter. It ought to be merging the sets of values instead.

File a bug...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Michael Snow a ?crit:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> The content belongs to its original copyright owners, and increasingly,
>> the Wikimedia Foundation is their official copyright agent.
>
>
> Please avoid statements like this, as they are potentially misleading.
> While it is theoretically possible that at some point in the future, the
> Foundation might take legal action against people who misuse content
> taken from Wikimedia in violation of the licensing terms, contributors
> do not assign their copyrights to the Foundation, and the Foundation
> does not assume a duty to protect these rights. The sense in which the
> Foundation is an official agent for copyright issues (actually the agent
> is Jimbo personally) is with respect to third parties who have
> complaints about their copyrighted material being infringed by use on
> Wikimedia projects.
>
> There is some language in [[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] about
> appointing the Foundation as an agent for downstream copyright
> compliance issues. That page is a draft, most of it now more than a year
> old, and has never been adopted as official policy. As things currently
> stand, contributors have every right to enforce their own copyrights
> against outside parties as they see fit, and don't need for the
> Foundation to get involved.
>
> --Michael Snow

I might however, add to this, that at least according to french law, the
foundation hold another responsability by being the owner of the servers
hosting the data. As such, copyright violation is not the only issue,
but presence of illicite content also is. In case of problematic
content, the author of the content is liable of the words written and
ideas conveyed, and the foundation is liable of letting the content stay
from the moment it was told it is there and problematic.

Ant


body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>>
>>> --- Neil Harris

>> I agree with you on this. Partner recognition should be kept well
>> clear of the content. Which is why I recommend having partnership info
>> on the Wikimedia Foundation site, not in the project content.
>
>
> There are some very important points here in the matter of intellectual
> property law.  I have long believed that in terms of copyrights the big
> argument will not come over the inclusion of copyvio material in some
> Wikipedia article, but over the willingness of Wikimedia to defend the
> collective rights of its multitude of licensors.  The collective has a
> history of removing copyvio material when it is found, often to an
> extent that far exceeds what may be required by law.  We only need to be
> aware of the copyvio material before we act.
>
> So far, I believe that those who have used the Wikipedia material have
> been reasonably willing to be compliant when advised of the GFDL.  What
> happens if someone bluntly and stubbornly refuses?  What tools do we
> have that we are willing to use to enforce compliance?  Who has the
> personal responsibility to take the necessary legal steps?  Prosecuting
> cases can be more difficult than defending them.  The fact that our
> collective rights are primarily not fiscal ones makes protecting them
> more difficult in a judicial system that reduces all disputes to dollar
> values as the lowest common denominator.  A lawyer working on
> contingency fees knows how to calculate 30% of nothing.
>
> I remember well the first "24" who was chased away when I arrived three
> years ago.  (He should not be confused with the more recent and now more
> familiar one who really was a PIA.)  Anyways, the first 24 was concerned
> with a set of ideas in economic theory based on different kinds of
> capital.  He considered such things as social capital, educational
> capital and environmental capital, all of which should appear on some
> kind of balance sheet.  IIRC he was mostly criticized for presenting
> original research, but some of which I had heard already heard about in
> other sources.  The point in raising this is that we need to look at
> capital in other than monetary terms, because that may be the one common
> idea that underpins all movements for the free distribution of knowledge.
> In the matter of partnerships being big has certain advantages; it
> allows us to be in the driver's seat.  We can, for example, charge a fee
> for the right to call oneself a Wikipedia partner while doing very
> little else in return.  A single page which shows the logos of all our
> partners would be enough.  That would only be there as verification that
> someone that calls himself a partner really is.
>
> Picture this:  We have, by volunteer effort alone, created a
> half-billion dollar gorilla that can't be sold (though not for a lack of
> willing buyers).  Its physical assets are a tiny depreciating server
> farm, and a little pocket change in the bank.  Enron could only wish to
> have done so much with so little?  That's the ultimate futures trade by
> the libertarian capitalist king of a socialist monarchy.
> Ec

Nod.

And again, partnership should be an exchange. "Selling" our logo (ie,
exchanging monetary resources in exchange of the use of a name, a
logo...) is only one way to do partnership.

There are other ways to do so. For example, when a website or an
organisation offers us some of its content, it is sharing knowledge with
us. It has value. It is "instructional capital". When Telebotanica
offers us to work together (ie, we together work to build a common
resource), it is "human capital". When some one offers us a server, it
is "infrastructural capital". When Sunir Shah made suggestions earlier
in Wikipedia life, it was "individual capital". Etc... All these are
partnerships. We just do not consider them so, because when we think
partnership, we think "asking money for the other one to use our logo"
or "exchaning links to increase google rank".

Our perspective is not modest. We now usually approach partnership with
a superior opinion. As a financial and bureaucratic thing.

When it is just about saying "We are collaborating on something. We have
a relationship of some sort".

We were more modest 3 years ago.


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
The Cunctator stated for the record:
> On 3/25/05 5:43 AM, "John Lee" <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>>Rick wrote:
>>
>>>Oh, please.
>>>
>>>Why is it every time an admin does something that
>>>somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
>>>hounds and the torches and go raging after them with
>>>the rest of the mob?
>>>
>>>RickK
>>>
>>
>>Because admins are expected to be above ordinary users; see [[WP:RFA]]
>>for yourself. People vote on others not only based on their suitability
>>for janitorial tasks but also on how polite, active, etc. the users are.
>>
>
> More fundamentally, it's because people are aware that in the long run, the
> real disasters and failures of society have come when the people in power
> fail to be kept in check.

And finally, when all the pretense is stripped away, it's because people
are violent pack animals, poorly disguised in a skin of civilization.
One scratch, and the murderous howling lynch mob springs out of hiding.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Eight parts gasoline, one part
  sean at epoptic.com | laundry detergent powder.


subject: [WikiEN-l] [172] George Kennan

body:
Abe Sokolov stated for the record:

> Thanks for the understanding,
>
> 172

Rest assured, we understand.

--
  Sean Barrett     | bus error (passengers dumped)
  sean at epoptic.com |


body:
Tom Haws a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> we have to admit that a big part of our content does not necessarily
>> fit the needs of some of the target people in these countries. And
>> what the associations I went in contact with insisted that they did
>> not want to just be handled a cd from west to use.
>
>
> Excellent post, Anthere.  And the above is right on.  I for one am not
> prepared to account for the consequences of distributing autofella...,
> etc. to school children.  I know this is a variation on an unpopular
> theme, but Mangus's Wikiratings need to come before a CD/DVD.
>
> Tom Haws

Hmmm, tough issue.

Another point recently mentionned... is that some editors think it is
not the role of the Foundation to distribute content and that we should
let other organisations do it. This will also solve the issue of legal
responsability. On the other hand, if other organisations are the legal
editors, how can we somehow get a benefit over the content distributed ?
Or should we get a benefit ?


body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>More fundamentally, it's because people are aware that in the long run, the
>real disasters and failures of society have come when the people in power
>fail to be kept in check.
>
And being de-sysop'd is not the "end of the world" unless we personally
see our adminship as a status symbol.  Really, what would be the
practical implications of my losing my admin privileges?  There are
hundreds of other sysops.  If granting adminship "shouldn't be a big
deal", why is revoking it such a big deal?  It is a mere slap on the
wrist, nothing more.  I can still edit, mediate, and serve on most any
committee.

