from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] African maps

body:
gwern branwen wrote:

>On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on
>>an item by item basis.  Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire
>>corpus of maps when we only have use for a few?  Even the argument that
>>something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and
>>not base it on unfounded speculation.  There are some sites, not major
>>universities, where this would be a worry.  A site where there has been
>>no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.
>>
>>
>Licenses and technical details can change at any time. We aren't
>really hurting for disk space, and why shouldn't Commons host all
>sorts of Free media suitable for reference works like Wikipedia, even
>if they aren't being used at that exact moment? Hosting them means
>further exposure and archival - Wikipedians may see the maps who would
>never have visited the university map, backups of Commons will also
>entail backups of their content (and dumps of Commons are much more
>common than dumps of that site), etc. And it's not like it's all that
>difference - a wget or curl, and then one of the mass upload tools, or
>something like pywikipedia's imageharvest.py.
>
>Further, how does our mirroring their content *hurt* them? They are
>not a commercial enterprise; ostensibly they are devoted to the
>development and spreading of knowledge and information. Leaving out
>entirely the issue of them being a university (even though they are
>private, they are still subsidized through tax breaks and funding and
>that sort of thing) and thus the American tax-payers on this list
>having a right to the material, our mirroring would seem to only
>further their mission.
>
>
>>We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its
>>industry.  We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred
>>to as W*******a because of our dominance.  I think that it's important
>>to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free
>>access to information.  That requires maintaining the respect of other
>>members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their
>>efforts.  The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and
>>that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are  put in a position
>>where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.
>>
>>
>People hate Microsoft for many reasons, but mostly because of what it
>did to achieve that dominance and what it does (or doesn't do) with
>all the money and power that position entails. They hate the crappy
>software, the lack of security and usability, the high fees, the
>overreaching DRM and legalities, the illegal business practices, the
>standards it destroys and monetizes for its own gain, the lack of
>innovation, and so on and so forth. I don't think the actual dominance
>itself is the issue. It makes all the reasons I listed much more
>pressing than the equivalent criticisms which could be leveled
>against, say, Apple, but it is not itself the reason. Wikimedia
>foundation projects dominating could be bad if we *abuse* it. But if
>Wikimedia foundation projects are dominant because the infrastructure
>is stable and capable of achieving what is asked of it, if they are
>dominant because they have so much content already, if there is a good
>community already there, if various network effects reward
>contributing to foundation projects, etc. then why is it a bad thing?
>
>
>>Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own
>>actions.  Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they
>>imposed through fear of arbitrary punishment.  Ethics involves a
>>willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>--Gwern
>
What's amazing is that you should go through a long response without
once referring to ethics, while ethics was the single most important
point in my comments.

The list of specific enumerated sins of Microsoft may indeed be a
factor, but underlying this is a much broader disconnection from
ethics.  This litany of wrongdoing has not harmed Microsoft sales.  Your
projection of a self-centered and self-righteousWikimedia   You say,
'Wikimedia foundation projects dominating could be bad if we *abuse*
it.'  That's fine.  But how will you know when that abuse is happening?
How will you recognize when that domionance will have been transformed
into bullying?

The argument based on the rights of the American taxpayer smacks of
cultural infantilism.  I don't for a second deny that the United States
Constitution provides such rights, but please forgive those of us
outside of that country when we choose to consider other values to be
more important than personal rights.

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Playing Wikipedia

body:
On 13/01/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> 'I recall a blog post about people who were "playing wikipedia" as a game. Much
> like trolls feed off forum flamewars, they fed off engaging in wiki-politics, powertrips
> and drama.'

Wikipedia is the finest free MMORPG available. I'd rename it "Zeroth
Life" but I think that's IRC.

* You have fallen into a Gdanzskig trap
* The troll hits!
* The troll hits!
* You take one point to your credibility
> strike
* You strike!
* You defeat the troll!
* The good version stays
* You have leveled up to Admin

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I can't comment on Esperanza because I have not been following that debate.
>>
>>I do think it's wrong to extrapolate the experiences regarding
>>Alternative medicine into all sorts of unrealated projects.  In the
>>present context all we would be asking them to do is to deal with
>>alternative medicine topics.  There may be contentious issues there, but
>>I think it's reasonable to expect that both sides will remain more or
>>less on topic.
>>
>>
>Both sides? You appear to have missed the point of that project back in the day
>
Why shouldn't both sides need to stay on topic.  Admittedly I chose not
to participate in that debate because I was not ready to do the research
needed to properly defend the closed-minded attacks from the opponents
of alternative medicine.  Now, we have a simple notability.  Even a
practice that has been unanimously rejected as having no medical value
can remain historically notable.

>>The potential for every WikiProject to have it's own internal politics
>>is certainly there, but why is that so bad?  Is it really any better to
>>throw these issues into a communal sewage treatment plant than a local
>>septic tank?  It might be easier to find a lost diamond ring in the latter.
>>
>>
>Establishing an effective monoply is always bad. At the moment a
>wikiproject knows that if they are less than ideal people will just go
>around them. Give them power that outsiders have no easy way to
>disspute and the various problems wikiprojects have become a lot more
>serious.
>
Who said anything about a monopoly?  Or that they have any new
"powers"?  Or that outsiders would not be able to participate?

Ec


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:10:35 -0800, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

>The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
>that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken

AfD speedy kept it.  So there is actually nothing wrong with AfD here.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... Notability

body:
David Goodman wrote:

>An good article that is properly defended is less likely to be
>deleted. I have seen many worthy articles fail because there are no
>outside references, and the claims are either exorbitant or mild. You
>can not expect others to know, unless you tell them.
>
All good articles also need time to evolve.  Stubs don't seem like much,
but they are a beginning.  References are a good thing; good references
are even better.  These too develop over time.  References are more
important when the facts are in dispute, but many articles can afford
patience when dealing with references.

Ec


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Total size of the Wikipedia (snapshot)?

body:
On 1/13/07, Frederick Noronha <fred at bytesforall.org> wrote:
> Talking about a related issue... circulation of Wikipedia content
> through non-Internet means.
>
> Webaroo [http://www.webaroo.com/] has this set of interesting
> Wikipedia web packs [http://www.webaroo.com/category/wiki2go_9]  Has
> someone checked them out? The last time around, unfortunately, they
> were only Windows-compatible, so quite useless for my Free
> Software-based GNU/Linux system. I was eager to check one which came
> with an Indian computer magazine, here in Goa. --FN

Actually, on the front page there is something like a whole wikipedia
web pack - 4.3 GB

Alfio


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page.

body:
Christopher Thieme wrote:

>I think I'm going to write a novel (under pseudonym, so it won't screw up
>the quality literary pursuits I'll eventually get around to publishing)
>called "Main Page"...probably about a murder mystery where one irate editor
>murders another over some personal attacks and edits to an article he
>considered owned and sacrosanct from others interference.
>
I would make it about a mediaeval sea-knight whose bumbling page follows
him on the bounding main.

