from_name: Skyring

body:
On 7/20/05, Ben <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is just the way to prevent some more instruction creep: reinforce and
> enforce existing policies.

Yup. NOR and CITE cover the plagiarism issue.

However, I feel that asking people whose material we deem worthy of
inclusion to become direct contributors to WP is something that could
pay dividends. For example, I created an article on St John's Church
in Richmond (where Patrick Henry made his fiery "liberty or death"
speech, and in the process I looked up the church website for some
historical information. I listed the website as a source, but after
reading recent discussion here, I sent off an email to the contact
address, suggesting they look over and contribute to the article. They
would have access to information, photographs, all sorts of useful and
unique information that could only enhance the article. At the very
least, I think they would be honoured by a request to contribute.

--
Pete, wishing he was back in Richmond where it would be warmer than Canberra


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Plagiarism Policy, was A Missing Policy

body:
On 7/21/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Jul 2005, Skyring wrote:
>
> > On 7/20/05, Ben <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This is just the way to prevent some more instruction creep: reinforce and
> > > enforce existing policies.
> >
> > Yup. NOR and CITE cover the plagiarism issue.
> >
> Well, I beg to differ. As I pointed out in another email, adding
> plagiarised content to Wikipedia can be understood as taking written
> material someone owns & releases it under the GFDL or Creative Commons
> without first consulting the author or owner.

Perhaps you are going in directions I'm not. Plagiarism is the
unattributed use of material. If we cite our sources, then obviously
re-using material is not plagiarism. It might be intellectual theft,
but it's not plagiarism if it's atrributed.

Perhaps you are talking about copyright issues, and there are others
here better fitter to talk about copyright than I.

That whole King James Bible issue was way outside my comfort zone!

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
Steve ranted:

> Wikipedia's Achilles heel was inevitably going to be
> its size, and the unwieldiness of managing or guiding
> large group trends. If you think about any society in
> general, its continuity is dependent on the
> establishement of ritual behaviours. Wikipedia's core
> principles are for the most part exactly what should be, but
> Ive been concerned that we lack rituals for indoctrinating
> people into a sense of our community goals and nature.

[snip]

> The general idea, back in the day, was that as
> problems grow, the community must restructure to
> answer them. Disputes gotten too big for JW and the
> mailing lists?--empower a committee to deal with this,
> and another to deal with that. The point is that these
> committees are more than just bantha fodder--they represent
> community structure, which is just as important as software
> structure, or NPO structure. If were not responsive in terms
> of community structure... <i>aw, look at me, I'm ramblin'
> again.  Wal, uh hope you folks enjoyed yourselves. Catch ya
> further on down the trail.</i>

Not rambling, Steve, that was a darn good rant!

Our community of volunteer writers still have not developed sufficient
dedication to avoiding bias and incivility. This might be due (in part)
to a lingering sense of anarchistic idealism. Anyway, there is a
well-founded fear that "structure" and "government" will lead to
tyranny.

I've been experimenting with [[Wikipedia:Policy enforcement log]]. I've
made a lot of templates and (proposed) policy pages. Tim Starling wrote
a cool little hack to allow blocked users to edit their own talk page.

Steve and I have revived the Mediation Committee (Mgm asked me to
co-chair). I'm trying to wrap up two VERY DIFFICULT article mediations
before my vacation tomorrow.

A lot of problems Wikipedia has comes down to:

* "I want the web site to reflect my own ideas, feelings and desires."

This comes into endless conflict with our stated mission of creating an
unbiased yet comprehensive free encyclopedia. Nonetheless, we've done an
outstanding job. We've got the world's attention, but we need to figure
out how to take it to the next level.

Uncle Ed

P.S. I will be on vacation July 22-31. (Try not to tear down the place
while I'm gone. ;-)


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: King James version

body:
>Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 05:56:05 +1000
>From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
>
>That whole King James Bible issue was way outside my comfort zone!
>
>--
>Peter in Canberra

It's already been long enough that I've forgotten the issue... all I know is
that the King James Version of the Bible was among the earliest works
released by Project Gutenberg--in 1989. (In 2004 they released an English
version of the Douay-Rheims).

I have to believe that Project Gutenberg knows is or is not in the public
domain, that after sixteen years the odds are that the British Crown knows
that Project Gutenberg is doing it, and if they haven't complained there is
probably a good reason.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> As I pointed out in another email, adding plagiarised content to Wikipedia
> can be understood as taking written material someone owns & releases it
> under the GFDL or Creative Commons without first consulting the author
> or owner.

I think you are confusing copyright infringement with plagiarism.  We
already have policies against copyright infringement, and enforce them
fairly strictly.  I think the rest of us were talking about the kind
of plagiarism that did not involve copyright infringement.

I don't think there is any doubt about having zero tolerance for
copyright infringement.

-Matt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: King James version

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>>Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 05:56:05 +1000
>>From: Skyring <skyring at gmail.com>
>>
>>That whole King James Bible issue was way outside my comfort zone!
>>--
>>Peter in Canberra
>>
>>
>It's already been long enough that I've forgotten the issue... all I know is
>that the King James Version of the Bible was among the earliest works
>released by Project Gutenberg--in 1989. (In 2004 they released an English
>version of the Douay-Rheims).
>
>I have to believe that Project Gutenberg knows is or is not in the public
>domain, that after sixteen years the odds are that the British Crown knows
>that Project Gutenberg is doing it, and if they haven't complained there is
>probably a good reason.
>
The Crown Copyright issue here relates to an eccentric element in UK
law, and would not be applicable anywhere else.  If it has stood up
unquestioned for 16 years the doctrine of laches would likely apply.

It's hard to conceive of how the notion that the British had a copyright
on the Word of God would play out in the American Bible Belt. :-)

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Wikipedia is fun, but credibility varies a lot

body:
--- steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Plus, she wrote it at about a high school level.
> Yeesh.

To be fair, most newspapers (at least in the U.S.) require stories to be
written at that level or a bit below in order to maximize readership.

She did send me a kind email in response. Basically she is willing to learn
more about us and agreed that all media need to be looked at critically.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:32:16AM -0700, Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>As I pointed out in another email, adding plagiarised content to Wikipedia
>>>can be understood as taking written material someone owns & releases it
>>>under the GFDL or Creative Commons without first consulting the author
>>>or owner.
>>>
>>>
>>I think you are confusing copyright infringement with plagiarism.  We
>>already have policies against copyright infringement, and enforce them
>>fairly strictly.  I think the rest of us were talking about the kind
>>of plagiarism that did not involve copyright infringement.
>>
>>
>This distinction is crucial.  Plagiarism doesn't always involve
>copyright infringement, or any other legal offense.  It's perfectly
>possible to plagiarize from the public domain:  for instance, if I print
>up _Huckleberry Finn_ with my name on it instead of Mark Twain's, I'm
>not infringing copyright, but I'm certainly plagiarizing.  Plagiarism is
>chiefly a matter of dishonesty or misrepresentation: purporting that
>something is one's own work when in fact it is not.
>
There's always 506 (c):

> (c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with fraudulent
> intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or words of the
> same purport that such person knows to be false, or who, with
> fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for public
> distribution any article bearing such notice or words that such person
> knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.

I don't know if there have been any cases under that section.

>A case of copyright infringement doesn't become a non-infringing use
>when you cite your sources -- except in the edge case of certain
>copyright licenses which permit copying only if you cite the source.
>However, a case of plagiarism *almost always* becomes non-plagiarism if
>you cite your sources correctly:  giving Mark Twain credit for his work.
>
Giving credit is a matter of moral rights, which in some cases extend
longer than copyrights.  Courts are not always well equipped to deal
with infringements of moral rights except with the heavy hand of
criminal law.  Courts can more easily reduce offences into monetary
terms.  There is nobody around with the personal standing to uphold
Shakespeare's moral rights in a civil court.

Ec


from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
On 20/07/05, Ben <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Larger attempts at voting, such as the Manual of Styles vote over the use of
> styles, and the whole mess of GNAA show that there is a huge trend going
> towards voting. Consensus always seems like an abstract idea to many, not
> easily defineable and up to individual judgements. Voting, it seems, is more
> clear cut; majority wins, and no one has to decide which side has the
> advantage.
>
> A suggestion could be that the idea of consensus be more easily defined and
> propagated.
>

The WP policy page on consensus isn't bad:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus

I suggest creating more "this poll is lame" sections in, er, lame
polls, and then linking to WP:CON and meta:Polls are evil.

Dan


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
--- "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Not rambling, Steve, that was a darn good rant!
Aw shucks, Ed. Thanks.

> Our community of volunteer writers still have not
> developed sufficient
> dedication to avoiding bias and incivility. This
> might be due (in part)
> to a lingering sense of anarchistic idealism.
Well, in any case, for anyone (newbies, etc) who may
not quite understand the fragility of the project--any
number of "anarchist" tendencies can take root.

> Steve and I have revived the Mediation Committee
> (Mgm asked me to co-chair). I'm trying to wrap up
two >VERY DIFFICULT article mediations before my
vacation >tomorrow.
> ...comes down to:
> * "I want the web site to reflect my own ideas,
> feelings and desires."

I.e. the simple and basic lack of individual
understanding or fidelity to NPOV concepts has become
a broad systematic problem. Hence the notion of an
NPOV committee remains something to think about.

> Nonetheless, we've done an outstanding job. We've
got the world's attention, but we need to figure
> out how to take it to the next level.

Jolly good. And "next level" of course doesnt mean a
"pushing to 1.0" mentality, or even any
"commercially-funded real-time-DB-access
paid-academic-supervised Wikipedia-fork," but rather a
simple refocus on the encyclopedia as the main
objective.

SV

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Thu, Jul 21, 2005 at 08:32:16AM -0700, Matt Brown wrote:
> On 7/20/05, Geoff Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> > As I pointed out in another email, adding plagiarised content to Wikipedia
> > can be understood as taking written material someone owns & releases it
> > under the GFDL or Creative Commons without first consulting the author
> > or owner.
>
> I think you are confusing copyright infringement with plagiarism.  We
> already have policies against copyright infringement, and enforce them
> fairly strictly.  I think the rest of us were talking about the kind
> of plagiarism that did not involve copyright infringement.

This distinction is crucial.  Plagiarism doesn't always involve
copyright infringement, or any other legal offense.  It's perfectly
possible to plagiarize from the public domain:  for instance, if I print
up _Huckleberry Finn_ with my name on it instead of Mark Twain's, I'm
not infringing copyright, but I'm certainly plagiarizing.  Plagiarism is
chiefly a matter of dishonesty or misrepresentation: purporting that
something is one's own work when in fact it is not.

A case of copyright infringement doesn't become a non-infringing use
when you cite your sources -- except in the edge case of certain
copyright licenses which permit copying only if you cite the source.
However, a case of plagiarism *almost always* becomes non-plagiarism if
you cite your sources correctly:  giving Mark Twain credit for his work.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reviving the Patrol Idea

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

I remember, a while ago, some was bold and enabled patrolling edits for
Wikipedia. It was shortly disabled.

I think the main problem with this was that anyone could mark edits as
patrolled. I have something akin to a feature request, which basically
reinvisions how the patrol thing should work.

The basic thing is that the software will provide hooks for people to
make patrols, but won't make it mandatory for everybody.

A patrol is a group of editors who have a mutual trust of each other's
judgments. Whenever one person on that patrol marks an edit checked,
everyone else knows about it. Preferably, each patrol should specialize
(like check edits that are +-500 and anon), but some overlap is good.
Eventually, there should be patrols covering all areas of changes.

To create a patrol, you'd have to meet certain requirements (like being
an admin). You register the patrol on Wikipedia, mark down which areas
of the recent changes you will check, and then recruit people. Only the
patrol leader can recruit people, but it's recommended that they be
democratic about it.

Anyone can "tune" into a patrol, that is, they can see what the
patrollers have marked certain changes, but they can't mark a message
under the name of the patrol until they've been recruited.

Recent changes, for anon and the totally unrecruited, will stay the way
it is, but you will have the option to enable Patrol markings. We can
color code them, or a user can assign different trust levels to the
patrols and then use the overarching data on certain edits to determine
their validity (this is like a huge forward jump in time).

The Wikimedia servers will have new Patrol chat rooms, which will be
like the LiveRC but for Patrol information. Eventually, programs that
can crunch patrol data and LiveRC data will be developed to assist
patrolling.

The actual process of marking edits patrolled or not will use the
existing infrastructure. We will not be making lots of new columns in
the database, one column with a certain amount of bits (say two per
patrol) will work.

* 00 - unpatrolled
* 01 - dubious or
* 10 - something here.
* 11 - patrolled

If this isn't scalable, then we can make a new table just for patrols
along the lines of

COLUMN PRIMARY_KEY rc_patrol_id
COLUMN PRIMARY_KEY edit_id
COLUMN status

What do you think?

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFC39UAqTO+fYacSNoRArbEAJ9hPqoQZfUjZEqpK97R4ZyHnkjwWACfVws+
04HyxUWF6yrDTZEtEeh4Eq0=
=0CFu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: ilooy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Crosspolinating regarding lad.wikis

body:
Hi,
There is enough support at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Ladino
to make the following request:

I'd like to request the set up
of the Ladino wikis for subdomains
http://lad.wikipedia.org
and
http://lad.wiktionary.org

For this we will need the
help of the developers.

Could someone help set this
up? Last time I requested this
on the tech list there was no
response. Is there another
forum where this should be
handled? Or could we get
an idea of a due date where
we could have it ready and
available for contributions.

With sincere regards,
Jay B.
en:User:ILVI
ia:Usator:ILVI


subject: [Wikitech-l] Crosspolinating regarding lad.wikis


list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts

body:
Robert Scott:
"One of the best current fonts is at: http://home.att.net/~jameskass/
He only asks for a $5 registration fee, and it is a very good font that
includes many code points for several languages including braille and
signing language fonts (as defined in the Unicode standard), but
unfortunately it is not GFDL compatable in terms of common distribution,
and Mr. Kass is retaining copyright on the font."

I'm pretty sure there is no free or shareware font that comes close to
code2000, in breadth of coverage. It supports almost any language. Its latin
character is not is main strength (not too nice on small point sizes), there
are not truetype hints AFAIK, but it contains nearly all defined unicode
characters.

In fact I would strongly recommend to at least license this font for the
Wikimedia server for rendering of timecharts, once I got unicode support for
EasyTimeline ready (ET unicode version works under Cygwin, waiting for a
patched version of Ploticus for Linux, can't do that myself).

Given the very small license fee for code2000, and the fact that James Kass
made it not too easy to even pay that small fee if one wants to (payment
details are somewhat hidden) so that probably most people stick to the
nearly complete demo version, I'm sure that mr Kass is not into this for the
money really. He might be persuaded to change the license if some sponsor
would  pay him a one time fee. I would be a major boost for open source font
support.

Erik Zachte


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Creationism is not horse-shit, it's pseudo-science

body:
Jtkiefer wrote:
> Your right calling creationism a science would be POV pushing, but if
> you take the stance that creationism is anything, science,
> pseudo-science, legend, myth, total bullshit... you're still gonna piss
> someone off which is an inherent problem with having an open medium like
> wikipedia.

The issue is generally easy enough to solve with freeform text in the
body of an article by "going meta" and shifting the emphasis carefully
until everyone is more or less satisfied.  I am not the only person who
has been pleasantly astounded at how well Wikipedia actually works at
producing good high-quality consensus explanations in this manner.

Categories, on the other hand, are not as easy because they are so
strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
trouble, I think.  (And edit my description as you please until it's
satisfactorily neutral. :-))

<POV>
Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism
is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse.
Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating
creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely
and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles.  The category does that
concisely and correctly.
</POV>

I have been thinking for many days (but with no progress) about a better
name for the category.

--Jimbo


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: King James version

body:
On 21/07/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> I have to believe that Project Gutenberg knows is or is not in the public
> domain, that after sixteen years the odds are that the British Crown knows
> that Project Gutenberg is doing it, and if they haven't complained there is
> probably a good reason.

AIUI, this particular copyright is not recognised under the Berne
Convention (since it's effectively "in perpetuity")... so it's become
public domain anywhere that's not under the Crown. And PG, of course,
is an American organisation :-)

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


from_name: Arwel Parry

subject:
[Wikitech-l] *URGENT* Anonymous editor successfully editing
	protected article

body:
Could someone technically knowledgeable please investigate as a matter
of urgency how anonymous vandal user [[User:82.153.107.78]] managed to
edit [[:en:Rangers F.C.]] while it was protected, at 1408 UTC today.
This would seem to be a major breach in our security.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Kate

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: *URGENT* Anonymous editor successfully editing
	protected article

body:
Arwel Parry wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> Could someone technically knowledgeable please investigate as a matter
> of urgency how anonymous vandal user [[User:82.153.107.78]] managed to
> edit [[:en:Rangers F.C.]] while it was protected, at 1408 UTC today.
> This would seem to be a major breach in our security.

from the protection log:

# 14:14, 21 July 2005 Smoddy protected Rangers F.C. (properly vprotect)
# 14:14, 21 July 2005 Smoddy unprotected Rangers F.C. (must have checked the
box)
# 13:34, 21 July 2005 Smoddy protected Rangers F.C. (vandalism)

it's likely that the first protection only protected it against page moves,
not edits.  it seems to be protected correctly now.

kate.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

><POV>
>Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism
>is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse.
>Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating
>creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely
>and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles.  The category does that
>concisely and correctly.
></POV>
>
>
I'm not sure why that's necessary though.  No reader who reads
[[creationism]] will come away with the idea that it is accepted in
scientific circles---the article itself does a good job of finessing the
issue.  The category is sort of a blunt object that summarizes one
particular view of the issue (that of nearly all scientists) without
explanation or nuance.  This is fine when no nuance is necessary and
pretty much all viewpoints agree on the categorization ([[United States
Democratic Party]] can go into [[Category:United States political
parties]] without objection), but IMO generally inappropriate when a
dispute exists between different viewpoints.

In any case, "pseudoscience" has more of a judgment feel than a merely
informational feel.  Even common or virtually-unanimous judgments aren't
acceptable---we don't put [[Charles Manson]] and [[Adolf Hitler]] into
[[Category:Evil people]].

-Mark


body:
Theresa Knott wrote:

> Calling it "disputed science" implies that it _is_ science that
>happens to be disputed by some.  However the category contains things
>that are clearly _not_ science. So that name is no good. I can't think
>of a good replacement name myself though.
>
>
Well, [[eugenics]] is in the category (or has been on and off), and
isn't non-science, or at least not "clearly" non-science.  (It varies
from outright quackery that'd qualify as pseudoscience, to morally
questionable but scientifically rigorous proposals, such as those in the
early 20th century by the New England Journal of Medicine to sterilize
people who had heritable diseases.)

-Mark


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Plus, she wrote it at about a high school level.
>>Yeesh.
>>
>>
>To be fair, most newspapers (at least in the U.S.) require stories to be
>written at that level or a bit below in order to maximize readership.
>
The IRS went through that with the 1040 Tax Guide some years back.  The
result was a guide that was twice as thick and failed to have any effect
on those who had a hard time reading it in the first place.  It was
certainly no help to those who might previously have grasped the
concepts, and who now found themselves wading through excess verbiage.

>She did send me a kind email in response. Basically she is willing to learn
>more about us and agreed that all media need to be looked at critically.
>
>
Hooray!  A convert. :-)

Ec


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 7/21/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Jtkiefer wrote:
> > Your right calling creationism a science would be POV pushing, but if
> > you take the stance that creationism is anything, science,
> > pseudo-science, legend, myth, total bullshit... you're still gonna piss
> > someone off which is an inherent problem with having an open medium like
> > wikipedia.
>
> The issue is generally easy enough to solve with freeform text in the
> body of an article by "going meta" and shifting the emphasis carefully
> until everyone is more or less satisfied.  I am not the only person who
> has been pleasantly astounded at how well Wikipedia actually works at
> producing good high-quality consensus explanations in this manner.
>
> Categories, on the other hand, are not as easy because they are so
> strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
> regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
> fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
> scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
> trouble, I think.  (And edit my description as you please until it's
> satisfactorily neutral. :-))
>
> <POV>
> Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism
> is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse.
> Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating
> creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely
> and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles.  The category does that
> concisely and correctly.
> </POV>
>
> I have been thinking for many days (but with no progress) about a better
> name for the category.
>
> --Jimbo

I think the existence of a pseudoscience category doesn't require that
every item ever thought to be pseudoscience should be in that
category.  For example, there is perfectly normal, scientific support
for aromatherapy used for mood enhancement.  For simple health
problems like headache and stuffy nose, there is also proof that
aromatherapy is at least somewhat effective for those uses.  Yet some
fringe supporters claim that it is capable of much more, so it is
grouped in the category "pseudoscience".  I don't think it belongs in
that category.

The category "pseudoscience" should only be for the truly and
completely pseudoscientific; things that have been widely and publicly
disproven, such as biorhythms, astrology, phrenology and perpetual
motion machines.  Aromatherapy doesn't belong, as its mainstream
component (mood enhancement) is backed by science.  Mentioning the
pseudoscientific fringe application in the article is enough; it
doesn't also have to be in the category.  Items where fringe believers
delve into pseudoscientific beliefs and practices should not poison
the general article with the pseudoscience categorization if the
mainstream use and application of the belief is not pseudoscience.

Since we cannot prove to the satisfaction of everyone but the fringe
of society that creationism is pseudoscience, it shouldn't be in that
category.  Instead, it should be in a category of "origin theory" or
"origin beleifs" or something like that, along with the big bang
theory and intelligent design.  That way, they share a common link as
similar subjects, but we don't categorize religious theories as
science of any kind.  Creationism should be in any science category,
either.

Errors of categorization should always be of omission whenever such
classification can reasonably be viewed as an insult.
Undercategorization due to POV doesn't have to be a problem; we should
just make similar categories to link similar ideas together in other
ways without POV judgement.

For example, I see no similarity between aromatherapy and creationism,
except the POV judgement that someone has made to both articles,
thereby linking them through pseudoscience.  Neither has been widely
disproven, so without the POV judgement, they wouldn't be linked, and
shouldn't be.  On the other hand, not having creationism and big bang
theory linked in a common category is clearly breaking a rule of
keeping similar ideas together, so we should find an NPOV common theme
(origin theory or origin beliefs) to join them.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>I think the existence of a pseudoscience category doesn't require that
>every item ever thought to be pseudoscience should be in that
>category.  For example, there is perfectly normal, scientific support
>for aromatherapy used for mood enhancement.  For simple health
>problems like headache and stuffy nose, there is also proof that
>aromatherapy is at least somewhat effective for those uses.  Yet some
>fringe supporters claim that it is capable of much more, so it is
>grouped in the category "pseudoscience".  I don't think it belongs in
>that category.
>
>
I'd certainly agree with that.  By the definition a lot of people are
using to place things like [[aromatherapy]] into
[[category:pseudoscience]], we could easily place [[psychiatry]] there
as well, and certainly [[psychoanalysis]] (and putting [[Jacques Lacan]]
and arguably [[Sigmund Freud]] into [[category:pseudoscientists]] would
be even more of a slam-dunk).

Now while I might not personally mind such a judgment, I still think
it'd be inappropriate, and don't see most of the rest as much different...

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Editorials

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> So, to me, a site with
> 1) articles submitted to NPOV,
> 2) personal analyses only partially submitted to
> NPOV
> and not editable, and
> 3) editorials not submitted to NPVO
> has a name, Indymedia.
> Not wikinews :-)

That's almost word for word what I say (I also often
say "if you want to tell the world what you think, get
a blog").

>
> And I do not agree. I think all wikimedia projects
> should adhere to NPOV. Strictly. As much as we can.
>
> But I then thought I had no idea what other wikinews
> have been doing on this issue and that possibly some
> of them have adopted editorials (which will quite
> naturally report a pov).
> Is this the case ?

We recently discussed this on en:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler#Wikinews_Editorials

It's a bit long but probably worth a read if you're
interested. I won't summarise - it's best if you have
a read yourself.

It also looks like I didn't contribute there, but
personally I see no reason why we should have them.
Wikinews provides a fully-npov and well fact-checked
news service, and not a lot more. If you want more
biased and sloppy fare, go to Indymedia (as Anthere
suggests). Indymedia gets around four times our
traffic, btw, although it has been going since '99 or
thereabouts.

However, I understand that de.wikinews runs or did run
editorials. Hopefully Erik or someone else can explain
more...

Dan

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Editorials


from_name: SJ

body:
Be kind to journalists.  They are friends, not enemies... I wrote a
rather kinder and lighthearted response, pointing out a few
correction.   She did reply to me, that same day, agreeing that
writing under deadlines is hard; and saying that it was nice to be in
touch with someone from the community.

SJ

On 7/20/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Out of curiosity, did you get a response?
>
> --gkhan
>
> On 7/20/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Below is an email I sent to the author of an article that was semi-critical of
> > Wikipedia. I think it illustrates the way many in academia don't get it and how
> > many of those are polluting the critical thinking skills of students.
> >
> > --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2005 06:45:27 -0700 (PDT)
> > > From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> > > Subject: Wikipedia is fun, but credibility varies a lot
> > > To: Susan.Barnes at rit.edu
> > > CC: maveric149 at yahoo.com
> > >
> > > Just a note about this article
> > >
> > http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050717/BUSINESS0105/507170321/1001/BUSINESS
> > >
> > >
> > > First, the English Wikipedia had about 640,000 articles at the time your
> > > article was published. Not 444,000. Second, Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia
> > > under the ownership of Bomis in 2001 - The Wikimedia Foundation was not
> > > formed until June of 2003.
> > >
> > > If your article had been published on Wikinews, then these errors would have
> > > been very quickly corrected before being marked for publication.
> > >
> > > This just goes to show that *all* forms of media have reliability issues.
> > > This also shows that media published on paper with a PhD as an author is also
> > > prone to obvious errors. Giving students the impression that they can trust
> > > that by focusing on the unreliability of web resources like Wikipedia is a
> > > great disservice to them. All media needs to be scrutinized by students.
> > >
> > > It is true that we sometimes discount what an expert says ; the reason is
> > > that we value getting it right vs blindly accepting what an expert says
> > > without checking.
> > >
> > > Daniel Mayer,
> > > A Wikipedian
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
++SJ


body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
>>regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
>>fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
>>scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
>>trouble, I think.
>>
>>
>How about "disputed science" or "disputed scientific theories"?
>
Currently we have [[List of alternative, speculative and disputed
theories]].  I've waltzed around this topic for the last three years,
and I'm convinced that that's about as close as we'll ever get to consensus.

Ec


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

body:
Is it possible having an improved protection log, which records
automatically if  the box  was checked or not?

We had the same problem on it.wiki, few days ago.

Ciao,
Frieda

On 7/21/05, Kate <keturner at livejournal.com> wrote:
> Arwel Parry wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>
> > Could someone technically knowledgeable please investigate as a matter
> > of urgency how anonymous vandal user [[User:82.153.107.78]] managed to
> > edit [[:en:Rangers F.C.]] while it was protected, at 1408 UTC today.
> > This would seem to be a major breach in our security.
>
> from the protection log:
>
> # 14:14, 21 July 2005 Smoddy protected Rangers F.C. (properly vprotect)
> # 14:14, 21 July 2005 Smoddy unprotected Rangers F.C. (must have checked the
> box)
> # 13:34, 21 July 2005 Smoddy protected Rangers F.C. (vandalism)
>
> it's likely that the first protection only protected it against page moves,
> not edits.  it seems to be protected correctly now.
>
> kate.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
_______________________________________________
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utente:Frieda


body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>I'm not sure why that's necessary though.  No reader who reads
>>[[creationism]] will come away with the idea that it is accepted in
>>scientific circles---the article itself does a good job of finessing the
>>issue.  The category is sort of a blunt object that summarizes one
>>particular view of the issue (that of nearly all scientists) without
>>explanation or nuance.  This is fine when no nuance is necessary and
>>pretty much all viewpoints agree on the categorization ([[United States
>>Democratic Party]] can go into [[Category:United States political
>>parties]] without objection), but IMO generally inappropriate when a
>>dispute exists between different viewpoints.
>>
>>
>
>You have to draw the line somewhere. Would you
>disagree with categorizing Christianity as a Religion?
>Jack T. Chick does (see e.g. frame 38 in this tract:
>http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1023/1023_01.asp).
>
>How far are you willing to go in the name of NPOV?
>How many Christian fundamentalists have to disagree
>with a fact to make it too controversial for Wikipedia
>to state in its unmarked voice? Our [[Earth]] article
>currently states without attribution that "[t]he planet
>formed around 4.57 billion (4.57?109) years ago".
>Do you think that sentence should be changed or qualified
>to reflect the "different viewpoints" on this subject?
>
>None of these are meant as rhetorical questions or
>trick questions. I'm honestly interested in where
>you want to draw the line.
>
The problem with this line of reasoning is in the need to "draw the
line".  There is no clear-cut demarcation between science and
non-science.  This was the main point in Feyerabend's arguments.
Drawing on your Chick pick I could certainly find an argument in favor
of "Bible Christianity is not religion."  Bible Christians are too stuck
in the words of the Bible to brought together as religion should do.  By
disavowing the record of the Bible the author effectively disavows
creation, prefering instead his mystical relationship with Jesus.

Since you seem to disagree with the age of the earth, what would you
suggest?  How would you back up your alternative theory? Saying that
Christian fundamentalists are wrong is just as POV as saying that they
are right.  There is no better way to promote creationism than to argue
against it.  The same happens with a lot of other fields that you might
label as pseudoscience.

Attitudes toward the various topics that end up on the pseudoscience
list will vary considerably.  The ones that I consider most likely to be
credible will differ from those that you put on such a list.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Poor, Edmund W (Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com) [050721 23:56]:
>
>
>>A lot of problems Wikipedia has comes down to:
>>* "I want the web site to reflect my own ideas, feelings and desires."
>>This comes into endless conflict with our stated mission of creating an
>>unbiased yet comprehensive free encyclopedia. Nonetheless, we've done an
>>outstanding job. We've got the world's attention, but we need to figure
>>out how to take it to the next level.
>>
>>
>We're having fun with this on [[WP:SCN]] (a Scientology wikiproject). You
>have the views of the CoS members and the views of the critics, and they're
>basically almost utterly incompatible. But NPOV is achievable! With great
>effort! (Also, we have a recently ex-member who's doing a great job on the
>articles about the "tech", i.e. the substance of the religion itself.)
>[[Xenu]] is achieving widespread fame in the blogosphere, and is being
>quoted (uncredited) in just about every recent press article on Tom
>Cruise's proselytisation for the Church. So we're getting just a little
>attention. I'm sure we'll weather it, and Wikipedia's immune systems appear
>to be kicking in just fine in at least one case ...
>
>
In other words, achieving consensus is hard work.  Calling for a poll on
some of these question can blow any possibility of consensus.

Ec


from_name: janisc at adelphia.net

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Multiple meaning definitions

body:
Hello,

I signed up for this list, because one my favorite hobbies is contributing to Wikipedia.

I am having a problem though with something I want to submit.

Multiple meanings--say you have a Taxi as in mode of transportation and Taxi the TV show.  How do you put the TV show up?  The "Taxi" listing is just an example as I'm sure the TV show listing is up.  How do you add a title of a book, movie, or record if the meaning is shared?  And what's worse what the title I want to add.  The proper definition of the word actually takes you to page of a redirect and not the word itself.

So any help would be kindly appreciated.  Thanks. :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki wiki

body:
hi,

at avar's suggestion i've created a wiki for MediaWiki (gosh, to think we
never had one of those before...).  it's located at:

  http://wiki.mediawiki.org/wiki/Main_Page

i'm not really sure what the best use for it is at the moment, but to start
with, moving wikipedia.sourceforge.net there seems reasonable, and then maybe
some of the documentation from meta.

have fun.

kate.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
Yes, we have come a long way. I remember creating the article Great
Salt Lake. I got a little flack from someone in Brooklyn, but Utah
did not weigh in. Anti-Mormonism exists. Mormons, especially in
groups, don't always act cool and some folks exaggerate or even make
up grievances. POV pushing violates our policies. But we have never
had a Mormon arbitration case.

Fred

On Jul 21, 2005, at 5:08 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

> While I would love to agree with you entirely, the situation e.g.
> with the LDS articles is exactly the opposite. Criticism is spread
> on sub-articles of sub-articles, and you have pages like
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mormonism which is largely an LDS
> description of anti-Mormon activities. Some of the LDS pages could
> come straight out of glossy brochures from Utah.


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
On Jul 21, 2005, at 9:56 AM, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>

> This comes into endless conflict with our stated mission of
> creating an
> unbiased yet comprehensive free encyclopedia. Nonetheless, we've
> done an
> outstanding job. We've got the world's attention, but we need to
> figure
> out how to take it to the next level.

I am increasingly coming to believe that NPOV does not lead to an
unbiased encyclopedia, but rather an encyclopedia that is biased
against idiocy. There's a wide number of totalizing POVs - Church of
Scientology springs to mind - that can't function in a NPOV
environment because they deny the existence of multiple points of
view. These POVs are excluded. We are biased against them.

As well we should be, but still. It's a key distinction, and one that
I think plays into other parts of this debate.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> I'm not sure why that's necessary though.  No reader who reads
> [[creationism]] will come away with the idea that it is accepted in
> scientific circles---the article itself does a good job of finessing the
> issue.  The category is sort of a blunt object that summarizes one
> particular view of the issue (that of nearly all scientists) without
> explanation or nuance.  This is fine when no nuance is necessary and
> pretty much all viewpoints agree on the categorization ([[United States
> Democratic Party]] can go into [[Category:United States political
> parties]] without objection), but IMO generally inappropriate when a
> dispute exists between different viewpoints.

You have to draw the line somewhere. Would you
disagree with categorizing Christianity as a Religion?
Jack T. Chick does (see e.g. frame 38 in this tract:
http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/1023/1023_01.asp).

How far are you willing to go in the name of NPOV?
How many Christian fundamentalists have to disagree
with a fact to make it too controversial for Wikipedia
to state in its unmarked voice? Our [[Earth]] article
currently states without attribution that "[t]he planet
formed around 4.57 billion (4.57?109) years ago".
Do you think that sentence should be changed or qualified
to reflect the "different viewpoints" on this subject?

None of these are meant as rhetorical questions or
trick questions. I'm honestly interested in where
you want to draw the line.

Regards,
Haukur


body:
See Taxi and Taxi (TV series),
there is a redirect at Taxi (sitcom).

Fred

On Jul 21, 2005, at 6:59 PM, Boris Lohnzweiger wrote:

> Multiple meanings--say you have a Taxi as in mode of transportation
> and Taxi the TV show.  How do you put the TV show up?  The "Taxi"
> listing is just an example as I'm sure the TV show listing is up.
> How do you add a title of a book, movie, or record if the meaning
> is shared?  And what's worse what the title I want to add.  The
> proper definition of the word actually takes you to page of a
> redirect and not the word itself.
>
> So any help would be kindly appreciated.  Thanks. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Then you have stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephi - a
> character out of the Book of Mormon - which is simply prefaced with
> "According to the Book of Mormon", and everything else is presented as
> fact.

I don't see a problem with that article.  What else is there to say
about it?  The Book of Mormon claims something about a person named
"Nephi", and we report "the Book of Mormon claims the following about
Nephi".  Do we need to explicitly say "however, people who think the
Book of Mormon is mostly hogwash think this claim is also hogwash"?
Should we add to the [[Nirvana]] and [[Shiva]] articles that a lot of
people think that Nirvana is nonsense and Shiva might not actually exist?

-Mark


from_name: tpryor at media.mit.edu

subject:
[Wikitech-l] request for anonymized apache log data for a
	recommendation system

body:
Hi,

I'd like to make a request to obtain access to anonymized apache logs for
wikipedia user data.

I am creating a new interface for wikipedia that requires clustered user data
(in that sense it is akin to the amazon recommendation system or, more
originally, movielens).

For this I need access to user page requests over time- preferably stored in a
database. I can provide a script that will translate users' ip addresses to a
unique signature so that the users themselves remain anonymous.

Who might I talk to to arrange this?

Tony Pryor


from_name: Miranche

subject: [Wikitech-l] Historical wikipedia snapshots

body:
Greetings Wikitechies,

I'm working on a research project on Wikipedia, and I'd like to create or obtain
a historical snapshot of Wikipedia on or about a given date.  I'm familiar
enough with mediawiki that I could hack my own script recreating the contents of
the "cur" table from the corresponding history (eg. by calling getRevisionText()
a couple of 10^5 times).  However since I'd hate to rediscover the wheel, I'd
appreciate if you could let me know if this has been done before, if there are
archives of old snapshots, or if there's an easier way to approach it
technically.

Thank you!

Miran B


body:
> How about "disputed science" or "disputed scientific theories"?

I don't think that would be a good name change.
The whole point is that [[Creationism]], [[Homeopath]]
etc. aren't scientific theories at all. And they
aren't disputed by the scientific community. This
is very different from new and disputed scientific
theories.

To quote Fastfission:

"The need to have some meaning indicates we will
have to perhaps sometimes have some statements
which are less neutral than others."

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
> regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
> fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
> scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
> trouble, I think.

How about "disputed science" or "disputed scientific theories"?

Sam


body:
Jimbo wrote:

> <POV>
> Now, a big part of the irritant in this discussion is that creationism
> is, as a matter of simple ordinary fact, pseudo-science or worse.
> Readers deserve to know, and quickly and simply, that treating
> creationist theories as if they were somehow scientific is completely
> and utterly unacceptable in scientific circles.  The category does that
> concisely and correctly.
> </POV>

Well put! Now, if you'd please replace <POV>...</POV>
with <ex cathedra>...</ex cathedra>... ;)

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
>
> How about "disputed science" or "disputed scientific theories"?

 Calling it "disputed science" implies that it _is_ science that
happens to be disputed by some.  However the category contains things
that are clearly _not_ science. So that name is no good. I can't think
of a good replacement name myself though.

Theresa


body:
On 21/07/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > strictly limited.  If we had a category of "things which are widely
> > regarded, by scientists and others of a similar bent, as being less than
> > fully established science, but which are often, by those who are not
> > scientists, put forward as if they were science" then we'd have less
> > trouble, I think.
>
> How about "disputed science" or "disputed scientific theories"?

But this doesn't really work. The steady-state universe is a disputed
scientific theory; impact-driven mass extinctions ditto... cold fusion
is about as wacky as you get whilst still being a disputed scientific
theory.

Lots of pseudoscience isn't a scientific theory which is disputed;
it's a theory the "scientificness" of which is disputed, if that makes
sense.

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


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Case sensitivity on Afrikaans Wiktionary

body:
Hi guys. I'd just like to insert a few comments...

On 7/21/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Hi Gerard,
> >
> When you look at the ERD it is explicitly indicated by the
> Conju/Decli-Word table what the Headword is. This is done for any

Why not call it the Inflection table since conjugation and declension are
just types of inflection. It's a lot easier to pronounce.

> language and it means that it is by practice and not design that in most
> languages the infinitive will be the Headword. Consequently, when one
> word is found the other will be also shown in a format that may need
> some screen design per type of conjugation or declination.

Many languages do not have a concept of "infinitive". Many languages
use some other form as the headword in dictionaries. Such forms are
known as citation forms. The other extremely common form used by
many languages as the verbal citation form is the 3rd person singular
present indicative. If verbs have gender then it is the masculine form.
I am not aware of another verb form used as the citation form but
there's a good chance there are others in exotic languages. Also it's
worth noting that a few languages have more than one infinitive form.

Hippietrail


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
[With]in [the context of] Mormonism, Nephi is...

Seems fairly neutral to me. However there are valid
concerns that n/10 average random articles fail to put
things in this context, and carry this through. Its
easy to be overly general ("worrying trends") or
overly particular ("Nephi") and miss the balance.

SV

--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> I don't see a problem with that article.  What else
> is there to say
> about it?  The Book of Mormon claims something about
> a person named
> "Nephi", and we report "the Book of Mormon claims
> the following about
> Nephi".

Do we need to explicitly say "however,
> people who think the
> Book of Mormon is mostly hogwash think this claim is
> also hogwash"?
> Should we add to the [[Nirvana]] and [[Shiva]]
> articles that a lot of
> people think that Nirvana is nonsense and Shiva
> might not actually exist?

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Commons copyright violotion and OTRS

body:
Hi,

Le Wednesday 20 July 2005 21:06, Gerard Meijssen a ?crit :
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> > Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> >> Hoi,
> >> On OTRS I received a complaint that some photo's were taken from a
> >> website. As the photo's were located on Commons, I informed the
> >> gentleman to go to the Commons administrators. In this case they were
> >> world war II photo's of machine guns. I told the gentleman that even
> >> if the photos were taken from his website, it would not matter when
> >> the photos are already in the pubic domain.
> >>
> >> The question, as it is not possible for a Dutch admin to remove
> >> photos from Commons and as it has no impact to remove the pictures
> >> from an article, is it correct to refer this gentleman to the Commons
> >> admins or is there / should there be a procedure for these issues.
> >
> > On Commons, if you think there is a copyright tag you can throw on
> > images you think are in dispute, which is the {{Copyvio}} tag, and any
> > user can add that onto the image.  You don't need to be an admin.
> > Please make sure you put in a reason on the image page when you think
> > there is a problem, or try and contact the user who uploaded the
> > content (to be kind to a potential new user who thought uploading
> > random stuff from web pages was appropriate).  The tag will get
> > flagged to a category which the admins on Commons check very
> > regularly, and will delete if it is against Commons policy.
>
> Hoi,
> In this case Commons states that it is public domain. There is this user
> who has just another WW II website and is the opinion that we copied his
> website. I am not completely aware of how these things are done on
> Commons and, I do not agree with some of the procedures that I do know.
> The thing is with OTRS, I am not just some user. By notifying me of this
> issue the gentleman may think he is talking to the WMF itself while in
> fact it has nothing to do with the nl.wikipedia. So the issue is also a
> bit bigger than just this and that is why I ask for some guidance.

I think the solution is quite easy.
Ask this person who is the photgrapher of this picture and when this
photographer died if he knows it. If he doesn't know who is the photographer,
I would think that he doesn't own the copyright of the picture. It doesn't
mean that the picture is in the public domain, but at least he can't give you
any trouble.

That's what I did with a German organisation who claims copyright of Gandhi's
photos I uploaded in Commons. I doubt very much this organisation owns any
copyright on these pictures and I am still waiting for its answer, two months
after my mail.

> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts

body:
Le Thursday 21 July 2005 01:15, Dori a ?crit :
> On 7/20/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
>
> > On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a
> > collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for
> > our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is
> > free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires
> > a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I
> > think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we
> > acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will
> > be able to get many resources for free.
>
> Good fonts require tons of time from professional artists. I don't
> think the foundation could buy them for all languages we support
> unless we somehow come across a few million dollars. We'd probably
> have better luck convincing Microsoft to open source theirs.

You are joking, I hope ?
I?doubt very much Microsoft is going to release anything as Open source any
time soon. It is not in their interest.

But I am pretty sure funding could be found to buy IP?rights.
Think about Blender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)

> Dori

Regards,
Yann
--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reviving the Patrol Idea

body:
Approval by committee, anyone?

See my proposal at [[w:en:User:R3m0t/Article validation]] - it's
short, and it's more or less what Yang suggests here, except for
article quality.

And by the way, I don't see the point of many patrol groups for
something as simple as vandalism. Perhaps a degree of trust to a user,
yes. ("Slightly trusted patroller" -> "Very trusted patroller")

On 21/07/05, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> A patrol is a group of editors who have a mutual trust of each other's
> judgments. Whenever one person on that patrol marks an edit checked,
> everyone else knows about it. Preferably, each patrol should specialize
> (like check edits that are +-500 and anon), but some overlap is good.
> Eventually, there should be patrols covering all areas of changes.
>
> To create a patrol, you'd have to meet certain requirements (like being
> an admin). You register the patrol on Wikipedia, mark down which areas
> of the recent changes you will check, and then recruit people. Only the
> patrol leader can recruit people, but it's recommended that they be
> democratic about it.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wapipedia

body:
--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/22/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Thank you Tim
> > I wrote at the adress to report the issue.
>
> Sorry - I forgot to mention on this list that I'd
> already done that.
> The site owner replied to say this was due to some
> bad scripting, and
> it was part of his mid-year-break project and he
> doesn't have time to
> fix it now since he's working, but he will in
> future.
>
> Angela.

Basically this is what he immediately told me.

ant

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 21/07/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>She did reply to me, that same day

My mail must've sucked somewhat - she hasn't replied to me, and I
mailed just over 24hrs ago :-)

Dan


from_name: Alexandre Dulaunoy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Explicit copyright assignment to wikimedia foundation

body:
Dear All,

I was wondering  what is the current status  of the explicit copyright
assignment  to the  wikimedia  foundation.  Is it  possible  to do  so
instead  of the  non-explicit  copyright assignment  for any  original
wikipedia contribution ?  Is there any official procedure  and form to
assign copyright to the foundation ?

Thanks a lot for any feedback,

adulau

--
--                   Alexandre Dulaunoy (adulau) -- http://www.foo.be/
--                          http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
--         "Knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance
--                                that we can solve them" Isaac Asimov


subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
> David Gerard wrote:
> "...success..."[!]

> On Jul 21, 2005, at 5:08 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
> > While I would love to agree with you
entirely...[there are] pages like
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mormonism which
> is largely an LDS description of anti-Mormon
activities. Some of the LDS pages could
> > come straight out of glossy brochures from Utah.

Peoples can become greatly occupied with
historiologising their collective persecution. (Which
is easy enough to designated as a general -ism with
anti- in front of it.) For example 9/11 articles might
just as easily be filed under
"Category:Anti-Americanism," and written off as a
"largely Western/American description of
anti-Western/American activities" (Didnt certain
people even set up a "memorial wiki"?)

So, whilst its generally rather easy (for
objective[istical] people) to see when something's a
bit one-sided, it can be difficult for experienced
editors to promote basic NPOV policy in some areas. So
its not that "its all too much hard work," its that WP
should try to conceptually organize various types of
NPOV debates and approach them more collectively. Say
"N P O V  c o m m i t t e e."

SV

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Zhuang wikipedia user Jienji VANG reply

body:
He should be reminded that Wikipedia's policy is "no original research".

It's OK for him to write in the dialect of Tianyang, but it's not OK
for him to invent a new orthography that nobody uses before. There is
already existing an official orthography, used by millions of Zhuang
people already. If he wants to write in Tianyang dialect, he should
use the official orthography for it.

Also, the Wuming dialect is the standard, and is widely understood.

There is nowhere else that talks about "t??", but there are many sites
that talk about "cuengh". Does he have an explanation for this?

Mark

On 21/07/05, shizhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Zhuang wikipedia user Jienji VANG reply on zh wp:
>
> The Zhuang Wikipedia edition I modified was based on the Zhuang dialect of my
> hometown, Tianyang(???). Since there is a Plattd??tsch Wikipedia project, i
> supposed that Zhuang Wikipedia could also be devided into many ones. Besides,
> the Holy Mountain of Ganzhuang(???), ruin of the earliest ancestor(???) of
> the Zhuang people, locates in Tianyang. The dialect in Tianyang has its own
> character. Because of the incapacity of the present standard Wuming Zhuang(??
> ??) in expressing Tianyang Zhuang's actuality, I referred to the Ti?ng Vi?t
> (Vietnamese) and adopted a new spelling system. In Tianyang, Zhuang is called
> t?. To distinguish it from the verb roar(t?, ?), I used the word t??. The word
> Puut?? means the Zhuang people. I have declared that it's a Tianyang Zhuang
> edition. Please do never modify it in Wuming Zhuang, ok? As a matter of fact,
> few people learn to speak Zhuang, and the so-called standard Zhuang(Wuming) is
> only used in Wuming County, so would you please let me do my own wikipedia
> alone?
>
> See discuss on Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%
> 81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E5.A3.AE.E8.AF.ADWikipedia
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Also I would not translate "????????????" as "could also be divided
into many ones", but rather "could also have a separate version for
different dialects".

Mark

On 21/07/05, shizhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Zhuang wikipedia user Jienji VANG reply on zh wp:
>
> The Zhuang Wikipedia edition I modified was based on the Zhuang dialect of my
> hometown, Tianyang(???). Since there is a Plattd??tsch Wikipedia project, i
> supposed that Zhuang Wikipedia could also be devided into many ones. Besides,
> the Holy Mountain of Ganzhuang(???), ruin of the earliest ancestor(???) of
> the Zhuang people, locates in Tianyang. The dialect in Tianyang has its own
> character. Because of the incapacity of the present standard Wuming Zhuang(??
> ??) in expressing Tianyang Zhuang's actuality, I referred to the Ti?ng Vi?t
> (Vietnamese) and adopted a new spelling system. In Tianyang, Zhuang is called
> t?. To distinguish it from the verb roar(t?, ?), I used the word t??. The word
> Puut?? means the Zhuang people. I have declared that it's a Tianyang Zhuang
> edition. Please do never modify it in Wuming Zhuang, ok? As a matter of fact,
> few people learn to speak Zhuang, and the so-called standard Zhuang(Wuming) is
> only used in Wuming County, so would you please let me do my own wikipedia
> alone?
>
> See discuss on Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%
> 81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E5.A3.AE.E8.AF.ADWikipedia
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


body:
The last sentence also is perhaps better translated as "For that
reason, I ask if it's OK for me to create my own Wikipedia??"

In the English translation provided by Captmjc, the last sentence
sounds a bit rude, while in the Chinese version it's an actual
request.

Cheers
Mark

On 21/07/05, shizhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Zhuang wikipedia user Jienji VANG reply on zh wp:
>
> The Zhuang Wikipedia edition I modified was based on the Zhuang dialect of my
> hometown, Tianyang(???). Since there is a Plattd??tsch Wikipedia project, i
> supposed that Zhuang Wikipedia could also be devided into many ones. Besides,
> the Holy Mountain of Ganzhuang(???), ruin of the earliest ancestor(???) of
> the Zhuang people, locates in Tianyang. The dialect in Tianyang has its own
> character. Because of the incapacity of the present standard Wuming Zhuang(??
> ??) in expressing Tianyang Zhuang's actuality, I referred to the Ti?ng Vi?t
> (Vietnamese) and adopted a new spelling system. In Tianyang, Zhuang is called
> t?. To distinguish it from the verb roar(t?, ?), I used the word t??. The word
> Puut?? means the Zhuang people. I have declared that it's a Tianyang Zhuang
> edition. Please do never modify it in Wuming Zhuang, ok? As a matter of fact,
> few people learn to speak Zhuang, and the so-called standard Zhuang(Wuming) is
> only used in Wuming County, so would you please let me do my own wikipedia
> alone?
>
> See discuss on Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%
> 81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E5.A3.AE.E8.AF.ADWikipedia
>
> [[zh:user:shizhao]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>The problem with this line of reasoning is in the need to "draw the
>>line". There is no clear-cut demarcation between science and
>>non-science.
>>
>>
>I was not so much referring to the line between science
>and non-science as the general line between *facts* which
>Wikipedia can report in its own voice without attribution
>("The Eiffel Tower is in Paris.") and *contested opinions*
>which have to be attributed or qualified ("Some critics of
>the Bush administration have suggested that oil interests
>were an important factor in the decision to invade Iraq.").
>
>Here are a few statements which I have been using as test
>cases for where different people might want to draw this
>line.
>
>1. Christianity is a religion.
>
>2. Creationism is pseudo-science.
>
>3. Americans have landed on the moon.
>
>4. The Nazis systematically exterminated
>millions of Jews.
>
>5. Human activities are significantly
>affecting the average temperature on Earth.
>
>My personal "line of unmarked narrative"
>lies somewhere between statements 4 and 5.
>
My response to those.
    1. Yes, by definition, with or without the theology.
    2. No, an opinion and characterization.  This doesn't mean that I
believe in creationism.  Only that categorizing something as
"pseudoscience" is a falsifiable theory that needs to be itself subject
to scientific rigour.
    3. Yes.  The Hollywood Studio Conspiracy Theory is a little
far-fetched, but those theorists have the burden of proof.  It's hard to
say when the cross the line from mere speculation (which is acceptable
in the formation of an early theory) to pseudo-science.  My speculation
(or theory) would be that that theory was intended as a joke, but I'm
willing to let it be at that without wasting time trying to prove it.
That would hardly warrant elevating my theory to the status of
pseudoscience.  That would be a perfectly abandonable theory.
    4. Yes, but for the use of the word "systematically".  The
exterminations are a question of body count.  That they were systematic
about it requires forming an opinion on a broader set of facts.
    5. That's an opinion.  Some would say that your Icelandic volcanoes
are the problem :-)

>>This was the main point in Feyerabend's arguments.
>>Drawing on your Chick pick I could certainly find an argument in favor
>>of "Bible Christianity is not religion."  Bible Christians are too stuck
>>in the words of the Bible to be brought together as religion should do.  By
>>disavowing the record of the Bible the author effectively disavows
>>creation, prefering instead his mystical relationship with Jesus.
>>
>>
>Excellent. Would you, then, object to Christianity
>being included in a religion category on grounds of
>the NPOV policy?
>
No.  Not all Christianity is Bible Christianity.  That one word,
"Bible", which you omitted from the comic strip quote can make a big
difference. Whether Christianity is a religion is a question of how you
define your terms.

>>Since you seem to disagree with the age of the earth, what would you
>>suggest? How would you back up your alternative theory?
>>
>>
>Maybe you misunderstood me or maybe I'm misunderstanding
>you. I'm fine with the Earth being old. I'm not a geologist,
>though, and I'm not familiar with the fine points of our
>current status of knowledge regarding the age of the Earth.
>
Great!  You know your limitations.  I wouldn't have the skills to prove
or disprove that one either.  So we both accept that opinion about the
Earth's age as provisionally true.  The onus is upon those who want to
convince us of something else to come up with convincing proof.

>>Saying that Christian fundamentalists are wrong is just
>>as POV as saying that they are right.
>>
>>
>I'm still not quite clear on your position here.
>Do you object to the current lead of the [[Earth]]
>article on grounds of the NPOV policy? If not then
>why not?
>
The lead says nothing about the Christian fundamentalists; your question
is a non-sequitur.  What am I supposed to be objecting to?  I have one
possible objection.  The symbol shown for Earth may have predated
meridians, so how can it be based on them?  But until I can back up my
position I'm not going to jump in on that.

>>There is no better way to promote creationism than to argue
>>against it. The same happens with a lot of other fields that you might
>>label as pseudoscience.
>>
>>
>I happen to disagree with that but it's irrelevant
>to the discussion at hand. We're not talking about
>how best to combat pseudoscience, we're talking about
>how the NPOV principle of Wikipedia applies to such
>topics and, in particular, their categorization.
>
To apply NPOV to the naming of categories choose names that are
acceptable to both sides of the issue.

>>Attitudes toward the various topics that end up on the pseudoscience
>>list will vary considerably.  The ones that I consider most likely to be
>>credible will differ from those that you put on such a list.
>>
>>
>What's important is the consensus of the scientific
>community. Not the opinion of me or you after a casual
>look on a list. As with any other topic you have to do
>substantial research to be able to write well on this.
>
>
I'm willing to look at the consensus of the scientific community, then
make up my own mind.  The science is more important than the
scientists.  I will not bow down and worship at the feet of the
scientific community.  Scientists can be just as entrenched in their
wrong ideas as writers of paper encyclopedias are about Wikipedia.  I
will respect a scientist in the work that hehas done in his own field,
but I will also be extremely skeptical when he starts to pontificate in
other areas.

Ec


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Explicit copyright assignment to wikimedia
	foundation

body:
> I was wondering  what is the current status  of the explicit copyright
> assignment  to the  wikimedia  foundation.  Is it  possible  to do  so
> instead  of the  non-explicit  copyright assignment  for any  original
> wikipedia contribution ?  Is there any official procedure  and form to
> assign copyright to the foundation ?

There isn't any standard form yet. I'm not convinced the Foundation
should want people to assign copyright to it though. Isn't it a lot
safer if we don't have ownership of any of the content? If we only own
the trademarks and domain name, there's a lot less to lose should the
Board go crazy and sell out to Microsoft or if someone successfully
sues us.

Angela.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>Le Thursday 21 July 2005 01:15, Dori a ?crit :
>
>
>>On 7/20/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>><snip>
>>
>>
>>
>>>On previous wikimeets I attended we did discuss the need for a
>>>collection of fonts that would include as many fonts as we can get for
>>>our public. It would help a lot if we could have one resource that is
>>>free for use and that does include all the needed fonts. If it requires
>>>a reasonable amount of money to buy a missing font to make it Free, I
>>>think it is worthy of consideration. I am also sure that when we
>>>acknowledge the people who make fonts available for this purpose we will
>>>be able to get many resources for free.
>>>
>>>
>>Good fonts require tons of time from professional artists. I don't
>>think the foundation could buy them for all languages we support
>>unless we somehow come across a few million dollars. We'd probably
>>have better luck convincing Microsoft to open source theirs.
>>
>>
>
>You are joking, I hope ?
>I doubt very much Microsoft is going to release anything as Open source any
>time soon. It is not in their interest.
>
>But I am pretty sure funding could be found to buy IP rights.
>Think about Blender: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)
>
Hoi,
Actually there are quite a few applications that have been made open
source by Microsoft. They do use several licenses for this and they are
not all equally Free or Open. My point is more that we should not assume
what a company like Microsoft is. When we want something of them and
when we do not ask nicely then we are not much better than what we make
Microsoft out to be.

Yes, we could buy IP rights propably for the shareware fonts ..

I have started an article on Meta on this subject: [[Font support from
the WikiMedia Foundation]]. This is to prevent the idea from going away
.. :)

Thanks,
    Gerard


subject: [Foundation-l] Fonts


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Miranche wrote:
> Greetings Wikitechies,
>
> I'm working on a research project on Wikipedia, and I'd like to create or obtain
> a historical snapshot of Wikipedia on or about a given date.  I'm familiar
> enough with mediawiki that I could hack my own script recreating the contents of
> the "cur" table from the corresponding history (eg. by calling getRevisionText()
> a couple of 10^5 times).  However since I'd hate to rediscover the wheel, I'd
> appreciate if you could let me know if this has been done before, if there are
> archives of old snapshots, or if there's an easier way to approach it
> technically.

I seem to remember someone looking into this, I don't know if they
completed it.

There are a few difficulties which mean you can't produce a completely
accurate past snapshot from a recent dump, in particular:

* Pages which have been renamed may appear at different locations; it's
difficult to track back to what the title was at a given past time.
* Pages which have been since deleted will not appear at all
* In rarer cases, histories have been merged after being accidentally
separated during editing, or individual revisions have been removed due
to copyright or other legalish issues.
* Image file uploads suffer similarly; there are no renames there but
older versions may be deleted (usually for vandalism)

You can however extract a reasonable approximation of the contents of
the wiki at a given time, depending on your needs.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Librarians, Professors, and Pundits

body:
SJ wrote:

>And, last but not least, from today's news:
>* Britannica has chosen a new 15-person advisory board, the first
>since the last one was effectively disbanded 10 years ago.  They hope
>that, among other things, this will bolster their image as a vetted
>and polished resource, to "respond to competitive challenges from
>Google, Yahoo, and the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia."
>http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/07/21/venerable_encylopedia_seeks_just_the_facts/
>
>A nice article by Eric Ferkenhoff, who is clueful enough not to use
>the definite article in front of the big WP.  There seem to be two
>Harvard economics professors on the board...
>
 From that article:

> ''We're deciding what people are going to think," said Wendy Doniger,
> a professor in the University of Chicago's Divinity School and the
> only member to have also served on the previous board, which had its
> last meeting in 1995.

There's the difference!  With our stress on NPOV we're encouraging
people to think for themselves.

They just don't get it.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Worrying trends

body:
David Gerard:
> We're having fun with this on [[WP:SCN]] (a Scientology wikiproject). You
> have the views of the CoS members and the views of the critics, and they're
> basically almost utterly incompatible. But NPOV is achievable! With great
> effort! (Also, we have a recently ex-member who's doing a great job on the
> articles about the "tech", i.e. the substance of the religion itself.)
> [[Xenu]] is achieving widespread fame in the blogosphere, and is being
> quoted (uncredited) in just about every recent press article on Tom
> Cruise's proselytisation for the Church. So we're getting just a little
> attention. I'm sure we'll weather it, and Wikipedia's immune systems appear
> to be kicking in just fine in at least one case ...

While I would love to agree with you entirely, the situation e.g. with
the LDS articles is exactly the opposite. Criticism is spread on
sub-articles of sub-articles, and you have pages like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Mormonism which is largely an LDS
description of anti-Mormon activities. Some of the LDS pages could come
straight out of glossy brochures from Utah.

Then you have stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephi - a
character out of the Book of Mormon - which is simply prefaced with
"According to the Book of Mormon", and everything else is presented as
fact. There's a Mormonism WikiProject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Latter_Day_Saint_movement
- most of whose members appear to be Mormons.

There are many passionate Mormons and relatively few critics. The
critics focus on a small number of key articles, which are continually
unstable. Many articles off the main center of activity will simply
reflect official LDS or at least believer POV because nobody else cares
to work on them, and even if they do, they can easily be pushed away by
the Mormon majority.

Opus Dei members are also presently trying to turn the OD-related
articles into pure apologetics, largely relying on writings by Catholic
scholars and trying to discredit everyone in the anti-cult movement
outside the Church. In addition to changing the text, some of them tried
to insert series of photos of smiling women and children into the main
article to reflect the "theology of joy" of Opus Dei. This effort is
currently stalled due to copyright issues with the images.

Then there's articles like [[creationism]] which never reach any level
of long-term stability, and where, beyond the conflict between science
and faith, there's a conflict between many different beliefs about
creation, Christian or otherwise, and whether or not they should
challenge science, or coexist with it.

Every religious movement with resources and some intelligence will
eventually discover Wikipedia and try to systematically undermine its
articles, aided by the passion of its members. If we want to stay open
even to irrationalism, there is no solution beyond occasionally taking
snapshots when the articles have reached some level of stability. That
is, when we have peer review, we can systematically try to guide
NPOV-aware Wikipedians into the dark corners of Wikipedia and push them
to be ready for publication, then leave them to the ignor^Wpeople of
faith again.

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wapipedia

body:
Tim Starling a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>Anyone heard of Wapipedia ? www.wapipedia.org ?
>>
>>Here is the type of results they give after a search :
>>http://www.wapipedia.org/wikipedia/mobiletopic.aspx?cur_title=Agriculture
>>
>>
>>My problem : the link provided for the wikipedia article is totally
>>broken and seem to lead to random articles. And there is no contact
>>link anywhere on their site.
>
>
> You can get contact details from the whois record. The email address is
> pshanks at megalong.com .
>
> -- Tim Starling

Thank you Tim
I wrote at the adress to report the issue.

anthere


from_name: SJ

body:
* Librarian Tasha Saecker, of Greeen Lake, WI's Caestecker Public
Library, on the importance of watching the growth of wikibooks:
 http://www.greenlakelibrary.org/blog/archives/006242.html
Some reports on Wikipedia...

* Susan Barnes on Wikipedia's credibility, and whether "hittable" is a word:
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050717/BUSINESS0105/507170321/1001/BUSINESS

At least three Wikipedians quickly replied to her (see mav's recent
thread on wikien-l) correcting the article in various ways... for the
record, the American Heritage dictionary lists hittable as a word,
whether or not Wikipedia does.

And, last but not least, from today's news:
* Britannica has chosen a new 15-person advisory board, the first
since the last one was effectively disbanded 10 years ago.  They hope
that, among other things, this will bolster their image as a vetted
and polished resource, to "respond to competitive challenges from
Google, Yahoo, and the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/07/21/venerable_encylopedia_seeks_just_the_facts/

A nice article by Eric Ferkenhoff, who is clueful enough not to use
the definite article in front of the big WP.  There seem to be two
Harvard economics professors on the board...

--
++SJ


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

body:
> The problem with this line of reasoning is in the need to "draw the
> line". There is no clear-cut demarcation between science and
> non-science.

I was not so much referring to the line between science
and non-science as the general line between *facts* which
Wikipedia can report in its own voice without attribution
("The Eiffel Tower is in Paris.") and *contested opinions*
which have to be attributed or qualified ("Some critics of
the Bush administration have suggested that oil interests
were an important factor in the decision to invade Iraq.").

Here are a few statements which I have been using as test
cases for where different people might want to draw this
line.

1. Christianity is a religion.

2. Creationism is pseudo-science.

3. Americans have landed on the moon.

4. The Nazis systematically exterminated
millions of Jews.

5. Human activities are significantly
affecting the average temperature on Earth.

My personal "line of unmarked narrative"
lies somewhere between statements 4 and 5.

> This was the main point in Feyerabend's arguments.
> Drawing on your Chick pick I could certainly find an argument in favor
> of "Bible Christianity is not religion."  Bible Christians are too stuck
> in the words of the Bible to brought together as religion should do.  By
> disavowing the record of the Bible the author effectively disavows
> creation, prefering instead his mystical relationship with Jesus.

Excellent. Would you, then, object to Christianity
being included in a religion category on grounds of
the NPOV policy?

> Since you seem to disagree with the age of the earth, what would you
> suggest? How would you back up your alternative theory?

Maybe you misunderstood me or maybe I'm misunderstanding
you. I'm fine with the Earth being old. I'm not a geologist,
though, and I'm not familiar with the fine points of our
current status of knowledge regarding the age of the Earth.

> Saying that Christian fundamentalists are wrong is just
> as POV as saying that they are right.

I'm still not quite clear on your position here.
Do you object to the current lead of the [[Earth]]
article on grounds of the NPOV policy? If not then
why not?

> There is no better way to promote creationism than to argue
> against it. The same happens with a lot of other fields that you might
> label as pseudoscience.

I happen to disagree with that but it's irrelevant
to the discussion at hand. We're not talking about
how best to combat pseudoscience, we're talking about
how the NPOV principle of Wikipedia applies to such
topics and, in particular, their categorization.

> Attitudes toward the various topics that end up on the pseudoscience
> list will vary considerably.  The ones that I consider most likely to be
> credible will differ from those that you put on such a list.

What's important is the consensus of the scientific
community. Not the opinion of me or you after a casual
look on a list. As with any other topic you have to do
substantial research to be able to write well on this.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Temporary appointments to the Arbitration Committee

body:
The Arbitration Committee needs new members.  They are down to 6; 2 are
on holiday, 3 have resigned, and 1 is permanently inactive.  This means
that majority decisions pass with only 4 votes, which is fine in a
sense, but may not provide the needed level of detailed analysis that
each case deserves.

The last vote was unbelievably rancorous and a huge pain in the neck for
everyone, to no obviously good purpose, and yet I am committed in the
long run to appointing people based on the results of community votes.
But for an emergency, I don't think we need to go through that whole
process.

Therefore, I am appointing some special members for the next 6 months
(to cover the period until the next election), at the advice (and plea
for help!) of the existing arbcom and (ultimately) my own judgment about
who seems to be available and would do a good job.

JamesF
Fennec
JayJG

This is an absolutely horrible job, guaranteed to earn you general
condemnation for being both a wimp and a tyrant, and I most sincerely
apologize to the poor victims I am pulling into our service here.

There will be an additional appointment as soon as I confirm what
appears to be the case, which is that Nohat is sadly leaving the
position as well.

--Jimbo


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Natural languages and new Wikipedias;	Chinook
	Jargon?

references:
<daoral$ae8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<BAY22-F4B87E20761559E45F0B1CB7DA0@phx.gbl>	<dap5l2$pq$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed050709235862ebec06@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Jimbo claimed that when he said something to that effect, "own
> language" meant simply some language they understand. However, as
> Anthere made very clear when saying that English is NOT her "own
> language" even though she is obviously quite fluent, one's "own
> language" is the language of their hearth.

In that particular exchange, Anthere was more right than I was.

I think that there are many different levels of fluency in languages,
and that we can take interest in providing Wikipedias for all of them.
But my overall point is that the goals of providing an encyclopedia to
everyone on the planet is different from the goal of providing
encyclopedias for reasons of language preservation, etc.

> A man born and raised with Nuorese Sardinian, but who at the age of 18
> moved to Rome and has since lived and worked among almost exclusively
> non-Sardinian-speakers for the last 30 or even 50 years, his "own
> language" is still Nuorese.

And we should view our goal from at least two simultaneous perspectives.
 If we have gotten him his free encyclopedia in standard Italian, and he
understands it, so that he can look up anything he's interested in, then
we've succeeded at one level.  If we've gotten him that *plus* the free
encyclopedia in Nuorese Sardinian, then we've done something more.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: wapipedia

body:
On 7/22/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Thank you Tim
> I wrote at the adress to report the issue.

Sorry - I forgot to mention on this list that I'd already done that.
The site owner replied to say this was due to some bad scripting, and
it was part of his mid-year-break project and he doesn't have time to
fix it now since he's working, but he will in future.

Angela.


from_name: shizhao

body:
Zhuang wikipedia user Jienji VANG reply on zh wp:

The Zhuang Wikipedia edition I modified was based on the Zhuang dialect of my
hometown, Tianyang(???). Since there is a Plattd??tsch Wikipedia project, i
supposed that Zhuang Wikipedia could also be devided into many ones. Besides,
the Holy Mountain of Ganzhuang(???), ruin of the earliest ancestor(???) of
the Zhuang people, locates in Tianyang. The dialect in Tianyang has its own
character. Because of the incapacity of the present standard Wuming Zhuang(??
??) in expressing Tianyang Zhuang's actuality, I referred to the Ti?ng Vi?t
(Vietnamese) and adopted a new spelling system. In Tianyang, Zhuang is called
t?. To distinguish it from the verb roar(t?, ?), I used the word t??. The word
Puut?? means the Zhuang people. I have declared that it's a Tianyang Zhuang
edition. Please do never modify it in Wuming Zhuang, ok? As a matter of fact,
few people learn to speak Zhuang, and the so-called standard Zhuang(Wuming) is
only used in Wuming County, so would you please let me do my own wikipedia
alone?

See discuss on Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E8%
81%8A%E5%A4%A9#.E5.A3.AE.E8.AF.ADWikipedia

[[zh:user:shizhao]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] JoeM ban

body:
Below is a letter that JoeM sent to this mailing list, as well as to me
privately.  I have consulted with the ArbCom and found no opposition to
my lifting Joe M's ban, which predates the ArbCom and was a long long
time ago anyway.  The apology is quite sound, and I welcome him as a
newcomer and hope that everyone will mentally wipe the slate clean and
greet him warmly.

I've recommended to Joe that he go out of his way to be extremely and
extraordinarily mature, polite, and peaceful especially in the early
months of his return.

--Jimbo

Joe M wrote:
>
> Jimbo,
>
> This is User:JoeM from Wikipedia. I'm contacting you concerning my ban
> from editing Wikipedia.
>
> I want to apologize for some of my more rude behavior on your site. I at
> times got too angry and enthusiastic in defending my views, and
> patriotism is so important to me that I got a little out of control.
> I've had a lot of time to think and cool off, though, and I'm not angry
> anymore, even at the Communist and pro-terrorist users. My views on
> America and the importance of defending freedom have not changed, but I
> now realize that the way I went about stating these views only hurt the
> causes that were important to me.
>
> If I am unblocked, I won't use sockpuppets anymore. I will not engage in
> personal attacks. I won't engage in revert wars. I will calmly discuss
> my edits and views on talk pages without attacking users that I disagree
> with. and I will definitely never, ever vandalize pages again. I will
> respect the principle of NPOV.
>
> I think that the Wikipedia project has great potential to shine light on
> the TRUTH that the mainstream media hides, and I'd like to be an active
> contributor again to make sure the project reaches its full potential.
>
> Please let me know if there's anything else I can do to help get my
> account back.  I really want to help Wikipedia grow.
>
> Your friend,
> Joe M.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Boris Lohnzweiger

body:
Hi,

there's a whole page dealing with that issue (the experts call it "disambiguation") in all major Wikipedias. Here's the English one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation (with links to articles in other languages).

I don't really get the second part of your question but the page dealing with redirects will probably help: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects

Boris

wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 22.07.05 00:59:34:

Hello,

I signed up for this list, because one my favorite hobbies is contributing to Wikipedia.

I am having a problem though with something I want to submit.

Multiple meanings--say you have a Taxi as in mode of transportation and Taxi the TV show.  How do you put the TV show up?  The "Taxi" listing is just an example as I'm sure the TV show listing is up.  How do you add a title of a book, movie, or record if the meaning is shared?  And what's worse what the title I want to add.  The proper definition of the word actually takes you to page of a redirect and not the word itself.

So any help would be kindly appreciated.  Thanks. :)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Press Inquiry

body:
On 7/21/05, Patrick Erwin <pce53703 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I have experience with the site and don't need many of
> the whens, wheres, and hows filled in, but was hoping
> to talk to an official spokesperson to ask a few minor
> questions.

Hi Patrick,

Wikipedia doesn't have an official spokesperson, but its parent
organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation, does have a Press Officer
(<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Press_Officer>); Elisabeth Bauer, who
you could direct questions to if you don't want to ask them openly on
this mailing list. You might also want to address questions to the
Foundation's Board via email to board at wikimedia.org, or to Jimmy
Wales (via Terry Foote on +1 727 231 0101). If you happy with
"non-official" responses, the village pump
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump> is a good place
to ask for community input.

Angela.