Tom Haws


body:
Michael Snow a ?crit:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> The content belongs to its original copyright owners, and increasingly,
>> the Wikimedia Foundation is their official copyright agent.
>
>
> Please avoid statements like this, as they are potentially misleading.
> While it is theoretically possible that at some point in the future, the
> Foundation might take legal action against people who misuse content
> taken from Wikimedia in violation of the licensing terms, contributors
> do not assign their copyrights to the Foundation, and the Foundation
> does not assume a duty to protect these rights. The sense in which the
> Foundation is an official agent for copyright issues (actually the agent
> is Jimbo personally) is with respect to third parties who have
> complaints about their copyrighted material being infringed by use on
> Wikimedia projects.
>
> There is some language in [[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] about
> appointing the Foundation as an agent for downstream copyright
> compliance issues. That page is a draft, most of it now more than a year
> old, and has never been adopted as official policy. As things currently
> stand, contributors have every right to enforce their own copyrights
> against outside parties as they see fit, and don't need for the
> Foundation to get involved.
>
> --Michael Snow

Copyrights are not the only issue.

Now, there is no doubt that just blanking a page can be done by anyone.

In case there is a request to permanently delete some versions in the
history of an article, only developers can do it.

But developers being volunteers, they can just decide they do not feel
like doing it.

In this case, suppose some one request a history is deleted. No one does
it. The one doing the request goes to the tribunal and show he informed
the website owners of the issue and nothing was done to fix it.

What will happen ? Is the site owner still responsible, even if he can
not technically fix the issue ? Or is the fact he asked developers to
fix it and nothing was done enough to assume he acted in good faith
rather bad faith toward the request ?

In case you need a practical example, see my request on wikitech, and
the fact it will possibly not get done.

What is the next step ?


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Anthere wrote:

>
>
> Michael Snow a ?crit:
>
>> Neil Harris wrote:
>>
>>> The content belongs to its original copyright owners, and increasingly,
>>> the Wikimedia Foundation is their official copyright agent.
>>
>>
>>
>> Please avoid statements like this, as they are potentially
>> misleading. While it is theoretically possible that at some point in
>> the future, the Foundation might take legal action against people who
>> misuse content taken from Wikimedia in violation of the licensing
>> terms, contributors do not assign their copyrights to the Foundation,
>> and the Foundation does not assume a duty to protect these rights.
>> The sense in which the Foundation is an official agent for copyright
>> issues (actually the agent is Jimbo personally) is with respect to
>> third parties who have complaints about their copyrighted material
>> being infringed by use on Wikimedia projects.
>>
>> There is some language in [[en:Wikipedia:Submission Standards]] about
>> appointing the Foundation as an agent for downstream copyright
>> compliance issues. That page is a draft, most of it now more than a
>> year old, and has never been adopted as official policy. As things
>> currently stand, contributors have every right to enforce their own
>> copyrights against outside parties as they see fit, and don't need
>> for the Foundation to get involved.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
>
> Copyrights are not the only issue.
>
> Now, there is no doubt that just blanking a page can be done by anyone.
>
> In case there is a request to permanently delete some versions in the
> history of an article, only developers can do it.
>
> But developers being volunteers, they can just decide they do not feel
> like doing it.
>
> In this case, suppose some one request a history is deleted. No one
> does it. The one doing the request goes to the tribunal and show he
> informed the website owners of the issue and nothing was done to fix it.
>
> What will happen ? Is the site owner still responsible, even if he can
> not technically fix the issue ? Or is the fact he asked developers to
> fix it and nothing was done enough to assume he acted in good faith
> rather bad faith toward the request ?
>
> In case you need a practical example, see my request on wikitech, and
> the fact it will possibly not get done.
>
> What is the next step ?

Hoi,
I think, that when we DELETE the article and then copy back those parts
that are proper, we will only lose the history of the article. For
moderators and for legal reasons we will be still able to show what was
there. To the public there is nothing to be seen of the content that
should not be there. In my opinion this is an acceptable solution.

There could/should be some mention of this in the talkpage to explain
that/how this issue is resolved.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions

body:
Angela wrote:

>There are a lot of unanswered questions and issues currently facing
>the board, and I would appreciate your help with these.
>
>If you have any thoughts on the following topics, please see
><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions> and give
>your answers and suggestions, either on that page, or by email to me
>if you would prefer to reply privately.
>
>1 Hosting
>2 Trademarks
>3 Membership
>4 Money
>5 Developers
>6 Communication
>
>If you feel there are further questions that need to be addressed,
>please add those to the page.
>
>
>
I have just looked at them quickly and was "shocked" to see so many open
questions/issues. I will certainly let my light shine on some of them.

Waerth/Walter van Kalken


subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, if other organisations are the
> legal
> editors, how can we somehow get a benefit over the content
> distributed ?
> Or should we get a benefit ?

Our benefit is that the information will be made available to people
who do not have it today. That is a great benefit, and probably the
most important reason for the Wikipedia's existence.

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Britannica proud to lag years behind recent developments
 such as SARS and nanotechnology

body:
  March 23, 2005 07:00 AM US Eastern Timezone

New Britannica Keeps Pace with Change; Revised Encyclopedia Boosts
Coverage of People, Science & Changing World

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 2005--New and revised articles
spanning science and technology, literature and the Middle East are at
the center of the just-published Encyclopaedia Britannica for 2005.

Among the new articles included in the 32-volume work are a substantial
number in science and medicine, such as SARS, monkeypox, nanotechnology
and computer crime.

There is even an article on earth-impact hazard, the science of
predicting the probability of astronomical bodies hitting the planet.

Several notable people receive their own entries for the first time,
including U.S. Senator John Kerry, novelist and Nobel laureate J.M.
Coetzee, cellist Yo-Yo Ma and philosopher John Rawls. Socrates is the
subject of a lengthy new treatment that reflects the latest scholarship
on the Greek philosopher.

There are fresh, new articles on German literature, the Vietnam War and
democracy. The cultural impact of the Great Depression is presented in a
new article by the noted historian Richard Pells.

As they have in recent years, the editors have again revised entries
related to the evolving post-9/11 world, the fight against terrorism and
the Iraq war. Articles in other areas, such as eugenics, electronics,
evolution, Catholicism and the entries on a number of countries have
undergone substantial revision.

According to editor Dale Hoiberg, the revisions are part of an effort to
keep the Britannica on the cutting edge of knowledge and world
developments at a time when the demand for reliable information is
greater than ever.

"The world is awash in misinformation," said Hoiberg. "We continue to
revise and improve the encyclopedia because people need a place to go
for the right answers."

Schools, libraries and universities interested in the 2005 Britannica
may call (800) 621-3900 or go to www.eb.com. Consumers may call (800)
323-1229 or go to www.britannica.com.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. has been a leader in reference and
education publishing since 1768. The company is known for the 32-volume
Encyclopaedia Britannica, the 26-volume Compton's by Britannica and its
pioneering work in electronic publishing. Its many digital products
include Britannica Online School Edition. Recently published printed
products include My First Britannica, Britannica Discovery Library and
the Britannica World Atlas. Britannica makes its headquarters in
Chicago. More information is at http://www.britannica.com.

Contacts

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Tom Panelas, 312-347-7309
tpanelas at us.britannica.com


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/25/05 5:43 AM, "John Lee" <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:

> Rick wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Oh, please.
>>
>> Why is it every time an admin does something that
>> somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
>> hounds and the torches and go raging after them with
>> the rest of the mob?
>>
>> RickK
>>
>>
>>
> Because admins are expected to be above ordinary users; see [[WP:RFA]]
> for yourself. People vote on others not only based on their suitability
> for janitorial tasks but also on how polite, active, etc. the users are.
>
More fundamentally, it's because people are aware that in the long run, the
real disasters and failures of society have come when the people in power
fail to be kept in check.


from_name: Roger Luethi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:40:35 +0200, Jaroslaw Fedevych (UALUG wrote:
> Of course I did. More than that: I've tried to load it up
> on a PC from which I have never logged in before :) Still
> the same. I have no slightest idea where does it resurrect
> from.

Wild guess: object cache? That was the culprit when I kept getting old
versions served on the RecentChanges feed. Turns out we only keep _one_
timekey for _two_ feeds, so if an edit happens and the RSS cache gets
updated, the Atom version won't be (and vice versa).

On a busy WP:en you wouldn't notice that, but on Wikis with less traffic
it may take a day for the latest edit to turn up in your feed.

The object cache is a blob in the database, so it's really a perfect
hiding place. If the files are gone and the browser cache is empty,
there aren't that many other options. I didn't take a closer look at
the code for the User CSS stuff, though.

Roger


subject: [Foundation-l] Tax status in the Netherlands for the Foundation

body:
Hoi,
At this moment I am researching setting up a Dutch chapter. Today I
learned that it is possible for the Foundation to be earmarked as a
registered charity in the Netherlands. There are several things that we
have to comply with BUT, we have to consider if we want to go this route.

* The Foundation has to be benefit the common good in the Netherlands
* The Foundation has to be an organisation that is truly active on a
mondial basis
* There may not be an organisation representing the Foundation in the
Netherlands

As far as I can tell we comply with these. The assesment of Kennisnet of
our importance of our projects for the Dutch educational system proves
the first one. Our aim is to have resources in all languages, we do have
projects supporting languages that can be found all over the globe, our
contributors can be found all over the globe. This proves the second
requirement. There is no Dutch legal entity at this moment associated
with wikipedia.

We can still have a local chapter. The chapter would however not
represent the Foundation.

When we go this route, we have to provide on a regular basis the yearly
financial statements of the Foundation. Its bylaws should also be shown
to the tax office.

Please give me feedback, is this something that we want. Is this
something also possible in other European countries ??

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site

body:
Hi Marc,

If you have questions on installation or administration you
preferably ask at mediawiki-l or irc://freenode.net/mediawiki
for help.

The Wikimedia Foundation only takes a few projects under it's cover,
I doubt you want to dig into the process of that. So, install it on
your own server, modifiy the skin to your needs and put some
ads up to cover the hosting cost.
There are a few commercial offers like Wikicities which can take all
the work from you.

BTW: http://paramedicine.com should point to the www. site.

ciao, tom

--
== Weblinks ==
* http://verlag.tomk32.de/ - WikiReader Digest als Print-Ausgabe
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site


body:
Anthere wrote:

>>What is the next step ?
>>
>>
>
>Hoi,
>I think, that when we DELETE the article and then copy back those parts
>that are proper, we will only lose the history of the article. For
>moderators and for legal reasons we will be still able to show what was
>there. To the public there is nothing to be seen of the content that
>should not be there. In my opinion this is an acceptable solution.
>
>There could/should be some mention of this in the talkpage to explain
>that/how this issue is resolved.
>
>Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
>
>Okay.
>How do we do this when the comments are on the pump ?
>And are now in ... say... 40 or more subsequent versions ?
>
>Ant
>
>
Hoi,
With pain, and only if we must. When you delete the pump, there will be
only one left. So you only loose the stuff that is removed from the pump
which is a rare occasion indeed.
GerardM


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site

body:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 11:38:27 +0300, Marc Colbeck <marc at colbeck.ca> wrote:
> I'm interested in chatting with someone who has set up a wiki site.

The MediaWiki  mailing list is best for this, since that is aimed at
people using MediaWiki on their own sites. See
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l> to subscribe.

> I don't know a lot about how to get the
> software onto a server, how to work at the administrative level with it (ie
> creating pages, etc) and how much time/work is involved.

There are a lot of wiki hosting companies that would do this for you.
There's a list at
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki#.22Hosted_wiki.22_and_Wiki_hosts>

> I'd like to get back to my dream of a website by paramedics for paramedics.
> The wiki software looks just perfect
> for that, however, I wouldn't mind being able to have some banner ads to
> help cover server costs.

You can download the software from <http://mediawiki.org> and
customize the skin to add adverts if you want since it is open source.
However, I would recommend that you consider putting your content at
Wikibooks instead. There are already a number of medical books at
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Medicine>. See
<http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Emergency_Medicine> for example.

Angela

--
Angela Beesley
Wikimedia.org
Wikicities.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site


body:
On 3/25/05 9:31 AM, "Sean Barrett" <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

> The Cunctator stated for the record:
>> On 3/25/05 5:43 AM, "John Lee" <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>>> Rick wrote:
>>>
>>>> Oh, please.
>>>>
>>>> Why is it every time an admin does something that
>>>> somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
>>>> hounds and the torches and go raging after them with
>>>> the rest of the mob?
>>>>
>>>> RickK
>>>>
>>>
>>> Because admins are expected to be above ordinary users; see [[WP:RFA]]
>>> for yourself. People vote on others not only based on their suitability
>>> for janitorial tasks but also on how polite, active, etc. the users are.
>>>
>>
>> More fundamentally, it's because people are aware that in the long run, the
>> real disasters and failures of society have come when the people in power
>> fail to be kept in check.
>
> And finally, when all the pretense is stripped away, it's because people
> are violent pack animals, poorly disguised in a skin of civilization.
> One scratch, and the murderous howling lynch mob springs out of hiding.

I think there may be some pretense in the above as well. Another reason may
simply be that the pool of administrators is too small with relation to the
rest of the community for optimal societal function.


body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Now, right now, MOST of the propositions we hear about are from
> commercial organisations, who want to make *cash* on the CD rom.
> Right ?
>
> Nothing wrong with this...
>
> But that means readers must pay for the cd rom...
>
> Are those who need more information... those who can pay for the cd
> rom ?
> Or those who can not ?

That's all fine. When people pay $10 for the 2005 English Wikipedia
cd, they are going to make a few copies, and maybe send a copy to
their friend in the third world country.

