subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

references:
<20030821130355.B456@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no> <3F45C6CE.2020006@pobox.com>

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> If you're reading the mailing lists through the gmane newsgroup
> gateway, beware that it corrupts its copy of postings by obscuring
> things it thinks are e-mail addresses.

Aahh.

> The address given in the above e-mail is in fact
> 'd o n a t i o n at-sign w i k i p e d i a dot o r g'.
> There is no public.gmane.org involved.

Thank you. Much more reassuring :-)

Thai said, I think a more localized way of doing donations should be
considered for Europe and perhaps Asia. For me, PayPal is fine,
though.

--
Gustav Foseid


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] /ban pages

in_reply_to:
<5.2.0.9.2.20030821135555.0312d548@digitalgrapefruit.com>;
	from dalighieri@digitalgrapefruit.com on Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at
	02:02:50PM -0700

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:
> I know that Jimbo requested that the evidence be gathered silently
> and privately, but realistically, I don't think that is
> appropriate. First of all, how is someone else to know that a user
> is being investigated for banning? If user A is gathering
> information on user B, it is possible that user C would have
> relevant experience, but not know to give it.

Well, there are pro's and con's.

> Second of all, in the interest of transparency, I think that every
> stage of something as serious as banning (which is more serious than
> page deletion, which we all agree should be fully transparent)
> should be open and fully available for perusal.

That's certainly true.  I absolutely don't want to open a new can of
headaches for me with claims that there are secret tribunals and what
not.

My main point is that we should all recognize that publicly
identifying someone as a problem user who should be banned can
*itself* generate the sort of bad behavior that we hope to avoid.  Not
always, and as I acknowledged, in many cases, the problem users are
just simply impossible to deal with.  Some are actual crackpots.  Some
are just jerks.

But fairly often, and I'm not the one who first identified this, we
have the problem of turning a mildly problematic user into an
arch-enemy with an extensive grudge against us.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

in_reply_to:
<bi3eut$m44$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from walter@wikipedia.be on Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 09:52:29PM +0000

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> In the euro-zone you can make a bank transfer from one account to a
> other account in the euro-zone for the same price like a local
> transfer. That is almost always free.
>
> Whit PayPal there are transcation costs and change from currency costs.
>
> A Wikimedia euro bankaccount in euro-zone state can be usefull for
> donations from Europe. No need for a credit card, easy to do, no loss of
> mony; 1 euro donation = 1 euro for Wikimedia. Not 1 euro - x%

O.k., can anyone recommend a large and reputable 'euro-zone' bank
where I can open an account from here?

Do other people have feedback for me on whether this is a sensible
thing to do?

One problem with what you've said, though, is that I don't foresee
much of a need for the Wikimedia Foundation to *spend* Euros in the
short term.  There is sometimes talk of locating a server in Europe,
but I'm unconvinced that there are good technical reasons for doing
so.  (But, if there are, I'm all for it.)

Other than that, I'll be buying machines in California.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I was unable to find any more information by logging in either.

http://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_help-ext&eloc=0&loc=281&source_page=_home&flow=

This page explains things for 'non-U.S. accounts'.  It seems that
there are no fees to send money from a non-U.S. account.  There's
little explanation that I can find of how to get money *into* PayPal.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

in_reply_to:
<dvik79591ty.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>;
	from gustavf@pvv.ntnu.no on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 04:58:01PM +0200

references:
<20030821130355.B456@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no> <3F45C6CE.2020006@pobox.com>
	<dvivfsq87i5.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>
	<20030822072135.I23554@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvik79591ty.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>

body:
Well, as is well known, it's the secret ambition of every capitalist
oppressor such as myself to have a Swiss bank account, so perhaps I
should make an effort to open one for Wikimedia Foundation when I am
in Germany next year.  :-)

--Jimbo


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
> >Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why
> >RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?
>
> I'm relying mostly on discussions in the Debian legal list,

(thanks, I'm still reading all this)

> The best evidence that he won't budge
> is that this argument with certain principal Debian players
> has been going on a long time, and they really want the FDL to change.
> Throughout the long debates, RMS hasn't budged an inch.
> That's why I don't think that we would do any better.

Or perhaps we can offer a way out of this mess to all parties,
based on this:

In
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00582.html
RMS wrote,
>Incompatibility of licenses is a significant practical inconvenience,
>and we have sometimes made changes for the sake of compatibility, but
>mere inconvenience doesn't make a license non-free.

As far as I'm concerned *our* beef with the GNU FDL is not about
invariant sections per se, but about license incompatibility.  We'd
like for people to be able to cut and paste text back and forth with
relative easy from documents under GNU FDL and CC Attribution-Share
Alike.

Our other complaint is about the *complexity* of the license, which is
long and tedious and clearly written from a perspective of a 'manual'
or 'documentation'.  Elsewhere, Stallman points out that the invariant
section 'problem' wouldn't resolve the 'length of license' problem,
since it's 8 pages, and the invariant section stuff is a lot shorter.

What might work out for everyone would be the creation of an 'LFDL',
for "Lesser FDL", similar in spirit and motivation to the "LGPL".  And
Stallman can recommend that people not use it, while simulteneously
acknowledging that it can be useful in some contexts.

I think a big selling point is that while free software is now
well-established and not a radical concept, free texts like Wikipedia
are still relatively new and unheard of, outside of free software
documentation, and that this budding movement has different needs that
need to be addressed if the idea of freedom is to grow in this arena.

In code, cutting and pasting and creating a derivative work out of the
middle of one program into the middle of another program isn't often
very useful.  Each program has it's own variable names, structure,
requirements.  Code re-use is possible, but is usually accomplished
with dynamic or static linking.

In our case, the case of text, that kind of cutting and pasting is
central to what we do.  A person writing an article about Iraq may
wish to very quickly and effectively adapt a CC BY-SA licensed work
by adding a few paragraphs of lightly edited Wikipedia background
information.

So license incompatibility is a growing problem for us.

> Of course, we're not so much asking for the Invariant Sections to go
> as we are asking for the GNU FDL to allow relicensing under CC
> BY-SA.  But CC BY-SA doesn't recognise Invariant Sections, so that
> would allow the Invariant Sections to be removed in two steps.  RMS
> would see that in a second, as I'm sure you'll agree!

Yes, but there's a solution to that, at least I think so.

Anything released under FDL 1.x or 2.0 with no invariant sections, no
Front-Cover texts, and no Back-Cover texts can be distributed under
the terms of LFDL 2.0 *or* FDL 2.0.  Anything release under FDL 1.x
with invariant sections can be released under FDL 2.0.

And then LFDL can be simpler and worded carefully so as to maximize
compatibility with CC SA.

A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would
allow for relicensing under LFDL.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

in_reply_to:
<NABBKFICIOPJAENJGNMJCEOHEIAA.email@joachim.net>;
	from email@joachim.net on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 05:48:40PM +0200

body:
Yes, please do.  And later today I will work through their system
to get exact instructions for buttons for various types of donations.

--Jimbo

joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote on Thu Aug 21 13:04:03 UTC 2003:
> > Tomorrow I will set up a web page on wikimedia.org (the foundation
> > website) with a variety of buttons and what-not to use, but there's no
> > reason you can't get started now if you like.
>
> Can we already put this Informations on
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donations
> or do you prefer to have wikimedia.org up first and only there the
> instructions?
>
> Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia on a cheap computer
	(was	Re:	Wikipediav. Britannica)

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:
>  "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>>http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page
>
>
> Hmm. Interesting. Couple bugs, though...(Chokes on formulas, and when I
> tried doing the submit for [[Celtic mythology]], it showed fine, but put the
> talk page as the article.)

The talk page bug is fixed now. The formulas bug (any example?) might be
due to the patchy installation I made, and then wouldn't show on a
"real" sifter site.

> Aside from that... I like the concept, could be a good way of doing it.

Thanks!

Magnus


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
> I agree with Kat it may not be a very good idea to ask
> for money in a press release. We want people to hear
> about us, to come to see us, to be impress by our
> work.

I entirely agree (at least for french version).

Aoineko


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of line harassment from EntmootsOfTrolls

body:
--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sigh.

Same here.

You don't feed the trolls, do you?

Chris

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Aaron Oppenheimer

subject: [Wikitech-l] trouble setting up...

body:
Hi,

I'm trying to set up an intranet using the wikipedia software. Everything seems set up and configured properly, but I can only access the main page - when I follow any link, I get the main page again. It's as if the arguments to the page are not being passed in, though I suppose there could be other causes. None of the logs show anything particularly weird (though the wiki log claims "We're confused" and that there's some caching trouble).

Anyone done this and know more about setting this up than I do?

Thanks,
Aaron Oppenheimer
aoppenheimer at dcontinuum.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX hash?

body:
Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> Thanks. I don't know Ocaml, but from the code it seems that this
> "standardization" is done in the render_tex funtion, where the syntax of
> each element of the function is changed recursively. Seems a bit too
> complicated to replicate without knowing the language :-) And I suppose
> there's no other way of getting the output hash, whithout access to the
> database.
>
> Maybe the "math" table could be added to the weekly database dumps?

There's not much reason to do that, since it's 100% generated by the
software on demand.

Feel free to use or adapt the math support functions from the top of
OutputPage.php, which munges the text, talks to the math table, and
calls texvc (which can be treated as a black box; you just have to
install ocaml and type 'make').

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] trouble setting up...

body:
Oops - found it. 'register_globals'was off in the php.ini file. Turning it on did the trick.

Aaron

-----Original Message-----
From: Aaron Oppenheimer
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 11:14 AM
To: wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] trouble setting up...

