from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/12/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I know I personally don't have the patience to wait a few days and
> then add my contributions. The way I see it, anon comes around --> sees he
> can't edit without registering and waiting four days --> decides it's not
> worth the hassle --> perfectly good contribution lost, maybe more -->
> Wikipedia suffers more in the long run.

Absolutely.

> I also disagree with anything that presumes bad faith about anonymous
> editors. Wikipedia built itself by being as open as possible. Can we diverge
> from that path of openness as little as possible?

And agreed again.   To expand on GMaxwell's comment about limiting
visibility of newbie edits: we should be as liberal as possible in
taking in new text and information from contributors, and as careful
as possible in how we display it.  Each view should very clearly
identify, filtered up to the first screen of the main display, the
history, community trust, level of discussion and monitoring, and
referencing put into an article (especially its last dozen edits).

SJ


list: commons-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] press release

references:
<ejb10j$h8i$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<OHEOKBPIOKBGALOCIOHIMEPBFBAA.bastique@bellsouth.net>
	<ejc1mp$3ik$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 14/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A press release announces things after they occurred. Not before.
>
> I would say that when people work on something great, it is cool to
> announce a big milestone. But of course, if no one is interested, there
> will be no press release.
>
> Ant

I will try and start something today... I did email comcom about it
some weeks ago, but got no discernible reply (what with it being a
closed list, and all)... are the WMF contact point for this?

Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [Commons-l] press release

references:
<ejb10j$h8i$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<OHEOKBPIOKBGALOCIOHIMEPBFBAA.bastique@bellsouth.net>
	<ejc1mp$3ik$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<d20d84ea0611140145m3fa8feb8tfaeb55256d9187f6@mail.gmail.com>

body:
I meant, are you (Anthere) the WMF contact point for this?

On 14/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > A press release announces things after they occurred. Not before.
> >
> > I would say that when people work on something great, it is cool to
> > announce a big milestone. But of course, if no one is interested, there
> > will be no press release.
> >
> > Ant
>
> I will try and start something today... I did email comcom about it
> some weeks ago, but got no discernible reply (what with it being a
> closed list, and all)... are the WMF contact point for this?
>
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Principles of organisation - who do we serve?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 11/13/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks, Brion. Specifically, could we require that new registered
>> users must have a confirmed email address before uploading? With talk
>> page email notifications as default setting.
>
> I oppose this on Commons, for the reasons I have given in this thread
> when this was previously brought up:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-June/044555.html

Commons != Wikipedia. Commons is a special case. We've got Enotif
enabled, we have globally visible media. I don't think that the
arguments made in a thread on a list for a different project, 4-5 months
ago, are equally valid when applied to Commons at this point in time.

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

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: James Hare

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Montenegrin Wikipedia should be opened

body:
What I want to know is -why- they don't want to work with the
Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias. If they could work
together, it'd introduce multiple viewpoints and thus help achieve Neutral
Point of View (and numerous arguments, and potentially nationality-related
nastiness).

Communication is the key. They should hear each other out.

On 11/14/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:2505d1590611140554r3b97d040s21207d25d5b25d36 at mail.gmail.com
> ...
> > On 11/14/06, Gerard Meijssen
> <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The decision to start Wikimedia Foundation projects are based on
> > > languages not on countries.
> > > [SNIP]
> > > Starting on the incubator does not a languages make.
> >
> > - 100.000 of inhabitants of Montenegro claim chat their native
> > language is Montenegrin.
> > - They don't want to work on Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian
> > Wikipedias.
>
> You mean you asked all 100.000 of them?
>
> *whisper* npov?
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: gwern branwen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/14/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
.....
> And agreed again.   To expand on GMaxwell's comment about limiting
> visibility of newbie edits: we should be as liberal as possible in
> taking in new text and information from contributors, and as careful
> as possible in how we display it.  Each view should very clearly
> identify, filtered up to the first screen of the main display, the
> history, community trust, level of discussion and monitoring, and
> referencing put into an article (especially its last dozen edits).
>
> SJ

Or in other words, we should follow that classic RFC saying (Postel's
Prescription): " Be generous in what you accept,  rigorous in what you
emit"?  Sounds good to me.

--Gwern


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 14/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> (...and perhaps we can make the pertinent point, without whining too
>> much, which led some people to consider this option: overwhelming
>> copyvios and underwhelming supply of labour.)
>
>
> I recall that when en:wp was having problems with vandalism of the
> Main Page featured article image, Commons admins were remarkably
> difficult to find. So some asked "could we have an admin on en: made
> an admin on Commons for this reason?" and got back "well, why don't
> you make all Commons admins admins on en: first."
>

We've had an administrator's noticeboard for a while now; all you need
to do is ask. I don't know who made that other comment.

> Some people in the Commons community seem to want it both ways. Is
> Commons an entirely independent project or does it, as a service
> project, need to open itself up to administration by people from other
> projects to keep up with its actual original purpose?
>

Ahh, but people from other projects want it both ways too: you want our
images but jump up and down when we delete them. Yes, we need people
from other projects, mainly for language diversity.

> This discussion appears to demonstrate Commons simply isn't making
> admins through its own processes anywhere near fast enough and its
> processes need radical revision.
>

We've currently got ONE applicant.

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

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from_name: geni

body:
On 11/14/06, Samuli Lintula <samuli at samulilintula.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:42:51 +0200, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Commons is not normal. I'm an en and wikispecies admin. I've probably
> > got at least as much experence dealing with images as all but your
> > most experenced admins. And now I have to mess around makeing 200
> > edits.
>
> I would like to introduce you to CommonTasks
> <URL:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:CommonTasks>.
>
> It isn't ready but the talk page has a list of maintenance work people can
> do even without being admins. It also has some instructions. Like I said,
> it isn't ready, and I'm sorry I have lately been too busy to push it
> forward even though other people liked the idea. But in time...
>

You want experenced and active admins. Something everyone is short of
to do non admin maintenance tasks includeing adding welcome templates?
This does not seem to be a reasonable use of rescourses.

> I'm sorry to say, but such claim doesn't give a very good picture of your
> knowledge of Commons. The admin process in Commons is the laxest one I
> know. 200 edits! I didn't know that much when I applied for adminship. I
> hadn't done much maintenance work. And I was elected.
>

I know other porjects with more relaxed standards. We are not however
looking at candidates with nor previous background

You need people who can speak spanish. You need admins with image
experence who can speak spanish. The only place you can get them
quickly is from the spanish wikipedia. Rather than haveing them make
200 edits which are less critial it would be mnore effective to
provide links to crash courses in commons adminship policy and then
basicaly rubber stamp their aplications.

> The reason Commons has few active admins is that - for many people - the
> work in Commons isn't rewarding. It's much more fun to write your own
> book, than to keep other people's books in alphabetical order on the
> library shelves.
>
> --
> Yst?v?llisin terveisin,
> Samuli Lintula
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
geni


body:
On 14/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Commons != Wikipedia. Commons is a special case.

Yes, Commons = Wikipedia + Wikinews + Wikibooks + Wikisource +
Wiktionary + Wikispecies + Wikiversity + Meta + ...

Let's just be clear that this is a decision that will potentially
affect the entire Wikimedia community and therefore their opinions are
of the utmost importance and relevance...
(...and perhaps we can make the pertinent point, without whining too
much, which led some people to consider this option: overwhelming
copyvios and underwhelming supply of labour.)

Brianna


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: Commons needs patrollers and future admins

body:
David Gerard napisa?(a):
> I just sent this to wikien-l asking for helpers. Presumably there are
> tags, etc. for non-admin patrollers to tag suspect images. Something
> like this posted to other language Wikipedias would be a good idea, I
> suspect.

*nod*

Sent to wikipl-l.

--
TOR


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Uploading files beyond the size limit

body:
On 11/14/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/11/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > I once wrote a function for the upload page where you upload a file by
> > giving its URL. There were some security concerns about malicious
> > servers, which I think I fixed, but then, as usual, nothing happened.
> > Should still be in there, for anyone interested. Lemme see... ah yes;
> > set $wgAllowCopyUploads=true in LocalSettings, and be done with it.
>
>
> I shudder at the thought of this being enabled on Commons unless such
> uploads are somehow marked for particular urgent attention - it sounds
> like an even easier way to upload copyright violations. If such
> uploads are marked and auto-categorised, it might be manageable.

When I was working on this, it was suggested that it should
automatically add the source URL to the image description (unless it
is already given in there). It could also add "[[category:URL
uploads]]" or the like.
With the source URL given, it would actually be *easier* to find
copyvios, as one knows exactly where it came from, unlike the current
system.

> (After all my whining on this list, I'm going to have to start looking
> for and tagging Commons copyvios myself and then applying for admin

Good luck with that. Myself, I'll stay with my tools and programming
languages - they're much easier to decipher than copyright law ;-)

Magnus


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java becomes Open Source, what next?

body:
On 11/14/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> That said, there's no reason to be paranoid.  Yes, there will always
> be vulnerabilities, but they'll be doubly limited by the approval
> process *and* the sandbox.  We aren't distributing arbitrary machine
> code, we're distributing Java, which as far as I know can't do
> anything like take over your computer or wipe your hard drive.
> Running arbitrary Java is not to my knowledge a real security risk, at
> least no more than arbitrary JavaScript (which can spy on you to an
> extent), and this Java won't even be arbitrary: it will be vetted
> first, however imperfectly.

You are mistaken about the nature of Java code.  Java code can do
anything code in any other language can do (can we say
java.lang.Runtime, please?); all it takes to escape the security
context is one user clicking "OK" to the "give this applet
permissions?" question that comes up when a signed applet is signed
with an unrecognized certificate. Most people will click "OK" on that
dialog.  This is even true for applets; escaping the standard security
context merely requires a touch of social engineering.

Kelly


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/14/06, Carl Witty <cwitty at newtonlabs.com> wrote:>
> "... we can provide (audited) java classes for anything performance
> critical..."
> Really?  Including fluid dynamics simulators, rigid-body kinematics with
> collision detection, Game of Life simulators, and chess-playing
> programs?  These are just a few possibilities for (the
> performance-critical part of) educational applets that I came up with
> off the top of my head; I'm sure there are many more.

Um. I promise that Game of Life will not be a problem. I've coded a
game of life simulation in freeking qbasic on a 286 which was faster
than the screen refresh rate.

Fluid dynamics, rigid-body kinematics, and chess...  I'm not sure if
you are more confused by how slow 'not performance critical' is or if
you have totally unrealistic expectations about what is needed to
educate people.  People not only learned but conducted serious science
with software in these fields on the computers of a decade ago, even
with interpreted languages far slower than what we'd use today... I
wouldn't expect a modern interpreted language to be any slower...

When I played with jython before it was about half the speed of
cpython (without psyco) on the same code, with a simmlar difference
compared to raw java.

Moreover, I hope you realize that the limiting factor for any of this
will be authoring the code. If a poor security model or editing model
keeps us from tapping into the public at large we will not do well.

> The JVM-based interpreter may still be the right thing to do, but people
> need to be aware that there are whole realms of creative educational
> possibilities that are far less feasible with that approach.

I don't understand your argument.
Java classes + an available interpreter can not be slower than java
classes alone.

> How does a Java applet go about asking for more privileges?  Is that
> something we can easily audit to avoid (for instance, by checking .class
> files to make sure they only use standard Java classes and methods that
> are in a whitelist, not to include reflection)?

It's not easy to audit if we're working with bytecode, ... if we're
working with sourcecode thats another matter.

> If the embedded-in-JVM interpreters let you interact with Java, then you
> will probably be able to write scripts that ask for more privileges; and
> that can't be fixed by outlawing reflection, since the interpreter has
> to use reflection.  For this reason, compiled Java may actually be
> easier to secure than an interpreter.

You control what methods they can access by what you choose to expose,
and you don't like the interpreter otherwise much with the VM.  This
is why jython is currently a non-starter (and in general, python has
been difficult to lock down).

> Can we write our own security manager, ensure that all calls to
> uploaded .class files are "wrapped" by our security manager, and
> implement our own restrictive security policy that way?

You have to have signed code to hook in as a security manager.. but
lets assume we could:

This would do nothing to stop mistery meat code from displaying
penises every second tuesday. The only way to handle that is to keep
size down, readability up, and always work with source.

In any case, it's pointless to debate what loft applications we'd
exclude with a particular implementation when none of these pieces of
software currently exist.


body:
On 14/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > (...and perhaps we can make the pertinent point, without whining too
> > much, which led some people to consider this option: overwhelming
> > copyvios and underwhelming supply of labour.)
>
> Some people in the Commons community seem to want it both ways. Is
> Commons an entirely independent project or does it, as a service
> project, need to open itself up to administration by people from other
> projects to keep up with its actual original purpose?

Who ever proposed Commons as an "entirely independent project"? All of
our admins come from other Wikimedia projects. You are the only one I
ever see say this.

If you're suggesting that Commons start allowing anyone with adminship
on any Wikimedia project to become an admin on Commons, dream on.
Being knowledgable about image copyright is not an important
consideration on many (most?) RfA processes. It might be one factor,
but not a deciding one. Many of our projects don't even have image use
policies. It's not so long ago that even English Wikipedia was far
more lax about image use.

> This discussion appears to demonstrate Commons simply isn't making
> admins through its own processes anywhere near fast enough and its
> processes need radical revision.

Sysopping is a tricky business. We already have, IIRC, the third
largest number of admins (after en.wp and de.wp).

The problem is not that our standards are too high. Our standards are
remarkably low, given the impact our actions can have, in fact. The
problem is a lack of interest. I don't know why you find this hard to
believe. But when you figure out how to get people interested in
glory-free, thankless tasks that most users will never see or have any
idea even go on, then feel free to let us know. Piece of cake,
right...

regards,
Brianna


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 14/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> You want experenced and active admins. Something everyone is short of
> to do non admin maintenance tasks includeing adding welcome templates?
> This does not seem to be a reasonable use of rescourses.

Call it "admin and patrolling" - a lot of tagging work can be done by
non-admins.

> > I'm sorry to say, but such claim doesn't give a very good picture of your
> > knowledge of Commons. The admin process in Commons is the laxest one I
> > know. 200 edits! I didn't know that much when I applied for adminship. I
> > hadn't done much maintenance work. And I was elected.

> I know other porjects with more relaxed standards. We are not however
> looking at candidates with nor previous background
> You need people who can speak spanish. You need admins with image
> experence who can speak spanish. The only place you can get them
> quickly is from the spanish wikipedia. Rather than haveing them make
> 200 edits which are less critial it would be mnore effective to
> provide links to crash courses in commons adminship policy and then
> basicaly rubber stamp their aplications.

If we can find good admin candidates for commons that people can vouch
for, that'd be great. But a mere call for admins in the first instance
would be the first thing to do, on the es: equivalent of [[WP:AN]] on
en:.

- d.


from_name: peter green

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
> Sent: 14 November 2006 08:25
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Principles of organisation - who do we serve?
>
>
> On 11/13/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks, Brion. Specifically, could we require that new registered
> > users must have a confirmed email address before uploading? With talk
> > page email notifications as default setting.
>
> I oppose this on Commons, for the reasons I have given in this thread
> when this was previously brought up:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-June/044555.html
what would imo be more sensible though more work to implement would be to require new users on commons to

1: specify thier username and password for thier home project
2: have built a good status on that project (i'm thinking account at least 14 days old, no blocks in last 14 days, edits on 7 distinct days since account creation/last block)

sure the determined will get arround this but it should help keep both the inexperianced and casual troublemakers at bay.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia glossary

body:
As you know, we have a lot of specialized lingo on Wikipedia. Even
worse, since anyone can edit, people are always adding new TLAs,
shortcuts, and neologisms to our jargon. For those of you who haven't
been keeping up, here are some handy definitions:

AfD - Something that used to be called VfD, but had to be changed when
Lemony Snicket complained about trademark infringement.
Consensus - Fewer than two Wikipedians.
Cruft - The stuff that lives in the internet's series of tubes and
delays loading of pages from Wikipedia. Sorry, buying more servers
doesn't actually help.
Edit count - A way of picking admins that makes about as much sense as,
say, buying a website based purely on its traffic numbers.
Good faith - An anagram for "swift boat".
Guideline - See: Policy
Infobox - A large table. There are usually supposed to be some chairs
with it to make it useful, but many of the legs are often missing.
Instruction - See: Process
Jimbo - The co-founder of Citizendium.
Mailing list - Place to write something you're not willing to have
edited mercilessly.
Policy - See: Instruction
Process - See: Guideline
Redirect - To repeat a command already given to somebody who is behaving
inappropriately, for example by using the various vandalism warning
templates. "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again!" is a double redirect.
Sockpuppet - Something to wear when walking on astroturf.
Stub - An article with more categories than it has words.
Userbox - A coffin.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Factual error on mediawiki.org

body:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 05:47:58PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Public domain is not a license. Please correct this as soon as possible.

No, but it *is* still possible to dedicate original material to the
public domain, is it not?

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

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


body:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 03:51:09PM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> Hey, if we're going to start including virtual machine run bytecode
> content, maybe we should include other VMs than Java's.  For instance,
> there's OCaml's toplevel VM, Parrot, and Smalltalk out there.  Could be
> fun.
>
> Okay, I'm not very serious about that.

Given the nuber of top-halves that write to Parrot... maybe so. That's
the nice thing about that (unless I vastly misunderstand it): you can
sandbox *Parrot*, and then everything that runs atop it is the same
amount of safer.

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

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


body:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 06:31:50PM -0500, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Our site is innovative in many ways...(nearly) instant gratification,
> open access, revision control (never forget), Free Content, low
> barriers to entry.. etc..    as we step into the realm of executable
> content we should not abandon all the things that have made us grand.

These issues have, of course, already been discussed: see WebGUI (which
is pretty hardcore about not allowing code in through the frontend), to
Zope, (which is not).

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

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 11/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> No, but it *is* still possible to dedicate original material to the
> public domain, is it not?

Maybe.  The courts haven't tested it.  In law, "public domain" is
where stuff goes when its copyright expires, and under some other
circumstances; nothing explicitly says you can put stuff there.  Thus
in proper legalese, you normally say something closer to "I grant an
irrevocable, unconditional, duty-free license to everyone in the world
to use, modify, redistribute, and otherwise do whatever they want with
my work."

Or something to that effect.  I may have confused some of the details
a bit.  The issue is discussed on [[public domain]], I think.


body:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 10:54:16PM -0500, Simetrical wrote:
> On 11/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > No, but it *is* still possible to dedicate original material to the
> > public domain, is it not?
>
> Maybe.  The courts haven't tested it.  In law, "public domain" is
> where stuff goes when its copyright expires, and under some other
> circumstances; nothing explicitly says you can put stuff there.  Thus
> in proper legalese, you normally say something closer to "I grant an
> irrevocable, unconditional, duty-free license to everyone in the world
> to use, modify, redistribute, and otherwise do whatever they want with
> my work."
>
> Or something to that effect.  I may have confused some of the details
> a bit.  The issue is discussed on [[public domain]], I think.

It is, where it says:

	It is commonly believed by non-lawyers that it is impossible to
	put a work into the public domain. Although copyright law
	generally does not provide any statutory means to "abandon"
	copyright so that a work can enter the public domain, this does
	not mean that it is impossible or even difficult, only that the
	law is somewhat unclear. Congress may not have felt it
	necessary to codify this part of the law, because abandoning
	property (like a tract of land) to the public domain has
	traditionally been a matter of judge-made law, rather than
	statute. (Alternatively, because copyright has traditionally
	been seen as a valuable right, one which required registration
	to achieve, it would not have made sense to contemplate someone
	abandoning it in 1976 and 1988.)

which hews pretty closely to what you assert.

But you're correct; the appropriate CC license has the same or better
effect, and is clear, legally.

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

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


from_name: Samuli Lintula

body:
On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 15:42:51 +0200, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> Commons is not normal. I'm an en and wikispecies admin. I've probably
> got at least as much experence dealing with images as all but your
> most experenced admins. And now I have to mess around makeing 200
> edits.

I would like to introduce you to CommonTasks
<URL:http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:CommonTasks>.

It isn't ready but the talk page has a list of maintenance work people can
do even without being admins. It also has some instructions. Like I said,
it isn't ready, and I'm sorry I have lately been too busy to push it
forward even though other people liked the idea. But in time...

On Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:23:52 +0200, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> There isn't anyone advocating that; this discussion started with a
> Commons admin threatening to block all es:wp users from Commons to
> stop copyvios from es:wp, because the Commons admins can't keep up,
> evidently because their admin process is strict enough that pretty
> much no-one even bothers trying.

I'm sorry to say, but such claim doesn't give a very good picture of your
knowledge of Commons. The admin process in Commons is the laxest one I
know. 200 edits! I didn't know that much when I applied for adminship. I
hadn't done much maintenance work. And I was elected.

The reason Commons has few active admins is that - for many people - the
work in Commons isn't rewarding. It's much more fun to write your own
book, than to keep other people's books in alphabetical order on the
library shelves.

--
Yst?v?llisin terveisin,
Samuli Lintula


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Principles of organisation - who do
	we serve?

body:
Technically, anything that isn't public domain is copyrighted. Even if it's
GFDLed.

But generally in a Wikimedia context, when people say "copyrighted" they're
referring to the icky all-rights-reserved stuff.

On 11/14/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anthony wrote:
> > On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> If there are Wikimedians who are advocating housing copyrighted media
> >> in Commons, speak up now, because we need to get clear on why that is
> >> not cool immediately.
> >>
> > Of course we advocate housing copyrighted media in commons.  Commons
> > is not limited to public domain material.
> >
>
> ... permission to stab him, please?
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/14/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Perform what exactly? The point of auto-expiry is that the protecting
> sysop would be able to set the term of protection. How would you
> achieve the same flexibility with a simple bot? Not to mention that
> deployment -- both in the Wikimedia family and outside -- would be
> much easier if it is a regular MediaWiki feature.

Just mention the time in the protection log entry. No detectable time
mentioned, default to 1 week.  Adjust the protection screen message to
describe the syntax.

A no frills implementation of this would only take about a half hour
from idea to tested completion, and wouldn't burden the mediawiki code
base with more code which we do not yet have solid evidence of
needing.

Later enhancements could include sophisticated features which we would
never expect in mediawiki proper... For example, it could contact the
top contributors or the protecting admin at the time of
unprotection... or auto-adapt the default unprotection log based on
the history of protection and edits.

Core developer and testing resources will only scale so far... so we
need to distribute tasks like this when we can and when it makes
sense.. and certainly when we don't even have proof that a feature is
really needed or when the solution just isn't well defined.

This is also why a bot API that does more than just facilitate editing
with external editors is quite important. :)


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
On 11/14/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
> and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
> checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
> users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.

As an aside...
When did stewards stop being checkuser,etc on project not large enough
to have their own?


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...


body:
Personally, I dislike the new vision statement. The older one had the exact
same meaning, and was much "catchier"; the current proposal sounds too
corporate. If a change is needed, I would suggest:

"Imagine a world in which every single person can freely access the sum of
all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

As for the mission statement, I would only do very small changes:

"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people
around the world, in order to collect and develop knowledge under a free
license, and to disseminate it effectively in a global scale."

"In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation provides the
essential infrastructure and the organizational framework necessary for the
support, development and growth of multilingual wiki projects and other
endeavors which serve our mission. The Foundation is committed to making and
maintaining all information from its projects available on the Internet free
of charge, in perpetuity."

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 11:37 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the
WikimediaFoundation

Organizations often have a "mission statement" and a "vision
statement". For a typical distinction, see e.g.:
http://www.cfbroward.org/new/tips/1.html

At the Board Retreat in October, we revisited our existing "Vision",
which is: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

We also developed a mission statement from scratch. What's the point?
Aside from uniting behind a set of key goals, it helps us to decide
which activities fall within our scope and which ones don't --
something that is not always easy, given the diversity of our existing
projects and communities. Should we launch a WikiFoo project, or is
Foo not part of our mission? Both the vision and mission statement
will be frequently cited in future discussions of this kind, so they
are relevant, and not just organizational fluff.

After some further discussion, the Board has come up with the
following Mission and Vision statements. I would like to invite
comments on these statements, and perhaps we can identify changes that
we can all agree on. I would also like to encourage you to propose
alternative statements on Meta (see URLs below).

The idea is that, after a discussion and editing period of at least
two weeks, the Board will choose a version of the M&V statements.
These versions will then be put forward to the community, for a simple
"up" or "down" vote. If a statement reaches at least a two thirds
majority of support, it will be implemented as such. If it only
reaches a simple majority, further discussion and potential revision
may follow, at the Board's discretion. A statement that does not reach
a majority will not become an official statement of the WMF. The usual
voting restrictions will apply (minimum participation period etc.) and
will be announced together with the vote.

A general note: Our mission statement is perhaps longer than it needs
to be, and our vision statement shorter. But in these matters, we can
be flexible -- the most important question is whether both statements
meet the specific needs of _our_ organization and community.

== Vision Statement ==

'''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
in the sum of all knowledge.'''

Comment:

One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
teaching another language like English and then giving access to
learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
in our vision statement. Rather, I suggested we could add a phrase
such as "unimpeded by language barriers, socioeconomic status, or
government censorship". This was seen as too negative. In any case, I
feel that the simple adjective "freely" may be sufficient in order to
convey the idea that we seek to make knowledge as widely available as
possible.

== Mission Statement ==

'''The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop knowledge under a free
license, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.'''

'''In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation
provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and
other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation is committed
to making and keeping all information from its projects available on
the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.'''

Comment:

This is a slightly edited version from the Retreat, see the URL below
for the original. It was important to us to emphasize that the
relationship between WMF and its chapters, in general practice, is
more one of organizations with different scope working towards the
same goals, rather than a top down chain of command. The last sentence
seemed important to emphasize the distinction between "free licensing"
and "free access", both of which we are equally committed to.

== Comments & edits welcome ==

In the spirit of "stable versions", the M&V statements above can be
found, as protected pages, on

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision

You can suggest changes in this thread, or edit the unstable versions:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission/Unstable
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision/Unstable

You are also encouraged to "fork" new versions if that becomes
necessary due to lack of consensus on the wiki. Again, after at least
two weeks, the Board will nominate the versions to be voted upon by
the community. Let me know if you have any questions about this
process.

You are encouraged to translate the proposed Mission & Vision
statements, and to carry this discussion into other languages -- see
the language links at the top of the above-referenced pages to get
started.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the
	WikimediaFoundation


from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] POV-push on meta by admin User:Millosh in policy draft

body:
I understand rules.
But you, [[User:Millosh]] you invent your rules AND
your arguments. You blocked me on meta, when I tried
to edit your proposal, and without giving sources for
your affirmations.

This is POV-pushing by an admin, [[User:Millosh]].

And the edit was not related to the proposal, but to
the examples illustrating that proposal.

Where did you get that information? Where is it
stated, for the Moldovan nation, that:
1. "nation/ethnicity not well established, in the
process of assimilation with Romanian nation"
2. "significant orthography difference between
Moldovan Cyrillic script and Romanian Latin script"

This is your POV, and you are pushing it with admin
powers, [[User:Millosh]], in a proposal of wikipedia
policy.

[[Dpotop]]

____________________________________________________________________________________
Sponsored Link

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$420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment!
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from_name: Barcex

body:
I'll post a similar message in the Spanish Wikipedia list. In fact I was
asking some current es: admins about that, but they wonder to be rejected
because they have not enough edits on Commons. I suggest as criteria to be
open to accept Spanish Wikipedia admins that have many contributions there
and were fighting image vandalism also before uploads were closed a few
months ago.

Barcex

2006/11/14, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> I just sent this to wikien-l asking for helpers. Presumably there are
> tags, etc. for non-admin patrollers to tag suspect images. Something
> like this posted to other language Wikipedias would be a good idea, I
> suspect.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Date: 14-Nov-2006 20:12
> Subject: Commons needs patrollers and future admins
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>
>
> Commons is currently suffering a problem of a metric shitload of
> rubbish and copyvios, and not enough admins to do the cleanup work.
> Can anyone here help?
>
> Patrollers who speak multiple languages are particularly valuable in
> this regard, but I expect anyone good would be reasonably welcome once
> they can show a reasonable amount of work on Commons itself. Spanish
> and Portuguese speakers are particularly encouraged at present,
> because es: and pt: only allow image uploads directly to Commons.
>
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Administrators#Suggestions_for_administrators
>
> (I whined enough about it on commons-l myself that I'll be diving into
> shitwork on Commons soon as well ...)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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body:
--- James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I want to know is -why- they don't want to work
> with the
> Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias.
> If they could work
> together, it'd introduce multiple viewpoints and
> thus help achieve Neutral
> Point of View (and numerous arguments, and
> potentially nationality-related
> nastiness).

Yes, they should collaborate, I agree.
But nationalism is a key factor in the Balkan.
Especially when it's nascent, and when it covers
unclear ethnic or linguistic identities.
Just like new converts to some religion tend to be
more  fanatic than the old ones.
And that applies to all, not just ex-Yugoslav.

Dpotop

>
> Communication is the key. They should hear each
> other out.
>
> On 11/14/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk>
> wrote:
> >
> > "Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com> wrote in
> > message
>
news:2505d1590611140554r3b97d040s21207d25d5b25d36 at mail.gmail.com
> > ...
> > > On 11/14/06, Gerard Meijssen
> > <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > The decision to start Wikimedia Foundation
> projects are based on
> > > > languages not on countries.
> > > > [SNIP]
> > > > Starting on the incubator does not a languages
> make.
> > >
> > > - 100.000 of inhabitants of Montenegro claim
> chat their native
> > > language is Montenegrin.
> > > - They don't want to work on
> Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian
> > > Wikipedias.
> >
> > You mean you asked all 100.000 of them?
> >
> > *whisper* npov?
> >
> > - Mark Clements (HappyDog)
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-15

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

  12 new PASSING test(s) :)
      * [Before] HTML without raw HTML enabled ($wgRawHtml==false)
      * HTML with raw HTML ($wgRawHtml==true)
      * Parents of subpages, one level up
      * Parents of subpages, one level up, not named
      * Definition list code coverage
      * MSGNW magic word
      * RAW magic word
      * Template caching
      * Inclusion of !userCanEdit() content
      * Out-of-order TOC heading levels
      * ISBN with a dummy number
      * Pages in namespace (Magic word disabled currently)
   4 new FAILING test(s) :(
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.
      * TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div
      * TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'
Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/14/06, Siebrand Mazeland <s.mazeland at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>> Let's stop bitching at each other and start being more constructive, could
>> we?
>>
>> Commons is the way to go and it saves a lot of work on and distraction from
>> other wiki's main goals.
>
> How?

We don't have to worry about as much vandalism or what we're saying
about people. Or border disputes.

>
>> Getting people inexperienced with image maintenance as admins on Commons is
>> not a good idea. Requiring only a few hundred edits and a few months of
>> activity is rather normal for admin bits on any Wikimedia wiki.
>
> Commons is not normal. I'm an en and wikispecies admin. I've probably
> got at least as much experence dealing with images as all but your
> most experenced admins. And now I have to mess around makeing 200
> edits.
>

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Image_classification_system
should keep you busy then.

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

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/14/06, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know if semi-protection is generally discouraging to new editors or
> not, and without good user studies none of us will ever know for sure. As
> far as I know, we are very much lacking in good data both about the
> experience of new editors and of "ordinary users" who don't edit, which is
> something I hope the research community will be able to someday remedy. It's
> all very well to have individual, qualitative impressions (sure, the place
> seems harder to navigate and less friendly than when I signed up three years
> ago) but those impressions don't mean much overall unless collected widely,
> counted reliably and aggregated.
......................
> -- phoebe

It would be nice, but it seems to be very low on the Foundation's list
of things to do - we still don't even know what effect disabling anon
page creation had, and there were supposed to be some official
analysis; we don't even have the promise of such analysis for
semiprotection. We might be able to look at the statistics ourselves
and argue, but we can't even do that right now (for example, I might
want to argue that it's been long enough that we can re-enable anon
page creation, and perhaps boost article creation rates which I hear
have been falling lately - and don't say we don't need more articles,
we do, there are tons and tons of articles we need - but I can't put
any hard numbers to my intuition or what I've heard because the
statistics aren't available).

--Gwern


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 06:03:26PM -0800, Carl Witty wrote:
>
> Can we write our own security manager, ensure that all calls to
> uploaded .class files are "wrapped" by our security manager, and
> implement our own restrictive security policy that way?

. . . and if we do so, do we want to do it with something other than a
JVM so we can avoid little issues like the nontrivial time and resources
consumed on startup of the VM?

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/15/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I just found this on toolserver:
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/Protect/protect

Careful.. It's not accurate. :)


from_name: Mark Clements

references:
<ejcvgk$mer$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejd05k$ood$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejd33a$3p4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:ejd33a$3p4$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Mark Clements wrote:
> > "Timwi" wrote:
> >
> >>Public domain is not a license. Please correct this as soon as possible.
> >
> > Soon enough for ya?   :-)
> >
> >
http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning&diff=4
> > 8510&oldid=25463
>
> Yep, thanks a lot :)
>
> Of course, I would have fixed it myself, but... you know! MediaWiki
> namespace and stuff ;-)

Yeah - we don't let any old so-and-so edit those messages.  Even such a
prominent so-and-so as yourself :-) **

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)

** irony


subject: [Wikitech-l] AntiSpoof issues

body:
"Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
news:ejd0fd$pug$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On 11/12/06, Tim Starling
<tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > [snip]
> >
> >>There is a need for judgement, regardless of the software in use. Trolls
> >>will go on trolling regardless of what anti-spoofing restrictions we
have in
> >>place. Our aim should be to minimise their impact, and heuristic systems
> >>with a high false positive rate do quite the opposite.
> >
> > This note brings to mind an interesting homework assignment for the
list...
> >
> > Can we think of a good way to impliment "interactive intervention" in
> > mediawiki which neither adds weird backend requirements (works with
> > the nonpersistantness of php) or odd client requirements (no java or
> > the like).
> >
> > The idea is that we have hundreds of people in IRC.. many people RC
> > patrolling.   There are *many* sorts of activities which software can
> > mark as suspect but which require judgement.  Is there a reasonable
> > way for us to get that judgement in real-time?
>
> But that's easy...
>
> * User tries to create an account
> * Software responds, "The username you chose is very similar to the
>    username of an existing user. In order to ensure that you are not
>    trying to impersonate someone else, an administrator will have to
>    approve your username manually. Approval is usually processed within
>    <average timeframe>. How do you wish to proceed?"
>    [ Request approval ] [ Try a different username ]
> * User clicks "Request approval". Software responds, "Your request for
>    approval has been sent off to the administrators. You will receive an
>    e-mail as soon as approval has been granted or rejected."
> * Either an e-mail is sent to a mailing list, or a wiki page is updated,
>    or (my preferred way) a special dedicated feature in MediaWiki is
>    invoked, which alerts volunteers to the awaiting approval.
> * An administrator accepts or rejects the request. If it is accepted,
>    the normal welcome e-mail with the confirmation link is sent to the
>    user. Otherwise, an e-mail informs the user of the rejection.
>
> Timwi

This requires that the user supplies an e-mail address - not currently a
requirement, so far as I know...

--
- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


body:
"Milos Rancic" <millosh at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:2505d1590611140554r3b97d040s21207d25d5b25d36 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 11/14/06, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The decision to start Wikimedia Foundation projects are based on
> > languages not on countries.
> > [SNIP]
> > Starting on the incubator does not a languages make.
>
> - 100.000 of inhabitants of Montenegro claim chat their native
> language is Montenegrin.
> - They don't want to work on Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian
> Wikipedias.

You mean you asked all 100.000 of them?

*whisper* npov?

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] Remove/Disable Move and Edit Tabs...

body:
> Can Anyone suggest how to remove/disable the Move,Edit and History Tabs.Iam using Monobook skin...

Edit [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]]

Add the code:

#ca-edit, #ca-history, #ca-move, #ca-viewsource
{
display: none
}

This will make the edit, history, move and view-source tabs always
invisible.

Why you wish to do this is a mystery, but that's one solution.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] POV-push on meta by admin User:Millosh in policy
	draft

body:
> What Millosh wrote on Meta about Moldovan is
> something that I would support.
> I expect that the language subcommittee supports it
> as well.

Cool, you should also inform the Moldovan people that
they are becoming more and more Romanian, as that text
you support says. :):)
You mix nationality with language issues here.

Also, you seem to confound script with ortograph.
Other bi-scriptal wikipedias exist (e.g., Serb wiki)
where a language is written with various scripts.

Dpotop

--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hoi,
> Calling the difference between Cyrillic script and
> Latin script anything but
> significant is brain dead. Expecting that this
> agitation against the
> existence of the http://mo.wikipedia.org will lead
> anywhere does not lead
> anywhere. As I said in a previous post, I can safely
> say that the Moldovan
> Cyrillic orthography will continue to be recognised
> in applicable standards.
>
>
> Personally I am of the opinion that as a consequence
> the main page of the
> mo.wikipedia can be restored to being a normal
> mainpage. I do recommend it
> to be properly protected against people who are not
> willing to accept what
> is not in line with their point of view. It has been
> discussed with some
> other members of the language subcommittee.
>
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> On 11/15/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I understand rules.
> > But you, [[User:Millosh]] you invent your rules
> AND
> > your arguments. You blocked me on meta, when I
> tried
> > to edit your proposal, and without giving sources
> for
> > your affirmations.
> >
> > This is POV-pushing by an admin, [[User:Millosh]].
> >
> > And the edit was not related to the proposal, but
> to
> > the examples illustrating that proposal.
> >
> > Where did you get that information? Where is it
> > stated, for the Moldovan nation, that:
> > 1. "nation/ethnicity not well established, in the
> > process of assimilation with Romanian nation"
> > 2. "significant orthography difference between
> > Moldovan Cyrillic script and Romanian Latin
> script"
> >
> > This is your POV, and you are pushing it with
> admin
> > powers, [[User:Millosh]], in a proposal of
> wikipedia
> > policy.
> >
> > [[Dpotop]]
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not the
	place for national constitution

body:
> At the risk of going off-topic, there is an
> interesting paper on this
> topic by the guy who does Omniglot. See:
>
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/revolutionary_scripts.htm
>

Nice article. The part on the "Moldovan language" is a
succinct and NPOV presentation of the problem. The
author is not affiliated with either part. Citations
are given.

Dpotop1

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from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] press release

body:
I have made a start, but I have never written a press release before
and I have no idea what makes a good one. What angles would you like
to push? Do you have a "model" I could look at? Who do you send it to?
What aspects might they be interested in? Do you fax it to them or
send them the link? [so, can I include images?] Is anyone
realistically going to pick this up or should I just blather about
things of interest to me? ;)

thanks,
Brianna


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

> What I want to know is -why- they don't want to work with the
> Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian/Serbo-Croatian Wikipedias.
It's their right to choose how to behave. But having said that I'll never
support a Montenegrin edition. I'll rather vote for unifying all
serbo-croatian entries into one, based on linguistics. Wikipedia is NOT a
place for people to create virtual nations or to confirm newly made nations
at international level. Things would be different IF and when an ISO code
would be issued OR there would be any evidence of the historical existence
of a Montenegrin language. You don't have any of the two, at the moment.

Not meaning that I like Montenegro or that I do not. I simply cannot see any
of the WMF policies taking national states into account (let alone funding,
where sadly we do need "chapters" to deal with states and the everchanging
intricacy of their laws). If you don't mind my quoting the Cure... "Sorry
Milos, wrong number":))) Pls don't get upset, it's really just a "wrong
number", nothing personal. Here we deal with languages and the way they are
internationally recognised, politics and opinion polls are simply none of
our bag.

B?rto


body:
Hello GerardM,

I am glad you agree with this source, because it says
1. Moldovan from Bessarabia=Romanian
2. Moldovan from Transnistria=Romanian with different
script.

So, it's not a question of different languages, but
one of biscriptality for a single language called in
two different ways for political reasons.
This is what wikipedia should do: a biscriptal wiki.

And, coming back to the fact that meta:User:Millosh
blocked me on meta. What you wrote in your message
makes me think that Millosh is indeed wrong, and that
you should:
1. Unblock me, because I corrected false info.
2. Block Millosh, who pushed his POV using admin
rights in an improper way.

Dpotop

--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jacky PB wrote:
> >> At the risk of going off-topic, there is an
> >> interesting paper on this
> >> topic by the guy who does Omniglot. See:
> >>
> >>
> >
>
http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/revolutionary_scripts.htm
> >
> >
> > Nice article. The part on the "Moldovan language"
> is a
> > succinct and NPOV presentation of the problem. The
> > author is not affiliated with either part.
> Citations
> > are given.
> >
> > Dpotop1
> Hoi,
> It is indeed a good presentation of many linguistic
> issues. It
> explicitly says that both the Moldovan and the Trans
> Sinistrians have
> made it a violation to use anything but "their"
> script. It also makes it
> quite clear that the middle ground is denied by both
> parties. The
> article explains that politics and the use of
> different scripts can and
> does lead to a growing apart of what used to be a
> languages continuum.
>
> Given the article there is no denying that both the
> Latin and the
> Cyrillic script are used for what is still
> considered to be one
> language. It provides absolutely no argument why we
> should not support both.
>
> Thanks,
>     Gerard
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The ability to edit competently, accurately, and in conformity with
> our standards (NPOV, BLP, TDMTLAOMG, etc) is a totally orthogonal
> matter with a persons interest in editing with good intentions.  Some
> of the most harmful problem material which I've seen inserted into
> Wikipedia was inserted with good intentions.

Certainly. So in addition to "Assuming Good Faith", our system
currently "Assumes Positive Contributions". This, in many cases, is a
fair assumption -- but in many other cases it is not. But whether a
contribution is likely to be positive or not is not only dependent on
the user in question, but also on the article. Pop culture articles
attract different editors than, say, those on mathematics; highly
politicized topics get different contributions than very sterile ones.

Semi-protection of selected pages is one way to deal with this problem
while respecting the distinction between different types of articles
-- we identify those articles where problems occur frequently, and
disable newbie editing for them altogether. The proposal made here, to
generally vet newbie contributions _instead_ of semi-protecting
articles, eliminates the distinction between the _types_ of articles
which we are talking about, which is a highly significant one. As a
consequence, it would massively alter the experience of all new users.
Such a drastic step is not warranted before trying more gradual steps
of quality assurance.

Accordingly, my proposal is to instead build QA and edit approval
functionality _on top_ of the existing protection model. Instead of
vetting all newbie edits, we should vet those to selected articles --
and in turn, we can make the number of those articles greater than the
current number of semi-protected pages. On the other hand, pages
which, on average, receive contributions that are in good faith and
improve the articles would continue to operate as present, but
_indicate_ if a quality-reviewed prior revision is available. See:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Eloquence/WikiQA

So, if someone makes an edit to [[Euclidean geometry]], it's going to
be immediately visible just like it is today, whether the user is a
newbie or not--but the page makes it much clearer to the reader that
the article they look at has not been reviewed yet, and whether a
reviewed version is available. If they make an edit to [[George W.
Bush]], it's going to have to be approved by a regular user first.

As a next step, we could also try to identify users from IP ranges
which are particularly likely to make negative contributions, and put
them into the "to-be-reviewed" bin by default. But we should only do
so if it is likely to significantly benefit our readers without
significantly impairing our editors.

> Without seeing some data on the current distribution of semiprotection
> lifetimes, I couldn't comment on the usefulness of automatic
> de(semi-)protection.  I looked at protection lifetimes some time ago
> (back when folks like Tony Sidaway were around and diligent with
> removing old protections) and we looked like we were doing pretty
> well.

Do a cross-language comparison -- last time I did so, there were vast
difference across languages. Particularly, those languages where
(semi-)protected pages are not visibly tagged seem to do poorer at
removing the protection. en.wp seems to do reasonably well in general,
though protections certainly often stay longer than they have to.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/12/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Auto-expiring protection sounds like a very interesting idea -- has anybody
> > submitted this to  Bugzilla?

> That would be a waste of developer time. If you want it on your
> project it would be trivial to sysop a bot account and have a bot
> perform it.

Perform what exactly? The point of auto-expiry is that the protecting
sysop would be able to set the term of protection. How would you
achieve the same flexibility with a simple bot? Not to mention that
deployment -- both in the Wikimedia family and outside -- would be
much easier if it is a regular MediaWiki feature.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/15/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> And agreed again.   To expand on GMaxwell's comment about limiting
> visibility of newbie edits: we should be as liberal as possible in
> taking in new text and information from contributors, and as careful
> as possible in how we display it.  Each view should very clearly
> identify, filtered up to the first screen of the main display, the
> history, community trust, level of discussion and monitoring, and
> referencing put into an article (especially its last dozen edits).

Turn that principle into a comprehensive set of specifications and
I'll get interested. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
> age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.

I'm not very comfortable with this at all. Wikimedia generally has a
track record of not being ageist in the assignment of community roles.
Please elaborate on the legal ramifications -- privately or publicly.
Perhaps we can identify those steward actions which could be legally
problematic, and those which aren't, and split the role accordingly?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> A no frills implementation of this would only take about a half hour
> from idea to tested completion, and wouldn't burden the mediawiki code
> base with more code which we do not yet have solid evidence of
> needing.

I just found this on toolserver:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/Protect/protect

The statistics for de: in particular, sorted by protection times, are
interesting:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/Protect/protect?lang=de&project=wiki&sortby1=4

There are still many articles that have been semi-protected since
January. For some of these, that may be a good idea, but I also see
quite a few where continued semi-protection seems unnecessary and
continued protection mostly an oversight. Again, de: does not label
protected pages as such, so they can be easily overlooked. So while it
might make sense for them to start doing so, the evidence seems strong
enough that auto-expiry alone would be a useful tool for de: sysops at
least. I'm sure the situation is similar in other languages (logic can
be as valuable as data ;-).

If you want to write and maintain a bot, that would be a great first step.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Commons-l] Digital Tipping Point doc. video footage

body:
There's a collaborative documentary on the open source / free culture
movement in the works:
http://www.digitaltippingpoint.com/

Interestingly enough, they're using CC-BY-SA (rather than the usual
NC/ND), and making their video footage available for remixing. What is
currently available can be found at:
http://www.archive.org/details.php?identifier=digitaltippingpoint

Specifically, the list of items:
http://www.archive.org/browse.php?field=/metadata/subject&mediatype=movies&collection=digitaltippingpoint

Lots of good stuff there, some of which might also be useful to add to
Wikimedia projects directly.  I hope they do make a documentary as
well -- an up-to-date resourcre for evangelism would be very useful.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Digital Tipping Point doc. video footage


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia glossary

body:
Very entertaining read!

On 11/15/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> As you know, we have a lot of specialized lingo on Wikipedia. Even
> worse, since anyone can edit, people are always adding new TLAs,
> shortcuts, and neologisms to our jargon. For those of you who haven't
> been keeping up, here are some handy definitions:
>
> AfD - Something that used to be called VfD, but had to be changed when
> Lemony Snicket complained about trademark infringement.
> Consensus - Fewer than two Wikipedians.
> Cruft - The stuff that lives in the internet's series of tubes and
> delays loading of pages from Wikipedia. Sorry, buying more servers
> doesn't actually help.
> Edit count - A way of picking admins that makes about as much sense as,
> say, buying a website based purely on its traffic numbers.
> Good faith - An anagram for "swift boat".
> Guideline - See: Policy
> Infobox - A large table. There are usually supposed to be some chairs
> with it to make it useful, but many of the legs are often missing.
> Instruction - See: Process
> Jimbo - The co-founder of Citizendium.
> Mailing list - Place to write something you're not willing to have
> edited mercilessly.
> Policy - See: Instruction
> Process - See: Guideline
> Redirect - To repeat a command already given to somebody who is behaving
> inappropriately, for example by using the various vandalism warning
> templates. "Stop, or I'll say 'Stop' again!" is a double redirect.
> Sockpuppet - Something to wear when walking on astroturf.
> Stub - An article with more categories than it has words.
> Userbox - A coffin.
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
I've heard that it's because all power flows from the Stewards, and if we
have non-liable people at the top that could cause problems. Ask Brad,
anyways.

On 11/15/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (Copy-pasting from [[m:Talk:Stewards/elections_2006-2]])
>
> I would really like to know what kind of actions Stewards do that
> "might have legal consequences". We have lost one really good
> candidate because of this requirement, and I don't really see the
> reason for it. Both I and Datrio were under 18 when we were elected,
> and there was no problem then ? and AFAIK, nothing has changed about
> the steward r?le since then.
>
> If it has to do with checkuser or oversight, it's as simple as what
> Angela says, to have policies about the use of these tools re. age. I
> generally second Angela's post.
>
> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
> > age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.  I am
> > aware there are some people who wish to run for steward who are not
> > 18.  Unfortunately, there is not an exception for this requirement.
> > Individuals who are trusted within our community may not be treated
> > the same way if there is a lawsuit which results from a steward's
> > actions, which is a very real possibility.  As such, we cannot allow
> > individuals who are not yet 18 to run.
> >
> > Also, for the same reasons, individuals who are anonymous (using only
> > a username) must disclose their identity in the same manner as persons
> > who run for the Board.
> >
> > Please contact me individually if you require further explanation.
> >
> > On 11/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > > The steward's roll has always been (correct me if I'm wrong here) a
> > > functional one where stewards aim to avoid making decisions and
> > > judgements and just follow the processes necessary. I think that the
> > > stewards are all perfectly skilled at judging the consensus of the
> > > community, of course, but I am fearful that it would undermind their
> > > position.
> > >
> > > I may of course be nit-picking here, but I think we need to be careful
> > > as the position of steward, while usually low-profile, can have an
> > > influence in certain situations.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > S
> > >
> > > On 13/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > Well... you know... yesterday, on irc, it was suggested that Danny
> > > > should not be reconfirmed since he was staff and needed the status
> to do
> > > > office action, but I should be reconfirmed. Granted, no one
> mentionned
> > > > Jimbo should be reconfirmed... :-)
> > > >
> > > > /me vaguely wonders how she would do if not reconfirmed...
> > > >
> > > > Right now, stewards lose stewardship was becomming inactive. Or they
> > > > lose it because another steward decides to remove them their access.
> > > > If this is acceptable, I have been wondering if we could not
> simplify
> > > > things by having stewards self-confirm their group ? For example,
> after
> > > > new elections, all stewards would do a clean up of their group (and
> > > > remove inactive or bad stewards). Would that be shocking ?
> > > >
> > > > Ant
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >  Sean Whitton wrote:
> > > > > Although I agree that we should reconfirm stewards, do we really
> need
> > > > > to do so the the board members?
> > > > >
> > > > > There is no easy solution here as board members are not
> automatically
> > > > > stewards or anything, the point I'm making is that reconfirming
> Jimbo
> > > > > seems a little strange.
> > > > >
> > > > > S
> > > > >
> > > > > On 13/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >>Last steward election was nearly a year ago. Since then, some
> stewards
> > > > >>resigned, some were removed, some became inactive. We need more
> stewards.
> > > > >>
> > > > >>Please see here:
> > > > >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006-2
> > > > >>
> > > > >>The rules are basically the same than last year but for one thing.
> > > > >>Previous stewards will have to be reconfirmed. Inactive stewards
> will be
> > > > >>removed.
> > > > >>
> > > > >>The rules for election are not yet fully finalized. Please comment
> on
> > > > >>them in the next few days. Currently, some people think dates may
> not be
> > > > >>best. Others are not certain previous stewards should be
> reconfirmed.
> > > > >>
> > > > >>Ant
> > > > >>
> > > > >>_______________________________________________
> > > > >>foundation-l mailing list
> > > > >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > >>
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >         ?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom
> is liberty
> > >                 sean at silentflame.com (PGP: 0x25F4EAB7) | xyrael.net
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Brad Patrick
> > General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> > bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> > 727-231-0101
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Jon Harald S?by
>
> Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
> Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
> MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
> Skype - jon.harald.soby
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
Yeah, but that happens as often as Jimbo using his executive power.

On 11/15/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
> Surely all power really flows from the devs, using the stewards as a
> channel?
>
> S
>
> On 15/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've heard that it's because all power flows from the Stewards, and if
> we
> > have non-liable people at the top that could cause problems. Ask Brad,
> > anyways.
> >
> > On 11/15/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > (Copy-pasting from [[m:Talk:Stewards/elections_2006-2]])
> > >
> > > I would really like to know what kind of actions Stewards do that
> > > "might have legal consequences". We have lost one really good
> > > candidate because of this requirement, and I don't really see the
> > > reason for it. Both I and Datrio were under 18 when we were elected,
> > > and there was no problem then ? and AFAIK, nothing has changed about
> > > the steward r?le since then.
> > >
> > > If it has to do with checkuser or oversight, it's as simple as what
> > > Angela says, to have policies about the use of these tools re. age. I
> > > generally second Angela's post.
> > >
> > > On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
> > > > age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.  I am
> > > > aware there are some people who wish to run for steward who are not
> > > > 18.  Unfortunately, there is not an exception for this requirement.
> > > > Individuals who are trusted within our community may not be treated
> > > > the same way if there is a lawsuit which results from a steward's
> > > > actions, which is a very real possibility.  As such, we cannot allow
> > > > individuals who are not yet 18 to run.
> > > >
> > > > Also, for the same reasons, individuals who are anonymous (using
> only
> > > > a username) must disclose their identity in the same manner as
> persons
> > > > who run for the Board.
> > > >
> > > > Please contact me individually if you require further explanation.
> > > >
> > > > On 11/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > > > > The steward's roll has always been (correct me if I'm wrong here)
> a
> > > > > functional one where stewards aim to avoid making decisions and
> > > > > judgements and just follow the processes necessary. I think that
> the
> > > > > stewards are all perfectly skilled at judging the consensus of the
> > > > > community, of course, but I am fearful that it would undermind
> their
> > > > > position.
> > > > >
> > > > > I may of course be nit-picking here, but I think we need to be
> careful
> > > > > as the position of steward, while usually low-profile, can have an
> > > > > influence in certain situations.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > S
> > > > >
> > > > > On 13/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > > Well... you know... yesterday, on irc, it was suggested that
> Danny
> > > > > > should not be reconfirmed since he was staff and needed the
> status
> > > to do
> > > > > > office action, but I should be reconfirmed. Granted, no one
> > > mentionned
> > > > > > Jimbo should be reconfirmed... :-)
> > > > > >
> > > > > > /me vaguely wonders how she would do if not reconfirmed...
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Right now, stewards lose stewardship was becomming inactive. Or
> they
> > > > > > lose it because another steward decides to remove them their
> access.
> > > > > > If this is acceptable, I have been wondering if we could not
> > > simplify
> > > > > > things by having stewards self-confirm their group ? For
> example,
> > > after
> > > > > > new elections, all stewards would do a clean up of their group
> (and
> > > > > > remove inactive or bad stewards). Would that be shocking ?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Ant
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >  Sean Whitton wrote:
> > > > > > > Although I agree that we should reconfirm stewards, do we
> really
> > > need
> > > > > > > to do so the the board members?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > There is no easy solution here as board members are not
> > > automatically
> > > > > > > stewards or anything, the point I'm making is that
> reconfirming
> > > Jimbo
> > > > > > > seems a little strange.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > S
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > On 13/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >>Last steward election was nearly a year ago. Since then, some
> > > stewards
> > > > > > >>resigned, some were removed, some became inactive. We need
> more
> > > stewards.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>Please see here:
> > > > > > >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006-2
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>The rules are basically the same than last year but for one
> thing.
> > > > > > >>Previous stewards will have to be reconfirmed. Inactive
> stewards
> > > will be
> > > > > > >>removed.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>The rules for election are not yet fully finalized. Please
> comment
> > > on
> > > > > > >>them in the next few days. Currently, some people think dates
> may
> > > not be
> > > > > > >>best. Others are not certain previous stewards should be
> > > reconfirmed.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>Ant
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >>_______________________________________________
> > > > > > >>foundation-l mailing list
> > > > > > >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > > > >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > >         ?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only
> wisdom
> > > is liberty
> > > > >                 sean at silentflame.com (PGP: 0x25F4EAB7) |
> xyrael.net
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Brad Patrick
> > > > General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> > > > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> > > > bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> > > > 727-231-0101
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Best regards,
> > > Jon Harald S?by
> > >
> > > Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
> > > Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
> > > MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
> > > Skype - jon.harald.soby
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
>         ?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is
> liberty
>                 sean at silentflame.com (PGP: 0x25F4EAB7) | xyrael.net
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 11/14/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> Technically, anything that isn't public domain is copyrighted. Even if it's
> GFDLed.
>
> But generally in a Wikimedia context, when people say "copyrighted" they're
> referring to the icky all-rights-reserved stuff.
>
And therein lies one of the big problems, as what constitutes "the
icky all-rights-reserved stuff" is much harder to define and explain
to people than "copyrighted media".

Simply referring to "the icky all-rights-reserved stuff" as
"copyrighted" only serves to confuse people more.  I hope that's not
what was happening here.

Anthony

> On 11/14/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anthony wrote:
> > > On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> If there are Wikimedians who are advocating housing copyrighted media
> > >> in Commons, speak up now, because we need to get clear on why that is
> > >> not cool immediately.
> > >>
> > > Of course we advocate housing copyrighted media in commons.  Commons
> > > is not limited to public domain material.
> > >
> >
> > ... permission to stab him, please?
> >
> > --
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the Wikimedia
	Foundation

body:
Organizations often have a "mission statement" and a "vision
statement". For a typical distinction, see e.g.:
http://www.cfbroward.org/new/tips/1.html

At the Board Retreat in October, we revisited our existing "Vision",
which is: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free
access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

We also developed a mission statement from scratch. What's the point?
Aside from uniting behind a set of key goals, it helps us to decide
which activities fall within our scope and which ones don't --
something that is not always easy, given the diversity of our existing
projects and communities. Should we launch a WikiFoo project, or is
Foo not part of our mission? Both the vision and mission statement
will be frequently cited in future discussions of this kind, so they
are relevant, and not just organizational fluff.

After some further discussion, the Board has come up with the
following Mission and Vision statements. I would like to invite
comments on these statements, and perhaps we can identify changes that
we can all agree on. I would also like to encourage you to propose
alternative statements on Meta (see URLs below).

The idea is that, after a discussion and editing period of at least
two weeks, the Board will choose a version of the M&V statements.
These versions will then be put forward to the community, for a simple
"up" or "down" vote. If a statement reaches at least a two thirds
majority of support, it will be implemented as such. If it only
reaches a simple majority, further discussion and potential revision
may follow, at the Board's discretion. A statement that does not reach
a majority will not become an official statement of the WMF. The usual
voting restrictions will apply (minimum participation period etc.) and
will be announced together with the vote.

A general note: Our mission statement is perhaps longer than it needs
to be, and our vision statement shorter. But in these matters, we can
be flexible -- the most important question is whether both statements
meet the specific needs of _our_ organization and community.

== Vision Statement ==

'''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
in the sum of all knowledge.'''

Comment:

One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
teaching another language like English and then giving access to
learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
in our vision statement. Rather, I suggested we could add a phrase
such as "unimpeded by language barriers, socioeconomic status, or
government censorship". This was seen as too negative. In any case, I
feel that the simple adjective "freely" may be sufficient in order to
convey the idea that we seek to make knowledge as widely available as
possible.

== Mission Statement ==

'''The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop knowledge under a free
license, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.'''

'''In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation
provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and
other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation is committed
to making and keeping all information from its projects available on
the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.'''

Comment:

This is a slightly edited version from the Retreat, see the URL below
for the original. It was important to us to emphasize that the
relationship between WMF and its chapters, in general practice, is
more one of organizations with different scope working towards the
same goals, rather than a top down chain of command. The last sentence
seemed important to emphasize the distinction between "free licensing"
and "free access", both of which we are equally committed to.

== Comments & edits welcome ==

In the spirit of "stable versions", the M&V statements above can be
found, as protected pages, on

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision

You can suggest changes in this thread, or edit the unstable versions:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission/Unstable
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision/Unstable

You are also encouraged to "fork" new versions if that becomes
necessary due to lack of consensus on the wiki. Again, after at least
two weeks, the Board will nominate the versions to be voted upon by
the community. Let me know if you have any questions about this
process.

You are encouraged to translate the proposed Mission & Vision
statements, and to carry this discussion into other languages -- see
the language links at the top of the above-referenced pages to get
started.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
On 11/15/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Personally, I dislike the new vision statement. The older one had the exact
> same meaning, and was much "catchier"; the current proposal sounds too
> corporate.

There were two primary reasons for the changes:

1) We're not only about access, but also about participation. A
read-only wiki is not very interesting. We saw "share in" as a phrase
that could transport many meanings.

2) Florence and I saw "That's what we're doing" as potentially
misleading for such an ambitious claim. Given how fucked up the
situation still is in much of the developing world, we need to be
careful not to come across as pretentious.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Dual-Licensing Wiktionary :fr ?

body:
<snip>
> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these
> changes can be used under
> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>

I do not know a great deal about the variety of
licenses.  What do you mean by a less Free license?
What does this mean in practice?

Birgitte SB

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