body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
> > free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.
>
> I see two possibilities:
>
> 1) Wikipedia specifically has a very high influence on a site's
> ranking. In this case, turning off nofollow will alter the shape of
> the web in search engines which respect it. If the average quality of
> links in Wikipedia is higher than the average quality of links outside
> Wikipedia, the quality of these search engine results as a whole will
> deteriorate. This is not about entitlement, it is about using the
> influence we have responsibly.
>
> OR
>
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.
>
> As I said, I think timing the addition of external links and enabling
> nofollow only for recent additions might be a reasonable compromise.

None of Wikipedia's mirrors has anywhere near the pagerank weight that
Wikipedia itself has.  With the exception of a small number of already
high-prominence sites, Wikipedia linkage is almost certainly bound to
substantially alter the rank of a given page in search engine results.

We are writing an encyclopedia, not seeking to influence search engine
result quality.  It should not be a serious concern of ours whether
our actions have a positive or negative impact on the value of
Google's product; at the very least, we should not eschew making the a
decision which is correct for us because that choice might have a
detrimental effect on the quality of Google's product.  Since leaving
nofollow off encourages SEO spamming, and turning it on discourages
SEO spamming, I see no reason why we should not disable SEO spamming.

The "delay" mechanism not only requires additional technical
complexity but just encourages gaming by SEO people.  Just turn it
off.

Kelly


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] Free advertising on Wikipedia


list: wikien-l

from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
I find [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]] all to be very linked together.

[[Streets and intersections in Pullman, Washington]] would be seen as
listcruft.

Joe

On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 4/30/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > Philip Welch wrote:
> > > On Apr 23, 2006, at 4:21 PM, Steve Block wrote:
> > >
> > >> I had a bash at creating a proposal which would define notability on
> > >> wikipedia as meaning that an article or topic is mentioned in a third
> > >> party reliable source.
> > >
> > > I can provide multiple third party reliable sources as evidence that
> > > there is a four way stop on the intersection between Merman Drive and
> > > Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington. Does that mean that
> > > aforementioned four way stop is worthy of mention in Wikipedia?
> >
> > What this guideline is trying to do is define notability within the
> > verifiability chain.
> >
> > It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
> > to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
> > the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
> > claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.
> >
> I've always considered NOR to be *part of* the verifiability rules.
> It is a description of what sources count toward verifiability.  For
> that matter, both rules are really an explanation of what NPOV means -
> "assert facts, including facts about opinions ? but don't assert
> opinions themselves".  NOR and V go on to describe what is meant by
> "facts".
>
> I guess what I'm saying is you can't really eliminate any of those
> three rules without significantly affecting the interpretation of the
> other one, or to quote NPOV: "Because the three policies are
> complementary, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one
> other, and editors should therefore try to familiarize themselves with
> all three."
>
> > Verifiability, NOR and NPOV do not mean we can write articles on topics
> > we happen to feel should have them, they mean we should write articles
> > on topics for which we have good sources, the summation of which do not
> > amount to the original research through creating a novel narrative, and
> > which does not impart greater weight to the topic than exists in the
> > wider world, represented by the reliable sources we seek.
> >
> I don't see how V, NOR, and NPOV imply that we should not impart
> greater weight to a topic than exists in the wider world.  For that
> matter I don't even understand what that means.
>
> > If we source only from the primary source, the topic itself, we cannot
> > do anything but present information from a biased point of view. Yes, it
> > is disappointing that there exists categories of information for which
> > Wikipedia would be a wonderful repository, but for which no other
> > sources exist for us to summate. However, that cannot be something we
> > should seek to remedy. Wikipedia is not a place for original research.
> > To me, that means Wikipedia cannot be a place to make claims of
> > importance for any topic. Such claims should already be established
> > within reliable sources, before we can attempt to document them. It is
> > unfortunate that closers in afd discussions are not mindful of this, but
> > it is the case that Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Wikipedia is not a
> > repository for primary research.
> >
> To this point I still can't really figure out what you're trying to
> say.  That paragraph above is pretty much indisputable.
>
> > So is your four way stop worthy of an article?  On the strength of your
> > description, I would say no, because you are imparting undue weight to
> > it by creating such an article, you are presenting information for your
> > own point of view rather than summarising someone else's, and if the
> > article states only that four way stop on the intersection between
> > Merman Drive and  Terre View Drive in Pullman, Washington then I'd
> > consider speedying it per A1.
> >
> I'd say it needs to be expanded if that's all it says.  Using those
> secondary sources provided by the person adding the information I'm
> sure you could come up with a nice little article on the subsection of
> Pullman where the street is located, or maybe on [[Streets and
> intersections in Pullman, Washington]], or something like that.  Right
> now it's far too hypothetical, so I don't know exactly what the best
> solution would be, though.
>
> But as I pointed out when the comment was first made, it's not clear
> whether or not the four-way stop on that intersection is verifiable
> without resorting to original research.  It might be, and it might not
> be.  It would, of course, be the job of the person adding the
> information to show that it is.
>
> Speedy deletion of such true information doesn't make any sense to me
> though.  At the least move the information into the talk page of the
> Pullman, Washington article, please.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
> > It is this distinction between two classes of
> content which is
> > essential. You, on the other hand, want to put ND
> content on equal
> > footing with other materials. This erodes the
> distinction, reduces the
> > incentive to contribute free content, and
> contradicts the definition
> > and mission of Wikisource.
>
> I think this point of Erik's is the most important.
>
> The reason that ND content should not be broadly
> accepted on any
> Wikimedia project is that the only cases where we
> are able to obtain
> an ND grant are cases where we also have a high
> probaiblity of getting
> a free grant.
>
> Content which forbids derivied works is not anymore
> free content than
> content you can use but not distribute.  Both are
> without cost, both
> deny you what would be considered natural rights
> without copyright,
> and both go far beyond the limited restrictions
> required to keep
> content free and far beyond what is needed to avoid
> people being
> confused by content degraded by later editors.
>
> When we accept kinda-free works it is at the cost of
> actually free works.
>
> There are many sites out there which are happy to
> distribute
> free-of-cost content, Wikimedia doesn't need to yet
> another.
>
> If someone can really make the case that there are
> works which could
> never be free but can instead be ND, then make it...
> And expect the
> counter argument "But what if I went to the
> copyright holder and
> overed him $100,000 USD to free his work"?  Because
> thats a perfectly
> valid counter argument.
>

The works I see us dealing with here are religous
works, goverment works, and manifestos of political
groups etc.  These sorts of works forbid modifiction
because the authors do not want to be misrepresented
not because they want to profit from the work.  This
situation is not comparable to un-free works on
Wikipedia.  It does not prevent free works from being
created in the same way at all.  Excluding these works
will not make anything more free.  I am not putting ND
works on the same footing as PD works; the works
themselves are not comparable.  This is not like a
picture of a butterfly.  It is not the that ND work is
better quality than some PD work; each work is unique.
 If we realy did have a high probability of getting a
free license on these works I would agree with you but
I so not belive it is possible.  I should really come
up with some concrete examples before continuing this
which will require some research, but I am for now
quite unconvinced.

Birgitte SB

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] SoC: Upload form improvements

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Is it GPL or GPL-compatible?

MIT-style; fully compatible.

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


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 5/1/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Perhaps this is a good time to push reenabling rel="nofollow" on en.wikipedia.org.

I don't much like the idea of effectively punishing thousands of
perfectly fine sites because of a few people who pee in the proverbial
public pool. How feasible would it be, in your opinion, to
 - add a timestamp to the externallinks table
 - only add nofollow to links which have been added recently (<7 days)?

That might be a reasonable middle ground. Yes, some spammers will get
through, but that's to be expected. If we can keep the quality of
links above the average on the web, then surely we should be treated
like any other site on search engines.

As for the present situation, I think that more closely cooperating
with existing link directories like DMOZ might help. If we can say, in
the style of sister project links, "DMOZ has more hyperlinks about
Foo", then we don't have to host these link lists on Wikipedia. I
often find even large link lists very useful, but I would prefer more
structured and carefully maintained ones than Wikipedia has, and that
is exactly what projects like DMOZ are for.

This is more relevant to en.wikipedia.org than some others; de:, for
example, has a guideline stating that five links should normally be
enough, and that all links should be of the highest possible quality:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Weblinks

As a more gentle alternative, a substitution policy of link lists vs.
links to link directories might make sense.

Erik


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Checkuser verification errors

body:
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:34:59 -0400, you wrote:

>Uh, actually, you did get blocked for 3RR violations using your many socks
>on [[Abortion]]. -Swatjester

This, too, accords with my reading of the situation.  It was this
tendentious editing, not sock confusions resulting from the username
issues, which resulted in the block.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/1/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/1/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If you take a look back in history, Wikipedia benefited (and still
> > > benefits) extremely from links and their impact on our PageRank. So it
> > > might be a little bit unfair to add nofollow tags to *all* of our
> > > links, just because it seems to be a simple solution to one of our
> > > many problems. The world wide web is not a one-way street ;)
> >
> > No one is proposing all our externals be nofollowed. Only ones
> > submitted by users.
>
> Hairsplitting? Okay, then let's say "almost all".

A little, but not really...  You talk about Wikipedia benefiting from
links, but most of the places places who link to us have linked to us
because the site operator has deemed Wikipedia to be useful.

This isn't the same as our links.

> > But really, what is the goal of Wikipedia?  It is to make a free
> > content encyclopedia.  It is not to be most popular website, or even
> > the most read encyclopedia. It's not to help SEOs or search engines...
>
> Let's try it the other way around. Links (real ones, without nofollow)
> are essential for the WWW. Does it comply with our goals to sabotage
> the web, only because we're too lazy?

Oh, are you part of the misinformed who participated in the prior vote
on this thinking that setting no follow makes links useless?

In any case, sabotage is a very strong word. Can you provide evidence
that doing so would sabotage the web?  Or is this just random
conjecture?     I think that nofollowing on Wikipedia will actually
improve search results, but I can't support that with concrete
evidence. What I can say with confidence and back with evidence is
that nofollow will reduce the incentive to spam, it will mostly
eliminate some sources of spam, that it with not impact the search
rankings of already popular sites, and that it will reduce distrust on
enwiki to some extent.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/1/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But really, what is the goal of Wikipedia?  It is to make a free
> > content encyclopedia.  It is not to be most popular website, or even
> > the most read encyclopedia. It's not to help SEOs or search engines...
>
> Let's try it the other way around. Links (real ones, without nofollow)
> are essential for the WWW. Does it comply with our goals to sabotage
> the web, only because we're too lazy?
>
> -- Arne (akl)

That's an utterly misleading line of thought.  If everyone in the
world added nofollow to their links tomorrow, nothing terribly drastic
would happen to the web.  Maybe some search engines would break for a
day or two.  In the longer term, everyone turning on nofollow would be
equivalent to everyone turning it off.  The web got along just fine
before nofollow was invented.

Google invented nofollow to provide them with additonal information
about certain types of links.  Apparently they'd prefer Wikipedia to
employ it (which would also imply they don't think it's going to
"sabotage the web").  There doesn't seem to be any suggestion that
turning it on would hurt the encyclopedia, and some are suggesting it
would help the encyclopedia.

Anthony


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Photographers - bored and after target practice?

body:
Useful category!  I can see some people having a tantrum when their
favorite fair-use promo image is replaced by a free-content photo,
though ... but all the better.

-Matt


body:
On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> What's listcruft?

On *fD, <foo>cruft is shorthand for 'articles about <foo> that are
below my personal notability threshold'.  Thus its application is
generally tautological and only serves to denigrate the subject
matter.

-Matt


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] 10k

body:
Hi,

today we came over 10k HTTP requests per second (even with inter-squid
traffic eliminated). Especially thanks to Mark and Tim, who've been
improving our caching, as well as doing lots of other work, and
achieved incredible results (while I was slacking). Really, thanks!

Domas


from_name: Ben Francis

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API (SoC)

body:
Brion,

You have removed the Client API entry from the Summer of Code page on
the wiki with a comment "Removing this since a number of people are
actively working on such already".

Who are the number of people who are actively working on this and does
this wiki change signify that the Client API project is officially no
longer open for applications through Summer of Code? Bearing in mind
applications open today.

Yours disappointedly,

Ben

--
Ben "tola" Francis
http://hippygeek.co.uk


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Wikimedia community,
>
> I am posting this to multiple lists, as I believe it is relevant to
> each of them (more on that below).
>
> For years, we have been using the term "free content" to refer to our
> projects. However, what exactly is free content? Does it include the
> right to make commercial use? Does it allow derivative works? A year
> ago, Anthere, one of our elected trustees, noted that the English
> Wikipedia article [[free content]] is confused and contains no clear
> definition. This is no surprise, as the term has evolved purely
> through its usage. One year on, the article doesn't look much better
> and still doesn't contain a single reference.
>
Wow, that's awesome.  Is Jimbo in on this?  I remember talking to him
over a year ago about it and the discussion started like this:

----
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>  The root of the problem is that we haven't decided what it means to
> be a *free* encyclopedia.

I don't have any idea why you think this.  There has never been any
question about this at all.
-----

8/21/04, if you'd like to look at the archives yourself.

Anthony


body:
On 5/1/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Domas and I visited the Google campus last week after the MySQL users
> conference, and chatted a bit with some folks from the search quality team. They
> assure us that, yes, rel="nofollow" *does* help prevent linkspam from having its
> intended effect and that, yes, at least some of the SEO folks end up giving up
> on sites because of it (though of course not all, and not immediately).

Also note that Wikipedia is different from most blogs and even wikis
in that it's replicated across the web. Most of these mirrors aren't
likely to turn on nofollow anytime soon.

Erik


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail fun

body:
Hello,

I sent myself an email from wikipedia and noticed the mail goes from the
apache server (humboldt) to zwinger then to goeje and finally get out.

Maybe the internal dns entry for smtp should point directly on goeje
instead of zwinger ?

Received: from mail.wikimedia.org (goeje.wikimedia.org [207.142.131.221])
	by mx.altern.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C1225178CE
	for <hashar at altern.org>; Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:09:32 +0200 (CEST)
Received: from zwinger.wikimedia.org (zwinger.wikimedia.org
[207.142.131.234])
	by mail.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7B6F8177FF1
	for <hashar at altern.org>; Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:56:37 +0000 (UTC)
Received: from humboldt (humboldt.pmtpa.wmnet [10.0.0.213])
	by zwinger.wikimedia.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E45F1AC019B
	for <hashar at altern.org>; Sun, 30 Apr 2006 20:56:37 +0000 (UTC)

cheers,

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


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Russell Blackford wrote:
> It's dangerous to apply the notion of "original research" too literally
> outside of its original context (dealing with crackpot theories, or simply
> novel ones, student essays, and so on). Beyond that context, I'm not
> literalistic, and I don't need a lot of guidlines. I think I know it when I
> see it, and I think I know what is not intended to be covered by the
> expression when I see it, even if it could be brought under the literal
> description that is used. Common sense has to prevail, I think, which is why
> we have all these processes involving shared community perceptions.
>
> An example of something that is probably NOT "original research": "Bloggs
> has approvingly cited the work of Derrida to attack the philosophy of
> bohemian snarkism. According to Bloggs, it is all 'words, words, words.'
> <reference, Joe Bloggs, Anti-Snark, p. 300>"
>
> An example of something that certainly IS original research: "Bloggs, who
> has attacked the philosophy of bohemian snarkism, could have found further
> support for his view by applying certain claims famously made by Derrida.
> <reference, Jacques Derrida, Words/ Words/ Words, p. 300>"
>
> We all make these kinds of distinctions reasonably confidently, don't we?
> When in doubt, at the margins, we do indeed want to call on our collective
> wisdom. The process seems straightforward enough to me, though I suppose I
> might change my mind if I got caught in an edit war over it.
>

I think we're in broad agreement.  The trouble is, at the thin edge, you
get people arguing that because everyone says "Foo", we can have an
article on "Foo", and note all the blogs and people who have said "Foo",
especially on "XYZ message boards", because Bloggs has set up a website
documenting the history of XYZ message board, and also the posts are all
archived and you can clearly see where Bleggs said "Foo" to Blaggs and
Bliggs banned him.

Apparently, because this can all be sourced it isn't original research,
because there are no sources disputing it it isn't a point of view, and
it's all sourced so it's verifiable.  The issue is that it is original
research because the particular documentation of these things create a
novel narrative which exists nowhere but on Wikipedia.  But that doesn't
seem to hold sway over people.  To me, no original research means we
can't personally see it, we need someone to see it for us and then we
can summarise them.  So if nobody else has commented on Bleggs saying
"Foo" to Blaggs in a reliable source, it's original research for us to
document it.  The problem is that there is an issue as to whether things
recorded on the internet as they happen exist in the same sense as a
tree, a cat and that four stop Phil mentioned.  Is the internet a
reliable source in and of itself?

Notability is an issue in the sense that everyone mentions it an no-one
agrees on what it means.  I was attempting to cut through various
discussions which were attempting to allow, for example, memes which
have existed for a year to be recordable.  Given there's not much of a
definition of a meme to start with, a meme pretty much being an idea
which catches on, it seems like allowing any idea which catches on to be
documentable after having caught on for a year a little mad.  To me.
For starters, how would we define whether a meme has caught on or not?

And then, why can't we allow website X to be added, it's been online for
a year, why isn't that allowed, and so on and so forth.  The idea was to
base notability within the three policies we have already, which as they
stand, would also allow Phil's Four Stop article.  I was kind of seeing
a lower tier triumvirate of notability, deletion policy and Wikipedia is
not.

