from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: a proposal

body:
Christopher Mahan a ?crit:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Mark Williamson a ?crit:
>>
>>>Sounds like a good idea! I'm donating my firstborn.
>>>
>>>Mark
>>
>>That sounds like a very unreasonable idea Mark :-)
>>
>>By the way, we have not much mail from him these days... is
>>Christopher
>>baby born yet ?
>
>
> 4 more weeks, and the baby showers are killing me. My wife had 4!
> (i'm busy writing thank you cards...

eheh, at least, this is not a tradition in France ;-)

> But at least we've picked out the name :)

Is it a supertitious issue not to make it public ?

I hope everything will be fine, but at least, now it can happen any time
with no problem :-)

ant


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
On 5/15/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Skyring said:
> > On 5/15/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> >> Skyring said:
> >> >
> >> > What sort of payouts have been involved?
> >>
> >> Usually the terms of the settlements are not disclosed.  One serial
> >> plaintiff has made settlements for published amounts varying from USD
> >> 8,000 to around USD 1,000,000, so this is potentially pretty serious.
> >
> > You don't think the courts would see a difference, when assessing
> > damages, between defamation by a major metropolitan daily newspaper,
> > and some guy in a newsgroup?
>
> Oh yes, but a newspaper has far more resources than a private individual.

Thanks.

So for a variety of reasons, the same slight is judged by the courts
as being more worthy of compensation when made by a major newspaper
than when made by some guy in. alt.talk.gossip.general

--
Peter in Canberra


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Copyrighted music on wikipedia.

body:
On 5/15/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
[snip]
>    2. Information presented on the Air Force Band of the Golden
>    West website is considered public information and may be distributed
>    or copied. Use of appropriate byline/photo/image credits is
>    requested.
>
> If anyone thinks this general statement about 'information presented'
> somehow waives the copyrights of third parties, sorry but I call bullshit.
[snip]

Thanks, that was pretty much my position...

Now, what about the other contributions? For example... :)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wall_-_Little_Linda.ogg
(by Jermy Wall of [[Spyro Gyra]] fame, afaik)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wilson_-_It_Mostly_Bees_that_Way_Sigmund_Floyd.ogg
(at least we could ask the author:
http://www.berklee.edu/faculty/detail.php?id=484&type=last_name&value=wilson&skip=)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wyche_-_Alright%2C_Okay%2C_You_Win.ogg
(copyright 1955, no doubt that it's not PD)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Zawinul_-_Mercy%2C_Mercy%2C_Mercy.ogg
(first recorded in 1966, written by [[Joe Zawinul]])

These are just the top couple of music contributions on the commons by
Raulbot.   I believe these (and many more) are clearly infringing.
There are quite a few cases where the composers are alive, and we
might be able to get permission, but it is likely they do not own the
rights to these works themselves.

Then we must consider the works which are old enough to potentially be
in the public domain but were almost certainly performed from modern
score. If we were to remove everything that was probably infringing
under this criteria, we would likely be left with very little music.
Would it be appropriate to add an additional tag for material which we
are sure is completely unencumbered ?(i.e. it's an original work, or
we can confirm it was performed from a public domain score. It would
be ideal if we could also link to the public domain score, as a
defense against a claim, and as an additional valuable resource for
our users?).  My concern here is that although at the wikimedia we
might be willing to accept the risk of violation, it would be unfair
to pass this risk to others without warning... It would be nice if
Linux distributions could source multimedia content from the commons
without taking on a substantial rights-checking burden.


body:
On 5/15/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Well I am not a lawyer, but a Brittish songwriter/producer pensioned in
> Thailand is very bittered every time I talk to them. Because people are
> using samples from his songs change every 4th bar or so and then he gets
> no more rights paid, because it is a "different" work. These are his
> words not mine. He still does well though.

Limited sampling can be snuck through via fair use, just as one book
can quote a little from a copyrighted work.  The issue is not clear
cut and doesn't work well across international lines (berne convention
copyright protections are pretty stiff), and in the US the court often
finds infringement when presented with such cases. Because of this, it
is considered wise for samplers to ask for permission, and it is often
the case that they pay for the privilege... or they pay dearly when
they transgress, for example it is reported that because the Fugee's
sampled about three bars of Enya's "Boadicea" for use in their
blockbuster hit album "The Score" they were forced to give all the
income from the song to Enya.


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
I am posting this on different talk pages, and want to inform the mailing list.
I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a
Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate,
that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a
Christian point of view.  In other contexts, I argue that they violate our
NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See [[Wikipedia:Neutral
point of view/BCE-CE Debate]] for the detailed proposal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/BCE-CE_Debate

There has already been a long and contentious discussion on the Jesus talk
page, and it has gotten cumbersome.  It might get cumbersome to discuss
this proposal here, too.  Anyway, in the very early stages of the debate,
someone told me that rather than argue on the Jesus talk page, I should
propose to change the policy.  Thus ....

Steve

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


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Fwd: Droits d'auteurs sur le dictionnaire del'Académie

body:
Hi Ec,

Le Sunday 15 May 2005 18:57, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
>
> L'id?e d'un "auteur collectif "immortel"" me semble bizarre.  Je sais
> bien que les acad?miciens se disent les immortels, mais je n'aurais
> jamais interpret? ?a qu'un sobriquet honorifique.

Yes. As LT said, they smoked crack. ;o)

> La neuv?me ?dition
> est clairement prot?g?.  Pour la huit?me les droits d'auteur auraient
> d?j? expir?s pour les premiers volumes, et ces droits pour les autres
> devraient terminer ? la fin de 2005.  Je ne trouve rien dans la loi sur
> les droits d'auteurs qui autoriserait un collectif immortel.

Yes, but it's a bit more complicated than that, otherwise I?wouldn't ask.
There is a provision in French law for adding 8 years due to the Second World
War, but it seems it doesn't apply to the French Academy because the Academy
has no heirs. And it could be that the 9th edition is not subject to
copyright because it is an official publication from the French Republic.

> Tout au d?but du Wiktionnaire fran?ais j'ai propos? l'id?e d'une
> Wikid?mie.  Oserais-je r?introduire cet id?e?  Bien sur la Wikid?mie
> serait limit?e ? quarante membres nomm?s au d?but par notre propre
> r?incarnation de Louis XIII.  :-)

http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionnaire:Wikid?mie
We are not 40 yet, but hopefully we will be many more than that.

> Ec

Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: a proposal

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

> > But at least we've picked out the name :)
>
> Is it a supertitious issue not to make it public ?

I haven't registered the domain name yet! :)

> I hope everything will be fine, but at least, now it can happen any
> time
> with no problem :-)

Everything will be fine. I'll announce at some point. Thanks.

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 - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:

>http://www.maverickrc.com/releases/26/
>
>As is shown here, the album "Jagged Little Pill" is still for sale, thus we
>are correct in assuming that "Ironic" cannot be uploaded legally on
>Wikipedia.
>
>
Isn't it ironic ......

Waerth


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
>
>>http://www.maverickrc.com/releases/26/
>>
>>As is shown here, the album "Jagged Little Pill" is still for sale, thus
>>we
>>are correct in assuming that "Ironic" cannot be uploaded legally on
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>That point is not relevant.  Ceasing to be available has no effect on the
>copyright of the material unless it is more than 75 years old.
>
>Ec.

As for the US, to be sure.

W.

_________________________________________________________________
Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


body:
Isn't it Ironic it is actually this song we are discussing. I am
actually comparing this "US Army" version with the version on my "Dutch
bought" "Jagged little pill" cd. And I must say the musical composition
is different. I know as we are busy withit with the comedy group here in
Thailand that if one in every four bars is different it doesn't
constitute a copy vio in the US. That is how rappers get away with sampling.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Irate impersonating me on IRC

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050515 23:47]:
> > From: "David Gerard" <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>
> > > If you see someone on IRC coming from 217.44.0.0/16 with a nick that's a
> > > variation on my name, it's not me, it's Irate.
> > > User:The Number comes from the same range (it's btcentralplus.com, so
> > > that's giving away approximately nothing) and may or may not be the same
> > > person. Although The Number doesn't use trademark Irate typos.
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Number suggests a very similiar
> > character so I wouldn't be at all surprised.
>
> I'll check for typos. Irate's habit of typing too fast and not bothering to
> correct himself leads to various trademark typos. If The Number is Irate,
> The Number can be blocked promptly as Irate trolling.

>From a quick check, I would suspect User:The Number to be a different entity
from User:Irate. Bradley/Irate has a very distinctive writing style
characterised by typos (as you note above) and poor grammar to the point of
incomprehensibility (e.g. "her is the news it is Gerard that does not
understand anything excpect manipulation" from a recent email). User:The Number
doesn't seem to have the same problems with his/her writing.

Irate's IRC impersonations are out of order, of course -- and yes,
"DavidGerard2" does indeed count as impersonation...

-- Matt

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - want a free and easy way to contact your friends online? http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Jo

subject: Re: [Wiktionary-l] Fwd: Droits d'auteurs sur le dictionnaire de l'Académie

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Yann Forget wrote:
>
>>> La neuv?me ?dition est clairement prot?g?.  Pour la huit?me les
>>> droits d'auteur auraient
>>> d?j? expir?s pour les premiers volumes, et ces droits pour les autres
>>> devraient terminer ? la fin de 2005.  Je ne trouve rien dans la loi sur
>>> les droits d'auteurs qui autoriserait un collectif immortel.
>>>
>>
>> Yes, but it's a bit more complicated than that, otherwise I wouldn't
>> ask.
>> There is a provision in French law for adding 8 years due to the
>> Second World War, but it seems it doesn't apply to the French Academy
>> because the Academy has no heirs. And it could be that the 9th
>> edition is not subject to copyright because it is an official
>> publication from the French Republic.
>>
>>
> 30 years for those who are "morts pour la France", but that can't
> apply for those who are immortal.
> Ec

Hmm, what a great way to extend copyrights forever. Have your stuff
published by an immortal institution. Whey didn't Disney think of that.
It would have saved them a lot of lobbying the US copyright system to
get copyrights extended so far.

Polyglot


from_name: David Gerard

body:
If you see someone on IRC coming from 217.44.0.0/16 with a nick that's a
variation on my name, it's not me, it's Irate.

User:The Number comes from the same range (it's btcentralplus.com, so
that's giving away approximately nothing) and may or may not be the same
person. Although The Number doesn't use trademark Irate typos.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Irate impersonating me on IRC


body:
David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050515 23:47]:
> From: "David Gerard" <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

> > If you see someone on IRC coming from 217.44.0.0/16 with a nick that's a
> > variation on my name, it's not me, it's Irate.
> > User:The Number comes from the same range (it's btcentralplus.com, so
> > that's giving away approximately nothing) and may or may not be the same
> > person. Although The Number doesn't use trademark Irate typos.

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Number suggests a very similiar
> character so I wouldn't be at all surprised.

I'll check for typos. Irate's habit of typing too fast and not bothering to
correct himself leads to various trademark typos. If The Number is Irate,
The Number can be blocked promptly as Irate trolling.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyrighted music on wikipedia.

body:
On 5/15/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> It seems strange to me that the discussion has gone on so long without
> someone quoting the relevant law. 17 USC S105 says:
>
> "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
> the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
> precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by
> assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
>
> It's not sufficient for material to be on a .gov website, I thought our
> policy pages had always made that clear.

I'm not so sure that people thought otherwise, but rather they were
under the assumption that the boilerplate notices on the pages were
sufficient.. ::shrugs:: never made any sense to me..

But you see over and over again 'came from a .gov website' cited as
the reasoning for a PD label...  I've even seen this logic applied to
images stolen off the home pages at public universities.

It's wishful thinking and it needs to stop.


body:
David Gerard (fun at thingy.apana.org.au) [050515 23:49]:
> David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050515 23:47]:
> > From: "David Gerard" <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

> > > If you see someone on IRC coming from 217.44.0.0/16 with a nick that's a
> > > variation on my name, it's not me, it's Irate.
> > > User:The Number comes from the same range (it's btcentralplus.com, so
> > > that's giving away approximately nothing) and may or may not be the same
> > > person. Although The Number doesn't use trademark Irate typos.

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:The_Number suggests a very similiar
> > character so I wouldn't be at all surprised.

> I'll check for typos. Irate's habit of typing too fast and not bothering to
> correct himself leads to various trademark typos. If The Number is Irate,
> The Number can be blocked promptly as Irate trolling.

In fact, looking at the last week of edits, it appears to be a pure trolling
account.

- d.


from_name: MPerel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate

body:
I would like to draw attention to and encourage participation
regarding slrubenstein's policy proposal/discussion at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/BCE-CE_Debate
.

--Miri


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

body:
John Bradley clearly has a level of intelligence and can probably read what
we're writing right now. I'm sure that Bradley could easily attempt to
deceive us by checking every message to omit all typos, in order to try to
make The Number not look like its him. With a matching IP (apparantely) and
trolling background, I wouldn't be so sure it isn't him.

Its easy to impersonate someone just by using a spell checker, and we all
know impersonation is his specialist subject. ;)
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gerard" <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 12:06 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Irate impersonating me on IRC

> Matt R (matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk) [050516 08:17]:
>
> > >From a quick check, I would suspect User:The Number to be a different
entity
> > from User:Irate. Bradley/Irate has a very distinctive writing style
> > characterised by typos (as you note above) and poor grammar to the point
of
> > incomprehensibility (e.g. "her is the news it is Gerard that does not
> > understand anything excpect manipulation" from a recent email). User:The
Number
> > doesn't seem to have the same problems with his/her writing.
>
>
> User:The Number has now been blocked (multiply) as the obvious trolling
> account it is. I did get an email from someone claiming to be its operater
> emphasising that they could not possibly be Sollog, ignoring that that
> wasn't why it was blocked. This person also wrote without trademark Irate
> typos.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>
> I am posting this on different talk pages, and want to inform the
> mailing list.
> I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC and AD represent a
> Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are
> appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an
> account of a Christian point of view.  In other contexts, I argue that
> they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE and CE instead. See
> [[Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/BCE-CE Debate]] for the detailed
> proposal.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/BCE-CE_Debate
>
> There has already been a long and contentious discussion on the Jesus
> talk page, and it has gotten cumbersome.  It might get cumbersome to
> discuss this proposal here, too.  Anyway, in the very early stages of
> the debate, someone told me that rather than argue on the Jesus talk
> page, I should propose to change the policy.  Thus ....
>
> Steve

Ultra-short summary of previous debates:

Pro-CE) AD = "Year of Our Lord" thus is POV. Use CE.
Pro-AD) No AD is more widely used and WP is not a vehicle for advocacy
for change, so stick to AD.
Pro-CE) But that is ignorance. We should be correct and neutral, not
sheep-followers of the majority.
Pro-AD) I am not Christian nor ignorant, but still use AD as the
"standard". Adovacy is a bigger POV problem than origins of common terms
being POV.

Rinse and repeat with minor variations.

Result: Weak argument to agree to disagree and have the Manual of Style
  say that both styles are acceptable and it should be decided on a
page-to-page basis.

Now I am going to read the new debate and see what's new has been said :).

Pete/Pcb21


body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:

> steven l. rubenstein wrote:

> Now I am going to read the new debate and see what's new has been said :).

Hey, I was pretty close :). Good job on the write-up Steven. You make
the case for the "use BCE/CE" camp pretty well. Hopefully someone with
the opposite point of view will write the definitive argument for the
other side and we can keep them for ever more :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't vote Gerard.

body:
John Bradley (Johnb at ontobus.co.uk) [050516 00:59]:

> Hi I have been accused by David Gerard of being the number, for some
> reason. This is more to do with Gerard continued harasment of me (User
> Irate) and his need to appear to be protected you lot from things you do not
> understand. Her is the news it is Gerard that does not understand anything
> excpect manipulation. Vote any way you like but don't vote gerard.

Should I ever run for anything, I eagerly hope for Irate to continue to
tell people not to vote for me.

(The "continued harrassment" appears to be blocking him on #wikipedia for
impersonating me on IRC. Apparently Tim Starling should never have been
given admin powers either, for blocking him for the same reason on
#wikimedia-tech. Goodness!)

- d.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Don't vote Gerard.

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:
> Aren't you banned yet?
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Bradley" <Johnb at ontobus.co.uk>

He's been banned from wikien-l a few times. He's using email addresses
from domains that he owns, I've now blocked the domains. Of course we
can expect to see him again, he's obviously committed. Email addresses
are not hard to come by.

-- Tim Starling


body:
>
> Rappers "get away with sampling" by paying money to license the samples.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Well I am not a lawyer, but a Brittish songwriter/producer pensioned in
Thailand is very bittered every time I talk to them. Because people are
using samples from his songs change every 4th bar or so and then he gets
no more rights paid, because it is a "different" work. These are his
words not mine. He still does well though.

Walter/Waerth


body:
Deathphoenix (originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com) [050516 04:23]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >If you see someone on IRC coming from 217.44.0.0/16 with a nick that's a
> >variation on my name, it's not me, it's Irate.
> >User:The Number comes from the same range (it's btcentralplus.com, so
> >that's giving away approximately nothing) and may or may not be the same
> >person. Although The Number doesn't use trademark Irate typos.

> That's it, David. I'm not voting for you.

OH NOES *SOB*

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Official Positions

body:
There have been a variety of discussions on meta about Official
Positions [OP]; some of them recent.  See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Official_position
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions_2#Positions

This is one of the major elements of discussion at today's Board meeting.

I would like to present a somewhat contra-OP argument that the core of
WP's success has not been its exclusive delegation of responsibility
to individuals, but rather its successful empowerment of /all/ of its
users, even new ones, to jump in and do what needs to be done.
Providing Officers with unique power and authority is a two-edged
sword; it encourages those individuals to take extra responsibility,
and provides them with authority to herd other volunteers.  But simply
going out and working diligently on a project provides a similar
authority, and an internal, rather than an external, sense of
responsibility.

The existence of rare, Board-sanctioned official positions in areas
where there is not already an active group of un-official Wikipedians,
can discourage the rest of the community from jumping in, and adds
heirarchy and single points of failure to what would otherwise (in the
case of a pressing event) be an open system.

I would be comfortable with the creation of special interest groups
based around the priorities of the community and the foundation,
before deciding on individuals to represent those interests.  Creating
titled individuals to carve out new interest groups, as has been
suggested in the past, is certainly unwiki and probably unscalable.

--
+sj+


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Official Positions


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Official Positions


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
>the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
>precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by
>assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
>
For those who may be unconvinced: the ADA Reference Manual shows a
Copyright (c) Department of Defense.

Reason: the manual was written by a contractor, which assigned copyright
to DoD.

(Note, however, that the US seems to let people use its copyrighted
works royalty-free, effectively under a "free license".)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions

body:
Other hasty thoughts on a busy morning:  the following are very different:
1) Entitling a point-of-contact or trusted position with authority to
make autonomous decisions  without consulting [the board], while
requiring in return transparency and discussion with [the community]
beforehand
2) Entitling such a person to make decisions without consulting with
anyone, to privately filter or veto similar efforts of others, or to
force all related efforts to go through him/her.

Hopefully the official positions conceived are of the first type; the
current meta page on the subject does not quite specify.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Official Positions


body:
Matt R (matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk) [050516 08:17]:

> >From a quick check, I would suspect User:The Number to be a different entity
> from User:Irate. Bradley/Irate has a very distinctive writing style
> characterised by typos (as you note above) and poor grammar to the point of
> incomprehensibility (e.g. "her is the news it is Gerard that does not
> understand anything excpect manipulation" from a recent email). User:The Number
> doesn't seem to have the same problems with his/her writing.

User:The Number has now been blocked (multiply) as the obvious trolling
account it is. I did get an email from someone claiming to be its operater
emphasising that they could not possibly be Sollog, ignoring that that
wasn't why it was blocked. This person also wrote without trademark Irate
typos.

- d.


body:
David 'DJ' Hedley (spyders at btinternet.com) [050516 09:11]:

> John Bradley clearly has a level of intelligence and can probably read what
> we're writing right now. I'm sure that Bradley could easily attempt to
> deceive us by checking every message to omit all typos, in order to try to
> make The Number not look like its him. With a matching IP (apparantely) and
> trolling background, I wouldn't be so sure it isn't him.

Not a matching IP, a similar IP. (Given the obvious troll behaviour, I
checked The Number and Sollogfan when the case hit RFAr. They actually
appear to be different people, unless one person has two DSL connections on
different ISPs.)

Irate could easily fool us *utterly* by sneakily not going on wild bursts
of personal attacks, editing reasonably and so forth. He should certainly
be smart enough.

- d.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Mon, 16 May 2005, Skyring wrote:

> On 5/16/05, Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> >
> > Ultra-short summary of previous debates:
> >
> > Pro-CE) AD = "Year of Our Lord" thus is POV. Use CE.
> > Pro-AD) No AD is more widely used and WP is not a vehicle for advocacy
> > for change, so stick to AD.
> > Pro-CE) But that is ignorance. We should be correct and neutral, not
> > sheep-followers of the majority.
> > Pro-AD) I am not Christian nor ignorant, but still use AD as the
> > "standard". Adovacy is a bigger POV problem than origins of common terms
> > being POV.
>
> The horse has long bolted. CE has been common usage for decades in an
> expanding circle of groups, most notably those of science or academia.
>
> The Christians trying to contain the infection are as ultimately
> risible as the French trying to keep their language pure by opposing
> terms such as "le weekend". Christian belief is something that comes
> from the heart, not from strict adherence to the display of symbols.
>
> The "standardists" may have a better moral case, but I see them as
> like those who grew up with the Imperial system of measurement and
> staunchly resist the metric system because they aren't used to the
> terms. Oddly enough, within the British Commonwealth these same people
> didn't have any problem in grasping decimal currency after conversion
> from pounds, shillings and pence. If they *really* have a problem with
> BCE rather than BC, then the standardists are picking the smallest of
> nits.
>
> CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
>
And here we can see several reasons why this proposal stirs up so much
resistance.

* The assertion that because the style "CE/BCE" is "common usage", it
should be exclusive usage. A confusion of categories: is there any proof
that if an academic or scientist uses the style "AD/BC", that the
editor will change it or reject the submission? (A glance at my copy of
the MLA Handbook only discusses how to use both correctly -- although
it does discourage use of the once hallowed "ibid." & "op. cit.")
* That usage amongst certain groups -- i.e., academics -- is preferable
to usage amongst other groups. Appeal to authority: I would hope that
if academics have unamimously embraced this style, that there are a
number of readily-available -- & published essays -- that eloquently
& convincingly explain why one style is preferable to another.
* That the only people who would resist using this style do so for
reasons of faith. A straw man argument: I prefer "AD/BC" over "CE/BCE"
because that was the style that I felt was the most authentic for me.
I am currently not a member of any religion, although at one point in
my past I did embrace neo-paganism.
* That the style "CE/BCE" is universally embraced except for a few
implictly out-of-fashion groups. Assertion without proof: I was not
aware that the of "AD/BC" has gone the way of isenglas & mimeograph
printing.

I suspect many people who defend the use of "AD/BC" tend towards emotional
arguments because they are not familiar with how to make meta-lingusitic
arguments -- which I admit is difficult to do, & harder to do well.
In effect, we who prefer that style are being told we are wrong & are
accused of causing offense where none is intended, but the reasons offered
fail to convince us how or why; & when we protest, we are perjoratively
labelled (i.e., "Christians"), & condemned. This sorta goes against the
ideal of [[Assume good faith]].

Geoff


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Two-Character symbols in the Ossetic Alphabet
	(categories)

body:
On 5/14/05, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are special digraphs in the Ossetic alphabet considered
> "letters". They are: ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??.
> How can I make them appear in the categories?

I am afraid these "minor" internationalization issues are still
problematic in MediaWiki, so that this is impossible (unless there is
a single Unicode character representing the whole digraph, which I
suppose is not). See also
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164 for a related issue.

(We have this thing in the Czech language, too. We have a digraph "ch"
which is considered a single character and should be sorted between h
and i.)

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

references:
<d62dgn$tru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af8050513124050c228bf@mail.gmail.com>
	<d69npn$u9b$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> > No.
>
> Care to expand on that?

It's an answer to your original question: no, there is not a variable
that will give you the page name without its parenthesis suffix.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

body:
"?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason" <avarab at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:51dd1af8050513124050c228bf at mail.gmail.com...
> No.

Care to expand on that?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message news:d6793b$4lt$2 at sea.gmane.org...
> James D. Forrester wrote:
>> Interesting. I had assumed that Phil wanted to link to
>> [[{{PAGENAMENOPARANTHESES}} (disambiguation)]], which could be mildly
>> useful
>> in primary topic disambiguation cases.
> But the point is that the "primary topic" will not have parentheses by
> definition. (At least not parentheses that you want to get rid of.)

...which is my exact point. At the moment, the only way to show show other
related articles is the {{otheruses}} template, which wants to point to a
"... (disambiguation)" article.

If the reader is looking at the article on [[lilac (color)]] for example, it
is likely that they might be interested in other articles of similar name,
such as [[lilac]]. If you use {{otheruses}} however you get a link to
[[lilac (color) (disambiguation)]]: there is no way to automate a link to
[[lilac]] so you have to type it in manually. This means that there is
little scope for making the appearance and behaviour of such complementary
links uniform, as per the recent [[template standardisation]] project.

Now some people might like the fact that there is no uniformity in these
things, on the grounds that they make the project look too mechanical, but
the alternative often looks thoroughly unhelpful and ugly.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Delirium

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>I was writing more in jest than in seriousness. I'm mostly just a
>little frustrated as an Australian having to constantly convert from
>pounds to kilometres, or from miles to kilometres whenever I read an
>American source (and since it is mostly America who resists the metric
>system, this probably is systemic bias).
>
>
Miles are still used in both the United States and UK, which between
them count for a pretty large proportion of the English-speaking world.
A minority, sure, but one more than large enough to be worth
accomodating---we accomodate far smaller minorities than those of 380
million people.

It would certainly be nice if each use of units was quoted in both
systems though, unless it makes no sense to do so (e.g.
non-engineering-oriented science articles).  Putting in miles is
appropriate, but not providing a conversion for them is sloppy.

-Mark


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 5/16/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (Note, however, that the US seems to let people use its copyrighted
> > works royalty-free, effectively under a "free license".)
>
> Does that imply {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}?

Only if they explicitly *say* they allow any use; if they just say
"yes" to any request, but don't have that as explicit policy, then
not.

Andre Engels


from_name: Rick

body:
--- Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:

> The horse has long bolted. CE has been common usage
> for decades in an
> expanding circle of groups, most notably those of
> science or academia.
>
> The Christians trying to contain the infection are
> as ultimately
> risible as the French trying to keep their language
> pure by opposing
> terms such as "le weekend". Christian belief is
> something that comes
> from the heart, not from strict adherence to the
> display of symbols.

It's only Christians who support AD/BC?  How curious,
considering that I am not a Christian, but support the
status quo, since CE/BCE is anti-Christian POV and a
violation of Wikipedia policy of using most common
name.  Just because the academic community uses it
doesn't mean our readers do.

Again, I suggest making it part of the Preferences,
just as the date formatting is.

RickK

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Delirium said:
>
>
>>Miles are still used in both the United States and UK, which between
>>them count for a pretty large proportion of the English-speaking world.
>>
>>
>
>In the UK this is only for "folk" uses such as pints of beer and road
>signs.  I believe all scientific and engineering ventures switched to SI
>long ago, and nearly all commercial institutions (aforementioned pints of
>beer excluded, for instance) are required to use metric measure although
>they are also permitted to provide equivalent ounces, pounds, stones and
>whatnot.  They sell orange juice in liters, butter by the kilogram, cloth
>by the meter.  Liquor is sold in metric measure, so in a pub you get a
>pint of beer but a 35 ml measure of brandy, and a 200ml glass of wine.
>
>Road signs haven't switched because it would be very difficult and
>dangerous as well as politically explosive.
>
>
Certainly I agree that we ought to use kilometers exclusively when
discussing scientific matters, since nobody uses anything else.  But as
you note, when discussing "folk" matters such as the distances between
cities, much of the English-speaking world uses miles, so it's
appropriate that we use them (though not, of course, without also giving
the distance in kilometers).

-Mark


body:
--- Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> As for the use of BC and AD, it is indeed perfectly
> appropriate in
> articles about Christianity-related topics, just as
> the use of the
> Hebrew, Hindu or Chinese calendars is appropriate in
> articles related
> to those topics.

Nonsense.  Do you want to use the Mayan calendar for
Central American articles, the date of the founding of
Rome for all dates associated with the Roman Empire?
We should use dates that the average reader is going
to understand.

RickK

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> It would certainly be nice if each use of units was
> quoted in both
> systems though, unless it makes no sense to do so
> (e.g.
> non-engineering-oriented science articles).  Putting
> in miles is
> appropriate, but not providing a conversion for them
> is sloppy.
>
> -Mark

It's not sloppy if the editor doesn't know how to do
the conversion.

RickK

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: More thorough history?

body:
On 5/15/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Ben Brockert wrote:
> >
> >>  Is there a cogent case for not automatically  fixing double
> >> redirects?
> >
> > There could be tens of thousands of them, and changing them
> > automatically may be slow and error-prone. Page moves need to be a
> > low-cost operation to make and to revert because we're very permissive
> > about letting people do them.
>
> This is true, but you can still find out what double-redirects there and
> enter them in a queue for later scheduled fixing or something...

Or, at least, you could display the list of redirects to the old name
after the move (if there are some), which is simple, but useful.
Currently, we display the hint that the user should check that, but if
such notice would be displayed _only_ if there would be some double
redirects (even better, along with their list), it would be great.

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Special variable

body:
"?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason" <avarab at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:51dd1af805051602327d9ed75f at mail.gmail.com...
> > > No.
> > Care to expand on that?
> It's an answer to your original question: no, there is not a variable
> that will give you the page name without its parenthesis suffix.

Thank you. I should have asked a better question :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
for (clue=0;clue.buy;clue.got) { writeln("Ask the question you want
answered/n") }


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

>AD and BC might be offensive to some, who knows what the abbrevations
>actually mean. Good stuff that so few know about it. But what ACTUALLY
>MUST be extremely offensive to a huge number of people is the
>imperialist use of the word "American." Therefore, if we change all
>instances of AD/BC, shouldn't be also change all instances of
>"American" to something that will not offend the majority of all
>Americans?
>
>
Heh, that one has already been fought over a bunch of times.

It needs a standard template, for instance "{{horse carcass 352}}"
that will link to the category of all related pages.

:-)

Stan


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Setting up a Scots Wikipedia

body:
>I wish to register my support for the creation of a
>Scots language wiki.
>
Have you subscribed under
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Scots ? That's the
place to register your support for creations of proposed wikipedias.

W.

_________________________________________________________________
Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] PGP plug-in

body:
admin Yellowikis wrote:
> Just curious. Has anyone looked into a PGP "plug-in" for WM that would
> allow totally secure/anonymous editing?

What would such a thing do?

For encrypting web pages in transit between client and server, HTTPS
already provides this.

For hiding the client's true network location from the server,
anonymizing proxy networks like Tor already provide this.

The only potentially useful thing I can think of for PGP might be
signing of edits to prove a consistent pseudonymous identity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> However, Raul recently uploaded
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Morissette_-_Ironic.ogg
>
> I brought this issue up to him, and his reply was that yes, it looks
> somewhat fishy but the boilerplate copyright waver on a government
> website should be sufficient.

It seems strange to me that the discussion has gone on so long without
someone quoting the relevant law. 17 USC S105 says:

"Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by
assignment, bequest, or otherwise."

It's not sufficient for material to be on a .gov website, I thought our
policy pages had always made that clear.

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised this
	proposal

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:

> [...] many people oppose the proposal because AD/BC doesn't bother
> them. Okay, they have a right not to be bothered by AD/BC. But to make
> that a reason for not using another term is ? and I am certain I am
> correct in this ? fundamentally incompatible with our NPOV policy. The
> basis of our NPOV policy is that not everyone feels the same way. This
> necessarily means that it doesn't matter that you are not bothered by
> something; what matters is that someone else is. I think this is the
> very essence of NPOV, to recognize that one's own feelings are not
> shared by others and thus cannot be the basis for making decisions
> concerning NPOV! [...]

That's a rather extreme interpretation of NPOV. There are cases
in which language itself expresses POV; "dictator" and "terrorist"
are two of our classic examples, they being often used as a
substitute for objective description of an individual's beliefs or
acts. However, BC/AD carry little or no such baggage, just as days
of the week do not convey a pro-Norse-religion POV or the months
of the year endorse Roman religion.

Given that, it shouldn't be too surprising that you're going to
get dismissive reactions; with the thousands of serious and
difficult neutrality problems all over WP, to make BC/AD usage
some kind of test case for NPOV is the sort of focus on triviality
for which American (excuse me, USian) academia has become infamous
in recent years.

Stan


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Official Positions

body:
Sj wrote:
> I would like to present a somewhat contra-OP argument that the core of
> WP's success has not been its exclusive delegation of responsibility
> to individuals, but rather its successful empowerment of /all/ of its
> users, even new ones, to jump in and do what needs to be done.

Absolutely.  This is key.  The official positions should be thought of
as people who are co-ordinating and advising and communicating, not
people who are solely responsible for doing things, or who are the boss
of other people.

> Providing Officers with unique power and authority is a two-edged
> sword; it encourages those individuals to take extra responsibility,
> and provides them with authority to herd other volunteers.  But simply
> going out and working diligently on a project provides a similar
> authority, and an internal, rather than an external, sense of
> responsibility.

This is an excellent observation.

What this should be thought of is as a formalization _only_ of something
that has gone on for a long time anyway.  People take responsibility for
something, they co-ordinate it, they advise, they communicate. And
especially when it comes to interfacing with the outside world, or
interfacing with the board, it is better if we have some clarity -- this
is the primary purpose of identifying people with particular positions.

> I would be comfortable with the creation of special interest groups
> based around the priorities of the community and the foundation,
> before deciding on individuals to represent those interests.  Creating
> titled individuals to carve out new interest groups, as has been
> suggested in the past, is certainly unwiki and probably unscalable.

It absolutely should not be a process of creating, but rather of
recognizing.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Official Positions


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/16/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
> > >
> > > CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
> > >
> >
> > ...except where use of BC and AD is appropriate. Would you have us
> > convert every instance of something being measured in feet, inches,
> > fathoms, chains, pounds, ounces, psi and the like to its metric equivalent?
> >
> > You can't impose a blanket policy where the usage is dependent on
> > context. Like naming conventions, there *are* exceptions to the rule.
> >
>
> It would be wonderful if Wikipedia converted completely to the metric
> system, or perhaps [[SI]] ("the most widely used system of units").
> Perhaps units should be referred to the Countering Systemic Bias
> Wikiproject.

 It isn't Systemic Bias and most of the articles seem to be drifting
in the direction of SI anyway.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
geni said:
> On 5/16/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It would be wonderful if Wikipedia converted completely to the metric
>> system, or perhaps [[SI]] ("the most widely used system of units").
>> Perhaps units should be referred to the Countering Systemic Bias
>> Wikiproject.
>
>
> It isn't Systemic Bias and most of the articles seem to be drifting
> in the direction of SI anyway.

Since this seems to be favoring the majority Systeme Internationale
against minority systems such as Foot-pound-second, shouldn't we still
refer this to Countering Systemic Bias? :)


body:
On 5/16/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> geni said:
> > On 5/16/05, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> It would be wonderful if Wikipedia converted completely to the metric
> >> system, or perhaps [[SI]] ("the most widely used system of units").
> >> Perhaps units should be referred to the Countering Systemic Bias
> >> Wikiproject.
> >
> >
> > It isn't Systemic Bias and most of the articles seem to be drifting
> > in the direction of SI anyway.
>
> Since this seems to be favoring the majority Systeme Internationale
> against minority systems such as Foot-pound-second, shouldn't we still
> refer this to Countering Systemic Bias? :)

Probably but that project has enough problems already.

--
geni


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Metric road signs in the U. S.

body:
--- dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> highway requirement. Many signs DID get changed, enough for them to become a
> reasonably familiar sight. Cars produced during that time period had both
> miles per hours and kilometers per hour marked on their speedometers,
> although odometers continued to read in miles.

I don't know how things are in other nations, but in the United States the
standards to get a drivers license are so low that really stupid people are
allowed to drive. For example, a 70% score on written driving tests is enough
to pass in most states, meaning you can screw up 30% of the time!  I imagine
many of these idiots got confused by the dual system, thus the current
pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Traffic would be much better if 95% scores were mandated to get a license. But
since most U.S. cities are built in a way that almost requires the use of an
auto, I don't think that will ever happen.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't vote Gerard.

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Geoff Burling wrote:
> On Sun, 15 May 2005, John Bradley wrote:
>
>
>> Vote any way you like but don't vote gerard.
>>
>
> I'm puzzled at this. Didn't the UK elections end last week? And
> AFAIK, there are no elections in Australia (which is David's
> home country), so unless David is running against John Bolton for
> US Ambassador to the UN (the only vote I know of that's impending),
> what office exactly *is* David Gerard running/standing for?
>

Supreme Overlord of Earth, of course.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: Sj

body:
Zhengzhu's script for maintaining side-by-side traditional and
simplified chinese articles should work just as well for side-by-side
US and Queen's English articles.  We should try that out...

SJ

On 5/16/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Rick said:
> > --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >> It would certainly be nice if each use of units was
> >> quoted in both
> >> systems though, unless it makes no sense to do so
> >> (e.g.
> >> non-engineering-oriented science articles).  Putting
> >> in miles is
> >> appropriate, but not providing a conversion for them
> >> is sloppy.
> >>
> >> -Mark
> >
> > It's not sloppy if the editor doesn't know how to do
> > the conversion.
> >
>
> Wouldn't it be cool to have some kind of macro system for pint,
> liter/litre, kilogram/kilogramme, foot, and whatnot--something not unlike
> the date conversion system we use, that enables me to see 8 October, 1988
> where an American would see October 8, 1988.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Yes, but generally that won't do much.

Mark

On 16/05/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >I wish to register my support for the creation of a
> >Scots language wiki.
> >
> Have you subscribed under
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Scots ? That's the
> place to register your support for creations of proposed wikipedias.
>
> W.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Speel online games via MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>

>Road signs haven't switched because it would be very difficult and
>dangerous as well as politically explosive.

Actually, in the seventies, there was a widespread systematic effort to add
distances in kilometers to road signs. I think it may have been an Interstate
highway requirement. Many signs DID get changed, enough for them to become a
reasonably familiar sight. Cars produced during that time period had both
miles per hours and kilometers per hour marked on their speedometers, although
odometers continued to read in miles.

I'm not completely sure what happened subsequently.

I do NOT remember any political "explosion" at all. Just apathy.

I believe that the requirement was dropped and that the dual-system signs were
just gradually, in the natural course of sign replacement, replaced with signs
giving distances only in miles.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/16/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be cool to have some kind of macro system for pint,
> liter/litre, kilogram/kilogramme, foot, and whatnot--something not unlike
> the date conversion system we use, that enables me to see 8 October, 1988
> where an American would see October 8, 1988.

Is this the season for dead-horse resuscitation?

Unit conversion is not necessarily very well done in automated ways.
Yes, you'll get a conversion, but without a huge amount of
parameterisation for preferred units, precision, and the like, it will
provide a much poorer conversion than a manual one, where human
judgment can be used to provide a good conversion.

And if you're willing to go to all that work to parameterize a
conversion operation, isn't it easier to just do the conversion
yourself?

-Matt (User:Morven)

P.S. so long as [[User:Bobblewik]] is active, we don't need such a
system; he seems to be quite willing to ensure that all Imperial and
US measurements in Wikipedia get a SI equivalent ...


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal: Why I devised this proposal

body:
Timwi wrote:

>OMG, not again.
>
>You know, I've always found this AD vs. CE debate extremely stupid.
>Like, as if renaming "AD" to "CE" would immediately, suddenly and
>magically remove all connections with any religion! Guys, it's still the
>number of years after Jesus' birth, whether you like it or not.

I have a few, brief comments to make concerning the list-serve
discussion.  First, I appreciate Skyring?s comments (and several others),
very much.  I disagree with Stephen Bain on one point: yes, BC and AD
should be used when appropriate.  But I do not think that ?when
appropriate? means ?Christianity related articles.?  Christianity related
articles, like Jewish related articles, Muslim related articles, Marxism
related articles, Fascism related articles must all be written from an
NPOV.  BUT I recognize that many articles will include within them passages
that describe or present a Christian point of view.  I believe that it is
in such sections that BC and AD are not only appropriate, but must be used
for the sake of accuracy.

But I have to respond to Timwi?s message at length.  His very statements
actually exemplify the reason I have made this proposal.  To be clear,
although I certainly do believe in the specifics of the proposal, my main
motivation was concern over people?s understanding of our NPOV policy.  I
wanted to open up a debate about NPOV, and raise people?s consciousness
about NPOV.  As far as I am concerned, what Timwi wrote proves that s/he
either does not understand, or does not accept, our NPOV policy, and by
itself justifies my proposal.

The fact is, if I thought everyone understood and was committed to our NPOV
policy, I would not have made this proposal NPOV should be a general policy
people can use to make decisions on an ad hoc basis. However, much of the
opposition to this proposal (and remember, the big dispute on the Talk:
Jesus page started with a change by JimWae) convinces me that many people
do not understand or care about NPOV. I realize you may think my
understanding of NPOV is eccentric. But here is what convinces me: many
people oppose the proposal because AD/BC doesn't bother them. Okay, they
have a right not to be bothered by AD/BC. But to make that a reason for not
using another term is ? and I am certain I am correct in this ?
fundamentally incompatible with our NPOV policy. The basis of our NPOV
policy is that not everyone feels the same way. This necessarily means that
it doesn't matter that you are not bothered by something; what matters is
that someone else is.  I think this is the very essence of NPOV, to
recognize that one's own feelings are not shared by others and thus cannot
be the basis for making decisions concerning NPOV! Yet in many, if not most
of the arguments in favor of keeping BC/AD, this is the ultimate reason
people give. So I have very serious doubts about the commitment to NPOV.
Jimbo says it is an unconditional policy, and everyone pays it lip-service.
You know what? I think most people follow the policy because most of the
time it is easy to follow the policy. I think here we have stumbled upon a
situation where many people truly find it hard to follow the policy,
because they cannot understand why someone would object to BC/AD as POV.
But this is precisely the test: to accept that your position is POV even
when you cannot understand why others do not share it. If someone cannot
make that leap, then our NPOV policy is in jeopardy. That is why I make
this proposal: to bolster our NPOV policy in a situation where many people
find it hard to follow the NPOV policy.

By the way, I don?t want to descend into an argument over language or
logic.  I am NOT saying that all opposition to my proposal is motivated by
a disregard for out NPOV people.  In fact, many people who oppose my
proposal share my commitment to NPOV, for which I am grateful.  I do not
write this to convince anyone to support my proposal.  I write this to
propel my real purpose, which is to spark a frank discussion about our NPOV
policy.

Steve

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


from_name: William H. Haggett

body:
I am new to this; so I may misunderstand, or I may be restating things
which have already been said.

The various documents and policies appear to indicate that NPOV is
primarily a matter of presenting facts in a fair and unbiased manner.
When there are differing viewpoints or opinions as to what are the
facts of a subject, then NPOV would require that these viewpoints be
presented in a fair and unbiased manner, without undue emphasis -- or
undue lack of emphasis -- being given to one or more of those
viewpoints.

However, in this case, we are not dealing with fact, viewpoint, or
opinion. We are simply dealing with *nomenclature*. While the names of
things may well reflect cultural or other bias, it is also true that
through long, common usage they lose much (if not all) of the
connotations they may have once had.

Does NPOV require that we reject the name of the month of June,
because it is based on the name of a Roman goddess?

It is likely that the overwhelming majority of people consider "BC"
and "AD" as simply labels -- giving little (if any) more thought to
their religious context than they give to the label "June".

It is possible that rejecting a commonly held and accepted
nomenclature in favor of one which many would perceive as being
artificially neutral could be considered as the violation of NPOV.

It is questionable whether the goals of the Wikipedia project would be
well served by taking it out of the mainstream and toward what many
would see as an "elitist" stance.

Good luck,
Bill


body:
Delirium said:
>>
> Miles are still used in both the United States and UK, which between
> them count for a pretty large proportion of the English-speaking world.

In the UK this is only for "folk" uses such as pints of beer and road
signs.  I believe all scientific and engineering ventures switched to SI
long ago, and nearly all commercial institutions (aforementioned pints of
beer excluded, for instance) are required to use metric measure although
they are also permitted to provide equivalent ounces, pounds, stones and
whatnot.  They sell orange juice in liters, butter by the kilogram, cloth
by the meter.  Liquor is sold in metric measure, so in a pub you get a
pint of beer but a 35 ml measure of brandy, and a 200ml glass of wine.

Road signs haven't switched because it would be very difficult and
dangerous as well as politically explosive.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
On Mon, 16 May 2005 16:02:40 -0400, "steven l. rubenstein"
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:

>But sometimes there are little things people do which, if the
>people were asked to stop doing these things so as not to offend, would
>involve no real sacrifice, no loss of integrity or honor.  I will never
>understand why in such cases such people not only refuse to make the small
>change asked for, they actually seem to relish and take pride in offending
>people.

Is it possible that they may sincerely feel that the proposed policy
chance is ill advised -- perhaps even foolish?

Good luck,
Bill


subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote...
>The argument of AD vs. CE is probably the most ridiculous one i've seen so
>far. What next - Will [[Gingerbread Man]] be made [[Gingerbread Person]] to
>not upset the gender equality pushers? Or how about renamed Wikipedia to
>Wikip?dia to not upset heavily pro-French language-ists? Just about
>everything can be made POV in one way or another.

mvh Bj?rn wrote...

>AD and BC might be offensive to some, who knows what the abbrevations
>actually mean. Good stuff that so few know about it. But what ACTUALLY
>MUST be extremely offensive to a huge number of people is the
>imperialist use of the word "American." Therefore, if we change all
>instances of AD/BC, shouldn't be also change all instances of
>"American" to something that will not offend the majority of all
>Americans?
>--
>mvh Bj?rn

I have observed that most of the objections to my proposal fall into one of
three camps: people who simply do not understand our NPOV policy (which I
addressed in my last message), and people who, as in the cases of  David
'DJ' Hedley and mvh Bj?rn, either fantasize about more and more absurd and
entirely hypothetical cases, which is just a means to avoid a specific and
concrete proposal that addresses different views actually held by millions
of people, and practices that are and have been going on for at least a
century; or complain about how unfair it is that they are being asked not
to be offensive.  Sometimes, when telling the truth, some people do of
course get disturbed, hurt, or angry -- these cases cannot and should not
be avoided.  But sometimes there are little things people do which, if the
people were asked to stop doing these things so as not to offend, would
involve no real sacrifice, no loss of integrity or honor.  I will never
understand why in such cases such people not only refuse to make the small
change asked for, they actually seem to relish and take pride in offending
people.

Steve

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


from_name: Seth Ilys

subject: [WikiEN-l] Announcing a policy proposal

body:
On 5/16/05, steven l. rubenstein <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> I have observed that most of the objections to my proposal fall into one of
> three camps: people who simply do not understand our NPOV policy (which I
> addressed in my last message),

Some of us, actually, believe that you misunderstand Wikipedia's NPOV
policy and are attempting to apply it in an agressive way, when NPOV
is supposed to be a guide to consensus-building.

--
Seth Ilys
   email: seth.ilys at gmail.com
   IM (aol, msn, yahoo): JehanneDaix
   blog: http://somewhereindurham.blogspot.com/


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia encourages employees to use Blogs and Wikis

body:
http://www.snellspace.com/IBM_Blogging_Policy_and_Guidelines.pdf
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/59570

experpts:
"Whether or not an IBMer chooses to create or participate in a blog or a
wiki or other form of online publishing or discussion is his or her own
decision."

"2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual
interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally
responsible for their posts."


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
>
>> But the point is that the "primary topic" will not have parentheses
>> by definition. (At least not parentheses that you want to get rid
>> of.)
>
> ....which is my exact point. At the moment, the only way to show show
> other related articles is the {{otheruses}} template, which wants to
> point to a "... (disambiguation)" article.

Yes, because you don't need any others, is my point. Am I really this
unclear?

> If the reader is looking at the article on [[lilac (color)]] for
> example, it is likely that they might be interested in other articles
> of similar name, such as [[lilac]].

No, it is not, as I've been trying to tell you. There is absolutely no
way they are going to type "lilac (color)" into either the URL or the
search box if they are actually looking for [[lilac]].

If there is a semantic link between the topics covered by the article --
as is the case with [[lilac]] and [[lilac (color)]] -- then there will
be a link in the body of the text, ideally in the introductory section.
If there isn't -- such as between [[gate]] and [[Bill Gates]] -- then
your assertion about the likelihood of a user wanting to go from one to
the other is clearly false.

> This means that there is little scope for making the appearance and
> behaviour of such complementary links uniform

We *do not* want these "complementary links" because they are useless.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Export Dictionary?

body:
Brian Suda wrote:
>
> Does anyone on the tech list know if this is even possible?

Wiktionary's database structure is the same as Wikipedia's: A bunch of
free-form bloks of text using MediaWiki mark-up syntax.

There is no real way to extract any algorithmically useful data, such as
"X is a translation of Y into language Z" or anything of the sort.

I've been saying that since Wiktionary started. :-)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>>I do NOT remember any political "explosion" at all. Just apathy.
>>
>>
>Things are slightly different in the UK, where Europeanization is a bit of
>a political football.  Tell British drivers they must stick to a 50kph
>speed limit and there's liable to be a lot of political fallout, if not
>actual damage, concerning road crash statistics.
>
The difference between the Canadian and British experience on
metrication is a bit like removing a band-aid.  Do you pull it off
quickly or slowly?  The British started a few years before us, and are
still experiencing pains over it.  Most of the visible changes here were
finished in less than a decade; the British have been at it for over 40
years, and without the need to do so under the shadow of the tail from a
very imperial bald eagle.

Ec


from_name: Roger Wesson

body:
Fans of archaic unit systems may find solace in the fact that astronomy
still stubbornly resists the onslaught of SI units.  The CGS system is
still king in astronomy: ergs/cm^2/s is our preferred unit of flux (except
radio astronomers use the Jansky) and we also like such non-standard units
as the Angstrom for wavelengths, light years and parsecs of course for
distance, and arcseconds and arcminutes instead of radians for angular
measures.  In the astronomy articles I've written for Wikipedia, though, I
think I've stuck with SI except for light years and parsecs.

As for what UK folk use, well, the packets might be marked in metric but
the amounts are still imperial.  We buy milk in 568ml (pint) bottles, peas
in 455g (1lb) packets, that kind of thing.

Not sure that changing distances on road signs would be that difficult or
at all dangerous, it's just that being on an island we have no compelling
reason to conform to the continental standard - there would be no benefit
to be gained from a switch.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Sidaway [mailto:minorityreport at bluebottle.com]
>
> In the UK this is only for "folk" uses such as pints of beer and road
> signs.  I believe all scientific and engineering ventures switched to SI
> long ago, and nearly all commercial institutions (aforementioned pints of
> beer excluded, for instance) are required to use metric measure although
> they are also permitted to provide equivalent ounces, pounds, stones and
> whatnot.  They sell orange juice in liters, butter by the kilogram, cloth
> by the meter.  Liquor is sold in metric measure, so in a pub you get a
> pint of beer but a 35 ml measure of brandy, and a 200ml glass of wine.
>
> Road signs haven't switched because it would be very difficult and
> dangerous as well as politically explosive.


body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/BCE-CE_Debate

OMG, not again.

You know, I've always found this AD vs. CE debate extremely stupid.
Like, as if renaming "AD" to "CE" would immediately, suddenly and
magically remove all connections with any religion! Guys, it's still the
number of years after Jesus' birth, whether you like it or not.

Also, some people in this discussion have drawn parallels between this
and imperial units of measurement. HELLOOOO?! It's not really like you
need to *convert* between the two, you know?! Or maybe I just somehow
missed that 1 year CE is actually equivalent to 3.573495764 years AD?

Have you thought that there may be alien civilisations out there? Using
our Earth year as measurement of time is POV!!

Head-shaking,
Timwi


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special variable

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message news:d6advj$9v0$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
>>> But the point is that the "primary topic" will not have parentheses
>>> by definition. (At least not parentheses that you want to get rid
>>> of.)
>> ....which is my exact point. At the moment, the only way to show show
>> other related articles is the {{otheruses}} template, which wants to
>> point to a "... (disambiguation)" article.
> Yes, because you don't need any others, is my point. Am I really this
> unclear?

Yes.

>> If the reader is looking at the article on [[lilac (color)]] for
>> example, it is likely that they might be interested in other articles
>> of similar name, such as [[lilac]].
> No, it is not, as I've been trying to tell you. There is absolutely no
> way they are going to type "lilac (color)" into either the URL or the
> search box if they are actually looking for [[lilac]].

Is it not possible to arrive at an article by any other means than an
explicit search?

Like clicking a wiki-link perchance?

Or following a link from an outside source?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Leif Knutsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy proposal

body:
Bill Haggett wrote:

:Does NPOV require that we reject the name of the month of June,
:because it is based on the name of a Roman goddess?

Using the name June for a month doesn't assume that there is a goddess named June, just as referring to days of the week as Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday doesn't assume that these Norse gods exist.

:It is likely that the overwhelming majority of people consider "BC"
:and "AD" as simply labels -- giving little (if any) more thought to
:their religious context than they give to the label "June".

That argument doesn't fly, for reasons that should be obvious.  Fifty years ago, the overwhelming majority in certain southern communities would refer to African-Americans as "boy" or "nigger," without giving it any further thought.

As it is, AD and BC mean something; their usage explicitly assumes a religious belief that everyone doesn't share.  The fact that people don't give it much thought - or don't even know - doesn't change the meaning.  "BC" means "before the Anointed One," and "AD" means "the Year of Our Lord."

:It is possible that rejecting a commonly held and accepted
:nomenclature in favor of one which many would perceive as being
:artificially neutral could be considered as the violation of NPOV.

I don't know what "artificially neutral" even means.  I think what all this comes down to is that the "overwhelming majority" can't be bothered to change their ways because it doesn't bother them, and they want the minority to lighten up and get on with things.

I was not too bothered by the practice of BC and AD in this encyclopedia, except when some bonehead corrected BCE/CE in an article with Jewish content.  But now that I see the attitudes toward this, I'm definitely becoming more insistently supportive of the proposal.

Leif


from_name: Skyring

body:
On 5/16/05, Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
>
> Ultra-short summary of previous debates:
>
> Pro-CE) AD = "Year of Our Lord" thus is POV. Use CE.
> Pro-AD) No AD is more widely used and WP is not a vehicle for advocacy
> for change, so stick to AD.
> Pro-CE) But that is ignorance. We should be correct and neutral, not
> sheep-followers of the majority.
> Pro-AD) I am not Christian nor ignorant, but still use AD as the
> "standard". Adovacy is a bigger POV problem than origins of common terms
> being POV.

The horse has long bolted. CE has been common usage for decades in an
expanding circle of groups, most notably those of science or academia.

The Christians trying to contain the infection are as ultimately
risible as the French trying to keep their language pure by opposing
terms such as "le weekend". Christian belief is something that comes
from the heart, not from strict adherence to the display of symbols.

The "standardists" may have a better moral case, but I see them as
like those who grew up with the Imperial system of measurement and
staunchly resist the metric system because they aren't used to the
terms. Oddly enough, within the British Commonwealth these same people
didn't have any problem in grasping decimal currency after conversion
from pounds, shillings and pence. If they *really* have a problem with
BCE rather than BC, then the standardists are picking the smallest of
nits.

CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Delirium

body:
Sj wrote:

>Zhengzhu's script for maintaining side-by-side traditional and
>simplified chinese articles should work just as well for side-by-side
>US and Queen's English articles.  We should try that out...
>
>
I believe at some point en: made a rough decision that we were willing
to put up with a non-preferred version of color/colour for the sake of
not introducing unnecessary complexity.

-Mark


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Delirium said:
>
>
>>Sj wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Zhengzhu's script for maintaining side-by-side traditional and
>>>simplified chinese articles should work just as well for side-by-side
>>>US and Queen's English articles.  We should try that out...
>>>
>>>
>>I believe at some point en: made a rough decision that we were willing
>>to put up with a non-preferred version of color/colour for the sake of
>>not introducing unnecessary complexity.
>>
>>
>Orthography aside, the languages are very closely bound because of
>American TV and movies.
>
Orthogrphy is of no consequence in a medium designed to appeal to the
illiterate.

Ec


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] PGP plug-in

body:
Just curious. Has anyone looked into a PGP "plug-in" for WM that would
allow totally secure/anonymous editing?

I ask because of this question at /.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/13/0250226


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>* That the only people who would resist using this style do so for
>reasons of faith. A straw man argument: I prefer "AD/BC" over "CE/BCE"
>because that was the style that I felt was the most authentic for me.
>I am currently not a member of any religion, although at one point in
>my past I did embrace neo-paganism.
>
>
For me, I prefer AD/BC over CE/BCE only because:
* It's harder to change one to the other with a simple typo.
* There's the same number of letters in each, which satisfies my
aesthetic sense.

That these reasons alone are sufficient to sway my preference on the
matter suggests to me that I don't consider the matter to be terribly
significant. :) However, since switching over to CE/BCE would entail
some rather major work fixing stuff in Wikipedia, I would strongly
oppose changing in either direction on that very basis - it's just not
worth it, IMO.


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

body:
The argument of AD vs. CE is probably the most ridiculous one i've seen so
far. What next - Will [[Gingerbread Man]] be made [[Gingerbread Person]] to
not upset the gender equality pushers? Or how about renamed Wikipedia to
Wikip?dia to not upset heavily pro-French language-ists? Just about
everything can be made POV in one way or another.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Geoff Burling" <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com>
To: "Skyring" <skyring at gmail.com>; "English Wikipedia"
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2005 5:17 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Announcing a policy proposal

> On Mon, 16 May 2005, Skyring wrote:
>
> > On 5/16/05, Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Ultra-short summary of previous debates:
> > >
> > > Pro-CE) AD = "Year of Our Lord" thus is POV. Use CE.
> > > Pro-AD) No AD is more widely used and WP is not a vehicle for advocacy
> > > for change, so stick to AD.
> > > Pro-CE) But that is ignorance. We should be correct and neutral, not
> > > sheep-followers of the majority.
> > > Pro-AD) I am not Christian nor ignorant, but still use AD as the
> > > "standard". Adovacy is a bigger POV problem than origins of common
terms
> > > being POV.
> >
> > The horse has long bolted. CE has been common usage for decades in an
> > expanding circle of groups, most notably those of science or academia.
> >
> > The Christians trying to contain the infection are as ultimately
> > risible as the French trying to keep their language pure by opposing
> > terms such as "le weekend". Christian belief is something that comes
> > from the heart, not from strict adherence to the display of symbols.
> >
> > The "standardists" may have a better moral case, but I see them as
> > like those who grew up with the Imperial system of measurement and
> > staunchly resist the metric system because they aren't used to the
> > terms. Oddly enough, within the British Commonwealth these same people
> > didn't have any problem in grasping decimal currency after conversion
> > from pounds, shillings and pence. If they *really* have a problem with
> > BCE rather than BC, then the standardists are picking the smallest of
> > nits.
> >
> > CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
> >
> And here we can see several reasons why this proposal stirs up so much
> resistance.
>
> * The assertion that because the style "CE/BCE" is "common usage", it
> should be exclusive usage. A confusion of categories: is there any proof
> that if an academic or scientist uses the style "AD/BC", that the
> editor will change it or reject the submission? (A glance at my copy of
> the MLA Handbook only discusses how to use both correctly -- although
> it does discourage use of the once hallowed "ibid." & "op. cit.")
> * That usage amongst certain groups -- i.e., academics -- is preferable
> to usage amongst other groups. Appeal to authority: I would hope that
> if academics have unamimously embraced this style, that there are a
> number of readily-available -- & published essays -- that eloquently
> & convincingly explain why one style is preferable to another.
> * That the only people who would resist using this style do so for
> reasons of faith. A straw man argument: I prefer "AD/BC" over "CE/BCE"
> because that was the style that I felt was the most authentic for me.
> I am currently not a member of any religion, although at one point in
> my past I did embrace neo-paganism.
> * That the style "CE/BCE" is universally embraced except for a few
> implictly out-of-fashion groups. Assertion without proof: I was not
> aware that the of "AD/BC" has gone the way of isenglas & mimeograph
> printing.
>
> I suspect many people who defend the use of "AD/BC" tend towards emotional
> arguments because they are not familiar with how to make meta-lingusitic
> arguments -- which I admit is difficult to do, & harder to do well.
> In effect, we who prefer that style are being told we are wrong & are
> accused of causing offense where none is intended, but the reasons offered
> fail to convince us how or why; & when we protest, we are perjoratively
> labelled (i.e., "Christians"), & condemned. This sorta goes against the
> ideal of [[Assume good faith]].
>
> Geoff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>Delirium said:
> >>
> > Miles are still used in both the United States and UK, which between
> > them count for a pretty large proportion of the English-speaking world.
>
>In the UK this is only for "folk" uses such as pints of beer and road
>signs.  I believe all scientific and engineering ventures switched to SI
>long ago, and nearly all commercial institutions (aforementioned pints of
>beer excluded, for instance) are required to use metric measure although
>they are also permitted to provide equivalent ounces, pounds, stones and
>whatnot.  They sell orange juice in liters, butter by the kilogram, cloth
>by the meter.  Liquor is sold in metric measure, so in a pub you get a
>pint of beer but a 35 ml measure of brandy, and a 200ml glass of wine.
>
>Road signs haven't switched because it would be very difficult and
>dangerous as well as politically explosive.

Difficult and dangerous?  As far as I know, in Canada that was one of the
first things to be switched.

Jay.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Export Dictionary?

body:
On 5/16/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Wiktionary's database structure is the same as Wikipedia's: A bunch of
> free-form bloks of text using MediaWiki mark-up syntax.
>
> There is no real way to extract any algorithmically useful data, such as
> "X is a translation of Y into language Z" or anything of the sort.

This could change once Wikidata is implemented. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary

Angela.


from_name: Alphax

body:
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Skyring wrote:
[snip]
>
> CE/BCE is already a standard in many disciplines. Make it so in WP.
>

...except where use of BC and AD is appropriate. Would you have us
convert every instance of something being measured in feet, inches,
fathoms, chains, pounds, ounces, psi and the like to its metric equivalent?

You can't impose a blanket policy where the usage is dependent on
context. Like naming conventions, there *are* exceptions to the rule.

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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body:
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David Monniaux wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> "Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of
>> the United States Government, but the United States Government is not
>> precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by
>> assignment, bequest, or otherwise."
>>
> For those who may be unconvinced: the ADA Reference Manual shows a
> Copyright (c) Department of Defense.
>
> Reason: the manual was written by a contractor, which assigned copyright
> to DoD.
>
> (Note, however, that the US seems to let people use its copyrighted
> works royalty-free, effectively under a "free license".)
>
>

Does that imply {{CopyrightedFreeUse}}?

- --
Alphax
GnuPG key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/8mpg9
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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from_name: steven l. rubenstein

body:
mvh Bj?rn wrote,

> > I have observed that most of the objections to my proposal fall into one of
> > three camps: people who simply do not understand our NPOV policy (which I
> > addressed in my last message), and people who, as in the cases of  David
>
>I read that. To me it mostly sounded like a "I'm right, you are wrong"
>argumentation. It would be good if you could describe in which ways
>your opponents have not understood our NPOV policy. That they just
>disagree with you does not suffice.

First off, I really appreciate your thoughtful response.

Well, it is true that I believe very firmly in the interpretation of NPOV
(or rather, the spirit behind it) that I presented.  But I also felt I was
addressing NPOV at a rather abstract level.  My point is, I do wish that
everyone agreed with what I wrote about NPOV in the prior e-mail.  But I
certainly believe someone can agree with everything I wrote in that e-mail
about NPOV in general and disagree with my proposal concerning
BCE/CE.  Obviously I still think I am right about that, but there are
several people who have voted against my proposal whose stance I fully
respect: Jyolkowski, Tomer, KHM03, Doc Glasgow, and Theo for example.

So it isn't that someone disagrees with me concerning my proposal, that is
proof to me that they do not understand our NPOV policy.  It is only when
they disagree in a particular way, for a particular reason.  In other
words, I believe that there are people who fully understand and are
committed to our NPOV proposal and reject my proposals for reasons I may
not particularly like, but must respect.  But there are people who reject
my proposal and I think their explanations are just absurd and disregard
specific explicit parts of our NPOV policy.  I don't want to go on and on,
but I hope that between the e-mail I sent concerning my general view of
NPOV, and the specific elements from our NPOV policy that I quoted verbatim
in my proposal, you can understand my point about NPOV (even if you still
disagree with my proposal ;-)

> > 'DJ' Hedley and mvh Bj?rn, either fantasize about more and more absurd and
> > entirely hypothetical cases, which is just a means to avoid a specific and
> > concrete proposal that addresses different views actually held by millions
> > of people, and practices that are and have been going on for at least a
>
>Your analysis of discrimination on the debate page was very
>enlightening. You said that those who are not discriminated have a
>very hard time understanding those who are discriminated and what they
>feel is discriminating (kindof, I cant quote it all here). But I think
>you are yourself as blind as those of us who do not prefer AD/BC over
>CE/BCE. I can bet alot on that millions of Americans get really
>irritated every time the word America is used in reference to USA.

I appreciate your generous comment.  I also agree with you -- I have to,
since it is clear that I really do not understand why so many people are so
irritated by BCE/CE.  But I have to say this: although I have read some
very reasonable objections to my proposal, I don't think anyone has been
able to explain to me why BCE and CE so upsets them.

As for "American," well, that is a funny thing.  I work in Latin America
and when in the US with Latin Americans and whenever they use the word
"Americano" referring to us gringos, I reply "Todos somos Americanos" (all
of us are Americans); they usually smile and shrug their shoulders.  I once
had a conversation with an old friend of mine who lives in Ecuador, and he
complained about how we gringos call ourselves "Americans."  I said to him,
"Well, there is nothing stopping Ecuadorians from calling themselves
"Americanos, why don't they" and he had no answer.  Here is what I think:
the real problem is not that the USA has appropriated for itself as a name
"America."  The problem is the USA economically and politically dominates
Latin America in many ways.  And that is what really pisses off my L.
American friends.  Contention over the use of the word "American"
symbolically represents other, more concrete (and higher stakes) issues --
which is why it is a matter of contention, but one that at least in the
eyes of my friends, is not really worth fighting about; they recognize that
the real fight is elsewhere, and when they can, they really do fight it.

But to the issue at hand: anyone in N, C, or S. America has a legitimate
claim to call themselves Americans.  No one can stop them.  Perhaps the
word "American" has become so identified with the USA that many Latinos
don't want to call themselves "Americans."  I certainly know tons of
Argentines and Brazilians who think "Argentine" and "Brazilian" are better
than "American."

But to be honest with you, I still don't understand why people see BCE and
CE as "American" or any kind of POV.  And I still don't understand how
people can claim BC and AD are not POV, although I recognize that many feel
this way.

>Therefore, the offense argument doesn't hold. There are hundreds of
>words, names and expressions in the English language that are a
>hundred times more loaded than AD/BC.

In my argument, "offense" is not a reason for calling AD/BC POV.  In my
argument, I bring up offense only as an example of one way that one group
signals to a second that the second group has an unconscious bias.  It is
true that I believe that once you know BC and AD offend me (in secular
contexts), I think it is only courteous that you avoid using them (unless
of course you are a Christian and talking about your own holidays, seminal
events, etc., then I wouldn't at all be offended).  But I do not claim
offense=POV.  My argument that AD and BC are POV is simply that AD means
"in the year of our Lord" and BC means "before Christ" and that Christians
are free to believe that Jesus is Lord and Christ which is why they
represent a Christian POV -- and are thus, necessarily, not NPOV (in
non-religious/Christian POV contexts).

> > people were asked to stop doing these things so as not to offend, would
> > involve no real sacrifice, no loss of integrity or honor.  I will never
> > understand why in such cases such people not only refuse to make the small
> > change asked for, they actually seem to relish and take pride in offending
> > people.
>
>In a few years it is not implausible that CE/BCE will have "won." But
>currently AD/BC is much more popular according to Google.

You may be right.  I also wonder if it was a mistake for me to invite votes
immediately when I wrote my proposal.  Honestly, I thought that like so
many proposals it would languish for a long time as people decided how
interested they were in it, and what they thought, and that it would take
quite a while to see what the majority thought, or even if anyone
cared.  Before I wrote my proposal I went to the "Wikipedia: How to create
a policy" and then to "Wikipedia Policy Thinktank" and discovered lots of
proposals which, I presumed, were made a while ago and are still in
proposal limbo.  I thought that would happen to my proposal too.

In any event, we are building an encyclopedia, and all committed to NPOV,
and if as you suggest the world may slowly change, surely a small bit of
that slow change will happen here.

As to Pcb21, I didn't start a debate in which only one side had an
opportunity to present its case.  I made a proposal, and on the proposal
page I provided space for general discussion as well as debate between
opposing and supporting sides.  To say that I notified other wikipedians
that I was proposing a modification of one of our most important policies
is "spamming" is absurd, and certainly not relevant to people actually
discussing the issues.  Finally, Nygaard didn't "merge" my proposal with
anything.  He distorted my proposal.  Disagree with my proposal.  Express
your criticisms of my proposal in the discussion section.  Vote against my
proposal.  But do not try to turn my proposal into something it isn't.  If
you don't like it, vote no and move on.  If you have a better idea, come up
with your own proposal.  These are two legitimate and available
options.  Changing the title of my proposal because you do not agree with
my proposal is not.

Steve

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


body:
>From: "Roger Wesson" <wikipedia at world-traveller.org>
>Not sure that changing distances on road signs would be that difficult or
>at all dangerous, it's just that being on an island we have no compelling
>reason to conform to the continental standard - there would be no benefit
>to be gained from a switch.

Hmm. Well, using the Canada example again, it shares a continent with a huge
neighbour that uses miles, yet it apparently found a compelling reason to
switch anyway.

Jay.


body:
>You know, I've always found this AD vs. CE debate extremely stupid. Like,
>as if renaming "AD" to "CE" would immediately, suddenly and magically
>remove all connections with any religion! Guys, it's still the number of
>years after Jesus' birth, whether you like it or not.

Actually, it's not, which makes the usage even more problematic.

Jay.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search activation

body:
A big thank you in name of all Commons-users!

Andre Engels

On 5/15/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> I've activated the Lucene search now on the following wikis:
>
> enwiki enwiktionary enwikiquote enwikibooks enwikinews
> dewiki dewiktionary dewikiquote dewikibooks dewikinews dewikiversity
> eowiki eowiktionary eowikiquote eowikibooks
> ruwiki ruwiktionary ruwikibooks ruwikiquote
> sourceswiki metawiki sep11wiki foundationwiki commonswiki specieswiki
> grantswiki
>
> Will add the rest shortly, though probably with non-ideal configurations.
>
> I've added Image: and Category: namespaces to the default search set on
> Commons.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Mon, May 16, 2005 at 01:43:36PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> > highway requirement. Many signs DID get changed, enough for them to become a
> > reasonably familiar sight. Cars produced during that time period had both
> > miles per hours and kilometers per hour marked on their speedometers,
> > although odometers continued to read in miles.
>
> I don't know how things are in other nations, but in the United States the
> standards to get a drivers license are so low that really stupid people are
> allowed to drive. For example, a 70% score on written driving tests is enough
> to pass in most states, meaning you can screw up 30% of the time!  I imagine
> many of these idiots got confused by the dual system, thus the current
> pandering to the lowest common denominator.
>
> Traffic would be much better if 95% scores were mandated to get a license. But
> since most U.S. cities are built in a way that almost requires the use of an
> auto, I don't think that will ever happen.

I'd be all for a 95% requirement for the tests if the tests themselves
weren't wrong 30% of the time.  The major problem is that these tests
are created by committees of people working in the public sector, and as
such they end up being politicized and biased in unproductive ways.
Certain answers are expected that are counterintuitive and downright
incorrect in real-world practice because they don't fit with local
governmental agendas, much the same way that most speed limits are set
to arbitrary levels notably lower than the sweet spot for convenience
and safety so that ticket revenue for moving violations can be
maximized by subtly encouraging violation of speed limit laws.

As long as test questions expect incorrect responses for a high score, I
can't really support higher score requirements for passing.

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