from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an appeal
is from a decision made by a specialized group to a larger group
which represents broader community opinion. You have an appeal from a
pretty large group to one person. How about appeals being to the
administrators as a group? If there really is a consensus perhaps
some way could be found to express it.

Fred

On Jan 8, 2006, at 10:23 PM, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:

>>
>> I like this idea, but this sounds more to me like a PR spindoctor
>> for the
>> ArbCom than anything else.  I don't know if we need more officials
>> right
>> now, we're already pretty sticky in the beauracracy.
>>
>>
>
> The Ombudsman should actually be quite "ArbCom sceptic" if you know
> what I
> mean - he or she should in no way succumb to the ArbCom interests,
> since the
> whole point of an Ombudsman is to act as a structure of appeal and
> review
> for the ArbCom and to a lesser extent admins.
>
> As to bureaucracy - I agree that the Ombudsman's role is already
> carried out
> to an extent by Jimbo. However, I presume Jimbo is already
> overloaded with
> work, and that he simply doesn't have the time to investigate and
> report on
> cases in depth. It is pretty unreasonable to expect him to be an
> ombudsman
> and last-step-of-appeals person, and do all of the other work he
> does in
> terms of the Wikimedia Foundation, and promotion, etc.
>
> I guess many people would like to take on the function of the
> ombudsman, at
> least those of us who are committed to justice on Wikipedia in the
> light of
> recent admin and ArbCom action.
>
> Food for thought, though. Just how much crap does Jimbo get, just
> for being
>
>> who he is? My guess is that it's a lot.
>>
>>
>
> Yes, I suppose it's a lot. That's why I don't think he should deal
> with
> cases that sometimes may seem quite trivial in the greater scheme of
> Wikipedia, but may be very important to particular users or the
> community.
>
> Ronline
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS is filling again

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Dear wikien,
>
> the Ticket System for email inquiries is again filling with requests.
> Before the holiday season, we were able to kill the list of 300 open
> tickets down to 30, now it is up again.
>
> This OTRS can be considered an important and exhausting job. A large
> share of those emails are related to wikipedia with standard questions
> ("Security Warning! Anyone can edit the page!), some of them are not
> related at all (I would like to buy 30 tons of Steel pipes, I found you
> on the internet).
>
> Anyone who is not afraid of inbound email inquiries and who is willing
> to spend some time in explaining how things work here is invited to help
> out.
>

We get much the same stuff on helpdesk-l, and we're down to about half a
dozen active members. If anyone wants to help out with that:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l

Oh yes, if you like RC patrol, this might be for you! We get quite a few
"Article XYZ is crap/has been vandalised" reports, which would otherwise
go unnoticed!

Thanks for your time.

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

from_name: Silas Snider

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
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- From the developer's list (wikitech-l), I found the following message:

>Servien Ilaino wrote:
>> Sorry to say, but these developers are kind of useless, aren't developers
>> supposed to "develop"... I haven't seen a new wiki for ages, no reactions
>> from developers or whatever at all!
>
>The Wikimedia Foundation board has refused to endorse the proposed
>policy for new language additions, so things are pretty much frozen
>until someone clarifies who has authority to do what and when.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Since it is now evident that new wikipedias are not possible for the
time being (b.c. of the Foundation), what makes us certain that the
Foundation will permit deletion of wikipedias at the current time? Is
this even a profitable sdiscussion to be having, especially when it
seems to give rise to some pretty powerful emotions in people?

Sincerely,
Silas Snider
[[en:User:Simonfairfax|Silas Snider]] ([[en:User talk:Simonfairfax|talk]])
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from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
On 1/8/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It is my understanding that Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian are mutually intelligible
> dialects of Serbo-Croatian and that the bigest difference is the use of scripts between
> and/or among them (which MediaWiki can deal with on the same wiki without forking
> articles).

No. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian AND Serbo-Croatian are four (political)
standards based on Neo-Shtokavian dialect. The first three have
political support now, the last one doesn't have any political support
except Yugoslav nationalist like Cabrilo.

> So a far, far better question is this: Why do we have separate Bosnian, Croatian and
> Serbian Wikipedias instead of just one  Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia?

For sure, we would not have "one Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia" because
"Serbo-Croatian language" is very offensive term here. We can have
something similar, but, no one of people who advocates for
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia wants to work on such project.

> Splitting things up purely for purely political reasons is a grave, let me repeat, GRAVE,
> violation of NPOV and does not serve our goal to provide an encyclopedia that the
> peoples of the Former Yugoslavia can use and understand.

Speaking strictly, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian have different
standards (something like differences between Norwege Bokmal and
Danish). Almost all of that is possible to solve using software and we
are working on it.

In other hand, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia is unlocked because of clear
political reasons: Some people couldn't wait for Latin version of
Serbian Wikipedia and they made a Latin fork of Serbian Wikipedia.

> We need to create a clear policy on the creation and shutdown of Wikipedias and apply
> that retroactively to fix this and other similarly horrid mistakes.

Yes.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Thread breakage

body:
Sam Spade wrote:
> I don't know what your talking about, but if you explain it more
> clearly, and in a more polite tone, I may be of some assistance.
>

I've sent a screnshot off-list. Hopefully it will explain how things
look from my point of view.

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

body:
On 1/8/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> An on-the-fly script converter is already working on the Chinese Wikipedia. It does not, I
> am told, require more than one version of an article and does not fork articles. What it
> does is display whatever script a person wants w/o needing separate articles written in
> the different scripts.

It is not only a matter of scripts. Only Serbian Wikipedia will have
FOUR variants, not two. Possible united Wikipedia would have at least
TEN versions (maybe more). We are working on it.

> So it appears that there is no valid reason to have separate wikis for each country that
> was formerly part of Yugoslavia. One Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia will do, IMO.

Until we would have a good implementation of software, separate
Wikipedias are needed. Serbo-Croatian is, again, offensive term to 90%
of inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Croatia.

> We are here to build encyclopedias that everybody in the world can read and use. That
> does NOT mean that we need to have encyclopedias in every single dialect spoken in the
> world. In fact, doing that will only hamper our goals since it needlessly breaks-up
> communities that could combine their effort into creating one encyclopedia that respects
> all the various mutually-understandable dialects of a single language.

We (the community from Serbian Wikipedia) have very good cooperation
with the community from Croatian Wikipedia and I am going to Zagreb in
the first part of Februray to see them.

> That Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian are separate languages appears to be a
> politically-convenient fiction that wants to enforce differences that don't really exist. That
> can only tend to enforce component-nation-specific POVs and thus violate NPOV (as
> would having separate Wikipedais for Simplified and Traditional Chinese).

POV is present on English Wikipedia, too. There are no chance to add
free about USA foreign politics on English Wikipedia. For example,
there are a number of articles named as "incidents" even US soldiers
were killing a lot of civilians. Pushing POV is very usual on
Wikipedia.

> Shut down Serbo-Croatian? No. Shut down Serbian, Croation, and Bosnian and then
> merge them into Serbo-Croatian? Yes.

And shut down three communities and one formed local chapter and one
local chapter in the process of forming.

> If need be we can reduce to just two wikis until/if a Latin/Cyrillic script converter and be
> created.

You are not introduced in the problem well.


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
That's all great. Nobody said anything about dictionaries. I just stated
that some people might have harder time properly understanding each and
every word.

And by the way, I don't think that you should be the one to judge here.
You don't claim to be neither a Bosnian, nor Serb, nor a Croat, and you
play a major role in SH wiki, which all leads me to believe that you're
biased when talking about these languages. Kudos to you for being able
to comprehend everything and actually not being able to tell the
difference between two obviously different languages, but you are a rare
specimen.

And regarding that Bosnian producer, I'm sure he "adjusted" his choice
of words for the occasion. You don't wanna feel unwelcome and
misunderstood when you're being a guest at a friendly party, now do you?

The difference is not that big a deal, as is the political connotation
every "foreigner" forgets to bare in mind. Like Millosh said, there
would be no community, should the 4 pedias merge. Hence, since there are
3 wikipedias that basically substitute the Serbocroatian one, the need
for the latter has become inexistent.

Cheers! :)

Dejan Cabrilo wrote:

>>They differ in reading as well as they differ in comprension. Let me
>>give you an example: My friend went to Bosnia to see her relatives (she
>>goes anually). When she returned from Bosnia, she was overwhelmed by the
>>fact that she learned so many new words. Bosnian is constantly being
>>under influence of Muslims and there you go. I'm afraid I won't
>>understand them should I ever go there. Another example is the fact that
>>according to my unofficial survey, most of the people my age (18 or so,
>>which is an important age group) and some of the other ages don't
>>actually know the names of the months in Croatian.
>>
>>
>
>True that many people don't know Croatian words for months. That's why
>in casual conversation, we either use international names or just
>number them.
>
>Funny you should say that Bosnian is hard to understand. Few weeks
>ago, a Bosnian film "Go West" was shown in Belgrade, and it's producer
>Ahmed Imamovi? was a guest on Belgrade radio station B92. Of course,
>the film was not subtitled Bosnian->Serbian. They assumed everyone in
>Belgrade can understand Bosnian.
>
>Imamovi? is from Sarajevo, he talked about the film, listeners were
>calling in and talking to him. There was no trouble in understanding
>at all. I listened to all of it, so it was part Bosnian, part Serbian,
>and I understood it all.
>
>Also, just this morning, over my tea, I was reading Croatian weekly
>Feral Tribune (http://feral.mediaturtle.com/), and among other
>articles, which were all writen in Croatian, I read this:
>http://feral.mediaturtle.com/look/weekly1/article.tpl?IdLanguage=7&IdPublication=1&NrArticle=12535&NrIssue=1059&NrSection=2
>article by Petar Lukovi?, who is writing in Serbian (if I am not
>mistaken, he is from Serbia and lives there). I read most of this
>edition of Feral Tribune, and I understood both stuff in Croatian, and
>stuff written by the Serbian author. If Lukovi? was not writing about
>politics in Serbia, I would probably never notice that I am reading
>two oh so different languages.
>
>Some time ago, in Serbian daily Danas (www.danas.co.yu), which
>unfortunately doesn't keep archives from more than few days, I read an
>article from Croatian Novi List (http://www.novilist.hr/), which was
>in its original form, so - Croatian. Iirc (they often use Novi List's
>articles), this one was regarding arrest of Ante Gotovina.
>
>And just moments ago, I wanted to check the result of basketball game between
>Partizan (Serbia) and  Bosna ASA BHT (Bosnia), so I went to
>http://goodyear.adriaticbasket.com/. I wanted to get details of the
>game, as I am a fan and couldn't watch it, so I went to their
>discussion forum topic:
>http://forum.adriaticbasket.net/viewtopic.php?t=4794
>... where fans of both Bosna and Partizan were commenting the game as
>it was progressing - with usual fan teasing (ok, teasing is a weak
>word). Nobody called for a dictionary.
>
>Cheers,
>Dejan
>
>P.S. Partizan won, if anyone cares.
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
Filip Maljkovic wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Since when does some silly war solve anything?
>
> Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to
> appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive
> to some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some
> people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost
> and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through a
> war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.

The influence of the wars (treating it as more than one, and not just
talking about the one over Kosovo) is bound to have an effect on
people's lives, but certainly the fact that so many were killed for no
good reason is a big part of the silliness.

>> My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom
>> immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see
>> Serbo-Croatian as one language.
>
> Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These
> refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they
> "still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually
> "speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something
> pretty obvious.

Most of them continue to speak their language.  That's normal in most
immigrant communities.  Language is not usually lost until the
generation of their grandchildren.  The process takes maybe 50 years.

>> If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a
>> natural death.  As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed
>> there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive.  Once we are
>> sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the
>> life support systems.
>
> Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.

I didn't say anything about policy.  I was just commenting on human nature.

>> The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.
>
> Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I
> can't really find a substitute in English ATM)

My sh-en dictionary (from-1982 :-) ) had this expression.as "one nail
drives out another".  Literal translations never convey the full meaning
for this sort of thing.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and take some
> of the workload off Jimbo?

Take some of the workload off Jimbo, yes.  Take the crap that would
come with the position, no.

--
Sam


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
On 1/8/06, Dejan Cabrilo <dcabrilo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to
> post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.

You are lying again.

> Like I said, this was a proposed policy, from May 2005 (the last time
> I was active on Serbian Wikipedia, it was in part a response to the
> fact that I overnight labeled a bunch of articles as POV, because I
> found them to be essays on Orthodox Christianity, but obviously,
> others realized the POV in supporting this policy). Still, it got 5
> votes for, and 3 against. I think it describes the inherit POV of such
> national projects.

1. You marked articles as POV without any intention to work on them.
If you do the same on English Wikipedia, POV tag would be removed
through some time.
2. It didn't pass because of your voting (on Serbian Wikipedia 5:3 is
not enough for introducing some new rule).

> The following users supported the policy:
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????:?????
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????:?????_??????????
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????:Bonzo
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????:Djordjes
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/????????:Dzordzm
>
> All of them are admins/bureaucrats, so people of trust there think
> that NPOV is not what Wikipedia is about.

You didn't translate the parts about NPOV.

> Three people voted against, users Zocky (not an admin, not active), me
> (not an admin, not active) and Aleksandar (doesn't seem to be an
> admin, I don't know if he is active).

And admins/bureaucrats didn't introduced the rule because of voting non-admins.

> Now, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolaj_Velimirovic was a part of
> Serbian Orthodox Church and writer of big part of its doctrine (or at
> least, what some say should be). So, it's much worse than copying
> stuff from some outdated encyclopedia, it's actually copying stuff
> from the source which is as POV as possible. And that seems acceptable
> on Serbian Wiki. Most of the articles are totally POV, as you can
> imagine coming from a church source.

And, again, you didn't mention that the article about Nikolaj
Velimirovic is still under POV tag because the article doesn't include
his relations toward anti-Semitism and Hitler.

It seems that you have a lot of personal problems in relation with
Serbian Wikipedia...

> The reason I am writing this is to show that national wikipedias are
> inheritly biased - they can be very good on covering stuff like
> nature, science, etc. but when it comes to more touchy topics, it will
> be hard to get editors from different perspectives.

And what about Piere de Cuberten's nazism? No one wrote anything about
that on English Wikipedia.

> I am pretty much presented with a choice: should I use Serbian,
> Bosnian or Croatian wiki? I am not either a Serb, a Bosnian, or a
> Croat, and I communicate on daily basis with people from Serbia,
> Bosnia and Croatia, using my native language (whatever it is). I work
> together with Serbs, Croats and Bosnians on many en.wikipedia
> articles. And I chose to only edit, when I do edit in non-english
> wikipedias, Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. Why would I go for anything
> else? If I am writing about World War 2, I will write a much better
> article if it's together with editors from all of those countries,
> than only one of them.

Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian adjectives mean a language, not a
nation. And it seems that you have a lot of Serbian, Croatian and
Bosnian ethnicities and cultures. For you, they are "anti-civilized",
they are "regressive", they are... This is a clear fascism.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of Power

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> Maybe he needs an indef block. Obviously a troll.
>

What! An obvious troll is an admin??? OH NOES!!!!!!!ELEVENTYONE

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS is filling again

body:
I've got a few tickets in the works, but unfortunately there's a few I just
can't handle.
People who think they can appeal about edit wars they're losing and
complaints about so-called rogue users and admins.

Unfortunately, more and more of the requests that come in ask Jimbo (or
someone else) to intervene in something. Can't we have a standard message
referring people to dispute resolution?

Mgm

On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Mathias Schindler
>
> > Anyone who is not afraid of inbound email inquiries and who
> > is willing to spend some time in explaining how things work
> > here is invited to help out.
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department#Accounts_on_OTRS
> >
> > Thanks for your help.
>
> I'd be happy to help out, because this is the sort of thing I do at
> another
> large online community and I enjoy it, but alas, my hands are tied here
> until late next year, as a glance at my user page will show.
>
> Peter, regretfully declining.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of Power

body:
Maybe he needs an indef block. Obviously a troll.

Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS is filling again

body:
Kat, there's still a few templates in the OTRS that need fixing.
Duplicate "Thank you for your mail" lines on top in at least one.

And "Good luck in answering your question," in the refdesk template.
1) "Yours sincerely," already has a comma, so the one after 'question' is
redundant.
2) I still find the line oddly phrased as if they're supposed to answer
their own question. Isn't "Good luck with finding the answer to your
question." better?

Mgm

On 1/9/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/8/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've got a few tickets in the works, but unfortunately there's a few I
> just
> > can't handle.
> > People who think they can appeal about edit wars they're losing and
> > complaints about so-called rogue users and admins.
> >
> > Unfortunately, more and more of the requests that come in ask Jimbo (or
> > someone else) to intervene in something. Can't we have a standard
> message
> > referring people to dispute resolution?
> >
> > Mgm
>
> Sounds like a decent idea. Draft one on Meta with the other templates,
> perhaps? (and now we're getting OT for this list...)
>
> -Kat
> who has been less active answering these and more busy dealing with
> them after they learn about dispute resolution. :-P
>
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:LucidWaking
> "Once you have tasted flight you will always walk with your eyes cast
> upward. For there you have been and there you will always be."
> - Leonardo da Vinci
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

body:
Here's my solution to the userbox problem.

Any "userbox" (aka. babel-like template) which does not

- Inform the reader about the languages (human) that one can understand
and edit in

- Inform the reader about the languages (computer) that one is
proficient in to some degree and can use those skills constructively
towards editing

- Inform the reader about what browser/operating system they use so that
they can be consulted wrt. technical issues with the wiki

- Inform the reader about what musical instruments they play so that
Free music can be recorded for articles

- Inform the reader about what WikiProjects they are part of so that
other editors can consult them about articles related to that wikiproject

should be deleted. WikiProject Userboxes should ensure that userboxes
remain as things which are useful to other editors, in the task of
building an encyclopedia. Such silly things as "This user is a dickbrain
with no respect for consensus, policy, copyright issues, or the task of
writing an encyclopedia" should be deleted, and the user banned for
wasting everyone's time and bandwidth.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of Power

body:
lol.

Ryan

On 1/9/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
> > Maybe he needs an indef block. Obviously a troll.
> >
>
> What! An obvious troll is an admin??? OH NOES!!!!!!!ELEVENTYONE
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> If absolutely nobody wanted an sh-Wikipedia we wouldn't be having this
> discussion at all.
>
No one said anything about anything being absolute. Nothing's absolute.
There are some hotheads and you know the story...

> Since when does some silly war solve anything?
>
Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to
appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive to
some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some
people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost
and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through a
war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.

> My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom
> immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see
> Serbo-Croatian as one language.

Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These
refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they
"still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually
"speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something
pretty obvious.

> If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a
> natural death.  As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed
> there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive.  Once we are
> sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the
> life support systems.

Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.

> The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very nice.

Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I can't
really find a substitute in English ATM)

Cheers. :)


from_name: fallout at lexx.eu.org

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Dejan Cabrilo wrote:
>>However, community than agreed that "We are a Serbian Wikipedia, so
>>it's only normal to have that kind of bias".
> I certainly hope that's not a consensus opinion, because that's flatly
> unacceptable for any language's Wikipedia.  That all Wikipedia articles
>  must be written from a neutral point of view (which implies not from
> the  point of view of any nationality, ethnicity, or culture) is one of
> the  few absolutely non-negotiable Wikipedia policies.
> -Mark

While it is true, I also think that in some cases it's not that clear. For
example, most articles in Polish Wikipedia, when discussing some matters
often tend to focus on Poland (although it's more of a systemic bias than
non-NPOV). We also have separate "events in Poland" and "events outside
Poland" sections in all our year and day articles.

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> There is ample support for the notion that setting up the separate
> wikis  was a grave violation of NPOV, but adopting retroactive policies
> for  anything is never good without an overwhelmingly strong reason.
> There  is no such overwhelming reason.  So unluss one of those
> communities  collapses form a total lack of interest, or there is a
> merger agreement  by any two or more of these communities we will
> probably have to live  with the fact of four communities for the
> forseeable future.  My crystal  ball cannot see farther than that.
> Ec

Speaking of sh:, why do we have separate Wikipedias for Malay and
Indonesian languages? From the English Wikipedia article, it seems that
Indonesian is just a standardised version of one of the Malay dialects and
the two are mutually intelligible.

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Of course, we could go article for article, but some "interesting"
> stuff that is apparently acceptable on one of those "national"
> Wikipedias is:
> http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/??????????_??????????????????_????_????
????????
> (Gospel of Matthew, full edition)
> [[?????????? ?????????????????? ???? ??????????]] (Gospel of Mark, also
> full edition)
> Not that big of a deal, but still, everybody thinks that it's OK to
> post the Holy Bible on Wikipedia.

Is there no Serbian Wikisource?

> Basically, it's a proposal to allow people to write from certain POVs,
> which would be labeled so. Here are the rules (my translation from that
> page):
> 1. At least one editor wants to write about it.
> 2. At least five editors support legitimacy of that POV.
> 3. At least one of those five is an admin.
> 4. At least five articles in user namespace describing that POV.
> 5. That the POV does not promote racial, religious or other hate and
> doesn't call for violence. This is solemly a concern of such things as
> fascism or nazism.
> 6. That the POV has local (i.e. is connected to Serbia somehow) or
> global importance.
> 7. That the POV is described in a proper place on Serbian Wikipedia.

Sounds like it's a Serbian edition of Wikinfo rather than Wikipedia...

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Moreover, they speak culturally and liguistically 3 different languages
>  and it's sometimes hard for me to understand what Bosnians or Croats
> are  saying just because of the diversity (I'm a Serb, by the way).

Ask Americans if they understand all Britons without any difficulty...

> As I said on IRC, you're very wrong. I'm sorry to break it to you this
> way, but Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian ARE different languages, albeit
> mutually intelligible.

Isn't not being mutually intelligible the most important distinction
between a language and a dialect (aside from having an army...)?

> And the political conotation is way too big to neglect. People have
> chosen to have separate wikipedias: just look at the growth of the
> three  in comparison to the "united one" (which is basically a fork).
> The three  didn't come out of the SH for no reason.

So if a war broke out between two English-speaking countries or if we were
just after such a war, we should divide English Wikipedia?

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Does this confusion pass over into reading aswell? I have trouble
> understanding what some people with thick English accents say,
> doesn't mean I can't understand everything that they write.
> Perhaps if you are struggling with understanding something written in
> the Croatian or Bosnian Wikipedias, you could pass it over to someone
> else  to translate for you?
> Stop clouding the issue.
> Fran

[[pl:Piotr W. Cholewa]], the (great) translator of [[en:Terry Pratchett]]'s
books to Polish once said that once or twice for a book, he has to consult
Terry and ask what some sentence actually means. Once, he was curious, so
he asked him which translators do it most frequently. The answer was...
Americans :). (Yes, Americans do "translate" British books to American
English).

Ausir


list: foundation-l

from_name: Alan Knight

subject: [Foundation-l] Why is the world attacking Microsoft censorship?

body:
Why is the world press attacking Microsoft censorship in China?

http://news.google.com/news?as_q=Microsoft+China+blog&svnum=10&as_scoring=r&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nsrc=&as_nloc=&as_occt=any&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=10&as_minm=1&as_maxd=9&as_maxm=1

If they wanted, they could find an equally good target in the usually atruistic Wikipedia's barring the creation of Chinese Wikinews.  Microsoft giving into Chinese censorship for business reasons is no worse than Wikipedia's barring a Chinese project in deference to Beijing's censors.  When you act frightened you get stepped on, and that is exactly what happended to all of us: We prevented a Wikinews out of fear for Wikipedia, but they block the Wikipedia anyways.

With all due respect for Jimbo, if he continues to use "no Chinese Wikinews" as a carrot to get Wikipedia back into China, he will ultimate fail at both despite his good intentions.

Let's set up Chinese Wikinews before this story hits the world press!!

Alan

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Photos
 Got holiday prints? See all the ways to get quality prints in your hands ASAP.


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Are you people crazy or blind? The point is that THESE PEOPLE DON'T
> WANNA HAVE 1 ENCYCLOPEDIA. The proof is everywhere. E.g. why were SR,
> HR  and BS created? Because people wanted to. Why is SH so
> underdeveloped  (and 200, not 2000, is a very optimistic number for
> articles made in the  project, not copied word by word from elsewhere)?
>  Because close to no  one wants to contribute to it. Is there an ISO
> for SH? No there isn't.

ISO codes aren't really an indication what is a language and what isn't
nowadays. After all, Moldovan language
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language) also has an ISO code...

As for your translation to Croatian, it's similar to how an American most
likely won't be able to write properly in British English - his English
will be well understood by the Britons, of course, but it will still have
noticable americanisms.

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> No. Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian AND Serbo-Croatian are four (political)
> standards based on Neo-Shtokavian dialect. The first three have
> political support now, the last one doesn't have any political support
> except Yugoslav nationalist like Cabrilo.

Maybe having a "Neo-Shtokavian" instead of "Serbo-Croatian" Wikipedia would
help if the name "Serbo-Croatian" is perceived as too "Yugoslavian" (not to
mention it excludes Bosnians, montenegrans etc.)?

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Until we would have a good implementation of software, separate
> Wikipedias are needed. Serbo-Croatian is, again, offensive term to 90%
> of inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and
> Croatia.

As I said, maybe a "Common Neo-Shtokavian" would be more appropriate and
less politically loaded term?

Ausir


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> That's all great. Nobody said anything about dictionaries. I just
> stated  that some people might have harder time properly understanding
> each and  every word.

Same with British and American, European Portugese and Brazilian, European
Spanish and Mexican. Yet all of them share the same Wikipedias.

Ausir


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
True, but he has it set up more as an appeals court. A ombudsman in
the sense you set forth would be welcome. I wouldn't mind at all
someone dropping me a note, saying "Hey, cool it, you're getting
carried away [with whatever]." We all need feedback. We don't need a
second-guessing czar. Things are hard enough the first time.

Fred

On Jan 8, 2006, at 11:22 PM, Peter Mackay wrote:

>> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fred Bauder
>> Sent: Monday, 9 January 2006 17:06
>> To: English Wikipedia
>> Cc: Fred Bauder
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman
>>
>> Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an
>> appeal is from a decision made by a specialized group to a
>> larger group which represents broader community opinion. You
>> have an appeal from a pretty large group to one person. How
>> about appeals being to the administrators as a group? If
>> there really is a consensus perhaps some way could be found
>> to express it.
>>
>
> An [[ombudsman]] isn't a judge or a government bureaucrat. An
> ombudsman is
> independent, not part of some appeals process or another knot of
> red tape.
> Nor do they have any special powers. Instead the function of an
> ombudsman is
> to investigate complaints and facilitate redress through existing
> channels.
>
> Peter (Skyring)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
If someone with substantial authority is selected for this position,
such a report will be, in effect, a decision.

Fred

On Jan 9, 2006, at 4:23 AM, charles matthews wrote:

> "Fred Bauder" wrote
>
>
>
>> Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an
>> appeal  is from a decision made by a specialized group to a larger
>> group  which represents broader community opinion. You have an
>> appeal from a  pretty large group to one person. How about appeals
>> being to the  administrators as a group? If there really is a
>> consensus perhaps  some way could be found to express it.
>>
>
> Looking at the section at [[Ombudsman]] on how the UK Parliamentary
> Commissioner works, in WP terms it would be something like this:
>
> - investigation of 'unfairness'
> - all applications must come through an admin
> - no remedies offered, just the publication of a report.
>
> Charles
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
But we are not engaged in futilely trying to save people on the
mainland from the executioner. Everything has natural limits. China
will change and one man standing in front of a tank is noble but it
is also bad to re-enact the charge of the light brigade. We can go
far and be bold; we have done that, but going way too far and harming
innocent, or possibly naive, people would be wrong.

I think that part of the world press that has a presence in China
would fully understand our position. They deal everyday with trying
to protect the freedom of their sources.

Fred

On Jan 9, 2006, at 5:14 AM, Alan Knight wrote:

> Why is the world press attacking Microsoft censorship in China?
>
> http://news.google.com/news?as_q=Microsoft+China
> +blog&svnum=10&as_scoring=r&hl=en&btnG=Google
> +Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nsrc=&as_nloc=&as_occt=any&as_drrb=q&
> as_qdr=&as_mind=10&as_minm=1&as_maxd=9&as_maxm=1
>
> If they wanted, they could find an equally good target in the
> usually atruistic Wikipedia's barring the creation of Chinese
> Wikinews.  Microsoft giving into Chinese censorship for business
> reasons is no worse than Wikipedia's barring a Chinese project in
> deference to Beijing's censors.  When you act frightened you get
> stepped on, and that is exactly what happended to all of us: We
> prevented a Wikinews out of fear for Wikipedia, but they block the
> Wikipedia anyways.
>
> With all due respect for Jimbo, if he continues to use "no Chinese
> Wikinews" as a carrot to get Wikipedia back into China, he will
> ultimate fail at both despite his good intentions.
>
> Let's set up Chinese Wikinews before this story hits the world press!!
>
> Alan
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Photos
>  Got holiday prints? See all the ways to get quality prints in your
> hands ASAP.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Did I miss the great Digital Universe debate?

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I think the consensus was, "It'll be humorous and perhaps a little sad
>>to see how little they end up with after blowing $10 million," or
>>maybe that was just my opinion on it.
>>
>>FF
>>
>
>oh I don't know. They could currently afford to spend $11.02 per
>wikipedia article.
>
Which for the average expert is going to mean 5-10 minutes per
article, only enough time for the most minimal fact-checking, let
alone making it a "featured article". Even if you pinch down and
say that a good reference needs only 100K articles, you're still
only getting an hour or so on each.

Reading between the lines, I think what they're really hoping is to
leverage the $10M for infrastructure, with most expert content
creators being "paid" in the form of bylines. For many experts,
this will be sufficient draw; they will be able to justify it
as part of work, it will be a way to get ahead, etc. DU is also
going to be able to advertise itself as a cretin-free zone, which
starts to look pretty good after an hour of RC patrol here.

The most concerning aspect for us is the potential to drain away
activity in science and technical areas, leaving WP to evolve into
the "free encyclopedia of garage bands and manga trivia". (You
laugh, but consider vandals gradually blanking math articles that
are not on any active editor's watchlist, and not noticed in RC
because of the continuous flood of recategorization edits.)

Stan


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS is filling again

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Mathias Schindler

> Anyone who is not afraid of inbound email inquiries and who
> is willing to spend some time in explaining how things work
> here is invited to help out.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department#Accounts_on_OTRS
>
> Thanks for your help.

I'd be happy to help out, because this is the sort of thing I do at another
large online community and I enjoy it, but alas, my hands are tied here
until late next year, as a glance at my user page will show.

Peter, regretfully declining.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway

> Honestly sounds like an attempt to subsume or parallel
> functions that already rest with Jimbo Wales.  I also have
> serious concerns about adding yet more bureaucratic positions
> to Wikipedia.

So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and take some of the
workload off Jimbo?

Peter, not sticking his hand up, neither


subject: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Tony Sidaway

> On 1/8/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > We agree about harmful or threatening talk page content,
> altho where
> > do we draw the line? I find communism and satanism threatening
> > myself...
>
>
> It's not the espousal of views that is problematic.  Saying
> you're a communist or a satanist on your user page is fine
> with me (even a proponent of global warfare in the interests
> of one's country, there are plenty of them around).  It's the
> factionalization, achieved by the use of cateogories and
> possibly (though I'm not entirely convinced on this) through
> the "whatlinkshere" mechanism, that is the problem in my view.

Are the existing factions on WP also a problem for you?

Pete, just chasing down the loose ends


subject: [WikiEN-l] Userbox fads

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission

> That's not a solution, that's just a codification of the
> assertion that userboxes, aside from everything else on a
> user page, needs to be "practical". If you are going to apply
> these to userboxes, why not apply them to images in
> userpages? Why not apply them to all text?

I think, in the spirit of setting a good example, any admin proponent of
this "solution" should first remove all frivolous and unneccessary material
from their own user space and adopt such a puritan, holier-than-thou
attitude that other editors begin to actively detest them, not invite them
to parties etc.

Pete, hereby applying for the silver badge and black cloak of the Joke
Police


body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/9/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>The most concerning aspect for us is the potential to drain away
>>activity in science and technical areas, leaving WP to evolve into
>>the "free encyclopedia of garage bands and manga trivia". (You
>>laugh, but consider vandals gradually blanking math articles that
>>are not on any active editor's watchlist, and not noticed in RC
>>because of the continuous flood of recategorization edits.)
>>
>>Stan
>>
>
>Doubtful. They are looking to recurite PhD plus. A lot of our science
>articles are writen by students and people with BScs.
>
Somewhere in the verbiage they mentioned the PhDs as leaders accepting
contributions. Students (including a professor's own students) and
talented amateurs could find themselves more motivated to tweak a
high-quality high-reputation article rather than to try to turn an
almost-English stub into something minimally coherent.

DU has a lot of hurdles, but they know all about WP and are
seeking to capitalize on our weakest points. We shouldn't get too
complacent.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
I liked that as I was able to vote for a number of people, including
some that have no chance at all of being elected. If we could only
vote for a few people I would then have to engage in grim
calculations, trying to be very careful when I really don't know all
those people very well. I think I would probably make some mistaken
votes in those circumstances and then have to live with them. Using
this approach I was able to vote for a wide variety of candidates
including some whose views differ from mine.

The thing is, the questions that we really have about arbitrators
can't be answered abstractly. You know something when you see them in
action in that role. It is very difficult to predict. Almost everyone
who ran might be a good arbitrator. Or might be a good arbitrator for
two weeks then we have to beg them to look at cases. One thing I did
consider very negative, lengthy and wordy responses to questions. I
can't stand written or oral filibusters.

Fred

On Jan 9, 2006, at 6:21 AM, Peter Mackay wrote:

> I've just cast my eye over the voting process for the ArbCom and I
> have got
> to say that it sucks. Every editor gets multiple votes, because
> they can
> support or oppose every single candidate. That's like a single
> voter being
> able to vote twice over in every voting district in the country.
> The end
> result will be a remarkably uniformly thinking ArbCom that has the
> support
> of a majority, while the minority will find that their views are
> unrepresented.


from_name: Zinnmann

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
FM> You just cannot force people to merge the knowledge after the
FM> projects have been successful for a few years on their own. You'd
FM> definitely get resistance and you'll just disrupt the Balkans
FM> again. You'd do more damage than good.

Wasn't the original diskussion about shutting down sh? I cannot see
why not doing so means to force people to work on it. If sh is active,
is should stay. Same thing for bo, hr and sr. There is absolutely no
need for a hurry. Let all these projects evolve for one or two decades
and then decide about them.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

body:
On 1/9/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> It occurs to me we should enforce some of our trademarks, because rampant
> infringement of Wikipedia's trademarks, and Wikimedia's trademarks in
> general is occurring. If we don't enforce our trademarks IIRC, we will
> eventually lose the ability to enforce them forever.
>
> For example: WikipediaClassAction.org is violating our trademark and
> copyright. Wikipedi.org, wikicommons.org, etc. are candidates for trademark
> infringement. I am not a lawyer, but it occurs to me that we apparently
> abhor being on the defending side of lawsuits so much, we abhor being the
> plaintiff.
>

I'll bite.  What's wrong with wikicommons.org?  Are you trying to say
the WMF has a trademark on anything that starts with wiki?


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

body:
On 1/9/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> It occurs to me we should enforce some of our trademarks, because rampant
> infringement of Wikipedia's trademarks, and Wikimedia's trademarks in
> general is occurring. If we don't enforce our trademarks IIRC, we will
> eventually lose the ability to enforce them forever.

This is true, and it's something the Foundation's legal committee are
working on.

> Wikipedi.org, wikicommons.org, etc. are candidates for trademark
> infringement.

Wikicommons.org is owned by the Foundation. Wikipedi is just
[[Typosquatting]] and not something I'm too worried about since it
would be too costly to prevent every domain typo from being
registered.

Angela


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 1/9/06, Wikiacc <wikiacc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/8/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > So long as their license is compatible with the GFDL (which if they
> > bootstrap from Wikipedia it'll have to be), I see no problems with it.
> > If they produce useful improvements in content quality on some articles
> > that they get reviewed by experts, we can fold in those changes to
> > Wikipedia, too.
>
> I recall hearing they were planning to use a combination of
> all-rights-reserved full copyright and an as of yet undetermined
> Creative Commons license (probably one incompatible with the GFDL).

According to Larry Sanger, they will not use Wikipedia content to
"bootstrap" their content.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>
>>So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and take some of the
>>workload off Jimbo?
>>
>>
>The main trouble is that Jimbo does have some kind of monarchical
>authority, that no appointed ombudsman could have.  Especially as the
>community would demand an election.
>
Jimbo could also overrule such a demand for a popularity contest.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
>
>>So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and take some
>>of the workload off Jimbo?
>>
>>
>Take some of the workload off Jimbo, yes.  Take the crap that would
>come with the position, no.
>
Such an ombudsman needs the authority to take unpopular actions without
fear that someone will whinge his way into having Jimbo overrule what he
does.  He needs to be able to confront anybody, but be seen as fair at
the same time.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) wrote:

>I guess many people would like to take on the function of the ombudsman, at
>least those of us who are committed to justice on Wikipedia in the light of
>recent admin and ArbCom action.
>
Those who would most want the job may ipso facto not be the best for the
job.

>Food for thought, though. Just how much crap does Jimbo get, just for being
>
>
>>who he is? My guess is that it's a lot.
>>
>>
>Yes, I suppose it's a lot. That's why I don't think he should deal with
>cases that sometimes may seem quite trivial in the greater scheme of
>Wikipedia, but may be very important to particular users or the community.
>
I would expect that a lot of that would be from outsiders who send him
private e-mails.

For insiders Jimbo would probably need a boilerplate response like, "I
have referred your complaint to the ombudsman, all future correspondence
on this matter should be directed to him."  As long as that Jimbo even
sporadically deals with user problems they will roll the dice to get his
attention.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an appeal
> is from a decision made by a specialized group to a larger group
> which represents broader community opinion. You have an appeal from a
> pretty large group to one person. How about appeals being to the
> administrators as a group? If there really is a consensus perhaps
> some way could be found to express it.

To 700 admins?????

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Korn

> On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and
> take some
> > of the workload off Jimbo?
>
> The main trouble is that Jimbo does have some kind of
> monarchical authority, that no appointed ombudsman could
> have.  Especially as the community would demand an election.

So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and take some
of the workload off Jimbo?

Pete, now even more curious


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
Milos Rancic wrote:

>On 1/9/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Perhaps patience is required at least until the software is working.  My
>>impression from the Yugoslave diaspora is that Serbo-Croatian is a
>>preferred term if it saves them from having to identify themselves with
>>one or another of the factions.  That or they will use the vague phrase,
>>"my language".
>>
>>
>1. It seems that Serbia, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin diaspora
>needs their own Wikipedia.
>
>2. This incident told me that it is impossible to work with fascists
>from Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. The project of making one
>Neo-Shtokavian Wikipedia will be done without them, for sure.
>
If the sh-Wikipedians are as bad as you suggest, then isn't the demand
to shut down their project a question of feeding the trolls taken to the
level of whole wikis?

Ec


from_name: SP

subject: [WikiEN-l] Snake, fire, rape

body:
Hello folks,

Sorry to be talking about rape, again. Somewhat disturbing that your
first memories of me will be repeated posts on this topic.  I look at
all the threads but don't think I need to comment very often.

Several editor are putting an alleged child rape victims name in
articles without any support from mainstream media sources.  I have
argued against this content based on many WP policy/guidelines. But, I
can't find any specific policy or discussion about rape victims.

Can anyone remember any place in Wikipedia English where naming rape
victims in articles is discussed? I'm trying to find community
consensus, one way or the other, on this point.

There is an arbitration case on this topic,WebEx and Min Zhu. I am a
party. I added journalism sources to talk page of /Evidence. Most
mainstream media sources in the US withhold names without the consent of
rape victim.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/WebEx_and_Min_Zhu/Evidence

I removed the alleged victims name from my evidence and have asked arb
comm  to remove it from the rest of the parties. Substituting a
pseudonym is the usual practice in medical and legal cases that are
published. For privacy reasons, having the victims name written over and
over again in these cases is problem.

Regards,
FloNight aka Sydney


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail: Bad decision!

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

I got the same message.

Kelly Martin stated for the record:

> Comments from the peanut gallery.  I felt like forwarding this
> somewhere, so I am.
>
> Kelly
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: IZAK <simshalom at att.net>
> Date: Jan 9, 2006 12:04 PM
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail: Bad decision!
> To: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
>
>
>
> Hi Kelly:
> When most people log on they are taken to the Main Page, and the
> ArbCom vote link should be on EVERY article, putting it on watchlists
> marginalizes it, and if you have a rule that users need to be active
> for a few months then their vote won't be registered regardless of
> what page they come from. At this stage it's more important to educate
> new users and the public about an important vote taking place within
> Wikipedia than to have the request for MONEY on every page which makes
> Wikipedia look greedy after they just raised around $300,000, don't
> you think? Get rid of the merchandising and commercializing junk and
> mention the ArbCom stuff that is more to the core of what Wikipedia is
> about, a participatory effort and not just a scheme to raise money.
> Some of us are having trouble writing and editing articles with that
> flashing "Dollar sign" on top of every page. I hope you understand the
> importance of this. It's about the kind of image Wikipedia wants to
> project about itself, an
>  d someone has made a bad decision here lately it seems to me.
> IZAK.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Say "NO" to drugs. That will
 sean at epoptic.org | bring the prices down.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Sam Korn
> Sent: Monday, 9 January 2006 10:45
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman
>
> On 1/8/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> > So you wouldn't be happy to volunteer for the position and
> take some
> > of the workload off Jimbo?
>
> Take some of the workload off Jimbo, yes.  Take the crap that
> would come with the position, no.

<grin> good point!</grin>

Food for thought, though. Just how much crap does Jimbo get, just for being
who he is? My guess is that it's a lot.

Peter


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

body:
On 1/9/06, SCO Estmort <eudaimonic.leftist at gmail.com> wrote:
> 6. There's a large chance this will help unite the community in external
> action.
>

I'm not sure that is a good thing/

> Of course, I do not seem to know why we don't do this already. Thoughts?

Probably becuase out legal stratergy at present hasn't got beyond
writeing letters.
--
geni


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
"Fred Bauder" wrote

> Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an appeal  is
> from a decision made by a specialized group to a larger group  which
> represents broader community opinion. You have an appeal from a  pretty
> large group to one person. How about appeals being to the  administrators
> as a group? If there really is a consensus perhaps  some way could be
> found to express it.

Looking at the section at [[Ombudsman]] on how the UK Parliamentary
Commissioner works, in WP terms it would be something like this:

- investigation of 'unfairness'
- all applications must come through an admin
- no remedies offered, just the publication of a report.

Charles


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Snake, fire, rape

body:
SP wrote:

> Can anyone remember any place in Wikipedia English where naming rape
> victims in articles is discussed? I'm trying to find community
> consensus, one way or the other, on this point.

This sort of stuff is discussed constantly in a variety of contexts, and
I think that in most of them the consensus ends up as "publish the
information if it has already been published by a mainstream news source".

In addition to crime victims, other cases where it comes up are:
* The names of underaged alleged criminals
* Secret or semi-secret information about an organization's internal
workings (e.g. Scientology).
* Leaked classified information

In all these cases, the consensus, as far as I can tell, is that
refraining from publishing something that has already been widely
published does not really accomplish much besides make our articles less
informative.  We shouldn't "out" people or "break" stories ourselves, or
republish information that has only been previously published in
fringe/sketchy sources, but summarizing what has already been reported
in the mainstream media is fair game.

-Mark


body:
On 1/9/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 1/8/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>I think the consensus was, "It'll be humorous and perhaps a little sad
> >>to see how little they end up with after blowing $10 million," or
> >>maybe that was just my opinion on it.
> >>
> >>FF
> >>
> >
> >oh I don't know. They could currently afford to spend $11.02 per
> >wikipedia article.
> >
> Which for the average expert is going to mean 5-10 minutes per
> article, only enough time for the most minimal fact-checking, let
> alone making it a "featured article". Even if you pinch down and
> say that a good reference needs only 100K articles, you're still
> only getting an hour or so on each.
>
If the source text written for free is well referenced an hour
wouldn't be too bad.  Of course, what people really seem to be missing
is that the $10 million is merely the seed money.  *If* they can get
some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would
probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money
(through donations, sales, services, etc.).

What did Wikipedia start with, half a million and one paid expert?
Then Larry was fired for lack of funding.  I'm sure in his opinion, if
Wikipedia could have afforded to pay 10 times as many experts for
twice as long, they wouldn't have the credibility problem they have
today.

Anthony


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia Blocked IP address 82.148.97.67 is for
	the whole counrty!

body:
On 1/9/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> > > > On 12/25/05, Mohamad Takriti <takriti at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > This is my second email to you. I beleive that you blocked the whole
> > > > country of Qatar by blocking the IP address 82.148.97.67. Please fix
> > > > this as we cannot now make any edits!
>
> The whole country has only one IP address?

No, but it appears to be a major proxy server for Qatar:

82.148.97.67 PTR record: proxy.qatar.net.qa.

I've noted this with the {{Sharedip}} template on the Talk: page.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia e-mail: The problem

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

IZAK stated for the record:

> Ok, so this is the sequence of events: I am a frequent user of Wikipedia. I log onto the Main Page. I have heard about the ArbCom elections. I don't understand why there is no link to the ArbCom vote on the Main Page, I then click/look at this article and that article, still no sign of an ArbCom vote. I stare hard at the page, and all I see is links at the top making appeals for more MONEY by Mr. Wales. I think to myself: Heck didn't they just finish with an appeal that gained them over 300,000 bucks, so why are they pushing new links to sell me junk, when all I want is to go vote in an important election? Then I think, hey, wait a minute, didn't they say that the appeal/s would be limited to "four times a year" (also too many compared to the number of past appeals we were subjected to) and I figure, you know, they maybe don't care enough about the ArbCom votes because if they did they would make space for ''that'' link on the top of ''every'' page instead of subjecting pe
opl
>  e to solicitations for more $$$,$$$. I have been a Wikipedian for over three years, and I have not seen this kind of fundraising push aside other more normative functions of Wikipedia, like ArbCom votes. Face the fact, there is something wrong if users have to stare at a fundraisng link now ALL THE TIME, and only get to find out about ArbCom votes when they finally get around to looking at their "watchlists". If people don't see the problem here, then they should get their (MORAL) vision checked.
> IZAK.
>

IZAK, you have now gone past the point of bringing a glitch to our
attention and into the realm of pointless ranting.  I do not think that
the choice of which banner appears in which location is a "MORAL" issue.

You will not improve my opinion of you or the legitimate point you have
made by continuing to send me these messages.

- --
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.org
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Snake, fire, rape

body:
That is my position, too. The Elizabeth Smart case is a good example of
the news media choosing their words with care, but reporting on her
sexual abuse by her alleged kidnapper.
FloNight aka Sydney

Delirium wrote:

> SP wrote:
>
>> Can anyone remember any place in Wikipedia English where naming rape
>> victims in articles is discussed? I'm trying to find community
>> consensus, one way or the other, on this point.
>
>
> This sort of stuff is discussed constantly in a variety of contexts,
> and I think that in most of them the consensus ends up as "publish the
> information if it has already been published by a mainstream news
> source".
>
> In addition to crime victims, other cases where it comes up are:
> * The names of underaged alleged criminals
> * Secret or semi-secret information about an organization's internal
> workings (e.g. Scientology).
> * Leaked classified information
>
> In all these cases, the consensus, as far as I can tell, is that
> refraining from publishing something that has already been widely
> published does not really accomplish much besides make our articles
> less informative.  We shouldn't "out" people or "break" stories
> ourselves, or republish information that has only been previously
> published in fringe/sketchy sources, but summarizing what has already
> been reported in the mainstream media is fair game.
>
> -Mark


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
Comments from the peanut gallery.  I felt like forwarding this
somewhere, so I am.

Kelly
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: IZAK <simshalom at att.net>
Date: Jan 9, 2006 12:04 PM
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail: Bad decision!
To: Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>

Hi Kelly:
When most people log on they are taken to the Main Page, and the
ArbCom vote link should be on EVERY article, putting it on watchlists
marginalizes it, and if you have a rule that users need to be active
for a few months then their vote won't be registered regardless of
what page they come from. At this stage it's more important to educate
new users and the public about an important vote taking place within
Wikipedia than to have the request for MONEY on every page which makes
Wikipedia look greedy after they just raised around $300,000, don't
you think? Get rid of the merchandising and commercializing junk and
mention the ArbCom stuff that is more to the core of what Wikipedia is
about, a participatory effort and not just a scheme to raise money.
Some of us are having trouble writing and editing articles with that
flashing "Dollar sign" on top of every page. I hope you understand the
importance of this. It's about the kind of image Wikipedia wants to
project about itself, an
 d someone has made a bad decision here lately it seems to me.
IZAK.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
On 1/9/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> True, but he has it set up more as an appeals court. A ombudsman in
> the sense you set forth would be welcome. I wouldn't mind at all
> someone dropping me a note, saying "Hey, cool it, you're getting
> carried away [with whatever]." We all need feedback. We don't need a
> second-guessing czar. Things are hard enough the first time.

As happened with the first jguk case, I think the community already
performs that role adequately.

--
Sam


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
It seems to me that many wrong beliefs (IMO) have been presented here
(not only talking to you, Ray). If non-speakers decide what's best for
all of us, then we may not have other options than to just stick to it.
But this is very wrong. Comparing English and SH is unproportional
because the differences between e.g. Serbian and Croatian are much
bigger. Leaving SH alone means leaving a fork to grow unnaturally with a
couple of editors that are going to keep on copy/pasting from around. If
Wikimedia supports that and if you have no problems with the doubled
work of a non-existent language, then I don't know what to say else. I'm
disgusted by the public awareness outside the Balkans. It just proves
that you have no idea what it's like here.

Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Filip Maljkovic wrote:
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> Since when does some silly war solve anything?
>>
>>
>> Maybe if people like you didn't call it silly, people would start to
>> appreciate the Balkans. Expressions like "silly war" may be offensive
>> to some people (not to me, because I'm politically neutral), and some
>> people may be outraged. Do you have any idea how many lives were lost
>> and how many were jeopardized? Do you know how it is to live through
>> a war? That war had A LOT of influence and you can't just step over it.
>
>
> The influence of the wars (treating it as more than one, and not just
> talking about the one over Kosovo) is bound to have an effect on
> people's lives, but certainly the fact that so many were killed for no
> good reason is a big part of the silliness.
>
>>> My experience with the Yugoslav diaspora in Canada, many of whom
>>> immigrated before Yugoslavia broke up, is that they still see
>>> Serbo-Croatian as one language.
>>
>>
>> Exactly. They weren't here when the stuff happened. These
>> refugees/people who moved away differ and, while some claim that they
>> "still see Serbo-Croatian as one language", how many of them actually
>> "speak" it? The views are different, but statistics support something
>> pretty obvious.
>
>
> Most of them continue to speak their language.  That's normal in most
> immigrant communities.  Language is not usually lost until the
> generation of their grandchildren.  The process takes maybe 50 years.
>
>>> If a project is to cease operation it must be *allowed* to die a
>>> natural death.  As long as people keep insisting that SH be closed
>>> there will be resistance, and that will keep it alive.  Once we are
>>> sure that it has stopped breathing, it will be safe to turn off the
>>> life support systems.
>>
>>
>> Does policy like that actually exist? I am, frankly, not aware of that.
>
>
> I didn't say anything about policy.  I was just commenting on human
> nature.
>
>>> The problem with that is that some of those solutions are not very
>>> nice.
>>
>>
>> Like a proverb from these areas says: /Klin se klinom izbija/! (I
>> can't really find a substitute in English ATM)
>
>
> My sh-en dictionary (from-1982 :-) ) had this expression.as "one nail
> drives out another".  Literal translations never convey the full
> meaning for this sort of thing.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
Yes, rather like an appeal to the House of Lords. The administrators
would need to work out who among them has clout in such a case. There
would be a protected page only administrators could edit.

Fred

On Jan 9, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>
>
>> Actually I think you kind of have this backwards. Usually an
>> appeal  is from a decision made by a specialized group to a larger
>> group  which represents broader community opinion. You have an
>> appeal from a  pretty large group to one person. How about appeals
>> being to the  administrators as a group? If there really is a
>> consensus perhaps  some way could be found to express it.
>>
>
> To 700 admins?????
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: oscar

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
On 1/8/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > If the situation had been my call at the beginning I would have had no
> > problem saying that we should have only a single Wikipedia to cover all
> > these, but it wasn't my call, and we need to cope with the reality in
> > front of us.  It is a fact that we have four projects, and none of them
> > suffer from a lack of interest and activity.  Nobody would benefit by
> > trying to undo the past.
> >
> > There is ample support for the notion that setting up the separate wikis
> > was a grave violation of NPOV,
>
> There's no support for that whatsoever, actually.
>
> These wikis were all in existence in the 2001-2002 era, apparently part of
> the
> first batch of bulk-created wikis made from a list of ISO 639 standard
> language
> codes:
> * http://sh.wikipedia.com/ (Serbo-Croatian)
> * http://sr.wikipedia.com/ (Serbian)
> * http://hr.wikipedia.com/ (Croatian)
>
> I have no doubt that whoever ran those bulk setups didn't read the whole
> list
> and wasn't aware that that particular combination of languages was
> present.
> Ascribing motives or claiming "a grave violation of NPOV" is simply
> absurd.
>
> Later, bs.wikipedia.org was added by request, on the basis that
> 1) our policy was to create wikis for any language with an ISO 639
> language
> code, on the assumption that an international standards body had a better
> handle
> on what's out there than us
> 2) it wasn't very fair or neutral to have Serbian and Croatian but *not* a
> Bosnian wiki.
>
> At some point the Serbo-Croatian one was shut down and articles copied to
> the
> others, on the basis that:
> 1) ISO 639 had rescinded the 'sh' code several years ago (in fact prior to
> the
> creation of that wiki, so an out of date list must have been used), so
> that wiki
> in fact was inconsistent with our language creation policy and probably
> would
> not have been created if anyone were looking at it explicitly
> 2) a number of people were strongly requesting that
>
> Later, at some point, someone reopened the Serbo-Croatian one, I'm not
> sure why.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

here is the page in question:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_permissions&oldid=146014#Serbo-croatian_Wikipedia

grtz, oscar

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


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>If the source text written for free is well referenced an hour
>wouldn't be too bad.  Of course, what people really seem to be missing
>is that the $10 million is merely the seed money.  *If* they can get
>some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would
>probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money
>(through donations, sales, services, etc.).
>
>
This is possible, but I think still a bit of a stretch.  Apart from
starting with no articles, they have a number of disadvantages:
* They're a commercial organization rather than a non-profit, which
tends to make people less willing to donate and volunteer
* They are known to have $10m, which makes people less likely to donate
or work for free
* They appear to be charging for user accounts, which will drastically
reduce the number of people who create them
* The end result appears to be under a murky and possibly proprietary
license, which will not encourage people to work on it for free

Not necessarily fatal flaws, but I'd say it's a long-shot that they will
be a serious competitor to Wikipedia anytime in the near future.

-Mark


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia Blocked IP address 82.148.97.67 is for
	thewhole counrty!

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel R. Tobias
> Sent: Monday, 9 January 2006 13:55
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia Blocked IP address
> 82.148.97.67 is for thewhole counrty!
>
> > > > On 12/25/05, Mohamad Takriti <takriti at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > This is my second email to you. I beleive that you
> blocked the
> > > > > whole
> > > > country of Qatar by blocking the IP address
> 82.148.97.67. Please
> > > > fix this as we cannot now make any edits!
>
> The whole country has only one IP address?

Qatar is a very small country. If you vigorously break wind there, it has to
go through border control. Lay off the spicy food unless you have an export
licence.

I'm guessing it's a dynamic IP address, assigned to many people in the
country, just not all at once.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Snake, fire, rape

body:
I'd think rules against original research or concerns about verifiability or
the reliability of non-mainstream sources would be enough rationale to keep
such information out.  I remember that much the same reasoning was used to
remove the real names of a couple of porn stars from WP articles about them.


body:
On 1/9/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >If the source text written for free is well referenced an hour
> >wouldn't be too bad.  Of course, what people really seem to be missing
> >is that the $10 million is merely the seed money.  *If* they can get
> >some good content created by that (even just 2000 articles would
> >probably do it), there should be no problem raising more money
> >(through donations, sales, services, etc.).
> >
> >
> This is possible, but I think still a bit of a stretch.  Apart from
> starting with no articles, they have a number of disadvantages:

I'm not sure what you're comparing them to, but I'll comment on your
points as is.

> * They're a commercial organization rather than a non-profit, which
> tends to make people less willing to donate and volunteer

Digital Universe Foundation is a non-profit organization incorporated
in Nevada.  See for youself at
https://esos.state.nv.us/SOSServices/AnonymousAccess/CorpSearch/CorpSearch.aspx.
 There is a for-profit which runs the ISP but supposedly this is set
up in a way so that most of the profits from the for-profit go to the
non-profit.  I'm not sure exactly what the arrangement is, though.

> * They are known to have $10m, which makes people less likely to donate
> or work for free

Small time people, maybe, but the larger grant money which they are
probably targetting is actually more likely to donate to a company
which isn't hanging on by a thread.

For donations of time, I'm not sure I agree, but you might be right.
I think it depends more on how they spend their money than how much of
it there is, though.

> * They appear to be charging for user accounts, which will drastically
> reduce the number of people who create them

I have an account and didn't pay anything.  AFAIK you only have to pay
if you subscribe to the ISP.

> * The end result appears to be under a murky and possibly proprietary
> license, which will not encourage people to work on it for free
>
Seems to me they will release *some* things under proprietary licenses
and some things under free licenses.  I certainly agree it will be
tough to get people to contribute to those parts under the proprietary
licenses for free, though if it's set up right maybe not too hard
(people will donate time to proprietary non-profit projects in some
circumstances).

What's murky, it seems, is exactly what they're going to do.  I'm sure
it'll be clear once they start publicizing this.

> Not necessarily fatal flaws, but I'd say it's a long-shot that they will
> be a serious competitor to Wikipedia anytime in the near future.
>
> -Mark

Well, you seem to have been misinformed on all your points.  But I see
them filling a different niche from Wikipedia anyway.

I have my doubts as to whether or not DU will be successful.  It's
really a matter of how well it's managed.  I think the idea is a good
one, though.  (I've personally watched a company I've co-founded, with
a similar idea, waste millions of dollars and go out of business,
during the dot-com days.  Actually when I showed this to one of the
other co-founders he asked me if this was our old CEO, who botched the
thing up back then, trying the idea again.  It isn't.)

Anthony


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] No new dumps since last month?

body:
Frederic Briere wrote:
> Hi!  Since the switch to XML format, we've seen regular dumps every 1-2
> weeks, which was much appreciated by people like me who run analysis
> tools on them.  Unfortunately, there hasn't been any new dump since the
> last Dec 13-18 run.  Does anybody know if/when they are scheduled to
> resume?

I'm rewriting the system that manages the dumps to finish automating it. Should
start running again this week.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The Wikipedia Ombudsman

body:
On 1/9/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> While I realise that WP is not a democracy, and we aren't quite at the stage
> of organised factions or political parties, I cannot view such an situation
> as leading to tranquility and stability.

That eventuality is my greatest fear for Wikipedia.  If it were to
happen, I think Jimbo/Board would need to take drastic action.  I hope
it isn't necessary.

--
Sam


body:
On 1/9/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> The most concerning aspect for us is the potential to drain away
> activity in science and technical areas, leaving WP to evolve into
> the "free encyclopedia of garage bands and manga trivia". (You
> laugh, but consider vandals gradually blanking math articles that
> are not on any active editor's watchlist, and not noticed in RC
> because of the continuous flood of recategorization edits.)
>
> Stan

Doubtful. They are looking to recurite PhD plus. A lot of our science
articles are writen by students and people with BScs.

--
geni


from_name: Stephane Bortzmeyer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Request for approval for a wiki for standards

body:
On Sat, Jan 07, 2006 at 07:38:13AM -0700,
 Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote
 a message of 77 lines which said:

> I want to add that there is a huge need for open and free (as in
> speech as well as beer) standards.  Even modestly priced standards
> from groups like ANSI or ISO can cost more than $200 a piece,

[First, let's talk about free beer]

Not all SDOs (Standard Definition Organizations) charge for the access
to standards. World-Wide Web consortium (http://www.w3.org/), Oasis
(http://www.oasis-open.org/) and of course the IETF
(http://www.ietf.org/), which launched the trend, do not.

[Now, free speech]

I know what is free [as in free speech] software and there are written
definitions of it. I do not know yet what is a free [as in free
speech] standard. The IETF is busy discussing it (in its IPR working
group). Advices are welcome, and so are attemps to put down in writing
the Definition of Free Standard (once you'll try to do it, you may
discover that it is not so obvious).


subject: [Wikitech-l] Memory corruption?

body:
We've had a couple odd errors cropping up in the last couple days:

* something tried to update a record in the 'recemtchanges' table
* something tried to run a 'peplaceinternallinks' function

These are both single-bit changes in strings, which is rather suspicious.

The 'recemtchanges' was on srv68, as recorded in the dberrorlog a number of
times over a couple days:

Sun Jan 8 16:56:02 UTC 2006     srv68   RecentChange::markPatrolled
10.0.0.101      1146    Table 'nlwiki.recemtchanges' doesn't exist (10.0.0.101)
UPDATE  `recemtchanges` SET rc_patrolled = '1' WHERE rc_id = '2429501'

When I checked it, the source code looked correct on that system; so it could be
either a bit flip in main memory (bad!), or some mysterious corrupting bug
somewhere else along the way...

There's no hits in /var/log/mcelog on srv68, which _should_ have listed any
detected memory parity errors, allegedly.

The 'pelplaceinternallinks' one I'm not sure where it happened; I don't think
our PHP error log files were working properly, and we somewhere along the line
stopped patching PHP to include the hostname in error output to clients. But it
was reported multiple times until we restarted the web servers to clear whatever
held the bogus cached code in memory.

I've set PHP to log errors to the syslog now; these then go to the log server on
zwinger and so can be collected and listed per-server in the syslog there.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On Mon, 2006-01-09 at 06:25 -0800, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Reading between the lines, I think what they're really hoping is to
> leverage the $10M for infrastructure, with most expert content
> creators being "paid" in the form of bylines. For many experts,
> this will be sufficient draw; they will be able to justify it
> as part of work, it will be a way to get ahead, etc.

This doesnt happen. Academics and so forth are busy and expect to
be paid for this type of thing. Bylines in an encyclopaedia dont
cut it any more.

Will be interesting.

Justinc


from_name: elephantus

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
> Caroline Ford wrote:
>
> >But linguistically almost _the_ test of "what is a language" is mutual
> >comprehensibility.
> >
> A helpful tool, perhaps, but hardly the defining test. Consider the
> Scandinavian languages.
>
> I would venture that the linguistic relationship between
> Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian is somewhat like the relationship between
> Danish/Norwegian/Swedish was from the Kalmar Union to the 19th-century
> period of romantic nationalism (after accounting for the increased
> uniformity promoted in more modern times by the printing press and
> universal education). The present differences are partly exaggerated for
> political reasons, but the political side of the equation is also likely
> to produce increasing distinguishability in a real sense over time. A
> single Serbo-Croatian wiki might be the right choice if we thought
> language was something frozen in place. If we conclude that languages
> continue to evolve, separate wikis might ultimately be more appropriate.
> In the interim, while this remains unsettled, I don't think it's
> necessarily awful that we're working along both tracks simultaneously.
>
> --Michael Snow

Thank you for inserting some wisdom into this discussion. Frankly, I'm
saddened by many knee-jerk responses along the lines of "Language x has
one wikipedia, why should it be any different with Croatian, Bosnian and
Serbian?". I can partly understand that, but I'd like to emphasize that
this is _not_ an initiative to split off British English from
English. English is not Croatian, Spanish is not Norwegian, Turkish is not
Russian. Languages differ in everything, including how close they are to
other languages.

I know a lot about American and British culture,
society etc., and this knowledge has also taught me to avoid
assumptions and quick judgements about other cultures and to accept the
actions and judgements of those closest to the problems as most probably
right - that you should not be telling other people that they are silly,
you should try to _understand why_ are they doing what they're doing.

The existence of Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia at this point in time probably
has as much purpose as the existence of Norwegian-Danish Wikipedia.
Real Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia already exists elsewhere - it is Serbian,
Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia taken together, with cooperations, article
translations and mutual help on various things, all increasing in frequency.
It is my hope that the three Wikipedias will grow and develop along the Scandinavian model, with
common featured articles and interwiki links,
and also with reasonable people, speakers of all three languages,
acting in good faith to improve NPOV on all languages (as has already
happened on several occasions). It is on this foundation that Wikipedias
should evolve, not on forced unifications and mass verbatim copying
of articles to a common dumping ground.

Elephantus

from Croatian Wikipedia

--
XXLadsl ponuda do 15.01.2006.- ve?e brzine, iste cijene. Samo kod
IskonInterneta uz XXLadsl surfajte 60 dana neograni?eno za samo 1kunu!


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Filter Recentchanges by categories

body:
Recent changes has become rather crowded with all that cursed popularity
of Wikipedia :-)

One often-mentioned solution was the ability to filter Recent changes by
categories. Well, now you have it!

It's turned off by default, no worries. To enable, set
    $wgAllowCategorizedRecentChanges
in LocalSettings.php

It uses my aforementioned class to determine wether an article belongs
to a category or one of its sub(subsubsub...)categories. Categories can
be entered on the Recent changes page, separated by "|". You can filter
for articles belonging or either any or all of the given categories
(OR/AND).

Once the usual authorities had a look at it, I'd like it to be enabeled
on some medium-sized wikipedia to determine the impact on the database
slave servers, which might or might not be severe.

I think this would be a very efficient way of managing our "RC patrol
forces" by dividing the huge amout of changes-to-be-checked into smaller
chunks.

What's missing is "articles that don't belong to any category". Yet!

Magnus


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> I know what is free [as in free speech] software and there are written
> definitions of it. I do not know yet what is a free [as in free
> speech] standard. The IETF is busy discussing it (in its IPR working
> group). Advices are welcome, and so are attemps to put down in writing
> the Definition of Free Standard (once you'll try to do it, you may
> discover that it is not so obvious).

Standards should be public domain, for the same reason that the Human
Genome is public domain. There's a short section in Sir John Sulston's
autobiography "The Common Thread" as to why the public domain is more
suitable than "copyleft" licences for this.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

body:
On 1/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Eh? The law must have changed since I last looked. What
> > happened to the cybersquatter who got a few million for mcdonalds.com?
>
> Have you got a cite for it? The last I heard was either the law changed,
> or they started enforcing it, but I'm sure I've read several articles
> saying that you just can't do that anymore. Not that there are any
> decent trademarks left to grab anyway.
>
> See
> http://www.nolo.com/article.cfm/objectID/60EC3491-B4B5-4A98-BB6E6632A2FA
> 0CB2/111/228/195/ART/ or, of course, [[Cybersquatting]] :)
>
> Steve

That link specifically says that "if the accused cybersquatter can
show a judge that he had a reason to register the domain name other
than to sell it back to the trademark owner for a profit, then a court
will probably allow him to keep the domain name."

Of course, ICANN makes its own rules, which need not have anything to
do with trademark law.

And the point I was making was that the WMF doesn't have a trademark
on the term "wiki".  But since "wikicommons.org" is owned by them
anyway, it really doesn't matter.

Anthony


from_name: Carbonite

body:
On 1/9/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/9/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Comments from the peanut gallery.  I felt like forwarding this
> > somewhere, so I am.
> >
> > Kelly
>
> Heh the arbcom notice was briefly at the top of every page but the
> people who look after site notice removed it. So I compramised on
> watchlists.

I also added it to Recent Changes. I think it's worth keeping the
notice there for a few days at least. Maybe add it there (and
elsewhere) again on the final day of voting.

Carbonite


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbo-Croatian wikipedia

body:
On 1/9/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Perhaps patience is required at least until the software is working.  My
> impression from the Yugoslave diaspora is that Serbo-Croatian is a
> preferred term if it saves them from having to identify themselves with
> one or another of the factions.  That or they will use the vague phrase,
> "my language".

1. It seems that Serbia, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin diaspora
needs their own Wikipedia.

2. This incident told me that it is impossible to work with fascists
from Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia. The project of making one
Neo-Shtokavian Wikipedia will be done without them, for sure.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Independent

body:
We're the first (no numbers given, so maybe not #1) of the top ten open
source projects, according to the Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article337369.ece

Just FYI,
Magnus


from_name: Frederic Briere

body:
Hi!  Since the switch to XML format, we've seen regular dumps every 1-2
weeks, which was much appreciated by people like me who run analysis
tools on them.  Unfortunately, there hasn't been any new dump since the
last Dec 13-18 run.  Does anybody know if/when they are scheduled to
resume?

--
             Fr?d?ric Bri?re    <*>    fbriere at fbriere.net

 =>  <fbriere at abacom.com> IS NO MORE:  <http://www.abacomsucks.com>  <=


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] enforcing our trademark

body:
It can still be trademark infringement though. You can't go and
register cocacola.org without hearing from lawyers.

Steve

On 1/9/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/10/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I'll bite.  What's wrong with wikicommons.org?  Are you trying to say
> > the WMF has a trademark on anything that starts with wiki?
>
>
> I can't speak for the original poster, but he probably doesn't realize that
> registering domain names is not copyright infringement. He's right about the
> first one though. WikipediaClassAction.org uses the Wikipedia logo, and I
> presume without permission. Has anyone in an official capacity contacted
> them about this?
>
> Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Independent

body:
Am 09.01.2006 um 16:12 schrieb Magnus Manske:

> We're the first (no numbers given, so maybe not #1) of the top ten
> open
> source projects, according to the Independent:

we are twice in the list even.

--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
http://verlag.tomk32.de/c/wrdigest