subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's what I see as a good thing. By involving people in the
> > discussion who are not emotionally attached to the subject being
> > discussed we can get views from outside the field of "fanatics" (sorry
> > for not knowing a better word here).
> >
> > I always try to back up my vote with some point of policy or research
> > (see the photographer on AFD today). More people should base their
> > votes off facts instead of "Keep, X is good/encyclopedic/verifiable".
> > They should address the policy point that's being addressed. I.e "What
> > do you mean not-notable? They were the main guest on Oprah last week
> > and they have a top 100  Amazon sales rank." instead of "Writers are
> > notable".
> >
> > You could change the deletion process a thousand times, but if people
> > put their own feelings of what should be included in the discussion
> > (and preferably immediately). We'd agree on stuff a lot easier.
>
> Perhaps closing admins should simply ignore opinions of the form "nn,
> delete" and "Keep all schools".  People will stop offering such such
> bland opinions if they realize that their input is being ignored and
> will instead offer more useful commentary.

Having a "bland" opinion doesn't mean that the opinion is incorrect.

I think all schools are inherently notable.  I also think all US
Presidents are inherently notable.  Both are "bland" opinions, neither
deserves less respect than the other, but judgements about their
correctness must be made independently.

The schools issue is an especially bad example for when to demand
further explanation, as we have an entire project page dedicated to
the pro and con arguments, each fully explained, each fully rational,
but each also diametrically opposed to the other.  It's a bad idea to
whack this hornet's nest again, demanding that everyone re-justify
their views when they're already clearly laid out on a Wikipedia
project page.

The only reason I don't reference the school project opinion page
anymore is that I grew tired of constantly posting a wikilink that is
unlikely to be clicked on.  I apologize and will resume linking to the
page the next time I vote "Keep" for a school.

The place where overly simplified arguments don't belong is in the
nomination.  Elsewhere, it depends on context.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongly deleted articles

body:
On 9/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> So have they been undeleted and expanded yet?
Well Buffalo Lake, Alberta is undeleted and pending expansion. But, I
added a stub tag which doubled it's length!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

body:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
> amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
> some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
> encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
Isn't that exactly why we exist?


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> Kelly Martin wrote:
> > Perhaps closing admins should simply ignore opinions of the form "nn,
> > delete" and "Keep all schools".  People will stop offering such such
> > bland opinions if they realize that their input is being ignored and
> > will instead offer more useful commentary.
>
> What if "keep all schools" is the reason the person is voting to keep?
> There are many that feel that all X for some X are "notable".

I would recommend that such opinions be given low (or perhaps even no)
weight.  Arguments to keep or delete an article on the merits of the
specific article (or, rather, the subject of the article, which should
be the main basis for a keep/delete decision) should be given more
weight than those based on any categories in which the article (or its
subject) might happen to fall in.

Kelly


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request
	for ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
Yes, I suggest writing in HamNoSys or Stokoe.

There is already software available that can convert from those to video.

Although there isn't currently software to convert from HamNoSys or
Stokoe to SSW, it's certainly feasible.

The only issue with writing in HamNoSys (or Stokoe) is that most deaf
people can't write using those. It's already been said that wouldn't
be as much of an issue because it can be converted to video. However,
the main problem would be with editors -- most of the people who are
able to use HamNoSys are experts, rather than laypeople.

If we could find even one or two people who know HamNoSys that would
be willing to transcribe videos, however, that might solve the
problem: somebody could sign an article, send it to those people as an
ogg or mpg file, and that person could transcribe it. Then, if anyone
wanted in the future, they could request to insert or remove parts.
Cumbersome, yes, but it's better than nothing at all.

Mark

On 14/09/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> > Stokoe and HamNoSys are very easy to write using computers, and can
> > use fonts and normal text rather than special markup languages.
> > (clustering "sig" characters in Stokoe present a difficulty, but not
> > an impossibility, for the average font-founder)
>
> Why not write in any of those, and generate any of the SignWriting
> ones? Or user's choice and conversion, like Simplified/Traditional
> Chinese? Anyway, using written English is probably the worst option.
>
> --
> Ausir
> Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
> http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The place where overly simplified arguments don't belong is in the
> nomination.  Elsewhere, it depends on context.

I'll definitely agree with that.  I'm totally in favor of speedy keeps
for sketchy, overly vague nominations.

Kelly


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia page protection report

body:
It most certainly is a problem. Page protection is antiwiki, and
should only be used when absolutely nessecary.

Mark

On 14/09/05, Daniel Wunsch <the.gray at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 September 2005 02:39, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> > I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
> > complexity:
> >
> > * limit protections by policy
> > * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> > the article namespace
> > * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks
>
> i'm not sure whether this really is a problem,
> but if so, it's a social one, not a technical.
>
> daniel
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net>
>
>>
>>
>>>At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is
>>>minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people
>>>have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on
>>>familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or
>>>not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for
>>>them in the first place).
>>
>>Critics will.
>>
>>
>
>The same critics that doomed wikipedia and claimed britannica will always
>be better?

Dealing with perception is as important as dealing with reality.

Jay.


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Forbidding such images for no practical reason smacks of fascism to me. So once
> the technical issue I mentioned is fixed, I see no valid reason for us to not
> be more permissive on image licensing in the user namespace (within the limits
> of WP:NOT a personal web page provider)
>
> -- mav

Practical reason #1: The submit button and accompanying text referring
to the licensing of submissions are identical.  We'll have to change
those.  #2: Inertia and lack of differentiation between user space and
the rest of Wikipedia.  People already expect to be able to take items
from all of Wikipedia under GFDL license.  #3: License hell as
described in the next paragraph.

If we make an arbitrary exception, I think it could ONLY apply from
whatever point we choose going forward.  Current content has already
been submitted under the old terms.  Deletion of previous content is
really just a courtesy to whoever requests it, as mirrors already have
the previous content.  If the original owners / authors /
photographers submitted it, they've already granted the license.  If
they weren't the original owner / author / photographer, then we
delete since if the submitter couldn't legally grant the license
agreed upon submission.

This all seems like a lot of work and fuss to avoid telling someone to
host the information they don't want to license on any of a vast
number of free webhosts.  We don't have to be nasty about enforcing
our policy, but since mirrors exist, it is probably a good idea to
reaffirm what people have agreed to upon submission and strongly
suggest that they have their content removed if that license was not
their intent.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
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JAY JG wrote:
> > From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> >
> > On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> >
> > Does it? How?
>
> It reduces the credibility of the project.

In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how
credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for
centuries hence.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
Phroziac wrote:

>Zomgwtfbbq! Wikimedia on Wheels!
>
>On 9/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Fastfission wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...
>>>
>>>There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
>>>usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
>>>seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
>>>
>>>Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
>>>Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
>>>the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
>>>colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
>>>with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
>>>activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
>>>that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
>>>Intelligence Agency.
>>>http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal
>>>
>>>Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
>>>the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
>>>considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
>>>is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
>>>In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
>>>the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
>>>would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
>>>Which, as I understand it, is verboten.
>>>
>>>
>>>
[snip]

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>So they will SUE US IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY? :)
>>
>>It's only illegal to use their image if you impersonate them. The
>>copyright of the image itself is that the image is in the public domain.
>>Effectively, it's a Trademark (albeit one without copyright), the
>>misrepresentation of which may render one liable to prosecution.
>>
>>And if they want to stop us, fsck them. We'll move the media servers to
>>Paris or Amsterdam, on wheels if needs be.
>>
>>--
>>Alphax                      |   /"\
>>
>>

A sort of "Howl's Moving Encyclopedia"?

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...Do you do RC patrol?  I do, and I know that this would hinder
> my work in that area.

I don't see why it would hinder our work, it would still show up in
the logs. And the redlinks there would make it stand out..


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for AS/English Wikipedia

body:
> Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
> textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
> know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia

True, but SignWriting + video is definitely better than a fork of
English Wikipedia + video.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>If you don't like the requirements that each of the other communities
>establishes, don't try to short circuit their processes through
>discussion on the "parent project".  Go there, and convince them it is
>in their best interest to grant common adminship.  Don't start here
>and say "Hey, they should grant me adminship upon arrival".  Here, I
>think the only appropriate discussion is whether Wikipedia-EN grants
>other projects' admins immediate access to our admin toolbox upon
>arrival.  Just as they have no business telling us who to grant
>adminship to, we have no business telling them.

I believe that it would be inappropriate for me to make such a request
at commons-l without discussing it first here.  If there is agreement
here that it would be a good thing, I would expect that discussion at
commons-l would follow.

I wonder whether commons has become more of a separate community than
was originally intended.  As the name implies, it was originally
supposed to be a shared area for media for all mw projects, ideally
with participation from each of them.  In that light, I'm surprised at
the degree of independence commons participants seem to expect.


from_name: Worldtraveller

body:
I'd support that position.  How could having unencyclopaedic articles not
damage the credibility of an encyclopaedia?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kelly Martin [mailto:kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com]
> Sent: 14 September 2005 4:37 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea
>
>
> On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> It reduces the credibility of the project.
>
> That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce
> much in the way of support.
>
> Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite Bans with No Oversight

body: Hmm, I thought it was just Enviroknot.


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 9/14/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:

> Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
> textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
> know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia

As said before, I would not consider that a 'true wikipedia'. The
editability of such a Wikipedia would be close to zero (either leave
it as it is or completely do it over), and as such it would be
non-wiki in my opinion.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article deletion (proposed 1 month hiatus)

body:
On 9/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm unable to follow the logic here. Why does this follow? And why would
> > it make a difference, since non-copyvios would be rejected by the CP
> > process anyway? If a page is a copyvio then it _should_ go on CP, if
> > it's not a copyvio then it shouldn't. The means used to remove the
> > articles don't matter.
> >
> > I'm not sure what you mean by "tactic of last resort", either. Do you
> > mean that people who are dead-set on deleting an article will try
> > accusing it of being a copyvio if a VfD fails to remove it, even if it's
> > not? That's bad behavior, again regardless of the means used to remove
> > the articles.
>
> It has been known. It will happen again.

Is it just me, or are you looking for any excuse to use against the system?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report

body:
On 9/14/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
> a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
> think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist. Maybe not on all
> projects ? Can you from your data gather such an information ? I mean,
> are there situations when a long-protected article actually grow and
> evolve during the protection ?

As far as I understand, an admin can edit the article if there is a
rough consensus to do so on the talk page.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I saw Sam Korn enforcing that one time, dunno how far he went with it though...
> Yes, it is copyright infringement. No, the law doesn't care. The law
> has absolutely no regard for anything but the people with better
> lawyers.

I got shouted at, became thoroughly depressed, and gave up.

All fair use images not included on articles should be candidates for
speedy deletion, assuming there has been time to have included them.

Sam


from_name: Bass, Joshua L

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
Using 1.5, am trying to add a link to the sidebar defining a listing of
All Pages from a particular namespace:

http://www.350z-tech.com/zwiki?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=
100

The link changes to:

http://www.350z-tech.com/zwiki/--error:_link_target_missing--

How can I create this link in the sidebar?


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
On 14/09/05, Terry Bader <bader at tcbader.com> wrote:
> I would be against this however making it the First in the tab ordering would be great.  Tab once and its there and ready to start searching.
>
> ~Terry

So where does the cursor go at the moment? I can't see any harm in it
defaulting to the search box.

I'm a little reluctant to formally suggest adding a wikicities-style
Google search box, as I know Brion and Kate (and probably others too)
have invested a fair bit of time and effort in the current Lucerne
search system, and I don't want to offend anyone :-/

Dan


from_name: Michal Migurski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
>> I realize I'm asking RTFM-type questions here - mainly I'm
>> looking  for
>> advice on which FM to R.
>
> There aren't too many Ms to R, F or otherwise. :)
>
> Insofar as there is documentation, it's probably mostly going to be
> the
> comments in the source code. (There are phpdoc comments on most method
> headers, though not all complete.)

I've seen these - having just recently discovered phpDoc, they are
very much appreciated.

> The internal API has changed significantly over time and remains
> unstable, but you can look at the existing source code to see how
> things
> are currently done.
>
> (Some of the maintenance scripts however are out of date or
> unmaintained
> because we don't use them much ourselves.)

This looks extremely promising. It's helpful to see semi-official
scripts that dig into the code, to understand how its authors view
the internals.

Off to dig,
-mike.

----------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
                  415.558.1610


from_name: Ben E.

body:
No, no, you have it all wrong. it's not Sarah defending Wikipedia, but her
sock, Valentina. ;)

--[[en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
On 9/14/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a little reluctant to formally suggest adding a wikicities-style
> Google search box, as I know Brion and Kate (and probably others too)
> have invested a fair bit of time and effort in the current Lucerne
> search system, and I don't want to offend anyone :-/

There is also the possibility that it could be considered to be bias
towards Google.  The only reason we have the Google box on the "search
disabled" page is that it is the only way WP can be searched.  Now, of
course, if Google want to promote themselves and donate the coding and
algorithm for their search engine to Wikimedia, cool!

Sam


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia page protection report

body:
On 9/14/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> * limit protections by policy
> * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> the article namespace
> * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks

All three would be highly welcomed by me, speaking as an en admin.

2 shouldn't be that major a feature, as the code to change "edit this
page" to "view source" already exists. 1, at least on en, seems to be
active and working well.  3 would be very welcome indeed, as it is
very easy to forget a page that you have protected yourself.

I hope someone could code these changes in for 1.6, or whatever the
next upgrade is going to be.

Sam


list: commons-l

from_name: Felipe Micaroni Lalli

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Trademarks

body:
You know. :)
Sorry.

14 Sep 2005 02:19:00 +0200, Claus F?rber
<claus at xn--frber-gra.muc.de<http://frber-gra.muc.de>
>:
>
> Felipe Micaroni Lalli <micaroni at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> > The system is free but the Gnome logo isn't under free license. Try
> create a
> > System with this logo. You can't.
>
> That's trademark law, not copyright. Even if you draw a "confusingly
> similar" image, which is not considered a derivate by copyright law and
> of which you hold full copyright, you still can't use it to create your
> own system. You can't even use the character sequence
> "G"-"N"-"O"-"M"-"E", although it is inelegible for copyright.
>
> On the other hand, tradmark law allows you to do whatever you want with
> that logo unless you claim to be GNOME Foundation (or your products
> theirs or endorsed by them).
>
> > Like the Wikimedia logo.
>
> The Wikimedia logos are actually both trademarked AND copyrighted by
> Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Claus
> --
> http://www.faerber.muc.de
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
um abra?o,
Felipe
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body:
Well done, Sarah.

That's precisely the way trolls should be dealt with.

Sam


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Being granted administrator access is a sign of community respect,
> earned within the community. If you want the respect of other related
> project communities, participate in those other communities. I expect
> members of other Wikimedia communities to establish themselves at
> Wikipedia-EN before they get admin access.

 Why? I don't see what is accomplished by this. Right now, someone who has
made 5,000 edits and is a well-known and trustworthy user on en.wiki, has to
jump through all those hoops again on other projects just to prove
"establishment" in the community or whatever. Admins are supposed to be
trustworthy folks. If you already know that the person is trustworthy and
uses the tools properly, what is accomplished by forcing them to
"participate in those other communities" while vandalism is going unchecked?

If you don't like the requirements that each of the other communities
> establishes, don't try to short circuit their processes through
> discussion on the "parent project". Go there, and convince them it is
> in their best interest to grant common adminship. Don't start here
> and say "Hey, they should grant me adminship upon arrival". Here, I
> think the only appropriate discussion is whether Wikipedia-EN grants
> other projects' admins immediate access to our admin toolbox upon
> arrival. Just as they have no business telling us who to grant
> adminship to, we have no business telling them.

 I don't think anyone is trying to order anyone to do anything. He's just
opening up the discussion. Besides, it would be nice if we could at least
say that en.wiki has a general consensus in favor of this issue before we
bring it to them. If we don't even agree, it won't make much sense to
involve the commons.

Even though adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", I'm opposed to
> any form of automatic common adminship on Wikipedia-EN for other
> project admins. If it truly is no big deal, then it should be no big
> deal to establish yourself anywhere you'd like to have admin tools.