>P.S. I tried having the renaming the main page back in 2004/2005.  I
>actually support it being set up as a portal.  It's amazing how many people
>will force any other article to comply with policy, but oh, God, not the
>Main Page!?!?!?!?!? ~cdt
>
The Main Page is perfectly consistent with the policy that existed when
it was first written.

Ec


from_name: gwern branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] African maps

body:
On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on
> an item by item basis.  Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire
> corpus of maps when we only have use for a few?  Even the argument that
> something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and
> not base it on unfounded speculation.  There are some sites, not major
> universities, where this would be a worry.  A site where there has been
> no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.

Licenses and technical details can change at any time. We aren't
really hurting for disk space, and why shouldn't Commons host all
sorts of Free media suitable for reference works like Wikipedia, even
if they aren't being used at that exact moment? Hosting them means
further exposure and archival - Wikipedians may see the maps who would
never have visited the university map, backups of Commons will also
entail backups of their content (and dumps of Commons are much more
common than dumps of that site), etc. And it's not like it's all that
difference - a wget or curl, and then one of the mass upload tools, or
something like pywikipedia's imageharvest.py.

Further, how does our mirroring their content *hurt* them? They are
not a commercial enterprise; ostensibly they are devoted to the
development and spreading of knowledge and information. Leaving out
entirely the issue of them being a university (even though they are
private, they are still subsidized through tax breaks and funding and
that sort of thing) and thus the American tax-payers on this list
having a right to the material, our mirroring would seem to only
further their mission.

> We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its
> industry.  We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred
> to as W*******a because of our dominance.  I think that it's important
> to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free
> access to information.  That requires maintaining the respect of other
> members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their
> efforts.  The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and
> that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are  put in a position
> where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.

People hate Microsoft for many reasons, but mostly because of what it
did to achieve that dominance and what it does (or doesn't do) with
all the money and power that position entails. They hate the crappy
software, the lack of security and usability, the high fees, the
overreaching DRM and legalities, the illegal business practices, the
standards it destroys and monetizes for its own gain, the lack of
innovation, and so on and so forth. I don't think the actual dominance
itself is the issue. It makes all the reasons I listed much more
pressing than the equivalent criticisms which could be leveled
against, say, Apple, but it is not itself the reason. Wikimedia
foundation projects dominating could be bad if we *abuse* it. But if
Wikimedia foundation projects are dominant because the infrastructure
is stable and capable of achieving what is asked of it, if they are
dominant because they have so much content already, if there is a good
community already there, if various network effects reward
contributing to foundation projects, etc. then why is it a bad thing?

> Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own
> actions.  Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they
> imposed through fear of arbitrary punishment.  Ethics involves a
> willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.
>
> Ec

--Gwern


body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:10:29 -0800, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:

>The overall problem though is that there are guidelines and they're ignored
>in favor of deletionists proposing articles for deletion because of their
>poor quality regardless of the subject, or for a dozen other reasons not
>related to suggested guidelines for deletion (the play only opened a week
>ago so the article should be deleted).

There is no such thing as a deletionist, only different levels of
inclusionism.  If you think you are an inclusionist, go and visit
[[Special:Newpages]], a.k.a. the Firehose of Crap.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

body:
On 13/01/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/12/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/12/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > So, when is the English wikipedia planning to get rid of  the
> > > noncommercial and wikipedia-only images that are still in use.
> >
> > less than 1000 of each less
>
> And the list is being whittled down all the time.  The commitment to
> get rid of them is there.
>
> > >And what
> > > about fair use, which to me sounds like wikipedia-only but without
> > > asking permission?
> > >
> >
> > That isn't quite the case.
>
> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).

Keeping aside the "fair use text quotations" (what the??), are you
sure you're speaking for everyone when you say "we" there? Somehow I
feel certain I'm not the only one who would like to get rid of fair
use on en.wp, and envisages a happy English Wikipedia future without
this crutch.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

body:
K P schreef:
> The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
> that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing

No it isn't. It shows that AfD is working perfectly fine.

What exactly is the problem, apart from that the article was nominated
at all?

Eugene


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
Aude, I will look a bit at your GIS links, but remember that they
specifically won't fund projects that are only digitising existing
collections. Quote: "We encourage projects that explore new ways to
share, examine, and interpret humanities collections in a digital
environment and to develop new uses and audiences for existing digital
resources." Hm... actually some kind of GIS project might work well,
especially if it making them more accessible. OK, two things to think
about: What will the benefit to a potential partner be? Anything
besides a credit acknowledgement? Secondly how would such a project
exploit the benefits of using a wiki? Or would it not at all?

cheers,
Brianna

On 13/01/07, Aude <audevivere at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the greatest shortcomings I see with Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects
> is with our use of maps and geospatial data.  I have seen ideas here and
> there on this mailing list and other places, but it's a big issue to work
> through.


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.0 released

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

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> January 10, 2007
>>
>> MediaWiki 1.9.0 is the quarterly release snapshot for Winter 2007.
>
> You're five months early.

You kids today and your wacky hemispheres... :P

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFqY6bwRnhpk1wk44RArFIAJ9Sz7vkiUjX7kic7FNBkisPLdnsOwCgkRbH
luPTOWH2SbriE4PetuchJso=
=UVK4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issue with external links

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage
>>in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too
>>many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer
>>"news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The
>>pendulum is starting
>>to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to
>>the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT
>>WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
>>
>>
> expect that if there will be any major legislation, it will mainly
>cover presumptions of fair use rather than changes in the release of
>public documents.  And fair use is clearly something that even Wikimedia
>projects tend to abuse on a large scale.
>
>I think it was a very wise and prudent move on the part of those who set
>up the Wikimedia Commons that they avoided fair use images altogether.
> This may be ultimately a saving grace for all Wikimedia projects that
>this has been done.
>
What's more needed is clarification and a balancing of interests.  Much
of the legislation is clouded by an absence of defining litigation.
This allows for a great deal of private interpretation based only on
speculation; that is so on both sides of the debate. Thee is quite
enough abuse on the English language projects alone; much of it does not
meet my own standards of belief in a more aggressive copyright policy.

I agree that there's an element of sense to the policy on Commons.  It
makes allowing fair use images more workable on the individual projects,
where a context for the images must be provided.

Ec


from_name: Sean Black

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On 1/13/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:14:17 +0200, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
> <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >uniquely vulnerable to AFD-wonks predation
>
> Assuming bad faith, at all?

Expressing one's viewpoint qualifies as an assumption of bad faith
when that opinion is contrary to your's? Good to know.

~~sean


from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page.

body:
I think I'm going to write a novel (under pseudonym, so it won't screw up
the quality literary pursuits I'll eventually get around to publishing)
called "Main Page"...probably about a murder mystery where one irate editor
murders another over some personal attacks and edits to an article he
considered owned and sacrosanct from others interference.

It might affect sales by having it linked from a disambig page or from a
disclaimer at the top of Main Page.

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme
User:ExplorerCDT

P.S. I tried having the renaming the main page back in 2004/2005.  I
actually support it being set up as a portal.  It's amazing how many people
will force any other article to comply with policy, but oh, God, not the
Main Page!?!?!?!?!? ~cdt


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Website remote loading English Wikipedia

body:
Kenny Barney wrote:
> http://tramadol.tfres.net/wiki/Main_Page has managed to evade the block.
> Their site is working again. Also, it appears that they use several
> different subdomains (e.g. http://soma.tfres.net/wiki/Main_page) which work
> as well.
>
> Finally, there is another site that is even trying to copy the URL.
> http://en.wikipedia.ifc.com.pl/wiki/Main_Page

tfres.net registered by scrimak at mail.ru . Google gives out the link:

   http://spamhuntress.com/wiki/Scrimak

So we want to block at least 67.19.221.205 & 67.19.221.204

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
senpai wrote:

>It's the only way to have some images in the italian articles. We have a lot
>of restrictive legislations and we can't use the fair use. For example, we
>can go in a museum and take some pictures of a painting but, we can't
>publish into wikipedia without the permission of the "sovraintendenza ai
>beni culturali"; some days ago the "sovraintendenza ai beni culturali" of
>florance have threated us for the photos of some painting and ohter kind of
>arts taked into the florence's museums; perhaps will be a problem also for
>commons.
>
I would suggest that you investigate the "sovraintendenza ai beni
culturali"'s right to do this.  If I, as a foreign tourist, chose to go
to the museum, take pictures of old masters' works, and upload them into
commons when I got home, I don't think there's much they can do about it.

Ec


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Guy Chapman aka JzG [mailto:guy.chapman at spamcop.net]
>Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 10:21 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.
>
>On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:10:29 -0800, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>The overall problem though is that there are guidelines and they're ignored
>>in favor of deletionists proposing articles for deletion because of their
>>poor quality regardless of the subject, or for a dozen other reasons not
>>related to suggested guidelines for deletion (the play only opened a week
>>ago so the article should be deleted).
>
>There is no such thing as a deletionist, only different levels of
>inclusionism.  If you think you are an inclusionist, go and visit
>[[Special:Newpages]], a.k.a. the Firehose of Crap.
>
>Guy (JzG)
>--
>http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

Boy, I'll say. Started with [[Callum richards]], at the top of the page. Biography of a child. Userfied it and emailed him, but now I have a message from someone who wanted to speedy delete it.

Fred


from_name: Bernd vdB

subject: [Wikitech-l] Web accessability and commonprint.css - rvsd

body:
Hello,
there has been a discussion this week about the print stylesheet, when I
reported a malfunction of Firefox (2.0 under Windows XP) with scaling.
Looking at the Firefox bugzilla it seems that there actually is a bug in the
Gecko engine regarding the (MS-Windows) print scaling feature.

Maybe it was not wise to adress this issue from the side of browser behaviour.
I would like the Mediawiki developer community to reconsider the point about
fixed font sizes in stylesheets - based on the position of an independent
mediator in HTML/CSS coding, the W3C:

- Web content accessibility guidelines:
"Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values
and style sheet property values."
( http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-CSS-TECHS/#units )

- Quality assurance:
"Units: avoid absolute length units for screen display. .. Do not specify the
font-size in pt, or other absolute length units for screen stylesheets. They
render inconsistently across platforms and can't be resized by the User Agent
(e.g browser). Keep the usage of such units for styling on media with fixed
and known physical properties (e.g print)."
( http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/font-size )

- An example from an organisation's guideline (State of Kansas):
"Use relative rather than absolute units of measure (e.g., for margins, font
sizes, borders, etc.)."
( http://www.da.ks.gov/itec/WASPriorities112001.htm
  classified as priority 2 - "Web developers must satisfy this item." )

Now looking at the en.wikipedia.org stylesheets we see fixed font sizes only
in commonprint.css
( http://en.wikipedia.org/skins-1.5/common/commonPrint.css?42 ), in the
'content' and 'pre' styles.

Regarding the QA citation, yes this is a print media - but why should
wikipedia try to produce a fixed page layout on a users printer?

At the time the stylesheet was designed I might have been the best choice to
set a fixed size (liek 'content .. 11pt') to get a fairly consistent result on
the browsers of that time. But with the actual versions of popular browsers we
see more consistent compliance with CSS specs.

The effort to change this setting to an 'em' or '%' value is minimal, the risk
for incompatability is zero. So please consider again to change this.

Greetings
// Bernd


body:
effe iets anders wrote:

>I would like to say as well that a lot of times institutions claim rights on
>the area of copyright they do *not* have.
>
That's very common.

>That is of course understandable,
>they want to stay in control. I would advice the italian community to seek
>advice from experts (maybe that could be done by the foundation or wikimedia
>italia?) to find our whether these claims are justifyable and whether they
>will stand in court as well.
>
Somehow we are not very far ahead if we must run to a lawyer every time
we dispute a copyright claim.  The legal costs will go up very quickly,
at the same time that it costs the false claimant nothing.  It hould be
up to the claimant to start legal action.

>You prooved today that it is indeed important
>to have that found out. And maybe it would be better to loose a case in test
>tryal in court on this as to be incertain forever. I dont know, i leave that
>up to the legal department. but maybe we should just consider.
>
Yes it would move the topic forward if we lost a case!  The case would
move even further forward if we won.  I doubt, however, that it would
ever get to trial.  How do you handle a legal bluff?

Ec


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:

> Fortunately, articles without references will soon no longer go to AfD.

The chance of that gaining consensus are next to nil.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


from_name: Gary Kirk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move

--
Gary Kirk


body:
K P schreef:
> On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> >
> > K P schreef:
> > > The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent
> > nominations
> > > that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
> > >
> > > [
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing
> >
> > No it isn't. It shows that AfD is working perfectly fine.
> >
> > What exactly is the problem, apart from that the article was nominated
> > at all?
> >
> > Eugene
>
>
> That is the problem that the article was nominated at all, in this case.