Hi,

I'm trying to set up an intranet using the wikipedia software. Everything seems set up and configured properly, but I can only access the main page - when I follow any link, I get the main page again. It's as if the arguments to the page are not being passed in, though I suppose there could be other causes. None of the logs show anything particularly weird (though the wiki log claims "We're confused" and that there's some caching trouble).

Anyone done this and know more about setting this up than I do?

Thanks,
Aaron Oppenheimer
aoppenheimer at dcontinuum.com
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] threats and abuse from IP user

body:
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
[snip]
> First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be
> protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of
> protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has
> it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But
> allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just
> going to turn into a constant edit war.

What's your opinion on some of the suggestions at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_pages_considered_harmful ?

ie, a system whereby anyone can edit protected pages all they like, but
changes to the generally presented 'current' version are deferred until
the page is left to sit for a time. No limitation on _who's_ doing the
editing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> However a money transfer to any national bank account is free and a one
> minute job, if and only if no borders are crossed (and cheaper and
> easier within EU boundaries than outside). This is why I suggested to
> have a local Paypal account in some countries.

I guess it's that last part I didn't get.  A "local Paypal account in
some countries".  Did you mean to just say a "local bank account in
some countries"?  That makes sense to me, given everything else that
you've said.

Maybe you're not quite understanding all about paypal.  I think I can
easily have local bank accounts all over the world and then link them
to Paypal for transfers.

But anyhow, the main question is how hard it is for me to open a bank
account in Europe.  There are no legal or tax barriers for me to do
so, let's assume, at least not on my end of the ocean.  So, can someone
find a reputable bank for me with an English explanation of how to get
an account?  Or something like that...

--Jimbo


from_name: Steve Vertigum

body:
Just for reference, does having a lot of "protected"
pages bog anything down?  And what about different
degrees of protected pages?   "Controversial" pages?
Wherin anon edits are limited?

Maybe also that one guys notion of limiting edits
(interms of various quantities) for specific users
..... ? might not be such a bad idea after all, in a
limited context.
-S-

--- Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> [snip]
> > First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just
> have to permanently be
> > protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of
> intermediate level of
> > protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a)
> has an account, b) has
> > it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level
> of accepted edits. But
> > allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in,
> to edit them is just
> > going to turn into a constant edit war.
>
> What's your opinion on some of the suggestions at
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_pages_considered_harmful
> ?
>
> ie, a system whereby anyone can edit protected pages
> all they like, but
> changes to the generally presented 'current' version
> are deferred until
> the page is left to sit for a time. No limitation on
> _who's_ doing the
> editing.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Yes, a LFDL would be a good idea, in my opinion (though this is just
my opinion as a Wikipedia volunteer contributor (as are all my public
posts, pages, etc) and not as a licensed lawyer). As previously stated
it is not a legal opinion unless there is an attorney client relationship,
and as the Wikipedia community is a voluntary association of individuals
I cannot imagine how I could give such a group a legal opinion.

Little Dan and I had a discussion about a similar subject on my talk page
a month ago; we were also thinking that a limited successor license
could apply retroactively only to Wikimedia so that the vagarities
surrounding the implied Wikipedia license could be acknowledged
and such a successor license would be general enough to allow for
that expansive kind of licensing that is the spirit behind all copyleft
type licensing schemes without requiring an absolute grant of copyright
to Wikimedia (which is hard to do for the 150,000 so existing articles,
not to mention the other name spaces) which is what FSF recommends
for its software code.

I am concerned also that the distinction between the non-exclusive
licence grant to Wikipedia; when one makes a contribution it is not
the same as the GFDL.  Is it? For example, if someone takes text from
one page and uses it (with or without edits) on another page, if it
was under GFDL there would be a violation because if the original
copyright owner releases it to Wikipedia under GFDL then when
someone moves content from one Wikipedia page (or between name
spaces) then all the attribution information that is implied in history
pages would also have to be moved. I have never found any discussion
about this anywhere. Souldn't thisambiguity also be considered when
adopting a successor license with the permission of FSF? If all
contributors explicitly acknowledge that they have given a non-exclusive
license then this material can be reorganized (and it would make Wikipedia
1.0 on paper a lot easier as all the attributions would not have to be
included there) and allow for liberal use of Wikimedia materials in any
spin-off project (and allow for direct translations between languages).
Alex756

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: "Wikimedia textbook discussion" <textbook-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

> What might work out for everyone would be the creation of an 'LFDL',
> for "Lesser FDL", similar in spirit and motivation to the "LGPL".  And
> Stallman can recommend that people not use it, while simulteneously
> acknowledging that it can be useful in some contexts.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipeda 1.0  Paper Plus

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Jimmy-
>
>>In order to make it convenient for people to follow the kind of
>>process that you describe, would you advocate some minor software
>>changes, i.e. a simple button-click for people to nominate things to
>>the 'candidates' page?
>
>
> More or less. Whatever software scheme is used should be reasonably
> generic to be applicable to similar situations. For example, Votes for
> deletion, Votes for undeletion and Requests for adminship are all pages
> that work according to the same "express dissent within given timeframe or
> [x] happens" model. It would be most useful to have some generic voting
> queue module instead of a hack that is adjusted specifically to the
> sifting process.

Well, after my voting feature was removed at some point (I think during
the change to Phase III), I am certainly not opposed to reintroducing
it. But, I don't think it will work nicely for a "stable version" (or
"1.0").

The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were:
* no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community
- I don't see that happening.

* feedback from all Wikipedians, not just those specializing in the
discipline in question -- besides being complete and accurate, articles
also must be reasonably well written and easy to understand
- Changes will still happen on wikipedia. Also, I propose that noone is
restricted to certain topics; anyone can approve any article ;-) as long
as s/he can be trusted to use common sense in what s/he is able to judge

* establishes trust in Wikipedia
- changes still occur in wikipedia, so the content will be the same for
any article at the time of approval. What happens next is up to
wikipedia entirely...

* simple, easy to use and completely open
- same as sifter, except that I would not let anons approve articles...

* requires only one change to the software (permalinks), which is useful
anyway for external authors trying to provide a permanent reference to
the revision of the Wikipedia article they cite
- sifter requires *no* visible change to the wikipedia software. We
*could* add an "approve this article" to be displayed as a user option,
which would then link to the appropriate sifter page

Now to my "pro-sifter" list:
* fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc.
Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like:
   - Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually
   - That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg"
   - Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image

* going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get
only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who
write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage

* user access is much easier to manage on a separate project

* sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while
wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the
clutter, otherwise.

* sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon,
right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on
wikipedia itself

* software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks

Magnus


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikitech-l] strange entries in article history

body:
There seems to be a bug which creates strange entries in the article
history. Please take a look at
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Ich_brauche_Hilfe&action=history
or
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Benutzer_Diskussion:Kurt_Jansson&action=history

There are entries created by "Benutzer:" or "Spezial:Contributions", but
the users were logged in.

And BTW, the new edit&section=new feature creates double entries if the
new text contains a heading.

Kurt


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up - Service or Quasi-Cash?

body:
Joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:

>I decided for "Service" (e.g. Wikimedia is providing Webspace...?). Is this
>right, or should I have taken "Quasi-Cash". What is a Donation in this case?
>
>
A donation isn't *really* a service, but in this case you can treat it
as one -- making charitable donations with a credit card (and charging
it as a normal charge, not a cash advance) is standard practice, and
many charitable organizations process credit cards directly (you can use
one to join the EFF at eff.org, for example).

-Mark


from_name: Gustav Foseid

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> Yes, but I don't understand what you're saying.  Maybe if you
> are reading through gmane they are mangling the address somehow?
>
> The correct address is: donation -at- wikipedia.org.

It was gmane that that mangled the address.

--
Gustav Foseid


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

references:
<20030821130355.B456@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no> <3F45C6CE.2020006@pobox.com>
	<dvivfsq87i5.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>
	<20030822072135.I23554@joey.bomis.com>

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> If there are other services in Europe or Asia that (a) are popular
> and easier to use for people there, and (b) easy for me to set up,
> then please let me know.

(a) would probably be any national bank account (at least in Europe).
(b) Would probably be nothing.

An added benefit would be that most national banking systems takes a
smaller commision than PayPal?. If opening bank accounts in a number
of countries will attract so much more donations that the extra work
is worth it, it probably should be done. This, however, should be in
the future some time.

? PayPal charges a commision of approx. 2-5%. In Norway (which I
  believe is quiet typical for Europe) a flat fee ranging from nothing
  to NOK 5 (USD 0.65, EUR 0.60) is normal.

--
Gustav Foseid


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX hash?

body:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 09:03:45PM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
>
> Hello guys,
> looking at the TeX rendering code on CVS, I see that each math fragment is
> identified with its MD5 hash, similar to images.
> But then, I find that this is only the "input hash". The code SELECTs for
> an "output hash", and this is used on the html page to retrieve the
> rendered math as a PNG image.
>
> How the output hash is computed? Maybe it's there in the code, but I don't
> find it. If I could compute the hash offline, I could include TeX math
> into the static version, the same way as images: just download them :-)

Input hash is MD5 of text between <math> and </math>.
Output hash is MD5 of the same text after "standarization",
so that only one image is generated for <math>x + y = z</math>,
<math>x+y = z</math> and <math>x+y=z</math>.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: paypal

body:
Joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:

>It is now free of charge to send money in Europe. I did it already(DE->FR).
>It works. You just have to ask for the rules and follow them.
>
>
Out of curiosity, does this apply across the entire EU, or only within
the euro-zone?  For example, could you send money DE->UK (or vice versa)
for free?

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:  How Wikipedia breaks the GNU/FDL

body:
A belated reply, but an issue I don't think was brought up:

Nicholas Knight wrote:

>>4B: We do not list the author of the last version plus at least five
>>authors
>>    of the old version on the title page.
>>
>>
>
>To quote from 4B:
>"...unless they release you from this requirement."
>
>One could easily argue that Wikipedia recieves an implicit release based on
>the fact that it is self-evident to contributors before they submit anything
>that we do not list the authors in this way.
>
>
>>4F+addendum: The license notice of Wikipedia is not in the
>>prescribed form,
>>    and it is not put on the title page
>>
>>
>
>The only person concievably able to try and enforce that provision on
>documents submitted to Wikipedia without looking like a complete idiot in
>front of everyone -- including U.S. courts -- would be the original author,
>and he'd have a time of it.
>
>
[rest snipped]

All this is assuming that the author it the person who submitted it to
Wikipedia.  This is not necessarily the case -- we also would like to
reserve the right to incorporate 3rd-party GFDL texts into Wikipedia;
for example, Nupedia texts.  A third party who writes a GFDL text and
does not submit it to Wikipedia might well expect the letter of the GFDL
to be followed, and if we do not, that causes a problem for us.

-Mark


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

body:
     > From: "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com>

     > A problem is exists with one IP user who continually tried to add in a
     > couple of paragraphs to [[Israel]]
     > ...
     > I am going to gather my friends for a whole range of contributions if
     > you keep forcing your POV. don't delete facts.
     > ...
     > Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

Sigh. I have a *very* bad feeling about this - the same kind of bad feeling I
had the day Cantor and Siegel sent their first spam, and wouldn't stop when
asked to.

As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to
have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of the
many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel
proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.

I'm not happy about this. I got the same feeling from the Wikipedia that I
had in the early days of the Internet, this wonderful group of people who all
had a positive attitude. And we all know where that went...

Look, don't get me wrong, I hope I'm misguided here, or being pessimistic, or
something. Maybe the Wikipedia community will be able to withstand the losers.

But maybe it won't; and maybe there's a reason the world doesn't have many
large, working anarchies - because they don't work.

So, much as it saddens me (which is no doubt not a fraction as bad as it
saddens those of you who've been around a lot longer), you might have to
think about introducing *even more* controls in the Wikipedia than the few
you have already - and maybe a fair number of them.

Don't be afraid to add mechanisms to keep the losers under control - because
if you don't, they will destroy the good stuff you *are* trying to create.

If so, I beg of you to take some lessons from the Internet, where we e.g.
tried too long to keep email open - with the results that you're all seeing
today in your inboxes. How I wish we'd added more teeth, back when.

Imagine the worst - because it will surely happen. (And realize that some of
the people you're dealing with see nothing wrong with deliberately killing
kids - against which trashing some electrons is very small beer indeed.)

So, with that background, here are some practical suggestions.

First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be
protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of
protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has
it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But
allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just
going to turn into a constant edit war.

Now you need to think: how will the vandals respond to that? If I were him,
and I were determined to harm the Wikipedia for perceived hostility towards
Palestinians (and there's a lot of anger boiling around there), I'd probably
start to vandalize random pages.

Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it doesn't
maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in users, and maybe
even go to a system were a new user is watched for a while to make sure they
aren't a vandal.

But my overall message is "think about the worst case and try and plan for
it". Sadly, I expect it will probably come to pass. But if you think about
it, and discuss it, way up-front, when you have the time and leisure to do so
in a calm and leisurely way, that will be best. Trying to fix it in the heat
of the moment will produce VfD-notice-debate^9.

I hope this email didn't depress you all too badly. The Wikipedia is a really
cool thing, and I am quite it will succeed in really making an impact. (I
wouldn't be working so hard on it if I didn't think so! I'm too ancient to
have this much energy without good cause! :-)

But you do need to protect yourselves.

	Noel


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX hash?

body:
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Input hash is MD5 of text between <math> and </math>. Output hash is MD5
>of the same text after "standarization", so that only one image is
>generated for <math>x + y = z</math>, <math>x+y = z</math> and
><math>x+y=z</math>.

Thanks. I don't know Ocaml, but from the code it seems that this
"standardization" is done in the render_tex funtion, where the syntax of
each element of the function is changed recursively. Seems a bit too
complicated to replicate without knowing the language :-) And I suppose
there's no other way of getting the output hash, whithout access to the
database.

Maybe the "math" table could be added to the weekly database dumps?

Ciao,
Alfio


in_reply_to:
<NABBKFICIOPJAENJGNMJOEOJEIAA.email@joachim.net>;
	from email@joachim.net on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 11:29:10PM +0200

body:
Well, if it helps you to avoid fees, I guess that's the right choice.
:-)

Joachim Kerschbaumer wrote:

> Hi Jimmy,
>
> I made a first test-donation, please let me know if you got it (I don't
> trust paypal yet... ;-)
> A question, maybe also interresting for others:
>
> I had to decide on paypal between
> * Service
> * Quasi-Cash
>
> Paypal wrote:
>
> "Service: A payment for the performance of a service. Free!"
>
> "Quasi-Cash: The transmission of money not involving an underlying service
> or good. The bank that issued your credit card may treat this 'Quasi-Cash'
> transaction as a cash advance and charge you cash advance fees. PayPal has
> no control over these fees. If you select 'Quasi-Cash' you may want to use a
> payment method other than Credit Card (Instant Transfer or eCheck) to avoid
> potential fees. "
>
> I decided for "Service" (e.g. Wikimedia is providing Webspace...?). Is this
> right, or should I have taken "Quasi-Cash". What is a Donation in this case?
>
> Thanks for an answer,
>
> Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


in_reply_to:
<3F469ECA.3020205@rufus.d2g.com>;
	from delirium@rufus.d2g.com on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 03:52:58PM
	-0700

body:
Delirium wrote:
> All this is assuming that the author it the person who submitted it to
> Wikipedia.  This is not necessarily the case -- we also would like to
> reserve the right to incorporate 3rd-party GFDL texts into Wikipedia;
> for example, Nupedia texts.  A third party who writes a GFDL text and
> does not submit it to Wikipedia might well expect the letter of the GFDL
> to be followed, and if we do not, that causes a problem for us.

I think we do follow the GFDL to the letter but I am also willing to
entertain any legitimate complaints.  If people have texts with
invariant sections, we can't accept those as contributions to the
wikipedia.

My reading of the "title page" requirement is that we are in
compliance so long as our 'page history' link precedes the body of the
text.  However, I do think this is one passage in the FDL that needs
to be clarified for the FDL 2.0

--Jimbo


from_name: joachim Kerschbaumer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote on Thu Aug 21 13:04:03 UTC 2003:
> Tomorrow I will set up a web page on wikimedia.org (the foundation
> website) with a variety of buttons and what-not to use, but there's no
> reason you can't get started now if you like.

Can we already put this Informations on
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Donations
or do you prefer to have wikimedia.org up first and only there the
instructions?

Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)


in_reply_to:
<BAY1-F53tvNLepTyaGW00001b5b@hotmail.com>;
	from jtdirl@hotmail.com on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 07:43:03PM +0100

body:
james duffy wrote, quoting the vandal du jour:
> Listen you fucking moron, I can use whatever language I want in the
> duscussion pages. The article however, are a different story.

Actually, courtesy to others is mandated at all times, and personal
attacks are neer the right thing to do.  It's completely beyond the
pale for this person or anyone else to call someone a 'moron', fucking
or celibate.

> I have blocked him again. The blocks are on 68.120.204.62, 68.120.205.147
> and 68.120.205.218. Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

Well, it's very unfortunate, but 68.120.204.* and 68.120.205.* may
find themselves all blocked in a few days if he doesn't give up.

One possibility is to invite him to the mailing list, or to email me.
Maybe I can calm him down, or maybe when faced with the need to
justify his statements, he'll realize that they are inappropriate.

-----

To strike a deeper philosophic note for a second, this is just the
kind of situation that illustrates how important NPOV is.  NPOV is
something that we can all agree on, the "truth" may or may not be.

Is it true that Israel is engaging in policies that are tantamount to
ethnic cleansing?  It doesn't matter, because there's no way to get
consensus on such a claim.  I personally think the claim is ludicrous,
while at the same time being very uncomfortable with a great many
policies of Israel.  But the point is -- some will agree, some won't,
and it's just not the place of Wikipedia to make that sort of claim.

NPOV doesn't mean the same thing as "true".  Of course, everything
that's NPOV is also highly likely to be true, because in order to be
NPOV, just about every damn person shy of lunatics has to agree that
it's true.

--Jimbo


body:
J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> Look, don't get me wrong, I hope I'm misguided here, or being
> pessimistic, or something. Maybe the Wikipedia community will be
> able to withstand the losers.

We've survived worse than this before.  This isn't the first time,
either, that someone has threatened to bring in their friends.

One of the big secrets of Wikipedia is that it isn't really an
anarchy, it just looks that way.  There are rules, and we do enforce
them.  Fortunately, the rules are so mild and reasonable that most
people can passionately buy into them, because it only takes a little
bit of experience to see that NPOV actually works to get something
done that would otherwise be a partisan bashing party.

> First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be
> protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of
> protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has
> it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But
> allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just
> going to turn into a constant edit war.