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.5.1/327 - Release Date: 28/04/06


from_name: Alison Wheeler

body:
*Most* sites don't permit drive-by addition of external links; our
projects are different because we are open and, as such, we need to be
more considerate of the general browsing public out there (imho) and
nofollow would be a great assist to that. If we 'patrolled' the external
links which we permitted to be active rather than passive there might be a
different solution, but we can't (the workload would be enormous plus
carrier liablity issues) and shouldn't.

On Mon, May 1, 2006 13:23, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Also note that Wikipedia is different from most blogs and even wikis
> in that it's replicated across the web. Most of these mirrors aren't
> likely to turn on nofollow anytime soon.

But isn't that a "they did it so I will" argument that we all rv over the
whole of WP already? If we are serious about sorting some of our problems
- and over-use of external links is but one of those - then we need to
start somewhere and put downa marker that we are dealing with the issue.
We ahve to start somewhere ...

Alison


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>the English Wikipedia allows anything legally
> allowed in regards to US fair use.  Such material is
> much less free than the any non-derivatives existing
> on enWS.

Just a nit: you're incorrect about English Wikipedia.

On English wikipedia what we allow is more complex. There are two broad classes:
1) Things we 'allow' because no one who cares has noticed yet.
(Including things which are outright illegal for us to distribute)
2) Things we intend to allow.

Class (1) is most likely larger than class (2) right now, but it's not
interesting to discuss so I won't mention it any more. It is important
to mention because if you don't know it you'll think that you can
determine what is permitted by looking at what is there.... You can't.

In the case the things we permit, Obviously GFDLed (and other
similarly licensed) content is permitted.  The way I explain it,
Wikipedia is intended to be the "Free (content) encyclopedia". Here we
mean free content in much the same sense that Erik describes,
including unlimited redistribution for any purpose and derivative
works. You can break the goal of the project this into two primary
parts: "Produce an encyclopedia" "which is free content."

It is the widespread belief on the English Wikipedia that in order to
really fulfil our goal of producing a free encyclopedia which is
useful and competitive in all subject areas we '''must''' be able to
excerpt from copyrighted works. Examples would include things like
using part of a famous painting to illustrate text describing how he
draws flowers.  We can do this because the the US has fairuse which is
specifically intended for this application, and many other English
speaking countries have fair dealings type precedents which affirm
that a copyright holder's monopoly on distribution does not extend far
enough to stop academic discourse.

We recognize that the inclusion of this content is a violation of the
other half the goal of the project. As a result it is only permitted
to include fair use in English wikipedia where doing so compromises
our ability to be a quality encyclopedia.

Thus, being legal in the US is a necessary but not sufficient criteria
for inclusion of non-freely licensed works in English wikipedia.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

body:
On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> IMO, taking the interested party has a NPOV, it's fine.
>
> For example, a member of the Democrat Party is an interested part in the
> Democratic Party article, should they be able to edit it?

We'd probably be save to limiting that to employees of the
Democratic Party.


body:
On Mon, May 1, 2006 15:11, Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
>> But isn't that a "they did it so I will" argument that we all rv over
>> the
>> whole of WP already? If we are serious about sorting some of our
>> problems
>> - and over-use of external links is but one of those - then we need to
>> start somewhere and put downa marker that we are dealing with the issue.
>> We ahve to start somewhere ...
>
> True. I remain unconvinced that indiscriminate use of the nofollow tag
> is the best way to do that, though. "If all you have in a hammer,
> everything looks like a nail." If all you have is a spam blacklist and
> a nofollow option .. I think Gregory's systematic queries point in the
> direction of the right solution. Perhaps a few new special pages could
> help us deal with external link issues more systematically. Hmm .. I
> think this is a job for Magnus or Rob! ;-)
>
> Erik
>


body:
(ignore previous ... mail uissues! response was actually ....)

On Mon, May 1, 2006 15:11, Erik Moeller wrote:
> True. I remain unconvinced that indiscriminate use of the nofollow tag
> is the best way to do that, though. "If all you have in a hammer,
> everything looks like a nail." If all you have is a spam blacklist and
> a nofollow option .. I think Gregory's systematic queries point in the
> direction of the right solution. Perhaps a few new special pages could
> help us deal with external link issues more systematically. Hmm .. I
> think this is a job for Magnus or Rob! ;-)

ok. Let me come at this from the other direction then! What *benefit* does
it do the Wikipedia and WMF projects to supply 'free' link value to other
sites. It doesn't help us sfaict, indeed it probably harms us as we can be
seen as detrimental to the quality of search engine results as we - in
effect - promote spam and other sites.

No-one has a "right" to a link fom us, just as no-one has a "right" to an
article about them (or for that article to read the way they would like it
to read.) I see this growing use of external links as bad for WP and
something to be seen to in whatever way possible.

Alison


body:
On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> And/or discredit the person using the term. It really is a pretty
> offensive term, but I don't know if most people using it realise that.

I think some do and use it intentionally so.  Which appears to be
rather contrary to civility and treating other contributors with
respect, I feel.

-Matt


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> It is this distinction between two classes of content which is
> essential. You, on the other hand, want to put ND content on equal
> footing with other materials. This erodes the distinction, reduces the
> incentive to contribute free content, and contradicts the definition
> and mission of Wikisource.

I think this point of Erik's is the most important.

The reason that ND content should not be broadly accepted on any
Wikimedia project is that the only cases where we are able to obtain
an ND grant are cases where we also have a high probaiblity of getting
a free grant.

Content which forbids derivied works is not anymore free content than
content you can use but not distribute.  Both are without cost, both
deny you what would be considered natural rights without copyright,
and both go far beyond the limited restrictions required to keep
content free and far beyond what is needed to avoid people being
confused by content degraded by later editors.

When we accept kinda-free works it is at the cost of actually free works.

There are many sites out there which are happy to distribute
free-of-cost content, Wikimedia doesn't need to yet another.

If someone can really make the case that there are works which could
never be free but can instead be ND, then make it... And expect the
counter argument "But what if I went to the copyright holder and
overed him $100,000 USD to free his work"?  Because thats a perfectly
valid counter argument.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 30/04/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
>>If didn't get this wrong, until now even interested parties
>>are welcome, as long as they aim for NPOV -- with the notable
>>exception of the autobiography clause.
>>
>>And where does "interested party" start?
>>
>>There are even topics so obscure ([[New Kadampa Tradition]] comes
>>to my mind), that only vocal opponents and vocal proponents
>>contribute. Should they already be considered "interested
>>parties"? Shall we hope, that they will battle it out so that the
>>result is NPOV?
>>
>>
>A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a
>party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder,
>employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider
>interested party to mean the party itself.
>
Somebody who happens to be suing the company is a very interested party.
:-)

Ec


body:
On 5/1/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> But isn't that a "they did it so I will" argument that we all rv over the
> whole of WP already? If we are serious about sorting some of our problems
> - and over-use of external links is but one of those - then we need to
> start somewhere and put downa marker that we are dealing with the issue.
> We ahve to start somewhere ...

True. I remain unconvinced that indiscriminate use of the nofollow tag
is the best way to do that, though. "If all you have in a hammer,
everything looks like a nail." If all you have is a spam blacklist and
a nofollow option .. I think Gregory's systematic queries point in the
direction of the right solution. Perhaps a few new special pages could
help us deal with external link issues more systematically. Hmm .. I
think this is a job for Magnus or Rob! ;-)

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The works I see us dealing with here are religous
> works, goverment works, and manifestos of political
> groups etc.
[snip]

Repeat after me.
ND licenses do not prevent misrepresentation.
ND licenses do not prevent misrepresentation.
ND licenses do not prevent misrepresentation.

If you are relaxing copyright holders fears of misrepresentation by
suggesting ND licenses, you are lying to yourself and possibly to
them.

It is acceptable in a free license (under any common definition) to
require that works be correctly attributed and not fraudulently
mislabeled.

If someone is going to edit the words of another in an effort to
misrepresent the original speaker, they will still do so no matter
what license the work is under.

Here you are just making another argument to reject ND licenses: they
are often preferred by people with unrealistic expectations, and whom
are thus likely to cause problems when those unrealistic expectations
are shattered.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Blocking

body:
Indeed.

On 5/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> maru dubshinki wrote:
> > On 5/1/06, Galen Williams <banbanbananaman at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> *I have been blocked for using my first name, Ban, as a username. Your
> >> username policy says nothing that could indicate "Ban" as being an
> >> impersonation of someone, offensive, or otherwise worthy of any level
> of
> >> blocking. Here is the error message:*
> >>
> >> *Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing*.
> >> You were blocked by Anonymous
> >> editor<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anonymous_editor>for the
> >> following reason (see our blocking
> >> policy <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>):
> "username"
> >>
> >> Your IP address is *64.233.172.4*.
> >>
> >> *If there is some obvious reason for blocking me that I cannot see,
> then can
> >> I use "Ban Galen?"*
> >>
> >> *Thank you for your time.*
> >>
> >> *: Ban Galen :*
> >
> > Heh. It is unfortunate that your chosen name is "ban", and we "ban"
> > vandals. Anyhoo, I've unblocked you, since you don't seem to be
> > foaming at the mouth.
> >
>
> Might want to cc: that to the OP...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


from_name: Sherool

subject: [Wikitech-l] Monobook CSS question

body:
On Sat, 29 Apr 2006 00:45:28 +0200, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Please direct me to the appropriate place if this this question should
> not be here.
>
> I'm editing my User:XXX/monobook.CSS

<massive snippage>

> They do not work.

<snip>

Not sure how literal that page name was, but just in case I feel I should
mention that you need to edit "User:XXX/monobook.css" not
"User:XXX/monobook.CSS"

My apologies of that was just a typo in the mail, but you would not be the
first person to be confused by MediaWiki's case sensitive pagenames. I've
seen plenty of people upload "some image.JPG" and then complain it got
deleted when nothing turns up when they try to insert "some image.jpg" on
a page for example. I've gone to User:XXX/Monobook.css a couple of times
myself and wondered where my stylesheet has gone to before I remember that
it needs to be a lowercase "m" in monobook :-o

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


body:
On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> How does turning on nofollow punish anyone?  Nobody is entitled to
> free pagerank just because they've been listed on Wikipedia.

I see two possibilities:

1) Wikipedia specifically has a very high influence on a site's
ranking. In this case, turning off nofollow will alter the shape of
the web in search engines which respect it. If the average quality of
links in Wikipedia is higher than the average quality of links outside
Wikipedia, the quality of these search engine results as a whole will
deteriorate. This is not about entitlement, it is about using the
influence we have responsibly.

OR

2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
placebo effect.

As I said, I think timing the addition of external links and enabling
nofollow only for recent additions might be a reasonable compromise.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik's concept a time delay isn't a new idea... it's one that has
> already been disregarded, at least for this application: even if we
> ignore the technical fun of using external links table at realtime,
> we're still left with the fact that it's pointless.  For links that
> are removed in a short span of time the SEO gains no advantage
> (mirrors haven't had a chance to mirror, google hasn't had a chance to
> spider), our concern stems from links which remain due to a lack of
> editorial oversight.

That depends entirely, of course, on how long the time delay is. It
could be as long as 30 days. A link which survives that long,
continuously, may very well be a good link that deserves to be there.

Erik


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unfair Blocking

body:
On 5/1/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
> >
> > Heh. It is unfortunate that your chosen name is "ban", and we "ban"
> > vandals. Anyhoo, I've unblocked you, since you don't seem to be
> > foaming at the mouth.
> >
>
> Might want to cc: that to the OP...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

Bah. He sent a mail to Wikien-l, he can bloody well follow any replies himself.

~maru


from_name: angelina markovic

subject: [Foundation-l] Congratulations !  // Cestitke !

body:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1187286,00.html

TIME 100: The People Who Shape Our World

>From the Magazine | Scientists & Thinkers
Jimmy Wales
The (Proud) Amateur Who Created Wikipedia
By CHRIS ANDERSON

Posted Tuesday, Apr. 25, 2006

"Edit this page." Just three little words, but what a miracle they have
wrought. Just about every entry on Wikipedia.org, the online encyclopedia,
invites visitors to fiddle. Is the entry incomplete? Add something. Is it
wrong? Correct it. Is it biased? Edit away. That such a remarkably open-door
policy has resulted in the biggest (and perhaps best) encyclopedia in the
world is a testament to the vision of one man, Jimmy Wales.

Wales, 39, is a former options trader who in 1999 set out to reinvent the
encyclopedia for the Internet age?free, up-to-date and available to all. He
started the way most encyclopedists start, by commissioning articles from
experts and subjecting them to peer review. After 18 months, he had a
pitiful 12 entries; at that rate, it would take a few millenniums to equal
Encyclopaedia Britannica. So Wales created a free-form companion site based
on a little-known software program called a wiki (the Hawaiian term means
quick) that makes it easy?with the "edit this page" button?to enter and
track changes to Web pages. The effect was explosive. That simple button
turned readers into contributors and contributors into evangelists.
Wikipedia now has more than a million articles in English, nearly 10 times
as many as in Britannica. That number nearly doubles each year. And most
extraordinarily, the site has not been defaced by vandals or hijacked by
zealots. Or more precisely, it is vandalized every day but is usually
repaired within minutes by any one of the millions of users who are
motivated to protect and nurture the site.

Today Wales is celebrated as a champion of Internet-enabled egalitarianism.
He describes himself not as antielitist but as "anticredentialist." That's a
key distinction. It means that amateurs can have as much to contribute as
professionals and that talent can be found anywhere. Everyone predicted that
mob rule would lead to chaos.

Instead it has led to what may prove to be the most powerful industrial
model of the 21st century: peer production. Wikipedia is proof that it
works, and Jimmy Wales is its prophet.

Anderson is the Editor in Chief of Wired magazine

>From the May. 08, 2006 issue of TIME magazine


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> I am sure there
> are many documents availble under the terms of no
> modification that Wikisource would love to have.  I do
> not know why you think such works would have no place
> simply beacuse they cannot be modified.

This has always been our policy everywhere.  If there are documents
under Wikisource which are under nonfree licenses, and I am not aware
that there are, they should be deleted immediately.

> I see no
> value whatsoever in being able to modify the works of
> Charles Dickens, the Paris Peace Accords, or the
> Constitution of Singapore.  In all honesty I see think
> this is true for 90% of material on Wikisource.

I can absolutely see many reasons to modify each of those.  Not *on*
wikisource, mind you.

1. Charles Dickens - perhaps I want to write an updated version,
modernizing the tale to deal with contemporary issues... I would find
the public domain text perhaps an excellent starting point.

2. Paris Peace Accords - imagine that I am writing historical fiction,
and I want to explore how some minor change in the provisions of a
treaty might radically impact history... I might want to include a
modified version of the Paris Peace Accords in an appendix of my novel.

3.  Constitution of Singapore - perhaps I am a free speech advocate
seeking to persuade people that Singapore's constitution needs to be
modified in various ways to contribute to a healthier society.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> Wow, that's awesome.  Is Jimbo in on this?
>
> Jimmy is aware of this effort, but apparently hasn't had time to look
> into it any further yet. I certainly hope that he will participate in
> the debates of the coming weeks.

I will do what I can.  I am of the opinion that free content / free
knowledge is easy to define, so I don't see much to debate about. :)
But I support the effort and I am glad Erik is taking the initiative on it.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> What you say might be true if significant numbers of people people
> were checking links other than at the moment of addition (i.e. when
> they were the top most diff), but they don't.

I would be interested in your data, even if it is old, on what the the
average lifetime of removed links is. That might be a good cutoff
point for nofollow. I should also note that just because this is
currently the case doesn't mean that it will have to stay that way.
There's probably lots of ways to generate useful reports for editors
from the externallinks table.

Erik


from_name: Joe Anderson

body:
Listcruft is a term on AfD used for the deletion of lists. Generally, it is
used for pointless lists.

On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > I find [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]] all to be very linked together.
> >
> > [[Streets and intersections in Pullman, Washington]] would be seen as
> > listcruft.
> >
> > Joe
>
> What's listcruft?
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


from_name: Arne Klempert

body:
On 5/1/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> ok. Let me come at this from the other direction then! What *benefit* does
> it do the Wikipedia and WMF projects to supply 'free' link value to other
> sites.

If you take a look back in history, Wikipedia benefited (and still
benefits) extremely from links and their impact on our PageRank. So it
might be a little bit unfair to add nofollow tags to *all* of our
links, just because it seems to be a simple solution to one of our
many problems. The world wide web is not a one-way street ;)

> It doesn't help us sfaict, indeed it probably harms us as we can be
> seen as detrimental to the quality of search engine results as we - in
> effect - promote spam and other sites.

This might be true, but only if there are more bad links than good
ones. Without having counted them, I'm sure that this is not the case.

Btw, the German Wikipedia still has to deal with link spammers, even
though nofollow is activated.

-- Arne (akl)


body:
BTW, you could look at [[cruft]] :D

On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Based on just the title [[Streets and intersections in Pullman,
> Washington]], I don't see how such an article would necessarily be
> pointless or a list.
>
> I suppose that wouldn't necessarily stop it from being deleted as
> "listcruft", though...
>
> Anthony
>
> On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Listcruft is a term on AfD used for the deletion of lists. Generally, it
> is
> > used for pointless lists.
> >
> > On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 5/1/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
> > > > I find [[WP:V]] and [[WP:NOR]] all to be very linked together.
> > > >
> > > > [[Streets and intersections in Pullman, Washington]] would be seen
> as
> > > > listcruft.
> > > >
> > > > Joe
> > >
> > > What's listcruft?
> > >
> > > Anthony
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Joe Anderson
> >
> > [[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


list: commons-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition

body:
Dear Wikimedia community,

I am posting this to multiple lists, as I believe it is relevant to
each of them (more on that below).

For years, we have been using the term "free content" to refer to our
projects. However, what exactly is free content? Does it include the
right to make commercial use? Does it allow derivative works? A year
ago, Anthere, one of our elected trustees, noted that the English
Wikipedia article [[free content]] is confused and contains no clear
definition. This is no surprise, as the term has evolved purely
through its usage. One year on, the article doesn't look much better
and still doesn't contain a single reference.

It is clear that we need a definition. With the help of feedback from
the likes of Richard Stallman and Lawrence Lessig, and an increasing
number of collaborators, I have drafted up a first version of such a
definition, called the "Free Content and Expression Definition":

        http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition

You can also use the URLs <http://freedomdefinition.org/> or
<http://freedomdefined.org/>. Please use the URL

        http://freecontentdefinition.org/static/ (with trailing slash)

when submitting this link to high traffic sites.

Licenses covered by this definition must grant the following freedoms:

* the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
* the freedom to redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the
information or expression
* the freedom to make improvements or other changes, and to release
modified copies

The essence of these freedoms is not negotiable. However, in order to
best express, interpret and elaborate on these freedoms, I would like
to announce an open editing phase to push this Definition to a 1.0
version. There is a stable, protected version of the definition and an
unstable, openly editable one. The openly editable one, which may
already differ significantly from the one above by the time you read
this, can be found at:

        http://freecontentdefinition.org/Definition/Unstable

You can suggest changes on the talk page, or be bold and make them
directly. The change process will be consensus-based. In order to
decide when a consensus has been reached on a change, I have appointed
three moderators besides myself:

* Benjamin Mako Hill. Mako is a co-initiator of the definition and a
prolific figure in the free software community. To quote Wikipedia, he
"is a Debian hacker and author of the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible
(...). He currently works in the electronic publishing group of the
MIT Media Lab, and is on the boards of Software in the Public
Interest, Software Freedom International (the organization that
organizes Software Freedom Day) and the Ubuntu Foundation."
* Angela Beesley. You may be familiar with her. ;-) She's the other of
the two elected trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and also the
Vice President of Community Relations at Wikia, Inc.
* Mia Garlick. General Counsel at Creative Commons, and an expert on
IP law. Creative Commons is, of course, the project which offers many
easy-to-use licenses to authors and artists, some of which are free
content licenses and some of which are not.

None of them is acting here in an official capacity related to their
affiliations. Please treat their comments as personal opinion unless
otherwise noted. See
<http://freecontentdefinition.org/Authoring_process> for details on
the authoring process and
<http://freecontentdefinition.org/Moderators> for more about
moderation.

The Creative Commons project has welcomed the effort to clearly
classify existing groups of licenses, and will work to supplement this
definition with one which covers a larger class of licenses and works.

In addition to changes to the definition itself, we invite you to
submit logos that can be attached to works or licenses which are free
under this definition:

        http://freecontentdefinition.org/Logo_contest

Why is this relevant to the projects I am alerting about it?

Wikipedia

Has the most significant problems distinguishing between free and
non-free materials simply because of the sheer amount of uploads and
user-submitted content. The English Wikipedia, for instance, allows
limited "fair use" in addition to free content uploads, but prohibits
licenses which forbid commercial use. This definition allows us to
state clearly: "An uploaded work must either be free content, or fair
use. If it is fair use, strong restrictions apply, and your upload may
be deleted or replaced at any time."

The definition also contains remarks about interoperability with other
licenses. This is a problem that concerns us at the moment when it
comes to importing texts under licenses which are philosophically
similar, but legally incompatible with the GFDL. If the definition
gets widely adopted, we can push for changes to licenses to make them
more compatible with each other.

Wikimedia Commons

Commons was launched as a free content repository. We have effectively
followed the terms of the definition in the licenses we allow and
prohibit for uploaded files; however, the discussions about whether to
allow, for example, pictures which cannot be used commercially keep
coming up. Clearly labeling the repository as a free content archive
under this definition will help to avoid that.

Wikinews

I've seen some uploaded photo galleries that were under licenses which
forbid derivative works. If we limit Wikimedia projects to free
content, that would explicitly not be allowed. This is an example of
"non-free content creep" that may be observed on other projects as
well.

Wiktionary

The definition contains recommendations about license complexity.
Wiktionary as a resource for terminological and lexicological data
does not benefit from the highly complex terms of the GFDL, which
require, for example, reprinting the entire license text when copying
a single page.

Wikimedia

The definition makes it easy to resolve the question of which licenses
to allow or disallow across projects. For example, a Wikimedia-wide
policy could be that: "All content in all projects must be free
content as per the Free Content Definition 1.0, with the exception of
works which are used under exemptions granted by national copyright
laws, such as 'fair use' in the United States. These exemptions are
defined on a per-project and per-language basis."

Outside Wikimedia, the definition will make it easier for us to
communicate. For instance, many people use the very vague terms "open
access" or "open content", or simply talk about "a Creative Commons
license" when describing licensing of their work. The term "free
content" has an existing usage in the sense described herein. With the
additional support of this definition, it is a powerful and simple way
to determine whether a work is usable in the context of the Wikimedia
projects.

One note on the choice of name. Not all people will be happy to label
their works "content", as it is also a term that is heavily used in
commerce. This is why Mako and I have compromised on the name "Free
Content and Expression Definition" for the definition itself. We are
suggesting "Free Expression" as an alternative term that may lend
itself particularly to usage in the context of artistic works.
However, we remain open on discussing the issue of naming, and invite
your feedback in this regard.

All that being said, I hope that you will join the open editing phase
or the logo contest. Even if there will be very little feedback, I
hope we will be able to release a 1.0 version of this definition
fairly soon.

You will find a general announcement that you can copy and paste to
other places at:

    http://freecontentdefinition.org/Announcement

Please leave a quick note in the log when distributing it. As a final
note, if you create an account on the wiki, I would appreciate it if
you could use your real name as your user name.

Thanks for your time,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition


from_name: Patrick Aljord

body:
On 4/30/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 30, 2006 at 01:06:02PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> > Chad Perrin wrote:
> > >
> > > As Brion Vibber and Christopher Budnick pointed out, each in his own
> > > way, I think the concern here is that you're adding needed functionality
> > > in a manner that makes good sense -- and that you're not throwing AJAX
> > > at it just because AJAX is buzzword-compliant.  I, for one, am perfectly
> > > happy with unadorned static (X)HTML when it solves the problem quickly,
> > > easily, and fully.  It runs faster and imposes less server load, too.
> > > Where AJAX provides actual measurable benefits, though, it's certainly
> > > an option to explore without prejudice.
> >
> > Although I largely agree with you (especially the "buzzword-compliant"
> > bit, heh!), I must state that AJAX often does run faster and save server
> > load. Imagine there was an AJAX-y way of adding a language link to an
> > existing article. This is just an example. In the traditional way, you
> > have to (1) load up the edit page, (2) submit it, and (3) re-render the
> > article page. Even a separate mechanism to add language tags would have
> > those three steps. With AJAX, however, you would have JavaScript create
> > the UI to enter the tag *and* update the page in-place, client-side.
> > Only the submission step would be an actual server hit.
>
> True -- there are ways to leverage AJAX and similar technologies to
> reduce server load.  It requires care and good planning to implement
> them, though, and it's of critical importance in a project like
> MediaWiki to ensure that it degrades gracefully so that everything still
> works even if the client doesn't allow Javascript.  Like I said, if it
> adds positive value, it's a good idea.  You just have to know what
> you're doing and why you're doing it.
>
Ok but I'm not a ajax expert so I'd probably reuse stuff from
script.aculo.us. Would that be ok? If not I think I'll apply for the
External Editor helper app.


body:
On 5/1/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> 1) Mirrors running MediaWiki on a database dump already get rel="nofollow" by
> default unless they explicitly switched it off.
>
> 2) Screen-scrapers would be getting rel="nofollow" in their copies too --
> something they currently DO NOT GET, thus multiplying the effect of linkspam.

I did a quick sample of some mirrors. 2 out of 10 used nofollow. 5 out
of 10, however, used some method of link obfuscation (such as using a
JavaScript that gets the URL in reverse spelling as a parameter) or
even link stripping. So it appears that at least some mirrors are
actively trying to _prevent_ links to external sites from being
indexed, probably as some method of SEO.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is Erik authorized to speak to other groups (such as the FSF) as a
> representative of the Wikimedia foundation?

To also make that clear, I have not spoken to anyone as a
representative of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we, essentially, want an invisible wall of separation between
> user-generated content and content from "trusted" sites? Or do we want
> a better solution? I don't like nofollow. It is a hack. It lacks
> imagination.

My personal opinion is that /currently/ I think nofollow has merit; I
think we're extremely bad at handling linkspamming and website
promotion in Wikipedia, and thus reducing the benefit might help.

However, if we became better at keeping track of what Wikipedia links
to and getting rid of spam, I'd support turning nofollow off.

What would be useful steps to take to keep better track of these?  Is
there anything that can be done in software?  Or procedure/process?
External applications?

-Matt


from_name: Jan Kulveit

body:
On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 04:40:23PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I see two possibilities:
>
> 1) Wikipedia specifically has a very high influence on a site's
> ranking. In this case, turning off nofollow will alter the shape of
> the web in search engines which respect it. If the average quality of
> links in Wikipedia is higher than the average quality of links outside
> Wikipedia, the quality of these search engine results as a whole will
> deteriorate. This is not about entitlement, it is about using the
> influence we have responsibly.
>

The quality of Wikipedia should be given more weight than to task
of  responsibly influencing search engines. If turning nofollow on leads
to decrease of spammers effort, it would be good for Wikipedia quality.

>
> 2) Due to mirrors, enabling or disabling nofollow has hardly any
> visible effect on search engine rankings. In that case, it would be a
> placebo effect.
>

Most highly ranking mirrors are used for SEO spam and turn external
links off completely (except their own links).

> As I said, I think timing the addition of external links and enabling
> nofollow only for recent additions might be a reasonable compromise.
>

I don't think so. Trying to think like the enemy... What I would
do if I wanted to insert spam link to e.g. Prague (I remove spam
from that page frequently).

1. spam on the Prague page wouldnt not survive long enough, too many
people watch it... thats futile
2. its necessary to insert the link to less visible pages, preferably
watched by nobody. what about Prague districts, Prague public transport
3. still, there is the risk of RC patrol. solution? spam indirectly e.g.,
create "useful" and "noncommercial" pages which won't be removed by RC
patrollers on sight (what about list of useful telephone numbers...
yet another weather service... seen in practice )
4. link from such lower-profile pages would be less effective because
lower keyword density & lower inter-Wikipedia page rank
5. so... let's do some inter-wiki SEO, create wikilinks so the spammed
wiki pages get higher interwiki rank, optimize the text for keywords...

results:
-> spam will be on pages with little editorial review
-> masked as noncommercial / informative pages
-> editing with malicious agenda of influencing interlink
structure

Jan Kulveit - User:Wikimol


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because there are ~2,800,000 external links from the main namespace
> alone on enwiki (there is now a patch to mediawiki to set nofollow per
> namespace, I think no matter what we should nofollow outside the main
> ns), I see automated scanning as the only reasonable step right now to
> improve our link quality.
>
> So I'm working on it..

Excellent news!  I'd hoped you were doing something like this.

And yes, I see no reason to not set nofollow in all namespaces except
the article one.

-Matt


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I have a problem with Wikimedia adopting this proposal
> as Wikisource certainly has a place for documents
> availble under licences forbidding modification.  I do
> not have specific examples in mind, but we already
> have policy of protecting all works from modification
> once they have been proofread to a certain degree.

These are completely separate statements. Protecting a page from
editing is entirely different from using legal powers to stop others
from distributing a modified version of that page. Page protection is
a policy matter, forbidding derivatives is a matter of law. I feel
that documents which cannot legally be distributed in altered form
have no place on Wikisource. But that is exactly the discussion we
need to have, especially on the Board level.

Erik


body:
IMO, taking the interested party has a NPOV, it's fine.

For example, a member of the Democrat Party is an interested part in the
Democratic Party article, should they be able to edit it? Same goes for the
NGS and Wikipedia.

On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 30/04/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > If didn't get this wrong, until now even interested parties
> > are welcome, as long as they aim for NPOV -- with the notable
> > exception of the autobiography clause.
> >
> > And where does "interested party" start?
> >
> > There are even topics so obscure ([[New Kadampa Tradition]] comes
> > to my mind), that only vocal opponents and vocal proponents
> > contribute. Should they already be considered "interested
> > parties"? Shall we hope, that they will battle it out so that the
> > result is NPOV?
>
> A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a
> party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder,
> employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider
> interested party to mean the party itself.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> And even when no one is doing this, editors are left paranoid about
> people doing it... because the incentives for corrupting out site in
> this manner are so great.

It is highly unlikely that disabling nofollow would significantly
affect such paranoia, since it is also unlikely that it would
drastically cut spam.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is highly unlikely that disabling nofollow

should be, of course, "enabling nofollow". Damn double negatives.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
Steve Bennet writes:
> What benefit, besides pure ego, does sharing this information with the
> world via babel boxes actually have?

Speaking only for myself, I often try to talk to people from all the
different language editions of wikipedia.  I like to know what level of
English a person feels comfortable with so that I can try to accomodate
them as much as possible if necessary.  I enjoy taking the time to
review things that I have written, asking myself whether I have used an
obscure word when a common word would suffice, etc.

Also, I am myself a language learning: spending time every day studying
German, and just now getting to the point where I might consider
upgrading my babel box from de-1 to de-2.  When I do, I really hope that
more Germans will try to write to me (using common words rather than
obscure ones) so that I can make new friends and learn new things.

We are an international project, and I think that babel boxes are great
for helping us to find other people who are interested in the same
languages.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Of course, since Babel templates are self-assigned, they say as much
> about ego and confidence as about actual linguistic skill.

Although I have found them to be remarkable accurate overall.  The other
day I almost teased someone who was en-2 that she should change it to
en-3 or even higher, because her english was good, but after further
discussion I realized that the assessment was valid.  :)

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

references:
<e2lm8l$qcc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444E804E.4030108@apple.com>	<e2m9sd$thj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<444EC04E.2000001@apple.com>

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> I don't have any good real-life examples to put up here, but likely
> cases would include judgement whether a particular phrasing is neutral
> or slanted, or what is the most common term for something.

One of the best writers of English on the projects is Erik M?ller, a
German.  His English is much better than the average English speaker and
indeed much better than even a lot of Wikipedians.

Even so, I will rarely notice him writing something that doesn't sound
quite right.  Usually this is not quite an _error_ but just some kind of
_oddness_.  His English is German-flavored.

I have no opinion about the usefulness of babel boxes identifying native
speakers.  I do agree that proficiency in a language is not always
exactly the same thing as being native or not.  But I still think that
there is a difference in the kinds of errors that native speakers of a
language make versus the kinds of errors that others make.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#####################################################################


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I see no
> value whatsoever in being able to modify the works of
> Charles Dickens, the Paris Peace Accords, or the
> Constitution of Singapore.  In all honesty I see think
> this is true for 90% of material on Wikisource.  I do
> not know what works we would have to exclude by
> adopting such a policy, but I am certain that they are
> works which do have a place on Wikisource.

The Creative Commons CC-BY-ND license defines "derivative works"
(which are forbidden) as follows:

- - - - -
"Derivative Work" means a work based upon the Work or upon the Work
and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical
arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version,
sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any
other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted,
except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License. For the
avoidance of doubt, where the Work is a musical composition or sound
recording, the synchronization of the Work in timed-relation with a
moving image ("synching") will be considered a Derivative Work for the
purpose of this License.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.5/legalcode

- - - - -

I'm sure you will agree that derivative works, as per this meaning,
are useful and essential to Wikisource. Translations, dramatizations,
fictionalizations, art reproductions, and so forth, are all made
impossible under licenses which forbid derivatives.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Derivative works are by no means essential for
> Wikisource.

I disagree. A document that cannot legally be translated, for
instance, cannot be called a free document. Wikisource is, by
definition and philosophy, a repository of free works, similar to what
Commons provides for non-textual materials. If you use the logic "but
the document is important", you are on a slippery slope of changing
Wikisource into a repository for materials under _any_ license which
allows free downloads, including "permission granted to Wikimedia" and
similar non-free arrangement.

> The fact that we cannot translate a work
> for the French Wikisource does not lessen the value to
> the English Wikisource.  There is already a policy in
> place which allows the works of French writers to
> treated as public domain in the English Wikisource yet
> forbidden the French Wikisource per disscusion on this
> very list.

That's interesting. Could you point me to this policy? I recall the
discussion, but not the conclusion.

Erik


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 30/04/06, Peter Jacobi <peter_jacobi at gmx.net> wrote:
> If didn't get this wrong, until now even interested parties
> are welcome, as long as they aim for NPOV -- with the notable
> exception of the autobiography clause.
>
> And where does "interested party" start?
>
> There are even topics so obscure ([[New Kadampa Tradition]] comes
> to my mind), that only vocal opponents and vocal proponents
> contribute. Should they already be considered "interested
> parties"? Shall we hope, that they will battle it out so that the
> result is NPOV?

A vocal opponent is not an interested party. An interested party is a
party with, well, an interest in the matter, like a shareholder,
employee etc. For Wikipedia purposes, you can pretty much consider
interested party to mean the party itself.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wars on wheels

body:
On 23/04/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 23, 2006, at 12:33 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > In other words: If the person you reverted accuses you of wheel
> > warring, then you wheel warred.
>
> And the only way of knowing that for sure before you revert is to
> contact the other admin before you do anything.
>
> In both cases, there's the admin absentee problem. Solution? Silence
> + external consensus = consent to go-ahead. We're enough of a
> community that you can seek out another admin for a third opinion if
> the admin you're reverting isn't around.

Actually in my definition, admin absenteeism isn't a major problem. If
you do something that the admin would have approved of (like lifting a
block at the right time), then you didn't wheel war. If you take
advantage of his absence to do something sneaky, then you're wheel
warring...

Steve


body:
On 5/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you take a look back in history, Wikipedia benefited (and still
> > benefits) extremely from links and their impact on our PageRank. So it
> > might be a little bit unfair to add nofollow tags to *all* of our
> > links, just because it seems to be a simple solution to one of our
> > many problems. The world wide web is not a one-way street ;)
>
> No one is proposing all our externals be nofollowed. Only ones
> submitted by users.

Hairsplitting? Okay, then let's say "almost all".

> But really, what is the goal of Wikipedia?  It is to make a free
> content encyclopedia.  It is not to be most popular website, or even
> the most read encyclopedia. It's not to help SEOs or search engines...

Let's try it the other way around. Links (real ones, without nofollow)
are essential for the WWW. Does it comply with our goals to sabotage
the web, only because we're too lazy?

-- Arne (akl)


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> That is not the case whatsoever.  We are commited to
> hosting freely distributable works.

The frontpage of en.wikisource.org states:

"Wikisource ? The Free Library ? is an online collection of free
content source texts built by its contributors."

Even before the free content definition, the [[free content]] article
Wikisource links to has stated:

"Free content, or free information, is any kind of functional work,
artwork, or other creative content having no legal restriction
relative to people's freedom to use, redistribute, improve, and share
the content."

Given this, it can be said that en.wikisource itself disagrees with
you that "freely distributable" is sufficient. I believe it is crucial
that Wikimedia projects follow a consistently high standard of freedom
for the works they host. This gives users certainty about the freedoms
they have, and compels those who wish to contribute content to choose
a permissive model rather than the least permissive which is still
acceptable.

Your argument for allowing non-free materials is a short term
argument. It is based on the consideration that there are texts which
are currently not available under free terms. If we follow your
advice, we will host those materials, but give the people who hold
rights over them no incentive to relax those restrictions. If we
remain steadfast in our convictions, we can build upon the works which
are currently accessible to us -- more than enough to grow a community
-- and use our influence to compel more and more people to share our
definition of freedom.

I find it hard to believe that you would even seriously make the
argument that Wikisource should host texts which cannot be translated
into other Wikisources. The ability to create useful derivative works
such as translations is exactly one of the key benefits a project like
Wikisource can provide over traditional web sites such as Project
Gutenberg.

> the material of Wikimedia will not
> be universally free everywhere.

There are local laws which can impede the freedom of content we host.
This typically applies to the question of when content enters the
public domain. I believe that we should follow the laws of the country
where the content originates, except in cases where these laws deviate
heavily from internationally prevalent standards.

Regarding the fr.wikisource.org example, I believe the text should
either be removed from all projects, or none.

> Why else is there an exception for fair use?

Fair use images are treated very differently from any free content.
1) It has always been policy on en.wikipedia.org that an article can
never consist of fair use materials alone. All articles are at most
enriched with fair use content, but their basis must always be free
content. Material copied straight from the web is deleted immediately,
and all the text must be licensed under the GFDL or more permissive
terms.
2) Fair use images can be deleted when orphaned, replaced when a free
alternative is found, removed when the fair use argument is questioned
or a copyright holder complains. They are essentially "allowed on
parole".

We can further develop this distinction if we are clear and consistent
about only allowing two classes of material, free content and limited
fair use to enrich that content.

Erik


body:
On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Wow, that's awesome.  Is Jimbo in on this?

Jimmy is aware of this effort, but apparently hasn't had time to look
into it any further yet. I certainly hope that he will participate in
the debates of the coming weeks.

Erik


from_name: Russell Blackford

body:
It's dangerous to apply the notion of "original research" too literally
outside of its original context (dealing with crackpot theories, or simply
novel ones, student essays, and so on). Beyond that context, I'm not
literalistic, and I don't need a lot of guidlines. I think I know it when I
see it, and I think I know what is not intended to be covered by the
expression when I see it, even if it could be brought under the literal
description that is used. Common sense has to prevail, I think, which is why
we have all these processes involving shared community perceptions.

An example of something that is probably NOT "original research": "Bloggs
has approvingly cited the work of Derrida to attack the philosophy of
bohemian snarkism. According to Bloggs, it is all 'words, words, words.'
<reference, Joe Bloggs, Anti-Snark, p. 300>"

An example of something that certainly IS original research: "Bloggs, who
has attacked the philosophy of bohemian snarkism, could have found further
support for his view by applying certain claims famously made by Derrida.
<reference, Jacques Derrida, Words/ Words/ Words, p. 300>"

We all make these kinds of distinctions reasonably confidently, don't we?
When in doubt, at the margins, we do indeed want to call on our collective
wisdom. The process seems straightforward enough to me, though I suppose I
might change my mind if I got caught in an edit war over it.

As for notability, I'm not sure I properly understand the argument. It seems
to me that we have a (loose and largely unofficial) body of criteria to
apply to decide whether or not something is notable. We don't apply novel
theories, we just find the facts and apply the criteria. The facts should be
publicly available ones. The criteria themselves get clarified and developed
from case to case, with commonsense input from the community to resolve
doubts in individual hard cases. That seems like the right way to go about
it to me. I'm not sure whether I'm in disagreement with anyone here or not,
but it just doesn't seem all that complicated at my end.

Russell Blackford (a.k.a. Metamagician3000)

----- Original Message -----
From: "charles matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, May 01, 2006 7:35 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

> "Steve Block"  wrote
>
>> It attempts to close the door on the possibility of allowing wikipedians
>> to decide what is and isn't notable, something I believe is against both
>> the original research and POV policies.  We should seek to summarise
>> claims of importance, where those claims are verifiable.
>
> Err ... why?  This may be what we resort to in some cases (garage bands).
> But it is a bad idea in other cases (e.g. academics).  And I think we all
> should be allowed to express opinions on notability.  In some areas, for
> example the arts, poetry, if you go by tallying up awards and honours and
> suchlike 'objective' credits, you will only reproduce the contours of the
> 'academic art' of the time.  Thus missing what is coming up, for example.
>
> Further, there could hardly be a better example of how 'original
> research',
> launched by Jimbo as a way to deal with crank theories, has been spandexed
> as an argument.
>
> Charles


body:
On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> None of Wikipedia's mirrors has anywhere near the pagerank weight that
> Wikipedia itself has.  With the exception of a small number of already
> high-prominence sites, Wikipedia linkage is almost certainly bound to
> substantially alter the rank of a given page in search engine results.

I agree with this now that it is also clear that mirrors are
deliberately reducing external links. It is clear that Wikipedia's
impact on the ranking of the sites it references must be significant.
I continue to maintain that tagging all links indiscriminately as
"nofollow" is essentially an admission of defeat; it is like saying:
None of our links are worth spidering. We're just a wiki. Please,
search engines, go to some other trusted sites, not to us.

I don't think our links are bad enough to justify such an explicit
statement with all the consequences it has. And the continual pounding
of "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" does nothing to change the fact that
it is a resource used by millions of people, that it is a resource
which is embedded into a larger network known as the WWW, a network
which itself is accessed by most people through portals and search
engines before they arrive at a content source. It is in our interest,
for our own project and for moral reasons, to help people to find high
quality educational resources, as opposed to those which are promoted
from within typically corporate, "trusted" frameworks such as AOL or
MSN.

The fact that Wikipedia maintains community-created lists of topical
links has always been, to me, one of its strongest points, one of the
best ways to further explore and find relevant information on a topic.
When I find an interesting and useful link, I often add it to
Wikipedia so I can look it up again later, no matter where I am. The
fact that any link to any resource has a chance and is treated,
hopefully, consistently and fairly according to community-drafted
policies distinguishes it radically from those "trusted" resources
which only allow links which benefit the owner of the resource, or at
least do not threaten to damage them or their advertisers.

Do we, essentially, want an invisible wall of separation between
user-generated content and content from "trusted" sites? Or do we want
a better solution? I don't like nofollow. It is a hack. It lacks
imagination.

Erik


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/1/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > None of Wikipedia's mirrors has anywhere near the pagerank weight that
> > Wikipedia itself has.  With the exception of a small number of already
> > high-prominence sites, Wikipedia linkage is almost certainly bound to
> > substantially alter the rank of a given page in search engine results.
>
> I agree with this now that it is also clear that mirrors are
> deliberately reducing external links. It is clear that Wikipedia's
> impact on the ranking of the sites it references must be significant.
> I continue to maintain that tagging all links indiscriminately as
> "nofollow" is essentially an admission of defeat; it is like saying:
> None of our links are worth spidering. We're just a wiki. Please,
> search engines, go to some other trusted sites, not to us.
>
I'd say it's more like saying "Don't assume this link is worth
spidering just because we link to it."  That's quite different from
what you're saying.

> I don't think our links are bad enough to justify such an explicit
> statement with all the consequences it has. And the continual pounding
> of "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" does nothing to change the fact that
> it is a resource used by millions of people, that it is a resource
> which is embedded into a larger network known as the WWW, a network
> which itself is accessed by most people through portals and search
> engines before they arrive at a content source. It is in our interest,
> for our own project and for moral reasons, to help people to find high
> quality educational resources, as opposed to those which are promoted
> from within typically corporate, "trusted" frameworks such as AOL or
> MSN.
>
Ultimately I think the search engines are in the best position to
determine how best to accomplish the goal of helping people find the
resources they're looking for.  And I think it's a very open question
whether treating links from a wiki differently from links on a site
with more tightly controlled access, helps a search engine guide
people to high quality educational resources.

Of course if Wikipedia had the time and resources to dedicate to such
a problem, a better solution would be to have a relatively small group
of individuals go through and mark links as followable or not
followable (high quality educational resource, or spam) manually.  But
I don't think that's reasonable.

Maybe putting a time-delay on the attribute is a good enough
compromise.  I don't know.  IANA search engine guru.

> The fact that Wikipedia maintains community-created lists of topical
> links has always been, to me, one of its strongest points, one of the
> best ways to further explore and find relevant information on a topic.
> [snip]
Sure, Wikipedia is great for that.  But I really don't see how that's
relevant to the nofollow tag, which is a tag for bots, and more
specifically search engine spiders, not humans.

> Do we, essentially, want an invisible wall of separation between
> user-generated content and content from "trusted" sites? Or do we want
> a better solution? I don't like nofollow. It is a hack. It lacks
> imagination.
>
On this point I agree.  Maybe Google or one of the search engines
looking to compete with them would be willing to consider a better
tagging system.  <a href=blah type=wiki firstadded=20060501195702> or
somesuch.  "Nofollow" is definitely a poor terminology.  The tag
should describe the link, not try to dictate to search engines what to
do with it.

Anthony


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Yes.
> Birgitte, you may be confusing the *licence* under which the texts are
> available to the public, and the *policy* of non-modification of these
> original texts on wikisource.
>
> Wikisource does not modify the texts itself, but it should seek to make
> modification possible for those who will use the texts later.

This is a beautiful expression of what I was trying to say, yes.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/1/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> My personal opinion is that /currently/ I think nofollow has merit; I
> think we're extremely bad at handling linkspamming and website
> promotion in Wikipedia, and thus reducing the benefit might help.
>
> However, if we became better at keeping track of what Wikipedia links
> to and getting rid of spam, I'd support turning nofollow off.
>
> What would be useful steps to take to keep better track of these?  Is
> there anything that can be done in software?  Or procedure/process?
> External applications?

I've ductaped curl to spamassassin and can now rate the spammyness of
websites. :) Now I just need to replace all the email header centric
SA rules with web centric ones.

Because there are ~2,800,000 external links from the main namespace
alone on enwiki (there is now a patch to mediawiki to set nofollow per
namespace, I think no matter what we should nofollow outside the main
ns), I see automated scanning as the only reasonable step right now to
improve our link quality.

So I'm working on it..


from_name: David Gerard

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_image_replacement_request

This is a cat of fair-use images that should be pretty darn easy to do
free-content replacements for; promo shots and so forth. Look at those
images - they fairly scream "target practice." To tag such an image,
you put {{fairusereplace}} on it and it goes in that cat.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API (SoC)

body:
Yuri Astrakhan wrote:
> Brion and Ben,
>
> User NicoT ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:NicoT ) contacted me
> about helping to develop the query API as part of Google's SoC. He
> outlined some of the goals for the API on his page (above), and has
> been actively looking at the code and communicating over an IM. Even
> though API might be less important than, lets say rich editor or a new
> parser code,  it should still be considered as a valuable proposition,
> especially if a value-add applications can be developed on top of
> basic method calls.

It's certainly valuable, but I don't think it fits within the Summer of Code
framework, which requires the students to do their own work rather than
collaborating in groups with the outside.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Please pay me the compliment of believing what I say,

I am not disputing your comments, I am simply pointing out the
contradiction to the way Wikisource defines itself. It is clear that
ND and NC materials have slipped through the cracks in a few projects
and languages.

> however it stretches your credulity or however you
> would like to interpret the Main Page.  Here is a link
> to most recent dissucion which took place on the most
> active and prominent page on enWS.  Not single person
> spoke out against accepting the ND license.
>
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#Non_commercial_texts

What I see is a single comment from you on this matter, and a single
response to that. This is not the broad discussion about these issues
which we need.

> When you have managed to limit fair use materials, I
> will examine the limits and re-evaluate my opiion.
> Currently enWP has pretty much any fair use material
> they can get away with.

The situation has much improved in recent years (though the overall
quantity of materials uploaded has grown, of course). Fair use images
are quickly deleted when orphaned, and the policy that they can be
replaced even with inferior free versions seems to be accepted now
(this was not always the case). We have a well-defined list of
acceptable circumstances of fair use.

Most importantly, fair use material is subject to very different
conditions than other content, and governed by its own policy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use

It is this distinction between two classes of content which is
essential. You, on the other hand, want to put ND content on equal
footing with other materials. This erodes the distinction, reduces the
incentive to contribute free content, and contradicts the definition
and mission of Wikisource.

Erik


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:NPOV as interpreted by Coleridge

body:
Though all men are in error, they are not all in the same error, nor
at the same time ... each therefore may possibly heal the other ...
even as two or more physicians, all diseased in their general health,
yet under the immediate action of the disease on different days, may
remove or alleviate the complaints of each other

So there you have it: the operation of WP:NPOV in articles edited by
opposing camps in a nutshell, courtesy of Mr. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 5/1/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The works I see us dealing with here are religous
> works, goverment works, and manifestos of political
> groups etc.

Again, these works can be protected through policy, while at the same
time permitting, by policy, legitimate derivative works such as
translations. There's no need to forbid derivative works by law. In
any case, the authorship history of the original work must be
maintained under common licenses such as the GFDL and CC-BY. This is
the message we have to communicate to the authors of these documents.

Erik


body:
Cool, remind us all where the list of general photos needed is?

Steve, fairly certain that he'll be adding some new photos to
[[Blois]], [[Chambord]], [[Tours]], [[Vannes]] etc soon ;)

On 01/05/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_image_replacement_request
>
> This is a cat of fair-use images that should be pretty darn easy to do
> free-content replacements for; promo shots and so forth. Look at those
> images - they fairly scream "target practice." To tag such an image,
> you put {{fairusereplace}} on it and it goes in that cat.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
On 5/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/04/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't use it, but I suspect en-5 was originally supposed to be used to
> > denote those who write English professionally, such as journalists, writers,
> > and editors. My own profession would probably qualify. However, I only use
> > the native English one to point out that, yes, I know English as a native,
> > but I find it really unnecessary from a Babel point of view to point out
> > that I can write professionally (especially when my quality of edits on
> > Wikipedia is often subpar).
> >
> > I don't really see a need for en-5, but I don't begrudge those folks who
> > want to use it.
>
> I would like to know more about what the babel boxes are really
> supposed to be used for. I definitely write better English than the
> average English speaker. I'm even a professional technical writer (for
> all the qualifications that required :)) And I speak French pretty
> well.
>
> What benefit, besides pure ego, does sharing this information with the
> world via babel boxes actually have? Someone mentioned once seeking
> out speakers of certain languages for help in translation, but it
> seems to me that specific "En->Fr 3" boxes would be more
> appropriate...no?
>
> Steve

I've used them on non en wikipedia's when I've needed to find people
who will understand me.

--
geni


body:
On 01/05/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/1/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > What's listcruft?
>
> On *fD, <foo>cruft is shorthand for 'articles about <foo> that are
> below my personal notability threshold'.  Thus its application is
> generally tautological and only serves to denigrate the subject
> matter.

And/or discredit the person using the term. It really is a pretty
offensive term, but I don't know if most people using it realise that.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babel template en-5

body:
On Mon, 01 May 2006 18:23:15 -0400, you wrote:

>I have no opinion about the usefulness of babel boxes identifying native
>speakers.

There is one editor I encounter frequently, a French Canadian, who
identifies as a native speaker of English but whose English is
idiosyncratic to the point where I often have to read it multiple
times before I understand what he's trying to say.  I do not believe
this is a flaw in my comprehension skills...
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG