from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] information sharing

body:
After Ruth suggested Quarto be held from publication until it was proofread, Anthere wrote:> I frankly do not know what to do. I just know I am all> for the board giving more information to the community> and making it available widely.Angela said :
Perhaps this needs to be done in a less time-intensive way. Couldn't alarge glossy Quarto be published every 6 months instead of every 3,with simple text based reports from the Board given monthly inaddition to the reports I already make athttp://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings ? When I say simple, Imean the report would be on one page, not split across various wikisand various templates. These reports could be limited to what actuallyhappened, rather than opinions on that, meaning it could be muchshorter than it would be in Quarto, and therefore much quicker andeasier to translate.

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

Why not. What I fear Angela, is duplication of efforts.
Currently, we have 3 sources of information.

* The reports from all meetings. The benefit is that these reports are very straightforward, done in a very timely fashion.
The main four disadvantages is that not everything is done in meetings (far from it), so not everything gets reported.
Secondly, it is not translated. Third, these are only decisions from the board, not from officers.
Fourth, they do not include personal opinions or thoughts. I do not mean it is wrong, they are only minutes from meetings, and should stay this way.

* The Quarto. It is supposed to be four issues per year. Though, I suspect only probably three this year. As you mention, it is not meant to be done in a timely fashion, but rather
to generally inform a couple of times a year. It is more a "state of the projects" at a given time. The main disadvantage is that it is slow.

* The main page with news on the Foundation Wiki. It was started more recently. I expect it relies a lot on good will of 1) board members of WMF
2) board members of local chapters, 3) officers and 4) generally involved editors. I wish it to be with a date and signed so that to make it clear where
the information will come. Advantage : it offers the opportunity to stick to real time events. Disadvantages : 1) it is only a short statement, 2) editors do not feel
entitled to make reports or do not think of doing some or do not feel like doing them, 3) it is not frequently translated.

If we add a monthly report, I fear we fall somewhere in between Quarto and the Foundation main page... and end up duplicating efforts.
Besides, I do not think it is efficient that *we* do such a report, as the ones having most of the information in their hands are not necessarily us... but those specifically
involved in an issue. Typically, Dammit or Brion or JeLuF or Kate or Tim (and many more here, I do not want to hurt any one) know much more of the current state of our servers
than us.

But your idea suggest that we should perhaps mostly improve the Foundation main page greatly and try to increase the number of reports there.
Most of the frame of the Foundation site is set now.
But we still are very much behind in terms of information available on the website.
If the aim of the newsletter is to get Board information out to peoplein a timely way, then I don't think Quarto is meeting that goal, and Idon't think it should try to. I see Quarto as something lesstime-urgent, and something which ought to be developed by thecommunity, not the Board.I'm copying this to Foundation-l since the the distribution ofinformation from the Board needs to be discussed by more people thanthe very small group on the Quarto list. Angela.

As a side comment, the Quarto is essentially done by the community. Not by the board. Only two pages or the 8 items are focusing on the board and the Foundation activity in itself. Page 1 is the welcome. Page 2 is letter from Jimbo and the board. Page 3 is report about Foundation activity. Page 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 are about projects reports, various initiatives on projects or projects wide, interviews, wikimania, local chapters activity, wikipedians meetups, image gallery, press coverage etc... Anyone can participate to those and is welcome to do so.

Talking about information sharing.... information is not a one way event.

I think I said it many times already, and will again repeat it, because I feel it is not entering many ears. And reading Cimon candidate statement, I wonder how our efforts to communicate are perceived. Expecting the board to inform you is one thing, but if you are not happy by the way we inform you, please try to help us decipher what you want. There is little I find more perplexing than to read some people find themselves badly informed and when we ask them how to improve things, there is absolutely no comment whatsoever.

Second, if you expect us to inform you, there is a similar requirement from us toward you. Danny made a good suggestion recently, which could be one way to tell us what you want. Perhaps all this does not concern editors on THIS mailing list, but only editors on the project, who do not read this list. If so, what do you suggest we could do to improve feedback given to us ?

Note finally, that this is not adressed only to editors, but also to officers or informed editors. We hope to receive information from officers. We hope they will help us gather information and we hope they can help us feed back this information to editors. I'll pick up a recent example which reflects pretty well my dismay. There was this deal with KDE. It was discussed on irc whether we should publish a little something on the WMF website. Someone told me "well, just make a report yourself on the matter". Fine, but guys, I promise "Wikimedia will develop an API which will allow developers to integrate Wikimedia content in their programs" means absolutely nothing to me. I do not know what an API is. How can I be expected to report something I just understand nothing about ? I just can't do it. And each time I feel like editors should be informed on a technical matter, please do not answer me "well, you know very well yourself, can't you just check and make a report yourself ?". Well,
 no, I can not. Those who have the information should realise that they are empowered to give it and to help others to understand. Rather than to keep information for themselves. Not expect that others know all of it and will report about it.

Last point. It would be correct that information be openly and spontaneously provided by officers. I am thinking of possibly suggesting that something like a monthly report or something similar be provided by officers. Even if it to write in it "all is well, nothing to report" or "I have had no time to do anything special this month". It should not be seen as control or police thought or whatever, but only information sharing. It is not efficient/proper that officers do things, in particular with external contacts, with the hat of an officer, without the board knowing, or with only certain board members knowing. First because it could lead us appearing quite stupid in front of potential partners. Second because two people could be doing the same thing, hence losing their time. Currently, this information sharing does not occur very well. Either information is not provided, or only indirectly provided. Indirect source is not good either, because each additional step distort the
 information given. Again, I have mentionned many times that I felt badly informed on some topics, or that only partial information was circulating. I would really like to improve this. Again, no good decision can be taken when information is lacking, and no information will be provided to editors when the information is unknown by the reporter itself.

Anthere

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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] information sharing


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Peng

subject: [Wikitech-l] Limiting amount of content per wiki page

body:
On 6/27/05, edward molasses <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am installing MediaWiki to be used to hold a dictionary and I would
> like to be able to give an administrator the ability to control how long
> dictionary entries (i.e. wiki pages) should be. I have not been able to
> find reference to this functionality in MediaWiki's documentation so I
> am assuming it is not implemented. Could anyone suggest where in the
> MediaWiki source code I would look to go about implementing this type of
> functionality?
>
> Thanks!
> Andrew.

What's wrong with excessively long dictionary entries? :O


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>> I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which
>>> are
>>> biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
>>
>> An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back
>> the argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable
>> because they have been granted a code.
>>
>> Ec
>
> Hoi,
> Well actually, you are beating back the arrival of conlangs in the
> English wiktionary. It is most definetly not universally accepted that
> conlangs should not exist in a Wiktionary. When conlangs do not exist
> exept for their occurance in a Wiktionary, that is another matter.

The only other place for some of them is in some small group's web site.

> When the spelling of words is different according to where they are
> used, the words are definitly needed in both forms and they need to be
> in a Wiktionary. Papiamento for instance has two distinct ways of
> spelling. It would be stupid NOT to have both official spellings in a
> Wiktionary. So when a language code marks a different way of
> pronouncing or a different way of spelling, it has its place in
> Wiktionary. In Wikipedia you can say things like "both can speak and
> read their versions of a language" in a Wiktionary you represent the
> existing spelling of words and you are not involved in judging if a
> spelling is political correct or not.

I have never considered Papiamento to be a conlang.

> In Ultimate Wiktionary, we want to have it a user preference that will
> allow you to select what languages you want to add. The languages that
> will be allowed to start with will be the ones that have a language
> code. Within a language there will be room for distinct spellings.
> There will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly
> relevant for the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules
> that will be published on October 15 and will be the official spelling
> from August 1 2006 onwards.

In English there is no such thing as an "official" spelling.


list: wikipedia-l

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

body:
Patrick Hall wrote:

>On 6/27/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
>>>biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
>>>
>>>
>>An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back the
>>argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable because they
>>have been granted a code.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>
>Which are those, just out of curiosity? (I imagine the list includes
>Esperanto and Volap?k?)
>
Esperanto, Interlingua and Volap?k have been established for some time.
I suppose too that Ido and Lojban have some claim to legitimacy.

I just cleaned out a number of  Latenkwa entries.  Then there's
Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek, Lingua Franca Nova, Klingon, Quenya, D'ni,
Glos, Bitruscan, Sindarin, Cirth, Tengwar, and probably a few others.

Ec


from_name: Patrick Hall

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

body:
On 6/27/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
> >I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
> >biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
> >
> >
> An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back the
> argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable because they
> have been granted a code.
>
> Ec

Which are those, just out of curiosity? (I imagine the list includes
Esperanto and Volap?k?)

-Patrick


from_name: Walter van Kalken

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

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>So, are you saying that a man from Lars cannot understand a man from
>Gramsbergen??
>
>Of course, this must be so, since the man from Lars speaks "German Low
>Saxon" and the man from Gramsbergen speaks "Dutch Low Saxon"... since
>of course languages always follow exactly political divisions.
>
>
>
Mark we will not forbid a man from Lars to work on NDS-NL just like we
wont forbid the man from Gramsbergen to work on NDS.

Only on NDS-NL he will have to use the Dutch variant
On NDS he will have to use the SASS German variant

It is so bloody simple!

Waerth/Walter


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>That's exactly my point. These two men speak the same language -- they
>live 4km apart.
>
>Yet you're telling them they don't. That's crazy.
>
>With these two men, the only issue would be spelling, which is very
>easy to remedy as has been proven with zh, sr, ks, and (attempted) en.
>
>
>
Here you prove yet again that you do not understand it. Spelling between
a language based on Dutch and a language based on German differ for miles.

Walter/Waerth


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>No, YOU don't understand.
>
>It's not two languages, one based on Dutch and one based on German;
>it's one language, just two different ways of spelling it.
>
>As I said before these two villages are 4km apart, both men can
>understand each others' speech very clearly because it is IDENTICAL.
>
>The only difference is the way they spell their languages, which can
>easily be converted.
>
>
>
No it is not read what the others said. A personn from one side of the
area it is spoken in cannot understand someone from the other side.

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
On 6/27/05, edward molasses <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am installing MediaWiki to be used to hold a dictionary and I would
> like to be able to give an administrator the ability to control how long
> dictionary entries (i.e. wiki pages) should be. I have not been able to
> find reference to this functionality in MediaWiki's documentation so I
> am assuming it is not implemented. Could anyone suggest where in the
> MediaWiki source code I would look to go about implementing this type of
> functionality?

It's not implemented.

First of all, we don't have any kind of proper ACL stuff that you
could extend so you'll have to create a new table (or extend a current
one), the former is easier, create something like page_length that
contains three fields, length_ns, length_title and length_length which
hold the namespace (int), title (varchar) and length you want to allow
on the page. Then make an interface for that, your best bet would be
just making a new tab in monobook (length configuration) that allows
your administrators to configure the length of a page and then check
if a new page meets those requirements on save ( see EditPage.php ).


subject: [Wikitech-l] it.wikinews problem

body:
On 6/27/05, Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could anyone fix it.wikinews homepage to [[Pagina_principale]] and not
> [[Wikipedia]]?

Ask one of the admins on that wiki to change MediaWiki:Mainpage.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Phil Boswell

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

body:
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote:
> Has anyone got a clue for how long the database will be locked for this
> update?

Is this causing the strange doubling effect wherein the last edit is
appearing twice at the top of each history page, and single-diffs are
failing?

...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
larger?

I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Fred Bauder

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

body:
Such behavior is not rare nor is it common. People on the Arbitration
Committee see  more than their share of it and it often results in
the user being banned. Without being familiar with the article and
its supporters ( I don't think you shared the name of the article ) I
can't say if it is any regular editor with an account.

I hope you are not permanently put off by this incident, but learn to
effectively resist the energy it represents.

Fred

On Jun 27, 2005, at 7:18 AM, James Gibbon wrote:

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


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] information sharing

body:
A noble subject line.

Angela wrote :
> ...with simple text based reports from the Board given monthly inaddition to the reports
> I already make at http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings ? When I say simple,
> I mean the report would be on one page, not split across various wikisand various
> templates. These reports could be limited to what actually happened, rather than
> opinions on that...

I would welcome short textual monthly reports.  That would be quite
helpful for any quarterly publication. Wikimedia does not currently
suffer from a surplus of regular reports.

As for Quarto publication, quarterly seems a natural period for
requesting reports of various committees and groups.  As the projects
grow, there is pressure from writers to publish *more* frequently.  It
would be interesting to rearrange the current workflow to produce a
steady stream of short, massively-translated reports; which are later
assimilated into compilations like the Quarto.

> * The Quarto. It is supposed to be four issues per year. Though, I suspect only probably
> three this year.

Four issues a year, make no doubt about it.  The Q2 edition will be
released, with a Wikimania inset, this summer. We have special plans
for that...

>               As you mention, it is not meant to be done in a timely fashion, but rather
< ... a "state of the projects" at a given time. The main disadvantage
is that it is slow.

The idea is certainly to be a 'state of the projects'; an accurate
historical snapshot of what was occuring across the Foundation's
projects each quarter.  Speed should slowly improve, though events
from the start of a reporting period will always be at least [three
months] old at publication time.  As we settle into a publishing
rhythm, synchronizing with other efforts (such as board and financial
reports and project statistics), we can move release dates closer to
the end of the reporting period.

> As a side comment, the Quarto is essentially done by the community. Not by the board. > Only two pages or the 8 items are focusing on the board...
< Page 2 is letters from Jimbo and the board. Page 3 is a report about
Foundation activity.

The Quarto *is* intended to be a channel for the Board to communicate,
first and foremost.  If you recall, the original proposal for such a
newsletter allocated an extra page to writing by the Board.  However,
the Board has ben politic, and reticent about making any kind of
public statement beyond the formal results of meetings.

> Last point. It would be correct that information be openly and spontaneously
> provided by officers. I am thinking of possibly suggesting that something like a
> monthly report or something similar ...

This would be excellent.

--SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] information sharing


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

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:d9o7kg$voh$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Phil Boswell wrote:
[query and excellent explanation snipped]

>> ...and is it possible to make the notice announcing the upgrade a little
>> larger?
>> I sailed into a correct without noticing the Site-Notice and was somewhat
>> startled to face the "locked-out" version of the edit page.
> I'll poke at it a bit...

Aaahh, that's better :-)

BTW you're obviously posting from somewhere unusual, because OE was able to
read your message directly without having to open it as an attachment !?!?!
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Muke Tever

body:
Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> In Ultimate Wiktionary, we want to have it a user preference that will
> allow you to select what languages you want to add. The languages that
> will be allowed to start with will be the ones that have a language
> code. Within a language there will be room for distinct spellings. There
> will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly relevant for
> the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules that will be
> published on October 15 and will be the official spelling from August 1
> 2006 onwards.

How will the distinct spellings be handled?  Not the same way [[color]]
and [[colour]] are on en: I hope?

--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


from_name: MilchFlasche瑋平

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chinese history

body:
2005/6/24, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>:
>
> http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-06/23/content_3125788.htm
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

Hello,

Can you show us the link to this project?
The press would never understand that in netword era, it's necessary to give
the link whenever you report about something on the net. Those ancient
people.

[[zh:User:MilchFlasche]]

--
2005, make signs happen!


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

subject: [Wikitech-l] it.wikinews problem

body:
Could anyone fix it.wikinews homepage to [[Pagina_principale]] and not
[[Wikipedia]]?

Thanks.

Frieda


from_name: edward molasses

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

>It's not implemented.
>
>First of all, we don't have any kind of proper ACL stuff that you
>could extend so you'll have to create a new table (or extend a current
>one), the former is easier, create something like page_length that
>contains three fields, length_ns, length_title and length_length which
>hold the namespace (int), title (varchar) and length you want to allow
>on the page. Then make an interface for that, your best bet would be
>just making a new tab in monobook (length configuration) that allows
>your administrators to configure the length of a page and then check
>if a new page meets those requirements on save ( see EditPage.php ).
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
This makes it very clear, thank you for the help!

> Hoi,
> You may know that we are programming a database specifically for
> Wiktionary. It goes by the name of "Ultimate Wiktionary". We hope to
> have it operational at the end of summer.
> For more information:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary and the category
> Wiktionary on Meta.
>
> I fail to understand why you want to restrict the length of dictionary
> entries. When people make them too long it is up to other editors to
> make them smaller. When you give an entry an arbitrary size, the
> infomation may not be complete.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM

Thanks for the news on Ultimate Wikitionary, this should be very useful
for our dictionary. Also, I understand what you mean about the editing
process of the Wiki. This feature was a suggestion from my supervisor
but I'm still not sure that it would be necessary.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: What Yahoo is providing

body:
> An "out of curiosity" question: Those look like db servers to me. Does
> that mean wikimedia is moving to distributed servers? I was vaguely under the
> impression the dbs were going to be kept in Florida, and just Squids
> distributed.

Well, we try to do things better. It might turn to be distributed content cluster.

Domas


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
>From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
>
>I've been defending the presence of [[Category:Pseudoscience]] for
>some time now as a sociological category, but it occurred to me today
>that one could imagine all sorts of circumstances in which it would
>seem hopelessly POV to have category labels of this sort (one could
>include things like [[Category:Hoaxes]] or [[Category:Conspiracies]]
>or whatever in this, if those categories exist), even if their actual
>articles (and even category pages) were written in perfect NPOV. Does
>the brevity of category labels make this impossible? I'm beginning to
>think they might, and that these sorts of categories should be
>converted wholly into lists. I wouldn't mind a [[List of Satanic
>lies]] which clearly noted who thought they were and included
>[[Evolution]] on the list. But I would mind having [[Category:Satanic
>lie]] put onto the Evolution page.
>
>Any input on this would be appreciated as I mull this over.

I've already seen categories used specifically for the purpose of promoting
a POV.  For example, a few months ago someone added [[Muhammad al-Durrah]]
to the [[Category:Hoaxes]], and in response a [[User:Alberuni]] added [[Anne
Frank]] to the [[Category:Hoaxes]]  I have no doubt neo-Nazis would be
repeatedly adding [[The Holocaust]] to the [[Category:Hoaxes]] as well, if
they were smart enough to figure out how to do it.

Unsurprisingly, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fertile ground for this kind of
issue.  As an unsurprising example, [[Zionism]] has been added to (and
removed from [[Category:Racism]] more than once.    Recently [[User:Yuber]]
went on a campaign of removing all sorts of areas controlled by Israel from
[[Category:Geography of Israel]], typically adding them to
[[Category:Geography of Syria]], apparently on the grounds that the these
kinds of Categories were not intended as an aid to the reader in finding
articles, nor should they reflect physical reality, but rather the should be
seen and used as a political statements about legitimate ownership of
territories.  Both sides quoted the same policy  to each other (""Unless it
is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it
should not be put into a category"), indicating that the specific policy was
actually of little help in making these kinds of decisions.

Jay.


from_name: mm

subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax

body:
I notice discussion about "New syntax".
My idea about this subject, hope useful, is:
We can have default "special characters" set and alternative "special
characters" defined for any row in tables where the
default set interferes with content of rows.
It is necessary to define a list of character set functionality, code,
definition.
When it is necessary, for some rows, it can be defined
 alternative "special characters" in one column
as a string of characters (not used in text).
The position in string is functionality code.
mm


from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] World66

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

Magnus Manske wrote:
> http://www.world66.com/northamerica/mexico
>
> Honestly, when I saw "[edit this]", I thought it was Yet Another Illegal
> Mirror, but they actually seem to have gathered their own contents,
> under cc-by-sa-1.0
>
> I see competition to WikiTravel...
>
> Magnus
>
>

It's not wiki. It's a pseudo-hypertext format (you get a choice of two
flavours of markup - bold and italic! - and links), and 1 image per
article. They also have information on businesses (eg. hotels, internet
caf?s) so I don't see how it won't just degenerate into mindless spam.
Still, it will be interesting to see what happens, give the LA Times
recent experience.

- --
Alphax
OpenPGP key: 0xF874C613 - http://tinyurl.com/cc9up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,'
and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S.
Lewis
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

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

Well, that's one way of looking at it; however, as I understand Jack Lynch's
and Fred Bauder's view, this would more likely be seen as organized attempts
by POV pushers to control article content. :-)

Jay.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

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

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
>> biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
>>
>>
> An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back
> the argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable
> because they have been granted a code.
>
> Ec
>
Hoi,
Well actually, you are beating back the arrival of conlangs in the
English wiktionary. It is most definetly not universally accepted that
conlangs should not exist in a Wiktionary. When conlangs do not exist
exept for their occurance in a Wiktionary, that is another matter.

When the spelling of words is different according to where they are
used, the words are definitly needed in both forms and they need to be
in a Wiktionary. Papiamento for instance has two distinct ways of
spelling. It would be stupid NOT to have both official spellings in a
Wiktionary. So when a language code marks a different way of pronouncing
or a different way of spelling, it has its place in Wiktionary. In
Wikipedia you can say things like "both can speak and read their
versions of a language" in a Wiktionary you represent the existing
spelling of words and you are not involved in judging if a spelling is
political correct or not.

In Ultimate Wiktionary, we want to have it a user preference that will
allow you to select what languages you want to add. The languages that
will be allowed to start with will be the ones that have a language
code. Within a language there will be room for distinct spellings. There
will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly relevant for
the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules that will be
published on October 15 and will be the official spelling from August 1
2006 onwards.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
>From: Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com>
>
>An interesting question is what would have happened if a majority
>vote/voted for using BCE/CE near-universally (except for Chrisitan
>topics). Does that mean it would have been NPOV?

NPOV, morally right, and might well have cured humanity's insatiable
appetite for burning greenhouse-gas producing fossil fuels. ;-)

Jay.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Transparent proxy blocked - again

body:
On 25/06/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:

> > Of those, only 20 have proxy or cache in the name.
> >
> > Thoughts on how useful this sort of data would be, given the
> > reasonably sized sample above?
>
> Ok, so of 126 addresses, we have about 20 proxies. So about 16% of anonymous
> Wikipedias users are recognised as being behind a proxy, using this scheme. I
> don't know the answer to this question, but does anybody know roughly what
> proportion of web users go through a proxy server? Is it close to 16%? If so,
> we've got a pretty good scheme here.

I've spoken to a friend working at one of the larger ISPs; the answer
is that it varies quite a bit. Only a minority of ISPs use them, but
those tend to be large ISPs (the canonical example is all the AOL
proxies you see around).

The upside is that most people are pragmatic, and call their proxy
servers things like "proxy-43765". So it looks like this is a fairly
effective way of identifying *most* proxies.

[He notes that there's also a "forwarded" header through most ISP
caches, which contains the "original" originating IP; I don't know if
this is accessible in this context or not, but it's useful to know it
exists]

[I also did another test on a larger sample - this brought it down to
~10% having "proxy" or "cache" in them. I may do further as resources
and tuits permit.]

> Of course, a determined user could create a sub-domain with 'proxy' or 'cache'
> in the title, which would fool a simple software implementation, but perhaps
> not a human.
>
> In reply to geni's comment, we're talking about a minor change to the software
> anyway, so all that's needed is to present the admin with this information at
> the time that he or she chooses to block a user.
>
> Ideally, the software could give the admin a "no IP block" option, to exercise
> at his or her discretion (the software may already do this; I don't know).

I'm not an admin, so can't really comment how the process actually
works. Can I just check I have the mechanism right here? User:XYZ goes
and vandalises an article; an admin bans them; the system then
automatically slaps a short ban on the associated IP address, to
prevent them logging out and trying again?

It looks like in 80%+ of cases, telling people what the IP resolves to
won't make any difference; it'll just be extra noise (with some
occasional amusement, as when you notice a .gov domain). How does this
sound -

a) Admin goes to block a user. System does a check on IP address,
resolves it to 473a.residence.some.edu, doesn't flag it as a proxy,
keeps quiet, IP blocked.

b) Admin goes to block a user. System does a check on IP address,
resolves it to usercache.admin.some.edu, and flags it because it
contains *cache*. Puts up a signal to the user - "The associated IP
address identifies as USERCACHE.admin.some.edu, and blocking it may
affect multiple people. Do you wish to block it anyway?". Admin makes
the call.

This would leave us with the functionality we have now, but give an
option for a simple override when it's likely the IP address isn't
"personal". The fact that the display only comes up when it contains
one of the keywords means that the privacy implications are low - and
if you want it trimmed further, you can have it say that
"...identifies as USERCACHE.admin.*.*" or the like. It also limits the
amount of time wasted by admins, since it seems to be the case that
without one of the keywords, in most cases, a cache/proxy server won't
be apparent from the address alone.

Thoughts?

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: cookfire

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> There will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly
> relevant for the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules
> that will be published on October 15 and will be the official spelling
> from August 1 2006 onwards.

Again!!!! Dutch spelling seems to be in need of a reform about every 5
years. Maybe I should switch my native language to something more
consistent. Hmm, Spanish and Turkish seem to be nice candidates :-)

Polyglot


from_name: Jake Waskett

body:
On Monday 27 June 2005 11:14, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 25/06/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> > > Of those, only 20 have proxy or cache in the name.
> > >
> > > Thoughts on how useful this sort of data would be, given the
> > > reasonably sized sample above?
> >
> > Ok, so of 126 addresses, we have about 20 proxies. So about 16% of
> > anonymous Wikipedias users are recognised as being behind a proxy, using
> > this scheme. I don't know the answer to this question, but does anybody
> > know roughly what proportion of web users go through a proxy server? Is
> > it close to 16%? If so, we've got a pretty good scheme here.
>
> I've spoken to a friend working at one of the larger ISPs; the answer
> is that it varies quite a bit. Only a minority of ISPs use them, but
> those tend to be large ISPs (the canonical example is all the AOL
> proxies you see around).
>
> The upside is that most people are pragmatic, and call their proxy
> servers things like "proxy-43765". So it looks like this is a fairly
> effective way of identifying *most* proxies.
>
> [He notes that there's also a "forwarded" header through most ISP
> caches, which contains the "original" originating IP; I don't know if
> this is accessible in this context or not, but it's useful to know it
> exists]
>
> [I also did another test on a larger sample - this brought it down to
> ~10% having "proxy" or "cache" in them. I may do further as resources
> and tuits permit.]

Seems a shame that Wikipedia (rightly) doesn't allow original research. This
is very interesting reading. :-)

I seem to remember that Wikipedia had it's millionth edit (or something like
that) not long ago. 10-20% might not seem much, but it helps put it in
perspective.

>
> > Of course, a determined user could create a sub-domain with 'proxy' or
> > 'cache' in the title, which would fool a simple software implementation,
> > but perhaps not a human.
> >
> > In reply to geni's comment, we're talking about a minor change to the
> > software anyway, so all that's needed is to present the admin with this
> > information at the time that he or she chooses to block a user.
> >
> > Ideally, the software could give the admin a "no IP block" option, to
> > exercise at his or her discretion (the software may already do this; I
> > don't know).
>
> I'm not an admin, so can't really comment how the process actually
> works. Can I just check I have the mechanism right here? User:XYZ goes
> and vandalises an article; an admin bans them; the system then
> automatically slaps a short ban on the associated IP address, to
> prevent them logging out and trying again?

I'm not an admin either, so at the risk of this becoming the "uninformed users
speculate about admins thread", let me offer my 2c.

My *understanding* is that the IP blocks (aka autoblocks) are added by the
system at a later time, for exactly the reason you suggest. However, their
implementation is very odd indeed. Instead of expiring when the original
block did, they add the duration of the block to the time that the IP
concerned last accessed Wikipedia (as opposed to the last attempt to edit).
As I once discovered when legitimately blocked for a 3RR violation, this has
the consequence that merely refreshing the list of currently blocked users to
check whether the block has expired will keep you blocked indefinitely.

This shouldn't be a a problem, however. The system must be storing the last IP
used by a user, since this autoblock-on-access mechanism cannot operate
without that data, so it can easily be checked at the time of an admin
setting a block.

>
> It looks like in 80%+ of cases, telling people what the IP resolves to
> won't make any difference; it'll just be extra noise (with some
> occasional amusement, as when you notice a .gov domain). How does this
> sound -

Logical.

>
> a) Admin goes to block a user. System does a check on IP address,
> resolves it to 473a.residence.some.edu, doesn't flag it as a proxy,
> keeps quiet, IP blocked.
>
> b) Admin goes to block a user. System does a check on IP address,
> resolves it to usercache.admin.some.edu, and flags it because it
> contains *cache*. Puts up a signal to the user - "The associated IP
> address identifies as USERCACHE.admin.some.edu, and blocking it may
> affect multiple people. Do you wish to block it anyway?". Admin makes
> the call.

Again, logical. We'd need to have a list of words to scan for, but this is
easy enough and the load on the server minimal.

In this case, I think it would be useful for an admin to have the facility to
set a user block but prevent autoblocks from being applied. This just means
setting a flag in the block table. As I explained before, there are other
ways of achieving proxy-friendly autoblock-equivalents, but that might be too
complicated.

>
> This would leave us with the functionality we have now, but give an
> option for a simple override when it's likely the IP address isn't
> "personal". The fact that the display only comes up when it contains
> one of the keywords means that the privacy implications are low - and
> if you want it trimmed further, you can have it say that
> "...identifies as USERCACHE.admin.*.*" or the like. It also limits the
> amount of time wasted by admins, since it seems to be the case that
> without one of the keywords, in most cases, a cache/proxy server won't
> be apparent from the address alone.
>
> Thoughts?

Seems entirely logical to me. It would be nice to hear from somebody who *is*
an admin, and can comment on that basis. How would such a facility affect you
people?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
MHart wrote:
> If done in a way similar to Google's API, then ripping a key wouldn't
> matter much since the key is limiting. The client-side applications
> wouldn't directly access the webservice API, rather the client-side app
> provider would be an intermediary. Client apps query the host provider
> and that host queries Wikipedia's API. If the client app provider wants
> to support more than 1000 queries per day (Google's limit), then they'd
> need to pay for more queries. Can't be ripped anyway since the key lies
> with the provider, not the client.

Well, let's play through the scenario:

* User with KDE desktop fires up amaroK to play some tunes
* Clicks for a Wikipedia article lookup on an artist
* amaroK contacts a server that someone(?) runs for amaroK
* amaroK server contacts Wikipedia server
* Data is sent back to amaroK server
* Data is sent back to amaroK client
* Happy!

Now, while the amaroK server <-> Wikipedia server is locked by a secret
key, the amaroK client <-> amaroK server probably isn't. Anybody can
make a request to the amaroK server, claiming to be amaroK -- an abuse
then DoSs the entire amaroK user base when it hits the maximum requests
for the amaroK key.

> On Wikipedia's side, the implementation and intermediary APIs and
> architecture don't matter. Just implement user key webservices API with
> query limits, and you're done.

Well, that just pushes the problem from one server to another. It
doesn't change the overall analysis I gave.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 07:52:24AM -0600, Fred Bauder wrote:
> Such behavior is not rare nor is it common. People on the Arbitration
> Committee see  more than their share of it and it often results in
> the user being banned. Without being familiar with the article and
> its supporters ( I don't think you shared the name of the article ) I
> can't say if it is any regular editor with an account.

I believe it was noted that the battleground in question was on the
"Division_Street" VfD.

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


body:
cookfire wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> There will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly
>> relevant for the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules
>> that will be published on October 15 and will be the official
>> spelling from August 1 2006 onwards.
>
>
> Again!!!! Dutch spelling seems to be in need of a reform about every 5
> years. Maybe I should switch my native language to something more
> consistent. Hmm, Spanish and Turkish seem to be nice candidates :-)
>
> Polyglot

Hoi,
The last spelling change was 10 years ago .. I hope to get the list of
the coming changes and the list of changes from 10 years ago and use
these in the Wiktionary ..
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On Mon, Jun 27, 2005 at 03:02:43PM +0100, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 27/06/05, James Gibbon <wikipedia at jamesgibbon.com> wrote:
>
> > But I was amazed to read a long-winded and detailed reply to a
> > comment I'd made in a vote for deletion page (for the
> > "Division_Street" article). In it, its author, who doesn't appear to
> > be a member but uses the IP address 65.182.172.95, alleges that I am
> > engaged in "wilful incomprehension" and "dirty net politics, a petty
>
> I was reading 1980s Usenet posts yesterday. I'd just like to say how
> wonderfully retro the phrase "net politics" seems... ;-)

That's "retro"?  Way to make a guy feel old.  I didn't even blink at it.

> Just remember; he's the one being a prat. You've no dog in this fight;
> if you want to ignore it, the only person disappointed in you will be
> him...

That is excellent advice, and well-phrased.  I second the sentiment.

>
> Goodness, poking around conflicts is like getting your very own soap
> opera sometimes. Impossible to stop.

More like a train-wreck in slow motion, for me.  Horrifying, but
difficult to look away.

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


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Further Wladk madness

body:
I have posted about this before, namely the unkind reception often given to
User:Wladk, usually posting as an IP number 200.46.++.  He has identified
himself as Wellington Perez Ishikawajima, Peruvian of Japanese extraction.
He has now initiated 100 pages or so; these exhibit almost all possible
problems, beginning with poor English.  Only User:Wikibofh seems to have
recognised, as I do, that this prolific contributor is posting material that
includes real gems, and is expanding the East Asia coverage in a way for
which Wiki-en should be grateful.  Plenty of really quite nasty comments
have been seen at VfD.

To give an example of the value: a recent high profile biography of Mao
Zedong argues that the Chinese Communists only came to power after they were
handed factories in ex-Manchukuo (which Japan overran in 1931), by the
Soviets who invaded right at the end of WWII.  Reading that, I realised that
I knew chapter and verse about that, from the WP articles I had been
cleaning up about Japanese heavy industry there.

So - please can I have some help in my campaign to have these articles
cleaned up first, before rushing them to VfD?  I think some Wikipedians'
comments (such as 'contribute to the WP in your native language') are
completely out of order.  I see no reason to believe that the wiki process
does not work, with these articles as for all else.  There is a listing I
maintain at

[[User:Charles Matthews/Imperial Japan]].

I should be grateful to be notified of more such - I found around ten major
ones this morning alone, while the database was locked.

Charles


body:
>From: "DANIEL RAY" <danielray at rediffmail.com>
>THANKS. INFORMATIVE. EDUCATIVE. ALL CAN'T BE SAME. EVERYTHING CAN'T HAPPEN
>AS WE THINK OR PLAN. SOMETHING HAS TO HAPPEN.  AS IT HAPPENS, SO IS THE
>RESULT. AS YOU SOW, SO YOU REAP. IT'S LIVING.
>
>YOURS,
>DANIEL RAY
>DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

Could the e-mailer/e-mailers performing [[breaching experiment]]s be
unsubscribed please?

Thanks,

Jay.


from_name: MHart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
If done in a way similar to Google's API, then ripping a key wouldn't matter
much since the key is limiting. The client-side applications wouldn't
directly access the webservice API, rather the client-side app provider
would be an intermediary. Client apps query the host provider and that host
queries Wikipedia's API. If the client app provider wants to support more
than 1000 queries per day (Google's limit), then they'd need to pay for more
queries. Can't be ripped anyway since the key lies with the provider, not
the client.

On Wikipedia's side, the implementation and intermediary APIs and
architecture don't matter. Just implement user key webservices API with
query limits, and you're done.

- MHart
- http://taxalmanac.org


from_name: Habj

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV

body:
On 6/26/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
> straightforward -- the users making such objections are almost always
> either Creationists or Eugenicists or other people who believe in
> bodies of thought labeled as "pseudoscience" -- and the response is
> generally pretty straightforward as well: Wikipedia is not claiming
> these so-labeled articles are actually "pseudoscience", but rather
> that they are labeled *by the mainstream scientific community* as
> "pseudoscience".

Well, I didn't finish my PhD but I am not creationist, neither a fan
of eugenics, is not very interested in ghosts and not involved in
alternative medicine. Still, I don't think science is the ruler with
which everything should be measured. Let's remember that the category
Pseudoscience is sorted under the category Science; we have a category
for non-sciency in the section for science. To me this is illogical.

Let's study what is not put in this category. The category Religion,
for some reasons, is not put as a subcategory to Pseudoscience. I'd
say the reason for this is that the major religions are to powerful to
be called pseudosciences, and then the other religions can follow.
However the difference, from a scientific point of view, is pretty
small - no, let's be frank. The difference between believing in
ghosts, or in Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ who died for us but lived
again is, from a scientific perspective, non-existent. The fact that
there are scientists who are Moslims and Christians doesn't make the
major religions of the world more scientific.  Btw I am sure there are
scientists who do believe in ghosts; they just don't say so in the
interviews as it doesn't look good.

Here I expect someone to say "but religion doesn't claim to be
science". Actually, a large part of what is in the Pseudoscience
category doesn't either. A fraction of the people who are interested
in ghosts imitate a scientific language, but that is mainly a way of
adopting to the prevailing paradigm. Most people who are deeply into
alternative medicine actually frown at science, and think the concepts
of science are not valid or at least greatly over-estimated. Sometimes
they try and get a treatment scientifically proven - but that is
mainly a way of trying to adopt to society and to the paradigm, to
gain acceptance. In their hearts, they don't believe in science. We
can study religions from outside, that is a kind of science - but if
so we can study antroposofy also, write papers about the roots and
consequences of their beliefs and publish in scientific journals.

Today, science has almost taken the place of religion. No, I am _not_
saying that science is a religion, but thinking about what decides
what we find important and valuable in life - what and who we let
guide us - science has taken a huge chunk of the space that some
hundred years ago was filled by religion alone. A Wikipedia created
in, say, 1650 would probably have a huge category for Heresy. Under it
would be subcategories for the slowly sprouting Western science and
the small pieces of quite advanced Arabian science that reached
Europe, another for pre-christian religions plus Islam and other
foreign religions, and a third for  "wrong" christian beliefs such as
gnosticism, catharism, and psilanthropism. IMO we should not have this
organisation in the reverse order. Today we should be able to look
more neutrally at our own prevaling paradigm.

A small subset of the articles in the Category Pseudoscience actually
is about science; old scientific beliefs now abandoned. For those, I
suggest the category Obsolete scientific theories. Possibly one could
complement it with a meighbouring category for questionable or not
accepted scientific theories; the line isn't easy to draw, but that
only illustrates that the concept isn't as easy as we sometimes like
to think. There is no need to lump this together with all kinds of
stuff that never was scientific in the first place. Actually, almost
all articles in the Pseudoscience category are already placed in at
least one other category - in most of the cases several. This also
speaks for the redundance of the category. The only hole it would
leave after itself, is that of the garbage can for those who through
everything they find non-scientific there and don't want to spend more
time finding out if this is Folklore, Quackery, Paranormal phenomena,
Creationism or something else.

/Habj


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
Gregory Maxwell stated for the record:

> I propose we establish a policy that PD confirmation must be sought
> for all images obtained from US government websites.
>
> Only material actually produced by US federal government employees in
> the course of their work is automatically PD. Often government
> websites also contain commercial stock photography and other contract
> works which we have no right to use.   US Federal government websites
> are among the most responsive on the internet, so obtaining such
> permission should not be an issue.
>
> There is usually an opportunity to apply common sense: If it looks
> like stock photography it probably is, and we should ask. Very few
> government agencies actually produce their own publication grade
> images. However, there are a number of well meaning wikipedians who
> have very wishful ideas of what we can use... If we ask them to apply
> common sense we get Alanis Morrissette's Ironic uploaded.

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

> I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think the best
> course of action would be for use to make a strong statement that we
> *always* prefer works made by wikimedia project participants. If we
> must choose between a work with free licensing and one made by a
> wikipedian we should always replace the free work with the wikipedians
> work unless the outside work is clearly better.  If there is any
> possible doubt in the copyright the work should be replaced by a work
> from one of our users.  We should avoid making outside works featured
> images.

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

> The wikimedia projects already have a sizable and growing base of
> photographers, illustrators, and musicians. It is completely
> reasonable to believe that we can meet our own media needs, excluding
> specific historical works that we wish to comment on.

Are you actually saying that it is "completely reasonable" for a
Wikipedian to photograph the wreck of USS ''Thresher''?  For a
Wikipedian to take a clear picture of a B-2 Spirit in flight?  For a
Wikipedian to take snapshots of the construction of the International
Space Station?  There are several myriad subjects beyond "specific
historical works that we wish to comment on" for which the public domain
is the only source of images.

--
  Sean Barrett     | When I become evil overlord, if I'm
  sean at epoptic.com | looking all around for my elusive enemy,
                   | I will occasionally look up as well.


from_name: geni

body:
> Seems a shame that Wikipedia (rightly) doesn't allow original research. This
> is very interesting reading. :-)
>
> I seem to remember that Wikipedia had it's millionth edit (or something like
> that) not long ago. 10-20% might not seem much, but it helps put it in
> perspective.

600,000 articles would be the latest milestone for the english wikipedia.

> This shouldn't be a a problem, however. The system must be storing the last IP
> used by a user, since this autoblock-on-access mechanism cannot operate
> without that data, so it can easily be checked at the time of an admin
> setting a block.

It's storeing more than the last. It is not uncommon to see strings of
auto blocks appearing

--
geni


from_name: Nyenyec N

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

body:
Hi,

I tried to clarify this on several pages, e.g. on
[[Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy]], but I got no answer so far.

I'll try to be short:

- For a 3RR violation an admin can *block* a user but cannot ban him
- The rules for blocking don't mention that the block can be extended
or known socks of the same user can be blocked if the block is
violated

Therefore, a user blocked under 3RR can argue that:
- No admin can extend the block after 24 hours if he doesn't continue
the revert war
  (Since this is an option only for bans but not blocks)
- No admin can block him when he returns through a known sock

I think this wasn't the intention of those, who formulated the rules
and the penalties for evading the block after a 3RR violation should
be extended based on WP:BAN.

I've learned that several admins do interpret the policies this way,
i.e. that they have the right to block the known sock and have the
right to extend the block.

I think this should be fixed.

Thanks,
[[User:Nyenyec]]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
Gregory Maxwell stated for the record:

> On 6/27/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
>>As long as copyright warriors are willing to apply common sense the
>>other way -- it is patently obvious that
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ssn22vBear1.jpg and
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ssn22vBear2.jpg were taken by a Naval
>>officer during the performance of his duty, and I would have little
>>patience if someone were to argue that they ''might'' not be.
>
>
> Notice I said that if there is doubt we should contact.
> It's not always obvious, just sometimes.  For government sourced
> images we should always be able to make a contact... Perhaps for your
> example we couldn't get that specific image confirmed but I'd bet if
> we asked we could get some other useful ones.

Very good.

>>I find the standard "any possible doubt" to be much too paranoid.  The
>>standard for convicting someone of premeditated murder is lower than
>>that.  If we held ourselves to that standard, we would be an image-free
>>Web site -- ''no'' image's provenance is ''utterly impossible'' for
>>someone to doubt.
>
> It's a reasonable target, if we can choose between an image with
> substantial doubt and one with little doubt (by a wikipedian) we
> should choose the wikipedian image.  If there is doubt we should also
> make an attempt to contact  the source.

I'm undoubtedly being overly literal, but that's exactly what the trolls
and other vandals will be.

>>>The wikimedia projects already have a sizable and growing base of
>>>photographers, illustrators, and musicians. It is completely
>>>reasonable to believe that we can meet our own media needs, excluding
>>>specific historical works that we wish to comment on.
>>
>>Are you actually saying that it is "completely reasonable" for a
>>Wikipedian to photograph the wreck of USS ''Thresher''?  For a
>>Wikipedian to take a clear picture of a B-2 Spirit in flight?  For a
>>Wikipedian to take snapshots of the construction of the International
>>Space Station?  There are several myriad subjects beyond "specific
>>historical works that we wish to comment on" for which the public domain
>>is the only source of images.
>
> There are cases, but there are a minority. View images at random, ...
> we have a great many number of images that anyone can take. The
> majority of the exceptions are ones which are clearly free, fair use,
> or could be easily settled with an email.
>
> I did not advocate forbidding external images entirely but rather
> making a strong position that images made by wikipedians are preferred
> where we have a choice, and setting some better guidelines for
> confirming content that isn't cut and dry.

As long as we avoid copyright paranoia and absolute prohibitions, I
concur.  I work around the military and do my best to take advantage of
my opportunities to photograph things most of the public never sees.

--
  Sean Barrett     | When I become evil overlord, if I'm
  sean at epoptic.com | looking all around for my elusive enemy,
                   | I will occasionally look *up* as well.


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Language counts

body:
Is there any way to add some tag to the wiktionary so that we can get a
count of the number of different languages we have on a wiktionary, and the
number of words in each?  For example:

On EN:

This wiktionary has:

English:    50,345 words

German:   4,211 words

Japanese: 123 words

Spanish:  422 words

..

..

And so on.

Is that somehow possible by adding a language tag, say [[lang:en]] and have
the tags identified per wiktionary, so that en shows up as Ingl?s on
Spanish, Englisch on German, etc.?

Thanks,

James


from_name: DANIEL RAY

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

body:
TO:
FASTFISSION (FASTFISSION at GMAIL.COM)

SIRS,

THANKS. INFORMATIVE ON YOUR PART. A LITTLE OFF THE TRACK. PRESUMPTIVELY EXPLANATORY INDEED. NOT FRUITFUL TO MY STATE OF KNOWLEDGE.

YOURS,
DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM

27/06/2005 MONDAY  ?

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 David Gerard wrote :
>Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [050626 13:04]:
>
> > Even more alternative solution: move it off of Wikipedia altogether,
> > to the webspace of some brave soul who would be happy to post a list
> > of "articles EB has that Wikipedia does not" (they could even pretend
> > it was an anti-Wikipedia page!).
> > One could easily imagine a script which would cycle through the
> > articles once every few days and check if they are still red-linked,
> > and move the filled in ones to a different section of the page. Hell,
> > I'll *write* that script if nobody else will. Then we can forget the
> > whole question. If someone will host it.
> > (I'd host it myself if I had any webspace of my own which could support it)
>
>
>I really don't see why this can't be hosted on Wikipedia, for the reasons
>you state. The fact that it's in Wikipedia: space as well makes it clear
>this is a working document, not product. If it's decided it can't be
>hosted on Wikipedia, I have plenty of places to put it, thatn can run cron
>jobs to run scripts to update it and so forth. (Though I'd have a hard time
>pretending to be anti-Wikipedia ;-) But I do think it belongs on Wikipedia
>if at all possible.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: James Gibbon

body:
Hello,

This is my first mail to the list; I've been a contributor to
Wikipedia for only five days. However, I've taken part in a wide
range of discussion fora on the Internet over the last 9 years or
so.

But I was amazed to read a long-winded and detailed reply to a
comment I'd made in a vote for deletion page (for the
"Division_Street" article). In it, its author, who doesn't appear to
be a member but uses the IP address 65.182.172.95, alleges that I am
engaged in "wilful incomprehension" and "dirty net politics, a petty
act of revenge that has come in response to the fact that I made a
few of your friends look foolish elsewhere on this site, and did so
without being apologetic about it". He goes on to say: "This is a
power play on your faction's part, a brave little shoveback to
reclaim a little online turf and make yourselves look like big men".
He ends by commenting "rest assured, buddy, I will never let this
one go", and signs himself "the noneditor".

The comment which to which this was a response was a fairly
innocuous and genuinely sincere remark on my part, to the effect
that I was unable to establish the notability of the subject of his
article. It's perfectly true that the author represents in the piece
that it is notable, but I'm afraid I have already seen more than one
article which makes this claim falsely; I just don't have the
cultural background to judge this. My comment was not even a vote
for deletion, only a note to say that the article should be
rewritten if it was indeed notable, otherwise it should be deleted.

In fact, contrary to the author's claim, I have no idea who he is
and have no knowlege whatever of anything he might have been
involved in at Wikipedia or anywhere else. I cannot claim to have
established any friends in the brief time I've taken part, and I
certainly do not belong to a "faction". I have no knowledge of any
event which might prompt an "act of revenge". I find the idea of
turf wars between rival gangs at an online encyclopaedia pretty
unedifying, and would not wish to take part in one.

Anyway the VfD page is obviously still there for anyone who's
interested to see it. When the software upgrade is complete and the
page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
possible.

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

It's been a bit of an eye-opener!

Thanks and regards from the middle of England,
James

--
Dig It : a forum for European Beatles fans - http://beatles.dyndns.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Conflict arising - what to do?

body:
 ?
READ. THANKS.

DANIEL RAY
DANIELRAY at REDIFFMAIL.COM
27/06/05 MON

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 JAY JG wrote :
>In articles which concern the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, don't most edits consist of POV editors from both sides repeatedly reverting each other? ;-)
>
>Jay.
>
>> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
>>
>>That's true, but  in at least one area, articles which concern the  Israeli-Palestine conflict, it is not unlikely that one editor may be  repeatedly reverted by a group of POV editors. Perhaps other  instances exist.
>>
>>Fred
>>
>>
>>On Jun 25, 2005, at 10:17 PM, JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>>> From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
>>>>
>>>>I think we need better answers. I am familar w cases like this, and
>>>>where they end up. How about its a large POV lobby instead of a  single
>>>>user, and they are trying to POV an ancient and contentious topic,
>>>>chasing off any and all NPOV users who come along?
>>>>
>>>>Jack (Sam Spade)
>>>>
>>>
>>>Um, isn't that what every single POV editor claims when a large  number of other editors reject his POV edits?
>>>
>>>Jay.
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Mark Williamson

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

body:
I would imagine that there are some basic standards.

I can't name them, but I can say which ones do and don't follow the
standards I would approve of:

Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek, D'ni, Glos, and Bitruscan most certainly
don't meet the standard.

LFN, Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin, Cirth, and Tengwar may or may not. One
important thing is that as far as I know, Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek,
D'ni, Glos, and Bitruscan have very few people who care at all about
them, while LFN, Klingon, Quenya, Sindarin, Cirth, and Tengwar have
some degree of followers (to be sure, I sometimes wish Tolkien had
combined all his languages into Tolkienish --- it's too bad the
Tolkien languages fanbase is sort of divided over so many different
languages)

Mark

On 27/06/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Patrick Hall wrote:
>
> >On 6/27/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Tim Starling wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I think we can put the blame on our use of language code lists which are
> >>>biased towards political rather than linguistic divisions.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>An important observation.  In Wiktionary I keep having to beat back the
> >>argument that a wide assortment of  conlangs are acceptable because they
> >>have been granted a code.
> >>
> >>Ec
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Which are those, just out of curiosity? (I imagine the list includes
> >Esperanto and Volap?k?)
> >
> Esperanto, Interlingua and Volap?k have been established for some time.
> I suppose too that Ido and Lojban have some claim to legitimacy.
>
> I just cleaned out a number of  Latenkwa entries.  Then there's
> Romanica, Espreso, Sasxsek, Lingua Franca Nova, Klingon, Quenya, D'ni,
> Glos, Bitruscan, Sindarin, Cirth, Tengwar, and probably a few others.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


body:
On 27/06/05, James Gibbon <wikipedia at jamesgibbon.com> wrote:

> But I was amazed to read a long-winded and detailed reply to a
> comment I'd made in a vote for deletion page (for the
> "Division_Street" article). In it, its author, who doesn't appear to
> be a member but uses the IP address 65.182.172.95, alleges that I am
> engaged in "wilful incomprehension" and "dirty net politics, a petty

I was reading 1980s Usenet posts yesterday. I'd just like to say how
wonderfully retro the phrase "net politics" seems... ;-)

> The comment which to which this was a response was a fairly
> innocuous and genuinely sincere remark on my part, to the effect
> that I was unable to establish the notability of the subject of his
> article. It's perfectly true that the author represents in the piece
> that it is notable, but I'm afraid I have already seen more than one
> article which makes this claim falsely; I just don't have the
> cultural background to judge this. My comment was not even a vote
> for deletion, only a note to say that the article should be
> rewritten if it was indeed notable, otherwise it should be deleted.

Fairly standard VfD comment, by the looks of it. I think you took his
ire through being the last commentor on the page.

> Anyway the VfD page is obviously still there for anyone who's
> interested to see it. When the software upgrade is complete and the
> page is unlocked, I will respond as calmly and unemotionally as
> possible.

Just remember; he's the one being a prat. You've no dog in this fight;
if you want to ignore it, the only person disappointed in you will be
him...

> A couple of questions, then: can anyone tell me who this person is?
> Does he have a history of this sort of thing?

The IP address tells you nothing beyond "well, he's probably in
Chicago". The writing style says "irritable American male", but this
only narrows it down to one and a half million suspects if I know
Chicago ;-)

For history; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=65.182.172.95
- edits to a few Chicago-related articles, confrontational style, no
history beyond the last day. He also seems to have been
User:65.182.172.86, and before that 65.182.172.89... hmm. There's some
evident disputes in that history, but damned if I know why he was on
your case. Doesn't seem to like the idea of policy, much, and has an
odd idea of cleanup tags, which are clearly the product of a "bruised
ego" (!)

Goodness, poking around conflicts is like getting your very own soap
opera sometimes. Impossible to stop.

I honestly think your best bet is to shrug and ignore it. These things
happen. VfD and the more contentious talk pages can be quite daunting
when you're new to the system (and indeed even when you're not; I
stopped regularly reading VfD months ago, it was just irritating me)

> It does smell more
> than faintly of paranoia, I have to say. Is this sort of behaviour
> common in general at Wikipedia?

People will often get very... enthusiastic in defending pages on VfD;
they created it, so *of course* it's notable! I have no idea why he
fixed on you, though; perhaps he has history with a user of a similar
name? A lot of Jameses about.

Note that he tries to make VfD into a cause celebr?; by deleting his
article we'll show the world what foul childish censors we are, and
he'll... he'll... send a copy to people who don't like the project, so
they can not like us *more*! That'll show 'em! ...of course it will.

Any questions in future, feel free to drop me a message on my talk
page, and I'll see if I can be of assistance.

> It's been a bit of an eye-opener!
>
> Thanks and regards from the middle of England,

Enjoy your seasonal rains...

--
- Andrew Gray
 [[User:Shimgray]]
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
Andrew Dunbar wrote:

>Actually, Spanish and Turkish have both undergone reforms. The most
>recent with Spanish only involved changing the alphabet and hence the
>sorting. Further back, Spanish once used the cedilla - in fact the
>English named for the cedilla comes from Spanish even though that
>language no longer uses it.
>
>Turkish underwent massive change when Ataturk came to power. Not
>merely the spelling but also the script was changed from Arabic to
>Latin and a large portion of the vocabulary borrowed from Arabic was
>replaced with new words from various sources.
>
>Coincidentally, Turkish now uses a cedilla not only with "c" but also
>with "s". (-:
>
>
At least that's more than 50 years ago and it resulted in a phonetic
spelling. I'm sure the Turkish school children are grateful for that. It
must have caused major disruption at one point, but it showed great
foresight. It probably causes a lot greater literacy among the people.

Of course I should have stated I was going to change my 'native'
language to Esperanto...

See you,

Polyglot


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> cookfire wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> There will also be room for old spellings; this is particularly
>>> relevant for the Dutch language as it will have new spelling rules
>>> that will be published on October 15 and will be the official
>>> spelling from August 1 2006 onwards.
>>
>>
>>
>> Again!!!! Dutch spelling seems to be in need of a reform about every
>> 5 years. Maybe I should switch my native language to something more
>> consistent. Hmm, Spanish and Turkish seem to be nice candidates :-)
>>
>> Polyglot
>
>
> Hoi,
> The last spelling change was 10 years ago .. I hope to get the list of
> the coming changes and the list of changes from 10 years ago and use
> these in the Wiktionary ..
> Thanks,
>    GerardM

Hi Gerard,

If I didn't 'digest' the last 'new spelling', then you can be very sure
that most other people didn't either. It seems like the last reform was
just a few years ago. The years are certainly flying by. Anyway, I think
if you want to indicate what spelling a word is in, marking them by the
years they are introduced would make a lot of sense. So spelling1995,
spelling2005 or something of the kind.

Polyglot


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
>>An "out of curiosity" question: Those look like db servers to me. Does
>>that mean wikimedia is moving to distributed servers? I was vaguely under the
>>impression the dbs were going to be kept in Florida, and just Squids
>>distributed.
>
>
> Well, we try to do things better. It might turn to be distributed content cluster.

Exactly.  We don't know for sure yet exactly how these will be used.
But even if we did not move to a distributed database setup, we will
still be very well situated to have live-updated offsite db servers for
failover capability in a serious emergency in Florida.

At our old facility in Florida, we had 2 power outages which cost us
significant downtime.  It would have been sweet to have db servers
elsewhere, ready to press into emergency service.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
I can offer no particularly helpful opinion on this, other than to say
that with this kind of thoughtful analysis, we will certainly do our
best in the end.

This kind of thinking is *really* important to me, it is the *essence*
of what it means (to me) to be a good wikipedian.

Thanks.

--Jimbo

Fastfission wrote:
> [[Category:Pseudoscience]] is one which gets objections at fairly
> regular intervals. The reasons for the objections are pretty
> straightforward --

[...]


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories and NPOV

body:
On 6/27/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
> >
> >I've been defending the presence of [[Category:Pseudoscience]] for
> >some time now as a sociological category, but it occurred to me today
> >that one could imagine all sorts of circumstances in which it would
> >seem hopelessly POV to have category labels of this sort (one could
> >include things like [[Category:Hoaxes]] or [[Category:Conspiracies]]
> >or whatever in this, if those categories exist), even if their actual
> >articles (and even category pages) were written in perfect NPOV. Does
> >the brevity of category labels make this impossible? I'm beginning to
> >think they might, and that these sorts of categories should be
> >converted wholly into lists. I wouldn't mind a [[List of Satanic
> >lies]] which clearly noted who thought they were and included
> >[[Evolution]] on the list. But I would mind having [[Category:Satanic
> >lie]] put onto the Evolution page.
> >
> >Any input on this would be appreciated as I mull this over.
>
> I've already seen categories used specifically for the purpose of promoting
> a POV.  For example, a few months ago someone added [[Muhammad al-Durrah]]
> to the [[Category:Hoaxes]], and in response a [[User:Alberuni]] added [[Anne
> Frank]] to the [[Category:Hoaxes]]  I have no doubt neo-Nazis would be
> repeatedly adding [[The Holocaust]] to the [[Category:Hoaxes]] as well, if
> they were smart enough to figure out how to do it.
>
> Unsurprisingly, the Arab-Israeli conflict is fertile ground for this kind of
> issue.  As an unsurprising example, [[Zionism]] has been added to (and
> removed from [[Category:Racism]] more than once.    Recently [[User:Yuber]]
> went on a campaign of removing all sorts of areas controlled by Israel from
> [[Category:Geography of Israel]], typically adding them to
> [[Category:Geography of Syria]], apparently on the grounds that the these
> kinds of Categories were not intended as an aid to the reader in finding
> articles, nor should they reflect physical reality, but rather the should be
> seen and used as a political statements about legitimate ownership of
> territories.  Both sides quoted the same policy  to each other (""Unless it
> is self-evident and uncontroversial that something belongs in a category, it
> should not be put into a category"), indicating that the specific policy was
> actually of little help in making these kinds of decisions.
>
> Jay.
>
>

Indeed policy, unless intricately written to cover all situations,
will occasionally fail to be of much use in individual circumstances.
In problem instances, it is best to look at the individual case, and
have the majority of editors insist on common sense and a resolution
that comes closest to NPOV while being accepted by most.

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


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US government images.

body:
I propose we establish a policy that PD confirmation must be sought
for all images obtained from US government websites.

Only material actually produced by US federal government employees in
the course of their work is automatically PD. Often government
websites also contain commercial stock photography and other contract
works which we have no right to use.   US Federal government websites
are among the most responsive on the internet, so obtaining such
permission should not be an issue.

There is usually an opportunity to apply common sense: If it looks
like stock photography it probably is, and we should ask. Very few
government agencies actually produce their own publication grade
images. However, there are a number of well meaning wikipedians who
have very wishful ideas of what we can use... If we ask them to apply
common sense we get Alanis Morrissette's Ironic uploaded.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I think the best
course of action would be for use to make a strong statement that we
*always* prefer works made by wikimedia project participants. If we
must choose between a work with free licensing and one made by a
wikipedian we should always replace the free work with the wikipedians
work unless the outside work is clearly better.  If there is any
possible doubt in the copyright the work should be replaced by a work
from one of our users.  We should avoid making outside works featured
images.

The wikimedia projects already have a sizable and growing base of
photographers, illustrators, and musicians. It is completely
reasonable to believe that we can meet our own media needs, excluding
specific historical works that we wish to comment on.

This position, along with some additional point guidelines (like
contacting US federal agencies to confirm PD status), should largely
address these copyright problems over the long term.

Some example which I have confirmed to be copyvio:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hiker_drinking_water.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Woman_in_Lotus_pose.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Girl_with_braces_in_for_checkup.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Hand_holding_a_tablet.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bicycle_rider_with_helmet.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Girl_with_braces_in_for_checkup.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Physical_therapy_exercise.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Family_playing_wiffleball.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Old_man_reading_in_library.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Ambulance_in_action.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Old_couple_reading.jpg

Once en is writable again, I can begin pulling these from articles so
they can be deleted.


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

body:
Although it is not official in any capacity, I think it's unfair to
completely exclude Ikavian.

For the unititiated, Ikavian (confusingly similar in name to both
Ekavian and Iyekavian!) is the 3rd variety of Serbo-Croatian, the
oft-forgotten outcast stepsister of the Ekavian and Iyekavian
variants.

It has no official consideration anywhere in the world, but then again
neither does Sicilian but we have a Sicilian Wikipedia.

Mark

On 27/06/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> I saw that some people are interested in SC/S/C/B problematic and I
> would ask all of them for some attention.
>
> 0. For people who don't know problematics, just to say that Serbian
> language is written in two alphabets (Cyrillic and Latin) and it has
> two standard variants (Ekavian and Iyekavian). Cyrillic and Latin are
> not geographic specific (in Belgrade, Podgorica or Banja Luka you can
> find both), but Ekavian and Iyekavian are. There are around 8 millions
> of Ekavian speakers and around 2 millions of Iyekavian speakers.
> Ekavian is used in Serbia (but officially, both standard variants are
> equal in Serbia), Iyekavian is used in Republika Srpska (the part of
> Bosnia and Herzegovina; officially, both standard variants are equal)
> and Montenegro (only Iyekavian standard is official). It can be said
> that all of that can be implemented for sh: and that bs: can implement
> only Latin<->Cyrillic conversion.
>
> Zhengzhu did a lot of work until now and we are waiting for the first
> implementation of his software on sr:. The software is based on his
> previous work on Chinese problem.
>
> 1. Zhengzhu would implement the basic part of software for sr: (which
> would be used on sh:, too; and maybe on bs:). However, it is just the
> beginning of the work and I think that all of that issue would need
> some help from the people (both: contributors and developers) who are
> interested in linguistics.
>
> 2. The first implementation of the software (on sr:) should be
> implemented in month or two (as I know). Implementation assumes:
>
> a) Keeping sr: policy that articles should be written in Cyrillic and
> using Cyrillic-based syntax (in the sense of the starting alphabet).
>
> b) Writing in Ekavian and/or specific syntax for marking
> Ekavian-Iyekavian variants. Also, Ekavian-Iyekavian dictionary would
> be used for automatic conversion and admins would have possibility to
> update dictionary.
>
> c) General conversion would work in both ways, but we don't want to
> mix Latin, Cyrillic, Ekavian and Iyekavian (it is chaotic, silly for
> average user, as well as it is not standard).
>
> d) All changes are on the read level. There would not be any change on
> the write level in MediaWiki.
>
> 3. It can be said that "classic" implementation of Zhengzhu's software
> would be the next step and (as I think) it would be finished in the
> next couple of months. Implementation assumes:
>
> a) Possibility for writing in different alphabets and variants.
>
> b) Conversion would be implemented on the write and read level.
> Database would be written in Ekavian Cyrillic with markup; when
> contributor writes something in Iyekavian or Ekavian Latin, it would
> be converted into Ekavian Cyrillic.
>
> 4. The next step is Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia where more complex (but
> more linguistically interesting) rules should be added.
>
> I think that almost all people on the lists know that Serbian,
> Croatian, Bosnian and Serbo-Croatian standards have minimal linguistic
> differences. The most of differences are cultural and political. So,
> we should be very careful with any decision related to that problem.
> Actually, sr:, hr: and bs: should not be forced to become one
> Wikipedia never.
>
> But, we can work on sh: with a lot of care.
>
> First of all, at sh: should be implemented extended Zhengzhu's
> software; which would take care about different standard variants
> (four Serbian, two Bosnian and one Croatian).
>
> Less complex is implementation of S<->C<->B dictionaries. More complex
> is starting to work on syntax (and maybe stylistic) differences. That
> step assumes that we would need help from educated people in
> linguistics.
>
> Also, database should not stay in Ekavian Cyrillics (as exclusive
> Serbian standard). We should make some kind of meta-alphabet and
> meta-orthography for writing data into database.
>
> And the last problem which I noticed are naming conventions. Would it
> be in Latin? Would it be in Serbian variant? Would it be in Iyekavian?
> Would it be...? This set of problems assumes that we need to make good
> political solutions.
>
> It is not good to make any kind of majorization. We can say that the
> most of Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Montenegrins write in Latin
> alphabet (around 50% of Serbs and Montenegrins, 90% of Bosniaks and
> 100% of Croats), but it would be very bad to implement sh: interwiki
> links etc. in Latin alphabet because around 1/3 of speakers would
> think that is is majorization. It can be said that maybe 60% of all
> speakers are Ekavians, but all Croatians, Bosniaks and Montenegrins
> are Iyekavians. Language policy in former Yugoslavia failed on
> principle "Ekavian and Latin Serbo-Croatian language for all people in
> Yugoslavia" (note that Slovenians and Macedonians have different
> languages!). Only military partially implemented that principle.
>
> 5. When I am talking about linguistics and technical implementation, I
> have clear solution. Any cultural/political problem which can be
> solved in those ways -- can be easily done.
>
> For example, we can call Serbo-Croatian in the sense of it's
> linguistic base: Shtokavian; even two letter ISO code (sh) is correct
> :) We have a lot of naming problems if we want to name the language
> correct: correct name in English translation is "Serbo-Croatian,
> Croato-Serbian, Croatian or Serbian, Serbian or Croatian" (because
> Serbian construction was "Serbo-Croatian" and Croatian construction
> was "Croatian or Serbian"). But, where are Bosniaks and Montenegrins
> in that name?
>
> I wanted to say that we can make little clever tricks for a number of
> problems, but there is a big field of other cultural and political
> problems. And if people here think that we are enough strong to work
> on that problems, I would need a lot of help.
>
> I think that the first step toward that solution is to make a
> workgroup of Wikipedians who are interested to work on that problems.
> The focus of that group should not be any (N)POV question nor the
> question of the sense of existence of sr:, hr: and bs:; but only
> making the solution which can allow possibility that people from sr:,
> hr: and bs: can work together.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Yahoo donation

body:
On 6/27/05, Matthew Rosson <o at thoughtcrime.nu> wrote:
>         Pardon the question, but whom can I email at Yahoo to thank them for the
> server donations to Wikipedia? I can't find contact info on Yahoo's site.
> Thank you.

I don't want to give out email addresses on a public mailing list, but
there is a contact email address on Yahoo's press release about their
offer at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050407/75258.html?.v=1

Alternatively, you could add a comment to the blog entry about it at
http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000100.html

Angela.


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

body:
Ze un bon blag Anter, me a-t-il la pertinenz a wikipedia-l? ;)

Mark

On 27/06/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>      * Vous allez enfin comprendre ce que l'on vous dit !
>
> La Commission europ?enne a finalement tranch? : apr?s la monnaie
> unique,l'Union europ?enne va se doter d'une langue unique, a savoir...le
> fran?ais. Trois langues ?taient en comp?tition :
>
>      * le fran?ais (parl? par le plus grand nombre de pays de l'Union)
>      * l'allemand (parl? par le plus grand nombre d'habitants de l'Union)
>      * l'anglais (langue internationale par excellence pour berner celui
> qui ne l'a parle pas)
>
> L'anglais a vite ?t? ?limin?, pour deux raisons: l'anglais aurait ?t? le
> cheval de Troie ?conomique des Etats-Unis; et les Britanniques ont vu
> leur influence limit?e au profit du couple franco-allemand en raison de
> leur l?gendaire r?ticence ? s'impliquer dans la construction europ?enne.
>
> Le choix a fait l'objet d'un compromis, les Allemands ayant obtenu que
> l'orthographe du fran?ais, particuli?rement d?licate ? ma?triser, soit
> r?form?e, dans le cadre d'un plan de cinq ans, afin d'aboutir ?
> l'eurofrancais.
>
>      * 1. La premi?re ann?e, tous les accents seront supprim?s et les
> sons actuellement distribu?s entre "s", "z", "c", "k" et "q" seront
> r?partis entre "z" et "k", ze ki permettra de zupprimer beaukoup de la
> konfuzion aktuelle.
>      * 2. La deuzi?me annee, on remplazera le "ph" par "f", ze ki aura
> pour effet de rakourzir un mot komme "fotograf" de kelke vingt pour zent.
>      * 3. La troizi?me annee, des modifikations plus draztikes zeront
>
> pozzibles, notamment ne plus redoubler les lettres ki l'?taient: touz
> ont auzi admis le prinzip de la zuprezion des "e" muets, zourz eternel
> de konfuzion, en efet, tou kom d'autr letr muet.
>
>      * 4. La katriem ane, les gens zeront devenu rezeptif a de changements
>
> majeurs, tel ke remplazer "g" zoi par "ch", zoi par "j", zoi par "k",
> zelon les ka, ze ki zimplifira davantach l'ekritur de touz.
>
>      * 5. Duran la zinkiem ane, le "b" zera remplaze par le "p" et le
> "v" zera lui auzi apandone, au profi du "f". Efidamen, on kagnera ainzi
> pluzieur touch zu le klafie. Un foi ze plan de zink an achefe,
> l'ortokraf zera defenu lochik, et le chen pouron ze komprendr et
> komunike. Le ref de l'Unite kulturel de l'Europ zera defenu realite !
>
> Source :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ALa_blague_du_jour#Une_langue_pour_l.27Europe_.28AFP.2C_5.2F12.2F00_10:00.29
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chinese history

body:
On 6/27/05, MilchFlasche?|?? <robertus0617 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Can you show us the link to this project?

The project is at http://www.china-can.com/

Angela.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness

body:
rose.parks at att.net wrote:

>     I very rarely post to the wikimedia mailing lists, but this message caught my attention. It mentions something that I feel is very important. Robin Shannon <robin.shannon at gmail.com>
>refers to the problem of distinguishing different types of links, which might be hard for the color blind. She says:
>
>"Sure this isnt really important..."
>
>I don't agree with this remark in any way. I think that the "accessibility" of our site is quite important. By Section 508 of our accessibility laws, the U.S. government is not allowed to use non-accessible computer software, applications, etc. Further, I believe it is morally right that our site be accessible.
>
I read that more as being not important not because we shouldn't care
about color-blind people, but because it's not particularly important
functionality.  Being able to distinguish between visited and
not-yet-visited links isn't necessary or even all that useful for
"accessibility" of the site.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness


subject: [Wikipedia-l] World66

body:
On 6/27/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not wiki.

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

> Still, it will be interesting to see what happens, give the LA Times
> recent experience.

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

On 6/26/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> ... they actually seem to have gathered their own contents,
> under cc-by-sa-1.0

It would be interesting to know how they changed license. They used to be GFDL.

Angela.