This is actually a pretty good idea.  I'm always in favor of finding
ways to turn our blunt instruments into 'softer' tools.  What I like
about your proposal here is that it *is* soft.  It could be used only
for certain pages marked as 'controversial', and that only *after*
they've become targetted for some kind of mass attack, or if an
ongoing flame war has lasted for months with no hope of resolution.

> Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it doesn't
> maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in users, and maybe
> even go to a system were a new user is watched for a while to make sure they
> aren't a vandal.

I'm opposed to that, for as long as we can possibly stand it.

Here's what I think: openness has done something astounding here, and
I think your parallel to the Internet as a whole is a solid one.  But
we have to be really vigilant about not letting our fear of vandalism
turn into a lockdown or a turn towards closedness.  It really is true
that 99.5% of all people aren't jerks.

But, at the same time, I've always said that my goal, my dream, is a
free encyclopedia.  The 'experiment in anarchy' is secondary at best.
So as soon as vandals start to gain the upper hand, we'll do whatever
has to be done.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipeda 1.0  Paper Plus

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>>The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were:
>>* no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community
>>- I don't see that happening.
>
> But, do you agree that it is desirable, to whatever extent we can
> achieve it?

I'm not sure I understand that sentence. I don't believe there will be
aseparate "sifter" and "wikipedia" groups. I'd think they'll overlap in
huge parts. Those who don't care about the stable version thingy at all
won't participate either way. Maybe a separate project would even
attract some academics who'd shy away from the "pure" wikipedia ;-)

> Before other people like Erik explained this to me again, I was still
> thinking of having an appointed class like sysops, with appointment
> being open and easy, to have quality control.  But on further
> reflection, it seems like quality control can be had in other ways
> that don't force us to have a separate class of users.
>
> Of course, if we start in on a process and the end result starts to
> look problematic, we'll have to bite the bullet and make a change.

I used to be in favor of the "appointed class" model, but now I think we
should try "logged-in only" open for everyone. It worked before :-)

>>Now to my "pro-sifter" list:
>>* fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc.
>>Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like:
>>   - Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually
>>   - That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg"
>>   - Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image
>
> That's obviously a benefit, but doesn't point to a need for a separate
> project, per se, but a need for making sure that the 'version' being
> approved is the *entire* article, including text and images.  This
> does complicate things a little bit.

Let's see: We'd need an additional image management routine, a new table
in the database to keep track of what-image-was-when-where, probably
interface to deltete wrongly approved images (and another one to
undelete them, of course;-)

Then we'll need another implementation of Recent Changes, or some kind
of filter; a search mode for just-the-stable-versions; URLs to the
stable version; making sure that stable versions have not been deleted;
and some new user options to spice the soup up a little ;-)

I probably forgot some of the necessary changes, but you get the picture...

OTOH: Sifter project needs a few more lines of code for importing
images, then it's basically ready to go.

>>* going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get
>>only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who
>>write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage
>
>
> Well, the exact url where people may browse 1.0 could be anything.
> In my private thinking about it, I've been thinking of it as
> www.wikipedia.org/1.0/wiki/
>
> But the exact url where someone could view what has been approved so
> far is not really important.

I wasn't talking about the URL, I meant there's an actual place to go to
for "reliable" information. Wikipedia-with-an-addon will be quite
confusing for some people, I'd guess; "You can edit this page" is scary
enough already :-)

>>* user access is much easier to manage on a separate project
>
> Maybe, maybe not.  Depends on implementation.

Try to answer "Who's been working on the 1.0 version, and how much?" in
both schemes, and you'll see what I mean.

>>* sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while
>>wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the
>>clutter, otherwise.
>
> I think having a separate RC (or Recent Approvals) is vitally
> important, but again I'm not sure it's really relevant for a
> question of 'separate project' or 'added features to existing
> project'.

Maybe not relevant, but a pain to hack (see above), and it has potential
for confusing the users.

>>* sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon,
>>right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on
>>wikipedia itself
>
> Maybe!  But this could complicate some things.

No it wouldn't, as long as both servers (the sifter and the 'pedia one)
are in your server farm. I'd only have to change an IP in the sifter
LocalSettings.php .

>>* software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks
>
> Well, that's a huge plus of course, because rough consensus and
> running code makes the world go around.

Ah, the good ol' times :-)

> After reading all this and writing all this, I'm not sure that
> "internal" versus "separate project" is really a useful concept.  I
> guess I'm for an 'internal' project, but with most of the features
> that you've identified.

Well, basically the choice is to
* implement many things twice within the same source (or include so many
IF statements that it will blur your eyes;-) or
* use the code we have

Magnus


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
>> So maybe we could open a Wikimedia Paypal account in several
countries.
>> Electronic transfer to a US Paypal account would be uneconomical due
to
>> high bank fees.

Jimbo wrote:
> I'm perfectly willing to do that, if that's the right thing to do, but
> my reading of the Paypal website doesn't suggest that I really need to
> do it.  Is there something that I'm not understanding?

It has nothing to do with Paypal's policies.

Tranferring money through Paypal from Europe to US or vice versa is easy
and in my view Paypal's fee is reasonable compared to international
money orders/bank transfers.

My point was this: this only works for people who have a Paypal account
already or are willing to open an account just for this transaction.
Both groups are still small in Europe, as far as I can tell.

However a money transfer to any national bank account is free and a one
minute job, if and only if no borders are crossed (and cheaper and
easier within EU boundaries than outside). This is why I suggested to
have a local Paypal account in some countries.

Transferring money directly from Europe to the US Paypal account is
something most people will have no idea how to it in the first place and
some bank will charge a big fee before the money reaches Paypal. In fact
it would not make much sense to upload it to Paypal at all.

I checked one major bank they charge $10 for a money transfer outside
Europe, which would make someone think twice before donating say $20.

To summarize: local bank transaction to upload money to national Paypal
account, Paypal to ship money over the ocean. Maybe Germany would be a
good starter for a second Paypal account, lots of German wikipedians to
give it a go, then we can try if a bank transfer from say the
Netherlands to Germany is affordable (new EU rules will make it cheaper)
and easy to do.

Erik Zachte


from_name: james duffy

body:
A problem is exists with one IP user who continually tried to add in a
couple of paragraphs to [[Israel]], including the line:

However, there was a systematic ethnic-cleanising process in Israel, which
many Zionists prefer to call "transportation" instead of ehtnic-cleansing.

Efforts to remove his additions produced the following summaries -

There facts stated are 100% accurate. Isn't it interesting that you are
uncomfortable with FACTS and the TRUTH ??

enhancement to the article --- I am going to gather my friends for a whole
range of contributions if you keep forcing your POV. don't delete facts.

I have blocked this person now under a number of different IPs. In view of
the above threat of bring friends along to the page, and because of his
constant using of different IPs, I protected the page, which everyone on the
page seemed to agree was the best temporary measure. I went to unprotect it
today to find that under the third IP (which I subsequently blocked) he had
left the following message on the talk page:

::Zionist definition of "vandal": A persoan who presents some facts about
Israel which demonstrate the racist nature of this state.  hmmmmm ... kinda
like how the victims of Israeli atrocities are called "terrorists".

::Which part of the facts that I added to the article were "vandalism" you
fucking hypocrite?  There was not a single word of abuse, misinformation or
even inaccuracy in what I added to the article.  The more you ugly baboons
try to control things and hide the truth, the more you contribute to your
own perennial replusiveness.

I don't want to have to keep protecting the page; it unfair to everyone else
who wants to edit it. But the nature of the edits are guaranteed to trigger
nasty edit wars, and the comments above show the rascist agenda he is
following.

Since I started writing this, he has since added to the talk page

Listen you fucking moron, I can use whatever language I want in the
duscussion pages. The article however, are a different story. If I used such
language in the article, then you had a point. But as itis, ones doens't
need to be a genius to realize what you are doing. You are zeroing on on a
cheap excuse to keep the page protected. The discussion pages are not part
of the encyclopaedia and even a dumb fuckhead like you knows this.

I have blocked him again. The blocks are on 68.120.204.62, 68.120.205.147
and 68.120.205.218. Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


body:
     > From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>

     >> Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that, but if it
     >> doesn't maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from non-logged-in
     >> users

     > I'm opposed to that, for as long as we can possibly stand it.
     > .. we have to be really vigilant about not letting our fear of
     > vandalism turn into a lockdown or a turn towards closedness.

Ah, I was not disagreeing with you on this; I would only suggest actually
implementing more restrictive access policies (like these ideas) when a
problem *actually happened*, one that couldn't be solved any other way (note
I did say "if it doesn't .. stop [the vandalism]").

I only want you all to ii) be aware that the world contains lots of losers,
and you might want to start musing. slowly and unheatedly, about how you all
would deal with their worst-case antagonistic behaviours, and ii) don't be
afraid to take whatever steps are needed to save the Wikipedia. But I see from
this:

     > I've always said that my goal, my dream, is a free encyclopedia. The
     > 'experiment in anarchy' is secondary at best. So as soon as vandals
     > start to gain the upper hand, we'll do whatever has to be done.

that you're already there on ii)!

On a more upbeat note (to balance my earlier doom and gloom :-) I should not
that you all have a much, much easier problem domain, technically.

If we were to try and fix email's many problems today, it would be a massive
job, because SMTP is implemented in every machine far and wide. If you decide
you need to change something to make Wikipedia "more secure" (alas), you just
change the server, and you're done. Now if you can only get everyone onboard
once you have to do so... :-)

	Noel


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: paypal

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I agree with Kat it may not be a very good idea to ask
> for money in a press release. We want people to hear
> about us, to come to see us, to be impress by our
> work.

It's a good thing we don't do that then; all it says last time I looked was
that we were starting a fundraising drive. Not anywhere are words like
"please donate".

> And then, they might touch their pocket

If they know that we are having a fundraising drive and that we now have the
capacity to accept donations, I'm sure some people will in fact donate.
That's a good thing, yes.

>...
> American people are very relax with money issues. In
> other places, this is not so. Er...asking money in a
> press release...I think...is...POV

So then don't mention that part in the French version and maybe in the
versions sent to English news agencies in Europe.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> To summarize: local bank transaction to upload money to national Paypal
> account, Paypal to ship money over the ocean. Maybe Germany would be a
> good starter for a second Paypal account, lots of German wikipedians to
> give it a go, then we can try if a bank transfer from say the
> Netherlands to Germany is affordable (new EU rules will make it cheaper)
> and easy to do.

And we could have a side benefit of having a bit of friendly competition
between PayPal accounts. ;)

Starting with Germany is a good idea; we can then move down the line based
on the size of each Wikipedia version and place the PayPal account in the
primary nation most users/readers of that language live in. PayPal accounts
in Australia and the UK would also be good ideas. But we can add more as
time goes on.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Joachim Kerschbaumer

body:
Hi Jimmy,

I made a first test-donation, please let me know if you got it (I don't
trust paypal yet... ;-)
A question, maybe also interresting for others:

I had to decide on paypal between
* Service
* Quasi-Cash

Paypal wrote:

"Service: A payment for the performance of a service. Free!"

"Quasi-Cash: The transmission of money not involving an underlying service
or good. The bank that issued your credit card may treat this 'Quasi-Cash'
transaction as a cash advance and charge you cash advance fees. PayPal has
no control over these fees. If you select 'Quasi-Cash' you may want to use a
payment method other than Credit Card (Instant Transfer or eCheck) to avoid
potential fees. "

I decided for "Service" (e.g. Wikimedia is providing Webspace...?). Is this
right, or should I have taken "Quasi-Cash". What is a Donation in this case?

Thanks for an answer,

Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: threats and abuse from IP user

body:
james duffy wrote:
> ....
> I have blocked him again. The blocks are on 68.120.204.62, 68.120.205.147
> and 68.120.205.218. Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

A temporary block of the whole IP range would be nice...

--mav


body:
J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> As the Wikipedia becomes more and more widely known, you're just going to
> have a higher and higher probability of including in that group some of
> the many humans who are losers. And, as the aftermath of Cantor and Siegel
> proved, that effect gets worse, not better, as the community grows.

Rejoice because your pessimism is unfounded in fact; I've seen over the past
year and a half that the percentage of bad edits has not increased
(although the volume has, of course) and, IMO, has in fact decreased. This
is simply due to the fact that for every jerk there are many scores of good
people (perhaps hundreds) and therefore increasing the number of people
reading and contributing to Wikipedia only makes it better, not worse.

I had a similar pessimistic opinion, BTW, back when I could review an entire
days edits in two hours (there were only 600-800 edits a day back then!).

But Wikipedia has scaled really well to my total astonishment.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Jimbo said
> Maybe you're not quite understanding all about paypal.
> I think I can easily have local bank accounts all over the world and
then > link them to Paypal for transfers.

If that is so, you're right I did not understand that. Paypal tells me
that in order to transfer money from my private bank account (without
using a credit card) I should send the money to a Dutch branch of the
Bank of America, so I figured that charging a Paypal account of a US
citizen would involve transferring the money to a bank in the US
directly. (For those who did not follow this thread, we are not talking
about transfer between two Paypal accounts).

In the Netherlands we have four banks that operate worldwide and are in
the world top 50 (ABN-AMRO is the largest), but because Paypal uses a
Dutch branch of the Bank of America that may be a logical choice.
Citibank has a large office in Amsterdam as well.

Still I think Germany would be a better start for a non US bank account,
due to its size and number of wikipedians there. It would still be a
worthwile undertaking even if it could not service as an inlet for
donations from other EU countries.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: wikiversity licensing

body:
Karl Wick wrote:
> Please show me ANY evidence that RMS and the FSF will be
> flexible about changing their licensing terms how we want
> them.
>
> Otherwise lets get new modules released in some way that is
> not exclusively GNU FDL.

And then we could not use GNU FDL only text created elsewhere (like on
Wikipedia). The advantages of what you want are counteracted by the
disadvantages of confusing users and downstream users and locking out GNU
FDL only text.

Since you own the copyright to all the work you submit, you can release
versions of your text in whatever license you want. But to make things
simple and easy for contributors and downstream users, we should only have
one license for all Wikimedia projects.

-- mav


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote on Sat Aug 23 00:01:50 UTC 2003:
> Still I think Germany would be a better start for a non US bank account,
> due to its size and number of wikipedians there. It would still be a
> worthwile undertaking even if it could not service as an inlet for
> donations from other EU countries.

It is now free of charge to send money in Europe. I did it already(DE->FR).
It works. You just have to ask for the rules and follow them.

Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: paypal - free money transfer in EU

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Out of curiosity, does this apply across the entire EU, or only within
> the euro-zone?  For example, could you send money DE->UK (or vice versa)
> for free?

My bank wrote to me:
Give the one who wants to send you money:
# your IBAN (International Bank Account Number)
# Your BIC(SWIFT-Code) (Bank Identifier Code)
"For payments in other european states please ask for IBAN and BIC of the
receiver"

...I think, I found the line you where asking for:
"Alle EU-?berweisungen sind entgeltfrei"
in english: "All EU-transfers are free" (if you don't transfer more then
12.500 Euro ;-)

It is the "EU-Verordnung 2560/2001"

Hope this helps,
Joachim (aka Fantasy :-)


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
james duffy wrote:

>I have blocked him again. The blocks are on 68.120.204.62, 68.120.205.147
>and 68.120.205.218. Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?

I am ***extremely*** disturbed by this situation.

Judging from your post, [[Talk:Israel]], and the IP contributions,
this user has never done any vandalism on Wikipedia,
yet the explanation for the blocking of the IP was "vandalism".
In fact, the (original) IP was blocked for taking place in an edit war.
Furthermore, you apparently protected the page to win an edit war
that you were taking place in.

Perhaps there were further posts containing vandalism
which were deleted, and which you forgot to mention in your post.
If not, then I don't see why I shouldn't unblock 68.120.204.62.

The later blockings of 68.120.205.147 and 68.120.205.218
are problematic in light of the high probability
that the insults which led to them were sparked by the above.
But they're not the "extremely disturbing" bit.

-- Toby


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
From
http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Luminiferous_aether:

Failed to parse (unknown error): \frac{c}{n} = \left( 1 - \frac{1}{n^2}
\right) v

where a formula should be.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2003 3:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia on a cheap computer(was Re:
Wikipediav. Britannica)

> Jake Nelson wrote:
> >  "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> >
> >>http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page
> >
> >
> > Hmm. Interesting. Couple bugs, though...(Chokes on formulas, and when I
> > tried doing the submit for [[Celtic mythology]], it showed fine, but put
the
> > talk page as the article.)
>
> The talk page bug is fixed now. The formulas bug (any example?) might be
> due to the patchy installation I made, and then wouldn't show on a
> "real" sifter site.
>
> > Aside from that... I like the concept, could be a good way of doing it.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Magnus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Dante Alighieri

body:
Our good friend at 68.x is certainly engaged in vandalism, I had to revert
quite a few instances from random pages (nothing to do with Israel, penis
for example).

At 01:12 AM 8/23/2003, Toby wrote:
>I am ***extremely*** disturbed by this situation.

*snip*

>Perhaps there were further posts containing vandalism
>which were deleted, and which you forgot to mention in your post.
>If not, then I don't see why I shouldn't unblock 68.120.204.62.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


body:
>
>james duffy wrote, quoting the vandal du jour:
> > Listen you fucking moron, I can use whatever language I want in the
> > duscussion pages. The article however, are a different story.
>
>Jimbo responded:
>Actually, courtesy to others is mandated at all times, and personal
>attacks are neer the right thing to do.  It's completely beyond the
>pale for this person or anyone else to call someone a 'moron', fucking
>or celibate.
>
> > I have blocked him again. The blocks are on 68.120.204.62,
>68.120.205.147
> > and 68.120.205.218. Any suggestions about deal with this bigot?
>
>Well, it's very unfortunate, but 68.120.204.* and 68.120.205.* may
>find themselves all blocked in a few days if he doesn't give up.
>
>One possibility is to invite him to the mailing list, or to email me.
>Maybe I can calm him down, or maybe when faced with the need to
>justify his statements, he'll realize that they are inappropriate.

I don't know if it is the same person (it is in the 67 range this time, but
the 68 user did threaten to bring on friends to 'hit' Jewish-orientated
articles) but some rather dodgy comments have started to appear that sound
like what in Ireland is known as 'taking the piss' (ironic ridicule).

This appeared on the [[Talk:Israel]] page:

I hate it when a bunch of lowly Goyim make comments about Israel. When are
these Goyishe Kop losers going to realize that Yahveh created them to be
ruled by us?

This was put in [[Jew]]:

Jews are very nice people, and it is extremely unfair that so many different
cultures from different parts of the world, at different periods of human
history, have said similar things about this nice peopel. Terrible
attributes like stinginess, tight-fistedness, money-grabbing, greedy,
conspiring, networking amongst themselves to the detriment of their host
nation, living parasitic lives among the Goyim, and other unfair attributes
of the sort, are just false and unfair accusations, probably out of jealousy
because the Jews are so good-looking that the lowly Goyim have always been
jealous of this nice shadow nation.