It's like AOL CDs. There are everywhere. little value, true, but
everywhere nevertheless.

I say if a company wants to press 100 million CDs per year and sell
them, many of these will end up in the hands of people who can't
afford to buy them.

Besides, they would make great presents.

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Fri, Mar 25, 2005 at 01:22:52AM -0800, Rick wrote:
> Why is it every time an admin does something that somebody disagrees
> with, it's time to get out the hounds and the torches and go raging
> after them with the rest of the mob?

I see no hounds, torches, or mob.  I see a sincere attempt to require
explanations and hold people accountable when there is reason to suspect
that they have betrayed the trust placed in them due to a conflict of
interest in violation of policy.

(Note that I do not claim that the trust has been betrayed here.  I _do_
hold that there has been presented here adequate _reason to suspect so_,
and thus that there needs to be explanation and accountability.)

Being expected to explain actions that appear to be in conflict of
interest is _not_ persecution.  It is "trust, but verify".  The
community does in fact place trust in the administrators (otherwise,
they would not be the administrators).  However, when an issue like this
comes up, we need that trust to be verified.

I would prefer to know for certain that nothing corrupt went on here.
However, until there is a good and credible explanation offered, none of
us can know that, and we are left with only ugly suspicions on one side
and baseless feelings of persecution on the other.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Marc Colbeck

subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site

body:
Hi Everyone,

I'm interested in chatting with someone who has set up a wiki site.  I'm
interested in opening one up, but I don't know a lot about how to get the
software onto a server, how to work at the administrative level with it (ie
creating pages, etc) and how much time/work is involved.

If anyone is willing to answer a few questions, I'd appreciate it.

I've owned paramedicine.com since about 95 and it used to be a huge site -
then my kids were born and I didn't have the time to do all the work.  Now
they're getting a bit older, and I'd like to get back to my dream of a
website by paramedics for paramedics.  The wiki software looks just perfect
for that, however, I wouldn't mind being able to have some banner ads to
help cover server costs.

Is that OK?  Can you use the wiki software to make a site and then have ads
on it and income?  If not, is there a way to run a wiki site of your own
(i.e. paramedicine.com) on the wiki server for free?

I know ... maybe I'm dreaming, but I'm still learning about wiki.  Thanks
for any answers.

Marc

________________________
Marc Colbeck, BHSc
Critical Care Paramedic
Paramedic Instructor
College of the North Atlantic - Qatar
work: marc.colbeck at cna-qatar.edu.qa
home: marc at colbeck.ca


subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Friday, March 25, 2005 08:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> At this moment I am researching setting up a Dutch chapter.

[Snip]

> Please give me feedback, is this something that we want. Is this
> something also possible in other European countries ??

Yes, I think that having chapters in countries in the EU is worthwhile for
two reasons - firstly, it helps with donations by providing a tax-relieved
method of donating (at least, in some countries), and secondly, it helps
foster a sense of community and belonging in the members.

Currently just France and Germany have chapters set up, but we are looking
at setting one up for the UK soon-ish. Eventually we may want to form a
Wikimedia Europe organisation to liase and so on at a larger level, but for
now this will suffice.

One this that you may want to look out for is what exactly you can do whilst
retaining the special tax status - for example, a UK chapter will not be
able to merely blindly collect money for the main Foundation, but instead
have charitable aims in and of itself (which might in practice not make a
great deal of difference, of course - collecting money for international
Internet-based education and learning projects vs. collecting money for the
Wikimedia Foundation).

Of course, you will need to have a quite large group of people willing and
able to put in the amount of work required to run the chapter, which I
imagine is not entirely simple (especially if none of you have done this
sort of thing before), and are able to stick with the chapter through the
longer term.

Very best of luck.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 3/25/05 5:43 AM, "John Lee" <johnleemk at gawab.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Rick wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Oh, please.
> >>
> >> Why is it every time an admin does something that
> >> somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
> >> hounds and the torches and go raging after them
> with
> >> the rest of the mob?
> >>
> >> RickK
> >>
> >>
> >>
> > Because admins are expected to be above ordinary
> users; see [[WP:RFA]]
> > for yourself. People vote on others not only based
> on their suitability
> > for janitorial tasks but also on how polite,
> active, etc. the users are.
> >
> More fundamentally, it's because people are aware
> that in the long run, the
> real disasters and failures of society have come
> when the people in power
> fail to be kept in check.

Thanks for the best laugh I've had so far today.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Anthere a ?crit:

> Another point recently mentionned... is that some editors think it is
> not the role of the Foundation to distribute content and that
> we should
> let other organisations do it. This will also solve the issue
> of legal
> responsability. On the other hand, if other organisations are
> the legal
> editors, how can we somehow get a benefit over the content
> distributed ?
> Or should we get a benefit ?

Glad you asked. Ten days ago I started working with a Unificationist, non-profit organization that is interested in incorporating much of Wikipedia's content into its own encyclopedia. (They are planning to commission an additional 5,000 or so articles, as well as donating thousands of World & I articles - all of this extra content will be GFDL!)

I have been (tentatively) offered the role of IT Director for this project.

Anyway, the IIFWP (or IRFWP) already has a legal department - and budget - big enough to handle the issue of legal responsibility - for their own selected subset of Wikipedia articles they will publish.

Surely whatever they LEARN while doing this could be passed on to us. They are a very nice bunch of people to work with.

Ed Poor, aka Oncle Edmond


subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:55:51 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> > That was the culprit when I kept getting old
> >versions served on the RecentChanges feed. Turns out we only keep _one_
> >timekey for _two_ feeds, so if an edit happens and the RSS cache gets
> >updated, the Atom version won't be (and vice versa).
>
> Did you just discover this, or did you forget to report the bug? :)

I tracked this down yesterday. It's so blindingly obvious when you
look at the code that I suspected it might be intentional. For my own
installation, I just cut $expire down by a few orders of magnitude.

While I was debating whether I should still report it or write a patch,
along came a list message that allowed me to sneak in my discovery and
off-load responsibility.

Btw, is there a deeper reason why the limit on RC entries is encoded
twice in the URL (previous and current value)?

Roger


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Prof. Rubenstein wrote two things which I'd like to comment on:

> ... "private ownership of the means of production" is the
> "Marxist" definition of capitalism, and now insists that
> I provide my own "marxist" definition!  This list serve
> is not the place for this discussion, which has already
> occurred on the  Capitalism talk pages.  Suffice to say,
> "private ownership of the means of production" is simply
> not, in no way, the marxist or "a" marxist definition of
> capitalism.

Googling the quoted definition easily shows that several sources
regard "private ownership of the means of production" as an
essential part of the "Marxist definition" of Capitalism.

And this mailing list *is* the right place to bring something
like this up. I, for one, would never have noticed this issue if
it hadn't been brought up here.

However, it's tricky, because the exact quoted phrase is not
used by a Marxist writer, but by an American college professor
PARAPHRASING the Marxists. The first reference below is some
lecture notes for a college course. It interprets "individual
ownership" as "private ownership of the means of production".

So the source for this would go something like:

* Professor Windbag of Westwind University at Turbyne, Indiana,
interprets Marxist writings as assailing "private ownership of
the means of production" as one of the chief evils of
Capitalism.

This provides the source: the ol' Windbag.

This clarifies that it's HIS interpretation.

http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm

Oh, and his name is

WILLIAM J. TALBOTT

Associate Professor
Department of Philosophy
Box 353350
University of Washington

Ed Poor
(That wasn't so hard, now, was it? ;-)


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:

> Some people have suggested that if someone keeps putting unsourced
> material on the page, the solution is to delete it.  Well, this is the
> first solution to any problem at Wikipedia.

Heh-heh.  It is easy to see how this problem got started.  Deleting
unsourced material is an excellent excuse for POV police, warriors, and
their ilk.  But it doesn't go over too well in polite society.

Tom Haws


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions for handling geographical coordinates

body:
Egil Kvaleberg wrote:
> Following up my previous mail, I've removed the gis_region column, and
> instead added a gis_globe column, so that it is easy to make this work in
> other worlds too, e.g. "Moon", "Mars" and I guess, "Sky" for the star maps.

Neat! :)

> CREATE TABLE wikipedia_gis (
>        gis_id int(8) unsigned NOT NULL,
>        gis_latitude_min real NOT NULL,
>        gis_latitude_max real NOT NULL,
>        gis_longitude_min real NOT NULL,
>        gis_longitude_max real NOT NULL,
>        gis_globe char(12) binary,
>        gis_type char(12) binary,
>        gis_type_arg char(12) binary,
>
>        KEY gis_id (gis_id),
>        INDEX gis_latitude_min (gis_latitude_min),
>        INDEX gis_latitude_max (gis_latitude_max),
>        INDEX gis_longitude_min (gis_longitude_min),
>        INDEX gis_longitude_max (gis_longitude_max)
> );

How do you expect this table to be queried? Individual indexes on the
lat/long fields seem like they'd be kind of awkward, since it can only
really use one in a given query.

> How to make addition of this table possible without shell access
> via the maintenance module?

Provide an .sql file with the creation commands. Those poor souls
without shell access generally have phpMyAdmin.

> Should the table use article ID or title as key?

Assuming the referenced article is the one containing the item, use the
page_id number; this is preserved when pages are renamed.

Don't call it gis_id, however; under our naming conventions that would
be the name of a unique record ID within the gis table. gis_page would
be better.

> How to rerieve article title based on ID in a portable manner?

Assuming you're pulling a bunch of records, something like:

select page_namespace,page_title, gis_blah,etc
from page,gis
where page_id=gis_page
and whatever_conditions;

> Any chance to test this extension on a broader scale?

When I get a few spare hours I'm going to set up a 1.5 test wiki on my
site; I'll set it up there.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] robots.txt - why disallow everyone, everywhere?

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:
> What happened to robots.txt?
> Why is this happening?

Bad symlink caused the wrong files to be overwritten on the slave
servers. Fixed now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Although your test case promises to be very difficult simply due to the
great volume of edits, I am glad we have it and it has been accepted. I hope
you will spare some time to present some evidence on the matter now that the
Arbcom has accepted the case. Especially useful would be edits requesting a
source for information or edits removing material that did have a good
source.

Fred

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 13:58:20 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
>
>
>> d. wrote:
>>> actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
>>>
>>>> What would you say the marxist definition of capitalism is?
>>>
>>> I'd say it's off topic for this list.
>>
>>
>> Well, I didn't self righteously bring it to the list as if someone I
>> disagreed with was obviously wrong.   As long as we are agreed the issue
>> of which side was "correct" or acting in good faith is
>> NOT obvious.
>> -- Silverback
>
> Well, this perfectly illustrates why I believe the "Capitalism" case is a
> perfect test case -- in my opinion, even better than crank theories in
> physics which really are relatively easy to deal with.
>
> Some people have suggested that if someone keeps putting unsourced material
> on the page, the solution is to delete it.  Well, this is the first
> solution to any problem at Wikipedia.  Let's say it is the second, third,
> thirtieth, or three-thousandth solution -- basically what Ray Saintonge
> wrote.  The reason for any disciplinary action is
> 1) this process is not working -- after a month of deleting the same
> material, it becomes a battle of wills
> 2) to give serious and well-intentioned editors some support and relief.
> Both of these characterize the issue at "Capitalism."
>
> And Silverback's own e-mails to this list provide further evidence of the
> problem.  He continues to insist that something like "private ownership of
> the means of production" is the "Marxist" definition of capitalism, and now
> insists that I provide my own "marxist" definition!  This list serve is not
> the place for this discussion, which has already occurred on
> the  Capitalism talk pages.  Suffice to say, "private ownership of the
> means of production" is simply not, in no way, the marxist or "a" marxist
> definition of capitalism.
>
> And this is the whole point of the "cite sources" and "verifiabilty"
> policies that Silverback disparages.  Of course it is possible that I am
> wrong about the Marxist definition -- but if I am wrong, then whomever is
> providing the "marxist" definition should be able to provide a source or
> citation.
>
> For Silverback to disparage these policies, and insinuate that it was
> self-righteous of me to bring this problem to the attention to the list, is
> too absurd.  His behavior mimics that of RJII's, and is the kind of
> behavior that has no place here at Wikipedia.  Our work must be
> verifiable.  If someone asks for a source, provide it.  Like RJII,
> Silverback not only scoffs at providing a source, he continues to insist
> that the definition is right, that it is I who has to provide the source,
> that I am self-righteous, that the policy is trivial ...
>
> At what point do we characterize this behavior as trollish?
>
> Steve
>
>
>
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
>d. wrote:
> > actionforum at comcast.net wrote:
> >
> > > What would you say the marxist definition of capitalism is?
> >
> > I'd say it's off topic for this list.
>
>
>Well, I didn't self righteously bring it to the list as if someone I
>disagreed with was obviously wrong.   As long as we are agreed the issue
>of which side was "correct" or acting in good faith is
>NOT obvious.
>                        -- Silverback

Well, this perfectly illustrates why I believe the "Capitalism" case is a
perfect test case -- in my opinion, even better than crank theories in
physics which really are relatively easy to deal with.

Some people have suggested that if someone keeps putting unsourced material
on the page, the solution is to delete it.  Well, this is the first
solution to any problem at Wikipedia.  Let's say it is the second, third,
thirtieth, or three-thousandth solution -- basically what Ray Saintonge
wrote.  The reason for any disciplinary action is
1) this process is not working -- after a month of deleting the same
material, it becomes a battle of wills
2) to give serious and well-intentioned editors some support and relief.
Both of these characterize the issue at "Capitalism."

And Silverback's own e-mails to this list provide further evidence of the
problem.  He continues to insist that something like "private ownership of
the means of production" is the "Marxist" definition of capitalism, and now
insists that I provide my own "marxist" definition!  This list serve is not
the place for this discussion, which has already occurred on
the  Capitalism talk pages.  Suffice to say, "private ownership of the
means of production" is simply not, in no way, the marxist or "a" marxist
definition of capitalism.

And this is the whole point of the "cite sources" and "verifiabilty"
policies that Silverback disparages.  Of course it is possible that I am
wrong about the Marxist definition -- but if I am wrong, then whomever is
providing the "marxist" definition should be able to provide a source or
citation.

For Silverback to disparage these policies, and insinuate that it was
self-righteous of me to bring this problem to the attention to the list, is
too absurd.  His behavior mimics that of RJII's, and is the kind of
behavior that has no place here at Wikipedia.  Our work must be
verifiable.  If someone asks for a source, provide it.  Like RJII,
Silverback not only scoffs at providing a source, he continues to insist
that the definition is right, that it is I who has to provide the source,
that I am self-righteous, that the policy is trivial ...

At what point do we characterize this behavior as trollish?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 02:50:46 -0500, Sj wrote:
> ( Cc:ing wikipedia-l, since it is important to have broad community feedback.

A cite from logo-request page:
== When will it be switched? ==
I put up a request for changing the swedish Wiktionary-logo a couple
of days ago. Does someone now when or how the logo will be switched?
V?sk 19:51, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)
: If you want to speed the process up, consider sending a request to a
mailing list (probably wikitech-l ?), it is possible, that not many
developers watch this page. --Mormegil 09:01, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

So, if someone can, do resend this letter of mine to wikitech-l:
there are three requests (os, lb, hy) at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_logos waiting long.

Sl. Ivanov
--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Wikitech-l] paragraph deletion

body:
> Erreur interneUn article de Wikip?dia, l'encyclop?die libre.
> Can't delete this article because it contains block-compressed revisions. This is a temporary situation which the developers are well aware of, and should be fixed within a month or two. Please mark the article for deletion and wait for a developer to fix our buggy software.
> ------------
> So, now, what do I do ?

As this issue has been around for months, you just keep a link to the page somewhere so you can delete it if that bug ever gets fixed :)

More seriously, this is starting to be annoying, many pages we can't delete.

> Anthere

Ryo

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


from_name: Ben Brockert

subject: [Wikitech-l] Viewing full wiki source of featured article archives

body:
>Could anyone please tell me how to view the wiki source of an
>entire month's archive, rather than article by article?

You'll need to copy those template inclusion lines somewhere else, and put subst: in front of each.

Like this:
{{subst:Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Benjamin Mountfort}}

You could do that in the sandbox, or on a sub page of your user space. After you've saved it like that, the text will be substituted into the page, rather than included via the template mechanism.

It makes a very long page, so you should dump it as you get what you need. I did it in the sandbox for the page you mentiond, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&oldid=11516044

Ben


from_name: Alan Wessman

body:
I don't think it's good practice to use NULL to mean anything more
than "unknown or missing value".  Perhaps gis_globe should be "Earth"
for Earth?  Then there's no ambiguity.

Alan

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 19:14:00 +0100, Egil Kvaleberg <egil at kvaleberg.no> wrote:
> Egil Kvaleberg wrote:
>
[...]
>
> where gis_globe is NULL for Earth.
>
[...]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Caveats with v1.4

body:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 05:29:12 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Please do! File a bug at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ to make sure we
> don't forget about it.

Bugs 1754, 1755.

Roger


from_name: Chitu Okoli

body:
Hi,

I'm analyzing the featured article nomination process for a research
project, and I'm trying to access the full wiki source of past archives.
However, archived articles are compacted in specially coded format;
apparently MediaWiki expands them automatically for viewing.

To understand what I mean, please go to, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Featured_
log/March_2005

If I click on any specific article, then view its associated "edit" link, I
get that article's wiki source, which is what I want. However, if I want to
see the wiki source of all the March 2005 articles at one shot, I would
normally click "edit this page". But instead this gives me a specially coded
source in the format of:

<<
{{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/History of Cape Colony from 1870 to
1899}}
{{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Comet Hyakutake}}
{{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Brian Close}}
{{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Country Wife}}
{{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Carl G. Fisher}}
>>

I hope I've clearly explained my difficulty. (I'll try to clarify further if
necessary.) Could anyone please tell me how to view the wiki source of an
entire month's archive, rather than article by article?

Thanks,
Chitu
User:cokoli


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "Karl A. Krueger" <kkrueger at whoi.edu>
>Being expected to explain actions that appear to be in conflict of
>interest is _not_ persecution.  It is "trust, but verify".  The
>community does in fact place trust in the administrators (otherwise,
>they would not be the administrators).  However, when an issue like this
>comes up, we need that trust to be verified.
>
>I would prefer to know for certain that nothing corrupt went on here.
>However, until there is a good and credible explanation offered, none of
>us can know that, and we are left with only ugly suspicions on one side
>and baseless feelings of persecution on the other.

Wikipedia has a number of mechanisms for investigating cases of alleged
admin abuse; WikiEN-l is not one of them.

Jay.


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Putting Wikipedia on a CD or DVD

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> English is 585MB, which should fit onto a CD with a little room
> to spare. If one were frugal with the markup, I wonder if perhaps an
> HTML version would fit. There'd be no images, though; you'd need to do a
> DVD version (or multi-CD, maybe split up alphabetically like a
> traditional encyclopedia :) for that.

HTML-version, with images, split alphabetically, sounds like a really
good way to handle that.  It would be cross-platform compatible, widely
hardware-friendly, attached to an interface with which computer users
are familiar (the browser), and very easily translated into a
print-format version.

--
Chad
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>On Friday, March 25, 2005 08:42 AM, Gerard Meijssen
><gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>At this moment I am researching setting up a Dutch chapter.
>>
>>
>
>[Snip]
>
>
>
>>Please give me feedback, is this something that we want. Is this
>>something also possible in other European countries ??
>>
>>
>
>Yes, I think that having chapters in countries in the EU is worthwhile for
>two reasons - firstly, it helps with donations by providing a tax-relieved
>method of donating (at least, in some countries), and secondly, it helps
>foster a sense of community and belonging in the members.
>
>Currently just France and Germany have chapters set up, but we are looking
>at setting one up for the UK soon-ish. Eventually we may want to form a
>Wikimedia Europe organisation to liase and so on at a larger level, but for
>now this will suffice.
>
>One this that you may want to look out for is what exactly you can do whilst
>retaining the special tax status - for example, a UK chapter will not be
>able to merely blindly collect money for the main Foundation, but instead
>have charitable aims in and of itself (which might in practice not make a
>great deal of difference, of course - collecting money for international
>Internet-based education and learning projects vs. collecting money for the
>Wikimedia Foundation).
>
>Of course, you will need to have a quite large group of people willing and
>able to put in the amount of work required to run the chapter, which I
>imagine is not entirely simple (especially if none of you have done this
>sort of thing before), and are able to stick with the chapter through the
>longer term.
>
>Very best of luck.
>
>Yours,
>
>
Hoi,
You miss the point of the my mail.

The point is that it IS possible to have the Foundation be registered in
the Netherlands and in France as well (in principle as I understood
from  Soufron). This allows us to do collect money directly by the
Foundation. It means that the monies collected can be used by the board
as it sees fit. It means that we do not need a chapter to REPRESENT the
Foundation..

With this potential being true for the Netherlands and other European
countries, we can have local banking accounts, have tax exemption in so
far as is possible under the tax laws of a country. Chapters exist as a
backbone for activities in a country. Consequently we need less people
to administrate all these efforts but we need a high quality
administration to do this.

*Do we want to go this way.
*Do we accept and understand the need for high quality administration.
*What are the problems for the Foundation to go into contracts in the
Netherlands and other countries.
*Divorcing the chapters from the representation of the Foundation in
countries.

Those are the things that are at issue. Whatever we choose it will have
a major impact on our future organisation.

PS The need for a high quality administration is imho a given. At this
moment many issues cannot be dealt with without the personal involvment
of Jimbo. Jimbo does not scale he is a demi-God not a God. I am of the
opinion that there is a need for a secretary to the board and some staff
that do admin and answer all things that have an answer according to the
policies of the board.

Thanks,
    Gerard


body:
Anthere wrote:
>
>
> Christopher Mahan a ?crit:
>
>> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On the other hand, if other organisations are the
>>> legal editors, how can we somehow get a benefit over the content
>>> distributed ? Or should we get a benefit ?
>>
>>
>>
>> Our benefit is that the information will be made available to people
>> who do not have it today. That is a great benefit, and probably the
>> most important reason for the Wikipedia's existence.
>>
>>
>>
>> Chris Mahan
>
>
> Nod.
>
> Now, right now, MOST of the propositions we hear about are from
> commercial organisations, who want to make *cash* on the CD rom. Right ?
>
> Nothing wrong with this...
>
> But that means readers must pay for the cd rom...
>
> Are those who need more information... those who can pay for the cd rom ?
> Or those who can not ?

Here's an idea:

Nonprofit organization, talks to a commercial organization, gets a
massive discount (80-90% off, maybe) on those $10 CD-recorded
encyclopediae.  Uses donations to fund its efforts.  Buys CD-media
copies at the discounted rate.  Avoids taxes due to nonprofit status.
Distributes to those in need of the material without the ability to get
it themselves.

Voila: outside entit(y/ies) deal(s) with the issue.  I'm not saying
that's the only way to handle it, but it's "so crazy it just might
work".  While it seems odd to suggest buying back its own content, it's
even possible that WMF might do the media-buying-and-distributing itself
for third-world distribution.

Then, of course, the major problem becomes how to get the same knowledge
into the hands of those without eletricity.

There's no reason I can see why for-profit packaging of Wikipedia can't
be leveraged for non-profit distribution.  The fact that someone is
repackaging the collected knowledge for the purpose of making a buck
doesn't necessitate all that work being lost to the nonprofit purposes
of the original project.

--
Chad
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Tom Haws wrote,

>steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>
>
> > Some people have suggested that if someone keeps putting unsourced
> > material on the page, the solution is to delete it.  Well, this is the
> > first solution to any problem at Wikipedia.
>
>
>Heh-heh.  It is easy to see how this problem got started.  Deleting
>unsourced material is an excellent excuse for POV police, warriors, and
>their ilk.  But it doesn't go over too well in polite society.
>
>
>Tom Haws

Are you being disingenuous, or have you just not been following this
thread?  I thought it was abundantly clear that the person in question had
been asked for a source several times.  The question is, what to do
then?  Ray Saintonge replied, delete.  And that is where my e-mail picks
up. To then suggest I am a POV cop in this matter is disingenuous and
dangerous.

What POV do you think I am pushing, Tom?

It should be clear that this is NOT a matter of pushing a POV.  I have no
objection to including a marxist definition in the article.  But it must be
accurate.  Otherwise, what kind of encyclopedia is this?

Okay Tom, what do you think we should do, if someone refuses over the
course of several weeks to provide a source for a claim that some editors
say is inaccurate or simply false?

I am getting tired of this discussion that seems to go nowhere, but I think
it is important.  If Tom Haws is going to label as a POV warrior anyone who
insists that our policies, such as Verifiability and Cite sources, must be
enforced, then how on earth are we going to write a good encyclopedia?  Or
do you have a different goal, Tom?

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] UK Wikimedia Foundation notes (was Tax status in the
 Netherlands for the Foundation)

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

> Yes, I think that having chapters in countries in the EU is worthwhile for
> two reasons - firstly, it helps with donations by providing a tax-relieved
> method of donating (at least, in some countries), and secondly, it helps
> foster a sense of community and belonging in the members.

Thirdly, tax deductions. Fourthly, tax deductions ;-)

> Currently just France and Germany have chapters set up, but we are looking
> at setting one up for the UK soon-ish. Eventually we may want to form a
> Wikimedia Europe organisation to liase and so on at a larger level, but for
> now this will suffice.

I do hope we can make progress on this tomorrow!

(Without me being dragged *too* deeply into it. I've done my time with
nonprofits and am entirely aware that being on the board of one and getting
anything done can take up 36 hours of any 24-hour day, and I have way too
many other things in progress ;-)

> One this that you may want to look out for is what exactly you can do whilst
> retaining the special tax status - for example, a UK chapter will not be
> able to merely blindly collect money for the main Foundation, but instead
> have charitable aims in and of itself (which might in practice not make a
> great deal of difference, of course - collecting money for international
> Internet-based education and learning projects vs. collecting money for the
> Wikimedia Foundation).

Apart from a proxy farm, there will be things like grants to other UK
nonprofits to do stuff or GFDL stuff; actively push the proposed Scots
Wikipedia forward; help along the other smaller British-language wikis;
provide a focal point to lure contributors for more British content.
All those are just off the top of my head. (Someone noting all this down
for tomorrow? I should be there 3pm-4pm ;-)

> Of course, you will need to have a quite large group of people willing and
> able to put in the amount of work required to run the chapter, which I
> imagine is not entirely simple (especially if none of you have done this
> sort of thing before), and are able to stick with the chapter through the
> longer term.

Yep. "Raise your hand if you've been on a nonprofit before ..."

- d.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking poiicy violation by vamp willow

body:
Not that this is the correct place to argue this, but you reverted
back to your preferred version three times in 24 hours.  The truth is
a great place to start.

It's also really freaking wierd to refer to yourself in the third person.

-Matt


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
I'll throw my two cents here - I'm not sure yet, but I think the same
could happen in Poland. We don't need to start a chapter, but we can
register the Foundation. This will probably happen in many other EU
countries, so this may be a very important thing to discuss.

--
Best regards,
Dariusz Siedlecki


from_name: VampWillow

subject:
[Foundation-l] UK Wikimedia Foundation notes (was Tax status
	in the Netherlands for the Foundation)

body:
Diva wrote:
> "Raise your hand if you've been on a nonprofit before ..."

:: lifts hand, arm, leg and one ear ... ::

More to the point, happy to offer self and skills for the purpose.

Alison


from_name: Blair P. Houghton

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> JAY JG wrote:
>> Wikipedia has a number of mechanisms for investigating cases of
>> alleged admin abuse; WikiEN-l is not one of them.
>
> HEAR HEAR. [[WP:AN/I]] is a good one.

Unreachable for anyone who's been blocked.  Without WikiEN-l people
could be "disappeared" by unscrupulous admins.

--Blair


body:
VampWillow wrote:
> Diva wrote:

>>"Raise your hand if you've been on a nonprofit before ..."

> :: lifts hand, arm, leg and one ear ... ::
> More to the point, happy to offer self and skills for the purpose.

/me tags VampWillow and runs away very fast ;-)

- d.


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on Answers.com and copyright conditions

body:
I think I have an idea of where this problem stems from; when you click
on an image in Wikipedia which was originally uploaded to Wikimedia
Commons the description (including who the author is) is not included
on the Wikipedia page for that image (only a link its page on Wikimedia
Commons is included). I would say Answers.com is simply pulling down
the content from Wikipedia (and ignoring the link to the Commons page).

At the moment Wikipedia image pages only include a link to the
corresponding Wikimedia Commons page. I'm not sure what the technical
issues are here but it seems to me when a user clicks on an image in
Wikipedia the description of the image should be on that page. A couple
of ways of achieving this might be to link directly to the image on
Wikimedia Commons or to somehow import the text from Wikimedia Commons
onto the Wikipedia page. I'm sure there are probably problems
associated with these, otherwise I imagine we'd be doing it already.

Christiaan

Anthere wrote:

> I think you are correct that there is possibly a problem as no where
> is the author of the picture mentionned, nor a link available.
>
> We should mention this to Jimbo
>
> Ant
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm a ?crit:
>>> Is anyone else surprised that Answers.com doesn't seem to follow GFDL
>>> or CCbySA conditions with regard to images used from Wikipedia, such
>>> as
>>> crediting authors:
>>>
>>> http://www.answers.com/library/Wikipedia+Images
>>>
>>> Or am I misunderstanding the process?
>>>
>>> Christiaan
>> Well, I could be misunderstanding the process myself, but aren't they
>> following GFDL by telling us it's a Wikipedia article to start with?
>> Mgm


from_name: Marc Colbeck

subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site

body:
That sounds interesting, I'll look into wikicities.

Thanks Tom.
________________________
Marc Colbeck, BHSc
Critical Care Paramedic
Paramedic Instructor
College of the North Atlantic - Qatar
work: marc.colbeck at cna-qatar.edu.qa
home: marc at colbeck.ca
----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas R. Koll" <tomk32 at gmx.de>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, March 25, 2005 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site

> Hi Marc,
>
> If you have questions on installation or administration you
> preferably ask at mediawiki-l or irc://freenode.net/mediawiki
> for help.
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation only takes a few projects under it's cover,
> I doubt you want to dig into the process of that. So, install it on
> your own server, modifiy the skin to your needs and put some
> ads up to cover the hosting cost.
> There are a few commercial offers like Wikicities which can take all
> the work from you.
>
> BTW: http://paramedicine.com should point to the www. site.
>
> ciao, tom
>
>
> --
> == Weblinks ==
> * http://verlag.tomk32.de/ - WikiReader Digest als Print-Ausgabe
> * http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
> * http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Starting a 'wiki' site


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
[Foundation-l] UK Wikimedia Foundation notes (was Tax status in
	the Netherlands for the Foundation)

body:
the same for me... :D

Cordialement,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 25 mars 05, ? 17:25, VampWillow a ?crit :

> Diva wrote:
>> "Raise your hand if you've been on a nonprofit before ..."
>
> :: lifts hand, arm, leg and one ear ... ::
>
> More to the point, happy to offer self and skills for the purpose.
>
> Alison
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
That they follow conditions of licence. It's up to them how they
achieve that isn't it?

Christiaan

On 25 Mar 2005, at 5:57 pm, Anthere wrote:

> Nod.
> This is probably the key of the problem.
> Well, the fact the description is missing from all pictures used by
> wikicommons (we do not really respect our own licence...) has already
> been raised many times unfortunately.
>
> It is certainly an issue to fix in the future.
>
> Meanwhile, what can we propose to Answers ?
>
> Ant
>
> Christiaan Briggs a ?crit:
>> I think I have an idea of where this problem stems from; when you
>> click on an image in Wikipedia which was originally uploaded to
>> Wikimedia Commons the description (including who the author is) is
>> not included on the Wikipedia page for that image (only a link its
>> page on Wikimedia Commons is included). I would say Answers.com is
>> simply pulling down the content from Wikipedia (and ignoring the link
>> to the Commons page).
>> At the moment Wikipedia image pages only include a link to the
>> corresponding Wikimedia Commons page. I'm not sure what the technical
>> issues are here but it seems to me when a user clicks on an image in
>> Wikipedia the description of the image should be on that page. A
>> couple of ways of achieving this might be to link directly to the
>> image on Wikimedia Commons or to somehow import the text from
>> Wikimedia Commons onto the Wikipedia page. I'm sure there are
>> probably problems associated with these, otherwise I imagine we'd be
>> doing it already.
>> Christiaan
>> Anthere wrote:
>>> I think you are correct that there is possibly a problem as no where
>>> is the author of the picture mentionned, nor a link available.
>>>
>>> We should mention this to Jimbo
>>>
>>> Ant
>>>
>>> MacGyverMagic/Mgm a ?crit:
>>>
>>>>> Is anyone else surprised that Answers.com doesn't seem to follow
>>>>> GFDL
>>>>> or CCbySA conditions with regard to images used from Wikipedia,
>>>>> such as
>>>>> crediting authors:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.answers.com/library/Wikipedia+Images
>>>>>
>>>>> Or am I misunderstanding the process?
>>>>>
>>>>> Christiaan
>>>>
>>>> Well, I could be misunderstanding the process myself, but aren't
>>>> they
>>>> following GFDL by telling us it's a Wikipedia article to start with?
>>>> Mgm
>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: paragraph deletion

body:
Nicolas Weeger a ?crit:
>>Erreur interneUn article de Wikip?dia, l'encyclop?die libre.
>>Can't delete this article because it contains block-compressed revisions. This is a temporary situation which the developers are well aware of, and should be fixed within a month or two. Please mark the article for deletion and wait for a developer to fix our buggy software.
>>------------
>>So, now, what do I do ?
>
>
> As this issue has been around for months, you just keep a link to the page somewhere so you can delete it if that bug ever gets fixed :)

And tell in 4 months to Actualys that the comment is finally not visible
any more ?

Gah

Ant


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Neutrality NPOV/Abuse of Administrator Power

body:
Rick wrote:

>
>
>Oh, please.
>
>Why is it every time an admin does something that
>somebody disagrees with, it's time to get out the
>hounds and the torches and go raging after them with
>the rest of the mob?
>
>RickK
>
>
>
Because admins are expected to be above ordinary users; see [[WP:RFA]]
for yourself. People vote on others not only based on their suitability
for janitorial tasks but also on how polite, active, etc. the users are.

That said, I do feel it's kind of stupid every time people act as if the
world will end whenever an admin does something wrong AND THE ADMIN
SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE IMMEDIATELY. Admins are human too.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])