It only takes a single editor to nominate an article for deletion. If
the nomination is invalid, that's a problem with that single editor.

Any system in which it takes more than one editor to nominate an article
for AfD will lead to a two level system, with a pre-AfD Nomination for
Deletion discussion.

Any system in which it takes less than one editor to nominate an article
needs better AI than we currently have.

> The time could have been spent researching and improving the Rock climbing
> article.

So someone should have speedy-closed the discussion sooner. I agree with
that.

> The overall problem though is that there are guidelines and they're ignored
> in favor of deletionists proposing articles for deletion because of their
> poor quality regardless of the subject, or for a dozen other reasons not
> related to suggested guidelines for deletion (the play only opened a week
> ago so the article should be deleted).

In most instances where a nomination does not follow the guidelines, the
article is kept, sometimes even speedy, which shows that AfD is doing
its job. Or common sense overrules the guidelines, which is good too.

> I've only done AfD for a couple of weeks, and I've taken it off my
> watch list, because it's frustrating debating articles nominated by
> editors who admit they're nominating it *because they never heard of
> it*

Where? Today's AfD contains over 100 articles already; I haven't found a
single nomination "because I never heard of it".

Eugene


body:
Ken Arromdee schreef:
> It highlights a real problem with the policies.  If you let anyone delete
> uncited material, and you even consider original research as a reason to
> delete an article, you leave the way open for vandals to intentionally
> challenge random claims and random articles just to cause trouble.
>
> What we *should* do is require that you must sincerely consider uncited
> material questionable before deleting it (or using it to nominate an article
> for deletion).  (Of course, this won't prevent the vandal from lying and
> trying to delete the article anyway, but then, that's true of any policy.)

Fortunately, articles without references will soon no longer go to AfD.

You may want to leave a comment at [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion
for unsourced articles]].

Eugene


body:
rfrangi at libero.it wrote:

>>Matt wrote:
>>
>>Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
>>wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
>>in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
>>for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
>>use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).
>>
>>
>Honestly, Fair use is an important freedom, but it's not a licence. NC images are way more free than fair use images (i.e. copyrighted images that you use without asking for permission).
>
It's not a question of one being more free than the other.  They
represent two different, but overlapping, tracks on the subject.  A
legal freedom is provided by a government law; a licence is granted by a
private owner.  If fair use applies it applies with or without a
licence.  A licence will allow uses that would clearly not be fair use,
and is thus supplementary to fair use.  It also clarifies the situation
where the status of fair use is unclear.

>My personal position is that what is true for texts should be true for images and other types of contents. So if WMF pojects  release their texts under GFDL, they should allow only images with GFDL of compatible licenses. For what I can see, asking it.wiki to remove NC images (no matter how gradually) without asking someone else to remove fair use images will only piss off the italian community (And by the way we still think that the removal of images tagged as PD-Italy from Commons has been an abuse).
>
It's sensible to have the same rules for both text and images, and
quoted fair use text is just fine in articles.  I don't know about the
images marked PD-Italy, but if they were taken by Italian residents
there should be no such problem.

>I think WMF should state clearly which kind of licences are proper for its projects and everything that is not compliant with this should be removed everywhere, quickly. Possibly this will piss off more pepole, but it's the only way out IMHO.
>
I still think that this should be handled at the project level.
Pictures of postage stamps issued in the las 50 years are almost all
fair use, including those used in stamp catalogues.

Ec


from_name: Sören Auer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia with geo-browsing and AJAX

body:
Hi all,

we thought it could be useful to experiment a bit with new technologies
(AJAX, knowledge extraction from WP etc.). Result is a user interface
for Wikipedia, which is largely based on AJAX, thus enabling previews of
images or referenced articles without reloading the current Wikipedia
page. Its called Pediax and accessible at:

http://en.pediax.org

Pediax also allows geo-browsing, i.e. geo-referenced Wikipedia articles
(currently over 50,000) are displayed on a map. It shows the 20 most
popular places/articles in the currently selected map area. On moves or
zooming of the map area the respective places/articles are updated (more
views on the Wikipedia content are currently under development).
Currently, everything is still a bit beta ;-) The CSS and JS code might
require some more tweaking. However, we are grateful for all hints,
feedback and ideas.

--s?ren


body:
effe iets anders wrote:

>I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
>as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
>Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
>use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
>(To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
>educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
>is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
>principles, what is more our principle then free licences?
>
I too have have serious reservations about Non-Commercial or Educational
Only licences.  I feel more comfortable with fair use.  I rather suspect
that these restricted licences stem from some sort of a political stand
about profit-making companies.  It's an idealistic approach that failed
to consider the consequences.

Ec


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david a fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>
> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free licenses
are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" - right
to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
> the user interfaces.

I agree, but this does not make those images free.

Marco aka Cruccone


body:
On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>
> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free licenses
are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" - right
to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
> the user interfaces.

I agree, but this does not make those images free.

Marco aka Cruccone


body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 18:25:48 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>Boy, I'll say. Started with [[Callum richards]], at the top of the
>page. Biography of a child. Userfied it and emailed him, but now I
>have a message from someone who wanted to speedy delete it.

It wears down your good faith pretty fast, newpage patrol.  You may be
interested in the template {{nn-userfy}} when userfying in these
circumstances.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.0 released

body:
On 1/12/07, Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-12-01 at 13:52 -0500, Simetrical wrote:
> > Yes.  I wonder what will trigger us to go to 2.0 . . . I can foresee
> > 1.35 down the road here.  :)
>
> I figure 2.0 will be phase4.

That rather begs the question, doesn't it?  :)


from_name: Aude

subject: [WikiEN-l] African maps

body:
We should think about how the maps would be useful for us.  Simply mirroring
the content doesn't add value.  How can we add value to them, by combining
maps and other information (maybe into a map/timeline for particular places
that we have articles for)?  For example, we could show how the
political/colonial boundaries changed over time for the continent as a whole
or for regions.  It might be a useful supplement to articles to develop some
form of online, historical atlas about places.

It may be possible to georeference some of them, so that they can be viewed
in a GIS/web mapping service, to work with them on adding value integrating
different sources of information, and begin to synthesize information into a
digital atlas format.  We could combine maps available from Northwestern,
with other sources (e.g. Library of Congress, other map libraries).  The
University of Texas and Penn State map libraries come to mind as other
places with treasure trove of materials that are not online yet.

I have many ideas going through my mind now, some mentioned here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AudeVivere/GIS  Basically, I think the
current way of doing "locator maps" is lacking and having some "atlas"
supplement to articles about places and topics with geographic aspects would
be wonderful.  The maps of Africa provide one excellent source for input
materials.

If we had some specific, thoughtful way that we wanted to use them, to add
value, to integrate them with our articles or other content, then I think
Northwestern would be happy for us to use them.  It may easier for them to
provide us with the images on a cd-rom/dvd-rom (if we asked)

Also, given a well thought idea, getting support through grant money is a
possibility to help get the ball rolling. (this is being discussed on
foundation-l)

-Aude

On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Matthew Brown wrote:
>
> >On 1/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
>
> Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on
> an item by item basis.  Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire
> corpus of maps when we only have use for a few?  Even the argument that
> something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and
> not base it on unfounded speculation.  There are some sites, not major
> universities, where this would be a worry.  A site where there has been
> no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>

--
Aude


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
rfrangi at libero.it wrote:

>>So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>>under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>
>>If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>>whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>>images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>>
>>
>Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>
Not necessarily.  It depends on the origin of the image.  If the image
is owned by an American of an American subject he should not get greater
protection in Italy than he does in his own country.

>>The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>>Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>>(Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>>This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>>images undermine that goal.
>>
>>
>Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>
Fair use is neither a licence nor an excuse; it is an exception to
copyright.  Nothing protects anyone from a legal action by a determined
complainer, not even being excessively cautions in applying the law.  If
a judge decides that it was not used fairly, then it was not fair use.
This does not negate the idea of fair use; it just means that the claim
was factually incorrect.

>Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>
Fair use is not a "trick"  One should not depend on the other.

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: Joaquim Alves Gaspar

subject: [Commons-l] Picture of the Year 2006 election

body:
Dear Commons User,

The election of the best Featured Picture of 2006 - POTY 2006 - is to take
place soon in Commons.

We need your opinion and help to organize and implement the event. There are
still a lot of things to do, like deciding the dates, tuning the rules,
preparing the project page, making the announcements, etc.

To participate, please check Commons talk:Picture of the Year/2006.

Joaquim Gaspar (User:Alvesgaspar)

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body:
Matthew Brown schreef:
> On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> > Fortunately, articles without references will soon no longer go to AfD.
> >
> > You may want to leave a comment at [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion
> > for unsourced articles]].
>
> That proposal seems to lack consensus.

How can you tell? The discussion is over 600 kB long...

OK, so it is probably not a good idea to leave another comment.

Eugene


from_name: David Strauss

body:
It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
both legal concepts with equal importance.

A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.

As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.

And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
fair use, anyway.

rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>
>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>
> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>
>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>> images undermine that goal.
>
> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>
> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>
> Roberto (Snowdog)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
both legal concepts with equal importance.

A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.

As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.

And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
fair use, anyway.

rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>
>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>
> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>
>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>> images undermine that goal.
>
> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>
> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>
> Roberto (Snowdog)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
both legal concepts with equal importance.

A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.

As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.

And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
fair use, anyway.

rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>
>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>
> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>
>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>> images undermine that goal.
>
> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>
> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>
> Roberto (Snowdog)
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
Ken Arromdee schreef:
> > You may want to leave a comment at [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion
> > for unsourced articles]].
>
> That's not better, that's worse.

I know.

> It's also irrelevant in most of the vandal cases because the articles targeted
> by vandals in this way usually have at least one source somewhere, which
> exempts it from that proposal.

If the proposal succeeds, I'm awfully tempted to write a bot that
automatically adds an external link
[http://www.google.com/search?q=NameOfArticle+-wikipedia] to all
articles tagged for deletion under this criterium.

Eugene

P.S. But I won't.


body:
Perhaps we should require fair use justification for non-commercial
media. Of course, this would be a per-Wikipedia issue, not a Foundation one.

Requiring fair-use justification for non-commercial images forces one of
two outcomes:
1) The non-commercial image is revealed to be non-essential or
replaceable with a free image. The non-commercial image is replaced with
something free.
2) The non-commercial image is justified as essential, and people can
redistribute the Wikipedia article (and its media) under fair use,
non-commercial use, or both.

David Strauss wrote:
> It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
> both legal concepts with equal importance.
>
> A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
> essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
> essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
> that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
> exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.
>
> As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
> free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.
>
> And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
> for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
> fair use, anyway.
>
> rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>>
>>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>>
>>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>>> images undermine that goal.
>> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>>
>> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>>
>> Roberto (Snowdog)
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
>> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
Perhaps we should require fair use justification for non-commercial
media. Of course, this would be a per-Wikipedia issue, not a Foundation one.

Requiring fair-use justification for non-commercial images forces one of
two outcomes:
1) The non-commercial image is revealed to be non-essential or
replaceable with a free image. The non-commercial image is replaced with
something free.
2) The non-commercial image is justified as essential, and people can
redistribute the Wikipedia article (and its media) under fair use,
non-commercial use, or both.

David Strauss wrote:
> It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
> both legal concepts with equal importance.
>
> A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
> essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
> essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
> that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
> exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.
>
> As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
> free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.
>
> And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
> for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
> fair use, anyway.
>
> rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>>
>>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>>
>>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>>> images undermine that goal.
>> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>>
>> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>>
>> Roberto (Snowdog)
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
>> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
Perhaps we should require fair use justification for non-commercial
media. Of course, this would be a per-Wikipedia issue, not a Foundation one.

Requiring fair-use justification for non-commercial images forces one of
two outcomes:
1) The non-commercial image is revealed to be non-essential or
replaceable with a free image. The non-commercial image is replaced with
something free.
2) The non-commercial image is justified as essential, and people can
redistribute the Wikipedia article (and its media) under fair use,
non-commercial use, or both.

David Strauss wrote:
> It doesn't matter what you consider a "trick." Fair use and licenses are
> both legal concepts with equal importance.
>
> A country banning fair use is tantamount to censorship because it bans
> essential forms of parody, criticism, and discussion. Those are
> essential freedoms -- historically and philosophically. In the same way
> that Wikipedia doesn't censor itself for China, it shouldn't stop
> exercising fair use just because some countries don't allow it.
>
> As for non-commercial images, show me *one* you can't replace with a
> free alternative. Non-commercial images are generally a convenience.
>
> And if you find an image that is non-commercial and has no alternative
> for discussing a topic in an article, you now have the possibility of
> fair use, anyway.
>
> rfrangi at libero.it wrote:
>>> So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
>>> under fair use because we don't have a substitute.
>>>
>>> If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
>>> whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
>>> images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.
>> Fair use images have to be removed as well if you reuse the contents in places where the concept of fair use does not exist.
>>
>>> The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
>>> Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
>>> (Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
>>> This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
>>> images undermine that goal.
>> Fair use undermine that goal as well. Fair use is not a license, is "an excuse to use copyrighted material". As such,  it does not protect you from a legal action and in the end a judge will decide if an image is used "fairly" or not.
>>
>> Beside that, please understand that you can't force a community to abandon NC's, when they consider fair use as being worse than NC. No way. As long as fair use will be allowed on en.wiki, NC's will be allowed on it.wiki. I wish both will not be accepted, but NC is a licence, fair use is a trick, so for what concerns me, if the latter stays, the former will stay as well.
>>
>> Roberto (Snowdog)
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
>> http://click.libero.it/infostrada14gen07
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Someone's got into their head that having it in mainspace is a
"violation of Wikipedia policy", and suggests it be moved into the
comparatively new Portal namespace, like [[Current events]] was.

On 1/13/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Gary Kirk wrote:
> > There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move
> >
> in the name of Jimbo, WHY?
>
> --
> GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
>
>
>

--
Gary Kirk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
(sorry, I sent that message in response to Dan - didn't see Mgm's
message before sending)

On 1/13/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone's got into their head that having it in mainspace is a
> "violation of Wikipedia policy", and suggests it be moved into the
> comparatively new Portal namespace, like [[Current events]] was.
>
> On 1/13/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gary Kirk wrote:
> > > There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move
> > >
> > in the name of Jimbo, WHY?
> >
> > --
> > GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Gary Kirk
>

--
Gary Kirk


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Holding deletion discussion in WikiProject space

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia_talk:Articles_for_deletion#Proposal_for_de-
centralization_of_debates

Proposed. Comments?

--Keitei


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-13

body:
On 13/01/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Wasn't a change made to the regression tester a while back to make that
> final status message less confusing?
>
> Did it... regress?  :-)

No, it's still there - IIRC, it was the addition of "..." to separate
the statistics from the big "FAILED" part.

Rob Church


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
> On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>
>> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's
>> getting
>> to the point where you can't even say the sky is blue without one
>> of these
>> little Napoleans squawking, "Original research! Need citation!"'

Next time it happens, ask him to contact me:
"The blue sky is so commonplace that it is taken for granted"
Schaefer, Vincent J.; John A. Day (1998). A Field Guide to the
Atmosphere. Houghton Mifflin Field Guides. ISBN 0395976316.

"It is now well established that the luminosity and blue colour on
very clear days and at considerable altitudes above the sea-level can
almost be accounted for by the scattering of light by the molecules
of air, without postulating suspended particles of foreign matter."
R. J. Strutt (Lord Rayleigh), Proceedings of the Royal Society of
London. Series A, 94(662), June 01, 1918, pp. 453 - 459.


body:
On 1/13/07, Bernd vdB <bb_tech at kanka.de> wrote:
> . . .

Okay, okay.  I forgot about it, you didn't need an essay.  :)  I
removed the font-size declaration entirely, revision 19221.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 21:26:50 +0100, "Oskar Sigvardsson"
<oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

>Actually, I'd really like it if it was moved from "Main Page" to "Main
>page". That capital p annoys the bejesus out me.

[[WP:BOLD]]...

If the servers go tits-up in the next half hour we'll know why I
guess.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: effe iets anders

body:
If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?

I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
(To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
principles, what is more our principle then free licences?

Lodewijk

2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco op gmail.com>:
>
> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david op fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> >
> > Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
> > that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
> > expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
> > such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>
>
> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
> licenses
> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
> right
> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>
> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
> > Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
> > use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
> > descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
> > the user interfaces.
>
>
> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>
> Marco aka Cruccone
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?

I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
(To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
principles, what is more our principle then free licences?

Lodewijk

2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
>
> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> >
> > Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
> > that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
> > expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
> > such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>
>
> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
> licenses
> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
> right
> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>
> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
> > Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
> > use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
> > descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
> > the user interfaces.
>
>
> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>
> Marco aka Cruccone
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
I can't possibly see the advantage. It doesn't open up the page name because
if you don't put in a redirect lots of links (both internal and external)
will die on us. Not to mention, the main page has been with us from the
beginning. Moving that entire history will be a strain on the server and it
really serves no useful purpose. Is having a fancy portal space really worth
that much?

Alternative idea: If it has to get that name, can't we create the portal
thingy as a redirect and use that template for alternative names on the main
page without actually moving it?

Mgm

On 1/13/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Gary Kirk wrote:
> > There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move
> >
> in the name of Jimbo, WHY?
>
> --
> GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Of course, must be. It's only logical for the main page to violate policy
since day one.
</sarcasm>

On 1/13/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Someone's got into their head that having it in mainspace is a
> "violation of Wikipedia policy", and suggests it be moved into the
> comparatively new Portal namespace, like [[Current events]] was.
>
> On 1/13/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gary Kirk wrote:
> > > There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move
> > >
> > in the name of Jimbo, WHY?
> >
> > --
> > GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Gary Kirk
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I can't comment on Esperanza because I have not been following that debate.
>
> I do think it's wrong to extrapolate the experiences regarding
> Alternative medicine into all sorts of unrealated projects.  In the
> present context all we would be asking them to do is to deal with
> alternative medicine topics.  There may be contentious issues there, but
> I think it's reasonable to expect that both sides will remain more or
> less on topic.
>

Both sides? You appear to have missed the point of that project back in the day

> The potential for every WikiProject to have it's own internal politics
> is certainly there, but why is that so bad?  Is it really any better to
> throw these issues into a communal sewage treatment plant than a local
> septic tank?  It might be easier to find a lost diamond ring in the latter.
>

Establishing an effective monoply is always bad. At the moment a
wikiproject knows that if they are less than ideal people will just go
around them. Give them power that outsiders have no easy way to
disspute and the various problems wikiprojects have become a lot more
serious.

--
geni


from_name: Frederick Noronha

body:
Talking about a related issue... circulation of Wikipedia content
through non-Internet means.

Webaroo [http://www.webaroo.com/] has this set of interesting
Wikipedia web packs [http://www.webaroo.com/category/wiki2go_9]  Has
someone checked them out? The last time around, unfortunately, they
were only Windows-compatible, so quite useless for my Free
Software-based GNU/Linux system. I was eager to check one which came
with an Indian computer magazine, here in Goa. --FN
--
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On 1/13/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> >> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's getting to the point where >you can't even say the sky is blue without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original >research! Need citation!"'
> >
> > Problem is whith that classic example is that the sky often isn't
> > blue. It spends a fair bit of time being black with white bits.
> > Depending on where you are grey may be popular and red/pink may appear
> > as much as twice a day.
> >
>
> Indeed. I'd say it's spent more time being grey than blue, recently.
> Miserable weather...

Mine is green. Huh. There you go. Could be because of all those shrooms....


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> Actually, I've been brooding about this topic since it came up last
> year, and I've been troubled by the meta-question:
>
> WHY is "the sky is blue" taken as the emblematic unchallengeable
> fact, since it's not even close to being true?
>
> I think the answer is that we've been brainwashed by being _told_ in
> elementary school that "the sky is blue," and we continue to believe
> it as having some quality of magical truth to it, even though we can
> see with our own eyes that it is false.

No, the answer is that some phrases are not meant to express universal
statements just because the literal words of the phrase don't include any
qualifiers.  "The sky is blue" doesn't mean "the sky is always blue, every
single place".  If I tell you that caviar is expensive, are you *really*
going to claim that I'm therefore denying the possibility that some store
could be going out of business and holding a 90% off sale on caviar?

It's like the joke about the programmer who read a bottle of shampoo saying
"lather, rinse, repeat" and died unable to get out of the infinite loop.

There's nothing wrong with the statement that the sky is blue, only with
people who insist on interpreting such statements in a boneheadedly literal
manner without comprehending them.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
On 1/13/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course, must be. It's only logical for the main page to violate policy
> since day one.
> </sarcasm>

Actually, I'd really like it if it was moved from "Main Page" to "Main
page". That capital p annoys the bejesus out me.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
>
> On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's
>> getting to the point where >you can't even say the sky is blue
>> without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original
>> >research! Need citation!"'
>
> Problem is whith that classic example is that the sky often isn't
> blue. It spends a fair bit of time being black with white bits.
> Depending on where you are grey may be popular and red/pink may appear
> as much as twice a day.

Yeah, and remember the song from South Pacific: "When the sky is a
bright canary yellow/I forget every cloud I?ve ever seen./So they
call me a cockeyed optimist,/Immature and incurably green..."

Actually, I've been brooding about this topic since it came up last
year, and I've been troubled by the meta-question:

WHY is "the sky is blue" taken as the emblematic unchallengeable
fact, since it's not even close to being true?

I think the answer is that we've been brainwashed by being _told_ in
elementary school that "the sky is blue," and we continue to believe
it as having some quality of magical truth to it, even though we can
see with our own eyes that it is false.

In fact, I don't think we're actually told that the sky IS blue, I
think we're told that we should "color the sky blue." On doing a
little Google Books searching, I found some entries that suggest that
the reason we were told that is not because it is a science fact that
little minds should know, but because coloring is a classic
educational arena for teaching children how to follow instructions:
"Children must learn to follow directions for many reasons... Say,
"Color the sky blue." Children then are ready to be given two
instructions to follow, and they follow them in order: "Color the
grass green and the sky blue." ?Next they learn to follow three
instructions..." Burmeister, Lou E. (1983). Foundations and
Strategies for Teaching Children to Read. Addison-Wesley. ISBN
020110802X. , p. 103

"Now we are going to color some of the picture together," I tell
them... "What color do you think Mary's dress could be?" They decide
on blue. I move around as they color the dress. Then we look at shoes
and color Mary's shoes black, and finally we color the grass green.
Later they will get the chance to finish the picture using whatever
colors they want. Approaching coloring in this way seems to help the
children who have little or no experience with coloring and prevents
them from taking one crayon and making random marks over the paper."
Josephine McLaughlin, Sylvia Andrews (2003): "Soaring With Reading
and Writing: a highly effective emergent literacy program," p. 67.

P. S. Speaking of things that we can see with our own eyes are
false... Genesis 1:16 says "And God made two great lights; the
greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the
night: he made the stars also." Why aren't fundamentalists troubled
by the fact that you frequently see the moon during the day, and
frequently can't see it at night?


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm schreef:
> I can't possibly see the advantage.

As soon as someone makes a movie called "Main Page", the Main Page will
have to be moved. It's in article space, so a real article would have
priority.

Or maybe our Main Page is notable and encyclopedic in itself -- after
all, it has more page views than most web pages -- and if someone writes
an article about it, it should be located at [[Main Page]].

"The '''Main Page''' of [[Wikipedia]] is the front page of the
encyclopedia. It was located at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]
until 2007, when it was moved to [[Wikipedia Portal Space]] because of
reaching the encyclopedic notability threshold{{fact}}."

Eugene


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page.

body:
On 13 Jan 2007 at 15:36, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/13/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think I'm going to write a novel (under pseudonym, so it won't screw up
> > the quality literary pursuits I'll eventually get around to publishing)
> > called "Main Page"...
>
> And then it can be a movie starring Tom Hanks. Ooh.

It could be a movie about Congressman [[Mark Foley]]'s teenage
boyfriend...

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Eugene, that would be a great reason to move it, but as of right now, no
such thing has happened.
Let's not act on things that might happen, but on things that actually have
happened.

Mgm

On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm schreef:
> > I can't possibly see the advantage.
>
> As soon as someone makes a movie called "Main Page", the Main Page will
> have to be moved. It's in article space, so a real article would have
> priority.
>
> Or maybe our Main Page is notable and encyclopedic in itself -- after
> all, it has more page views than most web pages -- and if someone writes
> an article about it, it should be located at [[Main Page]].
>
> "The '''Main Page''' of [[Wikipedia]] is the front page of the
> encyclopedia. It was located at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]
> until 2007, when it was moved to [[Wikipedia Portal Space]] because of
> reaching the encyclopedic notability threshold{{fact}}."
>
> Eugene
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.0 released

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> January 10, 2007
>
> MediaWiki 1.9.0 is the quarterly release snapshot for Winter 2007.

You're five months early.

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

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from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page (sic)

body:
I love how the Main Page is listed as "Main page" on the left-hand-side
navigation bar.

Also, anyone who claims repairing the links to Main Page would be insane and
take years, could probably just send out a bot to do it in a matter of a few
days (at most).  It's such a specious b.s. claim, that whoever said it first
and those who perpetuate such b.s., in the words of Garfield, "should be
dragged out in the street and shot."

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Diversity and NC images - Board meet

references:
<eoa8nj$ncb$1@sea.gmane.org> <45A8CF34.2050707@gmail.com>
	<eoapfs$u2o$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
luke brandt schreef:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>> luke brandt schreef:
>>
>>
>>> It seems to me that the opposition to NC is based on a most curious and
>>> imperfect interpretation of the word 'free,' one that seeks to encompass
>>> the freedom to make a profit from other people's efforts. I therefore
>>> hope that the Foundation won't have any truck with the idea of diluting
>>> its previous attitude to autonomy - luke
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> Your POV is not what the Foundation has expressed from the start. I
>> think you are completely wrong in this.
>> Thanks,
>>      GerardM
>>
>
> Hi Gerard,
> I shouldn't have interjected the word 'therefore' as I think there are
> other good reasons for autonomy as well, as I earlier surmised you do
> too. But I'd be interested to know why you disagree on NC. I already
> read Eric's arguments:
>
> http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC
>
> as well as this reply:
>
> http://cites.boisestate.edu/v6i3e.htm
>
> and I'd be interested to know your view.
>
> Thanks
> luke
Hoi,
It is simple. Wikipedia is the Free encyclopedia. It is licensed under
the GFDL, the GFDL allows for commercial use. Allowing for NC material
in Wikipedia would make the whole of Wikipedia not available under the
GFDL. Elementary.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Schuyler Thompson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page (sic)

body:
Its more an issue of the external links

- [[User:Xxpor]]

On 1/13/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I love how the Main Page is listed as "Main page" on the left-hand-side
> navigation bar.
>
> Also, anyone who claims repairing the links to Main Page would be insane
> and
> take years, could probably just send out a bot to do it in a matter of a
> few
> days (at most).  It's such a specious b.s. claim, that whoever said it
> first
> and those who perpetuate such b.s., in the words of Garfield, "should be
> dragged out in the street and shot."
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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

Rob Church wrote:
> No. It means that the parser has, in fact, escaped our control, and we
> should all be very very worried about the future...

Or it could mean that the Parser has had it's architecture rewritten to
be clean, extensible, backwards-compatible, intuitive,
standards-compliant and fast.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFqaK7qTO+fYacSNoRAtTsAJsEFHHY2MtjaAahJhFZkJSNrKNEEQCdEQPi
8Wokki3hpD7IWqyhRYQrdzc=
=vMLq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Platonides

body:
Domas worte:
> "Unfortunately, no content could be extracted." \o/
>
> -- Domas
Hehehe...

Here are some other mirrors -kindly provided by Mdangers- which should
start getting problems too:

http://www.1bx.com
http://www.rockland-digital.de
http://www.therapeutikon.de
http://www.koordinaten.de
http://en.wikipedia.b4d.pl

Full links at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Weiternutzung/Live_Mirorrs

Platonides


from_name: PeruvianLlama

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page (sic)

body:
> Its more an issue of the external links
Just a thought on this, but assuming that the move were
community-approved then would it be possible to do a sort of
"hard-redirect" where http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (or
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?Main_Page if you like) would
automatically shunt any incoming traffic to the new page? Isn't there
something in Apache, a 500-level code maybe that a server gives to
clients to indicate a permanent redirect so that the incoming link can
be updated? If this was the case, and since everyone agrees that moving
Main_Page is not an immediate concern but rather a long-term issue (or
not an issue at all), then Main_Page could exist for the next six months
or year as an un-editable "hard-redirect", to give the world's links
time to be updated. Then after that, once the epic novel "Main Page" has
been written and achieved verifiable notability, we can un-hard-link the
Main_Page article and editing could begin.

Is any of this plausible?

 - PeruvianLlama


subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

references:
<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNGELEDGAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<pan.2007.01.10.00.31.16.8480@ask.com>
	<9ab06f7e0701100408h7fcc7ffbpa976ecbb108912ff@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140701100511ya1e28fr9bd66770da26eb07@mail.gmail.com>

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 10/01/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just an update on the issue - it appears Spanish users took the template
>> from Italians. Though on it.wikipedia it runs in ~1s, it runs 20s on
>> Spanish, so obviously, just "taking teh template" didn't work that well.
>
>
> Obviously, with the fantastically stupid^Wcreative things people are
> doing with templates, we need to write a Template Virtual Machine just
> for running templates. Or design a mask for a FPGA that will execute
> template code directly in the hardware.
>

Having actually used an FPGA, you don't need to design a mask; just a
sound knowledge of VHDL (and by extension, Ada), a few bottles of turps,
and a sledgehammer to pound your face against when the @#$% software
decides that it understands a completely different subset of VHDL syntax
to what you wrote your program in...

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

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from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-14

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19224).
Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  19 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.
      * TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div
      * TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'
Passed 484 of 503 tests (96.22%)... FAILED!


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Wikitech-l] Discovered a remote loader

body:
Please block also enciclopedia.tiosam.com

See
http://enciclopedia.tiosam.com/enciclopedia/enciclopedia.asp?title=Special:Recentchangesand
http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especial:Recentchanges

On 1/13/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> > They're filed at
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Mno#Medbib.com_-_.22the_modern_encyclopedia.22
>
>
> medbib and cooldictionary blocked.
>
> -- Domas
> http://dammit.lt
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
We'll be a step into the right direction if people try to improve some
articles before nominating them for deletion.
Sure, you CAN speedy an article for failing to claim notability, but if a
quick google search shows beyond a shadow of a doubt it is notable and you
can add a few words to prove it, it's really not the most produvtive
endeavor to delete something.

I see a lot of deletion discussions questioning notability when the
nominator has no real idea about the subject. Perhaps when can have a
separate page for notability discussions to avoid having them nominated for
deletion ebefore we have all the facts.

Mgm

On 1/12/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I personally fear systemic bias on wikipedia is being squeezed from
> two directions concurrently at the moment.
>
> The way AFD currently works means that pages which are not on many
> users watchlists is uniquely vulnerable to AFD-wonks predation. So
> that means that the bias stemming from our communitys composition not
> only affects what gets created but also what gets deleted. This
> two-way squeeze worries me.
>
> Although I commend in general terms the drive to emphasize quality
> over quantity, to me at least that does not extend so far as to
> emphasizing removal of content over creation of it. And this is a
> question that should at least be addressed. I think it would be useful
> if the board and or Jimbo uttered something on the matter to let us
> know how they view the question in general on this mailing list.
>
> I do not wish to make this a discussion of specific examples but
> rather a more general definition of guiding principles. But if
> necessary for illustrating the reality of the issue, I will find some
> examples to ground it in reality. I really don't think such is
> necessary, and would much prefer to discuss the matter under a "veil
> of ignorance" about which particular areas are most vulnerable, and in
> the abstract.
>
> So how about it? Even if we accept that quantity is *less* important
> than the quality, is creation still preferred over removal?
>
> --
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>