It is not clear how so many different cultures from vastly different
geographic areas, at different times have all said similar things about the
Jews, but studies have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that these
accusations all spring from the jealousy of the Goyim (plural of Goy; Goy in
Hebrew means non-Jew).

I removed the above stuff that he put on the talk page. His response was

# 05:38, 23 Aug 2003 Talk:Israel (Motherfucker, do not delete stuff form
discussion pages.) He then proceded to put back in the comments. I rolled
them back and blocked the IP.

Either [[Israel]] and related articles has just happened to become
'nutter-central' in terms of the people whom it has attracted in the last 3
days, or someone (and maybe a friend) is deliberately trying to 'hit' these
articles to provoke people.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote in part:

>In
>http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00582.html
>RMS wrote,

>>Incompatibility of licenses is a significant practical inconvenience,
>>and we have sometimes made changes for the sake of compatibility, but
>>mere inconvenience doesn't make a license non-free.

To provide context, this discussion is about incompatibility
between the various GNU licences (FDL and GPL).
Of course, we don't have to mention that when we quote it back to him and say
?Isn't intercompatibility with non-GNU copyleft licences a good idea??. ^_^

>As far as I'm concerned *our* beef with the GNU FDL is not about
>invariant sections per se, but about license incompatibility.  We'd
>like for people to be able to cut and paste text back and forth with
>relative easy from documents under GNU FDL and CC Attribution-Share
>Alike.

Agreed.  I don't like the IS (and related) features of the GNU FDL,
but they're not the big deal.

>What might work out for everyone would be the creation of an 'LFDL',
>for "Lesser FDL", similar in spirit and motivation to the "LGPL".  And
>Stallman can recommend that people not use it, while simulteneously
>acknowledging that it can be useful in some contexts.

I like this idea, and your reasons for it.  Now who can sell it to RMS?
Of course, we need GNU -- we can't just write it ourselves -- for this reason:

>Anything released under FDL 1.x or 2.0 with no invariant sections, no
>Front-Cover texts, and no Back-Cover texts can be distributed under
>the terms of LFDL 2.0 *or* FDL 2.0.  Anything release under FDL 1.x
>with invariant sections can be released under FDL 2.0.

I can't say that I've read anything from RMS
suggesting that he would never agree to this.
I don't suppose that he'll like it at first, but we do have our reasons.
It's not like he's an obstinate, stubborn ideologue --
rather a thoughtful, open-minded ideologue. ^_^

>A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would
>allow for relicensing under LFDL.

I really don't know anything about CC's Lawrence Lessig.
Given the internecine political battles between "free" and "open",
does anybody know how RMS and Lessig feel about each other?
(I mean in particular ?I trust this organisation to do good licences,
at least to whatever degree is necessary for the LFDL to work in the end.?.)
I know that Lessig wrote the foreword to RMS's collected essays;
but OTOH, Lessig says "open" rather than "free" now.

-- Toby


references:
<BAY1-F53tvNLepTyaGW00001b5b@hotmail.com>
	<BAY1-F53tvNLepTyaGW00001b5b@hotmail.com>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030823025026.01143938@digitalgrapefruit.com>

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

>Our good friend at 68.x is certainly engaged in vandalism, I had to revert
>quite a few instances from random pages (nothing to do with Israel, penis
>for example).

First of all, we don't know that this is the same 68.120.*.*.
In fact, in my opinion, they're probably not the same person.
The 68.120.20?.* IPs, which had the argument with JtdIRL,
are dynamically assigned dialup connections from Pleasanton CA,
while the 68.120.71.* IP, the vandal that you and Jiang blocked,
is a DNS connection from Irvine CA, almost 400 miles away.
If there's any connection, then it's a 400-mile distant "friend",
and the 68.120.*.* relationship (PacBell) is nothing but a coincidence.
My guess is no relationship at all, however; the threat seems empty.

Now, I /absolutely/ agree that the 68.120.71.* IP blocked by you and Jiang
was certainly a vandal and should have been blocked just as it was.
And if JtdIRL thought that they were the same people
when he blocked his IPs, then he could be forgiven for that.
However, JtdIRL blocked the 68.120.204.* IP 16 hours
/before/ any vandalism from 68.*.*.* ever appeared.
So I'm afraid that this doesn't lessen my extreme disturbance.

But let us suppose that they are the same person, or at least friends.
The fact remains (if the available records are complete) that
JtdIRL blocked an IP that had made no edits but a POV edit war --
a rather managable 4 posts of the same 3 paragraphs over 6 hours --
and 2 reasonable edits (no "baboons" or threats) to the talk page.
In particular, the IP committed no vandalism, yet that was the reason given.
It's little comfort to learn that users of incorrectly blocked IPs
may later turn to vandalism /after/ being falsely accused of it.

There was also an odd note suggesting that the person had been blocked before,
yet there is no record of any other block that seems to be relevant.
So I'm still hoping that there is past history here
that JtdIRL just didn't explain in the mailing list post,
but which would show why an apparent newbie was treated this way.

-- Toby


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Protecting Wikipedia as it grows ever larger

body:
J. Noel Chiappa wrote:
> First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have
to permanently be
> protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate
level of
> protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an
account, b) has
> it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of
accepted edits. But
> allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to
edit them is just
> going to turn into a constant edit war.

I agree with you and Jimbo. This is an excellent idea. It
doesn't prevent anyone (except trolls) from joining us, or
from editing articles. It is an unintrusive way of
preventing damage while still maintaining our principles.

> Blocking IP addresses will work for a while to stop that,
but if it doesn't
> maybe you'll have to disallow all edits from
non-logged-in users, and maybe
> even go to a system were a new user is watched for a
while to make sure they
> aren't a vandal.

At the moment, we do not need to do this. The number of
trolls is small compared to the number of serious
contributors and newbies.

However, over time the number of people visting Wikipedia
will become huge, and eventually vandalism will become a
problem that will take all of our time and effort to deal
with.  Eventually, we will probably need to implement this
suggestion.

Every day Wikipedia becomes more and more well known, and
the use of the Internet worldwide is growing by leaps and
bounds. We would be naive to underestimate the threat posed
by the less than 1% of visitors who are out to cause havoc.
Less than 1% of a huge number, is still a very large
number.

Robert (RK)

=====
"I prefer a wicked person who knows he is wicked, to a righteous person who knows he is righteous".
The Seer of Lublin [Jacob Isaac Ha-Hozeh Mi-Lublin, 1745-1815]

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
On Fri, 22 Aug 2003 07:21:35 -0700, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> gave
utterance to the following:

> Gustav Foseid wrote:
>> Thai said, I think a more localized way of doing donations should be
>> considered for Europe and perhaps Asia.
>
> I agree with you, although I do note that Paypal claims to work
> perfectly fine in most (not all) European and Asian countries.
>
> If there are other services in Europe or Asia that (a) are popular
> and easier to use for people there, and (b) easy for me to set up,
> then please let me know.
>
I would suggest Worldpay, but their fees are rather high. (in NZ it's
about $NZ500 a year, commission of 4% and a GBP2.5 fee every time they
remit to your account, so unless business is brisk it's uneconomic. But
they do offer payment in a range of currencies, remitted in the one of
your choice, and it might be worth checking if they offer a special deal
for NPO's.
I don't mind paying by credit card in $US, but there has been enough FUD
spread about Paypal that I plan never to create an account there - I don't
trust them to keep my CC data secure.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

references:
<20030821130355.B456@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>
	<20030822071941.H23554@joey.bomis.com>
	<dviptix92wu.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>

body:
Gustav Foseid wrote:
> It was gmane that that mangled the address.

Why don't we turn that feature off? It's clear that it can cause
confusion, and we don't mangle addresses in the web archives of the
lists.

-M-


from_name: Jitse Niesen

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Out of curiosity, does this apply across the entire EU, or only within
> the euro-zone?  For example, could you send money DE->UK (or vice versa)
> for free?

I did this recently. As Joachim said, it is free if you provide the SWIFT
and IBAN code, but there is one catch: it is only free if the transfer is
in euros (i.e., if the UK account is in euros). Otherwise, the English
bank will charge you - in my case (Barclays), the charge is six pounds.
However, if I understand it correctly, the German bank won't be able to
charge you; before, both banks charged you. The rule is from 1 July 2003,
so not all bank employees know about it.

Hope this helps,
Jitse Niesen


from_name: Merritt L. Perkins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Server

body:
I think of a server as having several large hard drives and the related
hardware so that it can act as a large database. The subject is too
complicated for a brief description.
How servers work is described in "howstuffworks", "How Domain Servers
Work". It seems that each server is a large database and that they all
can communicate with one another and that several servers communicate
with each other to reach the desired information. The same information
may be stored on more than one server so that if one server fails the
information will not be lost.
Why do you want to get a server? Is your present server not working
right, likely to fail, or not large enough? Do you want to replace it? Do
you want to store a copy of the information on your present server on
another server?
Will you have backup power supplies on your servers?
Merritt L. Perkins


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] On deletion notices

body:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [ wikipedia-Bugs-793759 ] POST RECIPIES IS IMPOSIBLE!!!
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 07:05:00 -0700

Summary: POST RECIPIES IS IMPOSIBLE!!!

Initial Comment:
Yestaerday I posted two recipies from Argentina (Locro
and Milanesas) and Today there isn?t it here...
Why?...I need a special authoritation for do it?...and, if
this is real... Where is the free spirit of "Wikipedia"!?!?!?!

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

See, this is the kind of stuff I get cluttering up the bug reports queue
when we don't have deletion notices.

I checked the logs, and the pages in question appear to have been posted
in Spanish on the English Wikipedia, and were deleted by Jiang with
reason "not in English" within minutes of their posting. I don't see any
sign that they were ever listed in 'Votes for Deletion', nor that any
attempt was made to contact the author (an anonymous IP with no other
contribs).

They weren't _great_ pages, and both pages had had newbie experiments
dropped in them last year, but summary deletion isn't necessarily the
best thing.

Putting a notice on the pages that they should be moved to
es.wikipedia.org and/or translated into English would have taken just a
few seconds, and may have made a new contributor very pleased and
interested instead of angered and alienated.

(This isn't a criticism directed at Jiang, it's just a note on how this
now very widespread click-delete-and-forget philosophy doesn't look very
friendly from the other side.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] searching for restored articles

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> My admired developers!
>
> There's an article about [[P.D.Q. Bach]] in the German Wikipedia which
> has been deleted and restored again:
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.D.Q._Bach
>
> The funny thing that I can't find it when I search for "Bach" or
> "Schickele". Are restored pages not added to the search index (or
> whatever it's called)?

Yeah, that's a bug. Edit the page and it should add it back for now...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Björn Lindqvist

body:
 >First, some pages (e.g. Israel) will probably just have to permanently be
 >> protected. Well, maybe you need some sort of intermediate level of
 >> protection; e.g. only editable by someone who a) has an account, b) has
 >> it for a month, and c) has made a threshold level of accepted edits. But
 >> allowing anyone, even someone who's not logged in, to edit them is just
 >> going to turn into a constant edit war.

 >This is actually a pretty good idea.  I'm always in favor of finding
 >ways to turn our blunt instruments into 'softer' tools.  What I like
 >about your proposal here is that it *is* soft.  It could be used only
 >for certain pages marked as 'controversial', and that only *after*
 >they've become targetted for some kind of mass attack, or if an
 >ongoing flame war has lasted for months with no hope of resolution.

I think it is a *very* bad idea. It will add another level to the
Wikipedia hiearchy. I'd rather have the sporadic vandals and flame wars
than let that happen. In my utopia every anon should be treated exactly
the same as Jimbo Wales.
Let's just accept the fact that there will always be vandals. They
haven't fucked up WP yet so why worry?
It's like those patriot laws... :-)

BL


subject: [WikiEN-l] Please stop this harassment

body:
There are now six Wikipedia pages about banning me, most
started by EntmootsOfTrolls. Worse, he is now getting a lot
of support from Martin (MyRedDice) and Stevertigo (who also
simultaneously claims to be support me a Sysop; he thinks
that no one noticed he has been engaged in both campaigns
simulatneously.)

None of these pages are about discussing a ban. This is
about an enraged and unstable individual who is engaged in
full-press harassment campaign.  And some of you here are
egging him on.

For shame.

Please stop the people engaged in this harssment and
vandalism. I don't know what else to say.  Otherwise, you
are making this this place a violently hateful community,
one whose reputation will only suffer.

In sadness at the vast amount of hatred,

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] EntmootsOfTrolls and fake Wikipedia articles.

body:
I know that Jimbo and others here have spoken to
EntmootsOfTrolls, but EoT is getting more out of control.
He has stepped up his actions, and is now is creating
parodies of my Wikipedia User page.

It is my understanding that it is forbidden to create
Wikipedia articles whose contents exist solely to slander
Wikipedia contributors. And this is in addition to his
harassment that has already been agreed upon as bannable.
Since EoT is refusing to follow Wikipedia consensus, even
though he has been warned he could be banned, and since he
is actually making things worse, we are left with no choice
but to ban him.

This is an addition to my homepage.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RK/A_Liberal_Defense_of_Zionism

And here is the bizzare new Wikipedia article by
EntmootsOfTrolls.
User talk:RK/A Liberal Defense of Zionism

I understand that EoT may have some "issues" that prevent
him from functioning normally. But the rest of you have no
such excuse. Please stop supporting his non-stop
harassment, and abuse of Wikipedia article policy.

We have a choice: Make this a community where people can
work together, or make it a community which supports group
psychological harassment.  The choice is yours. Please
choose in a way which demonstrates wisdom.

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Op vr 22-08-2003, om 18:12 schreef Jimmy Wales:
> A similar change would need to be made to CC SA 2.0, so that it would
> allow for relicensing under LFDL.

The CC Licenses have a problem of their own:
they don't have an  "or any later version"-clause.
Perhaps we could add that ourselves if we start using it.

Wouter Vanden Hove
www.opencursus.be

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Dit berichtdeel is digitaal ondertekend
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/attachments/20030823/5cf7a300/attachment.pgp


from_name: Tucci

subject: [WikiEN-l] howdy folks

body:
hey, I had some trouble subscribing due to Yahoo
placing the confirmation request in my bulk mail
folder, but TUF-KAT is back to Wikipedia and the
mailing list.

Quite naturally, the first thing I did upon my
much-heralded return is get confused.  Is there a page
somewhere that explains how the table of contents
thing works?  Most specifically, why is [[All Eyez on
Me]] messed up, formatting-wise? (IE 5.0 on MacOS 9.2)

Tokingly yours, TUF-KAT

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Rick

body:
EofT is totally out of control.  He wrote the following on my talk page:

" User:RK has several times tried to shove whole debates onto my talk pages, and not onto my /ban page where it would go if he had a real issue with me, but into new files he created. This eventually ended up at Community case:RK where those who dislike /ban pages are now considering ditching it all. So RK doesn't respect conventions, nor my talk space. I owe him no respect in return. Beyond that, my comments were only about this one article he posted, and if you look at that article, you will see a link to "discuss this page". I clicked on it, and ended up at the page I dutifully posted on, so anyone else discussing the article could find it. So I don't consider this disrespectful - which shoving it in the face of every reader of his User_talk page would be. Third, and more like an in-joke, referring only to an earlier joke I made on that page, RK has accussed me of harassment, hate speech, etc., in a series of lying and libelling posts to the mailing list - this is persistent
 behaviour of his and he does it to others, often, and sees conspiracies where really there is just a common consensus on civility. So if everything I say on certain topics is to be understood as harassment, hate speech, sickness, etc., then, I am free to adopt those labels freely to describe what I am about to say about his politics, or (worst) to describe his politics. After all, RK is not being banned for using those words, so why should I be? When he's banned for his behaviour, I shall certainly take the lesson and never call anything "hatespeech" or "harassment" under his criteria. Until then, I think everyone should call anything they don't like by those words. EofT "

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20030823/151fa32a/attachment.htm


from_name: J. Noel Chiappa

body:
     > From: "james duffy" <jtdirl at hotmail.com>

     > An anonymous user appeared ... The user in question proceeded to
     > re-insert his anti-zionist rant and verbally abuse everyone else who
     > touched it. ... When he continued abusing other users .. I blocked him.
     > He then came back as a new IP added in the same POV stuff and called
     > people ''fucking morons'', ''fucking hypocrites, etc
     > Among his talk page comments were

     >> <Sarcasm> Yes, I'll admit it: everyone here on Wikipedia is a paid
     >> propogandist for the worldwise Zionist colonialist genocidal
     >> conspiracy! That's why we have articles on Israeli terrorism and Deir
     >> Yassin massacre, and why the Palestinian page doesn't even *contain*
     >> the words "terror" or "terrorist" or "terrorism". </Sarcasm>

Ahh, you seem to have been (in part) tripped up by a confusing edit. That's
not stuff added by an anonymous user, that's some stuff I added *replying* to
the anonymous poster, which got separated from my signature line (a bit
further down) by an intervening comment added later (by Cema). (I have now
put the two parts of my comment back together.) The anon poster said:

     >>> The more you ugly baboons try to control things and hide the truth,
     >>> the more you contribute to your own perennial replusiveness.

and I was trying to point out to them that the Wikipedia was hardly a
one-sided, pro-Israel, site.

In your excerpt, you also left out the next two lines of my comment (which
were in front of the split):

     >> What this all *means* is subject to debate. But adding clearly
     >> erroneous claims .. isn't doing any good.

I think you need to take a little longer reading things, because in this case
you have somehow completely misunderstood a fairly straightforward comment; I
would have thought it was obvious from the content that that was *not* the
anonymous poster.

	Noel

PS: I didn't realize that sarcasm wasn't allowed on a Talk page. I *did* flag
it, for goodness' sake.


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] On deletion notices

body:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [ wikipedia-Bugs-793759 ] POST RECIPIES IS IMPOSIBLE!!!
> Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2003 07:05:00 -0700
>
> Summary: POST RECIPIES IS IMPOSIBLE!!!
>
> Initial Comment:
> Yestaerday I posted two recipies from Argentina (Locro
> and Milanesas) and Today there isn?t it here...
> Why?...I need a special authoritation for do it?...and, if
> this is real... Where is the free spirit of "Wikipedia"!?!?!?!

R
T
F
M

;)


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Op za 23-08-2003, om 15:02 schreef Toby Bartels:
> I really don't know anything about CC's Lawrence Lessig.
> Given the internecine political battles between "free" and "open",
> does anybody know how RMS and Lessig feel about each other?

The difference between free software and open source
is that open source emphasizes the access to source code, and not the
rights you are given in the license.

This is what Raymond writes in the OSI Faq:
http://www.opensource.org/advocacy/faq.php
"Are you guys opposed to intellectual property rights?"
"The Open Source Initiative does not have a position on whether ideas
can be owned, whether patents are good or bad, or any of the related
controversies. We think the economic self-interest arguments for open
source are strong enough that nobody needs to go on any moral crusades
about it."

So Lessig and Stallman are on the same side of this, emphasizing users
rights when they buy copyrighted works.

> I know that Lessig wrote the foreword to RMS's collected essays;
> but OTOH, Lessig says "open" rather than "free" now.

His best speech is called "Free Culture", his upcoming book has the same
title.  http://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/

Wouter Vanden Hove
http://www.opencursus.be
http://www.open-education.org

PS: Whoops, I've got two "Open"s in my urls. :)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Dit berichtdeel is digitaal ondertekend
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/attachments/20030823/d080a4ca/attachment.pgp


from_name: Kurt Jansson

body:
My admired developers!

There's an article about [[P.D.Q. Bach]] in the German Wikipedia which
has been deleted and restored again:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.D.Q._Bach

The funny thing that I can't find it when I search for "Bach" or
"Schickele". Are restored pages not added to the search index (or
whatever it's called)?

Kurt


body:
== Summary: Step by step, my initial "extreme disturbance" disappears. ==

james duffy wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Furthermore, you apparently protected the page to win an edit war
>>that you were taking place in.

>I did nothing of the sort and how dare you suggest it.

I dared suggest it because I thought that it was true.
You know that I've never been on any campaign against you,
and I've mostly had only good comments about you in the past.
Please don't respond to me as if I'm engaging in personal attacks.

You are correct; you did nothing of the sort.  That was my mistake.
And I feel much better about the situation having realised that mistake!
Assuming that the IP had initially been blocked appropriately,
you simply reverted the addition of a banned user
and protected the page to stop them from coming back with different IPs.
That's all quite reasonable, assuming the initial blocking,
which reduces my "extremely disturbed" state to merely "disturbed".
The issue now is the initial blocking.

>An anonymous user
>appeared and added in highly POV rascist material into a page.

The material was not racist!  But it was indeed POV.
Newbies need to be taught NPOV all the time.
After all, the material that they were addressing
is legitimate but not covered in the article.
If this person was new to Wikipedia -- discussed below --
then it's easy to imagine that they didn't realise
that it /is/ covered in Wikipedia, just elsewhere.
And given that, a link in the Demographics section would be helpful
(nothing more is needed), so there's even an NPOVisation of the additions,
which is to replace them which such an explicit link.
And even if that ends up not being the best solution for the page,
still a good-faith discussion with the user is the right response.
And indeed, that's what was happening on the talk page --
where the user was belligerent but not bannably so
(the "baboons" and obscenities came later -- see below).

>The material
>could not be substantiated and the language used suggested it was someone
>trying in a very blatant way to POV the article.

It's blatant only to somebody that understands NPOV.
If one believes that the claimed facts are undeniably true,
then there's nothing blatantly biased about it at all.

>I reverted the addition
>and notified those who had worked on the article as I suspected they might
>be better placed to deal with the issue. The user in question proceeded to
>re-insert his anti-zionist rant and verbally abuse everyone else who
>touched it.

Actually, you /didn't/ revert the addition until the very last time,
after the blocking.  That's what made me happy above! ^_^

>I checked his list of contributions to try to ascertain whether
>this was a rather naive newbie with a problem of grasping NPOV, or a
>vandal. (The page in question had been subject to nakedly sectarian
>vandalism for a while.) All the evidence I could find was of a user who had
>made other contributions that had been seen as vandalism and had been
>reverted elsewhere. When he continued abusing other users, in the belief
>that he was a vandal I blocked him.

This is exactly the kind of evidence that I was hoping to see!
That's why my previous posts explicitly mentioned the possibility
that you'd left something out of your explanation,
some additional history that would explain your actions.
It's disappointing to me that you /still/ won't explain it.
After all, there are no other edits in the IP's contribution history,
nor in the contributions of any of the other IPs that you blocked,
so how am I supposed to know what this evidence is?

Although you still aren't saying just what it is,
you do seem to be implying now that there was past history.
So I checked further back in the edit history of [[Israel]],
where I saw that /another/ IP was doing the same thing a few days earlier.
If nothing else, that changes the nature of the edit war a good deal!
(I said before that it was just over 6 hours, but this new IP lengthens it.)
It would have been nice if you'd mentioned this other IP
(not a 68.120.*.* IP, BTW), so that readers would know about it.

Even better, I see that this other IP had been talked to about NPOV
(on a user talk page) and that the user must have seen it too,
since there was a reply.  Furthermore, the reply indicates
that the user has no interest in learning about NPOV.
So that explains why the user was /not/ a newbie
and did /not/ simply have trouble with NPOV.
This reduces me from "disturbed" to "concerned".
Mainly, I'm concerned that your blocking notice mentioned vandalism,
rather than willful refusual to abide by NPOV.
Gone are the days when new IPs are blocked only for vandalism,
but the concept of vandalism (like "He has a small penis.")
is still useful to distinguish the types of problematic users.

>He then came back as a new IP added in the same POV stuff and called people
>''fucking morons'', ''fucking hypocrites, etc

Indeed, but this was only after you blocked his first IP for "vandalism".
It seems likely to me that he (or she) felt provoked by your actions,
to which he responded in anger.  He hadn't written this stuff before.
So I wouldn't feel any better about the blocking
if an unjust blocking had /caused/ somebody to lose their cool,
rather than being the /effect/ of such behaviour.
Luckily, I've discovered the valid cause of the blocking above,
but these insults from several hours afterwards don't enter into it.

>Among his talk page comments were

><Sarcasm> Yes, I'll admit it: everyone here on Wikipedia is a paid
>propogandist for the worldwise Zionist colonialist genocidal conspiracy!
>That's why we have articles on Israeli terrorism and Deir Yassin massacre,
>and why the Palestinian page doesn't even *contain* the words "terror" or
>"terrorist" or "terrorism". </Sarcasm>  Look, there are lots of facts in
>the world. It's a fact that the Israelis assassinated Muhammad Sadr, the
>Islamic Jihad leader in Hebron. It's a fact that afte that, two Palestinian
>militant groups, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, claimed responsibility for a
>deliberate attack on a civililan bus that killed quite a few people,
>including many children. It's a fact that the Israelis then killed Abu
>Shanab, one of the founders of Hamas, in the Gaza strip.

As a matter of fact, that was /not/ among his talk page comments.
Thos comments were written (and signed) by [[User:Jnc|Noel]]:
<http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Israel&diff=1330912&oldid=1330886>
Furthermore, there is nothing objectionable about those comments!
They are not vandalism, nor are they any other reason to block an IP.
I suppose that you're just misinterpreting things in anger.

>I have disagreed with some users on the page who have been pushing a less
>than NPOV pro-Israel stance. I reverted and requested the banning of a user
>who inserted rascist anti-Israel attacks all over wiki. I have regularly
>reworded mentions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the current events
>page to remove one-sided comments from either side and ensure equality of
>language and interpretation.

Yes, you have been a good supporter of NPOV!
(That's why I can understand that you would view
the repeated insertion of POV text in an edit war as vandalism.)
I understand your "republican monarchist" dilemma and sympathise.
I'm definitely /not/ accusing you of bias in this matter;
the question was the response to bias in somebody else.

>I was NOT involved in an edit war with this IP
>contributor. I was simply doing what I was doing with /everyone else/,
>ensuring that NPOV standards were followed. The behaviour and threats of
>the user in question pretty much shows that he was not some poor newbie
>wrongly treated but someone determined to vandalise articles.

I guess that this has all been covered above.

>/If/ I had abused my sysop powers to 'win' against an opponent, I would not
>have drawn attention to the fact by contacting other users, by putting a
>note on the Vandalism page and sent a note about it around on the wiki
>list, would I?

Actually, this is probably what made me "***extremely*** disturbed",
rather than only "extremely disturbed", in my initial post.
It seemed that you expected our disapproval of the POV edits
to cause us to overlook your violation of explicit protection guidelines.
So that's one reason that I was happy to realise my mistake,
that you had not violated those guidelines at all. ^_^

>I stand over my decisions and resent your gross and dishonest
>misrepresention of them.

"gross" is debatable; I hope that I explained my mistakes.
But "dishonest" is wrong.  My post was in good faith.
I'd be insulted that you would accuse me of doing otherwise,
if I were the type to be insulted by what I'm sure you wrote in anger.

So now, only these issues remain:
* Your initial post to the mailing list didn't explain the history
  of the situation, which could hinder readers' understanding of it.
  In particular, you never mentioned the 67.30.99.* edits
  that proved that this wasn't a newbie NPOV error.
* When I misunderstood the situation (variously), you responded in anger.
  It was only because I know that you're normally a reasonable person
  that I went back and rechecked my understanding before replying now.
  That's how I discovered the 67.30.99.* edits, but other people
  might have been too insulted by your reply to look for them.
* The word "vandalism" continues its unfortnate loss of meaning,
  as it gets applied in a banning notice to (deliberate) POVness.
  Although obstinately and deliberately engaging in POV edits
  is reasonably bannable, that's not what the word "vandalism" means.
* An accusation of racism on behalf of the Israeli government
  has been Orwellianly interpreted as racism on behalf of the accuser.
  (In a more complicated context, that can be a wise deduction,
  such as when people excuse all lex solis regimes except Israel.
  But many people are just ignorant about that situation.)
None of these issues makes me "extremely disturbed",
and I don't see the need to follow them up here,
although I'll talk about them further if anybody wishes to.

So I'm happy now. ^_^

-- Toby