subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
On 6/27/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com>
> >
> >On 6/27/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Unsurprisingly, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fertile ground for this
> >kind of
> > > issue.  As an unsurprising example, [[Zionism]] has been added to (and
> > > removed from [[Category:Racism]] more than once.    Recently
> >[[User:Yuber]]
> > > went on a campaign of removing all sorts of areas controlled by Israel
> >from
> > > [[Category:Geography of Israel]], typically adding them to
> > > [[Category:Geography of Syria]], apparently on the grounds that  these
> > > kinds of Categories were not intended as an aid to the reader in finding
> > > articles, nor should they reflect physical reality, but rather they
> >should be
> > > seen and used as a political statements about legitimate ownership of
> > > territories.  Both sides quoted the same policy to each other ("Unless
> >it
> > > is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a
> >category, it
> > > should not be put into a category"), indicating that the specific policy
> >was
> > > actually of little help in making these kinds of decisions.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> >
> >Indeed policy, unless intricately written to cover all situations,
> >will occasionally fail to be of much use in individual circumstances.
> >In problem instances, it is best to look at the individual case, and
> >have the majority of editors insist on common sense and a resolution
> >that comes closest to NPOV while being accepted by most.
>
> Well, that's one way of looking at it; however, as I understand Jack Lynch's
> and Fred Bauder's view, this would more likely be seen as organized attempts
> by POV pushers to control article content. :-)
>
> Jay.
>
>

Organised attempts by POV pushers are usually reasonably transparent.
The only problem of course, is where the majority of Wikipedians
support a POV and put that ahead of NPOV editing (easy to do when
you're in the majority and can get your way).

But this is a problem when doing up policy in any case (particularly
if attempting to nail down individual cases in general
policy/guidelines - e.g. MoS).

An interesting question is what would have happened if a majority
vote/voted for using BCE/CE near-universally (except for Chrisitan
topics). Does that mean it would have been NPOV?

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: DANIEL RAY

body:
 ?

THANKS. CATCHING. YET TO COME UP TO YOUR MARK.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/2005 MON

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 Henry Kissinger wrote :
>Your capacity for thought experimetation is impressive. I like my
>friendships to be based on admiration, respect, and trust. All BS aside,
>you can walk away from me with no fear. You could actually call upon me
>for anything you think you may need. I am not as smart as the average
>bear, and would never forget that I am at the bottom of the pack (dogs).
>Anger, frustration, or jealousy could never rock me from that
>understanding.
>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: "Fred Bauder"
>   To: "English Wikipedia"
>   Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Conflict arising - what to do?
>   Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 07:00:54 -0600
>
>   >
>   > That's true, but in at least one area, articles which concern the
>   > Israeli-Palestine conflict, it is not unlikely that one editor may
>   > be repeatedly reverted by a group of POV editors. Perhaps other
>   > instances exist.
>   >
>   > Fred
>   >
>   >
>   > On Jun 25, 2005, at 10:17 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>   >
>   > >> From: Jack Lynch
>   > >>
>   > >> I think we need better answers. I am familar w cases like this,
>   and
>   > >> where they end up. How about its a large POV lobby instead of a
>   single
>   > >> user, and they are trying to POV an ancient and contentious
>   topic,
>   > >> chasing off any and all NPOV users who come along?
>   > >>
>   > >> Jack (Sam Spade)
>   > >>
>   > >
>   > > Um, isn't that what every single POV editor claims when a large
>   > > number of other editors reject his POV edits?
>   > >
>   > > Jay.
>   > >
>   > >
>   > > _______________________________________________
>   > > WikiEN-l mailing list
>   > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>   > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>   > >
>   >
>   > _______________________________________________
>   > WikiEN-l mailing list
>   > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>   > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>--
>___________________________________________________________
>Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
>http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
>
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>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rather surprising outburst on VfD this morning

body:
James Gibbon wrote:
> When the software upgrade is complete and the
> page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> possible.

It sounds like you'll make a great Wikipedians.

Especially from anonymous ip numbers, well, you never know what they are
going to say.  The Internet is a big place and there are rather a large
number of wingnuts out there.

--Jimbo


body:
James Gibbon wrote:
> When the software upgrade is complete and the
> page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> possible.

It sounds like you'll make a great Wikipedian.

Especially from anonymous ip numbers, well, you never know what they are
going to say.  The Internet is a big place and there are rather a large
number of wingnuts out there.

--Jimbo


body:
 ?
THANKS. OBVIOUS. BALANCE IS THE ESSENCE.
YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

27/06/2005 MONDAY

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 Henry Kissinger wrote :
>Why most certainly we always expect balanced journalism. The world needs
>and expects lady killer lounge lizards, and even gay JJs ;).
>
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: "JAY JG"
>   To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
>   Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Conflict arising - what to do?
>   Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 12:38:48 -0400
>
>   >
>   > In articles which concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, don't
>   > most edits consist of POV editors from both sides repeatedly
>   > reverting each other? ;-)
>   >
>   > Jay.
>   >
>   > > From: Fred Bauder
>   > >
>   > > That's true, but in at least one area, articles which concern
>   > > the Israeli-Palestine conflict, it is not unlikely that one
>   > > editor may be repeatedly reverted by a group of POV editors.
>   > > Perhaps other instances exist.
>   > >
>   > > Fred
>   > >
>   > >
>   > > On Jun 25, 2005, at 10:17 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>   > >
>   > >>> From: Jack Lynch
>   > >>>
>   > >>> I think we need better answers. I am familar w cases like this,
>   and
>   > >>> where they end up. How about its a large POV lobby instead of a
>   single
>   > >>> user, and they are trying to POV an ancient and contentious
>   topic,
>   > >>> chasing off any and all NPOV users who come along?
>   > >>>
>   > >>> Jack (Sam Spade)
>   > >>>
>   > >>
>   > >> Um, isn't that what every single POV editor claims when a large
>   > >> number of other editors reject his POV edits?
>   > >>
>   > >> Jay.
>   > >>
>   > >>
>   > >> _______________________________________________
>   > >> WikiEN-l mailing list
>   > >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>   > >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>   > >>
>   > >
>   > > _______________________________________________
>   > > WikiEN-l mailing list
>   > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>   > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>   >
>   >
>   > _______________________________________________
>   > WikiEN-l mailing list
>   > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>   > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>--
>___________________________________________________________
>Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
>http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
>
>_______________________________________________
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>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for creation of Dutch-Low Saxon (nds-nl)

body:
> >So, are you saying that a man from Lars cannot understand a man from
> >Gramsbergen??
> >
> No, I am not! Please read my messages more closely. I stated that those
> dialects are not to be mutually understood /when written down/. The
> spellings used are incompatible.

Nonono, this was in response to Walter.

> How easy, for someone who has not studied it!

To find out about such a matter as orthographic variants does not
require the study of a language for its own sake, but rather an
analysis of interlinear texts in the same dialect using two different
orthographies. This does not require even the most basic knowledge of
the language.

> Do you notice the length of
> the list yourself?

Yes. But:

>> Spelling can easily be converted, see
>> http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=Nds-test&variant=ks-de
>> (obviously there are some shortcomings, but these can be fixed with a
>> little programming).

You haven't commented on the test yet.

> And though near-identical dialects in different spellings
> might be mutually understood, it becomes a different thing when you talk
> about divergent dialects. I say that the wide differences between several
> Low Saxon variants *in combination with*  the differences in spelling make
> the possibility of a Wikipedia a valuable one.

Unfortunately it is not quite so clear-cut. As you can see by
searching the internet for http://www.google.com/search?q=keunigriek ,
most people use a sort of mixture of the two spellings -- many of the
pages that appear are from people on the German side of the border.
(vs pure German "K?nigriek" or "K?nigrik")

"Dialect differences compounded with different spellings" doesn't make
much sense since it's a dialect continuum. Spelling and dialect
continuum are separate issues that should be treated separately.
Dialect continuum is obviously a much more difficult issue to solve.

> O yeah? Where exactly does Waerth tell him they don't? The only thing he
> says is that he is in favour of two separate wikipedias!

He states very clearly: "No it is not read what the others said. A
personn from one side of the area it is spoken in cannot understand
someone from the other side."

I responded to your private e-mail offlist, but there is a section I
would like to respond to publicly.

> There we go again.... Will you quit already? You just persist in your own opinion
> constantly (...)

So you are against free thinking? Instead of persisting in my opinion,
I should just adopt yours? The whole purpose of differing opinions is
for people to discuss them and see if they can't come up with
something that will satisfy all parties and end up making the world a
better place.

Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why do we have them??

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
> biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.

Absolutely.  We started out using the ISO codes because they are
external to us (which is usually a good thing because it gives us one
less thing to argue about so we can just get our work done) and because
I assumed they were more or less sensible.

As it turns out, though, the ISO codes are highly politicized and often
just plain wrong.  This means that we have inconsistencies that are hard
to correct after the fact, because it involves community issues, etc.

I hope that over time, we will get better and better at this and the
existing nonsense will be ironed out over time.  I view this as a
longterm project that is going to take a few years.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

body:
 ?
THANKS. NOT MUCH CONCERNED.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
27/06/2005 MONDAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Phil Boswell wrote :
>"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote:
> > Has anyone got a clue for how long the database will be locked for this
> > update?
>
>
>Is this causing the strange doubling effect wherein the last edit is
>appearing twice at the top of each history page, and single-diffs are
>failing?
>
>...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
>larger?
>
>I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
>startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
>--
>Phil
>[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Test wikipedia policy

body:
Hi all, I have a few questions about our policy towards test Wikipedias.

1) Can there be a test Wikipedia without a specific request for the
creation of a Wikipedia in that language? Examples:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/enm/ (Middle English),
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/Skandinavisk/Hovudside (Unified
Scandinavian), http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/mis-ryu/
(South-Central Okinawan).

2) Should it become a requirement to have a test Wikipedia before a
new Wikipedia can be created??

3) Once a Wikipedia is actually created, is there a policy to delete
the test Wikipedia? For example with fiu-vro, I transferred all the
articles and gave credit on talkpages; for sco: I transferred all
articles. Clearly, having all these pages on meta now is just taking
up space.

Mark

--
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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

body:
 ?
THANKS. MAY NOW BE NOT MUCH CONCERNED.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Brion Vibber wrote :
>>"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote:
>>
>>>Has anyone got a clue for how long the database will be locked for this update?
>
>Some hours, don't know how long exactly. Probably less than a full day, but no guarantee. :)
>
>All our other wikis remain open for editing in the meantime, so feel free to slake your wiki-thirst in Commons, Wiktionary, Wikinews, etc or Wikipedia in another language while en.wikipedia.org is locked.
>
>Phil Boswell wrote:
>>Is this causing the strange doubling effect wherein the last edit is appearing twice at the top of each history page, and single-diffs are failing?
>
>Yes. The old database schema stored the current revision and older revisions in separate databases. The new schema rearranges things so revision data is stored in one place more consistently.
>
>The conversion works by first copying the current data in to where we had the old revisions, then breaking that off into the new text-storage, revision-metadata, and page tables.
>
>So in the meantime if you look at history, you will see two copies of the current revision -- one in each table.
>
>>...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little larger?
>>
>>I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
>
>I'll poke at it a bit...
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why do we have them??

body:
Wouter Steenbeek wrote:
> Just for the same reason that we have seperate Serbian, Croatic and
> Bosniak Wikipedias. They consider their languages as being separate,

I recently visited Serbia and Croatia, and opinions there are divided as
to whether the languages are separate.  The significant majority opinion
seems to me to be that they are not separate languages, but I did meet a
few people who argued that they are.

However, we had a Wikipedia meetup at Millosh's house, with Serbian
Wikipedians and the Croatians who drove me there, and they all
immediately and quite easily talked to each other without any difficulty
at all.  Of course I did not understand a word, but it did not seem to
me any different from American and British English.

With Serbian/Croatian/Bosnia(n|k) there are significant other issues as
well, having to do with the fact that they just concluded a rather awful
war not so long ago.  This complicates matters in a number of ways.

First, it increases the chance of major NPOV problems if people of
different views choose to work in different places rather than meeting
in the same place to try to achieve consensus.  Second, it decreases the
chance of major useless flamewars if people who are still very angry
becasue of the deaths of loved ones can't find a way to agree.

There are additional complications, though, having to do with spelling
and script.  I'm not an expert, but essentially there are 4 different
ways to write and... well, anyway, it is complicated.

The one thing I can say about this is that Wikipedians there are like
Wikipedians everywhere -- people of good will who seem to really care
about getting it right, and thoughtfully feeling their way forward in a
manner that attempts to be cognizant of significant opinions and
difficulties.  I left feeling much better about the whole mess than I
thought I would.  There are good people there, and they'll figure it out.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

body:
 ?

THANKS. NOW NOT SO MUCH TO BE CONCERNED.

YOURS
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Phil Boswell wrote :
>"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
>message news:d9o7kg$voh$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> > Phil Boswell wrote:
>[query and excellent explanation snipped]
>
> >> ...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
> >> larger?
> >> I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
> >> startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
> > I'll poke at it a bit...
>
>Aaahh, that's better :-)
>
>BTW you're obviously posting from somewhere unusual, because OE was able to
>read your message directly without having to open it as an attachment !?!?!
>--
>Phil
>[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
On 6/27/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If we
> > must choose between a work with free licensing and one made by a
> > wikipedian we should always replace the free work with the wikipedians
>
> Why would the work by Wikipedians not also be a free work? People
> should not be uploading non-free images, so this choice should not
> have to be made.

My language didn't make my intent clear: I meant the choice between
work by a wikipedian (obviously free) and work found on the internet
that we believed to be free but was not made by a wikipedian.
Because work made by wikipedians is always free without any room for
doubt and because it's usually better matched for our needs, we should
prefer it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

body:
 ?

THANKS. ALREADY REPLIED. PLEASE AVOID REPETITION.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Brion Vibber wrote :
>Phil Boswell wrote:
>>>>...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
>>>>larger?
>>>>I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
>>>>startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
>>>
>>>I'll poke at it a bit...
>>
>>Aaahh, that's better :-)
>>
>>BTW you're obviously posting from somewhere unusual, because OE was able to
>>read your message directly without having to open it as an attachment !?!?!
>
>I'm reading this list through a newsreader on the gmane link, and
>postings didn't default to PGP-signed.
>
>See what happens to this one though. ;)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why do we have them??

body:
On 6/27/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> As it turns out, though, the ISO codes are highly politicized and often
> just plain wrong.  This means that we have inconsistencies that are hard
> to correct after the fact, because it involves community issues, etc.
>
> I hope that over time, we will get better and better at this and the
> existing nonsense will be ironed out over time.  I view this as a
> longterm project that is going to take a few years.

One argument about politicization of ISO codes:

Serbo-Croatian standard language had two three letters code with
describing differences between alphabets: SCR for SC written in Latin
(Roman) alphabet and SCC for SC written in Cyrillic alphabet. Now, SCR
is assumed as "Croatian before Croatian" and SCC as "Serbian before
Serbian". In the fact, more then 50% (maybe 60%, maybe 70%) of Serbian
books during 70s and 80s are written in Latin alphabet and there were
one important cultural movement between world wars in Croatia which
assumed writing in Cyrillic. (As well as during SFRY some Croatians,
very rare, are writing in Cyrillic.)

I am not sure what is the sense of such decision of ISO.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright and Britannica Article List

body:
 ?
THANKS. TRUE. LAW TOO HAS ETHICS TO FOLLOW. LAW FOR MAN BY MAN.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Ray Saintonge wrote :
>DF wrote:
>
>>Either we need to accept that such a list, though
>>potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
>>to keep around.
>>OR
>>
>>We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
>>be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
>>which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
>>ultimately the one who is liable.
>>
>It is interesting to follow some of the links in our Feist v. Rural article. I was just reading through the decision in Assessment Technologies v. Wiredata (ooops I almost typed Wikidata. :-) ) http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/JX03YB6O.pdf where it was ruled that the copyright owner could not use copyright law to prevent access to non-copyright information. Cited in that case also was the case of Sega Enterprises Ltd. v. Accolade, Inc., 977 F.2d 1510, 1520-28 (9th Cir. 1992). There the court ruled that it was fair use for Accolade to make a copy of and reverse engineer Sega's console software in order to make its own games playable on Sega's system. The court said, "For technical reasons, Accolade had to make a copy of the source code in order to be able to obtain this information. It didn?t want to sell the source code, produce a game-console operating system, or make any other use of the copyrighted code except to be able to sell a noninfringing product, namely a computer game. The court held that this ?intermediate copying? of the operating system was a fair use, since the only effect of enjoining it would be to give Sega control over noninfringing products, namely Accolade?s games."
>
>It is also of interest that in a later ruling on costs Wiredata was awarded $91,765.28 in legal fees. To a large extent this was because there was an attempt to extent rights beyond what was avaiable in copyrights, and a recognition that the defendant in such cases is often at a disadvantage. "When the prevailing party is the defendant, who by definition receives not a small award but no award, the presumption in favor of awarding fees is very strong. See Diamond Star Building Corp. v. Freed, 30 F.3d 503, 506 (4th Cir. 1994). For without the prospect of such an award, the party might be forced into a nuisance settlement or deterred altogether from enforcing his rights.
>
>AFAIK The discussion so far on this point has been an internal one, with no intervention by anyone representing EB. I don't believe that we are infringing their copyrights, but even if we were there are steps which they must take if they wish to enforce that right. The first such step would be to issue a take-down order. That would give us an opportunity to comply without further problems. In a clear case of copyright violation we would indeed be required to take things down when we become aware of the problem even without such a notice. Where there is serious doubt about the copyrightability of the material we do better by giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt.
>
>Ec
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
 ?

THANKS. INFORMATIVE. EDUCATIVE. ALL CAN'T BE SAME. EVERYTHING CAN'T HAPPEN AS WE THINK OR PLAN. SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN.  AS IT HAPPENS, SO IS THE RESULT. AS YOU SOW, SO YOU REAP. IT'S LIVING.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

27/06/05 MONDAY
+

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 James Gibbon wrote :
>Hello,
>
>This is my first mail to the list; I've been a contributor to
>Wikipedia for only five days. However, I've taken part in a wide
>range of discussion fora on the Internet over the last 9 years or
>so.
>
>But I was amazed to read a long-winded and detailed reply to a
>comment I'd made in a vote for deletion page (for the
>"Division_Street" article). In it, its author, who doesn't appear to
>be a member but uses the IP address 65.182.172.95, alleges that I am
>engaged in "wilful incomprehension" and "dirty net politics, a petty
>act of revenge that has come in response to the fact that I made a
>few of your friends look foolish elsewhere on this site, and did so
>without being apologetic about it". He goes on to say: "This is a
>power play on your faction's part, a brave little shoveback to
>reclaim a little online turf and make yourselves look like big men".
>He ends by commenting "rest assured, buddy, I will never let this
>one go", and signs himself "the noneditor".
>
>The comment which to which this was a response was a fairly
>innocuous and genuinely sincere remark on my part, to the effect
>that I was unable to establish the notability of the subject of his
>article. It's perfectly true that the author represents in the piece
>that it is notable, but I'm afraid I have already seen more than one
>article which makes this claim falsely; I just don't have the
>cultural background to judge this. My comment was not even a vote
>for deletion, only a note to say that the article should be
>rewritten if it was indeed notable, otherwise it should be deleted.
>
>In fact, contrary to the author's claim, I have no idea who he is
>and have no knowlege whatever of anything he might have been
>involved in at Wikipedia or anywhere else. I cannot claim to have
>established any friends in the brief time I've taken part, and I
>certainly do not belong to a "faction". I have no knowledge of any
>event which might prompt an "act of revenge". I find the idea of
>turf wars between rival gangs at an online encyclopaedia pretty
>unedifying, and would not wish to take part in one.
>
>Anyway the VfD page is obviously still there for anyone who's
>interested to see it. When the software upgrade is complete and the
>page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
>possible.
>
>A couple of questions, then: can anyone tell me who this person is?
>Does he have a history of this sort of thing? It does smell more
>than faintly of paranoia, I have to say. Is this sort of behaviour
>common in general at Wikipedia?
>
>It's been a bit of an eye-opener!
>
>Thanks and regards from the middle of England,
>James
>
>--
>Dig It : a forum for European Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>[[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
>regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
>straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
>either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
>bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
>generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
>these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
>that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
>"pseudoscience".
>
>

Well, I happen to be a scientist by training and profession, and not a
Creationist or Eugenicist, but I really dislike
[[Category:Pseudoscience]].  This *is* indeed making a claim from
Wikipedia that said articles describe pseudoscience, which is not
particularly neutral.  If, as you describe, we want to describe
something as "labelled pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific
community", it should be given a category that reflects that more
neutrally, such as [[Category:Non-mainstream scientific theories]].
Sort of how we have [[Category:Alternative medicine]] rather than
[[Category:Quack medicine]].

-Mark


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward O'Connor

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Webservices API

body:
Hi everybody,

Jimmy wrote:

> I have been thinking a little bit as well about a model with full
> blown keys (like the Google API) -- the point could be that for free
> software, we can give out free keys and support those users at our own
> expense. But for proprietary software, we can charge money for the
> keys.

Brion Vibber wrote:

> For server-side systems (mirrors and other sites including our bits)
> something like the Google API's keys would work ok. A relatively small
> number of server admins will be setting things up, and the keys will
> be 'secret', kept on that server.
>
> Things are a bit different with the client-side software integration
> envisioned by the KDE folks; like a web browser these apps will be
> distributed to thousands of users and should "just work". A per-user
> key setup would probably not be acceptable, while a non-secret key
> distributed with the app (like a user-agent string) can be easily
> ripped and faked by someone less scrupulous.
>
> We probably want client-side apps to be able to act like a browser
> (easy, no manual setup), while trying to avoid server abuse by someone
> who decides to snarf a million pages a day; a per-IP rate limit on the
> 'free software key' is probably sufficient to automatically curb
> server-side abuse.

At work we've recently been over a lot of these same issues while
developing our API[0]. We've gone with a scheme which utilizes
per-application tokens. For tasks which require a user account, there
are per-user-per-app tokens. You can read more about it here[1]. Flickr
recently drafted their new auth API (here[2]) which (I think) has a
similar scheme.

Anyway, I thought looking at existing APIs which try to handle some of
the same use cases as a hypothetical Wikipedia API might be helpful.

Ted

0. http://api.evdb.com/
1. http://api.evdb.com/docs/auth/
2. http://flickr.com/services/api/auth.spec.html

--
Edward O'Connor
ted at evdb.com

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
On 6/27/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> As long as copyright warriors are willing to apply common sense the
> other way -- it is patently obvious that
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ssn22vBear1.jpg and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ssn22vBear2.jpg were taken by a Naval
> officer during the performance of his duty, and I would have little
> patience if someone were to argue that they ''might'' not be.

Notice I said that if there is doubt we should contact.
It's not always obvious, just sometimes.  For government sourced
images we should always be able to make a contact... Perhaps for your
example we couldn't get that specific image confirmed but I'd bet if
we asked we could get some other useful ones.

> I find the standard "any possible doubt" to be much too paranoid.  The
> standard for convicting someone of premeditated murder is lower than
> that.  If we held ourselves to that standard, we would be an image-free
> Web site -- ''no'' image's provenance is ''utterly impossible'' for
> someone to doubt.

It's a reasonable target, if we can choose between an image with
substantial doubt and one with little doubt (by a wikipedian) we
should choose the wikipedian image.  If there is doubt we should also
make an attempt to contact  the source.

> > The wikimedia projects already have a sizable and growing base of
> > photographers, illustrators, and musicians. It is completely
> > reasonable to believe that we can meet our own media needs, excluding
> > specific historical works that we wish to comment on.
>
> Are you actually saying that it is "completely reasonable" for a
> Wikipedian to photograph the wreck of USS ''Thresher''?  For a
> Wikipedian to take a clear picture of a B-2 Spirit in flight?  For a
> Wikipedian to take snapshots of the construction of the International
> Space Station?  There are several myriad subjects beyond "specific
> historical works that we wish to comment on" for which the public domain
> is the only source of images.

There are cases, but there are a minority. View images at random, ...
we have a great many number of images that anyone can take. The
majority of the exceptions are ones which are clearly free, fair use,
or could be easily settled with an email.

I did not advocate forbidding external images entirely but rather
making a strong position that images made by wikipedians are preferred
where we have a choice, and setting some better guidelines for
confirming content that isn't cut and dry.


from_name: Guaka

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Fulfulde Wikipedia [was:Request for a
	Wikipedia in Cebuano]

body:
On Sat, 2005-06-25 at 13:39 +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Guaka wrote:
> >
> > I still need the "rounded" Y if you know what
> > I mean?
>
> ? U+01B3 Ƴ
> ? U+01B4 ƴ

Are there also capital letters for the other signs?
http://bm.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning
http://ff.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning

> > And the 'ng', a rounded n
>
> ? U+014A Ŋ
> ? U+014B ŋ

Somehow the ng's look like normal n's on my screen. Maybe there's
something wrong with my font stuff, or with Debian's or XFree's in
general. If it's just wrong for me then I can add it. Maybe _you_
(people on this list) can let me know if it works for you, and what
system you use...

thanks,
Guaka


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
 ?
THANKS. NOT YET LIKELY TO BE CONCERNED. MAY BE LATER.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Jimmy Wales wrote :
>I can offer no particularly helpful opinion on this, other than to say
>that with this kind of thoughtful analysis, we will certainly do our
>best in the end.
>
>This kind of thinking is *really* important to me, it is the *essence*
>of what it means (to me) to be a good wikipedian.
>
>Thanks.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
>Fastfission wrote:
> > [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
> > regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
> > straightforward --
>
>[...]
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
On 6/27/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Well, I happen to be a scientist by training and profession, and not a
> Creationist or Eugenicist, but I really dislike
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]].  This *is* indeed making a claim from
> Wikipedia that said articles describe pseudoscience, which is not
> particularly neutral.  If, as you describe, we want to describe
> something as "labelled pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific
> community", it should be given a category that reflects that more
> neutrally, such as [[Category:Non-mainstream scientific theories]].
> Sort of how we have [[Category:Alternative medicine]] rather than
> [[Category:Quack medicine]].

But a major aspect of Category:Pseudoscience is that they generally
aren't scientific theories at all, but rather that they use scientific
language without the accompanying rigor. They might be right, but they
generally are not science.

I agree that a more neutral sounding name would be nice, but I'm not
sure what would work... I believe the category is useful, so we
shouldn't just do away with it.


body:
 ?
THANKS. I TOO. RIGHT. OBVIOUS.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Jimmy Wales wrote :
>James Gibbon wrote:
> > When the software upgrade is complete and the
> > page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> > possible.
>
>It sounds like you'll make a great Wikipedians.
>
>Especially from anonymous ip numbers, well, you never know what they are
>going to say.  The Internet is a big place and there are rather a large
>number of wingnuts out there.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
 ?

THANKS. ALREADY REPLIED. PLEASE AVOID REPETITIONS ANYWAY TO HELP SAVE TIME, MONEY AND RESOURCES AT BOTH ENDS.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Jimmy Wales wrote :
>James Gibbon wrote:
> > When the software upgrade is complete and the
> > page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> > possible.
>
>It sounds like you'll make a great Wikipedian.
>
>Especially from anonymous ip numbers, well, you never know what they are
>going to say.  The Internet is a big place and there are rather a large
>number of wingnuts out there.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR penalty is a block and not a ban -> problems

body:
Sounds like legalism to me.  Common sense that socks of an editor
blocked for 3RR can be blocked at the very least for any further
reverts (not 3 more, even one more is enough).  Common sense also says
that a 3RR block should not be extended.

Let's not get hung up on pedantic legalistic arguments over whether
3RR is a "block" or  a "ban" or whether or not admins have a "right"
to block or not block.  This is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in
bureacracy.

Kelly

On 6/27/05, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I tried to clarify this on several pages, e.g. on
> [[Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy]], but I got no answer so far.
>
> I'll try to be short:
>
> - For a 3RR violation an admin can *block* a user but cannot ban him
> - The rules for blocking don't mention that the block can be extended
> or known socks of the same user can be blocked if the block is
> violated
>
> Therefore, a user blocked under 3RR can argue that:
> - No admin can extend the block after 24 hours if he doesn't continue
> the revert war
>   (Since this is an option only for bans but not blocks)
> - No admin can block him when he returns through a known sock
>
> I think this wasn't the intention of those, who formulated the rules
> and the penalties for evading the block after a 3RR violation should
> be extended based on WP:BAN.
>
> I've learned that several admins do interpret the policies this way,
> i.e. that they have the right to block the known sock and have the
> right to extend the block.
>
> I think this should be fixed.
>
> Thanks,
> [[User:Nyenyec]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
 ?
THANKS. REPLIED TWICE. KINDLY DO AVOID SENDING SAME EMAILS REPETITIVELY HELP SAVE RESOURCES AT BOTH ENDS FOR YOU APPRECIATE YOU CANNOT COMPEL ONE TO BE IDENTIFIED FOOL AND IF YOU BETTER KNOW, THE RESULT WOULD GO NEGATIVE. PLEASE BE CAREFUL WHILE SENDING EMAILS ALREADY SENT AND REPLIED. I DO HOPE YOU WOULD BE CAUTIOUS AND OBVIOUSLY NEVER MISUNDERSTAND ME FOR WRITING THIS LONG EMAIL.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Jimmy Wales wrote :
>James Gibbon wrote:
> > When the software upgrade is complete and the
> > page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> > possible.
>
>It sounds like you'll make a great Wikipedian.
>
>Especially from anonymous ip numbers, well, you never know what they are
>going to say.  The Internet is a big place and there are rather a large
>number of wingnuts out there.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
 ?

THANKS. NOW NOT CONCERNED.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MONDAY

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Fred Bauder wrote :
>Such behavior is not rare nor is it common. People on the Arbitration  Committee see  more than their share of it and it often results in  the user being banned. Without being familiar with the article and  its supporters ( I don't think you shared the name of the article ) I  can't say if it is any regular editor with an account.
>
>I hope you are not permanently put off by this incident, but learn to  effectively resist the energy it represents.
>
>Fred
>
>On Jun 27, 2005, at 7:18 AM, James Gibbon wrote:
>
>>A couple of questions, then: can anyone tell me who this person is?
>>Does he have a history of this sort of thing? It does smell more
>>than faintly of paranoia, I have to say. Is this sort of behaviour
>>common in general at Wikipedia?
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

body:
Why do you find it hard to not disable the caps lock button? Also, judging
by the details of the e-mail message, why do you feel it necessary to use a
ghost mail client to mail the list?
----- Original Message -----
From: "DANIEL RAY" <danielray at rediffmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Cc: <daniel_ray_181158 at yahoo.com>
Sent: Monday, June 27, 2005 4:57 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Switch to MediaWiki 1.5

THANKS. NOT MUCH CONCERNED.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
27/06/2005 MONDAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

On Mon, 27 Jun 2005 Phil Boswell wrote :
>"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote:
> > Has anyone got a clue for how long the database will be locked for this
> > update?
>
>
>Is this causing the strange doubling effect wherein the last edit is
>appearing twice at the top of each history page, and single-diffs are
>failing?
>
>...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
>larger?
>
>I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
>startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
>--
>Phil
>[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copyright and license

body:
Hi there...

Does anybody know, can I use images for my wiki site which is
contained in the en_image_table.sql dump from
http://download.wikimedia.org, or it may be illegal outside Wikipedia?
Thanks
        Sergey


body:
Sure, it sucks.

Note that the second text should probably suck more, since it's
already in Dutch orthography (if you select the other option at the
top of the page, it'll convert it to German).

While a lot of people behind a project does inevitably make it more
viable, I think that it's still best to try to avoid a division of
labour whenever possible.

Mark

On 27/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >To find out about such a matter as orthographic variants does not
> >require the study of a language for its own sake, but rather an
> >analysis of interlinear texts in the same dialect using two different
> >orthographies. This does not require even the most basic knowledge of
> >the language.
> >
> > > Do you notice the length of
> > > the list yourself?
> >
> >Yes. But:
> >
> > >> Spelling can easily be converted, see
> > >>
> >http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=Nds-test&variant=ks-de
> > >> (obviously there are some shortcomings, but these can be fixed with a
> > >> little programming).
> >
> >You haven't commented on the test yet.
> >
> Sorry, but this on really sucks. Needs some more programming. I don't doubt
> you could fix this with a better converting program, but that's far from
> ideal: imo, if you get enough people behind this project, we don't need such
> a program at all.
>
> Wouter
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Altijd in contact met de kleinkinderen: 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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Test wikipedia policy

body:
While I am in general against imposing restrictions on the creation of
new Wikipedias, from what I have observed so far those with test
Wikipedias seem to be more successful: Cebuano and Kapampangan are
growing very very slowly (didn't have test Wikipedias), while Scots
and V?ro are growing very quickly. Though, to be fair, those requests
were around longer as well and so had more of a chance to develop a
wider support base.

Re artificial languages. While I agree that artificial languages (save
international auxiliary languages with at least a minimal following,
such as Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido, Interlingue [note the e;
interlingua and interlinguE are different language]) have no place in
Wikipedia, and that they shouldn't get test Wikipedias, the majority
doesnt agree (cf
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Artificial_languages_equal_rights ,
where it was voted 30 to 17 that artificial languages should be
treated equally by Wikimedia). I think that, in this regard, unless
they have been explicitly denied, we really should allow them.

This is indeed a problem, that the board (not in an official opinion,
but in individual comments from Angela, Jimbo, and Anthere) seems to
feel that most artificial languages should not qualify for Wikimedia
projects, while the community seems to disagree. I'm not sure about my
feelings here because while I believe that we should mostly limit
projects to natural languages, I also respect the democratic process.

I also think that in some cases, the Board should make explicit
decisions regarding creation of specific new Wikipedias to establish
precedent. I would feel uncomfortable just removing an old request
altogether, especially if it garnered support (ie Quenya), but at the
same time I feel that it is unlikely to ever come to fruitition so
long as those in power seem opposed to the existance of Wikipedias for
"recreational languages". Thus, I think that in cases like Quenya and
Sindarin, the board should vote about whether we can automatically
deny these requests based on a specific set of criteria.

Also an issue are "play languages", cants, languages that aren't fully
documented, and other requests. I think there needs to be a final
decision to tell us for sure, finally, and forever that there will not
be a Pig Latin Wikipedia, a Nadsat Wikipedia, or a Parseltongue
Wikipedia (Pig Latin is a play language, Nadsat is on top of being a
fictional language a sort of "cant" not suitable for more than the
most basic communication, and all that has been said ever about
Parseltongue is that the language consists, in written form, entirely
of "ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss")

Mark

On 27/06/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/28/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Imo, a test
> > wiki is desirable, but should not be obligatory for the creation of a new
> > Wikipedia. And while a test wiki in a language that has no request yet
> > should not be deleted at once, I think someone willing to create a new
> > Wikipedia should always request it properly, so if he/she makes a test wiki
> > he should put a request on the page immediately. Finally, it seems to me
> > nothing but logical that test wikis are removed when the real wikipedia has
> > been created. The moderators should bother to transfer the articles.
>
> I agree with Wouter. In addition, I think there should be some sort of
> policy on what is allowed a test wiki. It shouldn't be a place for
> wikis to start up in languages that have been completely rejected by
> the community. For example, if there's no consensus on Sindarin, it
> shouldn't be able to get around that decision by setting up on Meta.
> The test wiki area needs to be strictly for wikis which do have a real
> possibility of becoming Wikipedia languages. It also needs to be made
> clear that the test area is only for new languages, not for new wiki
> ideas, or we'll end up with content like
> http://scratchpad.wikicities.com/wiki/Bevelheads:Home and the other
> pages at Scratchpad all over Meta, which I don't think would be useful
> or appropriate.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> 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


body:
On 6/27/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds like legalism to me.  Common sense that socks of an editor
> blocked for 3RR can be blocked at the very least for any further
> reverts (not 3 more, even one more is enough).  Common sense also says
> that a 3RR block should not be extended.
>
> Let's not get hung up on pedantic legalistic arguments over whether
> 3RR is a "block" or  a "ban" or whether or not admins have a "right"
> to block or not block.  This is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in
> bureacracy.

Right!

Our policy pages are around to help make our behavior more uniform and
to reduce the surprise when we do what we normally do... They do not
exist to shackle us. The wikipedia community reserves the right to
decided everything on a case by case basis. Consistency is important
but it is less important than having a correct solution.


from_name: Raphael Wiegand

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Fulfulde Wikipedia [was:Request for a	Wikipedia
	in Cebuano]

body:
Guaka schrieb:

>
>>? U+014A Ŋ
>>? U+014B ŋ
>>
>>
>
>Somehow the ng's look like normal n's on my screen. Maybe there's
>something wrong with my font stuff, or with Debian's or XFree's in
>general. If it's just wrong for me then I can add it. Maybe _you_
>(people on this list) can let me know if it works for you, and what
>system you use...
>
>

For me it works, it looks like the IPA sign for [[en:Velar nasal]] (Win
XP/Mozilla Thunderbird).

Rdb


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for creation of french-german european
	dialect

body:
Mark Wiliamzon a ekri:

>Ze un bon blag Anter, me a-t-il la pertinenz a wikipedia-l? ;)
>
>
Koi, tu n'a pa lu le zuje du mezach?

--Michel Neich


body:
Aaaa, je kompren mentenan.

Je penz ke ze nouveau Wikipedia devre etr kree imediatem parzke, kom
la nouvel lang ofiziel de l'UE, zet lang zera bientot populer.

Zependan, voyan kom ze un variant d ortograf de franzez, il e pozibl
ke nou devio pourzuivr la converzion ortografik??

Mark Wiliamzon

Michel Neich <wikipedia at earthlink.net> a ekri:
> Mark Wiliamzon a ekri:
>
> >Ze un bon blag Anter, me a-t-il la pertinenz a wikipedia-l? ;)
> >
> >
> Koi, tu n'a pa lu le zuje du mezach?
>
> --Michel Neich
> _______________________________________________
> 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


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wider help needed for future software on sr,
	sh (and probably bs)

body:
I saw that some people are interested in SC/S/C/B problematic and I
would ask all of them for some attention.

0. For people who don't know problematics, just to say that Serbian
language is written in two alphabets (Cyrillic and Latin) and it has
two standard variants (Ekavian and Iyekavian). Cyrillic and Latin are
not geographic specific (in Belgrade, Podgorica or Banja Luka you can
find both), but Ekavian and Iyekavian are. There are around 8 millions
of Ekavian speakers and around 2 millions of Iyekavian speakers.
Ekavian is used in Serbia (but officially, both standard variants are
equal in Serbia), Iyekavian is used in Republika Srpska (the part of
Bosnia and Herzegovina; officially, both standard variants are equal)
and Montenegro (only Iyekavian standard is official). It can be said
that all of that can be implemented for sh: and that bs: can implement
only Latin<->Cyrillic conversion.

Zhengzhu did a lot of work until now and we are waiting for the first
implementation of his software on sr:. The software is based on his
previous work on Chinese problem.

1. Zhengzhu would implement the basic part of software for sr: (which
would be used on sh:, too; and maybe on bs:). However, it is just the
beginning of the work and I think that all of that issue would need
some help from the people (both: contributors and developers) who are
interested in linguistics.

2. The first implementation of the software (on sr:) should be
implemented in month or two (as I know). Implementation assumes:

a) Keeping sr: policy that articles should be written in Cyrillic and
using Cyrillic-based syntax (in the sense of the starting alphabet).

b) Writing in Ekavian and/or specific syntax for marking
Ekavian-Iyekavian variants. Also, Ekavian-Iyekavian dictionary would
be used for automatic conversion and admins would have possibility to
update dictionary.

c) General conversion would work in both ways, but we don't want to
mix Latin, Cyrillic, Ekavian and Iyekavian (it is chaotic, silly for
average user, as well as it is not standard).

d) All changes are on the read level. There would not be any change on
the write level in MediaWiki.

3. It can be said that "classic" implementation of Zhengzhu's software
would be the next step and (as I think) it would be finished in the
next couple of months. Implementation assumes:

a) Possibility for writing in different alphabets and variants.

b) Conversion would be implemented on the write and read level.
Database would be written in Ekavian Cyrillic with markup; when
contributor writes something in Iyekavian or Ekavian Latin, it would
be converted into Ekavian Cyrillic.

4. The next step is Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia where more complex (but
more linguistically interesting) rules should be added.

I think that almost all people on the lists know that Serbian,
Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian standards have minimal linguistic
differences. The most of differences are cultural and political. So,
we should be very careful with any decision related to that problem.
Actually, sr:, hr: and bs: should not be forced to become one
Wikipedia never.

But, we can work on sh: with a lot of care.

First of all, at sh: should be implemented extended Zhengzhu's
software; which would take care about different standard variants
(four Serbian, two Bosnian and one Croatian).

Less complex is implementation of S<->C<->B dictionaries. More complex
is starting to work on syntax (and maybe stylistic) differences. That
step assumes that we would need help from educated people in
linguistics.

Also, database should not stay in Ekavian Cyrillics (as exclusive
Serbian standard). We should make some kind of meta-alphabet and
meta-orthography for writing data into database.

And the last problem which I noticed are naming conventions. Would it
be in Latin? Would it be in Serbian variant? Would it be in Iyekavian?
Would it be...? This set of problems assumes that we need to make good
political solutions.

It is not good to make any kind of majorization. We can say that the
most of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins write in Latin
alphabet (around 50% of Serbs and Montenegrins, 90% of Bosniaks and
100% of Croats), but it would be very bad to implement sh: interwiki
links etc. in Latin alphabet because around 1/3 of speakers would
think that is is majorization. It can be said that maybe 60% of all
speakers are Ekavians, but all Croatians, Bosniaks and Montenegrins
are Iyekavians. Language policy in former Yugoslavia failed on
principle "Ekavian and Latin Serbo-Croatian language for all people in
Yugoslavia" (note that Slovenians and Macedonians have different
languages!). Only military partially implemented that principle.

5. When I am talking about linguistics and technical implementation, I
have clear solution. Any cultural/political problem which can be
solved in those ways -- can be easily done.

For example, we can call Serbo-Croatian in the sense of it's
linguistic base: Shtokavian; even two letter ISO code (sh) is correct
:) We have a lot of naming problems if we want to name the language
correct: correct name in English translation is "Serbo-Croatian,
Croato-Serbian, Croatian or Serbian, Serbian or Croatian" (because
Serbian construction was "Serbo-Croatian" and Croatian construction
was "Croatian or Serbian"). But, where are Bosniaks and Montenegrins
in that name?

I wanted to say that we can make little clever tricks for a number of
problems, but there is a big field of other cultural and political
problems. And if people here think that we are enough strong to work
on that problems, I would need a lot of help.

I think that the first step toward that solution is to make a
workgroup of Wikipedians who are interested to work on that problems.
The focus of that group should not be any (N)POV question nor the
question of the sense of existence of sr:, hr: and bs:; but only
making the solution which can allow possibility that people from sr:,
hr: and bs: can work together.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wider help needed for future software on sr,
	sh (and probably bs)


from_name: Jason Edgecombe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
Henning Jungkurth wrote:

>On 6/27/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>...
>
>quite an interesting problem. And I don't think there is "The
>Solution" that you are all hoping for.
>It sounds a little bit like the problem of distributing keys in any
>encryption technology, but actually it is way worse than that.
>Any key, user-agent-string, or other authentication method would have
>to be written down somewhere in the source code of the application
>that is using the API. And since one of the primary aims of the API
>are going to be open source applications, everything "hidden" in the
>source code, is publicly accessible. So whatever is the method for an
>application to say "Hi, it's really me!", it can be copied, thus
>another application can fake it.
>
>It would work with closed source applications, but offering the API
>only to closed source application isn't really an option.
>
>So, there isn't any way to identify the individual applications. But
>there is a way to identify the individuals who are using the
>application which is using the API. Why do you want to block the
>application? Just limit the use of the API to 1000 accesses an hour by
>IP-adress (replace with different numbers as you see more fit). That
>blocks any application, that is misbehaving.
>
>Ok, it would also block any other application that runs on the same
>machine (or over the same proxy), but I think that is acceptable, if
>it's to keep the whole thing running.
>
>There could also be an option to still have user-agent-strings, and
>limit the access by application (a low number) and have an overall
>limit (a resonably larger number). That would keep one application
>from stopping all other access, but also protect against any
>misbehaving application that changes user-agent-strings.
>
>
>hmmm...that sounds to easy...what did I miss? :-)
>
>regards
>Henning Jungkurth
>
>
what about adding user logins into the mix?
Use ip-based or user agent-based limits for anonymous access and
user-based limits for those who use a login. The login should be the
same as their wikipedia web login. That way a logged-in user wouldn't be
restricted by ip limits.

in order words:
If logged in{
 decrease user quota
} else {
decrease ip/agent quota
}
if quota==0 {deny request}

Sincerely,
Jason Edgecombe - a lurker who spoke up :)


from_name: Nyenyec N

body:
You are absolutely right. But let me give you some background to my question.

I'm one of the 2 sysops on HuWiki. We have a growing, but still
fragile community with about 20 very active (100+ edits / month)
editors.

Currently we experienced the first onslaught of quite persistent
trolls and disruptive users ever.
Unfortunately several of the key policies have never been translated
including WP:SOCK or have been translated before but never had to be
put into use like 3RR.

A couple of days ago we had to issue the first blocks for 3RR and the
two sysops were vehemently attacked by the blocked users and their
friends, demanding our resignation.

I know it's business as usual in EnWiki, but to me, this was my first
trial by fire as a sysop (i.e. being called a "nazi").
We're in the process of translating and clarifying all key policies
and that's how I found out this inconsistency in the word of the
policy and common practice in EnWiki.

The reason I wanted to clarify this is because I know I'm going to be
*personally* attacked because of this if its not crystal clear in our
version. :(

BTW, do you know how the initial policies of smaller Wikipedia's get formulated?
Are they translations of EnWiki policies? Or do they have their own
local benevolent dicator like Jimbo, who has the final say in these
matters (at least initially)?

Or do people in smaller Wikipedias vote on each and every policy from day 1?

Thanks,
nyenyec

On 6/27/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/27/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sounds like legalism to me.  Common sense that socks of an editor
> > blocked for 3RR can be blocked at the very least for any further
> > reverts (not 3 more, even one more is enough).  Common sense also says
> > that a 3RR block should not be extended.
> >
> > Let's not get hung up on pedantic legalistic arguments over whether
> > 3RR is a "block" or  a "ban" or whether or not admins have a "right"
> > to block or not block.  This is an encyclopedia, not an experiment in
> > bureacracy.
>
> Right!
>
> Our policy pages are around to help make our behavior more uniform and
> to reduce the surprise when we do what we normally do... They do not
> exist to shackle us. The wikipedia community reserves the right to
> decided everything on a case by case basis. Consistency is important
> but it is less important than having a correct solution.
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] latin numerals at ml

body:
Hi

Bijee left me a message on my talk page about numerals on Malayalam.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AAnthere&diff=15858603&oldid=15772378

What do you think ?

Anthere


list: foundation-l

from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Foundation-l] Elections 2005 - Report

body:
Okay, this is a first part of the short report of the 2005 elections
to the Wikimedia Board of Trustees.

First of all, the most important for us, the translation. The election
notice has been translated to 28 languages, the majority of Wikimedia
users are probably aware of the election.

As for the candidates, it's not so good, but the major Wikimedia
languages are covered. The candidate statements are available in 14
different languages (actually, the translation to Zh and Ca of
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen is still needed), so that shouldn't be a
problem.

Now, we had one minor problem - it turned out we had to change the
requirements to vote from at least 400 edits on every project, to at
least 400 edits on ONE project. We weren't too happy about making a
change, but we all accepted it - it had to be done due to technical
issues.

Tim Starling has put the Election UI up for translation today, we hope
it'll get translated on major Wikipedias if not today, tomorrow or the
day after, when the local sysops will notice that a part of the page
is left in English.

Back to the technical issues - we aren't sure yet how the 1.5
migration will effect the election. Tim said everything will go okay,
but it has to be noted that the migration might not be finished until
midnight UTC time. If that will be the case, the elections will be
delayed for a few hours. It's nothing big to worry about, though.

And, finally, we have 5 candidates. Angela with Anthere are standing
for re-election, Arno Lagrange and Cimon avaro are running in the
elections again, and Francis Schonken is standing for the first time.

On behalf of the Election Officials, I wish everyone good luck!

--
Best regards and sorry for my broken English, I'm tired ;),
Darek "Datrio" Siedlecki


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Elections 2005 - Report


body:
On 6/27/05, Nyenyec N <nyenyec at gmail.com> wrote:
> Currently we experienced the first onslaught of quite persistent
> trolls and disruptive users ever.
> Unfortunately several of the key policies have never been translated
> including WP:SOCK or have been translated before but never had to be
> put into use like 3RR.
>
> A couple of days ago we had to issue the first blocks for 3RR and the
> two sysops were vehemently attacked by the blocked users and their
> friends, demanding our resignation.
>
> I know it's business as usual in EnWiki, but to me, this was my first
> trial by fire as a sysop (i.e. being called a "nazi").
> We're in the process of translating and clarifying all key policies
> and that's how I found out this inconsistency in the word of the
> policy and common practice in EnWiki.
>
> The reason I wanted to clarify this is because I know I'm going to be
> *personally* attacked because of this if its not crystal clear in our
> version. :(
>
> BTW, do you know how the initial policies of smaller Wikipedia's get formulated?
> Are they translations of EnWiki policies? Or do they have their own
> local benevolent dicator like Jimbo, who has the final say in these
> matters (at least initially)?
>
> Or do people in smaller Wikipedias vote on each and every policy from day 1?

There is nothing magical about policy on en.  Other wikis are free to
make their own policy to meet their own specific needs.  The only
thing that isn't negotiable is NPOV.

People will attack admins for protecting the wiki no matter how
precisely formulated policy is.  Don't think that writing highly
detailed, well-defined policy will have any effect on that.

en has LOTS of places where the "formal policy" deviates from actual
practice.  Eventually someone will fix the formal policy to match the
actual practice, at which point actual practice will again diverge
from formal policy.

Kelly


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] en.wikipedia.org open for business

body:
Woo, that was fun!

Good news: We've got our BiggestWiki upgraded, in less time than I
feared (under 24 hours!) and the servers still live. The scripts have
gotten some additional stress-testing from problems that didn't show up
on the dozens of wikis we upgraded yesterday (but of course we're real
glad we fixed the problems revelaed on _them_ first!)

I'll write up some more notes in a bit.

It's all downhill from here, folks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] User groups on Wikimedia projects

body:
On 27/06/05, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey everyone, some of you may know me from IRC or Meta, but this is my
> first post here.
>
> I have one simple (I hope) question - will there be a possibility to
> either create custom user groups on the Wikimedia projects, or give
> single users special permissions? For instance, I can do with a
> rollback function on pl.Wikipedia, and I don't need the other sysop
> functions. Would it be possible for one to do something like that, or
> are we staying with sysops/bureaucrats?

I was also planning on opening a page on enwiki to open the matter for
discussion. Theoretically, of course, it can be done.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for creation of french-german european dialect

body:
     * Vous allez enfin comprendre ce que l'on vous dit !

La Commission europ?enne a finalement tranch? : apr?s la monnaie
unique,l'Union europ?enne va se doter d'une langue unique, a savoir...le
fran?ais. Trois langues ?taient en comp?tition :

     * le fran?ais (parl? par le plus grand nombre de pays de l'Union)
     * l'allemand (parl? par le plus grand nombre d'habitants de l'Union)
     * l'anglais (langue internationale par excellence pour berner celui
qui ne l'a parle pas)

L'anglais a vite ?t? ?limin?, pour deux raisons: l'anglais aurait ?t? le
cheval de Troie ?conomique des Etats-Unis; et les Britanniques ont vu
leur influence limit?e au profit du couple franco-allemand en raison de
leur l?gendaire r?ticence ? s'impliquer dans la construction europ?enne.

Le choix a fait l'objet d'un compromis, les Allemands ayant obtenu que
l'orthographe du fran?ais, particuli?rement d?licate ? ma?triser, soit
r?form?e, dans le cadre d'un plan de cinq ans, afin d'aboutir ?
l'eurofrancais.

     * 1. La premi?re ann?e, tous les accents seront supprim?s et les
sons actuellement distribu?s entre "s", "z", "c", "k" et "q" seront
r?partis entre "z" et "k", ze ki permettra de zupprimer beaukoup de la
konfuzion aktuelle.
     * 2. La deuzi?me annee, on remplazera le "ph" par "f", ze ki aura
pour effet de rakourzir un mot komme "fotograf" de kelke vingt pour zent.
     * 3. La troizi?me annee, des modifikations plus draztikes zeront

pozzibles, notamment ne plus redoubler les lettres ki l'?taient: touz
ont auzi admis le prinzip de la zuprezion des "e" muets, zourz eternel
de konfuzion, en efet, tou kom d'autr letr muet.

     * 4. La katriem ane, les gens zeront devenu rezeptif a de changements

majeurs, tel ke remplazer "g" zoi par "ch", zoi par "j", zoi par "k",
zelon les ka, ze ki zimplifira davantach l'ekritur de touz.

     * 5. Duran la zinkiem ane, le "b" zera remplaze par le "p" et le
"v" zera lui auzi apandone, au profi du "f". Efidamen, on kagnera ainzi
pluzieur touch zu le klafie. Un foi ze plan de zink an achefe,
l'ortokraf zera defenu lochik, et le chen pouron ze komprendr et
komunike. Le ref de l'Unite kulturel de l'Europ zera defenu realite !

Source :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ALa_blague_du_jour#Une_langue_pour_l.27Europe_.28AFP.2C_5.2F12.2F00_10:00.29


body:
Hey everyone, some of you may know me from IRC or Meta, but this is my
first post here.

I have one simple (I hope) question - will there be a possibility to
either create custom user groups on the Wikimedia projects, or give
single users special permissions? For instance, I can do with a
rollback function on pl.Wikipedia, and I don't need the other sysop
functions. Would it be possible for one to do something like that, or
are we staying with sysops/bureaucrats?

--
Best regards,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Language counts

body:
Hoi,
Yes there is a way to find the number of articles in a given language
and the number of languages on a wiktionary, check out the 271 languages
on the nl.wikipedia http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categorie:taal. You
will also find that all words that are categorised have a number. All
articles are categorised. :) The way it is implemented is thanks to a
great suggestion from an en.wiktionarian. It was however not possible to
implement this on the English wiktionary because some deemed it
un-lexicological.

It is done by using templates when a language is indicated. eg {{-en-}}
for an English language word.

Thanks,
GerardM

James R. Johnson wrote:

>Is there any way to add some tag to the wiktionary so that we can get a
>count of the number of different languages we have on a wiktionary, and the
>number of words in each?  For example:
>
>
>
>On EN:
>
>
>
>This wiktionary has:
>
>English:    50,345 words
>
>German:   4,211 words
>
>Japanese: 123 words
>
>Spanish:  422 words
>
>?..
>
>??.
>And so on.
>
>
>
>Is that somehow possible by adding a language tag, say [[lang:en]] and have
>the tags identified per wiktionary, so that en shows up as Ingl?s on
>Spanish, Englisch on German, etc.?
>
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>
>James
>


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
On 6/27/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> If we
> must choose between a work with free licensing and one made by a
> wikipedian we should always replace the free work with the wikipedians

Why would the work by Wikipedians not also be a free work? People
should not be uploading non-free images, so this choice should not
have to be made.

Angela.


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Why do we have them??

body:
Actually, Spanish and Turkish have both undergone reforms. The most
recent with Spanish only involved changing the alphabet and hence the
sorting. Further back, Spanish once used the cedilla - in fact the
English named for the cedilla comes from Spanish even though that
language no longer uses it.

Turkish underwent massive change when Ataturk came to power. Not
merely the spelling but also the script was changed from Arabic to
Latin and a large portion of the vocabulary borrowed from Arabic was
replaced with new words from various sources.

Coincidentally, Turkish now uses a cedilla not only with "c" but also
with "s". (-:

Hippietrail

On 6/27/05, cookfire <cookfire at softhome.net> wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> > There will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly
> > relevant for the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules
> > that will be published on October 15 and will be the official spelling
> > from August 1 2006 onwards.
>
> Again!!!! Dutch spelling seems to be in need of a reform about every 5
> years. Maybe I should switch my native language to something more
> consistent. Hmm, Spanish and Turkish seem to be nice candidates :-)
>
> Polyglot
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Henning Jungkurth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
On 6/27/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
...

quite an interesting problem. And I don't think there is "The
Solution" that you are all hoping for.
It sounds a little bit like the problem of distributing keys in any
encryption technology, but actually it is way worse than that.
Any key, user-agent-string, or other authentication method would have
to be written down somewhere in the source code of the application
that is using the API. And since one of the primary aims of the API
are going to be open source applications, everything "hidden" in the
source code, is publicly accessible. So whatever is the method for an
application to say "Hi, it's really me!", it can be copied, thus
another application can fake it.

It would work with closed source applications, but offering the API
only to closed source application isn't really an option.

So, there isn't any way to identify the individual applications. But
there is a way to identify the individuals who are using the
application which is using the API. Why do you want to block the
application? Just limit the use of the API to 1000 accesses an hour by
IP-adress (replace with different numbers as you see more fit). That
blocks any application, that is misbehaving.

Ok, it would also block any other application that runs on the same
machine (or over the same proxy), but I think that is acceptable, if
it's to keep the whole thing running.

There could also be an option to still have user-agent-strings, and
limit the access by application (a low number) and have an overall
limit (a resonably larger number). That would keep one application
from stopping all other access, but also protect against any
misbehaving application that changes user-agent-strings.

hmmm...that sounds to easy...what did I miss? :-)

regards
Henning Jungkurth


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
Yes, non-mainstream scientific theories are something different than
pseudoscience; i.e. that whole "Variable Speed of Light" theory
whatnot that a few legitimate physicists have advocated and is
considered within the bounds of physical research but is not currently
accepted by most physicists as likely being true. (At least, that's my
understanding of it -- I'm no physicist)

A better label might do it, but at some point you risk things being
unmanageable and bordering on self-parody. [[Category:Is labeled as a
"pseudoscience" by the mainstream scientific communitiy]] is more
accurate and NPOV, but for obvious reasons it seems impractical.

If there was some way to make it so that when somebody entered in
[[Category:Pseudoscience]] it would say that at the bottom of the
page, it would be more practical, but as far as I understand it the
best one can do along these lines is a redirect which doesn't fix the
problem. And I don't think this is necessarily a sensible modification
to request for MediaWiki -- it would be somewhat complicated and the
developers have better things to do.

Hmm. If someone could come up with a better title that might fix it,
but I fear there are no simple titles. And anyway, it still doesn't
solve the question of symmetry: [[Category:Considered a Satanic lie by
certain religious sects]] would still feel too much like pandering to
a certain POV for me to feel comfortable with it on the [[Evolution]]
page.

I'm leaning towards just creating a [[List of pseudosciences]] which
would redirect to [[List of "pseudosciences"]] or some other title
which would indicate explicitly the problematic nature of the term. I
don't think there is an article like this at the moment, with the
exception of  [[List of alternative, speculative, or disputed
theories]] which is not quite the same thing, is not a great title,
and is currently in debate on VfD, I believe. Then I would nominate
[[Category:Pseudoscience]] for CfD. However I'm not sure it would pass
-- there are a lot of people who are (rightfully, in my mind)
suspicious of such nominations as either misunderstanding the
category, or being someone who is just unhappy with falling under it.
Clearly neither is the case in this instance but I'm not sure
everybody else would see it this way.

On the other hand, I'm inclined to think that there SHOULD be somewhat
POV "warnings" on some pages of *some* sort. It would be counter to
the idea of producing a true encyclopedia of *reliable* knowledge if
it was impossible to distinguish things which have good support for
their belief from things that do not. Of course, I fully recognize
that my sense that science is a more reliable form of knowledge than
most others is reflective of a certain POV I carry (and honestly, I'm
a lot more moderate on these lines than a good number of people --
there are some branches of science I definitely take more seriously
than others, and I've probably spent more time than most in looking at
the problems with the scientific "system", at least from a historical
point of view). In an ideal world, a well-written NPOV article though
ought to indicate that sort of thing pretty clearly and pretty early
on.

And in the end, maybe what it comes down to is: Categories should not
serve as "warning" flags. They are meant to just be taxonomic devices.
Obviously taxonomy carries strong implications towards meaning (viz.
George Lakoff's work), but this fact just reinforces the point that
taxonomy needs to be considered strictly under the NPOV policy as
well.

Hmm. Well anyway, I will think about it some more still, there is no
rush on this. I appreciate the comments given so far in response to
this.

(And I'm clearly not trying to imply that this is just MY decision to
make, of course! But I'm aware other people have other things they are
working on, so if I imply that this is something weighing of me
specifically, it's just because I know that this is not likely at the
top of anyone else's agenda)

FF

On 6/27/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/27/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Well, I happen to be a scientist by training and profession, and not a
> > Creationist or Eugenicist, but I really dislike
> > [[Category:Pseudoscience]].  This *is* indeed making a claim from
> > Wikipedia that said articles describe pseudoscience, which is not
> > particularly neutral.  If, as you describe, we want to describe
> > something as "labelled pseudoscience by the mainstream scientific
> > community", it should be given a category that reflects that more
> > neutrally, such as [[Category:Non-mainstream scientific theories]].
> > Sort of how we have [[Category:Alternative medicine]] rather than
> > [[Category:Quack medicine]].
>
> But a major aspect of Category:Pseudoscience is that they generally
> aren't scientific theories at all, but rather that they use scientific
> language without the accompanying rigor. They might be right, but they
> generally are not science.
>
> I agree that a more neutral sounding name would be nice, but I'm not
> sure what would work... I believe the category is useful, so we
> shouldn't just do away with it.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
> It is also of interest that in a later ruling on costs Wiredata was
> awarded $91,765.28 in legal fees. To a large extent this was because
> there was an attempt to extent rights beyond what was avaiable in
> copyrights, and a recognition that the defendant in such cases is often
> at a disadvantage. "When the prevailing party is the defendant, who by
> definition receives not a small award but no award, the presumption in
> favor of awarding fees is very strong. See Diamond Star Building Corp.
> v. Freed, 30 F.3d 503, 506 (4th Cir. 1994). For without the prospect of
> such an award, the party might be forced into a nuisance settlement or
> deterred altogether from enforcing his rights.

I want to just note -- I'm not a lawyer of any kind, but I believe in
a number of circumstances there are times in which such sorts of
counter-suits, getting legal fees back, etc., are NOT guaranteed, and
I'm pretty sure that defenses of "fair use" generally don't get you
that ("fair use" is what you use in your defense -- it is not asserted
as an offensive "right" you can claim is infringed in current US
copyright law). At least, that's what I took away from Lessig's book,
_Free Culture_, which makes the argument in part that nuisance
settlements are a very common way for unreasonable copyright claims to
be threatened and enforced against clear fair use activities (you can
read it online if you are interested in what I am talking about -- see
the section on the kid who got sued by the RIAA just for writing a
better Windows networking client).

Which is just to say -- at the moment, you can't rely on the threat of
counter-suit and so forth to necessarily deter lawsuits, as I
understand it. (Personally I think this is one of the MAJOR problems
with current copyright law -- it makes defending principles punitively
expensive, and has gone too far to emphasize the "monopoly" aspect of
copyright law without remembering the "limited" part, but I'm hardly
the first to make such an observation).

FF


from_name: Alphax

body:
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James Gibbon wrote:
> A couple of questions, then: can anyone tell me who this person is?
> Does he have a history of this sort of thing? It does smell more
> than faintly of paranoia, I have to say. Is this sort of behaviour
> common in general at Wikipedia?
>

We can't tell you who it is, because they have no username. This is why
we encourage people to register - so that they are not confused with
whatever other random idiots have been allocated the same IP.

Beware of smelly creatures lurking under bridges.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
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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subject: [Wikipedia-l] World66

body:
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Angela wrote:
> It used to be more of a real wiki, when it was capitancook.com, but
> that merged with world66 in 2003.
> http://web.archive.org/web/20031002021425/www.capitancook.com/index.php
>

I wonder how they coped before then...

> Just to clarify, this isn't a recent project. It's been around in some
> form since at least 2002 and has 80,000 articles and an Alexa ranking
> of 13000 (<http://alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=medium&y=t&url=world66.com>)
> so is already somewhat successful.
>

Ah... how does Wikitravel compare to this?

> On 6/26/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>
>>... they actually seem to have gathered their own contents,
>>under cc-by-sa-1.0
>
>
> It would be interesting to know how they changed license. They used to be GFDL.
>

Wait - that's a double step backwards! They went to a version 1.0 CC?
Yes, it would be interesting to see how they did it - they must have
dumped all the old entries...

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
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: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
Why does Wikimedia want rate limiting that's any different from what
it has for normal webclients now (i.e. ban them if they're abusive), I
don't see how it makes much of a difference that the request is going
through SOAP over HTTP rather than XHTML over HTTP.


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
>So, are you saying that a man from Lars cannot understand a man from
>Gramsbergen??
>
No, I am not! Please read my messages more closely. I stated that those
dialects are not to be mutually understood /when written down/. The
spellings used are incompatible.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

body:
On 6/27/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Woo, that was fun!
...
> It's all downhill from here, folks.

Congratulations.  :)


body:
How easy, for someone who has not studied it! Do you notice the length of
the list yourself? And though near-identical dialects in different spellings
might be mutually understood, it becomes a different thing when you talk
about divergent dialects. I say that the wide differences between several
Low Saxon variants *in combination with*  the differences in spelling make
the possibility of a Wikipedia a valuable one.

W.
>Also, the difference in spelling is easily solved.
>
>Differences, as far as I know:
>
>(German spelling -> Dutch spelling)
>Final nn -> n
>s -> z
>i -> ie
>o -> ao
>au -> aau
>ei -> aai
>u -> oe/o
>f -> v
>? -> u
>mm -> m
>a -> aa
>ee -> eei
>ou -> oe
>? -> ae / e
>? -> eu/ui
>ll -> l
>ou -> oou
>w -> v/w
>oo -> o
>gg -> g
>chC -> gC
>uhi -> oei
>
>Spelling can easily be converted, see
>http://s87257573.onlinehome.us/ks/index.php?title=Nds-test&variant=ks-de
>(obviously there are some shortcomings, but these can be fixed with a
>little programming).
>
>Mark
>
>On 26/06/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So, are you saying that a man from Lars cannot understand a man from
> > Gramsbergen??
> >
> > Of course, this must be so, since the man from Lars speaks "German Low
> > Saxon" and the man from Gramsbergen speaks "Dutch Low Saxon"... since
> > of course languages always follow exactly political divisions.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 26/06/05, Wouter Steenbeek <musiqolog at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > >As I noted before, it is a dialect continuum.
> > > All of the continental West Germanic language variants form a dialect
> > > continuum, with the possible exception of the Frisian tongues.
> > > >Stellingwarfs and Middel-pommersch are surely not mutually
> > > >intelligible, but Grunnegers and Oostfreesk very well should be.
> > > Yes, so are Berlinic and High German. And East-Veluws and Dutch. But
> > > Grunnegers and Oostfreesk are not or barely mutually intelligible when
> > > written down, because of the different spellings.
> > >
> > > >You are foolishly dividing Platt by nations. This is illogical. If we
> > > >had an Oostfreesk Wikipedia, Grunnegers-speakers would surely
> > > >understand it and vice-versa, even though Grunnegers is in the
> > > >Netherlands and Oostfreesk is mostly in Germany.
> > >
> > > "Foolishly"... Mr. I-owe-all-the-world's-languages'-wisdom.... May I
>point
> > > at the difference in spelling once more? And don't you think that the
>bulk
> > > of the Dutch Low-Saxon dialects share some features most German
>dialects
> > > don't?
> > > >The problem of dialect continuum is a very difficult one.
> > > Yes, so it can't be solved by one such disregarding message.
> > > >HOWEVER, given the community reaction to a request for a Baseldytsch
> > > >Wikipedia, I think the same is logical for a request for a "Dutch Low
> > > >Saxon" Wikipedia
> > > Is it? Is Servien requesting a Wikipedia for just one town, or region?
>No,
> > > she obviously realises that, though the speaking communities hardly
>link
> > > dialects on any higher level than their own region (they will never
>say they
> > > speak Low Saxon, but always either the dialect of their own village or
> > > region, Twents, Sallands, Drents etc.), we should group some of them
> > > together. This is very different from what the proposer of the
>Baseldytsch
> > > Wikipedia did: he simply said: "I have no affinity with the other
>Alemannic
> > > dialects, so I want to open one for my dialect only".
> > > >-- your language may be different to whatever degree
> > > >than what many people on X Wikipedia use, but there is no rule
> > > >forbidding its use. There is no rule against writing pages and pages
> > > >and pages of content on nds.wiki in Stellingwarfs or Achterhooks.
>When
> > > >I suggested doing this, I got a cold response that Dutch Low Saxon
>and
> > > >German Low Saxon aren't mutually intelligible. Before whinging to us
> > > >about that, can you at least actually try to use your dialect on
> > > >nds.wiki to prove to us that it really doesn't work?
> > > Some users of nds: made clear that they only use one spelling: the
>Sass one.
> > > Dutch Low Saxon dialects are /never/ written in German spellings,
>except
> > > with some German-initiated projects.
> > >
> > > >Mark
> > > >
> > > Imo, the combined facts of mutual confusion in both speach and
>spelling
> > > makes this idea a valuable one.
> > >
> > > Wouter
> > >
> > > _________________________________________________________________
> > > Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
> > > http://messenger.msn.nl/
> > >
> > >
> >
> > --
> > 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
> >
>
>
>--
>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
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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


body:
>That's exactly my point. These two men speak the same language -- they
>live 4km apart.
>
>Yet you're telling them they don't. That's crazy.
O yeah? Where exactly does Waerth tell him they don't? The only thing he
says is that he is in favour of two separate wikipedias!

W.

_________________________________________________________________
Nieuw: Download nu MSN Messenger 7.0 http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Peng

body:
On 6/27/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Woo, that was fun!
>
> Good news: We've got our BiggestWiki upgraded, in less time than I
> feared (under 24 hours!) and the servers still live. The scripts have
> gotten some additional stress-testing from problems that didn't show up
> on the dozens of wikis we upgraded yesterday (but of course we're real
> glad we fixed the problems revelaed on _them_ first!)
>
> I'll write up some more notes in a bit.
>
> It's all downhill from here, folks.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Oh, cool. I'd been wanting to edit something. :P Good job. :)


from_name: David A. Desrosiers

body:
> Good news: We've got our BiggestWiki upgraded, in less time than I
> feared (under 24 hours!) and the servers still live. The scripts
> have gotten some additional stress-testing from problems that didn't
> show up on the dozens of wikis we upgraded yesterday (but of course
> we're real glad we fixed the problems revelaed on _them_ first!)

	Woo, and now to get the new 1.5 version into Plucker!

David A. Desrosiers
desrod at gnu-designs.com
http://gnu-designs.com


from_name: Raphael Wiegand

subject: [Wikipedia-l] de.wikipedia reaches 250.000 articles

body:
Hello,

A few seconds ago, de.wikipedia passed the 250.000 article mark. After
having been standing still at about 249.990 articles for more than an
hour thanks to deleting sysops, {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} rushed over the
magic 250k at 00:13 CEST with more than 20 articles created in less than
120 seconds. The "official" number 250.000 is [[de:M?nchgut]] by
[[de:Benutzer:Fristu]] - congratulations!

rdb


body:
>From: Raphael Wiegand <rdb_wikipedia at gmx.de>
>Hello,
>
>A few seconds ago, de.wikipedia passed the 250.000 article mark. After
>having been standing still at about 249.990 articles for more than an hour
>thanks to deleting sysops, {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} rushed over the magic 250k
>at 00:13 CEST with more than 20 articles created in less than 120 seconds.
>The "official" number 250.000 is [[de:M?nchgut]] by [[de:Benutzer:Fristu]]
>- congratulations!
>
>rdb
Congratulations to you too, and to all de:-Users here on the list!

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Violet/Riga

body:
On 6/27/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "DANIEL RAY" <danielray at rediffmail.com>
> >THANKS. INFORMATIVE. EDUCATIVE. ALL CAN'T BE SAME. EVERYTHING CAN'T HAPPEN
> >AS WE THINK OR PLAN. SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN.  AS IT HAPPENS, SO IS THE
> >RESULT. AS YOU SOW, SO YOU REAP. IT'S LIVING.
> >
> >YOURS,
> >DANIEL RAY
> >DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
>
> Could the e-mailer/e-mailers performing [[breaching experiment]]s be
> unsubscribed please?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jay.

Yes, please.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


list: textbook-l

from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Textbook-l] [[Wikibooks:Naming conventions]] rewrite

body:
I've rewritten a bit of [[Wikibooks:Naming conventions]] to make it
flow a lot more, as well as added a section on template/category/
media naming, so I'd like fellow admins and influential community
members to comment on the rewrite.

Also, I'm soliciting ideas on what to put down on [[Wikibooks:No
original research]] as a more in-depth version of why Wikibooks is
not a place to develop original research papers or collaborative
fiction.