 When Jimbo said "This should be no big deal" he did *not* mean that it
should be no big deal to go through some lengthly, arbitrarily defined, and
legalistic procedures *multiple times* in order to get the power to revert
project-wide vandalism. I think he meant that giving admin power to people
who deserve it should be easy and noncontroversial.
 Wikipedia is not a federalist democracy, and as such, we are not a
subdivided set of communities existing in a political arena trying to gain
dominance over each other. In my view, a user who gets admin rights on
Commons by virtue of his or her outstanding record on as an administrator of
en.wiki would be one more user who can do vitally important work for the
project *as a whole*, not someone who is there to enforce the views of
en.wiki on this "other" community. Optimally, such a person would at least
be familiar with the differing procedures on Commons, but as it stands, the
security risks that The Uninvited Co brought up seem to justify some
movement in this direction, imo.
 - Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Even if you say it twice, it doesn't change reality - AfD is a voting page.

I disagree.  People vote, but that doesn't make it a voting page.

> And that's different from vandals blanking pages as they already do, how?

Currently, a blank page means something has gone wrong.  Under PWDS,
it would take some investigation to find out that something had gone
wrong.  Do you do RC patrol?  I do, and I know that this would hinder
my work in that area.

Sam


from_name: Timwi

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> This confirms my intuition that long term page protection is used
> excessively on the German Wikipedia. [...] One immediate effect,
> besides stagnation, is that sysops become far more relevant in the
> power structure, as they are the only ones who can add information to
> articles after protection. Instead of being janitors, they become
> editors. This, I believe, must have social repercussions beyond the
> articles concerned.

Given these concerns, which certainly could be taken as a criticism of
the German Wikipedia's methodology, I'm surprised you didn't post this
to wikide-l.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for AS/English Wikipedia

body:
Phroziac wrote:
> On 9/14/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
>>Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
>>textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
>>know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia
>
> How exactly do you edit a video like wikitext?

Maybe a sign language Wikipedia should wait until technology exists to
automatically convert SignWriting, or any other form of writing sign
languages, to video.

Timwi


from_name: Phroziac

body:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> As a general note, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of a ban,
> nobody who says""This
> place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had possibilities before
> all you fucking Jews came along ..." will ever actually strike me as
> worth the effort of loading the webpage to unblock them. Which I
> think remains the best test for a ban against policy. If nobody cares
> enough to fix it, it must have been right.
>
> -Snowspinner
Exactly.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'll definitely agree with that.  I'm totally in favor of speedy keeps
> > for sketchy, overly vague nominations.
>
> There are occasions where a one-word reason for deletion is enough.
> For instance, take a absolutely clear-cut vanity article.  You can sum
> up the reason for deletion in one word: "Vanity. ~~~~".  You could
> write a sentence, or two, or three, in support of that, but it would
> never actually say more than the original statement.
>
> Unless, of course, this is not what you meant by "sketch, overly vague
> nominations".  If so, please elaborate!

I can't think of a single example where "Vanity. ~~~~" is not overly
vague.  I haven't objected to such nominations (that I recall) but
certainly feel annoyed that the nominator cannot be bothered to be a
little more specific when asking for consensus to remove an article.

"Vanity.  No Google hits. ~~~~" is OK with me.  "Vanity. Wikipedia
shouldn't be used as a home page" is OK.  "Vanity.  These
accomplishments aren't encyclopedic enough. ~~~~" is also a valid
nomination in my mind.

"Vanity. ~~~~" doesn't give enough indication of the nominator's state
of mind, so doesn't seem intended to actually start a discussion about
why the article was nominated.  Instead, it seems an appeal to "just
get this thing over with" that I find disrespectful to the newbies
that frequently make the error of posting vanity articles.  That's why
I object to vague and uninformative nominations; we're supposed to
discuss the article, and the nominator cannot be bothered to start the
discussion.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 9/14/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>>Perhaps closing admins should simply ignore opinions of the form "nn,
>>>delete" and "Keep all schools".  People will stop offering such such
>>>bland opinions if they realize that their input is being ignored and
>>>will instead offer more useful commentary.
>>
>>What if "keep all schools" is the reason the person is voting to keep?
>>There are many that feel that all X for some X are "notable".
>
> I would recommend that such opinions be given low (or perhaps even no)
> weight.  Arguments to keep or delete an article on the merits of the
> specific article (or, rather, the subject of the article, which should
> be the main basis for a keep/delete decision) should be given more
> weight than those based on any categories in which the article (or its
> subject) might happen to fall in.

I'm not sure I understand. You're saying that VFD exists to delete
badly-written articles on "notable" subjects? I've always understood
that it's for figuring out whether the subject is "notable" enough. If
what you say is true, VFD would be even bigger than it is now.


from_name: geni

body:
> I'm unable to follow the logic here. Why does this follow? And why would
> it make a difference, since non-copyvios would be rejected by the CP
> process anyway? If a page is a copyvio then it _should_ go on CP, if
> it's not a copyvio then it shouldn't. The means used to remove the
> articles don't matter.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "tactic of last resort", either. Do you
> mean that people who are dead-set on deleting an article will try
> accusing it of being a copyvio if a VfD fails to remove it, even if it's
> not? That's bad behavior, again regardless of the means used to remove
> the articles.

It has been known. It will happen again.

--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>Examples would be a perfect place to start.  There appear to be two
>main criticisms of AfD:
>
>1. Unreliability.  This appears to be your point.
>2. Bad and unhealthy atmosphere.
>
>
There was some discussion earlier about Comixpedia having forked from
Wikipedia as a result of articles on web comics being deleted on account
of being "non-notable" or somesuch. I don't know anything about that
myself, but if it's the case then that would seem like a good example to
dig evidence out of. Anyone have any handy?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
>  Now, of
> course, if Google want to promote themselves and donate the coding and
> algorithm for their search engine to Wikimedia, cool!
>
> Sam

could be tricky since they don't technicaly own it.

--
geni


from_name: Alphax

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
<snip>
> I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
> complexity:
>
> * limit protections by policy
> * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> the article namespace
> * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks
>

1 and 3 both sound like good ideas. Policy should state that protection
should only be used in cases of heavy vandalism or fruitless revert
wars, and should have a time limit (the maximum being 1 week).

(At this point, Tim or Brion says "so write the code for it". I'd really
like to, but I'm a bit busy at the moment.)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Practical reason #1: The submit button and accompanying text referring
> > to the licensing of submissions are identical.  We'll have to change
> > those.
>
> And that would be hard??

It depends.  Do you want users to have the option to selectively
retain copyright over everything on their user and talk pages?  If so,
I think that path leads to license hell.   If only images, how do we
keep them reasonably differentiated without inspiring more
Pioneer-12s?  It might not be hard, but I don't think it can be done
gracefully.

> > #2: Inertia and lack of differentiation between user space and
> > the rest of Wikipedia.  People already expect to be able to take items
> > from all of Wikipedia under GFDL license.
>
> Why would reusers even want or need to also have user pages? Also, from my
> experience, users in general do not like to have their user pages on other
> websites. So keeping user pages in the same database dump that reusers use has
> no practical benefit to anybody except maybe the person who creates the
> database dumps (exporting everything and only having one dump is easier).

Take the user pages out of the database dump.  I don't see a problem
with that.  But database dumps certainly aren't the only method of
reuse.  We cannot base our policy on database dumps alone.  Reusers
want content, and our submission policy to date has been that all
submissions are licensed for reuse.  We cannot arbitrarily change that
ex post facto for existing content.

If we're going to maintain sections where reuse is NOT permitted, I
think we have an obligation to make that clear, and again, I think it
leads to a real mess tracking what has been submitted under which
license and where it can be used and reused.

> > #3: License hell as described in the next paragraph.
> >
> > If we make an arbitrary exception, I think it could ONLY apply from
> > whatever point we choose going forward.  Current content has already
> > been submitted under the old terms.
>
> The old terms, as you put it, do not allow any NC or special use images. So
> what is your point? Do you mean to say that all NC and special use images now
> marked for deletion be deleted regardless of what namespace they were displayed
> from?

NC or special use?  Please clarify further, as I want to be certain to
answer the question you're asking rather than one I think you're
asking.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
2005/9/14, Michal Migurski <mike at stamen.com>:
> >> Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality without
> >> requiring screen-scraping?
> >
> > No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
> > pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.
>
> I'll look into it... though Python isn't really an option for now.
> I'm using PHP.

I see I'm not the only crazy guy who uses PHP for a bot. Good to know that.

Anyway, try the Advanced HTTP Client
(http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/576.html). It's easy to base
off your code on that. I made a simple bot in it which took 3 or 4kb,
but I lost it during the recent server crash - I'm rebuilding it in my
free time, adding some more features - eventually you could call it an
API. If you'll be interested, email me (datrio at gmail.com) in some time
- I'll give you a link to its source code.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> The problem overlaps somewhat with the problem of including images in
> templates, when those images are not truly free in every sense. For
> instance, consider the popular user boxes that are cropping up all over
> the place (for some examples, see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]). Many of these
> include images that are tagged as fair use.
>
>

For the most part, they *are* fair use - they illustrate the product.
The only one which has serious copyright concerns is the
Wikipedia/Firefox "logo", which infringes two trademarks (and some
people are claiming is a "parody"). If someone will draw their own
version of this, please do so and put it on commons, it's quite cute...

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> Maybe a sign language Wikipedia should wait until technology exists to
> automatically convert SignWriting, or any other form of writing sign
> languages, to video.
> Timwi

Why not SignWriting -> GIF animations conversion, though?

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Anthere

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Today I decided to analyze in more detail to what extent articles across
> Wikipedias remain protected for long periods of time. The report is at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Longest_page_protections%2C_September_2005
>
> (To developers: The script I used is 'logprot.pl' in my home directory.
> It may be desirable to make this available as a special page, if someone
> can figure out a way to make the query scale.)
>
> It shows all pages in all language Wikipedias that have been protected
> for more than 14 days. Note that, by the time you look at it, some of
> the pages in it may have been unprotected already.
>
> The Wikipedias with the most such protected pages are (article rank in
> parentheses):
>
> German   - 253  (2)
> Japanese - 165  (4)
> English  - 138  (1)
> Italian  - 19   (5)
> French   - 15   (3)
> Spanish  - 13   (10)
>
> This confirms my intuition that long term page protection is used
> excessively on the German Wikipedia. It is quite striking that many,
> many controversial articles have been protected for months. For example,
> articles about veganism, sex, democracy, abortion, astrology, Karlheinz
> Deschner (famous atheist writer), Silvio Gesell (controversial
> economist) and his Freiwirtschaft theory, Gorleben (controversial
> nuclear waste disposal site), and Egon Krenz (East German politician)
> have been protected since July. Articles about child sexual abuse and
> pedophilia have been protected since April 2005 and March 2005,
> respectively. Notably, in the child sexual abuse case, the article was
> also cut down from 54,000 characters to 2,000 before being protected,
> making it effectively useless -- a rather drastic measure to deal with
> ongoing controversies.
>
> The longest protected articles appear to be related to German student
> corporations. The record holder is [[de:Schmiss]], which has been
> protected since January after a neutrality dispute.
>
> Perhaps ironically, even the article about Wikipedia itself has been
> protected since August 25.
>
> Note that the local policy on protection, at
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Seitensperrung and
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administratoren , is not unusal
> and recommends only short protections except for very high exposure
> pages like the Main Page, or unimportant pages like redirects which are
> frequently vandalized. This raises the question why no bold admin has
> unprotected these articles yet.
>
> I cannot say anything about the protection patterns on the Japanese
> Wikipedia, which is the only one which stands out besides English and
> German. The long term protections on the English Wikipedia appear to be
> mostly accidental. When someone notices that a page has been protected
> for very long, it is generally quickly unprotected.
>
> Across languages, possibly with the exception of Japanese, the German
> Wikipedia is alone in the pattern of locking down controversial articles
> for months. Protected articles also seem to not be tagged as such, so
> that visitors do not see a reason for the protection on the page (a
> visible marker might also encourage sysops to unprotect the page).
>
> One immediate effect, besides stagnation, is that sysops become far more
> relevant in the power structure, as they are the only ones who can add
> information to articles after protection. Instead of being janitors,
> they become editors. This, I believe, must have social repercussions
> beyond the articles concerned.
>
> I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
> complexity:
>
> * limit protections by policy
> * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> the article namespace
> * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks
>
> I am merely reporting this issue and will leave it to others to deal with.
>
> Best,
>
> Erik

Interesting...

One point which does not seem factual to me in your report, but possibly
only an interpretation is

"> One immediate effect, besides stagnation, is that sysops become far more
 > relevant in the power structure, as they are the only ones who can add
 > information to articles after protection. Instead of being janitors,
 > they become editors. This, I believe, must have social repercussions
 > beyond the articles concerned."

This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist. Maybe not on all
projects ? Can you from your data gather such an information ? I mean,
are there situations when a long-protected article actually grow and
evolve during the protection ?

Ant


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
I think Ryan makes good points, but I think the real problem is that
becoming an admin is too difficult in the first place. Whether it's making
5000 edits on EN or 500 edits on the commons, these are unnecessary
requirements. Adminship should be granted to anyone who can be trusted not
to screw things up, and the number of edits has no direct relevance on that
point.

The fact that "adminship should be no big deal" should be a Wikimedia rule,
at the foundation level. While the individual projects should have some
leeway in enacting this rule (at least until the projects are better
merged), I find it hard to see how someone who is an admin on the EN project
could be denied adminship in the commons project. The reverse is probably
also true, but I don't know enough about how hard/easy it is to get
adminship on the commons.

That said, I think this thread is somewhat misdirected. This is really a
Foundation issue. I suppose the Foundation isn't well enough organized to
deal with it, though.

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
Dariusz Siedlecki wrote:
> 2005/9/14, Michal Migurski <mike at stamen.com>:
>
>>>>Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality without
>>>>requiring screen-scraping?
>>>
>>>No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
>>>pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.
>>
>>I'll look into it... though Python isn't really an option for now.
>>I'm using PHP.
>
> I see I'm not the only crazy guy who uses PHP for a bot. Good to know that.

I have the feeling that Michal is not actually trying to write a bot.
Looking at his original posting, my interpretation suggests that he has
already written a bot but is unhappy with it because he has direct
access to the DB and there should therefore be better/cleaner ways of
achieving the effects he wants.

Michal, if I'm right, then I guess the best way would be to try to use
the functions in the MediaWiki code. Yes, some of it uses globals, but
there are scripts in the 'maintenance' directory that use the MediaWiki
code to accomplish things outside an HTTP request. You might want to
have a look at those.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Allow one-word editing

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>
> The idea is this: with a combination of
> Javascript and server side tools, it should be feasible to double-click
> any word on a page and then edit that single word. This is especially
> useful for correcting spelling errors that you would be too lazy to wade
> through an entire section to get to.

I'd prefer if it was a sentence rather than a single word. Sometimes a
grammar fix requires changes to multiple words within a sentence.

Of course, that yields the same question: How to define 'sentence'? But
I think people can forgive if it erroneously considers "etc." to be the
end of a sentence.

Timwi


from_name: Carbonite

body:
On 9/14/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I think you should let David Gerard speak for himself, Jay. I have made no
> sockpuppets. Proof that I have absolutely does not exist. Please try to stay
> to the facts. If you and SlimVirgin want to quote me, please quote in
> context.
>
> Thanks,
> Zephram

 Proof of your sockpuppets absolutely doesn't exist? Hmm...I must have
misread this then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:David_Gerard#Sockpuppet_check_request
 Carbonite


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia API?

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

> I see I'm not the only crazy guy who uses PHP for a bot. Good to know
> that.

I'm currently developing a PHP bot for Wikipedia too (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ambush_Commander/LinkFix_dump ).

> Anyway, try the Advanced HTTP Client
> (http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/576.html).

I use SimpleTest's simple browser for web browsing (
http://www.lastcraft.com/ ). No point in reinventing the Web retrieval
wheel.

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
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iD8DBQFDKKx7qTO+fYacSNoRAtUsAJ97vZK3X4+Q0Tv08+86i5Dlz79S1ACfTcov
OHJ0oKYmiJTcdaDgyBW+dbc=
=ldFu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

body:
On Wednesday 14 September 2005 02:39, Erik Moeller wrote:

> I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
> complexity:
>
> * limit protections by policy
> * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> the article namespace
> * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks

i'm not sure whether this really is a problem,
but if so, it's a social one, not a technical.

daniel


body:
Anthere wrote:
>
> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
> a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
> think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.

Can't speak for Fr, but at least on En, sysops are allowed -- almost
even encouraged -- to make minor edits to protected articles that are
likely uncontroversial. Spelling corrections are a very obvious form of
this, but edits can easily go a lot further. This isn't much of a
problem on En because the community of sysops is vastly multi-cultural
and of such varying opinions that even slightly significant edits are
likely to spark controversy and are therefore avoided.

On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of
opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and
since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since
there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't
matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than
some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other
things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops
remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that
dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops
to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more
relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they
become editors".

Timwi


from_name: steve v

body:
IAC, even if policy isnt prohibitive, the number of
sysops on any wiki is an extreme reduction in the
available pool of edits in open editing. Unless there
is some great liberalization in granting sysop trust,
which seems to kind of contradict recent discussion
about claimed problems with sysop accountability.

Jamie on Mediawiki-l says that there is some code in
1.5 which AIUI might allow for gradations in page
protection (sysops, logged-in, anons etc) --or was he
talking about an aspect of the validation
/confirmed-version method?

SV

--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Anthere:
> > This is only true if there is no social norm
> forbidding a sysop to edit
> > a protected page. At least, on the english and
> french wikipedia, I do
> > think the rule of no-edit on a protected page
> exist. Maybe not on all
> > projects ? Can you from your data gather such an
> information ? I mean,
> > are there situations when a long-protected article
> actually grow and
> > evolve during the protection ?
>
> I can't automatically check it with the current
> script, though I could
> theoretically check for each article how many
> revisions there have been
> after the protected one. On the German Wikipedia,
> the general pattern
> seems to be that the article simply "dies" after the
> protection, with
> the exception of a few minor edits by sysops, like
> these:
>
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=B%C3%BCrgerrechtsbewegung_Solidarit%C3%A4t&diff=6870084&oldid=5830880
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Verlag_Heinz_Heise&diff=6760055&oldid=6287323
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=P%C3%A4dophilie&diff=6769462&oldid=6167188
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erich_Honecker&diff=7926076&oldid=6592590
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vertreibung&diff=9105694&oldid=6084751
>
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Egon_Krenz&diff=6801089&oldid=6290728
>
> These are often requested on the talk page, and
> sysops seem to stay away
> from controversial edits to protected pages. In that
> way, I don't think
> the German Wikipedia is fundamentally different from
> any other, it's
> just that the number of pages where sysops have to
> act as gatekeepers
> for long periods of time is[*] far larger.
> Speculating, I think this
> must give a different impression of the role and
> importance of sysops to
> newcomers.
>
> [*] For the record, admins Bdk and APPER have now
> unprotected many of
> the affected pages on the German Wikipedia. I'll
> re-run the script in a
> week and report the results here.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:
>
> >> From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> >>
> >> On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
> >> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> >>
> >> Does it? How?
> >>
> >
> > It reduces the credibility of the project.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
> amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
> some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
> encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
>
> -Snowspinner
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
I said keeping unencyclopedic articles hurts Wikipedia. When people
dismiss Wikipedia they're often talk about stubs they find incomplete
and items they don't expect to find in encyclopedia. I mean
unencyclopedic entries which shouldn't be here to begin with as per
WP:NOT.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> > The last thing we need is a group of specialists who actually care
> > about what kinds of articles are encyclopedic, and fall within
> > Wikipedia's mandate and policies, and what kinds are not?
>
> The problem is not that they "care", but that they're the ones who are
> _deciding_.
>
> And a VfD that's justified with the code "NN, D" is clearly not the work
> of someone who cares, IMO. The fact that such VfDs aren't removed out of
> hand is what makes me so concerned with the current system.
>
> >  Who aren't actually emotionally tied up in the subject matter, but
> > instead are able to view the topic with dispassionate reason?
>
> Who don't actually know anything about the subject matter, but instead
> come up with a vote based on a moment's thought about whether they've
> heard of it before?
>
> I'm not going to go through and state the flipside of every point you
> make, hopefully this is sufficiently illustrative. Different people have
> very different views on what's "good", and a heck of a lot of people
> (myself included) are voicing views that the current system is ungood.
> In the spirit of consensus-building, please at least consider that maybe
> things will have to change to satisfy the complainers, but that perhaps
> there's some system to change to that we will all like. This doesn't
> have to be adversarial.
> _______________________________________________
That's what I see as a good thing. By involving people in the
discussion who are not emotionally attached to the subject being
discussed we can get views from outside the field of "fanatics" (sorry
for not knowing a better word here).

I always try to back up my vote with some point of policy or research
(see the photographer on AFD today). More people should base their
votes off facts instead of "Keep, X is good/encyclopedic/verifiable".
They should address the policy point that's being addressed. I.e "What
do you mean not-notable? They were the main guest on Oprah last week
and they have a top 100  Amazon sales rank." instead of "Writers are
notable".

You could change the deletion process a thousand times, but if people
put their own feelings of what should be included in the discussion
(and preferably immediately). We'd agree on stuff a lot easier.

For example whether a substub should've been deleted wouldn't even be
up for discussion if someone started with a larger article.

We should adress the source of the ill-feelings and not the symptoms.

--Mgm


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Speaking of sysop acc'tability.

Currently, policy on most Wikis means that people are only likely to
be desysopped if they  commit very gross breaches of policy.

Just being generally grumpy, coming close to the line between what's
OK and what's not, and other behaviours which are probably not good
for a sysop to exhibit, will not usually get you desysopped.

In some cases, you may get desysopped not because you've done anything
wrong but because a lynchmob came after you.

Mark

On 14/09/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> IAC, even if policy isnt prohibitive, the number of
> sysops on any wiki is an extreme reduction in the
> available pool of edits in open editing. Unless there
> is some great liberalization in granting sysop trust,
> which seems to kind of contradict recent discussion
> about claimed problems with sysop accountability.
>
> Jamie on Mediawiki-l says that there is some code in
> 1.5 which AIUI might allow for gradations in page
> protection (sysops, logged-in, anons etc) --or was he
> talking about an aspect of the validation
> /confirmed-version method?
>
> SV
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Anthere:
> > > This is only true if there is no social norm
> > forbidding a sysop to edit
> > > a protected page. At least, on the english and
> > french wikipedia, I do
> > > think the rule of no-edit on a protected page
> > exist. Maybe not on all
> > > projects ? Can you from your data gather such an
> > information ? I mean,
> > > are there situations when a long-protected article
> > actually grow and
> > > evolve during the protection ?
> >
> > I can't automatically check it with the current
> > script, though I could
> > theoretically check for each article how many
> > revisions there have been
> > after the protected one. On the German Wikipedia,
> > the general pattern
> > seems to be that the article simply "dies" after the
> > protection, with
> > the exception of a few minor edits by sysops, like
> > these:
> >
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=B%C3%BCrgerrechtsbewegung_Solidarit%C3%A4t&diff=6870084&oldid=5830880
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Verlag_Heinz_Heise&diff=6760055&oldid=6287323
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=P%C3%A4dophilie&diff=6769462&oldid=6167188
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erich_Honecker&diff=7926076&oldid=6592590
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vertreibung&diff=9105694&oldid=6084751
> >
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Egon_Krenz&diff=6801089&oldid=6290728
> >
> > These are often requested on the talk page, and
> > sysops seem to stay away
> > from controversial edits to protected pages. In that
> > way, I don't think
> > the German Wikipedia is fundamentally different from
> > any other, it's
> > just that the number of pages where sysops have to
> > act as gatekeepers
> > for long periods of time is[*] far larger.
> > Speculating, I think this
> > must give a different impression of the role and
> > importance of sysops to
> > newcomers.
> >
> > [*] For the record, admins Bdk and APPER have now
> > unprotected many of
> > the affected pages on the German Wikipedia. I'll
> > re-run the script in a
> > week and report the results here.
> >
> > Erik
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Thu, 15 Sep 2005, Keith Old wrote:

> Geoff,
>
> I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples
> opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an
> admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter
> referred to the subject as not being notable.
>
> After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not
> established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping
> an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject
> useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain
> field of study.

While I agree with your point, from my participation in AfD I've come to
see that far too often "non-notable" is used in a vague sense, without
any definition of what the submitter thinks the criteria for notability
is. It's one thing, for example, to say that a web-based community is
non-notable because it has a small number of members: then the article
can be defended against deletion based on the membership size, or perhaps
another point can be introduced to prove notability. (Say, in regards to
my example, it is revealed that this web-based community has its origins
in the first BBS in Latvia.) It's another to just say "Non-notable
website" with no further explanation. Even if a subject _is_ non-notable,
the contributor would benefit from learning why that is the case.
>
> As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another
> man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote
> on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as
> possible.

Unfortunately, "cruft" does get used (or abused) a lot on AfD, both alone
& compounded with other words. (One combination that I still scratch my
follically-challenged head over is "stalkercruft". I still have no idea
what that might be, or how I would recognize "stalkercruft".)

My intent with this proposal is to force people to be less lazy in their
nominations. I for one always treat every nomination I make as a case
where I have to prove my case; & at the same time, try to remember that
the discussion is about the article, not me or the contributor. It would
be nice if more people did this. (Although the temptation to poke fun
at an article I admit sometimes is too powerful to resist.)
>
> I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think
> that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as
> much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
>
Agreed. I did not intend to say anything to the contrary.

Geoff

P.S. I'd say more, but I'm about to leave for a 4-day trip away from
home & Wikipedia. I leave the discussion to everyone else's capable hands.


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> I'm doing character-level diffs in my bot, for deep reverts,
> and I found that printing two revisions to files, one character per line
> (escaped of course), running GNU diff, and parsing the result,
> is extremely fast.
>
> It took Algorithm::Diff about 7 minutes to do what GNU diff did
> in less than 1 second.
>
> So GNU diff must be doing the right thing that we should simply copy,
> instead of recoding Algorithm::Diff in C++.

I had a look into the GNU diffutils documentation. Currently GNU diff is
based on the O((n+m)*D) algorithm by Myers. I think Algorith::Diff uses
the the classic O(n*m) algorithm.

Greetings,
Jakob


body:
> On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of
> opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and
> since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since
> there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't
> matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than
> some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other
> things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops
> remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that
> dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops
> to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more
> relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they
> become editors".
> Timwi

The same can be said of Polish Wikipedia, although here we do not
protect as many pages as at de:.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Craig Franklin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request for
	ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
Scr?obh Phil Boswell:

>I wondered whether it could be possible to create a SignWriting extension
to
>Mediawiki, along the same lines as WikiHiero, which used SWML as the
source.
>This would at the very least allow us to display the signs in articles
about
>them, and might provide some sort of kick-start for more extensive usage.

SignWriting looks like the best system as far as intelligibility goes, but
isn't it copyrighted?  I mean, I know that the creator has made it free for
use and all (see http://signwriting.org/about/questions/quest0004.html ),
but doesn't that still make it ineligible for use in a Wikimedia project?
It would be like using a special copyrighted ortography for English, or a
copyrighted conlang (Toki Pona, anyone?).

Yet another issue that must be addressed, I suppose.

Cheers,
- Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Anthere:
> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
> a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
> think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist. Maybe not on all
> projects ? Can you from your data gather such an information ? I mean,
> are there situations when a long-protected article actually grow and
> evolve during the protection ?

I can't automatically check it with the current script, though I could
theoretically check for each article how many revisions there have been
after the protected one. On the German Wikipedia, the general pattern
seems to be that the article simply "dies" after the protection, with
the exception of a few minor edits by sysops, like these:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=B%C3%BCrgerrechtsbewegung_Solidarit%C3%A4t&diff=6870084&oldid=5830880
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Verlag_Heinz_Heise&diff=6760055&oldid=6287323
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=P%C3%A4dophilie&diff=6769462&oldid=6167188
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erich_Honecker&diff=7926076&oldid=6592590
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vertreibung&diff=9105694&oldid=6084751
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Egon_Krenz&diff=6801089&oldid=6290728

These are often requested on the talk page, and sysops seem to stay away
from controversial edits to protected pages. In that way, I don't think
the German Wikipedia is fundamentally different from any other, it's
just that the number of pages where sysops have to act as gatekeepers
for long periods of time is[*] far larger. Speculating, I think this
must give a different impression of the role and importance of sysops to
newcomers.

[*] For the record, admins Bdk and APPER have now unprotected many of
the affected pages on the German Wikipedia. I'll re-run the script in a
week and report the results here.

Erik


body:
> Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the
> selection of article topics.  R&C are a function of quality and
> quantity of references and citations used within the individual
> articles.  Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of
> coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of
> encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else.  Any educator who finds
> a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it,
> however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in
> articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
>
> Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some
> seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki.  Individual
> articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project,
> and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced
> articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the
> project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving
> this role.  There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
>
> I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any
> topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia
> because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply
> accept that as part of the project.
>
> --
> Michael Turley
> User:Unfocused
True, that's exactly why I hate articles being deleted based on them
being fancruft.
Fancruft isn't a bad thing as long as an interesting info-filled
article can be written about it.

--Mgm


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

subject: [WikiEN-l] My Compliments

body:
>Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 22:44:58 -0500
>From: "Ben E." <bratsche1 at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] My Compliments
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
<e8494092050913204476ee13a at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

>Editors: You see, we are appreciated.

By sockpuppets?

There's no way you can disprove so, that would leave
intact the basis for supposedly identifying
sockpuppets, by gut feeling about what they say and do
- a process whose apparent blunt-instrument falliblity
is being discussed here in the Zephram case.

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Allow one-word editing

body:
What about a way in Javascript to edit whatever is selected with the mouse?

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

On 9/14/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/09/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> > > The idea is this: with a combination of
> > > Javascript and server side tools, it should be feasible to double-click
> > > any word on a page and then edit that single word. This is especially
> > > useful for correcting spelling errors that you would be too lazy to
> wade
> > > through an entire section to get to.
> >
> > I'd prefer if it was a sentence rather than a single word. Sometimes a
> > grammar fix requires changes to multiple words within a sentence.
>
> Well, here's a really neat idea: how about we let people edit section
> by section - that way people can do things like merging sentences too,
> and we don't need to worry about defining a sentence. Oh, wait... ;)
>
> On a more serious note, I can see that this might be useful for some
> power users, but it would definitely remain off by default to avoid
> confusion, and only be turned on by a handful of people, so may not be
> worth the development and maintenance time if it required changes to
> the core code.
>
> --
> Rowan Collins BSc
> [IMSoP]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
Alphax wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>
>>The problem overlaps somewhat with the problem of including images in
>>templates, when those images are not truly free in every sense. For
>>instance, consider the popular user boxes that are cropping up all over
>>the place (for some examples, see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]). Many of these
>>include images that are tagged as fair use.
>>
>>
>For the most part, they *are* fair use - they illustrate the product.
>
>
Illustrating the product is hardly a free ticket to fair use, even if
that's what the images do here. I don't particularly buy that either;
the images are logos that identify the user with the product, not actual
illustrations of the product. Also, fair use arguments for user pages
are a serious stretch. In most cases, the use has no relationship to the
purposes enumerated in the Copyright Act (criticism, comment,
scholarship, research, etc.).

>The only one which has serious copyright concerns is the
>Wikipedia/Firefox "logo", which infringes two trademarks (and some
>people are claiming is a "parody"). If someone will draw their own
>version of this, please do so and put it on commons, it's quite cute...
>
>
It may be cute, but as I understand it such images aren't eligible for
inclusion on Commons, nor do I get how you think that someone "draw[ing]
their own version" will avoid the legal problems.

--Michael Snow


body:
Timwi wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>>
>> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to
>> edit a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia,
>> I do think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.
>
>
> Can't speak for Fr, but at least on En, sysops are allowed -- almost
> even encouraged -- to make minor edits to protected articles that are
> likely uncontroversial. Spelling corrections are a very obvious form of
> this, but edits can easily go a lot further. This isn't much of a
> problem on En because the community of sysops is vastly multi-cultural
> and of such varying opinions that even slightly significant edits are
> likely to spark controversy and are therefore avoided.
>
> On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of
> opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and
> since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since
> there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't
> matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than
> some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other
> things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops
> remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that
> dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops
> to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more
> relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they
> become editors".
>
> Timwi

Makes sense...

Could it be possible that certain pages are automatically unprotected
after a certain time, while others (such as main page or site notice...)
remain protected ? In short, two different types of protection ?

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 22

body:
Ros? Haruo wrote:

>>Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:53:56 +0200
>>From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report
>>
>>[...]
>>
>>This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
>>a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
>>think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.
>
>
> As an example of a minor edit that was allowed, during the recent
> brouhaha over Pat Robertson's suggestion that Hugo Ch?vez be
> assassinated, the English "Pat Robertson" article was protected, but a
> sysop there implemented my request that a link to the corresponding
> Esperanto article be added to the set of interwikis.
>
> Haruo

Absolutely, but the edit was probably uncontroversial, and since you (a
non sysop I presume) asked for it to be done, and had it done by a
"sysop", it still let the sysop in the "janitor" role. The day he
refuses to do this uncontroversial job for you, then the sysop is no
more a "janitor" but a boss. And we will be in trouble :-(

In all honesty, I think that in the great majority of cases, there is no
abuse from sysops, and most are more than happy to add the
uncontroversial edits to the protected articles upon request.

If some sysops do not respect this, they should maybe have a time-off
sysophood to remember how it is not to be a sysop. Imho

Ant


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Request for the creation of a Neapolitan Wikipedia

body:
Arbeo M wrote:
<snip>
> The most clear-cut case seems to be the Neapolitan
> Wikipedia. Matter of fact, a large number of
> Wikipedians are supporting the idea, noboby opposes it
> and several native speakers are willing to contribute
> and waiting to get under way.
<snip>
> Details are here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages

Is the doc on http://wp.wikidev.net/Add_a_language still correct ?

There is also request for two more languages on meta:
 * Waray-Waray (Samar-Leyte Visayan)
 * Ladino

Maybe request for language creation should be sent to noc at wikimedia.org
or on bugzilla ?  I am not sure what is the new way to do stuff (kate?)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> No, the real claim is "AfD is damaging the project and should be deleted".
> The burden of proof is on those who make that claim.

Quite so.  I have seen scores of posts to this list that claim that
AfD damages Wikipedia and its culture, but never actually any
_evidence_.  I can recall a few poisonous VfDs (such as Historical
persecution by Muslims, stirred by now-banned -Ril-), but no more than
can reasonably be expected for such a sensitive area.  After all, we
are discussing deleting people's work.

And if we ever expect deletion not to be controversial, we are
deluding ourselves.  Where to put the barrier of entry to Wikipedia
is, has always been, and always will be one of the principle points of
disagreement and conflict.

That goes for AfD, PWDS, CSD or whatever.

Sam


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Why would reusers even want or need to also have user pages? Also, from my
> experience, users in general do not like to have their user pages on other
> websites. So keeping user pages in the same database dump that reusers use has
> no practical benefit to anybody except maybe the person who creates the
> database dumps (exporting everything and only having one dump is easier).

Personally I couldn't care less if my userpage was used on another
site, even the nazipedia, as long as it's labeled that i'm a wikipedia
user. The {{userpage}} template has recently been obfuscated, which
would keep it from accidently being changed.


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Allow one-word editing

body:
On 14/09/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> > The idea is this: with a combination of
> > Javascript and server side tools, it should be feasible to double-click
> > any word on a page and then edit that single word. This is especially
> > useful for correcting spelling errors that you would be too lazy to wade
> > through an entire section to get to.
>
> I'd prefer if it was a sentence rather than a single word. Sometimes a
> grammar fix requires changes to multiple words within a sentence.

Well, here's a really neat idea: how about we let people edit section
by section - that way people can do things like merging sentences too,
and we don't need to worry about defining a sentence. Oh, wait... ;)

On a more serious note, I can see that this might be useful for some
power users, but it would definitely remain off by default to avoid
confusion, and only be turned on by a handful of people, so may not be
worth the development and maintenance time if it required changes to
the core code.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll definitely agree with that.  I'm totally in favor of speedy keeps
> for sketchy, overly vague nominations.

There are occasions where a one-word reason for deletion is enough.
For instance, take a absolutely clear-cut vanity article.  You can sum
up the reason for deletion in one word: "Vanity. ~~~~".  You could
write a sentence, or two, or three, in support of that, but it would
never actually say more than the original statement.

Unless, of course, this is not what you meant by "sketch, overly vague
nominations".  If so, please elaborate!

Sam


from_name: Claus Färber

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Trademarks

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> schrieb/wrote:
> The core goal of Commons is maximal reuse.

Maximal reuse might result in minial content.

I think every restriction should be evaluated to determine whether the
image is still "free enough".

With copyright, that's quite easy: Copyright restricts nearly every act
of redistribution, so it makes sense to require that images and other
media need to have a "free license".[1]

On the other hand, trademarks only restricts labelling products with the
image or impersonating the owner, i.e. "trademarkish" use. IMO(!),
that's still "free enough".

Further, there's a conflict if you include "trademarkish" use within the
maximal reuse goal of Wikimedia: If someone really starts to use an
image on Commons as a trademark, it's likely to become protected as a
trademark (and incompatible with the maximal reuse goal).

Finally, there are some practical problems with a strict no-trademark
policy. As everything can be trademarked, you would have to do regular
trademark searches with every trademark registry. You can't ask the
author/source of an image (especially if it's PD or depicts something
found in nature) and there are very few things that can't be trademarked
(and virtually none the upload of which to Commons makes sense).

> Commercial logos are frequently under _both_ trademark _and_
> copyright.

If it's also copyrighted (and not under a free license), the situation
is clear: Wikimedia Commons can't host it.

-------------------------------
[1] You can argue what constitudes a "free" license. Some people
    consider no modification licenses free enough, some consider
    copyleft/share-alike/GNU licenses too restrictive.

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 14/09/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The only issue as I see it, is that we don't give reusers the option to not
> download user pages and other Wikipedia-specific pages. But that is a current
> technical problem; not a valid reason to forever forbid NC and special use
> images in the user or Wikipedia namespaces.

Actually, http://download.wikimedia.org *does* now carry filtered
dumps which don't carry User: and Wikipedia: pages. But this doesn't
solve the problem in hand, because we don't currently filter the
*image* dumps in any way. This is actually a big problem for all sorts
of licensing issues, because all the hard work of permission tagging
is likely to be lost in transmission.

But one very relevant implication is that images will be redistributed
even if they're not used *anywhere*, let alone if they're only used on
user pages. Remember: images are not attached to pages, they are just
referenced from them.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On 9/14/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Geoff,
>
> I realise that voters of Articles for Deletion need to sensitive to peoples
> opinions when voting. Having said this, I would object rather strongly if an
> admin closed a vote in Articles for Deletion on the grounds that a voter
> referred to the subject as not being notable.
>
> After all, one of the reasons for Speedy Deletion is that an article has not
> established notability of the subject. As well, the main reason for keeping
> an article is the belief that a user might find information on the subject
> useful. In other words, the topic of the article is notable within a certain
> field of study.
>
> As for cruft, I never use the word myself as one man's cruft is another
> man's interest. Having said this, I don't think an admin should close a vote
> on such a trivial ground and I would support it being relisted as soon as
> possible.
>
> I think that we will always need an Articles of Deletion process and I think
> that this system works as well as any could. It should aim to encourage as
> much participation as possible so should be open to all users.
>
> Regards
>
>
>
> Keith
> User Name: Capitalistroadster
>
> On 9/15/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:
> >
> > > >From: Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > >On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
> > > >
> > > >>On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>>I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
> > > >>>amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
> > > >>>some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
> > > >>>encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
> > > >>>
> > > >>Isn't that exactly why we exist?
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > >I always thought so.
> > >
> > > We exist to create a great encyclopedia. I don't see how an encyclopedia
> >
> > > filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered
> > > "great".
> > >
> > I agree with Jay here (& I hope that doesn't surprise him too much ;).
> >
> > Consider Wikipedia is a form of publication: currently we have the
> > lowest threshold I can imagine for acceptance of any publication. All
> > you have to do is submit an article that contains information that is
> > somehow useful. (Please ignore any need to define "useful" for the
> > moment.)
> >
> > By establishing a threshold, we end up rejecting material -- for
> > good or bad reasons -- which will inevitably result in hurt feelings.
> > (That is why in the publishing world rejection slips are so impersonal.)
> > Hurt feelings -- & the fact a certain percentage of submissions are
> > simply dreadful, unusable or submitted as a joke -- result in the
> > "toxic atmosphere" of the deletion process.
> >
> > And we can't rely on only a "Speedy Delete" process: there will always
> > be cases that fall into the grey area, if for no other reason than the
> > need for a second opinion. And, as Tony Sideway pointed out above, some
> > items are incorrectly placed into CSD -- for whatever reason.
> >
> > The only solution to this is to COMPLETELY ABOLISH this threshold:
> > either we have one or we don't have one. However, if we have no
> > threshold, then we have to deal with unuseful articles full of gibberish,
> > unfixable POV rants, hoaxes, & biographical entries that contain nothing
> > more than a date of birth, details of education, & details of personality.
> > Perhaps because we can somehow hide them in Wikipedia, we can argue that
> > they aren't a problem -- but left unchecked, these unuseful articles
> > will accumulate & grow into a problem.
> >
> > Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should
> > acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best
> > of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need
> > to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a
> > consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD:
> > would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of
> > either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately
> > closed as a Speedy Keep?
> >
> > Geoff
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Geoff, Keith.

Sometimes there's people that can word something a lot better than others.
In this case I heartily agree with both your last posts. I couldn't
have said it better myself.

--Mgm


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Quick field report:
>
> I tried to use Algorithm::Diff on split("",$str)'ed contents of 2 revisions,
> and for bigger (like 30kB) pages it takes a few minutes. This is weird.
>
> How is MediaWiki doing it ? Does it try to find longest common subsequence
> of lines or characters ?

The LCS algorithm operates on arrays, it's called an array of lines
internally but it could be pretty much anything, all you need is a valid
comparison operator. The formatter first does a line level diff, to
identify paragraphs which have been moved or deleted. It identifies
which lines have been changed, for some definition of changed. Then it
splits each of the changed lines into words (or characters, in the case
of Chinese and Japanese), and does a diff on the word arrays.

An important exception which I implemented a couple of weeks ago, is to
impose a maximum line length. Lines above the maximum are treated as a
single word. Some kinds of vandalism involve very long lines (~1 MB),
and these diffs used to fail. Brion ported this change to the C++
module, since both versions suffered from the same problem. Except the
C++ version segfaulted whereas the PHP version just gave an out of
memory error.

It would be nice to have a second exception for a large number of lines
requiring word-level diffs: this case also causes the current PHP
algorithm to fail.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 9/14/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> What do you think constitutes evidence? I've already said that I'm
> not lending my experience and knowledge of WP to evaluating the
> worthiness of articles because of the way the process works. I'm not
> so egotistical as to claim that my absence from AfD materially
> damages WP, but the last time I looked (a while ago) people were
> making mistakes that I could have corrected.

Examples would be a perfect place to start.  There appear to be two
main criticisms of AfD:

1. Unreliability.  This appears to be your point.
2. Bad and unhealthy atmosphere.

I would appreciate (from anyone) evidence for either of these.
Despite all the comments about AfD's foibles and failings, I
personally have not seen them in action.

These comments are not intended to be difficult.  I am just not
currently certain why changes need to be made.

Yours,
Sam


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...
>
> There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
> usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
> seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
>
> Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
> Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
> the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
> colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
> with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
> activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
> that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
> Intelligence Agency.
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal
>
> Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
> the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
> considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
> is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
> In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
> the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
> would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
> Which, as I understand it, is verboten.
>
> Of course, when I raise things like this on Commons, I seem to incite
> a lot of ire from people who want to pick nits about whether or not
> its usage is limited because of its *copyright* or because of federal
> laws. I have to admit, for a place which is supposed to care so much
> about whether or not things are actually free, people seem to think
> deleting images is the worst thing in the world, even if there is
> little compelling reason to think they are truly in the public domain.
> Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
> in the public domain -- there would be nothing worse for Commons than
> to be in continual doubt whether or not its licensing information was
> correct, it would defeat the entire point -- but that's just me.
>
> Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
> restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
> Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
> of "free" images.
>
>

So they will SUE US IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY? :)

It's only illegal to use their image if you impersonate them. The
copyright of the image itself is that the image is in the public domain.
Effectively, it's a Trademark (albeit one without copyright), the
misrepresentation of which may render one liable to prosecution.

And if they want to stop us, fsck them. We'll move the media servers to
Paris or Amsterdam, on wheels if needs be.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 08:39:20PM +0200, Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> > On De, however, I perceive a much more homogenous distribution of
> > opinions among the sysops. Since it was a sysop who made the edit, and
> > since sysops are trusted users, the edit was probably trustworthy. Since
> > there are often no other sysops disputing/opposing the edit, it doesn't
> > matter that the edit was of a much greater significance/magnitude than
> > some edits that spark violent edit wars. This (among many many other
> > things) encourages existing sysops to make sure the community of sysops
> > remains broadly like-minded, and this in turn encourages the view that
> > dissenting non-sysop editors are just vandals, and encourages the sysops
> > to keep the page protected. Hence, as Erik said, "sysops become far more
> > relevant in the power structure" and "instead of being janitors, they
> > become editors".
> > Timwi
>
> The same can be said of Polish Wikipedia, although here we do not
> protect as many pages as at de:.

Come on, Polish sysops being of homogenous opinion ?
Just look at the Togo case or Tawbot case ;-)

They're much less likely to get themselves involved in edit wars
than English sysops, but that's just about all difference.

Let's just wait for the dump so we can finally find all
blocked pages and remove all old blocks.


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> Come on, Polish sysops being of homogenous opinion ?
> Just look at the Togo case or Tawbot case ;-)

They're of more homogenous opinion when it comes to page protection or
article content - the above cases aren't about that :).

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongly deleted articles

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> FTSEurofirst 80: "FTS Eurofirst 80 Index is a stock index of European
> stocks."
<snip>
> A similar article, FTSEurofirst 100, was also deleted.
<snip>
> Buffalo Lake, Alberta: "Buffalo Lake is the fourth biggest lake in
> Alberta."
<snip>
> 13th key: "13th Key is a RPG mage using RPG Maker by Matthew Smith.
> It is a combination of A bad game and a good game in terms of grphics
> and gameplay."
>

So have they been undeleted and expanded yet?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
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OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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body:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 11:37:43PM +0200, Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> > Come on, Polish sysops being of homogenous opinion ?
> > Just look at the Togo case or Tawbot case ;-)
>
> They're of more homogenous opinion when it comes to page protection or
> article content - the above cases aren't about that :).

I don't think so, at the moment nobody even knows which pages have been
protected, and many pages have been protected/unprotected so many times
it was almost a protection war ;-) Haven't you noticed the "why the * has
X been unprotected, +protect" flames on IRC ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
> Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of
> redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them?
> Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work
> better?

Not really, it would give us less google hits. It would be better if
Google indexed redirect pages and the target page as one page.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
On 9/15/05, Bass, Joshua L <joshua.l.bass at lmco.com> wrote:
> Using 1.5, am trying to add a link to the sidebar defining a listing of
> All Pages from a particular namespace:
>
> http://www.350z-tech.com/zwiki?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=&namespace=
> 100
>
> The link changes to:
>
> http://www.350z-tech.com/zwiki/--error:_link_target_missing--

Don't put the link itself in the sidebar. Add
  keyterms-url|keyterms
to [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]]
 and then put the URL in [[MediaWiki:Keyterms-url]] and write "Key
Terms" at [[MediaWiki:Keyterms]].

MediaWiki-l would be a better list for this sort of question.

Angela.


from_name: Netocrat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Differential storage

body:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:22:42 +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:

> You can use the Special:Export page to export the complete histories
> of individual pages, so you could pick a few which seemed suitably
> representative and play with them.

The complete history option doesn't have any affect on the articles I
tried on wikipedia although it works on my server - is it disabled?

--
http://members.dodo.com.au/~netocrat