body:
> conned thousands of pounds. I would contend that someone's outward
> personality is not, alone, a valid reason to give them administrative
> powers. But the issue arises - how does one determine whether someone
> would make a good admin without trusting that they would? I would
> argue that it's very difficult.
>
That's exactly the reason we ask people to show some involvement with
admin duties before giving them those extra shiny buttons. From those
edits we should be able to tell if they are trustworthy and committed
to the project.

IMO large majorities tell us, a lot of users have seen them around and
agree the particular person being voted for is doing a good job and
can be trusted with admin powers.

Admin mentorship is a nice idea. I would certainly help new admins get
their footing, but I'm afraid it takes time away from what admins
should really be doing. Fighting vandalism, deleting nonsense and
generally keeping things running.

Finally, I think we should encourage people voting for adminship to
tell their reasons. That avoids "me too" votes and forces oppose
voters to explain themselves so others can seriously consider the
points they make.

--Mgm

On 6/24/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi people,
>
> This is my first proper contribution to how Wikipedia is "run", and
> I'm jumping straight in the deep end! I would say 'please be gentle',
> but adminship is a serious issue, no matter who says "adminship is no
> big deal".
>
> My first contribution to Wikipedia was only back in November of 2004,
> when I fixed a couple of links regarding spin in politics. I
> unfortunately think this is somewhat how requests for adminship is
> going at the moment, with people quoting Jim Wales' comment about
> adminship when it suits them.
>
> I didn't contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis for a few weeks, I
> made a few edits relating to photosynthesis in plants, and a few
> spelling corrections and one instance of reverting vandalism, which I
> had encountered for the first time on Wikipedia. It was nothing major,
> just me dipping my toes in the water. As I am a forum moderator at a
> fairly large internet community, I'm quite used to spam, trolling and
> most importantly, controversy. While some rightly say that Wikipedia
> is not an experiment in democracy and the community should not be the
> foremost target, it is important not to forget that it is hard to
> imagine what Wikipedia would be like without its community and
> consensus.
>
> Every time I look at Wikipedia I am reminded just how much I don't
> know. I pride myself on my general knowledge and I'm normally able to
> do a substantial part of any general knowledge crosswords, and I was
> gratified when one of my friends commented on it. The pursuit of
> knowledge is a lofty goal and I'm glad to be someone contributing to
> it, even with minor contributions like me, like spelling corrections,
> rewrites and aiming to improve comprehension and clarity of some
> Wikipedia articles which may not be written as well as they could have
> be.
>
> I have tried my hand at simple vandalism reversion for a set period of
> time - one time I managed 90 minutes, the second time a bit less. The
> reason I stopped was that /vandalism reversion is tedious/ -
> especially without the rollback feature. That people voting on the
> current votes for adminship expect people to have tried their hand at
> vandalism reversion (not just when they see it, but actively hunting
> it) is counter-productive - reverting simple vandalism is time wasted
> for people without rollback. We should give the ability to rollback
> liberally, but revoke that privilege liberally. If someone uses the
> rollback function for something other than vandalism, it should be
> rescinded. I think I am right in saying that the rollback feature was
> initially developed specifically to fight vandalism - I do not yet see
> any need to widen that remit.
>
> The page protection tool is another useful ability, being used to
> forcibly stop edit wars. I think it should be used in one more
> scenario - suspected copyright violations. As a relative newcomer I
> read the events leading up to RickK's departure with great interest. A
> suspected copyright violation should be protected until the situation
> is resolved - isn't that what the point of it is? I think that
> copyright paranoia is something to be wary of, however it shouldn't be
> dismissed. If a copyvio is suspected, the page should be protected as
> soon as possible (with the template in place) so we don't have the
> same repeat situation with revert warring over whether or not
> something is a copyright violation. I think we need a clearer policy
> for admins on this.
>
> Banning is a different issue, and something I believe new admins
> should be careful about doing. We have a 3RR policy, sure, but it's
> supposed to be for clear-cut cases of revert warring. When we get to
> the grey area about edit warring and defining vandalism I think we
> should be wary of using the 3RR to forcibly settle a dispute. Assuming
> good faith on behalf of the person who made the accusation should
> definitely be done (surely they had a reason, especially if they are a
> long-term contributor - making unsubstantiated copyvio reports might
> be vandalism). I think we should be less hasty with applying the 3RR
> rule if people are disagreeing over whether it should apply under the
> 3RR rules.
>
> Where am I going with this? I've reviewed the different admin
> abilities (excluding deleting, which we have a good policy for in my
> opinion), so what? I think we need to look at our admin appointment
> system as a whole.
>
> I am concerned, as some people have already voiced, that requesting
> adminship is becoming a popularity contest. Some people are elected
> with huge majorities, with a couple of dissenting voices from people
> who have had disagreements with the electee in the past. Without a
> reason for voting, it's difficult to tell what people are voting for.
> Are they voting for the person's character, or something else? I think
> Boothy443 is right to question the voting procedure (however I don't
> agree with the method of doing it). I am attempting to demean those
> admins who have been elected to adminship with large majorities and
> turnouts - but what does 50 names really show?
>
> The procedure in requests for adminship I do like is the discussion on
> opposition votes - the tone it sometimes takes may just have to come
> with the territory. When you vote at elections in the "real world", at
> least in the UK, you aren't voting for your concillor's or MP's
> character, you're voting for the policies that they stand for. This
> analogy is not quite apt to requesting adminship, as there is one set
> of policy formulated by everyone. But only today I read a story about
> a conman who convinced many people that he was a spy, and deceitfully

> Therefore I would like to propose a mentor system for new admins. If
> someone wishes to become an admin, they should find an existing admin
> who would willingly mentor them. When a mentor is found, the request
> would be put forward, and the adminship ability would be temporarily
> granted. During a set period (maybe 2-3 weeks) the mentor would
> monitor the actions of the adminee. A page for comments by other users
> and admins would exist. At the end of the period, the mentoring admin
> would provide a synopsis of the adminee's actions, and offer a
> decision on whether or not the admin should become a permanent admin,
> or returned to "normal user" status.  A bureaucrat would be
> responsible for making the final call on whether to promote or not.
>
> An obvious flaw, so far, with this system, is that a potential
> malicious user can go through the adminee period, get nominated
> without a hitch, and then cause trouble. This is why a deadminship
> procedure would need to be created - abuses of power should /not/ be
> tolerated. Currently there are irrevocable actions admins can take -
> these must either be fixed in code, or more appropriately, it made
> absolutely clear that anyone who takes malicious actions as an admin
> will face severe disciplinary action.
>
> This proposal, as it stands, does give admins more of a
> responsibility. I don't think this is a bad thing - admins do keep the
> wheels of Wikipedia turning. Changing the process to become an admin
> will result in it being thought less of as a status symbol and more of
> as a means to an end - ensuring that Wikipedia stands the test of time
> to become a fountain of knowledge - the reason I joined up to
> contribute, in my own way, to Wikipedia.
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Chris Jenkinson ([[User:Talrias]])
> http://talrias.net/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
On 6/24/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> In short, we dedicate another organisation to take care of a tool which
> has become essential to us. I think this is fair to help them... just as
> readers think we are an essential tool and support us.
>
> 'nuff on the topic. You want to help, you do. You do not want to help,
> you do not. Simple and light like air :-)

I suppose that is fair enough, but I thought freenode's near constant
pandering for support on IRC was enough.  I'm not the only one that
thinks this: several notable free software projects avoid freenode as
well.

Back when I was a part of Xiph.org, we setup our own irc network
because we became tired of freenode's constant nagging of our
contributors and several other free projects moved onto it for the
several years I ran it.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
firstname lastname stated for the record:
> Does this email work?

No.


from_name: Jake Waskett

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

body:
On Friday 24 June 2005 17:58, geni wrote:
> On 6/24/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> > An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to
> > be a really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been
> > recently used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is:
> > "troll, offensive user name".)
> >
> > As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> > transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large
> > UK telco).
> > manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
> >
> > a) Could somebody please remove the block, and
>
> It should be clear now. Problem users fromNTL are anoying.

Thank you.

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


list: textbook-l

from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks Newsletter No. 1

body:
This is the first edition new *Wikibooks periodical newsletter*. It's goal
is to give general information about current Wikibooks developments. This
first issue will mention several things from the relatively recent past on
Wikibooks, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

*New Developments *
The *Free High School Science Text* group from South Africa has started a
couple of new books, FHSST Biology,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FHSST_Biology , FHSST Physics,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FHSST_Physics , and FHSST Computer Literacy,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FHSST_Computer_Literacy , and they have more
planned. The project has the goal of providing free science textbooks to all
of South Africa. Of course, we know that eventually the books they create
will be used in other places as well. The FHSST,
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/index.html , has a large group of contributors
organized and already working. They were doing primary development offline
and then uploading the information, but leader Mark H,
http://www.nongnu.org/fhsst/4_team.html , has decided to try out the
Wikibooks development tools for their Biology book, developing it online
from the very start.

The FHSST folks are also working with two other organizations to develop
lesson plans related to the textbooks.

http://www.tuxlabs.org.za/
http://moodle.hmo.ac.za/

We hope that the FHSST books and related materials will set the stage for
other adventuresome educators to begin organized efforts to develop
educational materials on Wikibooks.

Wikibooks is now experimenting with a method of focusing effort called
the *Collaboration
of the Month*,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Collaboration_of_the_Month . The idea
is to identify a certain book each month for the community to rally around
and work on together.

*Wikistats*, http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/wikibooks/EN/Wikibooks_EN.htm.
This page gives statistics about Wikibooks.

*Book organization software enabled* ? Developers enabled wiki software that
automatically creates links from daughter pages to parent pages. It also
allows easy link-making from parent pages to daughter pages. Format links
from parent pages to daughter pages like this: [[/Daughter page]] To take
advantage of this feature, place subpages after slashes in the page titling
scheme. For example, a chapter on trees in the Plants section of a general
biology book: /General_Biology/Plants/Trees On the Trees page, the site
automatically creates back links to the Plants page as well as the
General_Biology page. Is that cool or what?

*Wiki Junior* ? Wikibooks is developing a series of nonfiction children's
books called Wiki Junior, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior . The
currently under development are:
* Big Cats, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Big_Cats
* South America, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_South_America , and
the
* Solar System, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Solar_System

*The Wikibooks Newsletter* ? this is an experiment in communication and
rallying of the troops, inspired by Linspire founder Michael Robertson's
"Michael's Minute" weekly newsletter.

*Most Active Books*
*Cookbook, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook
*Jokebook, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Jokebook*

Recommended Reading**
**How To Build A Computer,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Build_A_Computer
***World History, http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History
*Seven Habits Study Guide,
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seven_Habits_Study_Guide

*In Other Languages*
Administraci?n de tiempo (Spanish),
http://es.wikibooks.org/wiki/Administraci?n_de_tiempo

*Wikibooks in the News*
*'''Jimmy Wales on Slashdot''' ? When Jimmy was interviewed on Slashdot
recently (
http://interviews.slashdot.org/interviews/04/07/28/1351230.shtml?tid=146&tid=95&tid=11),
he expressed that one of the things that he is most excited about
within
the world of Wiki is changing the world of education in the developing world
with the creation of free educational materials on Wikibooks.
*http://www.govtech.net/magazine/channel_story.php?channel=27&id=93976 Panel
on Open Source

*Think Tank & Issues of Debate*
'''How should the textbook hierarchy be organized?''' With slashes, colons,
dashes ? "Wikibooks founder" Karl Wick suggests slashes, as the site
automatically recognizes slashes as indicators of page structure, and now
has software enabled that creates automatic links on daughter pages to
parent pages (see New Developments).

'''How can Wikibooks involve more educators?''' If you are an educator,
please give us feedback as to what would help you to use Wikibooks in the
classroom or as a development tool, or give examples of how you have used
Wikibooks materials in your classroom.


body:
On Friday 24 June 2005 17:53, David Gerard wrote:
> Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050625 00:46]:
> > An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to
> > be a really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been
> > recently used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is:
> > "troll, offensive user name".)
> > As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> > transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large
> > UK telco).
> > manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
>
> Trouble is that admins can't actually see what IP a username is coming
> from. So there's no indication until someone calls it to their attention.

Hmm. There seems to be a clash between anonymity and usability here, as is so
often the case with security systems.

Perhaps we could allow admins to see part of the reverse DNS, but not all of
it. If we strip off the last two parts of the name (in this example, leaving
just "manc-cache-5.server"), we'd get something that nine times out of ten
would identify a proxy or not, but would not be personally identifiable.

Reasonable?


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and freenode

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd think we'd be better off if people on this list donated first to
> wikipedia.

It is already the case that Wikimedia gets lots and lots of donation money.
Directing people to Freenode will not hurt us at all and if that can help that
network to stay up, then we can continue to concentrate on our goals.

-- mav

____________________________________________________
Yahoo! Sports
Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football
http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Requests for adminship reform

body:
On 6/24/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am concerned, as some people have already voiced, that requesting
> adminship is becoming a popularity contest. Some people are elected
> with huge majorities, with a couple of dissenting voices from people
> who have had disagreements with the electee in the past. Without a
> reason for voting, it's difficult to tell what people are voting for.
> Are they voting for the person's character, or something else? I think
> Boothy443 is right to question the voting procedure (however I don't
> agree with the method of doing it). I am attempting to demean those
> admins who have been elected to adminship with large majorities and
> turnouts - but what does 50 names really show?

I of course mean "I am not attempting to demean [..]" :)

Additional discussion of this is at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Talrias/Adminship_reform

Chris
--
Chris Jenkinson
http://talrias.net/


from_name: DF

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

body:
The Issue

Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica
to form a list of articles that Britannica has but
Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of
Britannica's copyright?

The list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics

Background

The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles
currently uses four very large lists of topics that
appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in
Wikipedia.  Of these lists, two are from sources whose
copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple
unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004
Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB").

On the talk page,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Copyright.3F,
there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a
copyright in the list of articles itself.  Under US
copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of
facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by
copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those
items is, in and of itself, a creative expression.
Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is
certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a
copyright over the list of articles in their
encyclopedia.  If true, then creating derivative works
from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of
articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be
a copyright violation.

As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees
that this applies to the EB list.  This includes
conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf,
both of whom I respect for their legal acumen.

Precedent

In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when
someone created a list of missing topics based on the
Columbia Encyclopedia.  At that time, it was decided
by community consensus to delete that list as a likely
copyright violation.

Archive of that discussion (look under March 2):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=2710783

In my opinion, the only real difference between the
two cases is that the EB list has existed for four
months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia
list was challenged and removed almost immediately
after its creation.

So what now?

Either we need to accept that such a list, though
potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
to keep around.

OR

We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
ultimately the one who is liable.

Thoughts?

Related links

WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
Feist v. Rural:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
US Copyright Code:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html

-DF
User:Dragons flight


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Replication-friendly upgrader

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:

> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>> Just a heads-up for those not following CVS; I'm fixing up an alternate
>>> schema upgrader which will do the major schema updates and UTF-8
>>> conversion for the 1.5 upgrade, and should be relatively friendly to
>>> replication.
>>
>>
>> Since basically everything (cur & old) will be changed in the database,
>> can't we just update the master DB server *without* synchronization to
>> the slaves, and then set up the slaves "de novo"?
>
>
> We could, but how would we benefit from this? That implies significantly
> more work (reconfiguring servers to enable/disable replication on
> certain databases and fanning out updates to multiple servers,
> selectively disabling filesystem alterations, etc).

I was think along these lines:
1. Make master read only; stop syncing
2. Update master only; meanwhile, delete all synced databases on the slaves
3. Once master is done, initialize slaves with a fresh master copy;
start sync
4. Enable write on server again
5. Profit! Oh, wait...

Maybe I misjudged the time to setup the slaves again, though.

Magnus
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from_name: blankfaze

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
On 6/24/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Does this email work?
>
>
yes.

--
! blankfaze
*so it goes*


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
On 6/24/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've commited a tool (maintenance/transstat.php) to CVS that makes the
> localization statistics prestented here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_statistics, if any of you
> have some free time to waste you could help update the current
> translations or help prune old redundant messages from them (see bug
> 2502 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2502)).

I've put in quite a bit of work to translate through MediaWiki: pages
as the LanguageXx.php files were not updated very often, and if
something was wrong, it could take a while. There is no way I'm going
to retranslate or backport all that by hand, and I have a feeling many
other languages may be like that. If someone wants those translations,
they may be better off taking a dump of the MediaWiki: namespace, or
writing a script that makes a .php out of them.

Dori


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] IRC and freenode

body:
A little announcement by Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of
staff of freenode. For those who do not know... Freenode is ... our irc
service...

Freenode is short on their last fundraising and would welcome any help
from those who use irc, likes it (ircholics) ....

The fundraising page is http://freenode.net/fundraiser.shtml

For those who wish to support freenode, please paste the little text
below on your project pumps or news page. Thanks in advance for freenode.

Anthere

* '''24 June 2005 : Please help'''. [[w:Peer-Directed Projects Center]]
runs [[w:freenode]], an interactive service which helps Wikipedia and
the FOSS community. Their annual fundraiser ends July 1, and they're
about $8,500 short.  [http://freenode.net/fundraiser.shtml Their
fundraising page]. From Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of staff
of freenode. Please spread the word... freenode is very helpful for us.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] IRC and Freenode


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] IRC and Freenode


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Am I allowed to start a poll?

body:
Don't feed the troll.  Ignore it.

On 6/24/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll was
> invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll considered
> trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use contentious
> language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He blocked me yesterday
> too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still don't know what
> that was for.
>
> CW
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 6/25/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well I can't tell if this is getting through your spam filter, I got no
> answer from the first email so I'll ask it again. Also my user name is
> LittleRedRidingHood:
>
> >Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll
> >was invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll
> >considered trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use
> >contentious language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He
> blocked
> >me yesterday too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still
> don't
> >know what that was for.
> >
> >CW
>
> Thanks and again I'm sorry if this is going to the wrong place.

Christ! Please stop spamming.
You've asked you question more than once. Wait patiently for an answer,
don't keep asking it.

--
! blankfaze
*so it goes*


from_name: geni

body:
> Hmm. There seems to be a clash between anonymity and usability here, as is so
> often the case with security systems.
>
> Perhaps we could allow admins to see part of the reverse DNS, but not all of
> it. If we strip off the last two parts of the name (in this example, leaving
> just "manc-cache-5.server"), we'd get something that nine times out of ten
> would identify a proxy or not, but would not be personally identifiable.
>
> Reasonable?

In most cases we find out pretty fast and there are/were a few editors
who I know if I block I'm going to have to kill the IP block.
personaly I can't see the point of the ipblock at all.

--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary and Wiktionary list

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:

>Hey,
>
>            The Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary now have over 1000 entries!
>And.where's the Wiktionary list?  I can't find it.
>
>
>
>James
>
Hoi James,
The Wiktionary-l at wikimedia.org can be found with the other mailinglists
at http://mail.wikimedia.org/
Thanks,
    GerardM

PS Proficiat :)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit:
> On 6/24/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>A little announcement by Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of
>>staff of freenode. For those who do not know... Freenode is ... our irc
>>service...
>
>
> I'd think we'd be better off if people on this list donated first to
> wikipedia. Freenode is a nice project but wikipedia provides something
> quite unique.  We already have to run our own IRC servers for recent
> changes...

I think that without freenode... it would be much much much more
difficult to manage many things. Real time chat makes a huge difference.
Now, we can ask the question to developers... do they feel like taking
care of ... euh possibly 100 channels ? Or might something like a
network of collaboration make the trick ?

ant


from_name: James R. Johnson

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

body:
Not to start up another argument (I remember the last ones), but this sounds
like the same thing betweek Bokmal and Nynorsk.

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mark Williamson
Sent: Friday, June 24, 2005 10:23 PM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why do we have them??

Hi all,
I have a question: why do we have separate Wikipedias for Malay and
Indonesian?

According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differences_between_Malay_and_Indonesian
, "The differences between Malay (Bahasa Melayu) and Indonesian
(Bahasa Indonesia) are comparable to the those between British English
and American English."

If this is the case, then why does our policy on English differ so
sharply than our policy with Malay/Indonesian?

Don't people realise that we're dividing labour? If they had
col-laborated on a single Wikipedia from the very beginning, the
Malay/Indonesian Wikipedia would probably have at least 15k articles
by now.

Mark

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit:
> On 6/24/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>A little announcement by Lilo, the director of PDPC and the head of
>>staff of freenode. For those who do not know... Freenode is ... our irc
>>service...
>
>
> I'd think we'd be better off if people on this list donated first to
> wikipedia. Freenode is a nice project but wikipedia provides something
> quite unique.  We already have to run our own IRC servers for recent
> changes...

A couple of citations (I hope their authors do not mind me putting them
here, I perceive they should not be misinterpretated)

JeLuF: running irc servers for RC and running a real network for users
are two different stories.

brion: i don't think there would be any benefit to running our own irc
for discussion.

brion: it's extra work, extra both, extra worrying about managing it and
crapflooders and DoSers and yadda yadda yadda

In short, we dedicate another organisation to take care of a tool which
has become essential to us. I think this is fair to help them... just as
readers think we are an essential tool and support us.

'nuff on the topic. You want to help, you do. You do not want to help,
you do not. Simple and light like air :-)

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: IRC and freenode

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose that is fair enough, but I thought freenode's near constant
> pandering for support on IRC was enough.  I'm not the only one that
> thinks this: several notable free software projects avoid freenode as
> well.

We'd need to constantly pander as well if our readership and editors were not
so generous.

-- mav

__________________________________
Discover Yahoo!
Use Yahoo! to plan a weekend, have fun online and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 24/06/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> On Friday 24 June 2005 17:53, David Gerard wrote:

> > > As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> > > transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large
> > > UK telco).
> > > manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net
> >
> > Trouble is that admins can't actually see what IP a username is coming
> > from. So there's no indication until someone calls it to their attention.
>
> Hmm. There seems to be a clash between anonymity and usability here, as is so
> often the case with security systems.
>
> Perhaps we could allow admins to see part of the reverse DNS, but not all of
> it. If we strip off the last two parts of the name (in this example, leaving
> just "manc-cache-5.server"), we'd get something that nine times out of ten
> would identify a proxy or not, but would not be personally identifiable.

Hmm. Set recent-changes to show only anons; 250 edits comes to about
175 unique IPs (busy people, these - one was there four or five
times). Converting them to names, then stripping off the two trailing
sections, we get this list - http://www.generalist.org.uk/wiki.txt
(somewhere along the line it went to 126 addresses. Buggered if I know
why.)

Of those, only 20 have proxy or cache in the name.

Thoughts on how useful this sort of data would be, given the
reasonably sized sample above?

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


body:
>
> Thoughts on how useful this sort of data would be, given the
> reasonably sized sample above?

not very because the IP blocks don;'t kick in until someone edits from
them so the person who does the intial block may never know.~~~~

--
geni


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] hello

body:
Hello everyone,

            I'm new to this list, so I hope I'll be able to contribute.  I
work mainly on the Anglo-Saxon wiktionary, which now has over 1000 entries!

Thanks,

James


from_name: Erik Zachte

body:
Sj:

> What is it that will take a lot of time to update, rewriting the queries?
> There are some SQL-friendly people around here who would like to help with
that.

I know SQL. Right now the scripts are parsing the dumps directly, doing a
lot of encoding, splitting, sorting and merging to process the files within
cramped memory.

SQL would be much easier. I do however worry about run time. I asked Brion
at Berlin, and he had no idea either.
Heavy ad hoc SQL queries have already often been forcefully aborted or
forbidden alltogether, no doubt for good reasons, so what to expect for this
monster job? It already runs 10 hours on English Wikipedia alone, over 24
hours for all Wikipedias. And parsing the dumps should still be much faster
than SQL, with all its extra I/O. Of course some tests could shed light on
this.

Apart from that I do lack the energy for any serious programming. All that
is left is for my day job. So I won't work on migrating to SQL of write new
encoding, splitting, sorting and merging code anytime soon. If I do some
perl hacking during my holiday it should be targeted towards EasyTimeline
where I have made promises that are half a year overdue (mainly unicode
support). If someone else would want to step in for wikistats code, that
would of course be great.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
On 6/24/05, Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/24/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've commited a tool (maintenance/transstat.php) to CVS that makes the
> > localization statistics prestented here:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_statistics, if any of you
> > have some free time to waste you could help update the current
> > translations or help prune old redundant messages from them (see bug
> > 2502 (http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2502)).
>
> I've put in quite a bit of work to translate through MediaWiki: pages
> as the LanguageXx.php files were not updated very often, and if
> something was wrong, it could take a while. There is no way I'm going
> to retranslate or backport all that by hand, and I have a feeling many
> other languages may be like that. If someone wants those translations,
> they may be better off taking a dump of the MediaWiki: namespace, or
> writing a script that makes a .php out of them.

We have just that, follow the "PHP" link on Special:Allmessages


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for adminship reform

body:
Chris, the long thoughtful post on this issue is appreciated. I agree
that article protection should be used more before the block button,
and admins should be encouraged to do this.

As for mentorship, I'm not convinced it needs to be done so formally
since nominating someone for adminship is an implicit endorsement and
vouching for that person's future as an admin. In contrast, a
self-nomination is viewed with much more caution and usually goes
through more scrutiny. Also, the scenario of someone "sneaking"
through the adminship process is something we all fear, but we seem to
have thwarted quite well.

-User:Fuzheado

On 6/25/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > conned thousands of pounds. I would contend that someone's outward
> > personality is not, alone, a valid reason to give them administrative
> > powers. But the issue arises - how does one determine whether someone
> > would make a good admin without trusting that they would? I would
> > argue that it's very difficult.
> >
> That's exactly the reason we ask people to show some involvement with
> admin duties before giving them those extra shiny buttons. From those
> edits we should be able to tell if they are trustworthy and committed
> to the project.
>
> IMO large majorities tell us, a lot of users have seen them around and
> agree the particular person being voted for is doing a good job and
> can be trusted with admin powers.
>
> Admin mentorship is a nice idea. I would certainly help new admins get
> their footing, but I'm afraid it takes time away from what admins
> should really be doing. Fighting vandalism, deleting nonsense and
> generally keeping things running.
>
> Finally, I think we should encourage people voting for adminship to
> tell their reasons. That avoids "me too" votes and forces oppose
> voters to explain themselves so others can seriously consider the
> points they make.
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 6/24/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi people,
> >
> > This is my first proper contribution to how Wikipedia is "run", and
> > I'm jumping straight in the deep end! I would say 'please be gentle',
> > but adminship is a serious issue, no matter who says "adminship is no
> > big deal".
> >
> > My first contribution to Wikipedia was only back in November of 2004,
> > when I fixed a couple of links regarding spin in politics. I
> > unfortunately think this is somewhat how requests for adminship is
> > going at the moment, with people quoting Jim Wales' comment about
> > adminship when it suits them.
> >
> > I didn't contribute to Wikipedia on a regular basis for a few weeks, I
> > made a few edits relating to photosynthesis in plants, and a few
> > spelling corrections and one instance of reverting vandalism, which I
> > had encountered for the first time on Wikipedia. It was nothing major,
> > just me dipping my toes in the water. As I am a forum moderator at a
> > fairly large internet community, I'm quite used to spam, trolling and
> > most importantly, controversy. While some rightly say that Wikipedia
> > is not an experiment in democracy and the community should not be the
> > foremost target, it is important not to forget that it is hard to
> > imagine what Wikipedia would be like without its community and
> > consensus.
> >
> > Every time I look at Wikipedia I am reminded just how much I don't
> > know. I pride myself on my general knowledge and I'm normally able to
> > do a substantial part of any general knowledge crosswords, and I was
> > gratified when one of my friends commented on it. The pursuit of
> > knowledge is a lofty goal and I'm glad to be someone contributing to
> > it, even with minor contributions like me, like spelling corrections,
> > rewrites and aiming to improve comprehension and clarity of some
> > Wikipedia articles which may not be written as well as they could have
> > be.
> >
> > I have tried my hand at simple vandalism reversion for a set period of
> > time - one time I managed 90 minutes, the second time a bit less. The
> > reason I stopped was that /vandalism reversion is tedious/ -
> > especially without the rollback feature. That people voting on the
> > current votes for adminship expect people to have tried their hand at
> > vandalism reversion (not just when they see it, but actively hunting
> > it) is counter-productive - reverting simple vandalism is time wasted
> > for people without rollback. We should give the ability to rollback
> > liberally, but revoke that privilege liberally. If someone uses the
> > rollback function for something other than vandalism, it should be
> > rescinded. I think I am right in saying that the rollback feature was
> > initially developed specifically to fight vandalism - I do not yet see
> > any need to widen that remit.
> >
> > The page protection tool is another useful ability, being used to
> > forcibly stop edit wars. I think it should be used in one more
> > scenario - suspected copyright violations. As a relative newcomer I
> > read the events leading up to RickK's departure with great interest. A
> > suspected copyright violation should be protected until the situation
> > is resolved - isn't that what the point of it is? I think that
> > copyright paranoia is something to be wary of, however it shouldn't be
> > dismissed. If a copyvio is suspected, the page should be protected as
> > soon as possible (with the template in place) so we don't have the
> > same repeat situation with revert warring over whether or not
> > something is a copyright violation. I think we need a clearer policy
> > for admins on this.
> >
> > Banning is a different issue, and something I believe new admins
> > should be careful about doing. We have a 3RR policy, sure, but it's
> > supposed to be for clear-cut cases of revert warring. When we get to
> > the grey area about edit warring and defining vandalism I think we
> > should be wary of using the 3RR to forcibly settle a dispute. Assuming
> > good faith on behalf of the person who made the accusation should
> > definitely be done (surely they had a reason, especially if they are a
> > long-term contributor - making unsubstantiated copyvio reports might
> > be vandalism). I think we should be less hasty with applying the 3RR
> > rule if people are disagreeing over whether it should apply under the
> > 3RR rules.
> >
> > Where am I going with this? I've reviewed the different admin
> > abilities (excluding deleting, which we have a good policy for in my
> > opinion), so what? I think we need to look at our admin appointment
> > system as a whole.
> >
> > I am concerned, as some people have already voiced, that requesting
> > adminship is becoming a popularity contest. Some people are elected
> > with huge majorities, with a couple of dissenting voices from people
> > who have had disagreements with the electee in the past. Without a
> > reason for voting, it's difficult to tell what people are voting for.
> > Are they voting for the person's character, or something else? I think
> > Boothy443 is right to question the voting procedure (however I don't
> > agree with the method of doing it). I am attempting to demean those
> > admins who have been elected to adminship with large majorities and
> > turnouts - but what does 50 names really show?
> >
> > The procedure in requests for adminship I do like is the discussion on
> > opposition votes - the tone it sometimes takes may just have to come
> > with the territory. When you vote at elections in the "real world", at
> > least in the UK, you aren't voting for your concillor's or MP's
> > character, you're voting for the policies that they stand for. This
> > analogy is not quite apt to requesting adminship, as there is one set
> > of policy formulated by everyone. But only today I read a story about
> > a conman who convinced many people that he was a spy, and deceitfully
>
> > Therefore I would like to propose a mentor system for new admins. If
> > someone wishes to become an admin, they should find an existing admin
> > who would willingly mentor them. When a mentor is found, the request
> > would be put forward, and the adminship ability would be temporarily
> > granted. During a set period (maybe 2-3 weeks) the mentor would
> > monitor the actions of the adminee. A page for comments by other users
> > and admins would exist. At the end of the period, the mentoring admin
> > would provide a synopsis of the adminee's actions, and offer a
> > decision on whether or not the admin should become a permanent admin,
> > or returned to "normal user" status.  A bureaucrat would be
> > responsible for making the final call on whether to promote or not.
> >
> > An obvious flaw, so far, with this system, is that a potential
> > malicious user can go through the adminee period, get nominated
> > without a hitch, and then cause trouble. This is why a deadminship
> > procedure would need to be created - abuses of power should /not/ be
> > tolerated. Currently there are irrevocable actions admins can take -
> > these must either be fixed in code, or more appropriately, it made
> > absolutely clear that anyone who takes malicious actions as an admin
> > will face severe disciplinary action.
> >
> > This proposal, as it stands, does give admins more of a
> > responsibility. I don't think this is a bad thing - admins do keep the
> > wheels of Wikipedia turning. Changing the process to become an admin
> > will result in it being thought less of as a status symbol and more of
> > as a means to an end - ensuring that Wikipedia stands the test of time
> > to become a fountain of knowledge - the reason I joined up to
> > contribute, in my own way, to Wikipedia.
> >
> > Chris
> >
> > --
> > Chris Jenkinson ([[User:Talrias]])
> > http://talrias.net/
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes
 DefaultSettings.php, 1.339, 1.340 SpecialExport.php, 1.32, 1.33

body:
Magnus, could you do this as a drop-in extension rather than in the main
SpecialExport code?

* It's standalone
* It's optional
* It doesn't use the defined export format

I've taken it out for the moment, but would love to see it available as
an extension.

A couple notes:
* Since this isn't part of the defined mediawiki export schema, it
should probably not claim to be the same version.
* Probably best to use existing htmlspecialchars() rather than
reimplementing it
* Actually, there's a function wfElement() specifically for generating
XML tags with proper formatting. That might be handy.
* There's no index on page_touched, and no limit on the query; that
could be a serious performance problem if this were used.
* Probably should use the database timestamp() method to format the
timestamp in the query; we'll at some point switch over to using
DATETIME fields rather than the 14-char fields.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Export : List all articles since X

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> The reasoning behind this is to ease mirror updates, which then won't
> have to wait for the next dump. Goes like this:
> * Check your mirror database for the latest date any article has
> * Get a list of all articles that have changed since that moment
> * Get all these articles via the "normal" Special:Export function
> * Update your database with these

See extensions/OAI for the mass update server/client we've been setting
up experimentally.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Rebecca

body:
On 6/25/05, Jake Waskett <jake at waskett.org> wrote:
> a) Could somebody please remove the block, and
> b) Could we please discuss establishing a policy that requires checking DNS
> before setting a block, to ensure that this situation does not arise? It is
> not the first time, and it is irritating to say the least, especially as it
> only takes a few seconds to check.
>
> Thanks.
>
> [[User:Jakew]]

As MacGyverMagic noted, the autoblocks are automatic - there was no
opportunity for anyone to check whether anyone else was using the IP.
I know it's a pain - I've got caught in at least two blocks because
someone has been vandalising from somewhere else in my university, but
it's easy enough to drop an admin a line and get the block undone if
you're being innocently caught in it.

-- ambi


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Jake Waskett (jake at waskett.org) [050625 00:46]:

> An admin called RickK has blocked 62.252.192.8 (for what seems to me to be a
> really poor reason: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently
> used by "Abortion". The reason given for Abortion's block is: "troll,
> offensive user name".)
> As can be readily seen from a reverse DNS query, this IP address is a
> transparent proxy server, use of which is forced upon NTL users (a large UK
> telco).
> manc-cache-5.server.ntli.net

Trouble is that admins can't actually see what IP a username is coming
from. So there's no indication until someone calls it to their attention.

Nice to see RickK blocking again though ;-)

- d.


from_name: firstname lastname

body:
Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll was
invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll considered
trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use contentious
language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He blocked me yesterday
too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still don't know what
that was for.

CW

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dumps on download.wikimedia.org

body:
Jochen Magnus <jo <at> magnus.de> writes:

>
> May be, that I miss an information in this newsgroup, may be, my english
> is too humble for understanding it, but I cannot find an answer to my
> question: "When can we expect fresh dumps?"

As of yesterday new dumps are online.
Please note, that there are just dumps
of our main databases. External Storage
(eh, place where we keep our archives),
and images will be done separately.

Cheers,
Domas


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
Does this email work?

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Messi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Localization statistics

body:
2005/6/24, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
> Mass-changing double quotes to single quotes has no actual benefits.

Won't parsing be faster? Or is it really a myth?

> * Bugs are often introduced (some quotes missed, escaped metacharacters
> missed, embedded variables missed)

This can be done quickly by a script that writes a new LanguageXx.php.
(e.g. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Messi/d2s_script
Btw, is it safe to single quote strings with $1?)

messi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
Very funny. Well like I said I got banned for starting a poll and I'm pretty
sure that's not against the rules.

>From: Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
>Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 21:19:16 -0700
>
>firstname lastname stated for the record:
>>Does this email work?
>
>No.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Hello

body:
Is this the wrong mailing list, just tell me and I'll go away.

>From: blankfaze <blankfaze at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: blankfaze <blankfaze at gmail.com>,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Hello
>Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:16:11 -0500
>
>On 6/24/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Does this email work?
> >
> >
>yes.
>
>--
>! blankfaze
>*so it goes*
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
If Safeway made a list of products offered by WalMart which Safeway
did not offer?

Fred

On Jun 24, 2005, at 11:32 PM, DF wrote:

> The Issue
>
> Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica
> to form a list of articles that Britannica has but
> Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of
> Britannica's copyright?
>
> The list:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics
>
> Background
>
> The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles
> currently uses four very large lists of topics that
> appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in
> Wikipedia.  Of these lists, two are from sources whose
> copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple
> unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004
> Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB").
>
> On the talk page,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Copyright.3F,
> there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a
> copyright in the list of articles itself.  Under US
> copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of
> facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by
> copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those
> items is, in and of itself, a creative expression.
> Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is
> certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a
> copyright over the list of articles in their
> encyclopedia.  If true, then creating derivative works
> from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of
> articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be
> a copyright violation.
>
> As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees
> that this applies to the EB list.  This includes
> conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf,
> both of whom I respect for their legal acumen.
>
> Precedent
>
> In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when
> someone created a list of missing topics based on the
> Columbia Encyclopedia.  At that time, it was decided
> by community consensus to delete that list as a likely
> copyright violation.
>
> Archive of that discussion (look under March 2):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=2710783
>
> In my opinion, the only real difference between the
> two cases is that the EB list has existed for four
> months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia
> list was challenged and removed almost immediately
> after its creation.
>
>
> So what now?
>
> Either we need to accept that such a list, though
> potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
> to keep around.
>
> OR
>
> We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
> be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
> which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
> ultimately the one who is liable.
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Related links
>
> WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
> Feist v. Rural:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
> US Copyright Code:
> http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html
>
>
> -DF
> User:Dragons flight
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Well I can't tell if this is getting through your spam filter, I got no
answer from the first email so I'll ask it again. Also my user name is
LittleRedRidingHood:

>Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll
>was invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll
>considered trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use
>contentious language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He blocked
>me yesterday too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still don't
>know what that was for.
>
>CW

Thanks and again I'm sorry if this is going to the wrong place.

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Better then Netscape :)

body:
On alexa.com, Wikipedia passed Netscape:

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=6m&size=large&compare_sites=netscape.com&y=r&url=http://www.wikipedia.org


from_name: Servien Ilaino

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

body:
Hi there,

I'd like to request for a Wikipedia in Dutch-Low Saxon (?1.8 million
speakers). There is currently a Low Saxon one but 95% of it is in
German-Low Saxon and quite ununderstandable for Dutch-Low Saxon speakers.

We already have the minimum number of interested persons who will work on
the Dutch-Low Saxon Wikipedia encyclopedia. (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Dutch-Low_Saxon)

Thanks in advance.

Servien Ilaino
(I'm just new here)

--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm


body:
Well I can't ignore him, he's done this twice and he'll probably do it
again. I started a poll and he banned me. Is this fair? How can I ignore it?
Every time I work on that article he bans me.

>From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Am I allowed to start a poll?
>Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:29:29 -0700
>
>Don't feed the troll.  Ignore it.
>
>On 6/24/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll
>was
> > invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll
>considered
> > trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use
>contentious
> > language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He blocked me
>yesterday
> > too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still don't know what
> > that was for.
> >
> > CW
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> > http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Yes, we had admins face disciplinary action before, but there's also a
large number of accusations that never even reach a stage of serious
discussion, because they ask for de-sysoping on a knee-jerk reaction -
merely for the admin disagreeing with them or for moving a page (which
anyone can do).

Arbitration should suffice.

--Mgm

On 6/25/05, Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/25/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias at gmail.com> wrote:
> > An obvious flaw, so far, with this system, is that a potential
> > malicious user can go through the adminee period, get nominated
> > without a hitch, and then cause trouble. This is why a deadminship
> > procedure would need to be created - abuses of power should /not/ be
> > tolerated. Currently there are irrevocable actions admins can take -
> > these must either be fixed in code, or more appropriately, it made
> > absolutely clear that anyone who takes malicious actions as an admin
> > will face severe disciplinary action.
>
> This is the case now. We've had three admins face disciplinary action
> over admin abuses before, all leading to de-sysopping, and more
> recently, one that was emergency de-sysopped after going on a deleting
> rampage. This sort of thing is specifically what the arbitration
> committee is for. There is no need to create an additional lynch mob
> so that a handful of users can settle scores with people who - they
> freely admit - have done nothing wrong, but they just don't like.
>
> -- ambi
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
No, I don't think a list of alphabetically ordered article names is in
any way creative or copyrightable. The other list could - IMO of
course - be reinstated, but asking Jimbo is probably a safe thing to
do.

-Mgm

On 6/25/05, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The Issue
>
> Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica
> to form a list of articles that Britannica has but
> Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of
> Britannica's copyright?
>
> The list:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics
>
> Background
>
> The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles
> currently uses four very large lists of topics that
> appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in
> Wikipedia.  Of these lists, two are from sources whose
> copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple
> unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004
> Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB").
>
> On the talk page,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Copyright.3F,
> there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a
> copyright in the list of articles itself.  Under US
> copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of
> facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by
> copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those
> items is, in and of itself, a creative expression.
> Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is
> certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a
> copyright over the list of articles in their
> encyclopedia.  If true, then creating derivative works
> from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of
> articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be
> a copyright violation.
>
> As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees
> that this applies to the EB list.  This includes
> conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf,
> both of whom I respect for their legal acumen.
>
> Precedent
>
> In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when
> someone created a list of missing topics based on the
> Columbia Encyclopedia.  At that time, it was decided
> by community consensus to delete that list as a likely
> copyright violation.
>
> Archive of that discussion (look under March 2):
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=2710783
>
> In my opinion, the only real difference between the
> two cases is that the EB list has existed for four
> months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia
> list was challenged and removed almost immediately
> after its creation.
>
>
> So what now?
>
> Either we need to accept that such a list, though
> potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
> to keep around.
>
> OR
>
> We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
> be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
> which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
> ultimately the one who is liable.
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> Related links
>
> WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
> Feist v. Rural:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
> US Copyright Code:
> http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html
>
>
> -DF
> User:Dragons flight
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Well, this sucks. Instead of telling me what I did wrong, first you people
tell me to wait for an answer, and then you tell me to ignore the guy whose
blocking me.

>From: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com>,English Wikipedia
><wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Am I allowed to start a poll?
>Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 23:29:29 -0700
>
>Don't feed the troll.  Ignore it.
>
>On 6/24/05, firstname lastname <cainwilshire at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi, I started a new poll on the talk page for feces because the old poll
>was
> > invalid, and Mikkalai blocked me for trolling. Why is a new poll
>considered
> > trolling? I was trying to help settle the issue. I didn't use
>contentious
> > language or anything, it was pretty straightforward. He blocked me
>yesterday
> > too for trolling but I thought it was a mistake, I still don't know what
> > that was for.
> >
> > CW
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Don't just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
> > http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm (macgyvermagic at gmail.com) [050625 04:10]:

> IMO large majorities tell us, a lot of users have seen them around and
> agree the particular person being voted for is doing a good job and
> can be trusted with admin powers.

Seconded. That's also why those nominated by someone else usually get a LOT
more votes than self-nominations.

> Admin mentorship is a nice idea. I would certainly help new admins get
> their footing, but I'm afraid it takes time away from what admins
> should really be doing. Fighting vandalism, deleting nonsense and
> generally keeping things running.

In practice, most new admins will know other admins and be able to
sanity-check with them. I recommend this highly.

(My main advice for new admins is "Patience, young Jedi.")

> Finally, I think we should encourage people voting for adminship to
> tell their reasons. That avoids "me too" votes and forces oppose
> voters to explain themselves so others can seriously consider the
> points they make.

Support votes are pretty self-explanatory - "I think they'll do well."
There often isn't much to add. Oppose votes are a different sort of thing.

But the message you're responding to is a good one with many good points to
ponder.

- d.


from_name: Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
On 25/06/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I have been thinking a little bit as well about a model with full blown
> keys (like the Google API) -- the point could be that for free software,
> we can give out free keys and support those users at our own expense.
> But for proprietary software, we can charge money for the keys.

Could web reusers use the same interface (with appropriate caching)?
Would they be able to get free keys if their sites were free?

(I have no plans to do anything along these lines, but I'd imagine
that sooner or later a WWW::Wikipedia::API will pop up on the CPAN...)

--
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brent at brentdax.com>
Perl and Parrot hacker


from_name: Michael Snow

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

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>Hi all,
>>I have a question: why do we have separate Wikipedias for Malay and Indonesian?
>>
>>
>I've often asked the same question, this is my personal favourite
>linguistic hobby horse. Presumably any merge would have to occur with
>much input and help from the editor communities on each wiki, and I'm
>yet to make contact with any of them. They don't seem to be too
>concerned about the issue themselves, judging by the fact that none of
>them has brought a merge proposal to the Board, the developers or this
>list.
>
>
Is there anybody who happens to participate in both communities? If so,
they might be best placed to explain the situation.

--Michael Snow


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

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> If Safeway made a list of products offered by WalMart which Safeway
> did not offer?

It would depend on how Safeway created the list. If Safeway sends
employees to WalMart stores to write down every item they can find that
Safeway doesn't offer, that's entirely legitimate because there's no
copying (in the copyright sense) involved. If Safeway somehow obtains
WalMart master internal list of merchandise and takes information from
it, then they are copying. However, it might still be okay for them,
because the information is purely factual and frankly, I don't think
that creating a list of the merchandise you offer qualifies as a process
of selection in the "creative" sense usually expected by copyright law.
Rather, if there's a violation of law here, it's likely to be a matter
of trade secrets.

I think our situation is different. Because our "products" are entirely
documentary, the only way we can create a list of our competitors'
products is by copying. And there is definitely a process of selection
in determining what subjects to cover in an encyclopedia. So this list
is not simply a copy of purely factual information that has had no
creative selection or arrangement applied to it. As such, I consider it
highly problematic.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Tables of contents are, to my knowledge, generally considered easily
and unquestionably covered by fair use clauses -- there is  no
"creativity" that goes into simply compiling a list of what your
encyclopedia has in it, and in the end this is essentially just
citation information, which of course is never considered copyrighted
(how could you attribute if you could not cite?). If one is to be
copyright paranoid (something which I somewhat support in some
circumstances), there are plenty of more dodgy uses of fair use in
Wikipedia than this.

FF

On 6/25/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, I don't think a list of alphabetically ordered article names is in
> any way creative or copyrightable. The other list could - IMO of
> course - be reinstated, but asking Jimbo is probably a safe thing to
> do.
>
> -Mgm
>
> On 6/25/05, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The Issue
> >
> > Whether or not using the 2004 Encyclopedia Britannica
> > to form a list of articles that Britannica has but
> > Wikipedia doesn't constitutes a violation of
> > Britannica's copyright?
> >
> > The list:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:2004_Encyclopedia_topics
> >
> > Background
> >
> > The WikiProject:Missing encyclopedia articles
> > currently uses four very large lists of topics that
> > appear in other encyclopedias but do not appear in
> > Wikipedia.  Of these lists, two are from sources whose
> > copyright has expired, one is a composite of multiple
> > unnamed sources, and the last is based on the 2004
> > Encyclopedia Britannica (hereafter "EB").
> >
> > On the talk page,
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles#Copyright.3F,
> > there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a
> > copyright in the list of articles itself.  Under US
> > copyright law (e.g. Feist v. Rural), a mere list of
> > facts, topics, names, etc. can be protected by
> > copyright if the selection and/or arrangement of those
> > items is, in and of itself, a creative expression.
> > Since the selection of articles for an encyclopedia is
> > certainly an act of creativity, this may grant EB a
> > copyright over the list of articles in their
> > encyclopedia.  If true, then creating derivative works
> > from their list of articles (i.e. by making a list of
> > articles that they have but we don't) is likely to be
> > a copyright violation.
> >
> > As can be seen from the talk page, not everyone agrees
> > that this applies to the EB list.  This includes
> > conflicting opinions from users Jamesday and Postdlf,
> > both of whom I respect for their legal acumen.
> >
> > Precedent
> >
> > In March 2004, a very similar situation occurred when
> > someone created a list of missing topics based on the
> > Columbia Encyclopedia.  At that time, it was decided
> > by community consensus to delete that list as a likely
> > copyright violation.
> >
> > Archive of that discussion (look under March 2):
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Copyright_problems&oldid=2710783
> >
> > In my opinion, the only real difference between the
> > two cases is that the EB list has existed for four
> > months without being challenged, whereas the Columbia
> > list was challenged and removed almost immediately
> > after its creation.
> >
> >
> > So what now?
> >
> > Either we need to accept that such a list, though
> > potentially useful, is too much of a copyright concern
> > to keep around.
> >
> > OR
> >
> > We need to come to some agreement that such lists will
> > be maintained despite the potential liability.  In
> > which case, Jimbo probably needs sign off since he is
> > ultimately the one who is liable.
> >
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> >
> > Related links
> >
> > WikiProject: Missing encyclopedia articles:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Missing_encyclopedic_articles
> > Feist v. Rural:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
> > US Copyright Code:
> > http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/toc.html
> >
> >
> > -DF
> > User:Dragons flight
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Fastfission wrote:

>Tables of contents are, to my knowledge, generally considered easily
>and unquestionably covered by fair use clauses -- there is  no
>"creativity" that goes into simply compiling a list of what your
>encyclopedia has in it, and in the end this is essentially just
>citation information, which of course is never considered copyrighted
>(how could you attribute if you could not cite?). If one is to be
>copyright paranoid (something which I somewhat support in some
>circumstances), there are plenty of more dodgy uses of fair use in
>Wikipedia than this.
>
>
If you want to claim fair use for this list, please review and analyze
the fair use factors and tell us how this list qualifies for fair use.
Fair use is analyzed on a case-by-case basis, so you can't really just
say glibly that a particular type of content is always fair use. It's
the *use* that matters much more than the nature of the original content.

There *is* creativity involved in a list of what an encyclopedia
contains, quite specifically due to the selection process involved in
determining what subjects go into the encyclopedia in the first place.

I agree that we have lots of dubious claims of fair use, but that
doesn't make this one okay.

--Michael Snow


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 6/25/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>DF wrote:
>>
>>
>>>there is an ongoing discussion of whether EB holds a
>>>copyright in the list of articles itself.
>>>
>>>
>>I've asked this back when I did the Columbia list, and I didn't get a
>>response, but I'll ask the same question again now: Why don't we just
>>ask them if they're okay with it?
>>
>>
>I was about to ask the same thing in my post, but I somehow forgot.
>
>
And if they don't answer, but simply complain to the media instead?
Given their regular habit of bad-mouthing us in the press, I'm not keen
on handing them an opportunity they can spin into "Look, Wikipedia is
blatantly copying all of our articles." With Brockhaus, where we have
established contacts and a more amicable relationship, I might view it
differently.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
Trillian currently uses a system where they distribute with their im client
a list of all the article titles, and it compares all incoming strings on
im, irc, etc.. against the titles. It then turns the strings into links that
when hovered over, initiate a request to the Trillian servers for the entire
text of the article, which is then displayed as a hover box. The article
text is cached for future use.

If a pay-per-basis api is available, they may want to incorporate a small
fee into the cost of the client which would allow each individual to access
the wikipedia api, rather than trillian's servers. This benefits them for
not having to handle so much traffic, and benefits the end-user because they
get completely fresh data (not from a stale copy on trillian's servers), and
it (may) benefit the foundation because it is incoming money, unless the
service is provided at-cost.

Just wanted to present this as a possible real-world solution that is
indicative of what folks are going to want to do with an API...

/Alterego

On 6/25/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> It seems that a lot of people are excited about the concept of KDE
> integration (and of course integration beyond that), and I am thinking
> that we should start to think now a little bit about the load on the
> webservers and how to manage it.
>
> My thought is that a well behaved application should produce no more
> load than people surfing our site with a traditional browser. But it is
> possible (likely, even) that some applications will not be well-behaved.
>
> If we have a single generic interface where everyone pulls in exactly
> the same way, then we have no way to block abusive applications without
> blocking everyone.
>
> Something as simple as requiring a "user agent" string might be enough?
>
> This issue is quite similar to the issue of people pulling pages from
> our site "live" to make a mirror. It's not a good thing to do if done
> abusively. But with web hosts, it is easy enough to simply block them
> if they misbehave. A misbehaving application will come in through many
> ip numbers.
>
> I have been thinking a little bit as well about a model with full blown
> keys (like the Google API) -- the point could be that for free software,
> we can give out free keys and support those users at our own expense.
> But for proprietary software, we can charge money for the keys.
>
> Anyone who doesn't want to pay can still get the database dumps from
> time to time.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> Currently the colour of the normal link and the visited link are
> indistinguishable to the colourblind. This is a problem across all the
> sites we have. Sure this isnt really important, but are then any web
> designers who have faced this problem before who could suggest colours
> which could be distinguished by most colourblind ppl (since most
> colourblind ppl arent completely colourblind, just red-green
> colourblind). Apparently about 10 percent of ppl are colourblind

Our links are blue and red. Can you confirm that these really are
indistinguishable to someone with red-green colorblindness?

I would really like to know if this is based on actual experience (eg,
you are colorblind or a colorblind person has reported to you that they
are in fact not distinguishable) or if it's speculation. Without hard
data it's going to be very difficult to just come up with a change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> Currently the colour of the normal link and the visited link are
> indistinguishable to the colourblind. This is a problem across all the
> sites we have. Sure this isnt really important, but are then any web
> designers who have faced this problem before who could suggest colours
> which could be distinguished by most colourblind ppl (since most
> colourblind ppl arent completely colourblind, just red-green
> colourblind). Apparently about 10 percent of ppl are colourblind

Our links are blue and red. Can you confirm that these really are
indistinguishable to someone with red-green colorblindness?

I would really like to know if this is based on actual experience (eg,
you are colorblind or a colorblind person has reported to you that they
are in fact not distinguishable) or if it's speculation. Without hard
data it's going to be very difficult to just come up with a change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> Currently the colour of the normal link and the visited link are
> indistinguishable to the colourblind. This is a problem across all the
> sites we have. Sure this isnt really important, but are then any web
> designers who have faced this problem before who could suggest colours
> which could be distinguished by most colourblind ppl (since most
> colourblind ppl arent completely colourblind, just red-green
> colourblind). Apparently about 10 percent of ppl are colourblind

Our links are blue and red. Can you confirm that these really are
indistinguishable to someone with red-green colorblindness?

I would really like to know if this is based on actual experience (eg,
you are colorblind or a colorblind person has reported to you that they
are in fact not distinguishable) or if it's speculation. Without hard
data it's going to be very difficult to just come up with a change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Colourblindness

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> Currently the colour of the normal link and the visited link are
> indistinguishable to the colourblind. This is a problem across all the
> sites we have. Sure this isnt really important, but are then any web
> designers who have faced this problem before who could suggest colours
> which could be distinguished by most colourblind ppl (since most
> colourblind ppl arent completely colourblind, just red-green
> colourblind). Apparently about 10 percent of ppl are colourblind

Our links are blue and red. Can you confirm that these really are
indistinguishable to someone with red-green colorblindness?

I would really like to know if this is based on actual experience (eg,
you are colorblind or a colorblind person has reported to you that they
are in fact not distinguishable) or if it's speculation. Without hard
data it's going to be very difficult to just come up with a change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
I have added a new function to Special:Export. Just letting you know, in
case you worry why I do that so shortly before 1.5 going life:

* The function is dead simple
* It requires $wgAllowArticleList to be set "true", which it isn't by
default

So it shouldn't break anything...

What it does is to return a simple XML list of all articles changed at
or after a specific time. Example syntax:
    Special:Export&action=list&since=20050625083959

Output looks like this:
<mediawiki version="0.1">
  <articlelist>
    <article prefixed_title="Main_Page" title="Main_Page"
namespace_id="0" namespace_name=""/>
    <article prefixed_title="Help:Contents" title="Contents"
namespace_id="12" namespace_name="Help"/>
  </articlelist>
</mediawiki>

The reasoning behind this is to ease mirror updates, which then won't
have to wait for the next dump. Goes like this:
* Check your mirror database for the latest date any article has
* Get a list of all articles that have changed since that moment
* Get all these articles via the "normal" Special:Export function
* Update your database with these

I'm not sure if we'll have such a function via the SOAP interface soon,
but - so what?

Magnus
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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
It seems that a lot of people are excited about the concept of KDE
integration (and of course integration beyond that), and I am thinking
that we should start to think now a little bit about the load on the
webservers and how to manage it.

My thought is that a well behaved application should produce no more
load than people surfing our site with a traditional browser.  But it is
possible (likely, even) that some applications will not be well-behaved.

If we have a single generic interface where everyone pulls in exactly
the same way, then we have no way to block abusive applications without
blocking everyone.

Something as simple as requiring a "user agent" string might be enough?

This issue is quite similar to the issue of people pulling pages from
our site "live" to make a mirror.  It's not a good thing to do if done
abusively.  But with web hosts, it is easy enough to simply block them
if they misbehave.  A misbehaving application will come in through many
ip numbers.

I have been thinking a little bit as well about a model with full blown
keys (like the Google API) -- the point could be that for free software,
we can give out free keys and support those users at our own expense.
But for proprietary software, we can charge money for the keys.

Anyone who doesn't want to pay can still get the database dumps from
time to time.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Webservices API

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> My thought is that a well behaved application should produce no more
> load than people surfing our site with a traditional browser.  But it is
> possible (likely, even) that some applications will not be well-behaved.
>
> If we have a single generic interface where everyone pulls in exactly
> the same way, then we have no way to block abusive applications without
> blocking everyone.
>
> Something as simple as requiring a "user agent" string might be enough?
>
> This issue is quite similar to the issue of people pulling pages from
> our site "live" to make a mirror.  It's not a good thing to do if done
> abusively.  But with web hosts, it is easy enough to simply block them
> if they misbehave.  A misbehaving application will come in through many
> ip numbers.
>
> I have been thinking a little bit as well about a model with full blown
> keys (like the Google API) -- the point could be that for free software,
> we can give out free keys and support those users at our own expense.
> But for proprietary software, we can charge money for the keys.

For server-side systems (mirrors and other sites including our bits)
something like the Google API's keys would work ok. A relatively small
number of server admins will be setting things up, and the keys will be
'secret', kept on that server.

Things are a bit different with the client-side software integration
envisioned by the KDE folks; like a web browser these apps will be
distributed to thousands of users and should "just work". A per-user key
setup would probably not be acceptable, while a non-secret key
distributed with the app (like a user-agent string) can be easily ripped
and faked by someone less scrupulous.

We probably want client-side apps to be able to act like a browser
(easy, no manual setup), while trying to avoid server abuse by someone
who decides to snarf a million pages a day; a per-IP rate limit on the
'free software key' is probably sufficient to automatically curb
server-side abuse.

A separate policy for proprietary client-side apps would have to be
policed on the honor system; someone could always have their client
claim to be amaroK and we'd never be the wiser. :)

Blocking a client-side app that identifies itself with a unique
user-agent or key, but behaves badly, would be easy. Blocking an app
that behaves badly _and_ pretends to be legitimate software is a harder
problem. (Sometimes you can distinguish between the real and the fake
app by its behavior or a quirk of its HTTP submission formatting,
sometimes that might not be easy.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiProjects overriding global guidelines?

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> I'm quite severely disturbed by the apparent habit of participants in
>> some WikiProjects to completely disregard Wikipedia's Manual of Style
>> and various guidelines, claiming that their pet WikiProject has their
>> own pet style guidelines, as if Wikipedia's global guidelines have no
>> say anyway.
>
>
> I've recently come across a couple of examples of something like this
> this too, on Wikiproject Cricket.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cricket_subcategories> directly
> contains all subcategories of Category:Cricket in it, for use by
> wikiproject members who want a list of categories to search when
> categorizing new aticles. My attempts to either replace this with a
> plain old list page or to move the category tags into talk pages (in
> accordance with the category guidelines suggesting that "meta"
> categories should go on talk pages) were vigorously opposed by
> Wikiproject members. I let the issue lie for a few months since it
> didn't seem in any way urgent and monitoring the category's usage over
> that time has been useful.

As a followup "where are things now" sort of thing, here's what
happened. After I mentioned category:cricket subcategories here, it was
put up for deletion by User:Thebainer. I had been hoping to wait for six
months or so before putting it up for deletion again, the last time was
only four months earlier. It failed the vote again, with Grutness voting
keep because "they seem to be keener on using the category, so I'm
swayed towards supporting a keep here." and Ngb voting keep because
"This is, as previously discussed in a recent CfD for the same category,
an invaluable tool for participants in the Cricket Wikiproject
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket>. Conversion
to a list is unsuitable as the list would need to be manually updated
every time a new category was developed."

I still maintain that this category is in violation of Wikipedia
guidelines,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categorization#Wikipedia_namespace
states "Categories relating to the Wikipedia namespace
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Project_namespace> should be
added only to the talk page
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page> of articles. For
example, tags suggesting the article is needs work
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:To_do>, or is listed on VfD
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VFD> would be placed on the talk page
as they are relevant to editors, not an aid to browsing in the way
ordinary categories are." So in accordance with that, I went ahead and
started moving the category tags over to the category_tak: pages.

I got as far as the "C"s before User:Calsicol
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Calsicol>came along and reverted all
the work I'd done. He said "You seem to be an American, and your page
gives no indication that you have any interest in cricket. Thank you."
While it is true that I have no particular interest in cricket, this
strikes me as being exactly the sort of problem that this thread was
talking about; it doesn't _matter_ that I have no particular interest in
cricket (and although I'm not actually American, it wouldn't matter if I
was either). I have an interest in making sure the category system on
Wikipedia is being used in a nice and tidy manner, which gives me just
as much reason to be changing this setup as someone who's a rabid
cricket fan.

Anyway, I guess I'll let the issue drop again for another couple of
months and come back to it. I still have the 2005 cricket season
subcategory thing to work on, I expect that'll draw a lot of ire when I
start actually changing things too.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New syntax proposal

body:
John Ky wrote:
> I like the proposal to make internal and external links use the same
> markup because it is more consistent, but I worry about the treatment
> of the ? character:
>
> In the current syntax, it appears that the internal [[]] syntax encodes the
> ? character so that wiki pages can have the ? character in its name.  While
> the external [] syntax does not encode the ? character so that pages
> that have the ? character in the URI still work (eg. cgi pages).
>
> So in the new syntax, is the ? encoded or not?

URLs are 'pre-formatted'. Any special characters in them are already
escaped as hex codes by the provider of the URL before we see it. A '?'
character in a URL has a particular meaning: it separates the path
portion from the query-string portion. The URL is maintained exactly,
and the '?' continues to be a '?'. It is not changed, because the URL is
already a URL.

Wiki links are not pre-formatted; they give a page title, which is
validated, parsed, and converted to a URL for a page on some particular
known wiki site. Special URL characters in a title, and UTF-8 bytes of
non-ASCII characters in a title, are escaped internally in the wiki when
a URL for that page title is created. A '?' in a wiki page title has no
special meaning, it is just another character in the title. When a URL
is created for the page, the '?' in the title is encoded as %3F.

In URLs '?' means one thing, in wiki page titles '?' means something
else. That would of course not change just because two there are
brackets instead of one on some URL links.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> an invaluable tool for participants in the Cricket Wikiproject
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket>.

Ack. I didn't realize that Thunderbird would preserve the links in
copy-and-pasted text when told to send email as text only, sorry about
the excessive linkage.