from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, advertising, websites and the lack of sources

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> Wikipedia has a *very* good rank on google (PR 9 on main page), which
> means that more and more webmasters want links from it. One way is to
> add an external link, however, these are usually spotted by editors.

I'm not sure about "usually".  But those links are a big problem,
because they let the linked-to site ride on the coattails of
Wikipedia's pagerank.  And there's a solution to this problem:
tell google not to look at Wikipedia's outgoing links.
See [[Wikipedia talk:Spam]].  (Specifically, the currently-last
section, "Proposal: Enable rel="nofollow" outside the main
namespace".  But soon enough we'll be discussing turning it off
in the main namespace, as well.)

> I noticed a trend: on such articles about websites, when I ask for reliable
> references, according to our policy, the answer is often: "why would we
> need references for this article? the website itself is used as a reference".

That's because it's extremely easy to confuse verifiability and
notability.  A website reference might be a fine and reliable
verification that the website exists.  But it obviously says
nothing about the site's notability.  What you want to ask for
is not a "reliable reference", but rather an "outside reference
which demonstrates notability".


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
On 5/20/06, Aleksy Schubert <alx at cs.ru.nl> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> Recently it turned out on the Polish Wikipedia that somebody created
> a secret mailing list for Polish Wikipedia administrators. Why I say
> the list was secret?
> * the information on it was not presented anywhere on the usual
>    public Wikipedia fora,
> * the information on the fact that this list is planned has
>    not been announced anywhere,
> * the list was private (only admins could read it and
>    had access to its archives),
> * the information about the list leaked on some of the Wikipedia
>    talk pages.
>
> There was a hot dispute concerning the problem on the official
> Polish Wikipedia mailing list. However, there was no clear result.
> A concrete proposal to discuss the issue in a narrow circle and achieve
> a compromise of some kind made by [[:pl:User:Ency]] was more or less
> ignored by the creators and supporters of the list.
>
> My concern with regard to the issue is that this kind of initiative
> spoils to high extent the open character of the Wikipedia community and
> therefore the mailing list should be closed or the admins should be
> obliged to sign off from the list. Another possibility is to just make
> the list open for the whole community in some way. However, the
> effective result of the discussion on the Polish Wikipedia mailing list
> (that means that the list still exists) stays in contradiction with my
> understanding of the  openness of the Wikipedia projects. That's why I
> raise this issue here in hope that I'll hear something that will allow
> me to better understand the situation and act appropriately.

I think this is rather inaccurate description.

A private list got started and the Wikipedians "trusted" by the
list's creators got invited to participate (mostly sysops,
because everyone who hasn't been behaving like a troll and
wants to be one easily gets a flag).

The list has been advertised many times on #wikipedia-pl,
so it's not really "secret".

The new list was started was not because the discussions
that take place there require secrecy, but simply
because the open mailing list became so full of trolls
and flamewars that it's not very useful for discussions,
and some people still like the "mailing list" format.

Oh, and I've got the invitation, but I'm not on the list.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Ok here is why Willaim Connolley and these stupid
 admins are messing up Wikipedia. (Hganesan)

body:
Peter Ansell wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>[[WP:NPA]], that's heading for a month now.  It's great being a rouge
>>admin :-D
>>
>>
>At risk of involving myself in this matter, I have to ask what the
>difference between rouge and rogue is. Is this simply the difference
>between an Australian and another spelling. Because I think its
>perfectly sensible to have a sentence that says "its great being a
>rogue admin", but I dont see how rouge, which is in my view a colour
>of makeup, relates to this sentence.
>
I have no interest in Connolley either.

To me a "rogue" admin admin is one who suddenly goes off the deep end.
He may have acted normally for a long while, but then without warning he
starts vandalizing for no apparent reason like an elephant who has taken
too much LSD.

A "rouge" admin edits from a more than obvious communistic POV.  The
colour red has traditionally been associated with far left political
parties, as in the Khmer Rouge.  Colloquially the Soviets were always
"The Reds".

Ec


from_name: Earthhope Action Network

subject:
[WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce for
	no reason

body:
SlimVirgin,
 Since you didn't have the decency to reply to my email, I
 thought you might reply here. Please try to be honest when you do.

 >Hi Jimmy,
 >Thanks for answering my emails. Here is the comment SlimVirgin put on my page:
  Wolfstar, I'm seeing a lot of aggresssive talk-page posts from you, but very few edits to the encyclopedia. Interiot's tool shows only 53 edits to articles, but 434 to user and article talk (338 to user talk). This is up to the beginning of May and the ratio since then looks even worse. If you don't start to reverse it soon, this account may be blocked. SlimVirgin (talk) 23:23, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

 "You left that comment on my page while I was minding my business for several days,
 sending awards out to Tijuanna Brass and Merecat, making some small article edits,
 and right after I put this on a page."

 Long live freedom. Long live freedom of speech, freedom of religious choice, the right to peacefully assemble, the right to the redress of grievances. Long live the right to a new government when the current oppresses these rights or the right to no government at all. Down with all oppressive regimes. Long live the right to bear arms without restriction, as it is stated in the 2nd amendment of the Constitution, and all the rights stated in the Bill of Rights, and before it got polluted with nitpicking laws that only served it's destruction and attempt at it's annihilation. Maggiethewolfstar 20:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
 What exactly is aggressive is about this (above)? http://earthhopenetwork.net/
 --
  Also, to moderators, many of my posts have been held back for no reason. These same posts were never included in the list posts.  I expect the same respect on this list that anyone else gets. Maggiethewolfstar http://earthhopenetwork.net/
 -----------


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/19/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >> As it is, it is easy for a company with
> >> a huge legal staff to shut down small "fair users" with the threat of
> >> endless, if futile, litigation. Lessig talks about a number of
> >> instances where this happened in his book, _Free Culture_.
> >
> > Only if the fair users roll over and die, like Wikimedia is doing.
>
> Since you seem completely unaware of the occasions where the Wikimedia
> Foundation has received complaints from copyright owners and told them,
> "Fair use, so buzz off" (couched in more polite terms, of course),
> perhaps you're not in a position to make informed comments on what
> Wikimedia is doing.
>
> --Michael Snow

I really don't see what Wikimedia has done on other occassions has to
do with what they are doing on this occassion.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 182

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>I think it's quite possible to give a pretty detailed plot summary of movies
>like the Sixth Sense and Fight Club without giving away the spoiler. For
>that reason, the fact that {spoiler} gives the text "Plot and/or ending
>details follow" is poor - plot details are fine, spoilers are the problem.
>
>I'm not against spoiler notices where appropriate, but surely common sense
>
>
>>should come into where they are needed and where they are not!
>>
>>
>Again, if the text produces "Plot...details follow" it does seem perfectly
>logical to put it where you're giving plot details!
>
It's perfectly sensible to give away the ending of a movie.  It saves
people from having to waste two hours of their lives waiting for the
end.  That time might be better spent editing their favorite site.  That
and they don't need to gorge themselves on overpriced popcorn.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Geni, I have to ask you to please stop opining on matters outside your
> > professional expertise.
>
> Claiming fair use on a non copyright image strikes me as a tricky
> concept and one that is rather pointless in any case. Fair use images
> are copyvios. At best they are just copyvios that are allowed within
> the US. They are still however copyvios. If they were not you would
> not bother trying to claim fair use.
>
I think what Jimbo was referring to is the fact that fair use, under
US law, is *not* a violation of copyright.

Of course, speaking of talking out of your ass, according to Jimbo
"simply having an image on the website, not used in an article, does
not in any way justify fair use claims."

Anthony


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Molu,

> On Sat, 20 May 2006 01:46:50 +1000 Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
>> G'day Molu, [Gah! Top-posting again! It's not that hard to send an
>> email, man!]
>>
>>> See [[WP:POINT]]. You are delibarately disrupting a reader's
>>> experience of WIkipedia by removing spoiler notices when the
>>> consensus is clearly for keeping them. This sort of thing when
>>> done with malicious intent is called vandalism.
>
>> That has nothing to do with WP:POINT. I suggest that you, and
>> everyone else who repeatedly cites it without actually knowing what
>>  it means, actually *read* the damn page instead of simply falling
>> in love with the name.
>
> I do not cite policy without reading it. Guy has the personal opinion
>  that spoilers are not good, and he disrupts the normal functioning
> of Wikipedia to make this point, even when consensus is clearly
> against him.

That's *not* what WP:POINT says.  Please read it again.

If Guy was a *fan* of the spoiler warnings, and removed them to prove
that the flood of complaints we'd receive from people such as your good
self would be overwhelming, *that* would be WP:POINT.  Or if he hated
them, so he added them to articles on non-fiction (e.g. [[Titanic]]) to
show how silly they are, *that* would be WP:POINT as well.  He'd be
causing disruption, and making edits he knows are inappropriate, solely
to prove a point that would be better made (without disrupting anything)
in conversation.

But a simple case of "I believe something, and I'm going to act on that"
is not WP:POINT, it's WP:BOLD.

> P.S. I don't know what makes a top-posting or what doesn't. I don't
> know many different ways of sending emails.

Compare my message to yours.  I'm making my comments below those
comments of yours that I'm replying to.  You're just throwing everything
above the line, so that we have to scroll down to find out what on Earth
you're talking about.

Interleaving comments instead of top-posting is free, easy, and comes
with a sense of moral satisfaction you'll be itching to feel.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
G'day Ryan,

> On 5/19/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>So why is his indefinite block being
>>reversed.
>
> Because he's a newbie and no one bothered to give him short blocks. This
> isn't simple vandalism and he's not willy on wheels.  Someone
> misunderstanding our policies doesn't give anyone precedent to railroad him
> rather than giving him a chance. We tell people to be bold, and then
> indefinite block them for doing it?

While I wouldn't have unblocked this user myself, I appreciate your
sincerity and your reasoning is fine.  If we have to block him again in
a week, so be it ... at least he's been given a chance.

You've done what you feel is the Right Thing, and you've done it with
sensitivity, explaining your reasons and making sure everyone
understands why you did it.  Well done.

There's no need for people to start throwing about epithets like "wheel
war" about this.

<snip/>

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Fastfission wrote:
> <snip>
>> We're trying to build a free
>> encyclopedia here, last I checked, not serve as an anti-copyright
>> activist network.
>>
>
> /me considers adding that to [[WP:NOT]]...
>
Only if I get to add "Wikipedia is not Mao" as well. :)

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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Article surveys re-surveyed

body:
On 5/20/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Many of the articles were unchanged since February: 23 articles had
> zero edits, with three of them having not been edited since before
> last November.  19 articles had ten or more edits, encompassing 80% of
> all edits.  The ratio of trivial edits to major edits remains roughly
> the same, at around 99% trivial.

Thanks for the update. I hadn't picked up on this before 99% trivial? What
do we have to do to get people to "be bold'?

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Recent edit son the Windows Media Player Article

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:
> --- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Eric Demolli wrote:
>>> Recent edits on the article have removed several
>> criticism about
>>> Microsoft. Now the article is mainly focused on the
>> "exciting" features
>>> of WMP 11 and the availability of WMP for other
>> platforms.
>> {{sofixit}}?
>>
>> At a glance, I can't see any such edits... can you
>> provide a diff?
>
> {{SoUnblockMe}}?
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Windows_Media_Player&diff=53118228&oldid=53112020
>
> Competition information removed, the template was expanded,
> an image of the latest beta version along with its release
> information added (which just happened to be Wednesday this
> week) not as a note on the page but featured in the
> template, nice long features list moved to the top, no list
> of bugs and formats it doesn't play, a long description of
> the beta version moved in right after the features, and the
> EC monopoly fine and restrictions moved to the bottom.
>

Did you read the edit summary?

"major restructuring: rewrote intro, moved EC info into its own section,
added info on WMP for mobile devices, dropped unsourced criticism,
renamed some sections"

Note that a lot of what was "removed" is available in [[Comparison of
media players]], which is linked from the See Also section.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>> In any case we have located the original high res version:
>>
>> http://animalpicturesarchive.com/animal/ViewImg.cgi?img=a7/Snowy_Owl_Nyctea_scandiaca_005-by_John_White.jpg
>>
>> We link to it in the article.
>>
> It's an ugly picture.  I'm sure we could find better.

It wouldn't be useful in the [[O RLY?]] article, though, because O RLY
was based on that specific image and not any other. Someone else already
tried making a replacement using a public domain owl image and I removed
it from the article because IMO it was downright deceptive to include it
there. Better to have nothing.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
jayjg wrote:
<snip>
> I'm having difficulty understanding what value he could possibly
> bring to the project.
>

Entertainment value?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Philip Welch stated for the record:
>
>> I think the {{spoiler}} template, if used at all, should only be used
>> to guard actual spoilers--i.e. "Darth Vader is Luke's father",
>> "Rosebud is his sled", the end of any M. Night Shymalan film, etc.
>
> Zeus impregnates the mortal chick.
>
> The horse is full of soldiers.
>
> Beowulf kills Grendel.
>
> Lancelot and Gwenevere hump like bunnies.
>
> The Nazis lose.
>
> I'm sure there's more.
>

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Template:Spoiler

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
Waerth wrote:
> I am still disappointed in the way people get purged if they are to
> critical even if they never abuse the responsabilities

You have hardly been purged.  You are welcome to contribute in the
projects, and it has always been my hope that your issues with various
things can be resolved in a positive manner!

Your stewardship and status as press contact were both revoked after you
threatened to abuse both of them.  When you were desysopped in the Dutch
community following a community process, you threatened to use your
steward status to make yourself a sysop again, as I understand it.  When
you were unhappy with something about the formation of the dutch
chapter, rather than coming to me or the board with a complaint, you
threatened to go to the press with your complaints.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false
 information

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>WP:V is deliberately vague on this point and editors have to use
>>common sense. If an article says "John Smith is a killer" and there's
>>no source, remove it immediately. But an edit saying "Skiiing is
>>Switzerland's top sport" can be tagged (but please remember to go back
>>at some point to see if a source has turned up), or better still, the
>>editor who's questioning it could look for a source himself. There are
>>so many gradations of unsourced material between these two examples
>>that we couldn't possibly be algorithmic about it, so editors have to
>>be sensible: the more harmful or the sillier an unsourced edit looks,
>>the faster it should be removed.
>>
>>
>Precisely!
>
>
I too find this a good basis.

An unfortunate tendency when you make a pronouncement is that people
generalize when they read them.  It is one thing to say that unsourced
statements about living persons should be deleted immediately, but quite
another to say that all unsourced statements should be deleted
immediately.  When you begin with the former, and during a later message
in the thread you assume you are talking about the same thing when you
shorten your reference, you can be sure that their will be those who
never read the first message and who will interpret the second message
as general policy.

It's hard to imagine how people will misunderstand you in the year 4039
when you have the same headstart as Jesus now has.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> geni wrote:
>> The effect will be limited. Even quite senior people don't appear to
>> be able to follow our copyright policy.
>
> And even those who claim they do still want to claim fair use in cases
> where it's plainly not.

If this is an oblique reference to me and the O RLY situation, I still
haven't come across a convincing argument for why fair use didn't apply.
It's hardly "plainly not" when even actual lawyers think it's fair use.

All I've been asking for is some sort of explanation of the takedown. I
don't mind the image being gone for other reasons than invalid fair use,
if that's the case, I just want to know why.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection policy

body:
On 5/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> If that is true, then the template at the time is misleading and scary
> and distracting to readers.  I propose that we eliminate the requirement
> that semi-protected articles have to announce themselves as such to the
> general public.  They can be categorized as necessary, of course, so
> that editors who take an interest in making sure things are not
> excessively semi-protected can do so, but there seems to me to be little
> benefit in announcing it to the entire world in such a confusing fashion.

If the semi-prot banner is removed for pages like GWB, I suggest we increase
the friendliness of a user who does try and edit it. We do want new users,
after all. Something like "Hi! Bet you thought Wikipedia was the
encyclopaedia anyone can edit, right? Well, it is...but articles like this
one are so popular that we've had to restrict it. On the other hand, there
are over a million articles that need your help. Click here to find out
which..."

Or something.

Steve


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
> Peter Mackay wrote:
> >> Obviously writing an NPOV-compliant article isn't a
> problem. Unduly
> >> biasing an
> >> article towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.
> >
> > I don't think you understand NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple
> points of
> > view, not one. We present the facts and let the reader decide.
>
> I can assure you that I understand NPOV perfectly.
>
> I will reiterate: unduly biasing an article towards your own
> opinions is not compliant with NPOV.

I wasn't talking about biasing articles. That's something you brought in,
and I'll agree with your motherhood strawman: unduly biasing an article
towards your own opinions is not compliant with NPOV.

What I'm saying - again - is that it's fine to have editors putting their
own partisan opinions into articles so long as this is done in accordance
with NPOV. NPOV allows for multiple viewpoints.

I think we've both reached agreement on all the above points and we can let
the list get on with discussing other trivia?

Pete, anxious to see a 3-armed Wookie


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Riiight... do you have a point in this argument anymore, or are you
> just doing it for sport?
>
I'll summarize my stance in this particular argument in case you can't
follow:  The statement that "fair use is a defense and not a right" is
the kind of confusing mumbo jumbo I'd expect to be spouted out by the
RIAA, not a Wikipedian.  Fair use is a fundamental right which is part
of the fundamental rights to free speech, free expression, free press,
etc.  While it is difficult for a person to get an advance court
ruling guaranteeing her right to fair use in a particular case, it is
often possible - in fact the recent passage of 17 USC 512(f) as part
of OCILLA provides a promising new avenue for fighting the chilling
effects of copyright threat over materials distributed online.

> Listen, I think it's a great idea to claim that we should all stand up
> and assert our fair use. Sounds great. But I'm not sure that's what
> WMF should do with its donations, and I'm not sure the O RLY? owl is
> the place to shed legal blood. There are copyright watchdogs out
> there, let them do that sort of work. We're trying to build a free
> encyclopedia here, last I checked, not serve as an anti-copyright
> activist network.
>
> FF

The other half of my argument is that Wikimedia should take advantage
of the OCILLA provisions when dealing with threats of lawsuits.  Ray
Saintonge expressed this view better than I have, and we seem to be in
agreement.  Refer to his recent emails in this thread for the details.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On May 19, 2006, at 3:37 PM, geni wrote:
>
>> The problem is there are a million bits of fan fiction out there so
>> the cannon thing is important with starwars. You have to have it there
>> unless you want pics of Han solo with 3 arms or something.
>
> Well, of course an artist's rendition should resemble what Han Solo
> actually looks like in the movies instead of stupid shit like that.
> But there's  no reason to stick with screen captures of the films
> themselves.
>

How about a Free photo of Harrison Ford and some image manipulation?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Philip Welch wrote:

>On May 18, 2006, at 2:48 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>If we don't want unsourced material, why have we tolerated it so long?
>>
>>
>This could be a change in what's considered acceptable rather than an
>eternal law. Early in Wikipedia's development, we took what we could
>get. Now that we have a crapload of content, we can set stricter rules.
>
>Think of it like a basketball team. If you absolutely need to have a
>basketball team and no one wants to join, you'll take anyone. If
>everyone in the school wants to join the basketball team, you have to
>set rules and cut people. True, there's a limit to the roster of a
>basketball team and no limit to the amount of information Wikipedia
>could have, but more importantly there's a minimum in both cases, and
>when the minimum is met, you can be more discriminating.
>
There are other ways of accomplishing this than setting more rules.  You
want to build the very best team, and that will be established by
looking at the players' activities on the basketball court.  When you
have a more artificial rule that an otherwise great player must achieve
a certain level of academic results, instinct should point towards
finding ways of improving his academics instead of cutting him from the
team without question.

We want to build on the poor articles.  This is usually much better than
waiting for someone to submit the perfect article on the same subjec.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 5/19/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> Interesting.  I tried looking this up, because hey, if it's repeated
>>> over and over it shouldn't be hard to find.  The first Google hit I
>>> found was http://www.eff.org/cafe/gross1.html - Understanding Your
>>> Rights:  The Public's Right of Fair Use.  But I guess the EFF has no
>>> clue what they're talking about.
>> If you want to play "find the source", we can do that, but I don't see
>> the value in it.
>>
> Nor do I.  You find a source, I'll find two.  We could keep it up for
> a long time, but suffice it to say it seems like there's not a
> consensus, among lawyers or among the general public, on whether or
> not fair use is a right.
>
>> "Fair Use is not a right...it is a defense to an infringement claim"
>> http://library.case.edu/copyright/fairuse.html
>
> Searching google for "fair use is a right" I get 200 hits.  Searching
> for "fair use is not a right" I get 99.  Do we need to start going
> through and evaluating the credibility of the sources?  Maybe see
> which ones are more impartial?
>

Google is not a reliable source.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>> What would you say if I told you that I had located the *original*
>> high-res version of the "O RLY owl", sans the text, and that it had a
>> clear copyright notice? The "O RLY" version is a copvio - so, our "fair
>> use" claim was in error.
>
> This argument came up in the image talk page and I don't see how it
> works. My understanding of copyright law on this matter:
>
> The photographer created the photo and held copyright to it, and then
> someone else came along and created a derivative work out of it. As a
> derivative work, the copyright is jointly owned - both the photographer
> and the ORLY-writer hold copyright over the resulting image and so the
> permission of both is needed for it to be copied (unless such an
> addition is too trivial to warrant a copyright in the first place, in
> which case the photographer's the sole copyright holder to Orly.jpg. I
> don't think this changes anything as far we're concerned, though).
>

The problem here is that the O RLY website was claiming copyright over
their image and not acknowleding the original author - kind of like what
Baidupedia are doing.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Sean Barrett
 What the hell does that mean? Was that supposed to mean something?
 Maggie thewolfstar

----------------------------------------
From: Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 12:21 PM
To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce for no reason

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Earthhope Action Network stated for the record:

> I expect the same respect on this list that anyone else gets.

You had the same chance to earn our respect as anyone else.

The results you see before you.

- --
 Sean Barrett | A thunder of jets in an open sky,
 sean at epoptic.com | A streak of gray and a cheerful "Hi!"
 | A loop, a whirl, a vertical climb,
 | And once again you know it's time....
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from_name: Aleksy Schubert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Aleksy Schubert <alx at cs.ru.nl> wrote:
>
>>Hello all,
>>
>>Recently it turned out on the Polish Wikipedia that somebody created
>>a secret mailing list for Polish Wikipedia administrators. Why I say
>>the list was secret?
>>* the information on it was not presented anywhere on the usual
>>   public Wikipedia fora,
>>* the information on the fact that this list is planned has
>>   not been announced anywhere,
>>* the list was private (only admins could read it and
>>   had access to its archives),
>>* the information about the list leaked on some of the Wikipedia
>>   talk pages.
>>
>>There was a hot dispute concerning the problem on the official
>>Polish Wikipedia mailing list. However, there was no clear result.
>>A concrete proposal to discuss the issue in a narrow circle and achieve
>>a compromise of some kind made by [[:pl:User:Ency]] was more or less
>>ignored by the creators and supporters of the list.
>>
>>My concern with regard to the issue is that this kind of initiative
>>spoils to high extent the open character of the Wikipedia community and
>>therefore the mailing list should be closed or the admins should be
>>obliged to sign off from the list. Another possibility is to just make
>>the list open for the whole community in some way. However, the
>>effective result of the discussion on the Polish Wikipedia mailing list
>>(that means that the list still exists) stays in contradiction with my
>>understanding of the  openness of the Wikipedia projects. That's why I
>>raise this issue here in hope that I'll hear something that will allow
>>me to better understand the situation and act appropriately.
>
>
> I think this is rather inaccurate description.
This is a disadvantage of keeping things secret. Even though
one may strongly strive in good will to give an adequate account
one goes astray because the facts are *kept secret*.

> A private list got started and the Wikipedians "trusted" by the
> list's creators got invited to participate (mostly sysops,
The first part of the sentence is an undeniable truth. The second
is, however, a pure source of unverifiable myths, legends, and
speculations. As the list is private, you can say whatever
you want about their users and no one outside the list will
be able to verify that. I can only try to infer that
* probably all the sysops were there,
* some of the sysops are there,
* some of the sysops signed off from there,
* some of the users who could've been perceived by the list creators
   as "trusted" behave like they were not included in the list,
* no person without the sysop flag confirmed publicly her/his being on
   the list.

> because everyone who hasn't been behaving like a troll and
> wants to be one easily gets a flag).
This is a bit inadequate on your side. You perfectly know that
except from troll-like users several POV-pushers were
denied the flag (and mixing them with trolls is unfair).
You also perfectly know that a few respectable users had problems
with getting the sysop flag in the past.

> The list has been advertised many times on #wikipedia-pl,
> so it's not really "secret".
You also know the strength of this kind of advert (as opposed
to the advert on the Message board or in the Village pump). I keep
on reading the channel every day and I didn't get to
know about that before the issue broke out on the mailing
list.

> The new list was started was not because the discussions
> that take place there require secrecy, but simply
> because the open mailing list became so full of trolls
> and flamewars that it's not very useful for discussions,
> and some people still like the "mailing list" format.
So no problem with publishing the archives of the list?

> Oh, and I've got the invitation, but I'm not on the list.

Bests,
Alx-pl

--
De toekomst is onzeker en het einde is altijd nabij
- Roadhouse Blues, The Doors


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Classical Belarusian in Wikipedia

body:
OK, that's absolutely crazy. As cited on the Requests for New
Languages page, there are also newspapers written in socalled
"Narkamauka". What do they use at http://gov.by/ let me guess... NOT
tarashkievitsa?

Remind me, of all people educated in Belarus, which ones were taught
to read in Classical Belarusan at school? NONE, they all learnt Modern
Belarusan, that is the language read by the millions of speakers of
the Belarusan Language. Only a minority use the "Classical grammar",
and even those people were educated in Official Belarusan.

You try to put down the official language with names such as
"narkamauka", and say it is "soviet imposed". That is irrelevant here.
What matters is, it is official in Belarus, used by most belarusans,
learnt by most belarusans at school.

Mark

On 20/05/06, Kiryl Nieviarouski <k.nieviarouski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear All, Dear Mark,
>
> Belarusian Classical Grammar (sometimes called Tarashkievitsa)is used by
>    Belarusian Language Society
> [http://www.tbm-language.com/eng/about.html], by Belarusian PEN Centere
> [http://www.pen-centre.com/eng/pen_about.html], by most important
> belarusian writers and free media (newspapers, magazines, radio) to name
> just some: Nasa Niva Newspaper [http://arche.home.by/], ARCHE Magazine
> [http://arche.home.by], Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
> [http://www.svaboda.org], by main belarusian political parties and Non
> Government Organisations: Party of Belarusian Popular Front
> [http://www.pbnf.org], United Civil Party [http://www.ucpb.org],
> Viasna'96 [http://www.spring96.org], by Civil Society Center
> [http://www.cacedu.unibel.by/cscsc/], by belarusian Dictionary Project
> [http://slounik.org], by Litara.net Webzine [http://www.litara.net], by
> Belarusian Legal Portal [http://www.praunik.org], by Belarusian Students
> Portal [http://studenty.by] by many belarusian bloggers from LiveJournal
> Community and in particulary by Rydel's blog [http://www.br23.net/] wich
> won this year the 4th National Belarusian Web Content Contest, organized
> by prominent belarusian portal TUT.BY [http://www.tut.by].
>
> All of above mentioned organisations and individuals use CLASSICAL grammar.
>
> Most localisation and internationalisation job of free and open source
> software (GNU/Linux)in belarusian is done according to classical grammar.
>
> As you see, it's not just "some of belarusian nationalists" which want
> to return to older belarusian, but intellectuals, writers, journalist,
> students, politicals, translators and policymakers who use it.
>
> It is not true, that  "By sheer chance, the proponents of the
> alternative style were the first to arrive at be.wikipedia[...]" this is
> because major part of BYnet (belarusian part of the web) uses classical
> grammar.
>
> In such situation I belive it is inappropriate to create an alternative
> wikipedia for authors who want to write in official, imposed by soviet
> regime grammar rules (which are still obligatory).
>
> If someone want create article in "Narkamauka", should be allowed to do
> so in the belarusian wikipedia.
>
> PS Sorry for my English.
>
> --
> With best regards, Kiryl Nieviarouski
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> There are many private, semi-private and secret lists in which
> wikimedians make decisions with eachother without ever telling anyone or
> explaining. Openness has gone overboard a very long time ago. Most
> things you read on the public lists have been discussed privately long
> before an outsider found out about them.
>
> It is the hard truth. The foundation nor any of the projects are 100%
> open ....... and should they be in some cases?
I think it is quite natural that people make lists of this kind on one
or another occasion. I find it even necessary in some circumstances.
Some of the English Wikipedia guidelines suggest even that this is a
reasonable thing to do (for instance in case of a conflict). The
question is only if this kind of communication channel, namely
non-public Wikipedia admin list, is OK.

Groeten,
Alx-pl

--
De toekomst is onzeker en het einde is altijd nabij
- Roadhouse Blues, The Doors


from_name: abu hamza

body:
the evidence for shipman eing jewish is greater than the evidence for him
not being jewish.

shouldnt the question be why are certain posters hell bent on removing this
background information.

i didn't put the first reference there, it was removed and i put it back
again

>From: Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 05:36:46 -0700
>
>On May 20, 2006, at 2:13 AM, abu hamza wrote:
>
> > hi Philip,
> > like i said, the few references we have on shipmans background
> > claim him to
> > be jewish
>
>Those references are *not reliable*.  It's unacceptable to put
>unreliable information in the wiki, period.
>
>If it was reliably established that he was Jewish, there would be no
>problem. Since it isn't reliably established, reporting that he was
>Jewish, or that he might be Jewish, constitutes anti-Semitism.
>
>Why are you so hell-bent on making this poorly-supported case that he
>is Jewish, anyway?
>
>--
>Philip L. Welch
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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http://join.msn.com/toolbar/overview


subject: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970/Abu Hamza

body:
being anti zionism isnt being anti semetic. likewise some of the most
antisemetic people are christian zionists.

you are slandering me to muddy the water, please refrain from personal
attacks. I am not anti semetic and could never be

p.s mycontributions included chinese muslims, turkic people and a moors
section in the spanish inquisition

>From: Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970/Abu Hamza
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 05:47:59 -0700
>
>On May 19, 2006, at 1:09 PM, Ryan Delaney wrote:
>
> >> Saladin1970's actual article "contributions" have all been POV,
> >> usually not relevant to the article, extremely poorly written,
> >> generally unsourced, and, when sourced, taken from non-reliable
> >> sources; that's when they haven't been POV copyvios.  Moreover, they
> >> have been reverted by 9 different editors.  He has managed all of
> >> this
> >> in under 50 edits.  I'm having difficulty understanding what value he
> >> could possibly bring to the project.
> >
> > He's a newbie. He doesn't understand our rules or procedures or
> > have any
> > sense of institutional memory like those of us who have been around
> > for a
> > long time. Revert him, zap him with the cluebat a few times, and
> > give him a
> > chance to reform. This is a wiki and the article histories are
> > preserved
> > indefinitely. If short blocks have no effect on him, then I'd be
> > willing to
> > consent to a community ban. But we have to try them first.
>
>All of his edits seem to fall within a POV-pushing, anti-Semitic
>agenda. From denouncing Zionism to trying to publicly identify
>(without proof) a convicted murderer as Jewish, it's pretty clear
>that he's trying to turn Wikipedia content into racist propaganda. I
>am quite firm about this--he should be blocked indefinitely. If he is
>willing to apologize for his past edits I'd have no problem with
>reinstating him. But Wikipedia is not a hate site.
>
>On May 19, 2006, at 7:42 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >> I'm having difficulty understanding what value he could possibly
> >> bring to the project.
> >>
> >
> > Entertainment value?
>
>I don't find anti-Semitism entertaining, thanks.
>
>--
>Philip L. Welch
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If you see an unsourced statement that would be libel if false, and it
>>makes you feel suspicious enough to want to tag it as {{citation
>>needed}}, please do not do that!  Please just remove the statement and
>>ask a question on the talk page.
>>
>>
>Agree with this. Is it added to the relevant policy pages?
>
>Here is an example from an article I deleted:
>
>
>>"The most recent disaster that <name omitted> claims his organization
>>has responded to is the 2004 South Asia Tsunami, although there is no
>>convincing evidence that he or any of his team has been there.[citation
>>needed]"
>>
>>That is really really really awful.
>>
>>
>It's also just stupid, bad writing. "Nobel peace prize winner Jim Smith said
>all people should donate money to charities. Ironically, Smith has never
>given money to the [insert name of charity picked at random here."
>
The real problem with the last statement is that it is a negative one.
Saying that someone has _never_ done something is virtually impossible
to verify.  (Unless he was out of contact with everyone when his Oceanic
Airlines flight home from the Nobel ceremonies crashed on a South
Pacific Island)

>IMHO this kind of writing breaches NPOV and almost NOR - we start to make
>claims about the person by connecting unrelated facts together. We should
>never attempt to expose hypocrisy in our subjects - if it exists, we should
>find reliable sources that have already done that. This was the problem with
>[[Safe Speed]] - editors had tried to debunk claims made by the group,
>whereas what they should have been doing was citing others who had debunked
>them, not just general research that apparently contradicts their claims.
>
It's still a matter of how you expose the hypocrisy.  In the case of the
Massachusetts congressman who openly campaigned for a maximum of four
terms, it was a verifiable fact that he was in his seventh term.

>Selective juxtaposition of facts to imply something is definitely out. You
>either say it and cite a source, or you don't say it at all.
>
Yes, but a skillfull wordsmith can still find ways around that.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On May 19, 2006, at 4:33 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I support serious action to ban people who commit copyvios.  We are
>> supposed to be using fair use only in certain very limited
>> circumstances
>> and people who do not realize that should be banned from the project.
>
> This seems overly aggressive to me. It's better to re-educate than to
> ban whenever possible.
>

50kV throught the chair won't be available until MediaWiki 1.7 :(

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
Hoi,
On the Dutch Wikipedia there has been a mailinglist for admins only
for a VERY long time. The reason why it was started was that many
public quarrels on nl.wikipedia itself detracted from what Wikipedia
was about. As much as anything the list proved to be a great way of
letting excess heat go out of issues.

It is not that is should be secret, it is treated as confidential
because its content can be less diplomatic at times.

When you look at where information comes from, statistically the
largest part comes from a smallish group. It is also fair to say that
the admins pretty much make up this smallish group. In essence it is
helpful; it does not mean that the arguments do not have to be put
forward publicly and a vote is not done in public but the static
around an issue is less.

Some people said it was a cabal, they were invited to run for admin,
many did and became satisfied that it was not only to find that they
are now accused of being part of this in-crowd.. They are :)

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 5/20/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Aleksy Schubert <alx at cs.ru.nl> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > Recently it turned out on the Polish Wikipedia that somebody created
> > a secret mailing list for Polish Wikipedia administrators. Why I say
> > the list was secret?
> > * the information on it was not presented anywhere on the usual
> >    public Wikipedia fora,
> > * the information on the fact that this list is planned has
> >    not been announced anywhere,
> > * the list was private (only admins could read it and
> >    had access to its archives),
>
> Why? What is meant to be discussed on that mailing list that cannot be
> open at least to all subscribers?
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
good point steve

>From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 15:01:34 +0200
>
>On 5/20/06, abu hamza <abuhamza1970 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > the evidence for shipman eing jewish is greater than the evidence for
>him
> > not being jewish.
>
>
>
>I haven't been following this conversation much, but in general if the
>statement you make is true, then it's appropriate in an article to make a
>similar statement: "Doubts over X's ethnic origins remain, but certain
>writers (A, B) offer evidence to suggest that he was Jewish"...
>
>Steve
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If you see an unsourced statement that would be libel if false, and it
>>makes you feel suspicious enough to want to tag it as {{citation
>>needed}}, please do not do that!  Please just remove the statement and
>>ask a question on the talk page.
>>
>>
>Yes. And this is what we used to do before {{fact}} or its synonyms
>became widespread. I think that, because {{fact}} is so easy to tag
>onto something, the practice of moving dubious claims may have
>decreased somewhat in favor of tagging them.  What can we practically
>do to change this? I think policy alone will not be sufficient, given
>how ubiquitous {{fact}} has already become.
>
>Perhaps we need a new tag for claims which should be moved within n
>days unless cited, with its own category for maintenancy. But that
>might further increase the use of tagging as opposed to talk pages.
>
Multiplying the number of tags only provides new opportunities for
getting things wrong.

Ec


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
There is also an IRC channel for en.wikipedia admins.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW:  Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

body:
 Do you mean anything that doesn't agree
 with you or the band of admins and their vigilanat spies that
 control articles and edits?

 Incase you haven't noticed Mrs. Laupheimer, I was trying to assist you
 in your efforts.
   Where was this assistance? and it's not Mrs.

 I hope you realise that your constant complaining-which is the only
 term that can be applied to these
 e-mails- will only result in the list-Administrators blocking your
 message.
   Complaining Prasad? How about telling the truth. And how is
    this the only term that can be applied..because you said so? You're
    kidding right?

 Taking into account the fact that your talk-page has been protected,
 this mailing-list is perhaps the last medium through which you can express
 your grievances.
    Wrong, pal. I have a website that is quite well known and quite
    popular. I also have alot of allies both in and out of Wikipedia.
    My allies outside of Wiki are journalists, many presidents of
    strong groups, and the general pissed-off (from being pissed-on)
    public, i.e. regular lowly oridinary people like myself. Scads of
    them, actually.

 Using terms like "vigilant spies" only seves to make you seem
 frivolous. Unless you abandon this attitude you are unlikely to be
 taken seriously.
    Sorry, but vigilante spies is the only term I can come up with that
    describes these editors. Oh, I am taken seriously by many people on
    Wikipedia, have no fear. Or then again, maybe have fear. The admin
    cabal is doomed to extinction like most tyrannical regimes are. Note:
    notice how Philip Welch defends the Chinese firewall. Jimmy Wales
    went up against Philip on this. My email concerning this was blocked

  I am trying to help you, but unfortunately you do not seem to be in a reciprocative frame of mind.
    You have a strange idea of helping me. No I'm not reciprocative of
    sancitmonious bullcrap.
 If you would still be
 open to my suggestions I ask that you contact me.
   Sure.
    Maggiethewolfstar
  ---
  Regards,

 Prasad.

 PS-Incase you haven't noticed I am one of the very few users who is
 showing any interest whatsoever in assisting you.

----------------------------------------
From: "Prasad J" <prasad59 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:53 AM
To: "Earthhope Action Network" <contact at earthhopenetwork.net>
Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

Do you mean anything that doesn't agree
with you or the band of admins and their vigilanat spies that
control articles and edits?

Incase you haven't noticed Mrs. Laupheimer, I was trying to assist you
in your efforts. I hope you realise that your constant
complaining-which is the only term that can be applied to these
e-mails- will only result in the list-Administrators blocking your
message. Taking into account the fact that your talk-page has been
protected, this mailing-list is perhaps the last medium through which
you can express your grievances. There is ofcourse IRC, but be warned
that "whiners" are quickly banned from the channels by the moderators
there. Using terms like "vigilant spies" only seves to make you seem
frivolous. Unless you abandon this attitude you are unlikely to be
taken seriously. I am trying to help you, but unfortunately you do not
seem to be in a reciprocative frame of mind. If you would still be
open to my suggestions I ask that you contact me.

 Regards,

 Prasad.

PS-Incase you haven't noticed I am one of the very few users who is
showing any interest whatsoever in assisting you.


body:
Abu means father of , and my son is called hamza . Is this more muddying the
water that my name is called abu hamza? You just wrote a whole article
complaining about people writing stuff like "is one of the 'British friends'
of the "Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress,". And in the same
breath you write this is saladin (posting here as abu hamza) . Note the
emphasis.

But let us not muddy the water. Currently i am on a ban for over a week,
after having only been here for 3 days. And the ban being my first ban (tom
harrison was for the same 3rr).

So far you have suggested i made copyright violations - can you cite them
please.

you then have suggested i use the wrong references -  i was never informed
that references to wikipedia pages or personal home pages are not allowed.
one would in all fairness expect some kind of warning before i was
permanently banned (initially)

In fact just in the last day, i have been accused of being an antisemite by
philip for opposing political zionism. I have been accused of copy right
violations, of making no useful contributions, of using the name abu hamza.

Is it a case of throwing enough mud so that it sticks?   There is no basis
for a ban, other than my section on zionism, which is all factual and
undisputable.

"The three talmudic Oaths

The major historical Jewish rabbis, including those in Cordoba recognised
there were preconditions to moving to israel in accordance with the Talmud.
These included the three oaths, that jews would not be unduly persecuted,
that all nations would approve the return from exodus, and that no force was
to be used.threeoaths Because of these conditions millions of Jews exiled
from Europe, Russia since the 9th century have prefered to emmigrate to
neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Iran.History
of the Jews in Turkey The population of Jews in Palestine at the turn of the
20th century was just tens of thousands.macrohistory Many Orthodox Jews
vehemently oppose the return from exile as they argue the conditions have
not been met. In particular the second oath wherebye just 2/3rds of the UN
general Assembly voted in favour of a recommendation for a two state
solution , and All the neighbouring states opposed the creation.
Historically the vast number of jews have opposed political zionism, based
on these judaic rulings."

>From: Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 08:11:40 -0500
>
>On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>  > If it was reliably established that he was Jewish, there would be no
> > problem. Since it isn't reliably established, reporting that he was
> > Jewish, or that he might be Jewish, constitutes anti-Semitism.
>
>The only reference I've found to Harold Shipman being Jewish is a BBC
>news site reporting a comment by [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]], an Islamist
>cleric in the UK, who was convicted in February of racial hatred and
>incitement to murder. Abu Hamza told the court that the British
>Foreign Office and media are controlled by Jews, and part of his
>evidence was that, referring to Harold Shipman, "If a doctor kills 250
>of his patients there is not a single word about his religion."
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4644030.stm
>
>This is the attitude that User:Saladin1970 (posting here as Abu Hamza)
>brings to Wikipedia. We see it a lot. A few weeks ago, another user,
>User:Jamaissur, created a number of articles about British Jews who
>were caught up in a financial scandal. There were other people caught
>up in it too, but he didn't create articles about them, only the
>Jewish ones, and some of the articles ended up consisting only of the
>allegations with practically no other information. When he couldn't
>find a source saying they were Jews, he'd add things like "is one of
>the 'British friends' of the "Israel Center for Social and Economic
>Progress," which made the same point.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Barry_Townsley&oldid=44187414
>Or that the person was married to someone whose father was Jewish. He
>even created an article about the charity [[Jewish care]] because one
>of the men caught up in the scandal was a major fundraiser, and for a
>while that's all the page said: British charity, looks after Jewish
>people, controversial Lord X was a major fundraiser.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jewish_Care&oldid=44486804
>
>Even if Harold Shipman was Jewish and there's a good source for it,
>there's no reason it should be in the intro. His ethnicity/religion
>wasn't in any way relevant to his notabilty.
>
>Sarah
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Delirium wrote:
>>
>>> Patrick, Brad wrote:
>>>
>>>> Don't assume anything.  If you are speaking as a person interested in
>>>> Wikipedia, great.  I'm sure you have good things to say about
>>>> Wikipedia
>>>> in Thailand.  Good for you.  All I am saying is that you do *not* have
>>>> the authority to speak on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation,
>>>> Inc.
>>>
>>> I'm not sure if you're new here or what, but this isn't how we do
>>> things at the Wikimedia Foundation.  We discuss politely, if
>>> sometimes heatedly, on the mailing list, not brusquely and
>>> dictatorially.
>>>
>>> Waerth asked if the Foundation had confidence in him to discuss with
>>> this organization; not if he legally has the authority to enter into
>>> commitments on behalf of the foundation, which is quite a different
>>> matter.  In short, his question did not call for a legal opinion,
>>> and offering one unsolicited was unhelpful, misrepresenting the
>>> matter, and impolite.
>>
>> This criticism is totally misplaced. Note that Brad addressed whether
>> Waerth could *speak* on behalf of the Foundation, responding directly
>> to Waerth's question. The issue is not limited to whether Waerth is
>> authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation to enter into
>> agreements.
>>
>> Lawyers are not restricted to giving legal opinions and nothing else,
>> sometimes they need to represent their clients in communicating with
>> third parties, as Brad did here. Brad's intervention was helpful
>> (because it got across his client's position), misrepresented
>> nothing, and if it wasn't as polite as suits your tastes, it's
>> because more polite ways of communicating this hadn't yet gotten the
>> message across.
>
> It *did* misrepresent the matter, and does not appear to have
> accurately represented his client's position either, as the more
> helpful and accurate reply by Anthere (an *actual* board member) was
> quite different from Brad's.
>
> -- Unhelpful reply (Brad): "You do *not* have the authority to speak
> on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.".
>
> -- Helpful reply (Anthere): "I think that is fine you go and contact
> these people. I'll be happy if something gets out of it. ... As long
> as you do not make believe others that you are allowed to make
> decisions in the name of the Foundation, that's fine. Just make that
> clear."
>
> So the actual position of at least one board member seems to be,
> contrary to what you claim, that the issue *is* limited to whether
> Waerth is authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation (he isn't,
> and doesn't believe himself to be), but that it's perfectly fine if he
> contacts third parties for collaboration with Wikimedia as long as he
> doesn't represent himself as being an agent of the Foundation.  Which
> seems a lot more sensible and helpful as a reply to me.

I suppose it's convenient for you to overlook another part of Anthere's
reply: "in truth Walter, board members should not themselves speak *in
the name* of the Foundation." In the end, I see no particular
contradiction between Anthere's statement and Brad's. If they want to
play good-cop/bad-cop, that's their business, but Brad did not
misrepresent anything. He was seeing to it that the Foundation's
previously communicated position was clear, just the sort of thing an
attorney should be doing for a client.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
Well thank you Philip, you have topped the lot.because my name is Abu Hamza,
i am responsible for 911.
well done Phil

>From: Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 06:19:29 -0700
>
>On May 20, 2006, at 6:11 AM, Sarah wrote:
>
> >> If it was reliably established that he was Jewish, there would be no
> >> problem. Since it isn't reliably established, reporting that he was
> >> Jewish, or that he might be Jewish, constitutes anti-Semitism.
> >
> > The only reference I've found to Harold Shipman being Jewish is a BBC
> > news site reporting a comment by [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]], an Islamist
> > cleric in the UK, who was convicted in February of racial hatred and
> > incitement to murder. Abu Hamza told the court that the British
> > Foreign Office and media are controlled by Jews, and part of his
> > evidence was that, referring to Harold Shipman, "If a doctor kills 250
> > of his patients there is not a single word about his religion."
> > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4644030.stm
> >
> > This is the attitude that User:Saladin1970 (posting here as Abu Hamza)
> > brings to Wikipedia.
>
>So he publicly identifies with a notorious Islamist and anti-Semite.
>3,000 people in my country were murdered five years ago in the name
>of those attitudes. He should be banned indefinitely just as we would
>ban a neo-Nazi who made similar anti-Semitic edits. These people do
>not belong in our community.
>
>--
>Philip L. Welch
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> The statement that "fair use is a defense and not a right" is
> the kind of confusing mumbo jumbo I'd expect to be spouted out by the
> RIAA, not a Wikipedian.  Fair use is a fundamental right which is part
> of the fundamental rights to free speech, free expression, free press,
> etc.

Is it?  I don't see it that way.  If you have evidence to cite in
support of that claim, I'd be curious to see it.

"Fundamental rights" aren't always quite as fundamental as we'd
like them to be.  Free speech is (at least under U.S.-style
democracies) a fundamental right.  But it's not universal, even
in the West: it's not an absolute right in Germany, for example.

Lots of things which feel like they ought to be fundamental
rights, aren't.  For example, there's no fundamental right to
privacy in the U.S., much though many of us wish there were.
But it's not mentioned anywhere in the Declaration of
Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.

Copyright is not a fundamental right; it's an artificial
construction of government, usually with the expressed goal of
promoting creative expression.

Me, I'd say that "fair use" isn't a fundamental right, either;
rather, it is an exception to copyright, a further legal
construction on top of an already legal construction.

Arguments over fair use are often something else, in disguise.
A lot of people, especially on the net, believe that the legal
construction called "copyright" is wrong and invalid; they've
heard only half of Stuart Brand's quote about "information wants
to be free" and have amplified it into "all information must be
free".  They believe that copyright law and its beneficiaries
are to be variously ignored, taunted, teased, or hunted down
and shot.  If the copyright holders seem to be gaining the upper
hand, the information-must-be-free activists believe that
(as in love and war) all is fair: defiance, guerilla action,
perjury, obfuscation, or hiding behind specious fair use claims
as a diversionary tactic.

Now, despite my seeming rhetoric, I am not trying to claim that
the copyright-is-wrong activists are wrong, nor am I suggesting
that Anthony DiPierro is a "copyright-is-wrong" activist.
(I have no idea how Anthony DiPierro feels about copyright,
but some of his arguments *sound* like the arguments of those
activists, which is why I bring all this up.)

If someone wants to believe that copyright is wrong and that all
information must be free, that's fine.  (As Thomas Jefferson
famously said, a little revolution every once in a while is a
good thing.)  But, two things: (1) please don't use "fair use"
to justify your abandonment of copyright law, because "fair use"
is part of the very same copyright law you're trying to abandon.
Also, (2) please carry out your activism somewhere other than
Wikipedia, because Wikipedia, whether you like it or not,
is a U.S. entity which is bound to honor U.S. copyright law.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Message: 8 Unblock Request

body:
This user was correctly blocked for using his user page to solicit
personal attacks and disruption, compiling a list of "rogue admins"
and "victims of Wikipedia's secret police".

Good riddance.


body:
Adrian,
 Thanks for your honesty and your backup.

 No, I don't want to be one of the mindless drones that says that Wikipedia is perfect and I will never apologize for something I didn't do. I will and have, however, apologized when I said something that I considered wrong.

 Mindless drones is a term that I came up with while still editing on Wikipedia. Yes,. it is the truth and the truth also, is that there are these brain washed people all over the world.
 They are living breathing examples of the present Orwellian state that the world is in. And the crackdown is about to happen. With the COPE bill and all the evidence I see on the internet, well. WE ARE SO FUCKED.

 take care, Adrian and I do appreciate your concern and your friendship.
 ps Many of my posts do get included in the mailing list.

----------------------------------------
From: "A. K. Me" <akme at internode.on.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:38 PM
To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net
Subject: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

I thought that I would say something here.

I have now written 5 messages to the Wikipedia mailing list and so far
none has been published. I have written to Jimbo Wales, to the
Wikimedia board, and on talk pages, and I have had my IP addresses
blocked because I asked them to look in to why I was blocked and whether
it was fair. They have told me that I am not allowed to ask for anyone
to question my ban. I have written detailed web pages proving that
there were pages deleted from history which have perverted the
"evidence" leading to my block. Administrators have come forward to
verify that the pages that were deleted from history proves that I was
being attacked and that I only repeated what they said to me back to
them. But yet nobody will listen to my appeal. I have never vandalised
Wikipedia or hurt it in any way. But they say that they will never let
me back on because I have told so many people that Wikipedia has problems.

So I think that it is hopeless to talk to people about these things. If
you want to be unblocked you have to apologise for your actions. You
have to lie to them and say that you were a bad person, even when you
did nothing wrong. You have to say that all of the worst administrators
are really good people. You have to say that Wikipedia is perfect and
promise never to say anything bad about it ever again.

Do not waste your time with people like this. Prasad is not the enemy,
nor is anyone else here. They are just mindless drones who follow the
group think. Somewhere further up the line someone is giving them
orders. If they do not follow them, then they end up like you and me,
on the banned list, without a voice. So they accept that they have no
individuality in return for the privelege of editing Wikipedia.

So the question is this: do you want to be a mindless drone who has lost
their individuality? Do you want to lie about things and pretend that
horrible people are good? Or do you want to be true to yourself, as an
honest individual who is their own person?

The choice is yours.

And if Prasad is an individual, they will not be one on Wikipedia, where
individuality is frowned upon.

Adrian

Earthhope Action Network wrote:

> Do you mean anything that doesn't agree
> with you or the band of admins and their vigilanat spies that
> control articles and edits?
>
> Incase you haven't noticed Mrs. Laupheimer, I was trying to assist you
> in your efforts.
> * Where was this assistance? and it's not Mrs.*
>
> I hope you realise that your constant complaining-which is the only
> term that can be applied to these
> e-mails- will only result in the list-Administrators blocking your
> message.
> *Complaining Prasad? How about telling the truth. And how is
> this the only term that can be applied..because you said so? You're
> kidding right?
> *
> Taking into account the fact that your talk-page has been protected,
> this mailing-list is perhaps the last medium through which you can
> express
> your grievances.
> *Wrong, pal. I have a website that is quite well known and quite
> popular. I also have alot of allies both in and out of Wikipedia.
> * *My allies outside of Wiki are journalists, many presidents of
> strong groups, and the general pissed-off (from being pissed-on)
> * *public, i.e. regular lowly oridinary people like myself. Scads of
> them,* *actually.*
>
> Using terms like "vigilant spies" only seves to make you seem
> frivolous. Unless you abandon this attitude you are unlikely to be
> taken seriously.
> *Sorry, but vigilante spies is the only term I can come up with that
> describes these editors. Oh, I am taken seriously by many people on
> * *Wikipedia, have no fear. Or then again, maybe have fear. The admin
> cabal is doomed to extinction like most tyrannical regimes are. Note:
> notice how Philip Welch defends the Chinese firewall. Jimmy Wales
> went up against Philip on this. My email concerning this was blocked
>
> * I am trying to help you, but unfortunately you do not seem to be in
> a reciprocative frame of mind.
> *You have a strange idea of helping me. No I'm not reciprocative of *
> *sancitmonious bullcrap.*
> If you would still be
> open to my suggestions I ask that you contact me.
> *Sure.
> */Maggie/*thewolfstar**
> ---
> * Regards,
>
> Prasad.
>
> PS-Incase you haven't noticed I am one of the very few users who is
> showing any interest whatsoever in assisting you.
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From*: "Prasad J"
> *Sent*: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:53 AM
> *To*: "Earthhope Action Network"
> *Subject*: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request
>
> Do you mean anything that doesn't agree
> with you or the band of admins and their vigilanat spies that
> control articles and edits?
>
> Incase you haven't noticed Mrs. Laupheimer, I was trying to assist you
> in your efforts. I hope you realise that your constant
> complaining-which is the only term that can be applied to these
> e-mails- will only result in the list-Administrators blocking your
> message. Taking into account the fact that your talk-page has been
> protected, this mailing-list is perhaps the last medium through which
> you can express your grievances. There is ofcourse IRC, but be warned
> that "whiners" are quickly banned from the channels by the moderators
> there. Using terms like "vigilant spies" only seves to make you seem
> frivolous. Unless you abandon this attitude you are unlikely to be
> taken seriously. I am trying to help you, but unfortunately you do not
> seem to be in a reciprocative frame of mind. If you would still be
> open to my suggestions I ask that you contact me.
>
> Regards,
>
> Prasad.
>
> PS-Incase you haven't noticed I am one of the very few users who is
> showing any interest whatsoever in assisting you.
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] SPAM-MED: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock
	Request

body:
I won't even respond to that insulting comment of name-calling me a troll.
   Maggie thewolfstar

----------------------------------------
From: "Prasad J" <prasad59 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:46 PM
To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net
Subject: SPAM-MED: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

I am afraid I have to withdraw my offer of assisstance in light of the
fact that you are a singularly trollish editor who, I am now
convinced, has nothing of a neutral-point-of-view to contribute to
Wikipedia. I have already asked the moderators to block you off the
mailing-list for the simple reason that we are all tired of your
annoyingly persistent and pointless whining. You are welcome to try
and involve your "journalists" friends and the "pissed-off public" in
your "battle" for the "truth", however I doubt that even they will
take you seriously. Most of your fellow trolls only try and annoy
people in order to attract attention. They are the only people who
will support you in your fight against the "Administrative Cabal".
Also, maybe your e-mail about the Chinese firewall was blocked because
no-one cares about what you have to say. You are swiftly heading in
the direction of being banned from this mailing-list. So I suggest
that if you have any (sane) arguement to make, you go ahead and make
it soon, instead of wasting what little time you have by ranting in a
delusional manner.


body:
Hi Peter, thanks for your email. I cannot stay around here because I am banned indefinitley. I would like to still edit at Wikipedia. But I don't know how to go about it the process that will allow this.

 I would like to get a mediation process, a thing I like many people, have never had.

 Again, Peter
 Thanks! Maggie thewolfstar

----------------------------------------
From: "Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay at bigpond.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:42 PM
To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net>, "'English Wikipedia'" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce forno reason

> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of
> Earthhope Action Network
> --
> Also, to moderators, many of my posts have been held back
> for no reason. These same posts were never included in the
> list posts. I expect the same respect on this list that
> anyone else gets.

It's not a conspiracy. Well, not as much as you might imagine, anyway. I'm a
regular poster here who has been moderated from time to time (and indeed
booted right off the list at least once).

Why don't you suck up your pride, learn how we operate and use the system to
your advantage? Sure and it's all a corrupt clique of rouge administrators,
but what you need to remember is that Wikipedia is just a website, and
that's the way things operate here. Play by our rules and be happy, or go
off and complain about it. Either way it makes no difference and we've seen
it all before.

But, believe it or not, we'd rather you stayed around as a useful
contributor.

--Peter (Skyring)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock
	Request

body:
You are so insulting it is unbelievable. Ranting in a delusional manner?

 Holy cow. If people on the mailing list, moderators or not, cannot see this it is just staggering in it's implications.

{\ in peace and justice for the wildthings /}

------
Margie Laupheimer
friend of wildlife
Earthhope Action Network
http://earthhopenetwork.net/

A resource for networking, activism
and exchange of environmental news,
information and protest.

<-^-> (o) <-~-> (0.|.0) <-~-> (o) <-^->

a company by the People
and for the People..
Hill Street Webware
http://hillstreetwebware.com/

845-626-2815
------

----------------------------------------
From: "Prasad J" <prasad59 at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:50 PM
To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net
Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

I am afraid I have to withdraw my offer of assisstance in light of the
fact that you are a singularly trollish editor who, I am now
convinced, has nothing of a neutral-point-of-view to contribute to
Wikipedia. I have already asked the moderators to block you off the
mailing-list for the simple reason that we are all tired of your
annoyingly persistent and pointless whining. You are welcome to try
and involve your "journalists" friends and the "pissed-off public" in
your "battle" for the "truth", however I doubt that even they will
take you seriously. Most of your fellow trolls only try and annoy
people in order to attract attention. They are the only people who
will support you in your fight against the "Administrative Cabal".
Also, maybe your e-mail about the Chinese firewall was blocked because
no-one cares about what you have to say. You are swiftly heading in
the direction of being banned from this mailing-list. So I suggest
that if you have any (sane) arguement to make, you go ahead and make
it soon, instead of wasting what little time you have by ranting in a
delusional manner.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Fastfission wrote:
<snip>
> Listen, I think it's a great idea to claim that we should all stand up
> and assert our fair use. Sounds great. But I'm not sure that's what
> WMF should do with its donations, and I'm not sure the O RLY? owl is
> the place to shed legal blood. There are copyright watchdogs out
> there, let them do that sort of work. We're trying to build a free
> encyclopedia here, last I checked, not serve as an anti-copyright
> activist network.
>

/me considers adding that to [[WP:NOT]]...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
On 5/19/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> You are starting to speak like a repetative record. A bit more respect
> in your tone could well get us somewhere. A person interested in
> wikipedia. I have spend more fucking hours in the past 2,5 years for
> wikimedia FOR FREE then you will ever do on your salary! Without people
> like me contributing to these projects there wouldn't be any money to
> pay for your cushy job earning topdollars over my back. So a bit more
> respect and a more normal tone should be warranted. Also you are not on
> the board as far as I know.
>
> Waerth/Walter

Walter,

you're misinterpreting what Brad said - he simply pointed out that
you're not (legally) authorised to speak for the foundation - which is
true. The fact that you're interested in pursuing a collaboration is
great - he even said this (read it again - it's below).

I'll also repeat what Michael pointed out in that Brad has done *huge*
amounts of work for the foundation, behind the scenes, *for free*.
Really, huge. He really believes in our ideals - and he knows how the
community works. But the fact that not many people know him possibly
isn't such a surprise :-)

If this collaboration goes well, you're welcome to pass it on to the
Special projects committee
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> - we're
here to help out in any way.

All the best,

Cormac (Cormaggio)

Brad Patrick wrote:

>
> >Don't assume anything.  If you are speaking as a person interested in
> >Wikipedia, great.  I'm sure you have good things to say about Wikipedia
> >in Thailand.  Good for you.  All I am saying is that you do *not* have
> >the authority to speak on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> >


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


from_name: Dan Rosenthal

subject:
[WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
	forno reason

body:
Never had a mediation process? What a load of nonsense. You had no less than
3 mediators trying to help you: Me, Merecat, and Tijuana Brass. I defended
you on AN/I, said that you had potential as a contributing editor if you
could see the error of your ways. You've repeatedly shown that you have no
interest whatsoever in doing so. And the personally sent troll email you
sent to me, yeah that was real nice too. Don't pretend the system hasn't
worked for you. You haven't worked for the system.

-Swatjester

On 5/20/06, Earthhope Action Network <contact at earthhopenetwork.net> wrote:
>
> Hi Peter, thanks for your email. I cannot stay around here because I am
> banned indefinitley. I would like to still edit at Wikipedia. But I don't
> know how to go about it the process that will allow this.
>
> I would like to get a mediation process, a thing I like many people, have
> never had.
>
> Again, Peter
> Thanks! Maggie thewolfstar
>
> ----------------------------------------
> From: "Peter Mackay" <peter.mackay at bigpond.com>
> Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 1:42 PM
> To: contact at earthhopenetwork.net>, "'English Wikipedia'" <
> wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
> forno reason
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of
> > Earthhope Action Network
> > --
> > Also, to moderators, many of my posts have been held back
> > for no reason. These same posts were never included in the
> > list posts. I expect the same respect on this list that
> > anyone else gets.
>
> It's not a conspiracy. Well, not as much as you might imagine, anyway. I'm
> a
> regular poster here who has been moderated from time to time (and indeed
> booted right off the list at least once).
>
> Why don't you suck up your pride, learn how we operate and use the system
> to
> your advantage? Sure and it's all a corrupt clique of rouge
> administrators,
> but what you need to remember is that Wikipedia is just a website, and
> that's the way things operate here. Play by our rules and be happy, or go
> off and complain about it. Either way it makes no difference and we've
> seen
> it all before.
>
> But, believe it or not, we'd rather you stayed around as a useful
> contributor.
>
> --Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Dan Rosenthal
IWVO National Legislative Director


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

body:
On 5/20/06, abu hamza <abuhamza1970 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> the evidence for shipman eing jewish is greater than the evidence for him
> not being jewish.

I haven't been following this conversation much, but in general if the
statement you make is true, then it's appropriate in an article to make a
similar statement: "Doubts over X's ethnic origins remain, but certain
writers (A, B) offer evidence to suggest that he was Jewish"...

Steve


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > The statement that "fair use is a defense and not a right" is
> > the kind of confusing mumbo jumbo I'd expect to be spouted out by the
> > RIAA, not a Wikipedian.  Fair use is a fundamental right which is part
> > of the fundamental rights to free speech, free expression, free press,
> > etc.
>
> Is it?  I don't see it that way.  If you have evidence to cite in
> support of that claim, I'd be curious to see it.
>
That fair use is a fundamental right is really a philosophical
statement, and essentially an opinion.  That said, there is a long
history of the *recognition* of the right to fair use, in statutory
law, in common law, and in court precedent.

A more interesting question is whether or not fair use is
Constitutionally required.  From my research on this it seems to be
that it is, but this doesn't seem to have been explicitly stated in
any US Supreme Court rulings.  See
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2002dltr0003.html

> "Fundamental rights" aren't always quite as fundamental as we'd
> like them to be.  Free speech is (at least under U.S.-style
> democracies) a fundamental right.  But it's not universal, even
> in the West: it's not an absolute right in Germany, for example.
>
I'd say that free speech is a universal fundamental right, even though
the governments of some countries don't recognize it.

> Lots of things which feel like they ought to be fundamental
> rights, aren't.  For example, there's no fundamental right to
> privacy in the U.S., much though many of us wish there were.
> But it's not mentioned anywhere in the Declaration of
> Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.
>
While it's not *explicitly* mentioned in those documents, both the US
congress and the US courts have recognized the right to privacy.

> Copyright is not a fundamental right; it's an artificial
> construction of government, usually with the expressed goal of
> promoting creative expression.
>
> Me, I'd say that "fair use" isn't a fundamental right, either;
> rather, it is an exception to copyright, a further legal
> construction on top of an already legal construction.
>
> Arguments over fair use are often something else, in disguise.
> A lot of people, especially on the net, believe that the legal
> construction called "copyright" is wrong and invalid; they've
> heard only half of Stuart Brand's quote about "information wants
> to be free" and have amplified it into "all information must be
> free".  They believe that copyright law and its beneficiaries
> are to be variously ignored, taunted, teased, or hunted down
> and shot.  If the copyright holders seem to be gaining the upper
> hand, the information-must-be-free activists believe that
> (as in love and war) all is fair: defiance, guerilla action,
> perjury, obfuscation, or hiding behind specious fair use claims
> as a diversionary tactic.
>
> Now, despite my seeming rhetoric, I am not trying to claim that
> the copyright-is-wrong activists are wrong, nor am I suggesting
> that Anthony DiPierro is a "copyright-is-wrong" activist.
> (I have no idea how Anthony DiPierro feels about copyright,
> but some of his arguments *sound* like the arguments of those
> activists, which is why I bring all this up.)
>
FWIW, I *am* a "copyright-is-wrong" activist, though I don't believe
that my arguments I've been making in this thread rely on that.

I'm also a big believer that there are many instances in Wikipedia
where the doctrine of fair use is abused in a way which is unhelpful.
It is my opinion that explicitly licensed (to everyone) and/or
undisputably public domain content should be preferred, not for the
sake of the legal principles themselves but so that the content can be
distributed in as many jurisdictions as possible without any fear of
legal reprecussions.  However, I have come to recognize the fact that
it is impossible to create a quality encyclopedia which is legal to
distribute in all jurisdictions of the world.  In terms of images and
copyright law I believe this comes into play when it is the very image
itself which is being discussed in the encyclopedia article.

> If someone wants to believe that copyright is wrong and that all
> information must be free, that's fine.  (As Thomas Jefferson
> famously said, a little revolution every once in a while is a
> good thing.)  But, two things: (1) please don't use "fair use"
> to justify your abandonment of copyright law, because "fair use"
> is part of the very same copyright law you're trying to abandon.
> Also, (2) please carry out your activism somewhere other than
> Wikipedia, because Wikipedia, whether you like it or not,
> is a U.S. entity which is bound to honor U.S. copyright law.
>
Regarding 1), I think the whole principle of copyleft relies on the
fact that it *is* OK to use copyright law against itself.  Regarding
2), US copyright law includes fair use, and it includes OCILLA.

Anthony


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >I think what is meant is that the O RLY owl (O RLY stamped over a picture of
> >an owl taken by someone else) infringed on the copyright of the original owl
> >photographer. And since we weren't doing anything fair-use-wise with respect
> >to that original photo, we were infringing on their copyright as well.
> >
> >Which seems logical - otherwise there would be a massive loophole. We could
> >write O RLY on a non-free map of France, and use it in the France article to
> >discuss O RLY or whatever...
> >
> Better still in an article on Orly Airport. :-)
>
> Ec

YA RLY

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> >> The effect will be limited. Even quite senior people don't appear to
> >> be able to follow our copyright policy.
> >
> > And even those who claim they do still want to claim fair use in cases
> > where it's plainly not.
>
> If this is an oblique reference to me and the O RLY situation, I still
> haven't come across a convincing argument for why fair use didn't apply.
> It's hardly "plainly not" when even actual lawyers think it's fair use.
>
> All I've been asking for is some sort of explanation of the takedown. I
> don't mind the image being gone for other reasons than invalid fair use,
> if that's the case, I just want to know why.
>
As of now the image *is* in the article, in the form of [[Image:Orlypaper.jpg]].

I suppose if you don't think the use is fair use, then the current
image is a copyright violation of a copyright violation of a copyright
violation.  :)

Anthony


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>
>> Patrick, Brad wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Don't assume anything.  If you are speaking as a person interested in
>>> Wikipedia, great.  I'm sure you have good things to say about Wikipedia
>>> in Thailand.  Good for you.  All I am saying is that you do *not* have
>>> the authority to speak on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>>>
>> I'm not sure if you're new here or what, but this isn't how we do
>> things at the Wikimedia Foundation.  We discuss politely, if sometimes
>> heatedly, on the mailing list, not brusquely and dictatorially.
>>
>> Waerth asked if the Foundation had confidence in him to discuss with
>> this organization; not if he legally has the authority to enter into
>> commitments on behalf of the foundation, which is quite a different
>> matter.  In short, his question did not call for a legal opinion, and
>> offering one unsolicited was unhelpful, misrepresenting the matter,
>> and impolite.
>>
>
> This criticism is totally misplaced. Note that Brad addressed whether
> Waerth could *speak* on behalf of the Foundation, responding directly to
> Waerth's question. The issue is not limited to whether Waerth is
> authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation to enter into agreements.
>
> Lawyers are not restricted to giving legal opinions and nothing else,
> sometimes they need to represent their clients in communicating with
> third parties, as Brad did here. Brad's intervention was helpful
> (because it got across his client's position), misrepresented nothing,
> and if it wasn't as polite as suits your tastes, it's because more
> polite ways of communicating this hadn't yet gotten the message across.
>

It *did* misrepresent the matter, and does not appear to have accurately
represented his client's position either, as the more helpful and
accurate reply by Anthere (an *actual* board member) was quite different
from Brad's.

-- Unhelpful reply (Brad): "You do *not* have the authority to speak on
behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.".

-- Helpful reply (Anthere): "I think that is fine you go and contact
these people. I'll be happy if something gets out of it. ... As long as
you do not make believe others that you are allowed to make decisions in
the name of the Foundation, that's fine. Just make that clear."

So the actual position of at least one board member seems to be,
contrary to what you claim, that the issue *is* limited to whether
Waerth is authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation (he isn't, and
doesn't believe himself to be), but that it's perfectly fine if he
contacts third parties for collaboration with Wikimedia as long as he
doesn't represent himself as being an agent of the Foundation.  Which
seems a lot more sensible and helpful as a reply to me.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand