subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Steve Summit wrote:
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>>>>> The last sentence of the lead,
>>>> It actually can be spelt "lede".
>>> I couldn't find any dictionary that agrees with this other than
>>> Wiktionary.
>> How hard did you look?  The first three google hits are
>
> anything but dictionaries.
>

Random House publishes dictionaries; therefore I class them as a
dictionary site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_House sayeth:
> Random House entered reference publishing in 1947 with the American
> College Dictionary, which was followed in 1966 by its first unabridged
> dictionary. It publishes today the Random House Webster's Unabridged and
> Random House Webster's College dictionaries, probably the main
> competitors for Merriam-Webster reference titles.

Timwi wrote:
> Also see adam's reply :)

Just because it's "archaic" doesn't mean it's wrong; Americans should be
well aware of this, given the "archaic" forms of words which are now
found primarily in American English, while Commonwealth English adopted
more "modern" French-derived words or spellings.

--
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: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 03/08/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>
>>
>>>Very nice! How often is the database updated?
>>>
>>>
>>For the moment, I do not update the database, I analyze a grabbed wikipedia.
>>
>>I developed this program as a proof of concept. For the update of the
>>database, it will depend of the possibility of integration in wikipedia. I
>>do not have enough details at this step.
>>
>>
>
>Have you played with WikiWax? It's a bit temperamental (and uses an
>old dump), but much the same idea - see wikiwax.com (or
>[[en:WikiWax]])
>
>
>
Hmmm ...


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest


list: wikien-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Submit review"

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> How would people feel about a "Submit review" tab that is only shown
>> to unregistered users, and that would result in a page showing
>> [...]
>>
>> The reviews would be sent to a to-be-created mailing list  [...]
>
> If we will ever have proper discussion threads to replace the archaic
> and dysfunctional talk pages, these reviews would be a perfect candidate
> for starting such a discussion thread.
>

There's a pseudo-forum function, used on Uncyclopedia (and probably
others), based on the Dynamic Page List function (which would also be
nice to have):

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/DPLforum

--
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: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
Timwi wrote:
> You said "dropping in a directory by FTP". He said "Clicking [something]
> from inside MediaWiki". I don't know about other people, but I see a
> huge difference between those. The latter is easier. The former doesn't
> even have a UI.

The list is there because the extensions are present. They're present because
someone uploaded them. You can't of course write files to the disk from the UI
because it's locked off, typically, and the idea of fetching code from the web
server UI is enough to get you shot for treason.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] New Proposed WikiMedia Project

body:
Hello Mr. Baum,

Seems like a good idea, but Wikibooks seems to cover your idea at their
How-To bookshelf.

--James

On 8/3/06, Jerome Baum <gratemyl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just created this proposal:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpeedWiki
>
> --
> Yours,
>
> Jerome Baum
> --
> pegwit v8 public key
> =b04220a315671b9351f71b6db4870ead7234316727d2c2f14b276e8575a5b3bd
> --
> e-gold Account Number: 3400024
> Create an Account / Commit Payment: http://3400024.e-gold.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Fastfission

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Technical solution to bad fair use (was:Uploading
	images should be a privilige...)

body:
On 8/3/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> The [[David Bowie]] article gets around the lack of free use
> photographs by using a free use drawing. It looks like it could be a
> drawing of a photograph and is certainly recognisable as David Bowie.
> When does a drawing start violating copyright? Drawings are quite
> subjective, is there much value in them?

Well, that's a very different question than the one we've been
throwing around here. It depends on the photograph, and it depends on
the drawing, and in the end it the final work itself is invoking a
fair use concern in one capacity or another since it is definitely
derivative.

FF


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
On 8/3/06, Daniel Kinzler <daniel at brightbyte.de> wrote:
> * In case of a web UI, how would it be protected? Would it be inside
> MediaWiki itself, available to, say, beurocrats?

Even if there were to be a Web interface, I don't think bureaucrats
will be given privileges to execute arbitrary PHP code anytime soon.


body:
On 8/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The value is project-wide, not necessarily on an article-by-article
> > basis. And I think Jimbo would say that a high quality encyclopedia is
> > never at odds with producing a free one. Wikipedia could still be high
>
> Eh? Britannica has done pretty well at producing a high quality
> encyclopaedia, but they haven't gotten off the ground in the free
> stakes.

I'll Eh? right back at you. Just because EB can produce quality and
NOT be free does not at all mean that quality and being free are
incompatible.

In any case, going back and forth over the question of whether
Wikipedia would be high quality without fair use images seems fairly
silly to me since the designation is entirely subjective. I think your
position is a little silly but you're allowed to say the same about
mine. I think you're putting short-term aesthetics ahead of legal and
long-term sensibilities.

> Yes, it's a pity that we have to do all our diagrams from scratch,
> there are thousands of articles that need some.

So put in a diagram request. There are people who are happy to make
diagrams for articles. Filling diagram requests is MUCH easier than
photography because you can do it from anywhere and with free
software.

FF


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] question about image

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

Pedro Sanchez stated for the record:
> Consider [[Image:Magnetowasright2.jpg]]
> says it's CC, but, doesn't Marvel holds the rights to mageto character?
>
> I wasn't sure how to proceed, and given the iamge is used almost
> exclusively on userpages, I didn't want to upset a lynchmob to get me
> later, so ... what should be done here? is that actually a CC image?

The creator of that drawing may be licensing whatever rights he may have
(damned few) under CC, but the distinctive likeness of Magneto is very
thoroughly owned by Marvel, who are not licensing anything.  In short, a
/prima facie/ (pun intended) violation of trademark.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Those who cannot remember the past are
 sean at epoptic.com | condemned to learn it from Oliver Stone movies.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Technical solution to bad fair use

body:
On 8/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> That actually sounds fairly plausible. I'm an expert on LA paparazzi
> after having seen a half-hour documentary on them. One thing I recall
> was that a good clean photo doing something fairly controversial (eg,
> drunk outside a club) was worth in the $500 range. A shot of a
> celebrity just not wanting to be shot was like $100, and a posed
> celebrity shot was like $50 or less. And all this is presuming that
> the photos would be published in the week or so afterwards.
>
> The chances of a photographer having old (2-3 years), boring, plain
> "Hi, my name is Paris Hilton" shots lying around that they would hand
> over for "not much" sounds pretty good to me. We just need to work out
> what exactly we can offer them in return.
>
> To that end, we could improve our crediting system. We could
> explicitly say "Wikipedia thanks the following professional
> photographers for their graceful contributions". I don't believe that
> would be at all contradictory to our mission.

The only problem there is that it treats the "professionals" in a
different category than the "amateurs", which I think it somewhat
against the philosophy of the place. If WP allows "professionals" to
have their name listed (and with a link to their website?), why
wouldn't it let "amateurs" list theirs on the same page? Pretty soon
it could also devolve into a spam page, the only requirement being
contribution of a photograph.

Maybe that's not a problem, though. At least there would be SOME
requirement. Actually, perhaps one could set the requirement --
contribute photographs to Wikipedia which can (and are) used in
articles and you get to put your name and link on a page for
contributing photographers. I don't know if anyone would go for that
(either Wikipedians or photographers). It's somewhat of an equivalent
of selling ad space, except services rather than money would be
transacted. Might be a bad precedent, might lead to some unpleasant
arguments ("I contributed 5 pictures of my rear to Wikipedia for the
'buttocks' page, why can't I list my website here?"). Just thinking
out loud here.

But even without a centralized credit facility we could make it easy
for photographers to quickly set up Flickr-like user pages for
themselves where they would have their contact information, a link to
their web page, and a list of all free photos they've uploaded to
Wikipedia and what articles they are used in. If we set up easy-to-use
templates for this it might make it look even more attractive. We
could remind them how high a pagerank Wikipedia has, and that their
photograph would be used in an article which showed up on the first
Google search page in most cases.

I think we have a lot to offer in terms of exposure and attention,
even without modifying our system one bit. If we found some way to
send a "Hey, want to contribute some of your old, unused photos to
Wikipedia?" message around, perhaps it work on its own merit, if it
was worded well and presented the pros and cons in a straightforward,
no-B.S. fashion.

What they have to gain: free exposure on a high-pagerank, high-traffic
site with a professional apperance (no pop-up ads); regular
contributors would be more than welcome to have a link to their own
website listed on their userpage along with samples of their
contributed images.

What they have to lose: very little -- releasing under a viral license
like CC-BY-SA would not only require attribution for re-use, but would
require all re-use to be itself licensed under a free license, which
their normal clientele would not be doing, so they are not competing
against themselves; the pictures are likely not going to be doing much
sitting at the back of their files gathering dust, and pictures which
would be too "boring" for professional use would actually be
potentially ideal for Wikipedia, which is somewhat
anti-sensationalistic.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Common sense exceptions to our copyright policy.

body:
On 7/31/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Although I entirely agree with you on the Nazi copyright issue (though
> I think the images copyrights defaulted to Bavaria, which further
> complicates matters). Buildings are a problem for our contributors. A
> well known example of this is the Eiffel Tower whose owners have been
> known to chase down those who claim copyright over night-time pictures
> of the tower due to the particular way they arrange the lights.

Do we have any evidence that this has ever been ruled as valid under
U.S. copyright law? I know nothing of French copyright law and do not
claim to, but this strikes me as something that a court would knock
down in five minutes in the United States.

FF


body:
On 7/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/31/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> In both cases the legal danger is entirely
> > hypothetical and dubious at that -- they are based on stretched and
> > literal interpretations of complicated aspects of the copyright law
> > and nobody has ever been taken to court over them.
>
> Did you just volunteer to be a test case?

Before anyone could be a test case we'd have to have someone taking
them to court over the copyrights for Nazi posters. Which to my
knowledge has not happened. Which is my point.

FF


body:
On 8/3/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> >But even without a centralized credit facility we could make it easy
> >for photographers to quickly set up Flickr-like user pages for
> >themselves where they would have their contact information, a link to
> >their web page, and a list of all free photos they've uploaded to
> >Wikipedia and what articles they are used in. If we set up easy-to-use
> >templates for this it might make it look even more attractive. We
> >could remind them how high a pagerank Wikipedia has, and that their
> >photograph would be used in an article which showed up on the first
> >Google search page in most cases.
> >
> >
> This fits perfectly into commons' architecture, and indeed several
> professionals already have their own dedicated galleries and/or
> categories there.
>
> What would be a good attention-getting conduit? Used to be, you
> could get the attention of lots of nerds by just spa^H^H^Hposting
> to Usenet. What do photographers look at?
>
> I wonder if a classified-type ad in a print magazine would be noticed...

We should probably try and contact some of the professionals who
already do contribute to Wikimedia projects and see what they think
about it. They probably will have useful ideas and observations about
such an arrangement, and would help concretize any proposals (they'll
know what they read, they'll know whether professionals really do keep
dusty photos of Paris Hilton around, and they'll know what their
professional copyright concerns are). As it is we're flying blind.

FF


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] question about image

body:
Consider [[Image:Magnetowasright2.jpg]]
says it's CC, but, doesn't Marvel holds the rights to mageto character?

I wasn't sure how to proceed, and given the iamge is used almost
exclusively on userpages, I didn't want to upset a lynchmob to get me
later, so ... what should be done here? is that actually a CC image?


from_name: mboverload

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Oh crap.  This is seriously ****ing awesome Julien!

On 8/2/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I have wrote a "google suggest" like service for wikipedia under GPL
> licence [1].
> By the way, I am not sure if this project will interest you, I am open
> to all comments from your community.
>
> I wrote a simple web site for english/french on
> http://suggest.speedblue.org, all software are available in the download
> section.
>
> Best Regards.
> Julien Lemoine
>
> [1] If you want me to change the licence to something other than GPL,
> please let me know.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
On Aug 3, 2006, at 7:39 PM, geni wrote:

> I've been putting together a complaint to send to Tiscali about one of
> their subscribers breaching their TOS on wikipedia (may not work but
> worth a try). The problem is that the person caused most of the
> trouble they did while logged in. Thus checkuser is required to get
> hold of the IPs. Releasing these IPs would require foundation
> permission. Tiscali would also likely need to be able to contact the
> foundation to confirm any claims. I believe this gives us three
> options.
>
> I send Tiscali the email without IPs and with the foundation's contact
> information. This is likely to archive nothing since Tiscali would
> have to contact the foundation before starting an investigation
>
> The foundation gives me the IPs. This would allow Tiscali to begin an
> investigation but they would probably still have to contact the
> foundation. This has the disadvantage that the foundation has to
> release the IPs to me (even though I already know the range and
> Tiscali IPs don't tell you much I can understand the foundation not
> wanting to do this).
>
> The foundation co opts my email and sends it itself. This allows it to
> keep the IP data private and removes possible barriers. On the other
> hand this could result in more work for the foundation.
>
> I assume this situation will arise in future thus I am trying to start
> a general discussion as well as seeking answers for this specific
> case.

When the arbitration committee decided to try this we had obtained
ips through checkuser so passed them along. That was, however, in the
case of very bad actor. We were engaged in dialog after having
blocked a major American university. There is a time limit, however
someone that is really nasty will hang in there, blocked or not.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


from_name: Jerome Baum

body:
I just created this proposal:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpeedWiki

--
Yours,

Jerome Baum
--
pegwit v8 public key
=b04220a315671b9351f71b6db4870ead7234316727d2c2f14b276e8575a5b3bd
--
e-gold Account Number: 3400024
Create an Account / Commit Payment: http://3400024.e-gold.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
On 8/3/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> On Friday 04 August 2006 00:15, Simetrical wrote:
> > Even if there were to be a Web interface, I don't think bureaucrats
> > will be given privileges to execute arbitrary PHP code anytime soon.
>
> This would be _very_ usefull for small wikis, where the admin could log in,
> and update/install extensions via an webinterface.

Yes, maybe, but not bureaucrats.  But I'm not sure a web interface is
so critical.  How did you install the wiki software to start with
without moving the files to the webserver, via FTP or otherwise?  If
your hosting provider gives you a GUI to add files to your directory
from elsewhere, then go ahead and use it.  If it doesn't, you'll have
to use a command line, just like you did to install MediaWiki in the
first place.

A web interface *would* still make things easier for the less
technically-inclined, sure.  But tying it to the wiki account is very
dangerous, because it assumes that there are never going to be any
bugs in the user login process that would allow an attacker to gain
access.  It would be *very bad* to allow arbitrary code to be
downloaded and executed with the only security being the MediaWiki
account logins; the security procedures just aren't up to it.


from_name: Frederic

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Guten Tag Jeff V. Merkey,

am Mittwoch, 2. August 2006 um 23:28 schrieben Sie:

JVM> Julien Lemoine wrote:

>> Hello,
>>
>> I have wrote a "google suggest" like service for wikipedia under GPL
>> licence [1].
>> By the way, I am not sure if this project will interest you, I am open
>> to all comments from your community.
>>
>> I wrote a simple web site for english/french on
>> http://suggest.speedblue.org, all software are available in the
>> download section.
>>
>> Best Regards.
>> Julien Lemoine
>>
>> [1] If you want me to change the licence to something other than GPL,
>> please let me know.
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
JVM> It's a start -- we also need a specialized file system for a google
JVM> replacement.

JVM> Jeff
JVM> _______________________________________________
JVM> foundation-l mailing list
JVM> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
JVM> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

I don't understand what the discussion is all about. Plse Explain.

--
Mit freundlichen Gr??en
Frederic
mailto:frederic at frederics.de


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Colbert Report heads-up

body:
On Thu, 3 Aug 2006 11:35:03 -0700 (PDT), Cheney Shill
<halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:

>trolling is to illicit a response

I think you mean elicit.

Oh, wait, you were trolling, weren't you?

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


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>On 8/3/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I disagree completely. That is literally *IMPOSSIBLE* for those with no
>>>command-line access, whereas dropping in a directory by FTP is insanely easy.
>>>
>>>Literally zero setup. What's easier? Nothing.
>>
>>Clicking "Extensions" from inside MediaWiki, being presented with a
>>list, and clicking one to install and enable it. And having no idea
>>how idea it actually works.
>
> That's not easier, that's exactly what I'm talking about, therefore precisely as
> easy.

You said "dropping in a directory by FTP". He said "Clicking [something]
from inside MediaWiki". I don't know about other people, but I see a
huge difference between those. The latter is easier. The former doesn't
even have a UI.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>Julien Lemoine wrote:
>>
>>>First of all, I grabbed the whole content of english/french wikipedia in
>>>june 2006. Then, everything is compiled is a final state machine (about
>>>200Mb for english wikipedia).
>>
>>Can you explain in greater detail what your finite-state machine looks
>>like? Is it like a directed graph?
>
> The right data structure for this sort of thing is called a "trie",
> and Googling it will turn up lots of information.
> Though I'm not sure if the original poster knows this term.

I know, and his is indeed a trie. But that word is rarely used. Look at
his work: He has perfectly implemented a trie with a lot of thought, but
without knowing the word "trie" :-p

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Julien Lemoine wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Timwi wrote:
>
>>Can you explain in greater detail what your finite-state machine looks
>>like? Is it like a directed graph?
>
> Yes this is a directed graph [... etc. ...]

I'm very impressed! You've clearly thought a lot about this, and
implemented it the right way.

I don't have any further questions, my curiosity is satisfied :)


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] trivia: non-linking links

body:
Hi all,
  Don't know if this is widely known (and much less, whether it is
useful), but I discovered that you can quickly make a non-linking link
simply by inserting a single link break. That is, the code:
[[Some
link]]

Will render as: [[Some link]] - just plain text.

Caveats:
- Only really works with multi-word links, as breaking anywhere but a
space inserts an extra space:
[[Foo
]]
renders as: [[Foo ]]
- Attempting to use a "pipe trick" with a single word produces the
amusing effect of making the link totally vanish: [[Foo|
]] renders as nothing at all. (while [[Foo|]] renders as linked Foo).
- explicitly linking the name back to itself produces a normal link: [[Foo|
Foo]] is the same as [[Foo]].
- doesn't seem to work for templates
- probably not useful for anything?

Anyway, just some more rather curious fringe parser behaviour.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
On 8/3/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> I disagree completely. That is literally *IMPOSSIBLE* for those with no
> command-line access, whereas dropping in a directory by FTP is insanely easy.
>
> Literally zero setup. What's easier? Nothing.

Clicking "Extensions" from inside MediaWiki, being presented with a
list, and clicking one to install and enable it. And having no idea
how idea it actually works.

(pretty much the firefox extension model)

Steve


body:
On 8/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are enough celebrity photographers in Los Angeles to last a
> lifetime of free images if we could set up a rapport with them to
> release some of their less-likely-to-be-commercially-viable images
> under free licenses. Free exposure and circulation for them, free
> images for us. I don't see how they'd have anything to lose (and it is
> not as if the places they would sell their photos to regularly are
> going to suddenly want to re-license their whole magazine as CC-BY-SA
> either, so the odds of it even competing with their regular business
> is pretty low).

That actually sounds fairly plausible. I'm an expert on LA paparazzi
after having seen a half-hour documentary on them. One thing I recall
was that a good clean photo doing something fairly controversial (eg,
drunk outside a club) was worth in the $500 range. A shot of a
celebrity just not wanting to be shot was like $100, and a posed
celebrity shot was like $50 or less. And all this is presuming that
the photos would be published in the week or so afterwards.

The chances of a photographer having old (2-3 years), boring, plain
"Hi, my name is Paris Hilton" shots lying around that they would hand
over for "not much" sounds pretty good to me. We just need to work out
what exactly we can offer them in return.

To that end, we could improve our crediting system. We could
explicitly say "Wikipedia thanks the following professional
photographers for their graceful contributions". I don't believe that
would be at all contradictory to our mission.

Steve


body:
On 8/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> The value is project-wide, not necessarily on an article-by-article
> basis. And I think Jimbo would say that a high quality encyclopedia is
> never at odds with producing a free one. Wikipedia could still be high

Eh? Britannica has done pretty well at producing a high quality
encyclopaedia, but they haven't gotten off the ground in the free
stakes.

> quality even if it lacked fair use images. Most encyclopedias do *not*

It would be, shall we say, "less high quality".

> have an image for every article and do not feel the need to, much less
> images of lesser known celebrities and video games.

Wikipedia is not most encyclopaedias, it's a hell of a lot better.
It's much broader, and significantly deeper in many areas. Most
encyclopaedias don't have a photo for every article because they don't
have room to publish them, not because they don't feel they would be
of value.

> Also, I think the more free and good looking images Wikipedia has, the
> more impressive and useful it is. Wikipedia is currently the only site
> I know of on the 'net where you can get high-quality vector images
> illustrating a wide-variety of things (parts of cars, household items,
> hydrogen bombs).

Yes, it's a pity that we have to do all our diagrams from scratch,
there are thousands of articles that need some.

> Ugly free images can also inspire better free images. I have many
> times replaced well-intentioned but amateurish free images with
> re-done, more professional looking free versions. If everything is a
> slick un-free image, though, the obviousness of what should be
> replaced goes down a bit.

I would have no qualms against putting a red border around non free images.

Steve


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Artikel ohne Koordinate

body:
Timwi schrieb:
> Stefan K?hn wrote:
>
>> Hallo zusammen!
>>
>> Zahlreiche Artikel in der Wikipedia haben einen Raumbezug aber noch
>> keine Koordinate. Andererseits kennen sich viele Benutzer in bestimmten
>> Landstrichen besonders gut aus und wissen aber nicht, dass dort ein
>> Artikel existiert oder die Koordinate fehlt.
>>
>> Deshalb hab ich mal eine Liste f?r jedes Land erstellt, die alle derzeit
>> noch nicht georeferenzierten Artikel (z.B. Berge, Museen, Orte) enth?lt.
>>
>> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProjekt_Georeferenzierung/Artikel_ohne_Koordinate
>>
>
> Ich glaube nicht, dass sich damit so leicht Freiwillige finden. Ihr habt
> ja einfach nur alle Artikel nach Land aufgelistet. Ich m?sste also
> hunderte von Artikel, die unter "England" aufgelistet sind, ?ffnen, um
> zu gucken, welche davon in Cambridge sind. Ich glaube nicht, dass viele
> Leute dazu Lust h?tten. Hinzu kommt dann noch, dass man erstmal
> umst?ndlich rumsuchen muss, um rauszufinden, wie die Koordinaten in die
> Artikel eingetragen werden sollen, und selbst wenn man das mal gefunden
> hat, ist die Erkl?rung viel zu kompliziert und viel zu umst?ndlich.
>
> Timwi
>
Ich habe mir die Artikel 'mal angesehen - viele haben nicht 'mal eine
"Datenbox" - wenn man die h?tte, ?ber ein Template, dann k?nnte man
diese nach und nach mit replace.py (also ?ber den pywikipediabot)
ausf?llen. Ich w?rde sagen, dass die Arbeit so, wie sie sich jetzt
darstellt keinen Sinn macht, denn dann m?chte man au?er den
Geokoordinaten irgendwann z.B. die Einwohnerzahl (bei St?dten) oder
irgendwelche baulichen Eigenschaften (z.B. bei Kirchen) dazuf?gen und
das ganze manuelle hin- und herklicken geht wieder los.

Hier geh?rt erst 'mal je nach Stadt/Fluss/Ge?ude/Museum usw.
strukturiert - also erst 'mal nachdenken, was denn alles f?r Daten
interessant sein k?nnten und vor allem: welche bei allen Seiten jener
Art eingef?gt werden sollten (fr?her oder sp?ter). Wenn das dann 'mal
gemacht ist (ist zwar eine Riesenarbeit, lohnt sich aber f?r die
Zukunft), dann kann man daran arbeiten, Listen zu estellen - diese kann
man dann so umwandeln das ?ber einen Batch die Daten einfach eingeklebt
werden.

Beispiel auf einer Seite besteht ein Template:

{{Geobox_koordinate|<!--hier die Koordinate einf?gen-->}}

dann wird ausgef?hrt
replace.py, der diese spezifische Seite aufruft + den Kommentar durch
die Koordinate ersetzt.

diese replace.py aufrufe der einzelnen seiten werden in eine Batchdatei
gestellt, die der Computer dann selbst?ndig im Hintergrund abarbeitet.

Das interessanteste jedoch w?re:
viele Projekte haben schon solche Daten - also: diese Daten auslesen und
in ein Wikidata-Project ?bertragen, welches dann die Daten in einem
Seitenabschnitt anzeigt.

Dadurch w?rden alle eingegebenen Daten automatisch f?r alle Projekte
gleichzeitig verf?gbar und man w?rde jede Menge Zeit sparen und ein
wesentlich besseres Resultat haben, denn: sollte irgendwo etwas falsches
drinstehen und dies korrigiert werden, dann wird das automatisch ?berall
korrigiert und nicht nur in der einen Wikipedia. (Die zu lokalisierenden
Teile werden einfach ?bersetzt).

Hmmm ... eigentlich sollten wir diese Diskussion auf Englisch f?hren,
denn was ihr da vorhabt k?nnte ein Projekt?bergreifendes Vorhaben
werden, das allen zugute kommt.

So, wie es jetzt ist w?rde ich z.B. nicht daran mitarbeiten - w?re es
Wikidata, was gleichzeitig eben auch dem Projekt zugute kommt, an denen
ich selbst haupts?chlich arbeite, dann w?rde es Sinn machen. Denn
prinzipiell ist das hier sehr interessant - nur kann ich von der Zeit
her nicht einfach noch mehr machen.

Ciao, Sabine

p.s. ev. schreibe ich das in meinen Blog, dann h?tten wir es auch auf
Englisch
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: DaB.

subject: [Wikitech-l] Toolserver

body:
Hello,
Am Donnerstag, den 03.08.2006, 16:31 +0200 schrieb Steve Bennett:
> At the risk of getting a whack on the head, could we have a status
> update on the toolserver, particularly with respect to English
> Wikipedia? I haven't heard much since it was announced that the data
> was being reloaded but there was some corruption.

Yes. I have fix the problem with the corruption (I think so).

The problem at the moment is, that the discs of zedler are too slow for
sync with en:. The german Verein has allready bought a disc-array, which
should be fast enought. The problem is, that there are
hardwareincompatibility between the scsi-card of zedler and the
discs-array. I have order by the verein to buy a new scsi-card, but wait
for mark who can tell me at best (I guess so) which card is the right
one.

We all together wait for river, which had planed to call adaptech for
the hardwareincompatibility. If I have no anwser after the wikimania, I
would just buy a new card.

>
> Steve

Sincerly,
DaB.
--
Blog: http://www.wp-blog.de | PGP: 2D3EE2D42B255885


from_name: Mark Bell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
Folks,

This may be answered somewhere but i have not found a reference.

I would like stats or a graph that shows:

Number of unique editors per article X number of articles with that many
unique editors.

So for example

number of unique editors        Number of articles with that many unique
editors
15                                               356
30                                               3455

And so on. Is this even possible?

M


subject: [Wikitech-l] Sorry for the repost. Graphing Questiion.

body:
I didn't change the subject line like I should have.

On 8/3/06, Mark Bell <typewritermark at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> This may be answered somewhere but i have not found a reference.
>
> I would like stats or a graph that shows:
>
> Number of unique editors per article X number of articles with that many
> unique editors.
>
> So for example
>
> number of unique editors        Number of articles with that many unique
> editors
> 15                                               356
> 30                                               3455
>
>
> And so on. Is this even possible?
>
> M
>

--
Mark Bell
MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program
http://www.storygeek.com
"The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly


subject: [Wikitech-l] Unique editor statistics (was: Extension Installer)

body:
On 8/3/06, Mark Bell <typewritermark at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like stats or a graph that shows:
>
> Number of unique editors per article X number of articles with that many
> unique editors.
>
> So for example
>
> number of unique editors        Number of articles with that many unique
> editors
> 15                                               356
> 30                                               3455
>
>
> And so on. Is this even possible?

Certainly.  If you know how to write in MySQL and some brand of
computer language that supports MySQL, it shouldn't be hard to
generate such stats from a database dump (see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Database_dumps).  If you don't know how
to, maybe someone who does will have pity on you and do it for you.  I
haven't gotten around to learning MySQL yet, but it looks to be
probably fairly simple if you have access to a dump.


body:
On 8/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> AFAIK the copyrights were forfeited at the end of the war.

No, the goverment inherited the rights. The State of Bavaria claim the
rights to Mein Kampf in all languages but English and Dutch, for
example, and they occasionally sue to prevent it being published (see
[[Mein Kampf]] article). But I've never heard them do anything like
that with photographs (and their suits seem to be based more on the
desire to not spread the information than a concern with copyright
infringement).

Again, to my knowledge nobody has ever been sued over Nazi photograph
copyrights in the post-WWII era. I use it as an example because there
has been a lot of text spilled about this issue in the past on the
Wiki awhile back. In situations like this I think it would be easy to
have highly specialized categories of "super-low-risk fair use"
claims, like one for Nazi photographs.

FF


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
On 03/08/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> > Very nice! How often is the database updated?
>
> For the moment, I do not update the database, I analyze a grabbed wikipedia.
>
> I developed this program as a proof of concept. For the update of the
> database, it will depend of the possibility of integration in wikipedia. I
> do not have enough details at this step.

Have you played with WikiWax? It's a bit temperamental (and uses an
old dump), but much the same idea - see wikiwax.com (or
[[en:WikiWax]])

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest


subject: [Wikitech-l] Toolserver

body:
On 8/3/06, DaB. <wp at daniel.baur4.info> wrote:
> The problem at the moment is, that the discs of zedler are too slow for
> sync with en:. The german Verein has allready bought a disc-array, which

Oh cool. What does "too slow for sync with en" mean? The toolserver
will always be "a bit behind", or the replication lag is increasing,
or it's just hopeless?

> should be fast enought. The problem is, that there are
> hardwareincompatibility between the scsi-card of zedler and the
> discs-array. I have order by the verein to buy a new scsi-card, but wait
> for mark who can tell me at best (I guess so) which card is the right
> one.
>
> We all together wait for river, which had planed to call adaptech for
> the hardwareincompatibility. If I have no anwser after the wikimania, I
> would just buy a new card.

Thanks for the update, it's always nice to know what's going on :)

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
On 8/3/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> You said "dropping in a directory by FTP". He said "Clicking [something]
> from inside MediaWiki". I don't know about other people, but I see a
> huge difference between those. The latter is easier. The former doesn't
> even have a UI.

Yeah, uploading onto FTP on Windows is tricky without a specialised
client. Oh wait...no, there are "network places" which actually work
fairly well, but still, any solution which involves taking action
*outside* the client GUI is necessarily "more complicated" than any
solution which is wholly contained *within* the client GUI.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
On 8/3/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I know, and his is indeed a trie. But that word is rarely used. Look at
> his work: He has perfectly implemented a trie with a lot of thought, but
> without knowing the word "trie" :-p

Oh, you're bringing back memories of computer science...I half expect
someone to mention BST's or radox or something next...

(but please don't :))

Steve


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Daily Usage Stats?

body:
"Johannes Ernst" wrote:
> The Daily Usage statistics are empty in
>     http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaZZ.htm
> (first table, last column on page)
>
> Where should I look to find them?
>
> What I'm really looking for is insights on the relationship between
> load and servers, e.g. how many concurrent sessions per server, page
> views per time and server etc.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Johannes.

Such data is not kept any more.


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hello,

Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
>
>> The algorithm uses very few cpu power. Imagine for example that all the
>> data needed are in memory, the compiled automaton could be obtained in 1
>> minutes.
>>
>
> Okay, that's good.  But what I meant was, how much CPU power (and
> other resources) will the suggestion feature eat on a day-to-day
> basis?  I start typing "Metasyntactic variable" into the search box,
> it helpfully provides some suggestions based on its index ? how much
> resources did that just use?  When thousands of people are doing it
> every minute, how much will that slow down the servers compared to the
> normal load of page views and edits and so on?
>
The search uses very few resources (only RAM to store the index).
The complexity in the worst case is O(log(A) * P) where A is the number
of letter in Alphabet and P the size of the word to search.

I wrote two implementations :
 - monothreaded with index stored on disk (I implemented it for my
server because I have few RAM available)
 - multithreaded version with all index in RAM

With the second one, you will be able to handle a lot of queries per
second with very few cpu power.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hello,

> Very nice! How often is the database updated?

For the moment, I do not update the database, I analyze a grabbed wikipedia.

I developed this program as a proof of concept. For the update of the
database, it will depend of the possibility of integration in wikipedia. I
do not have enough details at this step.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 03/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> That actually sounds fairly plausible. I'm an expert on LA paparazzi
> after having seen a half-hour documentary on them.

Lol.

> To that end, we could improve our crediting system. We could
> explicitly say "Wikipedia thanks the following professional
> photographers for their graceful contributions". I don't believe that
> would be at all contradictory to our mission.

Where are you proposing this is written? I could imagine us puting
photo credits in image captions...

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi,

> == UI stuff ==
>
> The only two constructive suggestions for the User-Interface that I
> would make are:
>
> 1) That if the user presses 'Enter' in the search textbox whilst
> typing out a query, that it automatically choose/open/redirect to the
> first item in the list. That way I can type out what I want, and press
> enter to open the first link when I've typed enough to specify it well
> enough to get it to the top of the list, all without using the mouse.
>
> 2) Allow the user to press the down/up arrows to select/highlight a
> specified entry on the list (including but not limited to the first
> item), and press enter to open it. That way again the user can be lazy
> and can select a link without using the mouse, and without typing out
> the full title.

These two features are available now. You can use them :)

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi Steve,

>> I will generates a new index with redirects, I will give you the size
>> before/after this evening.
>
> Redirects should be indicated with what they redirect to, like:
>
> ...
> Top-rope climbing -> top roping
> Top roping
> ...
>
> Or something - but maybe with the proviso that it doesn't show a
> redirect if the actual target is currently being displayed.

I updated the analyzer to add the redirects. I've done it on French
wikipedia. The automaton size is now 42M instead of 32M. I will do the
same on english tomorrow and give you the new automaton size.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
Let's for a minute forget about my code and look at what we want. From
what I gather from the discussion:

* discover extensions available locally, base on some meta-file in each
extension's directory.
* Have a (web?) UI for listing the available extensions, and
enable/disable them.
* That would supposedly manipulate a list of active extensions stored in
a file (or database table)
* That list would have to be read and evaluated for each page request
(it should probably be cache in memory, using the object cache or something)
* any options the extensions may have would have to be set manually in
LocalSettings.php. Since with the new system, extensions wouldn't load
until after LocalSettings.php is evaluated, extensions would have to
take care not to overwrite options when applying defaults.

This raises some questions

* In case of a web UI, how would it be protected? Would it be inside
MediaWiki itself, available to, say, beurocrats?
* When an extension is enabled by the UI, some custom script may be run
to patch the db. That may require a different db user.
* It would be nice to have a way to provide basic options to the
extension on install, without having to edit LocalSettings.php

All of the above do not address how to locate and download extensions -
which is what the code I wrote mainly does. I personally feel that it's
nice to have a repository based installer, like, say, apt or something.
So, I wrote something like that. How useful a CLI-based tool for this
really is - well, it doesn't hurt to have it, I guess. It would be very
convenient, but probably way too dangerous, to allow fetching extensions
via a web interface.

In any case, *please* let's establish a repository of tgz bundles of
extensions somewhere. It's simply silly to require people to use SVN to
get extensions, unless they want bleeding edge. It's also trivial to do
for all extensions that have their own directory. A simple script can
generate something like this automatically:
<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/repository/extensions/>

-- Daniel

--
Homepage: http://brightbyte.de


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] Colbert Report heads-up

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:
> Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:The only real difference between satire and trolling is whether or not
> you get the joke!  Of course the word "trolling" has basically become
> meaningless at this point.  People use the term for basically anything
> and everything.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> No, trolling is to illicit a response, preferably an extended, irate one.  Satire, as you may be aware, has a long history in non-interactive media, such as books.
>
> If wikiality hasn't disrupted it, I'm sure wikipedia's entry for each can help you better understand both and their distinctions.

   You are mostly right but there is a very large amount of "Trolling"
hat goes on which is quite obviously a joke.  In this case the troll is
really only going after the users who are either too easily agitated to
read carefully or just plane dumb.  In that instance it really is a
matter of "getting the joke".

Dalf


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-04

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{CURRENTMONTHNAMEGEN}}... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test 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 HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Toolserver

body:
Hello,
Am Donnerstag, den 03.08.2006, 22:58 +0200 schrieb Steve Bennett:
> On 8/3/06, DaB. <wp at daniel.baur4.info> wrote:
> > The problem at the moment is, that the discs of zedler are too slow for
> > sync with en:. The german Verein has allready bought a disc-array, which
>
> Oh cool. What does "too slow for sync with en" mean? The toolserver
> will always be "a bit behind", or the replication lag is increasing,
> or it's just hopeless?

the problem is, that when I start en-replication the lag of all other
languages starts to increase heavly.

en is at the moment 54 days back. Thats hopeless to resync with my
sync-programm. So a new dump of en would be needed, but like I say at
the moment that's useless, the same would start again.

>
> Thanks for the update, it's always nice to know what's going on :)

no problem.

>
> Steve

Sincerly,

DaB.

--
Blog: http://www.wp-blog.de | PGP: 2D3EE2D42B255885


list: commons-l

from_name: Joanot Martorell

subject: [Commons-l] Radical proposal

references:
<MGBBLBFKJDODAGLGJBCDKEBPGBAA.plugwash@p10link.net>
	<20060711211324.95747.qmail@web32203.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<e692861c0607130604w78d0f352ie1bbf82d00265b45@mail.gmail.com>
	<d20d84ea0607130616g5ec813b7i8462a02d1ade7328@mail.gmail.com>

body:
I'm not agree to disable article function because Commons wouldn't be
a multilingual project and all it would be only in English, according
to the language policy about naming categories. People from others
wikiprojects in non-English language would find a lot of problems to
find images for their articles.

2006/7/13, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
> On 13/07/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I find it very disappointing that folks here don't find human driven
> > presentation of content to be valuable.  Will we now be deleting the
> > commons main page and simply redirecting it to a category?
> >
> > This will force projects to build their own true gallery pages rather
> > than build them on commons.  Because of the difficulty of building
> > truly multilingual things on commons the incentive to avoid working on
> > commons already exists... this will just increase it further. :(
>
> I wouldn't worry too much. I expect... um... MS Windows to be released
> under the GPL before an implementable solution to this problem is
> found.
>
> As I said on the Village pump, anyone who is seriously thinking of
> implementing some new solution absolutely must make the system
> multilingual. That challenge should be enough to keep anyone busy
> until the Microsoft-FSF alliance.
>
> Brianna
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

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

Moin,

On Friday 04 August 2006 00:11, Daniel Kinzler wrote:
> Let's for a minute forget about my code and look at what we want. From
[snip a bit]
>
> In any case, *please* let's establish a repository of tgz bundles of
> extensions somewhere. It's simply silly to require people to use SVN to
> get extensions, unless they want bleeding edge. It's also trivial to do
> for all extensions that have their own directory. A simple script can
> generate something like this automatically:
> <http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/repository/extensions/>

And it would be way cool if you could use YAML for the meta info, and adopt
quite a few things from CPAN. And PLEASE add cryptografic signatures and
enforce them (aka warn when not present etc).

Please see here for an example distribution:

	http://search.cpan.org/~tels/mediawiki-graph/

There is no need to re-invent the wheel on signing & packagig :)

One could even think of creating an installer that will such a cpan package
automatically.

All the best,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Aug  4 01:45:36 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Mediawiki graph-extension: http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Moin,

On Friday 04 August 2006 00:15, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Daniel Kinzler <daniel at brightbyte.de> wrote:
> > * In case of a web UI, how would it be protected? Would it be inside
> > MediaWiki itself, available to, say, beurocrats?
>
> Even if there were to be a Web interface, I don't think bureaucrats
> will be given privileges to execute arbitrary PHP code anytime soon.

This would be _very_ usefull for small wikis, where the admin could log in,
and update/install extensions via an webinterface.

best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Aug  4 01:49:10 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #5,546,528 and EU patent EP0689133:

   ________________________________________
   | Header | Body | Attachements |	  |
   |--------+	   +----------------------|
   |					  |
   ~					  ~

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from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
I've been putting together a complaint to send to Tiscali about one of
their subscribers breaching their TOS on wikipedia (may not work but
worth a try). The problem is that the person caused most of the
trouble they did while logged in. Thus checkuser is required to get
hold of the IPs. Releasing these IPs would require foundation
permission. Tiscali would also likely need to be able to contact the
foundation to confirm any claims. I believe this gives us three
options.

I send Tiscali the email without IPs and with the foundation's contact
information. This is likely to archive nothing since Tiscali would
have to contact the foundation before starting an investigation

The foundation gives me the IPs. This would allow Tiscali to begin an
investigation but they would probably still have to contact the
foundation. This has the disadvantage that the foundation has to
release the IPs to me (even though I already know the range and
Tiscali IPs don't tell you much I can understand the foundation not
wanting to do this).

The foundation co opts my email and sends it itself. This allows it to
keep the IP data private and removes possible barriers. On the other
hand this could result in more work for the foundation.

I assume this situation will arise in future thus I am trying to start
a general discussion as well as seeking answers for this specific
case.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hello Andrew,

Andrew Gray wrote:
> Have you played with WikiWax? It's a bit temperamental (and uses an
> old dump), but much the same idea - see wikiwax.com (or
> [[en:WikiWax]])
>
Yes I tried it, but it gives a full list of matching articles without
ranking.
I did not find it really useful and very fast, I preferred to keep a
small list of ranked results.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia Suggest


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Just one more request: what about if the search string matches
*within* the phrase, but not necessarily at the start. Like "Hardy"
matching "Laurel and Hardy"? Is that possible with this data
structure?

Steve

On 8/2/06, Julien Lemoine <speedblue at happycoders.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have wrote a "google suggest" like service for wikipedia under GPL
> licence [1].
> By the way, I am not sure if this project will interest you, I am open
> to all comments from your community.
>
> I wrote a simple web site for english/french on
> http://suggest.speedblue.org, all software are available in the download
> section.
>
> Best Regards.
> Julien Lemoine
>
> [1] If you want me to change the licence to something other than GPL,
> please let me know.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Just one more request: what about if the search string matches
> *within* the phrase, but not necessarily at the start. Like "Hardy"
> matching "Laurel and Hardy"? Is that possible with this data
> structure?
>
No it will not. But I don't think this will be really usefull :
Imagine a query with a single letter ("a" or "e" for example), it will
matches a least half articles without understanding the results.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


subject: [Wikitech-l] Smarter name matching for templates

body:
Hi,
  MediaWiki has a fairly useful case-guessing heuristic where if you
search for "foo boo moo" it attempts, if that fails, to match "Foo Boo
Moo" and "FOO BOO MOO".

Would it be possible to do something similar for templates? The
heuristic for "template:foo boo moo" would be:
1. If that page is not found, try "template:foo-boo-moo"
2. If that page is not found, try "template:fooboomoo"

This may just be useful for English Wikipedia, but the lack of naming
convention there makes it really difficult to remember the names of
multi-word templates.

Steve


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
geni wrote:

>On 8/4/06, Nathan Carter <cartmanau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal with this?
>>If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
>>I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do the dirty
>>work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
>>Cheers,
>>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
>>
>>
>
>While that may be an option in the short term in the long run this is
>likely to become more common and thus it is probably best that there
>to be a way to deal with this below foundation level.
>
>
>
Most of the ISP's ignore these reports, including DCMA takedown notices
(they just throw them in the trash). One very effective
method that both works and gets their attention I have used at
WikiGadugi dissuades 100% of vandals, gets the ISP's attention, and
gets the problem fixed immediately. It is as follows:

1. When I first setup WikiGadugi, I had the distinct pleasure of being
visited by WillyonWheels from the UK.
2. I tried the whole page move vandal, blocking, blah blah blah, it only
made him more persistent.
3. I wrote a shim program into IP tables as a MediaWiki addon that does
WHOIS lookup everytime
the IP address gets used to write a page and saves not only the IP
address for the write, but the ISP range as well.
4. The shim checks a file not visible where I record IP addresses for
vandal addresses and autoblocks the entire ISP IP range AT THE FIREWALL
blocking both reading and writing, shutting down all access for that ISP.

I had someone from the UK email me (my email servers are on a separate
network) from this ISP range. It was
blueyonder.uk and apparently, other universities were studying the
Cherokee translation and wondered why the site was down. It was not long
before the ISP notified me a certain account was "suspended".

I would suggest creating a banned ISP listing with ranges based on
persistent vandals, and when they suspend the accounts, you will unblock
them
at the firewall. It fixed my vandalism problems. I have 0% vandalism at
the WikiGadugi site and I stuck it to WillyOnWheels.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


body:
On 8/4/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The value is project-wide, not necessarily on an article-by-article
> > > basis. And I think Jimbo would say that a high quality encyclopedia is
> > > never at odds with producing a free one. Wikipedia could still be high
> >
> > Eh? Britannica has done pretty well at producing a high quality
> > encyclopaedia, but they haven't gotten off the ground in the free
> > stakes.
>
> I'll Eh? right back at you. Just because EB can produce quality and
> NOT be free does not at all mean that quality and being free are
> incompatible.

Ok, we're probably understanding the phrase "at odds with"
differently. In any case, I think we agree - an encyclopaedia can be
high quality without being free, free without being high quality, or
can be both. And there are decisions that can be taken which are
effectively trade offs - the quality of EB would probably suffer
greatly if it suddenly converted to a wiki with all paid staff sacked.
On the other hand, Wikipedia is much higher quality than a number of
other "closed source" encyclopaedias.

> In any case, going back and forth over the question of whether
> Wikipedia would be high quality without fair use images seems fairly
> silly to me since the designation is entirely subjective. I think your
> position is a little silly but you're allowed to say the same about
> mine. I think you're putting short-term aesthetics ahead of legal and
> long-term sensibilities.

Yep. I don't believe a great deal in the future - or maybe I'm
impatient and short-sighted. My attitude towards editing Wikipedia
(and wikis in general) is "what can I do to make this page better for
the next user than it was five minutes ago, and how can I encourage
that next user to make it even better for the user after him".
Sometimes a short term dip in "quality" has to be taken for the long
term - removing useful but unverifiable and POV information, for
instance. I don't know that I'm really advocating taking legal risks
for short term gains though.

> > Yes, it's a pity that we have to do all our diagrams from scratch,
> > there are thousands of articles that need some.
>
> So put in a diagram request. There are people who are happy to make
> diagrams for articles. Filling diagram requests is MUCH easier than
> photography because you can do it from anywhere and with free
> software.

You're right, I will.

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> On 7/31/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/31/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In both cases the legal danger is entirely
>>> hypothetical and dubious at that -- they are based on stretched and
>>> literal interpretations of complicated aspects of the copyright law
>>> and nobody has ever been taken to court over them.
>> Did you just volunteer to be a test case?
>
> Before anyone could be a test case we'd have to have someone taking
> them to court over the copyrights for Nazi posters. Which to my
> knowledge has not happened. Which is my point.
>

AFAIK the copyrights were forfeited at the end of the war.

--
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: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>geni wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 8/4/06, Nathan Carter <cartmanau at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal with this?
>>>If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
>>>I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do the dirty
>>>work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
>>>Cheers,
>>>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>While that may be an option in the short term in the long run this is
>>likely to become more common and thus it is probably best that there
>>to be a way to deal with this below foundation level.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Most of the ISP's ignore these reports, including DCMA takedown notices
>(they just throw them in the trash). One very effective
>method that both works and gets their attention I have used at
>WikiGadugi dissuades 100% of vandals, gets the ISP's attention, and
>gets the problem fixed immediately. It is as follows:
>
>1. When I first setup WikiGadugi, I had the distinct pleasure of being
>visited by WillyonWheels from the UK.
>2. I tried the whole page move vandal, blocking, blah blah blah, it only
>made him more persistent.
>3. I wrote a shim program into IP tables as a MediaWiki addon that does
>WHOIS lookup everytime
>the IP address gets used to write a page and saves not only the IP
>address for the write, but the ISP range as well.
>4. The shim checks a file not visible where I record IP addresses for
>vandal addresses and autoblocks the entire ISP IP range AT THE FIREWALL
>blocking both reading and writing, shutting down all access for that ISP.
>
>I had someone from the UK email me (my email servers are on a separate
>network) from this ISP range. It was
>blueyonder.uk and apparently, other universities were studying the
>Cherokee translation and wondered why the site was down. It was not long
>before the ISP notified me a certain account was "suspended".
>
>I would suggest creating a banned ISP listing with ranges based on
>persistent vandals, and when they suspend the accounts, you will unblock
>them
>at the firewall. It fixed my vandalism problems. I have 0% vandalism at
>the WikiGadugi site and I stuck it to WillyOnWheels.
>
>Jeff
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
BTW, Wow is an active Wikipedia user and a member of the Linux Community.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
On Aug 4, 2006, at 10:03 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

> BTW, Wow is an active Wikipedia user and a member of the Linux
> Community.
>
> Jeff

May not be the same guy. I think our WOW is in Canada.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
On Aug 4, 2006, at 7:39 AM, Nathan Carter wrote:

> On 8/4/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> The foundation co opts my email and sends it itself. This allows
>> it to
>> keep the IP data private and removes possible barriers. On the other
>> hand this could result in more work for the foundation.
>>
>
>
> Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal
> with this?
> If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
> I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do
> the dirty
> work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
> Cheers,
> Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)

Assuming this is an English Wikipedia thing, this could become an
arbitration committee matter.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/4/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only problem there is that it treats the "professionals" in a
> different category than the "amateurs", which I think it somewhat
> against the philosophy of the place. If WP allows "professionals" to
> have their name listed (and with a link to their website?), why
> wouldn't it let "amateurs" list theirs on the same page? Pretty soon

I think it's reasonable to distinguish people who do X for a living,
but have chosen to do X for free for us, and people who do Y for a
living, but have chosen to do X as a hobby. In some ways it's a much
greater sacrifice for a professional to work for free.

More pragmatically, amateurs don't need much encouragement to work for
us. I contribute photos to Wikipedia because I enjoy it, and because I
want to - not for any kind of recognition. Also, since "amateurs" are
Wikipedia community members, there are other ways of recognising them
internally - talk page messages work well. "Professionals" come from
outside the Wikipedia community, so should be recognised in a more
external way.

> it could also devolve into a spam page, the only requirement being
> contribution of a photograph.

Let's not be unnecessarily pessimistic.

> Maybe that's not a problem, though. At least there would be SOME
> requirement. Actually, perhaps one could set the requirement --
> contribute photographs to Wikipedia which can (and are) used in
> articles and you get to put your name and link on a page for
> contributing photographers. I don't know if anyone would go for that
> (either Wikipedians or photographers). It's somewhat of an equivalent
> of selling ad space, except services rather than money would be
> transacted. Might be a bad precedent, might lead to some unpleasant
> arguments ("I contributed 5 pictures of my rear to Wikipedia for the
> 'buttocks' page, why can't I list my website here?"). Just thinking
> out loud here.

It should best be managed with discretion. Phrasing it as "Contribute
X, gain the right to Y" is definitely the wrong way. Phrasing it as
"We are grateful to X, of yyy.com for his many photos" is better. No
rights, no exchange, just gratitude.

> But even without a centralized credit facility we could make it easy
> for photographers to quickly set up Flickr-like user pages for
> themselves where they would have their contact information, a link to
> their web page, and a list of all free photos they've uploaded to
> Wikipedia and what articles they are used in. If we set up easy-to-use
> templates for this it might make it look even more attractive. We
> could remind them how high a pagerank Wikipedia has, and that their
> photograph would be used in an article which showed up on the first
> Google search page in most cases.

Yeah, that's really not a bad idea. We would want to keep some
controls on it if people are coming to Wikipedia specifiaclly for
this, like ensuring that they only put pictures up which are genuinely
useful to us, and toning down the spam/advertising aspects of it.

> I think we have a lot to offer in terms of exposure and attention,
> even without modifying our system one bit. If we found some way to
> send a "Hey, want to contribute some of your old, unused photos to
> Wikipedia?" message around, perhaps it work on its own merit, if it
> was worded well and presented the pros and cons in a straightforward,
> no-B.S. fashion.

Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen any advertising for contributors to
Wikipedia. Even popping around sites like flickr or photobucket or
whatever and spreading the word would be handy. There are a lot of
good amateur photographers out there looking for exposure.

> What they have to lose: very little -- releasing under a viral license
> like CC-BY-SA would not only require attribution for re-use, but would
> require all re-use to be itself licensed under a free license, which
> their normal clientele would not be doing, so they are not competing
> against themselves; the pictures are likely not going to be doing much
> sitting at the back of their files gathering dust, and pictures which
> would be too "boring" for professional use would actually be
> potentially ideal for Wikipedia, which is somewhat
> anti-sensationalistic.

Yeah, and they can always upload them at like 1500px and still try and
sell higher res photos for printing if they really want. Not ideal,
but not terrible.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
On Aug 4, 2006, at 10:19 AM, geni wrote:

> On 8/4/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> Assuming this is an English Wikipedia thing, this could become an
>> arbitration committee matter.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> So arbcom should handle complaints to ISPs? Should I forward the
> email to you?
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

We might be able to once we know what is going on. Yes, I will
introduce the matter to the arbcom.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

body:
On Thu, Aug 03, 2006 at 05:04:18PM -0400, Brion Vibber wrote:
> because it's locked off, typically, and the idea of fetching code from the web
> server UI is enough to get you shot for treason.

You're probably not a big Zope fan, then, right? :-)

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
 Julien Lemoine wrote:

Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Just one more request: what about if the search string matches
> > *within* the phrase, but not necessarily at the start. Like "Hardy"
> > matching "Laurel and Hardy"? Is that possible with this data
> > structure?
> >
> No it will not. But I don't think this will be really usefull :
> Imagine a query with a single letter ("a" or "e" for example), it will
> matches a least half articles without understanding the results.
>
> Best Regards.
> Julien Lemoine
>
>
I wrote a "suggest" function for finding part numbers for a request form at
work - enabling multi-word search is really useful and powerful.  I haven't
looked at your code, so I don't know if you're using a keyword index, or
LIKE SQL functions.  I set mine up to require at least 4 characters and to
to break on whitespace, so the SQL (pseudocode) is WHERE LIKE(wordone) AND
LIKE(wordtwo) and so on.

Best Regards,
Aerik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 08:03:22AM +0200, Julien Lemoine wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Just one more request: what about if the search string matches
> > *within* the phrase, but not necessarily at the start. Like "Hardy"
> > matching "Laurel and Hardy"? Is that possible with this data
> > structure?
> >
> No it will not. But I don't think this will be really usefull :
> Imagine a query with a single letter ("a" or "e" for example), it will
> matches a least half articles without understanding the results.

It would require you to apply some heuristics to determine what *not*
to display, certainly...

but let me note that the incremental search feature in the phone book
of my Blackberry -- which displays a list of first, the entries whose
titles *start* with the substring, and then, the entries which contain
it elsewhere -- is pretty useful.  It interacts with the height of the
pulldown, of course, but it is pretty useful.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 09:59:29AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
>   MediaWiki has a fairly useful case-guessing heuristic where if you
> search for "foo boo moo" it attempts, if that fails, to match "Foo Boo
> Moo" and "FOO BOO MOO".
>
> Would it be possible to do something similar for templates? The
> heuristic for "template:foo boo moo" would be:
> 1. If that page is not found, try "template:foo-boo-moo"
> 2. If that page is not found, try "template:fooboomoo"
>
> This may just be useful for English Wikipedia, but the lack of naming
> convention there makes it really difficult to remember the names of
> multi-word templates.

My instinct is to say that's a Bad Idea, and on reflection, I know why.

I can't locate it just now, but there's an Eric Allman paper that ships
with the sendmail distribution, that explains why mailbox-name-generation
protocols are a bad idea: because (among other things) they can
*reveal* collisions, making things that weren't broken break as the
environment (invisible to a mail sender) change.

Case folding is inherently a wart, because (unless you use it
*everywhere*), it can make things break. That is, if you permit pages
whose names differ only in case, then you cannot safely automatically
fold case *anywhere else*, because you open the possibility that, for
example, someone will pick a template that has been included in
hundreds of pages -- with the wrong case -- and create the template to
which that *actually* points.

Look! Computer Assisted Vandalism!

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 8/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it's reasonable to distinguish people who do X for a living,
> but have chosen to do X for free for us, and people who do Y for a
> living, but have chosen to do X as a hobby. In some ways it's a much
> greater sacrifice for a professional to work for free.

I don't necessarily disagree, but this does ride the line between
"thanking someone for professional-grade work" and "valuing someone
for their accreditation as a proxy for valuing their content". If that
makes sense.

> More pragmatically, amateurs don't need much encouragement to work for
> us. I contribute photos to Wikipedia because I enjoy it, and because I
> want to - not for any kind of recognition. Also, since "amateurs" are
> Wikipedia community members, there are other ways of recognising them
> internally - talk page messages work well. "Professionals" come from
> outside the Wikipedia community, so should be recognised in a more
> external way.

Just the same, we want to make sure we don't end up looking like we
undervalue "amateur" contributions either, since they no doubt make up
the bulk of our contributions. Making a big hub-bub because someone is
willing to donate the scraps of their day-job to Wikipedia might rub
some the wrong way, if you get what I'm saying.

Again, I don't necessarily disagree that there aren't reasons to
encourage professionals, I'm just saying it's something I'd want to
tread carefully when it comes to even "expressing gratitude". A lot of
contributors here are very anti-authority (in a broad sense, not just
in the limited sense of state power) and one of the key aspects of
Wikipedia's content model is that you don't need any sort of
accreditation to participate.

That being said, there would be advantages to emphasizing professional
contributions as well. Aside from potentially attracting people who
can contribute very high quality content without much difficulty, it
could also raise the status of Wikipedia in the professional world
(I've seen lots of discussions between academics where they deride
Wikipedia's content as "amateur hour" without knowing that lots of
academics contribute to Wikipedia).

Though as we all know just because someone is professional does not
make them a good contributor (in the case of academics, it may just
encourage them to throw their hands up and say "I'm sick of arguing
with these idiots! Don't they know I'm a professor?", which I've seen
happen a few times. That's not meant to be an anti-academic comment,
but I think that most academics don't spend very much time trying to
explain themselves to people outside of their specific disciplines,
are not used to people challenging their authority or doubting what is
considered in their line of work to be a basic fact, and as a
consequence don't deal with "free for all" settings like Wikipedia
very well), and we should not hold our breath for the majority
professionals to endorse Wikipedia (it will never really happen, not
as long as "edit this page" remains).

FF


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Blocked titles

body:
On de.wikipedia, we were discussing the topic of blocked titles, meaning
topics that otherwise would go through a cycle of deletion and
re-creation by trolls/vandals/fanatics. Currently, this is done by
putting a template on it and protecting the page.

This is rather ugly and has certain side effects, e.g., filling up the
"short pages" list.

Many would prefer a clean technical soution. The simple way would be to
add a new table to the database, listing the topics blocked from
recreation. This table would only be accessed
* when an admin clicks on an "(un)block this article" link on a
non-existing page (write access)
* when someone tries to edit a non-existing article (read access)

As table fields, I suggest title, blocking user id, and maybe date.
Unblocking a topic would, im my model, equal the removal of the entry
from the table; I don't see the need to keep a history on such a rarely
used and easy-to-counteract-by-another-admin function. Perhaps a new log
would be in order, though.

Magnus

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from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to find an old TfD discussion?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> ...I can only guess it was sometime in the last month or two...

You can at least narrow it down by going to the deleted template
(or any page) and clicking on the "If you expected a page to be
here... check the deletion log" link.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Aug 4, 2006, at 10:03 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>BTW, Wow is an active Wikipedia user and a member of the Linux
>>Community.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>
>May not be the same guy. I think our WOW is in Canada.
>
>Fred
>
>
Fred,

I considered this and the possibly this username is a public moniker
folks use due to the notability
to vandlize other wiki's. Whomever it is appears to have automated
software to perform their
edits as the page moves occur in batches and are must faster than can be
done by a human being.

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blocked titles

body:
On 8/4/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> On de.wikipedia, we were discussing the topic of blocked titles, meaning
> topics that otherwise would go through a cycle of deletion and
> re-creation by trolls/vandals/fanatics. Currently, this is done by
> putting a template on it and protecting the page.

This has the advantage of allowing the user to see a human-written
explanation of why that particular topic is banned. It would be good
if any technical solution can maintain that property.

Steve


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Editorial use vs commercial exploitation

body:
There are some images that are protected from
"commercial exploitation", although they are not
restricted in commercial editorial use such as
Wikipedia, newspapers, magazines and books on the
subject.

A current case are Norwegian sculptures. Norwegian
copyright law says:
    ? 24. [..]
    Works of art and photographic works may also be
depicted when they are permanently located in or near
a public place or thoroughfare. However, this shall
not apply when the work is clearly the main motif and
the reproduction is exploited commercially.

If I undestand it correctly, such images are for
example protected from being: postcards , sold
separately and used in advertisement.

What is the view of the Wikimedia foundation about
such images?

/ Fred


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
Oooh! War of attrition!

James approves.

On 8/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 8/4/06, Nathan Carter <cartmanau at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal with
> this?
> >>If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
> >>I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do the
> dirty
> >>work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
> >>Cheers,
> >>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
> >>
> >>
> >
> >While that may be an option in the short term in the long run this is
> >likely to become more common and thus it is probably best that there
> >to be a way to deal with this below foundation level.
> >
> >
> >
> Most of the ISP's ignore these reports, including DCMA takedown notices
> (they just throw them in the trash). One very effective
> method that both works and gets their attention I have used at
> WikiGadugi dissuades 100% of vandals, gets the ISP's attention, and
> gets the problem fixed immediately. It is as follows:
>
> 1. When I first setup WikiGadugi, I had the distinct pleasure of being
> visited by WillyonWheels from the UK.
> 2. I tried the whole page move vandal, blocking, blah blah blah, it only
> made him more persistent.
> 3. I wrote a shim program into IP tables as a MediaWiki addon that does
> WHOIS lookup everytime
> the IP address gets used to write a page and saves not only the IP
> address for the write, but the ISP range as well.
> 4. The shim checks a file not visible where I record IP addresses for
> vandal addresses and autoblocks the entire ISP IP range AT THE FIREWALL
> blocking both reading and writing, shutting down all access for that ISP.
>
> I had someone from the UK email me (my email servers are on a separate
> network) from this ISP range. It was
> blueyonder.uk and apparently, other universities were studying the
> Cherokee translation and wondered why the site was down. It was not long
> before the ISP notified me a certain account was "suspended".
>
> I would suggest creating a banned ISP listing with ranges based on
> persistent vandals, and when they suspend the accounts, you will unblock
> them
> at the firewall. It fixed my vandalism problems. I have 0% vandalism at
> the WikiGadugi site and I stuck it to WillyOnWheels.
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs


from_name: Mark Bell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension Installer

references:
<44CF528C.8040905@brightbyte.de>
	<732865eb0608031853s5cb06aa9y8ac0e64f09873bbd@mail.gmail.com>
	<eavtra$aib$1@sea.gmane.org> <eavubg$c93$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
any chance you can send me the data?

On 8/4/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
> > MAYBE this will work (haven't tried it):
> >
> >      SELECT editorcount as 'Number of unique editors', COUNT(rev_page)
> >          as 'Number of articles with that many unique editors'
> >      FROM (
> >          SELECT rev_page, COUNT(DISTINCT rev_user_text) as editorcount
> >          FROM revisions GROUP BY rev_page
> >      ) AS editorcounts
> >      GROUP BY editorcount
> >      ORDER BY 'Number of unique editors';
>
> I've just tested this, and it works perfectly, except that "revisions"
> should have been "revision". :-)
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Mark Bell
MA student in Ball State University's Digital Storytelling program
http://www.storygeek.com
"The future is here...it's just not widely distributed." - Tim O'Reilly


from_name: Chris McKenna

body:
It seems as though this is a form of fair use, and as such would be
allowable on projects (such as en.wp) that allow fair use but not on
Commons and others which don't.

Chris

On Fri, 4 Aug 2006, Patrick-Emil Z?rner wrote:

>
> --- Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
>
> > There are some images that are protected from
> > "commercial exploitation", although they are not
> > restricted in commercial editorial use such as
> > Wikipedia, newspapers, magazines and books on the
> > subject.
>
> So you give the answer yourself. They are not 100% commercial. What is
> "commercial exploitation"? Sell things to get rich. Well that is why
> you sell stuff.
>
> > If I undestand it correctly, such images are for
> > example protected from being: postcards , sold
> > separately and used in advertisement.
>
> It could mean anything. That is the reason why commons wants pictures
> that where we can clearly say they are free (Even though we turn a
> blind eye on the GFDL ;-)
>
> > What is the view of the Wikimedia foundation about
> > such images?
>
> It is not only a matter of the foundation but also a matter of the
> community. Because if these will be allowed on commons I will stop
> doing my adminstrative work there and make use of my right to leave.
>
> regards
>
> Paddy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
Chris 'Awkward' McKenna

cmckenna at sucs.org
www.sucs.org/~cmckenna

The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes,
but with the heart

Antoine de Saint Exupery


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs

body:
Jeff Merkey -- defender of American Indians, defeater of Asian ISPs.

Wikipedia could technically set up such an extreme system, but it would
cause too many people to be blocked at once, and thus less people can edit
(Jimmy-Jimmy seems to like allowing everyone to edit). Also, such high
levels of blocking could give us a bad name.

But I'd implement it.

On 8/4/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
>
> >Oooh! War of attrition!
> >
> >James approves.
> >
> >
> I had to do the same thing to chinanet and several other asian ISPs as
> well -- they remain blocked -- permanently.
>
> Jeff
>
> >
> >On 8/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>geni wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 8/4/06, Nathan Carter <cartmanau at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Is there already a section within the foundation which can deal with
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>this?
> >>
> >>
> >>>>If not is some form of "abuse reporting" procedure needed?
> >>>>I think the best way to do it is for the foundation itself to do the
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>dirty
> >>
> >>
> >>>>work so to speak, which should avoid any privacy issues.
> >>>>Cheers,
> >>>>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>While that may be an option in the short term in the long run this is
> >>>likely to become more common and thus it is probably best that there
> >>>to be a way to deal with this below foundation level.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Most of the ISP's ignore these reports, including DCMA takedown notices
> >>(they just throw them in the trash). One very effective
> >>method that both works and gets their attention I have used at
> >>WikiGadugi dissuades 100% of vandals, gets the ISP's attention, and
> >>gets the problem fixed immediately. It is as follows:
> >>
> >>1. When I first setup WikiGadugi, I had the distinct pleasure of being
> >>visited by WillyonWheels from the UK.
> >>2. I tried the whole page move vandal, blocking, blah blah blah, it only
> >>made him more persistent.
> >>3. I wrote a shim program into IP tables as a MediaWiki addon that does
> >>WHOIS lookup everytime
> >>the IP address gets used to write a page and saves not only the IP
> >>address for the write, but the ISP range as well.
> >>4. The shim checks a file not visible where I record IP addresses for
> >>vandal addresses and autoblocks the entire ISP IP range AT THE FIREWALL
> >>blocking both reading and writing, shutting down all access for that
> ISP.
> >>
> >>I had someone from the UK email me (my email servers are on a separate
> >>network) from this ISP range. It was
> >>blueyonder.uk and apparently, other universities were studying the
> >>Cherokee translation and wondered why the site was down. It was not long
> >>before the ISP notified me a certain account was "suspended".
> >>
> >>I would suggest creating a banned ISP listing with ranges based on
> >>persistent vandals, and when they suspend the accounts, you will unblock
> >>them
> >>at the firewall. It fixed my vandalism problems. I have 0% vandalism at
> >>the WikiGadugi site and I stuck it to WillyOnWheels.
> >>
> >>Jeff
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>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
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] complaining to ISPs