from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> Brion, please refrain from quoting half-sentences of mine, which gives
>> the impression I said something I didn't.
>>
>> There is no legal necessity for the "list authors" feature. I never said
>> that. I said that it is currently very inconvenient to fulfil the
>> demands of the GFDL, because you have to download the entire wikipedia,
>> including history, to correctly publish a single article. What good is
>> it to have an open license if taking advantage of that is a PITA? (I'm
>> talking non-geeks here, and geeks who have a slow machine/internet
>> connection/etc.)
>>
>
> Okay, I quoted the entire paragraph to show that you said exactly what I thought
> you said.
>
> Now, I ask again the same thing for the same reasons: please ask Brad Patrick,
> the foundation's legal counsel, about this to see if it's actually true.
>
I checked the GFDL myself, and it seems that only *modified* copies
require the author list. So, you're right if it's just a PDF of the wiki
(not modified). And, I'm right for things like the WikiReaders and
WikiPress, or all things that are not plain copies. I've added basic ODT
export to the XML parser (which has become surprisingly fast, BTW). When
producing an editable format, providing a list of authors thus seems
prudent to prevent ... misunderstandings of the license.
>
>> If you want to contribute something that is actually helpful, please run
>> the one little SQL query I asked you to run, and tell us how many
>> seconds it takes.  Maybe run it again ignoring anons. If it take 2
>> seconds, the feature could be activated (for the time being, of course);
>> if it takes 30 seconds, activating it on Wikipedia is certainly out of
>> the question.
>>
>
> For database performance issues I leave this in Domas's hands, since he'll just
> turn it off if he thinks it's a problem anyway.
>
> A quick test in isolation on lomaria showed 'George W. Bush' taking about a
> second and 'Wikipedia:Sandbox' about 4 seconds. As frequently hit pages they may
> be better in cache already; Sandbox results were much faster after that first
> hit. Random-access could lead to cache churn, check with Domas.
>
> EXPLAIN shows use of a temporary table, not necessarily a good sign but not too
> bad if it fits in memory:
>
> mysql> EXPLAIN SELECT DISTINCT rev_user,rev_user_text FROM revision WHERE
> rev_page=3414021;
> +----------+-------+------------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------------------------+
> | table    | type  | possible_keys          | key     | key_len | ref  | rows  |
> Extra                        |
> +----------+-------+------------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------------------------+
> | revision | range | PRIMARY,page_timestamp | PRIMARY |       4 | NULL | 42114 |
> Using where; Using temporary |
> +----------+-------+------------------------+---------+---------+------+-------+------------------------------+
> 1 row in set (0.02 sec)
>
>
Thanks for running this. It seems, as Rob already said, it might be best
to plan for a few servers for a future API. I'll bother foundation-l
with this. Also, I volunteer to write/help with API development ;-)

OTOH, 4 seconds MySQL and little Apache load - compared to the 32
seconds it just took srv28 to render the actual GDW page - is not that
much...
> More worrying than the time it takes is the amount of data it churns out: 8965
> rows for George W. Bush, 21528 rows for Wikipedia:Sandbox. That's only going to
> get longer as time goes on, and it's unsustainable in the long term. (That's
> possibly why the GFDL explicitly *doesn't* require a list of every contributor.)
>
> It's still a lot with accounts only: 2664 rows for GWB and 6569 for the sandbox.
>

I expect the growth of the distinct author list for GWB to be slower,
with the protection in place. There is a lot of editing going on, but
many edits seem to be made by a small group. Also, 2664 rows would
result in a roughly estimated 160KB of XML, which can be cut down
significantly by using <c> instead of <contributor>, omitting user ID,
etc. Maybe 70KB total, transfered as 35KB gzipped (all just rough
estimations, but IMHO correct within the odrer of magnitude). We have
article texts that long.
> So even if it's fast enough for the moment, I'd much prefer if we had something
> that fit clear requirements. If the idea is for every random person grabbing
> pages off our site to have the minimal GFDL requirements, I'm not so sure this
> fits the bill.
>

I now agree that this is less critical than I previously thought, but I
still think it will be very useful, increasingly so as more and more
Wikipedia "spin-off" products and services mushroom. Yes, it is not
"mission-critical", but neither is the whole Special:Export page itself,
the RSS feeds, or the random page function (which has its own database
field *and* index, for crying out loud!).

A few dedicated API servers are probably the way to go in the long run.

Magnus

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
G'day David,

> Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000
>  articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor)
> has over a million?

Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor?  Where does that leave
/World Book/ and /Encarta/?  And why can't I think of more than four
encyclopaedias at the moment?  Gah.

We're not *exactly* competing with Britannica.  We're providing a free,
detailed, comprehensive encyclopaedia ... where "encyclopaedia" is a
very broad description, and can include anything on any topic with
pretensions to the name (George Lucas gets his /Star Wars/ ideas from
us!).  We're *more* than Britannica.  Much, much more.

At the same time, we're much, much less.  Wikipedia's greatest strength
--- our openness --- is also a weakness.  The damage left by edit wars,
our tolerance of insane amounts of cruft, even the constant vandalism
isn't that big a deal --- but inaccuracy *is*.  And Wikipedia is very
vulnerable to inaccuracy.  Where we're inaccurate about real people,
like John "have I spelled his name right yet" Siegenthaler, we can cause
actual pain in real life.  That's an issue we're trying to deal with,
with WP:NOR to cut down on kookery, WP:V to cut down on outright lies,
and WP:OFFICE to mop up anything we've missed ... but it's going to take
time.

We aren't out there to create a new Britannica.  We're creating
something different.  We should look to Britannica, and its competitors,
as something to emulate.  We should *aspire* to be as good as them.
But, in the end, we're *not*.  There's always a niche market for
creatures like Britannica --- for people who are worried about accuracy
(but not money) and are not prepared to put in the effort required to
find out if a Wikipedia article is true or not, for example.

Of course, unintentionally, we're hurting Britannica.  And we're hurting
the other encyclopaedias out there as well.  We're bringing an
encyclopaedia into the homes of people who couldn't afford the fees
charged by the others.  Decent and free will always trump excellent and
bloody expensive.  It's only natural that Britannica, whose management
presumably know one or two things about business, will see this and get
scared.  They don't want to peddle to a niche subset of the 'paedia
audience, and they don't want to risk going under if it doesn't work.

And frankly, that's not just Britannica's problem --- it's ours as well.
  "Decent and free" is fine when there are better encyclopaedias out
there.  If we're the best the world can offer, then we *have* to be
great, not good, not decent, but *great*.  We'd owe it to the world,
after taking away their best encyclopaedias, to provide a valid alternative.

Cheers,

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

--
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from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Mar 27, 2006, at 8:38 AM, Sam Korn wrote:

> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Remeber the "bare arms and Qur'an" fight?
>
> If there was a "bare arms" tag, then yes, I suppose that would fall
> under the category.
>
> But the discussion you are talking about was not on account of the
> bare arms per se, but rather their juxtaposition.

I think Wikipedia should uphold the right to bare arms.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] How to get around AOL proxies?

body:
G'day Ilmari,

> Personally, I wouldn't support forcing users to install a new browser
> just to edit Wikipedia.  But if we can tell them that "to edit
> Wikipedia, you must first open menu X, select entry Y and uncheck the
> checkbox labelled FOO", that might be acceptable.

Pish, posh.  How long as AOL been open to the Internet now?  Damn near
ten years, I'd think.

It's time for these lame AOLers to realise that there's newer, better
ISPs around, and that we won't hang around forever babying those
recalcitrants who simply refuse to upgrade.  Legacy ISPs have been a
millstone (is that the right metaphor?) around our necks for too long ...

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

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On Mar 27, 2006, at 8:14 AM, jayjg wrote:

> I would imagine it would have implications for all countries with
> legal
> systems based on British Common Law, which I would think would look
> at  the
> ruling in this case when deciding similar cases.

It would depend--the American legal system is based on English common
law, but American courts rarely, if ever, take into account English
court precedents after the colonial period. Commonwealth countries
may still take into account contemporary English precedents, however.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki converter (follow-up)

body:
Jay R. Ashworth schrieb:
> On Fri, Mar 24, 2006 at 01:11:23PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> So even if it's fast enough for the moment, I'd much prefer if we
>> had something that fit clear requirements. If the idea is for every
>> random person grabbing pages off our site to have the minimal GFDL
>> requirements, I'm not so sure this fits the bill.
>>
>
> Any comment, then, brion, on whether it might make it into the mainline
> distribution, which presumably has less strict requirements on such
> things?
>
It is currently in, but deactivated. So it will likely be part of the
next release. To activate, set
    $wgExportAllowListContributors = true
in LocalSettings.php

Magnus

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from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Solution to the Image Problem

body:
On 3/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear uploader: If this image is from the web, please provide the URL to that
> image.
>
> Bingo, instant image verification (and likely, instant copyvio
> verification).

Except that as soon as the image is tagged as {{imagevio}}, someone'll
suggest that the image can be used as long as it's tagged {{fair
use}}.  It's quite difficult to get rid of sourced, tagged images.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
G'day Geni,
> On 3/27/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>>G'day David,
>>>Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000
>>> articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor)
>>>has over a million?
>>
>>Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor?  Where does that leave
>>/World Book/ and /Encarta/?  And why can't I think of more than four
>>encyclopaedias at the moment?  Gah.
>
> Because Encarta drove most of the others into bancrupcy?

They did?  I wonder what their pornography-to-article ratio is.

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

--
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from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Well, there's always <http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/wikify>.

The OP asked about implementations for MediaWiki, although Kate's tool
is useful for seeing just how pointless such a feature is on a
large-scale wiki.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I find it very curious that of all the things they can attack
>> wikipedia for, the fact that wikipedia is not censored is the one they
>> focus on. Very strange indeed.
>>
>
> All the more reason to tag Wikipedia articles as kidsafe/worksafe.
>
> Steve
>
>
Unfortunately, that's easier said than done -- "child-safe" and
"worksafe" are concepts that are impossible to define in a way that
everyone can agree on. What one parent or community regards as
acceptable may be unacceptable in another; what a parent wants their
ten-year-old child to be able to see will probably differ from what they
want their sixteen-year-old child to be able to see, and so on.

For some examples of edge cases: consider pictures of men wearing
shorts, which are regularly banned by the censors in some of the more
conservative Middle-Eastern states: do we mark all articles showing
images of uncovered arms or legs as "unsafe"? How about pictures of
women with uncovered hair? Do we mark the [[Holocaust]] article, which
is extremely upsetting, as "unsafe" for children to read? How about
[[death]], which is upsetting for very small children? What about
pictures of [[Bah?'u'll?h]], which observant Bah?'?s prefer not  to see
in public, or even in their own homes?

I recommend reading RFC 3675 for a full and detailed discussion of all
the issues involved: its authors conclude that broad-brush attempts at
content filtering as "ill considered [...] from the legal,
philosophical, and particularly, the technical points of view."

Rather than attempting to define "safe" and "unsafe" categories, we
should instead concentrate on assigning all Wikipedia articles to
meaningful fine-grained descriptive categories, without any implied
judgment that a category is "safe" or "unsafe" for any given viewer.
Downstream users who want to filter Wikipedia's content can then use
this information to make their own choices.

-- Neil


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 12:27:32PM -0500, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> > Well, there's always <http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/wikify>.
>
> The OP asked about implementations for MediaWiki, although Kate's tool
> is useful for seeing just how pointless such a feature is on a
> large-scale wiki.

That was very nicely put, Ivan.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> Can we accuse them of having a (insert currently unpopular POV) bias?

Well, is it unpopular to examine the links between the CIA and
Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc? Some of their editors worked in covert
operations for the US administration (according to a presidential
library with declassified documents).

More or less. :)


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/27/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>   > On Mar 24, 2006, at 7:04 AM, Steve Block wrote:
> >
> >> So creating a narrative which doesn't exist elsewhere, for example
> >> citing blog entries to create a story, that's clearly original
> >> research,
> >> yes?
>
> > Fred Bauder wrote:
> >> Now you are getting into citing published material. However, doing so
> >> to advance a novel idea would remain original research.
>
> So a blog entry is deemed to be a publication?  Is any given blog deemed
> a publication and a reliable source?

Nope.  Blogs are not considered reliable sources.  They can be certainly be
used as sources in articles about those specific blogs, and can be quoted if
the authors themselves are famous individuals, but in general they should be
avoided.

  And what then is a novel idea?  I
> can construct a narrative from blog postings, would this be a novel idea?

Yes.

Jay.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>One question I have had: what if the author gives you permission to
>copy an entire email somewhere, including email address? That seems to
>me to be pretty verifiable, unless someone accuses you of fabricating
>the entire thing. The only question is where to put the email -
>WikiSource?
>
>
That would seem to fall vaguely in the same category as a blog entry by
the same author; better than having no documentation, but not nearly as
good as something peer-reviewed.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
> We aren't out there to create a new Britannica.  We're creating
> something different.  We should look to Britannica, and its competitors,
> as something to emulate.  We should *aspire* to be as good as them.
> But, in the end, we're *not*.  There's always a niche market for
> creatures like Britannica --- for people who are worried about accuracy
> (but not money) and are not prepared to put in the effort required to
> find out if a Wikipedia article is true or not, for example.
>
> Of course, unintentionally, we're hurting Britannica.  And we're hurting
> the other encyclopaedias out there as well.  We're bringing an
> encyclopaedia into the homes of people who couldn't afford the fees
> charged by the others.  Decent and free will always trump excellent and
> bloody expensive.  It's only natural that Britannica, whose management
> presumably know one or two things about business, will see this and get
> scared.  They don't want to peddle to a niche subset of the 'paedia
> audience, and they don't want to risk going under if it doesn't work.
>
> And frankly, that's not just Britannica's problem --- it's ours as well.
>   "Decent and free" is fine when there are better encyclopaedias out
> there.  If we're the best the world can offer, then we *have* to be
> great, not good, not decent, but *great*.  We'd owe it to the world,
> after taking away their best encyclopaedias, to provide a valid alternative.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
That's why we should now, after hitting the psychologically important
1,000,000 article mark in the en: encyclopedia, be focusing on quality
improvement, not growth.

-- Neil
*
*


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

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

David Alexander Russell stated for the record:
> There is an 'artistic' tag - so the Michelangelo's David image would be
> tagged as 'images of naked buttocks' and 'this material appears in an
> artistic context'
>
> Cynical

"Artistic" according to whose Point Of View?  Some people think a
crucifix soaking in urine is "artistic."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | The other side to the Wikipedia that nobody really
 sean at epoptic.org | likes to talk about... is that a large portion of
                  | the content is fairly pornographic, and actually
                  | quite lewd. --Encyclopedia Britannica spokesman
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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh wow. Naked bits of bodies need to be censored, eh?

Sure, especially if the person looking is 12 and is using school equipment.

>Perhaps we should just remove this evil "eee-vo-lushion" thing while
we're at it?

Sure, especially if the person looking is 12, and is using school
equipment in Kansas.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Benjamin Webb

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
	wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Talking about multilingual MediaWiki, Rodovid already has a certain level of
that implemented.

You have one user account for every language and one watchlist for all
languages. Also, because Genealogical data is facts, the database is shared
among every language, with a different language enterface. So if you add a
person in English, another person will be able to see that record in
Ukranian.

On 27/03/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Aphaia wrote:
> > On 3/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/26/06, Benjamin Webb <bjwebb67 at googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Even though your e-mail could be seen as critisising me, I greatly
> >>> appreciate it. Any feedback at all is useful for me. You mentioned
> having an
> >>> opinion poll. Could I start that now? The proposal has been on meta
> for a
> >>> week.
> >>>
> >> The policy for new projects states that projects must be discussed for
> >> "at least a month" before a poll is taken:
> >> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy
> >>
> >
> > Also, I would like to add such poll concerning with the Foundation
> > level should be grobal, hence multilingual.
> >
> > With exceptions like Wikimedia Commons which is needed to be kept as
> > unscattered, I have no reason to support any monolingual project as
> > Wikimedia ones, specially after haven seen Wikispecies and its two
> > years inactivity. Currently, I have found only English speakers showed
> > interest to the suggestion and it brought me if our grobal community
> > has interested in the idea now discussed.
> >
> > --
> > Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
> > email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
> Hoi,
> When it comes to multilingual projects, it is relevant to mention that
> development on Multilingual MediaWiki has started (
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki ). Your suggestion
> that Commons should stay a monolingual project is something that I have
> problems with. Currently it is only useful for people who speak English.
> When you are looking for pictures of animals or plants you have to know
> your Latin. :(
>
> As to Wikispecies, it is a great idea that came before its time. Its
> time will come I am sure. :)
>
> When Multilingual MediaWiki is "Brion ready, accepted and merged", it
> will be possible to have a genealogy project where more parts of the
> user interface can be localised. One of the fun aspects of genealogy is
> that you will find what parts of a family comes from what parts of the
> globe; it is therefore important to have a user interface that allows
> for people from all over the globe to collaborate. :)
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 27 Mar 2006, at 13:18, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 3/27/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>> That's why we should now, after hitting the psychologically important
>> 1,000,000 article mark in the en: encyclopedia, be focusing on
>> quality
>> improvement, not growth.
>
> *'''Support'''

You obviously hang around in different subject areas than I do. We are
missing tens of thousands of articles completely, not even stubs. Our
coverage of architecture is scanty to say the least, just as one
example.

Not to say we shouldnt be improving things.

Justinc


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> There has been some recent discussion at [[MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext]]
> about providing specific instructions for AOL users who find the IP of
> their proxy blocked, similar to how we provide instructions for users
> editing from China.

There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.

This would mean requiring that AOL users log in before edit. Sad, but more open than many proposed
solutions.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
geni wrote:

>On 3/27/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>G'day David,
>>
>>
>>>Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000
>>> articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor)
>>>has over a million?
>>>
>>>
>>Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor?  Where does that leave
>>/World Book/ and /Encarta/?  And why can't I think of more than four
>>encyclopaedias at the moment?  Gah.
>>
>>
>Because Encarta drove most of the others into bancrupcy?
>
While I can't be sure that Encarta was specifically responsible for
this, in principal that's what happened. For Britannica, Encarta was the
first shoe to drop, and Wikipedia was the second.  Among other general
encyclopedias there were Collier's, Funk and Wagnalls, Encylopedia
Americana and I could find many others if I chose to research it.  We
are now at the point where we treat subjects in such depth that even the
topically specialized encyclopedias can feel threatened.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>Regardless of what you call it, the discussion has been held many
>times. There simply isn't anything near consensus for any sort of
>censorship in the community (and it is censorship, don't kid yourself,
>just read the first sentance in [[Censorship]]). The discussion has
>been had, lets just levae it at that.
>
>And frankly, while I agree that some sort of voluntary content control
>might be nice, I sorta like the idea that wikipedia will give you the
>facts straight up, without any spin, no matter how ugly or morally
>reprehensive they may be. Our responsibility is not to make a school
>safe version of the facts, our responsibility is to always give the
>facts with a neutral point of view. If some schools and libraries
>can't agree with that point of view, that's too bad.
>
I would take it one step further, and say that schools have a
responsibility to show kids how to protect themselves on line.  The
parents who go too far in hiding this sort of thing from their kids may
just be breeding the next generation of victims.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Unfortunately, that's easier said than done -- "child-safe" and
> "worksafe" are concepts that are impossible to define in a way that
> everyone can agree on. What one parent or community regards as
> acceptable may be unacceptable in another; what a parent wants their
> ten-year-old child to be able to see will probably differ from what they
> want their sixteen-year-old child to be able to see, and so on.

I agree completely that defining such concepts in a global way is not
possible. However, concepts such as "covered nipples", "men in shorts"
or "photographs of genitalia" are objective. Individuals with
appropriate software can then filter as they see fit.

> For some examples of edge cases: consider pictures of men wearing
> shorts, which are regularly banned by the censors in some of the more
> conservative Middle-Eastern states: do we mark all articles showing
> images of uncovered arms or legs as "unsafe"? How about pictures of

No, we mark them "men with uncovered arms or legs".

> women with uncovered hair? Do we mark the [[Holocaust]] article, which
> is extremely upsetting, as "unsafe" for children to read? How about

Ditto.

> [[death]], which is upsetting for very small children? What about
> pictures of [[Bah?'u'll?h]], which observant Bah?'?s prefer not  to see
> in public, or even in their own homes?

Currently, we have no "offensiveness" markup whatsoever. If and when
we implement such a system, someone can create a tag called "pictures
of Bahaullah", which can be used and filtered against as appropriate.

> I recommend reading RFC 3675 for a full and detailed discussion of all
> the issues involved: its authors conclude that broad-brush attempts at
> content filtering as "ill considered [...] from the legal,
> philosophical, and particularly, the technical points of view."

I agree. Which is why I'm not proposing broad-brush content filtering,
but instead fine-brush content *tagging*.

>
> Rather than attempting to define "safe" and "unsafe" categories, we
> should instead concentrate on assigning all Wikipedia articles to
> meaningful fine-grained descriptive categories, without any implied
> judgment that a category is "safe" or "unsafe" for any given viewer.
> Downstream users who want to filter Wikipedia's content can then use
> this information to make their own choices.

Ok, I now see that you were actually replying to my original message
where I glibly used the terms "kidsafe" and "worksafe". My bad.

Steve


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>While I can't be sure that Encarta was specifically responsible for
>>this, in principal that's what happened. For Britannica, Encarta was the
>>first shoe to drop, and Wikipedia was the second.  Among other general
>>encyclopedias there were Collier's, Funk and Wagnalls
>>
>
>... Encarta *is* Funk and Wagnalls. MS bought the content and
>refurbished it a little bit. Their consideration was that F&W's image
>and band name was not that important, so "Encarta" was created as a MS
>brand name.
>
>Except for the Dutch Encarta, all other versions stem from this.
>
As we learn from [[Encarta]], it also subsumes Collier's material. :-)

Always nice to be able to eat in one's own restaurant without
getting ptomaine poisoning...

Stan


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
 wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/26/06, Benjamin Webb <bjwebb67 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Even though your e-mail could be seen as critisising me, I greatly
>>> appreciate it. Any feedback at all is useful for me. You mentioned having an
>>> opinion poll. Could I start that now? The proposal has been on meta for a
>>> week.
>>>
>> The policy for new projects states that projects must be discussed for
>> "at least a month" before a poll is taken:
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_project_policy
>>
>
> Also, I would like to add such poll concerning with the Foundation
> level should be grobal, hence multilingual.
>
> With exceptions like Wikimedia Commons which is needed to be kept as
> unscattered, I have no reason to support any monolingual project as
> Wikimedia ones, specially after haven seen Wikispecies and its two
> years inactivity. Currently, I have found only English speakers showed
> interest to the suggestion and it brought me if our grobal community
> has interested in the idea now discussed.
>
> --
> Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
> email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
Hoi,
When it comes to multilingual projects, it is relevant to mention that
development on Multilingual MediaWiki has started (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multilingual_MediaWiki ). Your suggestion
that Commons should stay a monolingual project is something that I have
problems with. Currently it is only useful for people who speak English.
When you are looking for pictures of animals or plants you have to know
your Latin. :(

As to Wikispecies, it is a great idea that came before its time. Its
time will come I am sure. :)

When Multilingual MediaWiki is "Brion ready, accepted and merged", it
will be possible to have a genealogy project where more parts of the
user interface can be localised. One of the fun aspects of genealogy is
that you will find what parts of a family comes from what parts of the
globe; it is therefore important to have a user interface that allows
for people from all over the globe to collaborate. :)

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Erm, we just went *onto* daylight savings. (Somehow my brain still
> thinks March is the end of summer...)

It is. In the UK.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> That's why we should now, after hitting the psychologically important
> 1,000,000 article mark in the en: encyclopedia, be focusing on quality
> improvement, not growth.

*'''Support'''

Steve


from_name: charles matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The real competition,
	was Re:  Britannica quote of the day

body:
"Mathias Schindler" wrote
> charles matthews wrote:
>>  "Mark Gallagher" wrote
>>
>>> We're not *exactly* competing with Britannica.
>>
>> Indeed. If you looked at Alexa, you'd say our main rival was blogger.com.
>
> Wrong metrics will lead to wrong conclusions.

I don't think my comment was inane.  People have a choice between writing
about themselves, their opinions, pets and so on; or of contributing factual
material to Wikipedia.  There is an overlap, which may only increase.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
 "Neil Harris" wrote

> That's why we should now, after hitting the psychologically important
> 1,000,000 article mark in the en: encyclopedia, be focusing on quality
> improvement, not growth.

How about a voluntary tariff: 10 edits improving quality for each email to
this list.  And so on: we should charge higher for adding an article about
no-hoper bands, basketball coaches not known further than the next town,
etc.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Justin Cormack wrote:
> On 27 Mar 2006, at 13:18, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>> On 3/27/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>> That's why we should now, after hitting the psychologically important
>>> 1,000,000 article mark in the en: encyclopedia, be focusing on
>>> quality
>>> improvement, not growth.
>>>
>> *'''Support'''
>>
>
> You obviously hang around in different subject areas than I do. We are
> missing tens of thousands of articles completely, not even stubs. Our
> coverage of architecture is scanty to say the least, just as one
> example.
>
> Not to say we shouldnt be improving things.
>
> Justinc
>
>
I don't believe that a drive for quality is incompatible with the
complementary goal of comprehensively covering all known specialist
topics. It's more a matter of focus, since our topic coverage is now
undeniably better than any general encyclopedia (and continuing to get
better rapidly), but our article quality is currently much more patchy.

-- Neil


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
Dear uploader: If this image is from the web, please provide the URL to that
image.

Bingo, instant image verification (and likely, instant copyvio
verification).


body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>> There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
>> looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
>> redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
>> IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
>> return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.
>>
>
> If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL?
> Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https
> URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.
>
> This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users,
> but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are
> public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.
>
>
Now, that's an *excellent* idea.

1 the SSL overhead will be low, because edits are a tiny fraction of the
overall traffic
2 If we only SSL the form submission, this limits the SSL overhead even
further.
3 AOL browsing will still be proxied, so page-view load will not increase
4 AOL _browsing_ will still be completely anonymous
5 AOL IP editors will still be as anonymous as any other IP editors
6 Dynamic IP assignment should not be any more or less of a problem than
with other ISPs

Are there any reasons why this should not work? Perhaps this could be
the solution for all non-XFF-friendly ISPs?

-- Neil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] The real competition,
 was Re:  Britannica quote of the day

body:
charles matthews wrote:
>  "Mark Gallagher" wrote
>
>> We're not *exactly* competing with Britannica.
>
> Indeed. If you looked at Alexa, you'd say our main rival was blogger.com.

Wrong metrics will lead to wrong conclusions.

Texaco-manager 1: Our competitor is BP.

Texaco-manager 2: We are not *exactly* competing with BP.

Texaco-manager 3: Look at finance.google.com, our main rival is Oracle
as their revenue almost matches ours.

And yes, all CNN, Warner Brothers, NASCAR, Playboy, Wikipedia and
Nintendo are competing in terms of spare time of its users.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] external link checker

body:
We already store the external links.

Even before we did that I did a lot of processing with them.

On enwiki A good number are rotted, yes, but far more have been
replaced with (or always were) spam or spam-like content.

There is an absolutely insane number of them on the large wikis, it's
a tough problem.

On 3/27/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Did anybody implement in MediaWiki a link rot checker for external
> links?  Here is a theory for how it could work:
>
> When a new page is saved and the parser detects a "http:" pattern,
> the external link is stored in a separate database table, with a
> pointer to the wiki page where it was harvested.  At regular
> intervals, all external links are tried (HTTP GET) by a background
> process and the success or failure rate is recorded.  If a link
> becomes unavailabe (HTTP ERROR) during three consequtive fetch
> attempts, it gets listed on a special page of possibly broken
> external links.  Broken links from the same website could be
> grouped together.  Maybe the whole site is broken, has moved or
> has been internally reorganized.


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
>>> looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
>>> redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
>>> IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
>>> return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.
>>>
>>>
>> If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL?
>> Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https
>> URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.
>>
>> This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users,
>> but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are
>> public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.
>>
>>
>>
> Now, that's an *excellent* idea.
>
> 1 the SSL overhead will be low, because edits are a tiny fraction of the
> overall traffic
> 2 If we only SSL the form submission, this limits the SSL overhead even
> further.
> 3 AOL browsing will still be proxied, so page-view load will not increase
> 4 AOL _browsing_ will still be completely anonymous
> 5 AOL IP editors will still be as anonymous as any other IP editors
> 6 Dynamic IP assignment should not be any more or less of a problem than
> with other ISPs
>
> Are there any reasons why this should not work? Perhaps this could be
> the solution for all non-XFF-friendly ISPs?
>
> -- Neil
>
>
And, on re-reading, perhaps for AOL users only, the "my talk page" link
could be an SSL link which would then auto-redirect to the appropriate
IP address talk page, thus eliminating any need for a cookie.

A question: does the Foundation have a PKI certificate for the
wikipedia.org domain?

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] How to get around AOL proxies?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
 "Neil Harris" wrote

> I don't believe that a drive for quality is incompatible with the
> complementary goal of comprehensively covering all known specialist
> topics.

I don't, either.  But I would make a small bet that discussion of this topic
will veer into issues of article creation, in most circumstances.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You are welcome to develop your own external labelling service. Placeopedia
> acts as a linkage between Wikipedia and Google: why not set up something of
> your own for content labelling? Useful information can be found here:
> http://www.w3.org/PICS/#Developers

Scalability would be the problem. We have a million articles, but a
large editor pool too. To tag pages, we would need to harness that
editor pool.

> Hosting this stuff within the Foundations purview would IMNHSO be foolish.

Oh? Why?

> Actually incorporating it into Mediawiki would be suicidal. Imagine the edit
> wars which could be provoked.

Yeah? We have edit wars about silly stuff now. You really think
labelling a page "contains images of naked bodies" is so contentious?

Steve


body:
I agree with all of what you have said. Seeing as we have a test database,
engine.rodovid.org, there shouldn't be a propblem. Any non-real records can
be put there.

On 27/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >
> >
> >>All of these are aspects that are derived from Wikimedia users'
> >>experience with developing other on-line content.  The current internal
> >>push for this sort of development is where users like myself have been
> >>so used to how things are done with Wiki software that we wonder why
> >>this isn't be done for geneological research, where these ideas of free
> >>access to information and the ability to freely edit the information
> >>havn't yet caught on.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >Being able to freely edit is an important feature, but that opens up a
> >wide range of other problems like our policies on original research.
> >
> >Ec
> >
> >
> >
> I think in this situation the term "original research" is not really
> applicable.  By definition all geneological research is all secondary
> research in terms of relying on other original source material to prove
> if a particular fact is true or not.  The closest that anybody is going
> to get to a traditional definition of original research with a project
> of this nature is going to be those who seek oral histories for groups
> of people who traditionally did not keep written records.  I have a
> brother-in-law with Ga ancestry (one of the tribal groups in Ghana)
> where this is the only source of that sort of knowledge.  This is an
> area of human knowledge, BTW, that is as fragile as linguistic
> preservation efforts, and a key part of the transmission of human culture.
>
> I think this can be kept in check considerably with this sort of
> proposal for a geneoligical project, where research projects that have
> absolutely nothing to do with geneology would be prohibited.  Another
> point to make is perhaps the prohibition of fictional geneologies, such
> as the geneology of the Baggins Family from the works of J.R.R. Tolkein.
> Even the use of ancient ancestral records such as those from classical
> religious texts like the Bible might be at least a point of discussion
> among participants.  I think this is going to be the grey area that
> would have to be in check, not the prohibition on original research to
> keep publication of crackpot ideas off of Wikipedia.  That is the main
> purpose of the no original research policy anyway... to politely tell
> people with these wild theories that Wikipedia is not a forum for
> primary publication of these concepts.  A UFO researcher adding
> genological information about the ancestral history of "the greys" would
> be justifiably laughed off any serious geneological forum.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
I don't see how it would cause edit wars - IMHO it is fairly difficult
(impossible even) to disagree about the content of a PICS label, since
it contains objective statements of fact. For example, I appreciate it
may be possible to have an edit war about whether some particular
statement is NPOV, how do you have an edit war as to whether an article
contains an image of bare buttocks? (sure, you could edit war about
whether the image SHOULD be there, but you couldn't edit war about
whether it IS there or not , which is what a PICS label is about

Cynical

Phil Boswell wrote:
> Steve Bennett-4 wrote:
>
> You are welcome to develop your own external labelling service. Placeopedia
> acts as a linkage between Wikipedia and Google: why not set up something of
> your own for content labelling? Useful information can be found here:
> http://www.w3.org/PICS/#Developers
>
> Hosting this stuff within the Foundations purview would IMNHSO be foolish.
> Actually incorporating it into Mediawiki would be suicidal. Imagine the edit
> wars which could be provoked.
>
> HTH HAND
>


body:
To be honest, I don't really know either. I only really know from certain
discussions on Wikipedia. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is to let
people import GEDCOMs from anywhere until we get some sort of complaint, and
then think about what we are going to do from there.

On 27/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Benjamin Webb wrote:
>
> >When you import a GEDCOM to the Rodovid database, the information is
> >extracted and stored as wikipages, not as the GEDCOM, so the
> >copyrightability of the GEDCOM doesn't matter.
> >
> >
> >
> Any patents or copyright claims on the GEDCOM file format itself is not
> really the point.  This is an open international data format standard
> that has widespread support and usage from many geneological computer
> users, including many for profit and non-profit groups.  Royalties have
> never been assessed for using the data format itself and likely won't be
> either.  Trust me when I say that the internal politics of the LDS
> church would simply not allow formal royalties to be charged for it
> either, and there are geneological groups involved with the development
> of that data standard that have nothing to do with the LDS church
> either, although that is who has organized conferences and groups to
> discuss development of this standard.
>
> The copyrightability is more toward the data itself, and if databases of
> factual data can be copyrighted.  The current political movement within
> the USA is to permit copyrighting such data, although traditionally
> common law rulings in U.S. courts is to deny such records for copyright,
> such as the copyrightability of names and phone numbers in a telephone
> directory.  That in this case the information is based on facts that
> originated prior to the 20th Century gives an even weaker claim to the
> copyrightability of this data.  I don't know how far the push toward
> copyrighting databases has gone, as that would take somebody who has
> really been following the concept in legal circles, nor do I know what
> the status of that is outside of the USA.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Wasn't that the crux of [[WP:TOBY]], which failed miserably?

Toby was pretty sophisticated: "Click here if you want other people to
decide what you can see".

Leveraging existing user-side content filtering software we can
probably do ever so slightly better than that.

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting involved

body:
I use Microsoft Windows with IIS, PHP 5 and MySQL 5 for my main
development/test environment and I have no problems with it, although
having a virtual machine with FreeBSD, Apache et al. on for additional
testing is nice. :)

"Support" is a relative term, since MediaWiki sets out loose
requirements. Your web server needs to be able to handle PHP, and PHP
as installed needs session support, the PCRE libraries, and MySQL
support, so your choices are going to be dictated in part by the OS
and personal preferences. Obviously if you were going to be coding
things like Oracle or PostgreSQL support, you'd want PHP configured
and plugged in to work with those too.

Rob Church

On 27/03/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You need
> > * a web server (recommended Apache)
> > * PHP
> > * MySQL
>
> I know I'm going to get tarred and feathered here, but is ILS
> supported as the webserver?
>
> I think my Microsoft bias is showing. Anyway, I'll see how I go.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Bishop

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body: how to post a message


subject: [Wikitech-l] Getting involved

body:
On 3/27/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You need
> * a web server (recommended Apache)
> * PHP
> * MySQL

I know I'm going to get tarred and feathered here, but is ILS
supported as the webserver?

I think my Microsoft bias is showing. Anyway, I'll see how I go.

Steve


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
> looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
> redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
> IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
> return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.

If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL?
Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https
URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.

This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users,
but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are
public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> There's a simple, non-invasive way to determine the IP address of an AOL client, which I've been
> looking into recently: use SSL sign-on. Make the login links go to https://secure.wikimedia.org, and
> redirect them back when they're logged in. SSL requests skip the proxy cluster. We would store the
> IP address at login in the session, and then continue to use that IP address for the user after they
> return to the unsecured part of the site. And of course there are security benefits for all users.
>
> This would mean requiring that AOL users log in before edit. Sad, but more open than many proposed
> solutions.

While we're at it, why not have everyone sign in securely? If the
technology is in place to allow this, we should take advantage of it.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

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


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PMS Upload denied

body:
hi!

On pms we get a "The upload directory (/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/pms) is not
writable by the webserver. " error on uploads. Is it normal?

Thanks
B?rto


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Philosophical question re sources

body:
On Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:05:05 +0100, you wrote:

>My last question is: Who the hell is Paul Smith? The article begins
>"Safe Speed is a UK web-based road safety organisation run by Paul
>Smith." and only has this to say about him: "Smith ran the project as
>a hobby from his home in Scotland for some time but in 2003, following
>a period of illness in which his self-employed computer engineering
>business ran down, he took it up full time at some significant
>personal cost. Although Smith has always used the word "we" when
>discussing Safe Speed on the website, it is very much his idea and his
>organisation. Smith is also a member of the motorists' pressure group
>Association of British Drivers (ABD)."

And all the above as well.  Yes, it's all a problem.  A problem which
is hard to address, since the site is *about* making unprovable
claims, and is cited by libertarian motorists as an "authority" to
back their views - it is the sole "authority" doing so, of course,
which makes it widely cited..

>Are we to be led to believe that this whole article is about some
>angry British motorist running a website from home?

Correct.  But he is a talented self-publicist and has succeeded in
getting his absurd "one in three" claim on the BBC News website, among
other coverage.

Someone has taken to slapping {fact} and {weasel} all over the
criticisms, which is understandable enough since the rebuttals all
come from primary sources.  Any decent suggestion on how to prune it
down to an appropriate length and keep it that way would be
appreciated.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are welcome to develop your own external labelling service. Placeopedia
> > acts as a linkage between Wikipedia and Google: why not set up something of
> > your own for content labelling? Useful information can be found here:
> > http://www.w3.org/PICS/#Developers
>
> Scalability would be the problem. We have a million articles, but a
> large editor pool too. To tag pages, we would need to harness that
> editor pool.
>
> > Hosting this stuff within the Foundations purview would IMNHSO be foolish.
>
> Oh? Why?
>
> > Actually incorporating it into Mediawiki would be suicidal. Imagine the edit
> > wars which could be provoked.
>
> Yeah? We have edit wars about silly stuff now. You really think
> labelling a page "contains images of naked bodies" is so contentious?
>
> Steve

Yes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David

Does this one contain naked buttocks:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg

Or what tags would you use on this image:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg

--
geni


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
>
> Does this one contain naked buttocks:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg

What would most internet filtering software packages say?

> Or what tags would you use on this image:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg

That depends on what tags existed.

--
Sam


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/22/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Interesting ruling from the High Court in England, which could have
>> implications for our talk  pages.
>> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737001,00.html
>>
>> Sarah
>
> It only really applies to UK editors and since in the UK sending a
> libelus claim on a postcard is enough to trigger a case it is hardly
> an unexpected extension of the law.

Not quite true.  There's a number of libel cases which, along with this
one, now establish that postings to wikipedia, and I'd say anywhere on
wikipedia, not just the talk page, by anyone, regardless of country of
origin, are now fair game for a libel suit in the courts of England and
Wales.

Steve Block

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
> >
> > Does this one contain naked buttocks:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg
>
> What would most internet filtering software packages say?
>

No idea. Who cares? If we want to do this we would want to do a reasonable job.

> > Or what tags would you use on this image:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg
>
> That depends on what tags existed.
>

What tags should exist?
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
>> cite reliable published sources.
>
> When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must rely on what reputable
> people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've taken. Is that wrong?

According to [[WP:V]], absolutely.

A good way to look at the distinction between verifiability and truth is
with the following example. Suppose you are writing a Wikipedia entry on
a famous physicist's Theory X, which has been published in peer-reviewed
journals and is therefore an appropriate subject for a Wikipedia
article. However, in the course of writing the article, you contact the
physicist and he tells you: "Actually, I now believe Theory X to be
completely false." Even though you have this from the author himself,
you cannot include the fact that he said it in your Wikipedia entry.

Why not? Because it is not verifiable in a way that would satisfy the
Wikipedia readership or other editors. The readers don't know who you
are. You can't include your telephone number so that every reader in the
world can call you for confirmation. And even if they could, why should
they believe you?

For the information to be acceptable to Wikipedia you would have to
persuade a reputable news organization to publish your story first,
which would then go through a process similar to peer review. It would
be checked by a reporter, an editor, perhaps by a fact-checker, and if
the story were problematic, it might be checked further by the lawyers
and the editor-in-chief. These checks and balances exist to ensure that
accurate and fair stories appear in the newspaper.

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
> > >
> > > Does this one contain naked buttocks:
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg
> >
> > What would most internet filtering software packages say?
> >
>
> No idea. Who cares? If we want to do this we would want to do a reasonable job.

Well, if the idea of tagging is to work with internet filtering
packages, as I presume it is, finding out what works best with them
would not be a bad idea in the slightest.

> > > Or what tags would you use on this image:
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg
> >
> > That depends on what tags existed.
> >
>
> What tags should exist?

See above. ;-)

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On 3/27/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 3/22/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Interesting ruling from the High Court in England, which could have
> >> implications for our talk  pages.
> >> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737001,00.html
> >>
> >> Sarah
> >
> > It only really applies to UK editors and since in the UK sending a
> > libelus claim on a postcard is enough to trigger a case it is hardly
> > an unexpected extension of the law.
>
> Not quite true.  There's a number of libel cases which, along with this
> one, now establish that postings to wikipedia, and I'd say anywhere on
> wikipedia, not just the talk page, by anyone, regardless of country of
> origin, are now fair game for a libel suit in the courts of England and
> Wales.
>
> Steve Block

Lewis v king again? True but I can't see any non uk court inforceing a
uk libel ruleing.

--
geni


body:
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:23:19 +0200, you wrote:

>The 'weasel' tag is pretty silly - there's not even consensus that
>weasel words are particularly bad. It should be deprecated in favour
>of {fact} or something.

I thought so.  And he applied a {fact} tag to something which is
stated in the footnotes of one of the currently linked sources, which
struck me as a bit bizarre.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
  > On Mar 24, 2006, at 7:04 AM, Steve Block wrote:
>
>> So creating a narrative which doesn't exist elsewhere, for example
>> citing blog entries to create a story, that's clearly original
>> research,
>> yes?

> Fred Bauder wrote:
>> Now you are getting into citing published material. However, doing so
>> to advance a novel idea would remain original research.

So a blog entry is deemed to be a publication?  Is any given blog deemed
a publication and a reliable source?  And what then is a novel idea?  I
can construct a narrative from blog postings, would this be a novel idea?

Steve Block

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
This does NOT apply to UK editors - the decisions of the High Court of
England and Wales are only binding in (strangely enough) England and
Wales. This decision does not alter the position in the rest of the UK
(ie Northern Ireland, and Scotland, both of whom have separate courts
from England and Wales)

Cynical

Steve Block wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>> On 3/22/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting ruling from the High Court in England, which could have
>>> implications for our talk  pages.
>>> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737001,00.html
>>>
>>> Sarah
>>>
>> It only really applies to UK editors and since in the UK sending a
>> libelus claim on a postcard is enough to trigger a case it is hardly
>> an unexpected extension of the law.
>>
>
> Not quite true.  There's a number of libel cases which, along with this
> one, now establish that postings to wikipedia, and I'd say anywhere on
> wikipedia, not just the talk page, by anyone, regardless of country of
> origin, are now fair game for a libel suit in the courts of England and
> Wales.
>
> Steve Block
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Probably should be along the lines of the ICRA's label generator - I
think the 'tags' that can be included in a PICS label are actually
defined in the format specification so I don't think we could do it any
differently from the ICRA

Cynical

geni wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
>>>
>>> Does this one contain naked buttocks:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg
>>>
>> What would most internet filtering software packages say?
>>
>>
>
> No idea. Who cares? If we want to do this we would want to do a reasonable job.
>
>
>>> Or what tags would you use on this image:
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg
>>>
>> That depends on what tags existed.
>>
>>
>
> What tags should exist?
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:49:29 +0200, you wrote:

>On 3/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> I thought so.  And he applied a {fact} tag to something which is
>> stated in the footnotes of one of the currently linked sources, which
>> struck me as a bit bizarre.

>Ok, I'll swap you. You work on [[University of Melbourne Student
>Union]] and [[Melbourne University student organisations]] for a
>while, I'll take [[Safe Speed]]. In a week, we'll swap back?

Looks like you got you a deal :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On 3/27/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> This does NOT apply to UK editors - the decisions of the High Court of
> England and Wales are only binding in (strangely enough) England and
> Wales. This decision does not alter the position in the rest of the UK
> (ie Northern Ireland, and Scotland, both of whom have separate courts
> from England and Wales)
>
> Cynical

Even if you live in scotland there is a fair chance that you have
assets in england and wales . Of course if you don't have any assets
you don't need to worry anyway.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David
>
> Label it the same way as everyone else.

Which is?

> >
> > Does this one contain naked buttocks:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg
>
> I'm at work, so won't check.
>

Oh it's probably safe for work unless you are working in some islamic
countries in which case there is the theoretical posibilty it may
break some of their anti israel laws even then doubtful.

> > Or what tags would you use on this image:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg
>
> If there is a need for labelling such images "bare woman's arms", then
> we'll use the appropriate tag. Or do you mean, John Travolta is
> offensive?
>
> Steve

Remeber the "bare arms and Qur'an" fight?

--
geni


from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews EN ArbCom

body:
Nathan Carter wrote:

>I was just wondering what the use of ArbCom is if certain users choose
>not to participate and claim that they do not recognise ArbCom procedures.
>Why should we even have it if that is the case?
>For those interested in this take a look at -
>http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Requests_for_arbitration/Users_Cartman02au_et_al_v_Mrmiscellanious#Statement_by_User:Mrmiscellanious
>Cheers,
>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>
Basically the case was made early both in public and in private to Jimbo
and Larry that "Jimmy says ..." or "Larry says ..." might not scale well
as the sole method of conflict resolution as Wikipedia conquered the
Alexi ratings.

The Arbcom was established sometime thereafter .... possibly to help
provide the appearance of legitimacy to a "community" evolving on an
owner's server's and bandwidth.   Notice that Fred Bauder also
established an outlet for POV articles.  Another useful way to allow
individual expression and bleed off some of the more militant POV
warriors.

The use of Arbcom in the face of some users' refusal to acknowledge its
sovereignty or applicability is fairly straightforward.  Some useful
conflict resolution now is better than zero conflict resolution or
perfect legitimate sovereign resolution authority sometime in the next
few hundred years.  I assume Arbcom has proven efficacious at resolving
some conflict or Mr. Bauder would probably not still be involved with
it.  I saw him in action at several legal articles and he does not
strike me as one interested in wasting his time.

If you wish to improve the perception of the legitimacy of the Arbcom
more widely throughout the "community" it might be useful to consider
ways to improve the selection of the arbitrator's.   I may be out of
date here.  It is possible/likely that the stacked Board has moved
beyond hand picking people it likes and trusts.  OTOH The label and
lynch mentality established early in the project may have simply been
polished up a bit.   Why design and implement a political machine if
there is no intent to use it?  How were the emerging committees intended
to offload some of the stacked Board's workload and traceable
responsibilities established?   Were they handpicked by the stacked
Board, Jimbo, or selected/elected/nominated by the communities of
interest that they serve or represent?

Another angle of attack might be to improve the appearance of the appeal
process.  A few years ago I saw Fred explain that Arbcom's authority was
derived from Jimbo's status as site owner/God King and therefore he
could not really effectively arbitrate policy disputes directly
involving Jimbo as an adversarial party.   As I understand it, at that
time, appeals beyond the Arbcom were made to Jimbo as the God King.
Borrowing some vernacular from "24", the ultimate governing ontological
dinstinction is "Jimmy says ...".   (Which "24" and I and possibly a few
others rather vocally viewed as a potentially fatal flaw in the
implementation of the universal ether, absolute correct frame of
reference, or NPOV.   Fortunately, there is a limit to how much damage
Jimbo can personally do in other language Wikis.  Inevitably multiple
biases will infiltrate and errors begin to cancel as the WikiEmbassies
and translaters improve the flow of information between wikis. )

We could lift and tailor the U.S. approach to adjudication appeal.  When
U.S. citizens are in dispute with the all powerful executive (el
Presidente Jimbo) the case is generally appealed to a separate body
(U.S. Supreme Court) with authority completely autonomous from the
executive specified by the U.S. Constitution.

Note that in reality this effects the executive very little in day to
day administration.  Presidents often do as they please despite the
Court's rulings.  After all they control the armed forces, the daily
expenditures, and often a public mandate.  Nevertheless it provides a
pressure relief valve and a focus for vocal minorities attempting to
drive change to more tolerable (to them, not necessarily the executive's
minions) conditions.

Note that this process would probably require modification of the
existing charter of the Wikimedia Foundation's filed charter.   This is
not surprising since Jimbo explicitly stated on the Wikipedia mailing
list that he intended to stack the Board and then proceeded to privately
develop the initial Wikimedia Foundation charter to do just that.

The whole issue thus resolves to the question of when Jimbo will get
tired of the problems that unilateral godhead creates within these
projects he founded and whether suitable modifications can be designed
and implemented to rectify the deficiencies before some upstart
organization lifts our materials and begins improving them under a more
useful charter that encourages effective widespread participation.

It will be interesting to see what recommendations the external
professionals the stacked Board has been contemplating bringing in have
and how they compare to some of the community's previously volunteered
opinions and recommendations.   Of course it is always possible that
only yes people professionals will be hired as a next stage of window
dressing.  Effectively this can be done in face saving ways such as
having the consultants or experts provide multiple options along with
analysis from which the client then selects the "best" or preferred
options which are then made public.

Notice how quickly the hired legal expertise turned out to be private
client confidential with the "clients" being the stacked Board members
with fiduciary responsibilities rather than the wiki community members
or foundation membership at large.   This after qualified (Self alleged,
I asked the volunteer for no verifiable credentials, ... assume good
faith and all that.) volunteers from the community at large were
pointedly and repeatedly ignored.

Perhaps we need several teams of legal beagles to adequately represent
all segments of the "community"?

Might also be interesting .... does anyone know whether any of our
attempted grant proposals to date have been declined due to specific or
general concerns stated regarding potential conflicts of interest?

I realize the details are probably
secret/proprietary/private/something.    I am more interested in the
existence of the category .... monies not available locally due to
apparent conflicts of interest.   Could be viable funding should an
upstart fork ever arise to compete ineptly with the status quo we elite
few have created herein.

Regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews EN ArbCom


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Someone has taken to slapping {fact} and {weasel} all over the
> criticisms, which is understandable enough since the rebuttals all
> come from primary sources.  Any decent suggestion on how to prune it
> down to an appropriate length and keep it that way would be
> appreciated.
> Guy (JzG)

Formatting. Just as I create subsections when I want other editors to
expand on sections, do the opposite if you don't want that. So, trim a
whole section down into a bullet point, headed with "the three most
well-known claims are the following".

The 'weasel' tag is pretty silly - there's not even consensus that
weasel words are particularly bad. It should be deprecated in favour
of {fact} or something.

Steve


subject: [Wikipedia-l] PMS Upload denied

body:
Hi Sabine!

No, the bug has not been addressed yet. We are not in a hurry, though, we
have a lot of text translations ongoing anyway, so we can wait for a few
days. If nothing happens by the end of the week I'll go and spend some tears
on the IRC channel, to make sure someone will have mercy for pitiful us :)

Thanks
B?rto

----- Original Message -----
From: "Berto" <albertoserra at ukr.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 27, 2006 3:53 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] PMS Upload denied

hi!

On pms we get a "The upload directory (/mnt/upload3/wikipedia/pms) is not
writable by the webserver. " error on uploads. Is it normal?

Thanks
B?rto

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>G'day David,
>
>
>>Nothing to do with the fact that Britannica Online has about 100,000
>> articles and the English Wikipedia (Britannica's direct competitor)
>>has over a million?
>>
>>
>
>Wikipedia is Britannica's direct competitor?  Where does that leave
>/World Book/ and /Encarta/?  And why can't I think of more than four
>encyclopaedias at the moment?  Gah.
>
I suspect that EB will be the last dinosaur.  It is no longer economical
to produce such beasts.  Anything new in the future is likely to be
limited to one or two volume desktop works that highlight convenient
quick look-ups without the need to go on line.  Plugging "encyclopedia"
into an amazon.com search just gave me 100,874 hits with a young
readers' novel about "Encyclopedia Brown" at the top of the list,
followed by specialized works about dinosaurs (a pop-up book), folk
remedies, counselling, ordinary life, natural medicine, history, DC
Comics and mortgages.  I thumbed through the first 100 entries, and only
the World Book showed up in 68th place, there were a couple of
children's encyclopedias, and a large assortment of books covering an
amazing range of specialized topics.  The attractiveness of these may be
that they can summarize the essentials of a subject in a single volume.
They have nothing to worry about from us until we can start producing
printed single volumes.

>We're not *exactly* competing with Britannica.  We're providing a free,
>detailed, comprehensive encyclopaedia ... where "encyclopaedia" is a
>very broad description, and can include anything on any topic with
>pretensions to the name (George Lucas gets his /Star Wars/ ideas from
>us!).  We're *more* than Britannica.  Much, much more.
>
Absolutely.

>At the same time, we're much, much less.  Wikipedia's greatest strength
>--- our openness --- is also a weakness.  The damage left by edit wars,
>our tolerance of insane amounts of cruft, even the constant vandalism
>isn't that big a deal --- but inaccuracy *is*.  And Wikipedia is very
>vulnerable to inaccuracy.  Where we're inaccurate about real people,
>like John "have I spelled his name right yet" Siegenthaler,
>
No; it's "Sei..."  The old rule of "'i' before 'e' ..." dies hard.

>we can cause
>actual pain in real life.  That's an issue we're trying to deal with,
>with WP:NOR to cut down on kookery, WP:V to cut down on outright lies,
>and WP:OFFICE to mop up anything we've missed ... but it's going to take
>time.
>
The risk with rules that are too tightly observed is that we could
easily lose our competitive and innovative edge.  Striving for accuracy
is very important, but we need to be mindful of what it means when that
tossed coin lands tails up.

>We aren't out there to create a new Britannica.  We're creating
>something different.  We should look to Britannica, and its competitors,
>as something to emulate.  We should *aspire* to be as good as them.
>But, in the end, we're *not*.  There's always a niche market for
>creatures like Britannica --- for people who are worried about accuracy
>(but not money) and are not prepared to put in the effort required to
>find out if a Wikipedia article is true or not, for example.
>
Indeed, with all the implicit irony!

>Of course, unintentionally, we're hurting Britannica.  And we're hurting
>the other encyclopaedias out there as well.  We're bringing an
>encyclopaedia into the homes of people who couldn't afford the fees
>charged by the others.  Decent and free will always trump excellent and
>bloody expensive.  It's only natural that Britannica, whose management
>presumably know one or two things about business, will see this and get
>scared.  They don't want to peddle to a niche subset of the 'paedia
>audience, and they don't want to risk going under if it doesn't work.
>
There is a point when knowing a thing or two about business is not
enough.  They have already had to deviate significantly from the
encyclopedia model of the pre-electronic age, and that does not appear
to have been enough.

>And frankly, that's not just Britannica's problem --- it's ours as well.
>  "Decent and free" is fine when there are better encyclopaedias out
>there.  If we're the best the world can offer, then we *have* to be
>great, not good, not decent, but *great*.  We'd owe it to the world,
>after taking away their best encyclopaedias, to provide a valid alternative.
>
Whenever I read yet another trivial debate about whether we should have
pictures of bare breasts or the like it makes me wonder whether we are
up to the task.  It is very much our problem.  Catching up to Britannica
was a problem that could be easily put into concrete terms.  Britannica
was Number One, and a clear target.  There is a huge ethical and moral
dimension to being number one, and I'm not sure if enough of us have
grasped that.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Remeber the "bare arms and Qur'an" fight?

If there was a "bare arms" tag, then yes, I suppose that would fall
under the category.

But the discussion you are talking about was not on account of the
bare arms per se, but rather their juxtaposition.

--
Sam


from_name: John Tex

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day (Johntex)

body:
Censorship is a scare word that does not accurately describe the internal
debate over images.  If hte government tells us not to print something, that
is censorship.   If we decide not to print somethin because of our own
editorial standards, that is not censorship.

If we want Wikipedia to be taken seriously, and to be used as widely as
possible, then we need to hold ourselves to decent editorial standards.
That might mean taking some very small steps such as putting some content
behind a spoiler-like warning.  This way, people know that reading the text
of articles will be school/work-safe, and they can make an informed decision
to view the images so-tagged.

>Regardless of what you call it, the discussion has been held many
>times. There simply isn't anything near consensus for any sort of
>censorship in the community (and it is censorship, don't kid yourself,
>just read the first sentance in [[Censorship]]). The discussion has
>been had, lets just levae it at that.

Johntex


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
This feature is not in MediaWiki because MediaWiki is for an
encyclopedia and it looks more professional to have titles with a
space in them ("Hash table" instead of "HashTable", "Alabama" instead
of "AlaBama" or "AlabamA").

In my opinion, CamelCase (as it is called) is merely a relic of old
wikis, and should not be used any more.

You can read about this: (some articles have french versions)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase_and_Wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CamelCase_and_Wikipedia

On 3/27/06, Gbely Raymond <gbely_raymond at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> hello,
>   Beginning , excuse you all for my "Bad English" , we speak french in my country..:)
>
>   Is there any implmentation of automatic linking page for mediawiki ? I would
>   like know if it'll be possible to have this functionality on wikimedia, to edit
>   a page without regard how to produce page link with double brackets. I mean if
>   in a page there are some words related on the name to articles or pages ,
>   wikimedia must automatically transform those words as link to thoses pages
>   without that the editor need to put thoses word between brackets.
>
>   I saw on the net that it'was a basic function to all wiki engine . Why it's not
>   implemented in mediawiki ???
>
>   I hope that i've been understood.
>
>   thanks for your help


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelangelo%27s_David

Label it the same way as everyone else.

>
> Does this one contain naked buttocks:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Donatello_david_plaster_replica_right_1000px_wide.jpg

I'm at work, so won't check.

> Or what tags would you use on this image:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:C31893-101.jpg

If there is a need for labelling such images "bare woman's arms", then
we'll use the appropriate tag. Or do you mean, John Travolta is
offensive?

Steve


body:
On 3/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I thought so.  And he applied a {fact} tag to something which is
> stated in the footnotes of one of the currently linked sources, which
> struck me as a bit bizarre.

Ok, I'll swap you. You work on [[University of Melbourne Student
Union]] and [[Melbourne University student organisations]] for a
while, I'll take [[Safe Speed]]. In a week, we'll swap back?

Steve


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original Research

body:
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Url: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060327/3448deb6/attachment.diff


from_name: Gbely Raymond

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
hello,
  Beginning , excuse you all for my "Bad English" , we speak french in my country..:)

  Is there any implmentation of automatic linking page for mediawiki ? I would
  like know if it'll be possible to have this functionality on wikimedia, to edit
  a page without regard how to produce page link with double brackets. I mean if
  in a page there are some words related on the name to articles or pages ,
  wikimedia must automatically transform those words as link to thoses pages
  without that the editor need to put thoses word between brackets.

  I saw on the net that it'was a basic function to all wiki engine . Why it's not
  implemented in mediawiki ???

  I hope that i've been understood.

  thanks for your help

Bishop <gbely_raymond at yahoo.fr> a ?crit :  how to post a message

_______________________________________________
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M.Gbely Raymond BasilTechinicien Superieur de L'informatiqueMinist?re de l'economie et des FinancesDirection du Patrimoine de L'etat (D.P.E)BPV 57 Abidjan - C?te d'Ivoirehttp://fii.freezee.org/ -- Forum Informatique Ivorien

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from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 3/27/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>It's time for these lame AOLers to realise that there's newer, better
>>ISPs around, and that we won't hang around forever babying those
>>recalcitrants who simply refuse to upgrade.  Legacy ISPs have been a
>>millstone (is that the right metaphor?) around our necks for too long ...
>
> I might almost support that view if most AOLers had been around for 10
> years. However, they probably *do* move on and "upgrade" to a better
> ISP, leaving new, even lamer AOLers to take their place. And punishing
> *them* for it is just unfair.

It sucks when a parody backfires :-(

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

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from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] new users login with email verification

body:
On Mon, Mar 27, 2006 at 09:38:30PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> 1. This request would get a wider audience from mediawiki-l

Could you draw the distinctions between that and wikitech a little more
finely?  I didn't realize that mediawiki-l existed, but clearly, it's
still software related, rather than project-.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
Sweet. Actually you have life easy - all the main edit warriors are
currently blocked pending arbitration.

Steve

On 3/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:49:29 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >On 3/27/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >> I thought so.  And he applied a {fact} tag to something which is
> >> stated in the footnotes of one of the currently linked sources, which
> >> struck me as a bit bizarre.
>
> >Ok, I'll swap you. You work on [[University of Melbourne Student
> >Union]] and [[Melbourne University student organisations]] for a
> >while, I'll take [[Safe Speed]]. In a week, we'll swap back?
>
> Looks like you got you a deal :-)
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Mon, 27 Mar 2006 17:45:06 +0200, you wrote:

>If there is a need for labelling such images "bare woman's arms", then
>we'll use the appropriate tag. Or do you mean, John Travolta is
>offensive?

"Warning: may contain 1980s hairstyles"
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
On Mar 27, 2006, at 5:26 PM, Mark Gallagher wrote:

> G'day Phil,
>
>> On Mar 27, 2006, at 8:14 AM, jayjg wrote:
>>
>>> I would imagine it would have implications for all countries with
>>> legal
>>> systems based on British Common Law, which I would think would look
>>> at  the
>>> ruling in this case when deciding similar cases.
>>
>> It would depend--the American legal system is based on English common
>> law, but American courts rarely, if ever, take into account English
>> court precedents after the colonial period. Commonwealth countries
>> may still take into account contemporary English precedents, however.
>
> AIUI, that's due to bog-standard insecurity --- "we can't let those
> dirty forners tell us what to do!"
>
> The Australian High Court recently (well, fifteen years ago ...)
> looked
> to Zimbabwe and Canada (IIRC) for guidance.  I believe the argument
> goes
> something like: "our law was the same up until X date, therefore ---
> barring decisions that drastically change this area of law --- we're
> likely to be expected to come to similar conclusions".

The United States went to war twice to ensure that the English
weren't in charge of our laws. Other former colonies don't seem to
appreciate that :)

Do the Commonwealth nations grant to English rulings stare decisis
standing as court precedents, or do they simply look to them for
guidance?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Chatroom libel ruling

body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/27/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> geni wrote:
>>> On 3/22/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> Interesting ruling from the High Court in England, which could have
>>>> implications for our talk  pages.
>>>> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1737001,00.html
>>>>
>>>> Sarah
>>> It only really applies to UK editors and since in the UK sending a
>>> libelus claim on a postcard is enough to trigger a case it is hardly
>>> an unexpected extension of the law.
>> Not quite true.  There's a number of libel cases which, along with this
>> one, now establish that postings to wikipedia, and I'd say anywhere on
>> wikipedia, not just the talk page, by anyone, regardless of country of
>> origin, are now fair game for a libel suit in the courts of England and
>> Wales.
>>
>> Steve Block
>
> Lewis v king again? True but I can't see any non uk court inforceing a
> uk libel ruleing.

True, and I'm also not sure what the onus is on the foundation to
provide contact details for uploaders is.  That said, it's worth
remembering the potential is there.  I think the likelihood of a suit is
slim, but not zero, and potentially increasing.  I think the WP:OFFICE
is a good response and the work done by Danny is brilliant.

Steve Block

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subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l]  How to get around AOL proxies?

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>>Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>>>
>>>If that really works, couldn't we just make AOL users _edit_ over SSL?
>>>Have http links with action=edit (or action=submit) redirect to an https
>>>URL if fetched from an AOL proxy.
>>>
>>>This would break talk message notification for unregistered AOL users,
>>>but I suppose we could use a cookie for that.  After all, talk pages are
>>>public, so there's no security issue even if someone fakes the cookie.
>>
>>Now, that's an *excellent* idea.
>>
>>1 the SSL overhead will be low, because edits are a tiny fraction of the
>>overall traffic
>>2 If we only SSL the form submission, this limits the SSL overhead even
>>further.
>>3 AOL browsing will still be proxied, so page-view load will not increase
>>4 AOL _browsing_ will still be completely anonymous
>>5 AOL IP editors will still be as anonymous as any other IP editors
>>6 Dynamic IP assignment should not be any more or less of a problem than
>>with other ISPs
>>
>>Are there any reasons why this should not work? Perhaps this could be
>>the solution for all non-XFF-friendly ISPs?

It won't work for all of them, since some may tunnel SSL traffic through
the proxy as well.  There's very little we can do in that case without
help from the user, and possibly not even then.

(From a technical viewpoint, the hardest situation is not a proxy, but a
large number of users on RFC-1918 addresses behind a single NAT router.
  There's no way we can discover their internal IP address, and even if
we could, it'd be all but useless to us.)

> And, on re-reading, perhaps for AOL users only, the "my talk page" link
> could be an SSL link which would then auto-redirect to the appropriate
> IP address talk page, thus eliminating any need for a cookie.

Unregistered users don't _have_ a "my talk page" link, so the point is
moot.  They do, however, get those "You have new messages" notices,
which is what I proposed the cookie for.  I do agree with you that many
if not most special pages, including Special:Mytalk, should also be
served over SSL for those users.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic Link

body:
thanks Ilmari Karonen
  i 've seen our website to link converter i made a test, i was very  enjoyed , it 's very fine, but the problem is how to use the script on  a wiki website ???

Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> a ?crit :  Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Gbely Raymond wrote:
>
>>  Is there any implmentation of automatic linking page for mediawiki ?
>
> Not an official one.
>
>>  like know if it'll be possible to have this functionality on wikimedia
>
> No, it will not.

Well, there's always .

Not that I'd recommend it for any serious use.

--
Ilmari Karonen
_______________________________________________
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M.Gbely Raymond BasilTechinicien Superieur de L'informatiqueMinist?re de l'economie et des FinancesDirection du Patrimoine de L'etat (D.P.E)BPV 57 Abidjan - C?te d'Ivoirehttp://fii.freezee.org/ -- Forum Informatique Ivorien

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 3/24/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> Okay, but imagine you have one blog, which describes said blogger doing
>> a, b and c.  Is that permissable?  Because if it is, then it's
>> permissable to game Wikipedia, to my mind, in that anything documented
>> online is fair game.
>
> No, of course it's not. Blogs aren't generally good sources anyway - I
> was just ignoring that fact for convenience :)
>
>> To my mind, a novel narrative is one that can not be verified
>> independent of the events themselves.
>
> Well, I don't see that any "narrative" can be "verified" as such,
> other than by reference to someone who's already published it. "Novel"
> I would restrict to something controversial...

See, to me if the narrative is unverifiable, then it's not allowable per
[[WP:V]].  Novel, to me, indicates new.

Steve Block

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