from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

references:
<C0DD5CA1.128A6%travis@gpsports-eng.com>
	<44B82251.3020305@wikia.com> <44B8DA88.50606@hackish.org>

body:
On Jul 15, 2006, at 6:07 AM, Delirium wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I am curious to know whether very many people agree with me that
>> "human
>> dignity" is a valid reason for a "delete" vote in a case like this.
>>
>>
>
> Not in the slightest.  That's a POV, which I may or may not agree
> with,
> but which has no place shaping the contents of the encyclopedia.
> Either
> the subject is not notable, in which case there should be no
> article, or
> he/she is, in which case there should be.  Obviously we don't delete
> notable articles because of concerns about "human dignity", as
> basically
> everyone has agreed in several obvious examples like [[Joseph
> Merrick]].
>
> If we're going to start bringing in other content-based guidelines,
> then
> why is "human dignity" the first or only one?  How about, "delete --
> inflames ethnic conflict"?
>
> -Mark

That we tend to inflame political conflict is certainly the reason
the Chinese have blocked us. Zeq has been working on me regarding
inflaming ethnic conflict. Human dignity I like and support, both for
reasons of being kind and as a legal prophylactic. I just don't think
we should act mean. With great power comes great responsibility.

Fred


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: GerardM

subject:
[Foundation-l] Requests to use the foundations'
	trademarks/logos.

body:
Hoi,
Can I understand that this permission for using our content can be seen as a
precedent for similar organisations like the Library of Congress..
organisations like the Koninklijke Bibliotheek .. ?? (
http://www.kb.nl/index-en.html )
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 7/15/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you to the several of you who contacted me offlist about this.
>
> Danny, mindspillage, gmaxwell, and I met in DC with the Library of
> Congress
> folks who are responsible for the digital harvesting and web archival
> functions.  LoC is a big place, and the folks we met with coordinate a lot
> of different elements.
>
> One of the folks pulled out a folder which included a sheaf of the emails
> that end up in OTRS.  She passed one over to me and was explaining how the
> curatorial folks are interested in including a specific page or set of
> pages
> as part of a discrete topic, etc. and before she was done speaking I had
> written at the bottom in large letters in a blue pen, "BLANKET PERMISSION
> GRANTED" s/BP and all that.
>
> That there would be a moment's hesitation to cooperate fully with the
> Library of Congress is beyond my comprehension.  I only regretted that we
> hadn't had an opportunity to meet with them earlier.
>
> Working with LoC will likely be a two-way street.  They have 40 TB (that's
> terabytes - 10 million items) of digital collection which is of great
> interest to us.  They also are interested in the full archival approach,
> given what the projects have become as part of the American internet
> phenomenon.  How that will be accomplished is still being discussed and
> will
> involve several different elements within LoC.
>
> Part of the reason I took this job was to be able to sit across the table
> from other organizations and do something for the betterment of the
> projects.  Largely, such ideas of working together has been stifled by a
> simple lack of time and bandwidth from board members and Jimmy.  I'm glad
> that we are moving in this direction.
>
> Oh, and we're going to get the whole digital archive of the US Holocaust
> Memorial Museum too.  =)  Thanks to Danny Wool.
> --
> Brad Patrick
> General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> 727-231-0101
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I am curious to know whether very many people agree with me that "human
> dignity" is a valid reason for a "delete" vote in a case like this.
>

Not in the slightest.  That's a POV, which I may or may not agree with,
but which has no place shaping the contents of the encyclopedia.  Either
the subject is not notable, in which case there should be no article, or
he/she is, in which case there should be.  Obviously we don't delete
notable articles because of concerns about "human dignity", as basically
everyone has agreed in several obvious examples like [[Joseph Merrick]].

If we're going to start bringing in other content-based guidelines, then
why is "human dignity" the first or only one?  How about, "delete --
inflames ethnic conflict"?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident
>> that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
>> does boneheaded things from time to time.
>>
>
> This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
> is AP's reportage using a full name.

It's standard journalistic practice to report names unless there's some
reason to believe that doing so would cause the person imminent harm
(e.g. Mafia witnesses).  The main reason is so that news can be
verifiable by outside sources.  There is also sometimes an exception for
sources who have agreed to talk to a journalist on condition of
anonymity, but that is increasingly discouraged for the same
reason---articles based on "a source who asked not to be named" could
be, and sometimes have been, entirely made up.

-Mark


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again)

references:
<b80736c80607131613y7603ea91qc410afa86435554f@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90607131640t2d2f9cfbo48f652d5bebbd210@mail.gmail.com>
	<dfgeb29avft24pptb892ut798jbtmp5s10@4ax.com>
	<71cd4dd90607140203y2c2ff212r20f02effaa3c8913@mail.gmail.com>
	<sncfb2te8hfvs3le7r2ka5is0dtmfpfokk@4ax.com>
	<71cd4dd90607140936t5c39a62djd754130a0519e90b@mail.gmail.com>
	<0nkfb2ltmpng9eqtcu9to4r7vd8b1q2i5j@4ax.com>
	<71cd4dd90607141424h7859c0dbh3bdf655b5ebcb002@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 17:24:11 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>> You're missing the point.  We don't know either way, there are no
>> reliable sources.  we don't have a court transcript, a report from the
>> paper, a statement, nothing.

>So you think the guy's brother was telling the truth, and then he
>retracted it for some reason?  Or you think some random guy made up a
>hoax story which just coincidentally happened to be the truth?

No, as I've said several times, I think *we don't know* because there
are no reliable sources.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] re  GFDL publisher credit

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Registration is certainly nice in GFDL and most copyleft enforcement
>>>because it sets up a minimum statutory penalty if you can prove
>>>copyright infringement.  Otherwise you can only seek actual damages.
>>>Note that the registration must take place before the infringement
>>>occurs.  This is something I've discussed at length on this mailing list
>>>before, with many individuals on this list quite against formal
>>>registration, and deliberate obfuscation of user information that would
>>>make such registration difficult to impossible.
>>>
>>>All I'm pointing out is that the situation right now is exactly up to
>>>individual contributors, and you are correct, it boggles the mind to
>>>think what is really necessary to do this enforcement.
>>>
>>>
>>The problem with actual damages is that they are measured in monetary
>>terms and need to be proven.  Since we all give our services for free
>>there is no damage to be proven.  Only statutory damages make sense.  Of
>>course anyone with a copyright interest in a work should be legally
>>entitled to file a registration.  Those with more radical views about
>>the nature of free content should have no business preventing others
>>
>>
>>from protecting their own rights.  If they want to remain anonymous that
>
>
>>would still be their choice.  The material that should be registered
>>could be in the form of a data dump onto CD(s) that are sent monthly or
>>on some other regular basis.
>>
>>
>One of the requirements for formal registration of copyright require
>that you document the nationality and residence (the name of the country
>you live in is sufficient) of all copyright claimants.  The purpose of
>this is to know what laws actually protect the content, as international
>copyright conventions do apply and nationality does have some impact on
>copyright protection.
>
Registration is still not a requirement for owning copyright, only for
seeking remedies.  The United States had to remove the registration
requirement because international treaties forbid it.  I haven't
investigated this, but it seems that these administrative requirements
for registration may derive from regulations rather than statutes.
Perhaps foreign editors can grant jurisdiction to US courts on this.
The requested details may be impossible to untangle for a variety of
reasons.  Author lists for every article can be provided, but the
usefulness of those list is highly questionable.  You could take the
approach that it is the responsibility of the US Government to primarily
protect the interests of its own citizens both at home and abroad.  If
some foreigner accidently gets protected that's a bonus.  Government
forms are produced with the majority in mind.  At the time these things
were first produced it would have been unimaginable to think that a
publication could have many thousands of mostly unidentifiable authors.
If you contact somebody at the copyright office who knows how to think
outside the box, some kind of solution may be available.

>I made a request almost a year ago that Wikimedia projects allow
>voluntary declaration of this information (I don't think it should ever
>be compelled), together with your real legal name for this purpose.  The
>proposal was mainly that such information could be put into the user
>preferences section where you also put your sig and some other personal
>details like e-mail address.  Even asking for voluntary declarations of
>information like this was met with incredible hostility and accusations
>that I didn't understand the WMF privacy policy.  The purpose of
>collecting this information was specifically so I could file formal
>copyright registration on behalf of Wikibooks users including myself.
>
I remember that.  Did you seriously expect that it would be any
different? ;-)   It's Dilbert's cubicle on a global scale. :-)
Some obsessions with privacy verge on paranoia.  Those individuals need
to realize that there's a downside to that.

>BTW, the Library of Congress does not have a maximum limit of only 5
>copyright claimants, but since the GFDL suggests the number of 5 people
>listed, most people assume that is the most that you are permitted to
>list as authors.  It is not, and I don't see a problem with listing 20
>or more people, as can happen with some Wikimedia projects.  For
>Wikibooks, that can be 20 different people with significant
>contributions.  My reading of the GFDL is that it suggests that you
>should list at least five different people if there were that many
>contributors, and that meets the minimum terms of the GFDL, and not
>necessarily even the minimum requirements for copyright law.
>
LOC may not have a maximum limit of 5, but can it handle thousands?  As
far as all this goes GFDL is a separate issue.  A good summary of what
you are saying is, "Many people don't know how to read."

>For the Wikijunior books and for some of the other Wikibooks, this
>information is being collected more informally in "author" pages where
>this information is being listed.  It is also assumed that when a
>Wikibook is published, that this information will also be used (at least
>the author's names) as credit for who helped put together the content.
> Again, this is all voluntary and some people have removed their names
>from these author pages as well for various reasons.  Even these pages
>have been controvercial, with some cries to have them all deleted and
>banned by policy.  This is why I say that the WMF is encouraging
>deliberate obfusaction of user information preventing copyright
>registration.
>
AFAIK there has only been one takedown order recently.  These should all
be made public, and the affected authors notified, because anybody can
file for a putback.  I don't see things as "deliberate", but there is a
strong need for leadership at the Board level on this issue.

>At the moment, however, I don't know of any specific content for any
>Wikimedia project that has had formal copyright registration occur.  And
>you are correct that trying to prove damages that a free project like
>this would be difficult at best for any monitary amount, although I
>think a judge could still come up with at least some modest amount just
>to prove a point that copyright violations are wrong to do, even for
>free content.
>
I don't know that a judge would do that.  Imposing punitive damages
without legal authority is something that could be easily reversed on
appeal.  The statutory damages provisions in effect are what provides
the authority.  The judge then has flexibility within the numerical
boundaries in the law.

I know of no existing registrations either.  Perhaps the way to go would
be to boldly go forth, listing the authors you know and adding "plus XX
unidentified authors."  Sending one in will at least let you know if it
gets accepted.  Beyond that, you certainly should not be the one stuck
with the burden of the filing fees for a large number of registrations.

Ec

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/14/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>" ...Wikimedia doesn't transfer the ownership of anything, and there is no
>>rental, lease, or lending. But then again, by that definition
>>*nothing* distributed over the Internet is published, and I doubt a
>>court would agree with that...."
>>
>>Because of the way the GFDL works, ownership is transferred to every person
>>that receives it.
>>
>>
>Ownership of what?  The ownership of copyright doesn't get
>transferred.  Copies of the work don't get transferred.  What gets
>transferred?  Bits?
>
I agree with you on this.  GFDL is a licence, not a transfer of ownership.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/14/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Fortunately, most AP stories vanish from the net pretty quickly.  This
> one will.  The Yahoo link will die in a few months.  But imagine if
> someone were to write a Wikipedia article using precisely the (daft, if
> you ask me) arguments that Anthony DiPierro has been using.  It is a
> confirmable story, we do know a number of fairly trivial facts about
> her, and... we might imagine... this *could* become an idiotic short
> lived meme among the immature segment of the under-17 crowd on the
> Internet, as did Brian Peppers.
>
It could, I suppose, but it hasn't.

When this woman starts getting the level of searches for her name that
Brian Peppers does, why don't you bring this up again.

Until then, you're making a strawman argument.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/14/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 7/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote
>>>
>>>
>>>>>Robert Scott Horning said:
>>>>>The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold
>>>>>copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free
>>>>>Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a
>>>>>copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the
>>>>>copyright and defending the GPL.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>My preference here would be to have each editor appoint WMF as a
>>>>non-exclusive agent for the purpose of taking all steps to defend
>>>>editors' copyrights.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Optionally, I hope.  I personally have no desire to sue people over
>>>the vast majority of my legal rights under copyright law.  Basically,
>>>as long as you don't take my works and then create a non-free
>>>derivative, I don't care what you do with it, at least so far as
>>>copyright law is concerned.
>>>
>>>
>>I think that that view is shared by most of us who have a philosophical
>>attachment to the concept of free information.
>>
>>
>I dunno.  I've seen an awful lot of lawsuit-happy Wikipedians.  I've
>even been legally threatened by a number of them for running a mirror
>site.
>
Hmmm!  Maybe things are worse than I imagined.  I've gradually come to
the conclusion that the more mirrors and forks we have, the better.
I've even considered that having more fair use material may in fact help
free use.

As for you "lawsuit-happy Wikipedians", they often fail to see the big
step between threatening a lawsuit and starting one.  My only answer to
them would be, "So do it!"

>>>Frankly, I'd hope that the WMF would do the same, and only use
>>>lawsuits to make works more free, not less.
>>>
>>>
>>I presume that with "optionally" you are referring to WMF retaining the
>>option to sue or not sue based on the circumstances of the situation,
>>and not that each editor has an option about naming WMF as agent ...
>>sometimes.  The alternative would only create more confusion when the
>>WMF's right to pursue the matter comes up.  On the other hand, it would
>>be ridiculous to demand that WMF pursue with vigour every bit of
>>perceived copyvio.
>>
>>
>What I'm saying is that if the WMF requires me to give it the right to
>enter into copyright lawsuits on my behalf, I won't ever contribute
>anything to Wikipedia or any of the other projects again.  (I suppose
>I'd make an exception for those things that I'm willing to give to the
>public domain).
>
If it's in the public domain, there's no copyvio, and no rights to give.

>I don't want the WMF to have the option to sue or not sue based on the
>circumstances of the situation.  I obviously can't stop others from
>giving them this right, but I won't give it to them for my own
>content.
>
Circumstances to me mostly have to do with the severity of the copyvio,
or whether a particular case is practical or worth it.

It may be enough for one editor on a page to give them the right to sue.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
On 7/14/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >>I presume that with "optionally" you are referring to WMF retaining the
> >>option to sue or not sue based on the circumstances of the situation,
> >>and not that each editor has an option about naming WMF as agent ...
> >>sometimes.  The alternative would only create more confusion when the
> >>WMF's right to pursue the matter comes up.  On the other hand, it would
> >>be ridiculous to demand that WMF pursue with vigour every bit of
> >>perceived copyvio.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >What I'm saying is that if the WMF requires me to give it the right to
> >enter into copyright lawsuits on my behalf, I won't ever contribute
> >anything to Wikipedia or any of the other projects again.  (I suppose
> >I'd make an exception for those things that I'm willing to give to the
> >public domain).
> >
> >I don't want the WMF to have the option to sue or not sue based on the
> >circumstances of the situation.  I obviously can't stop others from
> >giving them this right, but I won't give it to them for my own
> >content.
> >
> >Anthony
> >
> >
> I hope that you are correct and I am wrong in a concern about the lack
> of a copyright over Wikimedia project content by the WMF.  I can't
> possibly envision all of the situations that real life might bring up,
> and I've seen over the years too many unusual situations to be able to
> even predict just what might be an issue in the future that would
> require a WMF copyright claim on project content.  It just seems as
> though the dismissal of claim of copyright hasn't been completely
> thought through, nor is this denial of claim formal either.
>
> What I am suggesting is that if the WMF has a copyright claim on project
> content (not necessarily exclusive claim, which is a different issue),
> there are both good and bad legal points to be made about what the
> consequences of that copyright claim might be, as is also the case of a
> denial of copyright claim entirely.

Actually, I think the WMF most likely *does* have its own independent
claim of copyright on project content, which is why I have asked them
to formally and explicity disclaim any such interest (assuming Danny
is correct that they don't want it).  But any lawsuits the WMF enters
into on its own behalf would, I think (IANAL), require the WMF to have
its own independent standing.  Now this is complicated by the fact
that the GFDL has that (annoying, IMO) automatic termination clause
(section 9), but I would like to think that a judge wouldn't let the
WMF sue me because I, for instance, left out User:Wik from an author
list.

Anyway, my content, which I contribute, is copyrighted by me, and if
someone takes only that content and no one elses than I only I have
the right to sue over the "misuse" of it.  If someone wants to take my
content (and the content of others like me) and use it in a CC-by-SA
work, for instance, I'm not going to sue them, even though that
technically violates the GFDL.  Presumably the WMF wouldn't sue them
either, but I can imagine situations in which the WMF would be likely
to sue and I wouldn't.  If the WMF does have a copyright interest in
Wikipedia, it is likely quite easy to separate out those parts and
still use the rest, at least for something on the level of a small
subset of the overall collection.

Anthony

> Often some organizations will
> assume liability on behalf of their members, especially volunteers, for
> official activities of that organization.  The American Red Cross and
> the Boy Scouts of America are two organizations I know of that do this
> for their volunteers.  As a volunteer scouter, if I get sued because of
> my activities when involved with working with youth, the Boy Scouts will
> have their legal representatives consult with me over the situation and
> defend me in court.  There are official policies and such that must be
> followed, and I have to convince them that I was following those
> polices, but the safty net is there to help me volunteer.  I don't know
> how far the WMF would go to defend project contributors who are acting
> in good faith and follow project and WMF policies to the best of their
> ability.  I hope I never find out.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/14/06, Sydney aka FloNight <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> Angela, for example, is known for a small area of her life if we go by verifiable, reliable sources. For that reason the information is best covered in another article.
>
The thing is, Angela has gotten involved with a number of different
things: Wikipedia/Wikimedia, Wikia, and Ourmedia (two non-profits and
a for-profit, all of which are relatively well-known, and all of which
have their own Wikipedia articles).  I really don't think it makes
sense to mention this in every single one of those articles - what
makes sense is to have a single article which links to each.

> Of course for dignity reasons, it is worse when the only thing that someone is famous for may be one small stupid mistake.
>
I think human dignity is certainly a factor, though I'd probably
phrase it as right to privacy.  In fact, the first time one particular
article went up for deletion (I think it was Jimbo, but it might have
been Angela), I voted to delete it out of respect for their wishes.
Wikipedia/Wikimedia has gotten a lot bigger since then (I'm not even
sure if the latter existed at the time), as has Wikia, and at this
point I think the public right to know outweighs the individual right
to privacy, at least so long as the article is kept narrow.

Anthony


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China]]:
	mainspace or not

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

> On 7/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 7/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > Wikipedia should avoid gratuitous self-reference, but the blocking of
>> > Wikipedia by China is itself newsworthy/articleworthy, IMO.  We have a
>> > [[Wikipedia]] article, after all - not all self-reference is
>> > forbidden.
>>
>> I think that's a good assessment, and good criteria to use. The blocks
>> have been covered in the major media, and the articles ties in with
>> other articles about PRC internet censorship, particularly [[Baidu
>> Baike]].
>
> Well as someone living on the front lines of Wikipedia access in
> China, I do think moving the article to Wikipedia: namespace is the
> correct thing to do. It's not really appropriate for the main
> namespace. It wouldn't be appropriate for any of these either:
>
> [[Blocking_of_BBC_in_mainland_China]]
> [[Blocking_of_Blogger_in_mainland_China]]
> [[Blocking_of_HRIC_in_mainland_China]]

Why wouldn't they be appropriate? The subject, including the treatment
of Wikipedia, the BBC, and various bloggers and blogging services, has
been of great interest to some people and has received considerable
mainstream media coverage.

It's certainly possible that the article incorporates material that is
either not neutral or not verifiable. That should be handled by pruning
it, and if the pruning is drastic enough the article might warrant
merging. Perhaps to [[Internet censorship in mainland China]]
(neutrality check: would [[Internet filtering in mainland China]] be a
better title?). But moving to the Wikipedia namespace is not the
solution to these problems any more than deleting the article would be.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >
> > I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident
> > that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
> > does boneheaded things from time to time.
>
> This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
> is AP's reportage using a full name. What would likewise be
> undignified would be the immortalisation of this in a biography,
> forever linking this person's name with this event and this event
> alone (there is no other biographical information available), as if
> that was the sum total of their life.
>
I think that's in part due to the details of the incident, though.
Otherwise, we should probably delete [[John Couey]] and a whole host
of other articles on criminals.

Calling 911 to get a date is boneheaded.  Trying to force yourself
sexually onto a child is more than just boneheaded.

Anthony


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/15/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Jul 14, 2006, at 5:01 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > imagine if
> > someone were to write a Wikipedia article using precisely the
> > (daft, if
> > you ask me) arguments that Anthony DiPierro has been using.  It is a
> > confirmable story, we do know a number of fairly trivial facts about
> > her, and... we might imagine... this *could* become an idiotic short
> > lived meme
>
> The worst aspect of this is that there is no way to flesh out the
> woman's humanity. It is doubtful any other published information exists.
>
> Fred
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

My comment as a regular Articles for Deletion participant was that the
article doesn't meet WP:BIO. The only possible grounds under WP:BIO are
"Persons achieving renown or notoriety for their involvement in newsworthy
events."

My definition of a newsworthy event is something that is reported over a
number of days or page one news on the day it happened such as the Mumbai
bombings. Being reported in an AP or Reuters Oddly Enough story just doesn't
cut it for mine. Those stories are usually used as filler on Page 9.

Further, we have one source the AP story. We don't have enough information
to write a reasonable article or stub about her. In my opinion, the same
applies to Brian Peppers.

We should consider human dignity. We are the leading biographical resource
available on the Internet. If an employer is Googling a possible employee, a
Wikipedia entry will almost inevitably come up on the first page of results.
We should consider human dignity.

Please see our biography guidelines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BIO

Regards

Keith Old

User:Capitalistroadster


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident
>> that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
>> does boneheaded things from time to time.
>
> This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
> is AP's reportage using a full name. What would likewise be
> undignified would be the immortalisation of this in a biography,
> forever linking this person's name with this event and this event
> alone (there is no other biographical information available), as if
> that was the sum total of their life.

I'm not sure what the distinction between "embarrassing" and
"undignified" is, here. And I already addressed the lack of other
information separately, I would already have supported deletion on that
basis alone. I was assuming that there was something more to the
incident for the sake of argument so that the matter of "human dignity"
could actually be addressed.

This incident is really a bad example for discussing the subject we're
supposedly discussing, I wish Jimbo had used one that wasn't so
obviously deletable for unrelated reasons.

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland
 China]]:	mainspace or not

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Wikipedia should avoid gratuitous self-reference, but the blocking of
>>> Wikipedia by China is itself newsworthy/articleworthy, IMO.  We have a
>>> [[Wikipedia]] article, after all - not all self-reference is
>>> forbidden.
>> I think that's a good assessment, and good criteria to use. The blocks
>> have been covered in the major media, and the articles ties in with
>> other articles about PRC internet censorship, particularly [[Baidu
>> Baike]].
>
> Well as someone living on the front lines of Wikipedia access in
> China, I do think moving the article to Wikipedia: namespace is the
> correct thing to do. It's not really appropriate for the main
> namespace. It wouldn't be appropriate for any of these either:
>
> [[Blocking_of_BBC_in_mainland_China]]
> [[Blocking_of_Blogger_in_mainland_China]]
> [[Blocking_of_HRIC_in_mainland_China]]

Is there anything like a [[Blocking of external media in mainland
China]] article? I think that would be quite reasonable to have an
article about. And when that article grows to an unwieldy size it would
also be justified to split it up into subtopics much like the ones you
list. So no, I think it's quite appropriate to have those articles, we
may just need a more obvious "parent" article about the subject in general.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> However, in such a scenario, the surviving Wikipedia would be merely
> a "dead" historical document, albeit a massive one with many
> alternative versions.
>
> Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
> actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
> will continue to exist for centuries to come?

I think it should be "living", but thanks to the complete record of
previous edits it would also still serve as a historical document - with
a copy of the database it should be possible to "dial back" Wikipedia to
a previous state at will. The only problem with using it as such might
come when AfD or its successors starts deleting articles because they're
"no longer notable any more", in which case articles of historical
significance will start going down the memory hole and future
researchers will need to resort to archived database copies for it.

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Adil W. Ahmad

subject: [Wikitech-l] Custom left nav per namespace?

body: Hi,A custom left nav per namespace is fairly simple to implement if you're willing to program in php. I have done something similar for our internal wiki, and it requires some patience but it can be done.One clue: use $wgTitle->getNamespace(); Let me know if you have questions...A


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>At the moment, however, I don't know of any specific content for any
>>Wikimedia project that has had formal copyright registration occur.  And
>>you are correct that trying to prove damages that a free project like
>>this would be difficult at best for any monitary amount, although I
>>think a judge could still come up with at least some modest amount just
>>to prove a point that copyright violations are wrong to do, even for
>>free content.
>>
>>
>>
>I don't know that a judge would do that.  Imposing punitive damages
>without legal authority is something that could be easily reversed on
>appeal.  The statutory damages provisions in effect are what provides
>the authority.  The judge then has flexibility within the numerical
>boundaries in the law.
>
>
What I was trying to imply here is that a case for some damages might
still be made, even though by being made available for "free" would
certainly made such award astonishingly small compared to what you would
have gained from trying to publish content with a more conventional "all
rights reserved" copyright.  The formula for determining that award
would have to be decided on a case-by-case basis and would be something
close to a nightmare for a judge to determine, or a plaintiff to present
as reasonable for copyleft content.  Copyleft content does have some
restrictions, and a violation of copyleft principles can potentially
show some damage depending on how blatant of a copyright violation was
done that completely ignored the license but treated it as public domain
content instead.

Having statutory damages available would act as a much better deterant
from people who wouldn't care about any copyright infringement or
violations of the terms of a license like the GFDL.  I think on this
point we are agreed.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 7/14/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> If you want to achieve functionality of having a custom menu on certain
> pages, you can always use templates. Personally, I don't think changing
> the left sidebar is a good idea: most users expect it to stay the same
> throughout the whole site.

What's the "left sidebar" exactly? The links down the left side
already do change depending on the page: "user contributions" only
appears when on a user page, for instance.

Steve


from_name: Peter Adams

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tell MW not to share extension's db connection

body:
thanks for the info Tim. i think I now have a better idea of the what
the issue is.

MW is opening a db connection. then my extension is opening a db
connection through it's own connection class (not through database.php).

The errors made by the extension's db connection are being caught by
MW's database::fetchObject()'s use of mysql_error() which is called
without a link identifier. By not calling mysqlerror with a link
identifier it is picking up any error found on the last link created
(the extension).

Unfortunately, the only way to clear a mysql_error seems to be to run
another of php's mysql function (like another query() or mysql_ping
()) or by closing the connection so my catch has to do something
pretty inefficient to work around this.

It seems like MW's database::fetchObject function should call
mysql_error() with it's own link as the param or at least have an
option to do so that could be set by the extension developer. That
way extensions that are bridges to large frameworks with their own
error handling don't have to worry about MW's error handling or set
MW to ignore off all of it's own database errors.

Thoughts/ideas?

-P-

On Jul 14, 2006, at 10:00 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> Peter Adams wrote:
>> Hi all -
>>
>> I'm writing an analytics package for MediaWiki and am running into an
>> issue where even though my extension creates a separate mysql
>> connection, MW is catching the DB errors and throwing up its stack
>> trace.
>>
>> I'm running php 4.4.2 and MW 1.6.3.
>>
>> It appears that MW is trying to use the mysql connection that my
>> extension has established. a quick look at the MW database.php
>> suggests that this  might be an optimization.
>>
>> Could anyone provide some guidance on how to best avoid this if you
>> are writing an extension that needs to make a mysql connection?
>
> You can create a database connection with new Database(...). This
> creates a
> new connection, unless you have DBO_PERSISTENT enabled which you
> almost
> certainly don't. Throwing an exception is the standard way to
> report a query
> error, if this is a problem for you then you can use
> $database->ignoreErrors(true). It's probably better though if you
> just catch
> the exception, the ignore errors mode isn't very well tested. You can
> suppress connection errors by passing 1 for the $failFunction
> parameter of
> the Database constructor.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

/**
   * Peter Adams  <peter at openwebanalytics.com>
   *
   * Open Web Analytics - the open source web analytics framework.
   *    Blog >>   http://www.openwebanalytics.com/
   *    Wiki >>    http://wiki.openwebanalytics.com
   */


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 14 Jul 2006 at 20:31, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Perhaps an article like [[Stupid things which people have done]] would
> satisfy the cravings of those readers.

That would be quite a lengthy article...  :-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 15 Jul 2006 at 00:34, "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Along these lines:
> Will anyone care in a year? two years? ten years? one hundred years?
>
> Wikipedia is forever.

This is an interesting line of discussion... Just what does everybody
think is likely to be the future of Wikipedia in ten, one hundred,
one thousand, ... years?

Barring a total catastropic collapse of civilization (and possibly
even then), it's likely that some copy of some portion of some
version of Wikipedia will survive somewhere, given its wide
dissemination.  Such a thing will likely be an imporant resource for
future historians / archeologists / anthropologists / etc.
researching human culture of the early 21st century.

However, in such a scenario, the surviving Wikipedia would be merely
a "dead" historical document, albeit a massive one with many
alternative versions.

Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
will continue to exist for centuries to come?

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


from_name: Adam Lorenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
Hehe, look at [[WP:LAST]]

:)

Adam

On 7/15/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> On 15 Jul 2006 at 00:34, "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Along these lines:
> > Will anyone care in a year? two years? ten years? one hundred years?
> >
> > Wikipedia is forever.
>
> This is an interesting line of discussion... Just what does everybody
> think is likely to be the future of Wikipedia in ten, one hundred,
> one thousand, ... years?
>
> Barring a total catastropic collapse of civilization (and possibly
> even then), it's likely that some copy of some portion of some
> version of Wikipedia will survive somewhere, given its wide
> dissemination.  Such a thing will likely be an imporant resource for
> future historians / archeologists / anthropologists / etc.
> researching human culture of the early 21st century.
>
> However, in such a scenario, the surviving Wikipedia would be merely
> a "dead" historical document, albeit a massive one with many
> alternative versions.
>
> Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
> actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
> will continue to exist for centuries to come?
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Adam J. Lorenz


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Anthony wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 7/14/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>" ...Wikimedia doesn't transfer the ownership of anything, and there is no
>>>rental, lease, or lending. But then again, by that definition
>>>*nothing* distributed over the Internet is published, and I doubt a
>>>court would agree with that...."
>>>
>>>Because of the way the GFDL works, ownership is transferred to every person
>>>that receives it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Ownership of what?  The ownership of copyright doesn't get
>>transferred.  Copies of the work don't get transferred.  What gets
>>transferred?  Bits?
>>
>>
>>
>I agree with you on this.  GFDL is a licence, not a transfer of ownership.
>
>
It transfers rights tantamount to ownership (all of this GNU crap does).
And may qualify
as a transfer of copyight since it conveys "RIGHT TO COPY" == COPYRIGHT.
People
just for some reason are not able to get this. Go read the licence. If
you grant someone unlimited
RIGHT TO COPY under the Doctrine of Esstoppel, after they do it for some
period of time,
it may qualify as a transfer of copyright.

There is case law that backs up this view -- Copyrights can be
transferred on the back of a bubble gum
wrapper according to one ruling by the Circuit courts when you give
someone UNLIMITED RIGHT TO COPY
something.

Jeff

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


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
> actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
> will continue to exist for centuries to come?
>

I'd say it's likely that some such thing will exist, whether called
"Wikipedia" or not; possibly even multiple such things.  I find it hard
to imagine a scenario in which the idea of collaboratively building an
encyclopedia through a global communications
medium falls entirely out of favor and isn't revived by anyone.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>
>>Anthony wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 7/14/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>" ...Wikimedia doesn't transfer the ownership of anything, and there is no
>>>>rental, lease, or lending. But then again, by that definition
>>>>*nothing* distributed over the Internet is published, and I doubt a
>>>>court would agree with that...."
>>>>
>>>>Because of the way the GFDL works, ownership is transferred to every person
>>>>that receives it.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Ownership of what?  The ownership of copyright doesn't get
>>>transferred.  Copies of the work don't get transferred.  What gets
>>>transferred?  Bits?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I agree with you on this.  GFDL is a licence, not a transfer of ownership.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>It transfers rights tantamount to ownership (all of this GNU crap does).
>And may qualify
>as a transfer of copyight since it conveys "RIGHT TO COPY" == COPYRIGHT.
>People
>just for some reason are not able to get this. Go read the licence. If
>you grant someone unlimited
>RIGHT TO COPY under the Doctrine of Esstoppel, after they do it for some
>period of time,
>it may qualify as a transfer of copyright.
>
>There is case law that backs up this view -- Copyrights can be
>transferred on the back of a bubble gum
>wrapper according to one ruling by the Circuit courts when you give
>someone UNLIMITED RIGHT TO COPY
>something.
>
>Jeff
>
>
What makes this position possibly valid is the fact people state the
content under such licenses is "FREE". When you say
something is FREE it implies a transaction or transfer occurred. "I did
not pay for this new hat, it was free and part of
a promotion, but it was given to me for FREE, and now it's MY PROPERTY".
I think you can see the logic. If folks
want to make claims they hold copyrights on materials under any of these
GNU licenses, the words "FREE" should not
be used and replaced with "LICENSED AT NO CHARGE FOR EDUCATIONAL
PURPOSES" and the words
"RIGHT TO COPY" replaced with "LICENSED UNDER THE TERMS."

Jeff

>
>
>>Ec
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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] re GFDL publisher credit


from_name: Jesse W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

references:
<mailman.91754.1152966904.4497.wikien-l@Wikipedia.org>
	<44B8CDFF.17428.104C1085@dan.tobias.name>
	<8meib25l5vh1l2h55mn30qluivle1mkdln@4ax.com>

body:
Noting I am probably being trolled, but still... ;-)
On Jul 15, 2006, at 12:00 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:14:07 -0400, "Daniel R. Tobias"
> <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> This is an interesting line of discussion... Just what does everybody
>> think is likely to be the future of Wikipedia in ten, one hundred,
>> one thousand, ... years?
>
> Microsoft will buy it.  You know they will - nobody is allowed to have
> ay significant presence in the digital world without the Evil Empire
> taking an interest.
They *can't* buy it - depending on what you mean by "it".  If you mean
having a copy of the content they can do anything (that the GFDL lets
them do) to, they already can have that, and they don't even have to
pay for it.  In fact, I'm slightly surprised they haven't set up a
mirror on MSN already.  If you mean the copyrights in the content, I
know a large number of contributors won't sell theirs, so that's more
or less moot, baring any joint authorship strangeness.  If you mean
owning the servers - hell, if Microsoft wanted to give us use of some
servers they owned, I wouldn't refuse - but that doesn't give them much
besides a nice publicity boost.  If you mean owning the trademarks
(name, logos, etc.), they'd have to go through the Foundation first.
If you mean controlling the Wikimedia Foundation, that might happen, in
which case there'd be a nasty, unpleasant split, with many contributors
pooling their cash and buying new hardware, and things would go on more
or less as they do now, except the leadership would change (and we'd
have a nasty, big wiki-iezed competitor to deal with).  Sort of like
what happened with Napster.  I can't think of any other meanings of
"it" - if anyone has some, please post.

> They will migrate it to .Net, the number of servers will multiply a
> hundredfold, performance will suck, and all contributions will be
> licensed under the MSFDL, which is sort of like GFDL except with
> Microsoft owning everything.
Well, they can't switch to the MSFDL if they want to combine it with
existing Wikipedia content, unless they can suborn the FSF - in which
case the world has ended, so we have other things to worry about... ;-)

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I would vote "delete, nn - human dignity".  A full explanation would be:
>> For goodness sake, leave the poor woman alone.
>
> It's a combination of factors, I think

I totally agree with that, to be sure.  What I am asking is whether or
not there is general agreement that *one* legitimate factor to consider
is human dignity, personal privacy, and so on.  I think so, and I think
that most people think so, but I also think that there is a faction who
disagrees, who thinks that we should barrel forward in all cases with
information, so long as we can verify it.

> - Did she actively seek out this publicity, or was it forced on her?
> - Is there an identifiable "cult" surrounding her persona that goes
> beyond narrowly limited demographic or subcultural subsets?
> - Have other publications using reliable processes (not necessarily
> print) picked up the story for some reason other than reprinting it?
> Has it ever transcended the "Offbeat News" section?

Yes.  These are all valid questions, and this sort of question is what I
think saves us from "slippery slope" absurdities like "what George Bush
says he wants personal privacy?"

> Human dignity is one argument among many that can be applicable in
> certain situations. It's not a catch-all.

That's how I see it, too.  It is one factor among many.

--Jimbo

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident
> that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
> does boneheaded things from time to time.

Yes, but usually they do not end up being permanently presented in what
is arguably the most important encyclopedic record of our time.
Usually, such things come and go, a little blip in the news.  Even
today, when tons of information does get archived on the Internet, the
power of wikipedia, and the breadth of it, means that for many
borderline or non-notable people the #1 hit in google is going to be to
the Wikipedia article.

http://www.google.com/search?q=brian+chase&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hl=en-US&client=firefox-a


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image deletions not logged

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

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Naturally, you're not going to tell us which images they were so we have no hope
> of looking them up. Thanks! ;)

I suspect that Timwi doesn't know what he deleted. He has a vague idea,
but doesn't know exact names.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEuRtIqTO+fYacSNoRAqOhAJ0ZO094tEIsO8s0tIypQCP37of/cwCdHZop
HQdzp9ri88z7fplhKfbYkoM=
=QloX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:

>
>Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
>actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
>will continue to exist for centuries to come?
>
I think it's quite likely. There is some scientific software that
dates back into the 1960s, even the 1950s in a couple cases, and
it's still being worked on despite being started on close to the
very dawn of the computer age.

As time stretches out, context-setting becomes more and more
important. The thousand-year-old [[Suda]] is online - eye-opening
to read its entries that are equivalent to our stubs, and be
unable to get much from them because things are mentioned
but not explained, and the cited works have long since vanished.

Ironically, an implication is that a Brian Peppers article
then becomes needed just to supply the background to all the
arguing on this list and elsewhere... :-)

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image deletions not logged

references:
<e99ja9$v3s$1@sea.gmane.org> <44B89321.6050404@pobox.com>
	<e9b60c$eqe$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>> Naturally, you're not going to tell us which images they were so we have no hope
>>> of looking them up. Thanks! ;)
>
> I suspect that Timwi doesn't know what he deleted. He has a vague idea,
> but doesn't know exact names.

His browser history would know.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Mark Clements (HappyDog)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsing Wikitext in perl

body:
Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at ...> writes:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > 3) Has anyone ever done a (semi-)formal specification of MWT?
>
> Only the code.  There have been attempts, but there mostly
> out-of-date. There's a bug report for this:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7
>

Some work has been going on at mediawiki.org
(http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec and
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/).  It's early days and any input
would be appreciated, but it might help.

--
Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [[Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China]]: mainspace
	or not

body:
It seems that [[Blocking of Wikipedia in mainland China]] was just
moved to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China

The reason given was the [[Wikipedia:Avoid self-references]] rule.

The article is still linked by six mainspace articles. Should we merge
the information and remove the links or just move it back?


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Peter Adams wrote:
> Hi all -
>
> I'm writing an analytics package for MediaWiki and am running into an
> issue where even though my extension creates a separate mysql
> connection, MW is catching the DB errors and throwing up its stack
> trace.
>
> I'm running php 4.4.2 and MW 1.6.3.
>
> It appears that MW is trying to use the mysql connection that my
> extension has established. a quick look at the MW database.php
> suggests that this  might be an optimization.
>
> Could anyone provide some guidance on how to best avoid this if you
> are writing an extension that needs to make a mysql connection?

You can create a database connection with new Database(...). This creates a
new connection, unless you have DBO_PERSISTENT enabled which you almost
certainly don't. Throwing an exception is the standard way to report a query
error, if this is a problem for you then you can use
$database->ignoreErrors(true). It's probably better though if you just catch
the exception, the ignore errors mode isn't very well tested. You can
suppress connection errors by passing 1 for the $failFunction parameter of
the Database constructor.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Francis Tyers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Campaigns Wikia

body:
> > Please
> > re-read the context below - of course, you're right that "wiki" is not
> > equal to wikip/media - but that's not what Andre or Ruth were saying
>
> How were they saying otherwise? They thought wikia = wikipedia?
>
> -Bop

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Nowhere did anyone say "Wikia -
Wikipedia" apart from you.

Ruth mentioned the following:

"On July 4, 2006, Jimmy Wales opened a new wiki devoted to political
topics. You can find it at"

Andre mentioned:

"So? So nothing. Ruth is just warning people who expect to get to some
kind of Wikipedia as to what to actually expect."

Now, I don't see anywhere there where they say "Wikia is Wikipedia".

I think it is quite a reasonable thing to announce on the list and we
would have saved everyone a lot of time if you hadn't have gone off on
one over something you thought you read.

Incidentally, Ruth is right, it is not "just another Wiki", it is "just
another Wiki run by the guy who runs/owns/$your verb here$ Wikipedia".
Hence interesting, but another Wiki, say "Wikiporn" (recent AfD
candidate) would /not/ be interesting because it isn't run by Jimbo
Wales.

Fran.


body:
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Hash: SHA1

Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Thanks for reporting this - few direct calls to mysql_error() slipped
> in lately, I've replaced them with Database::lastErrno() and
> Database::lastError() which deal with connection contexts properly.
> Fixed in 15645.

Sounds almost as if it were a wiki. :-)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Ideas for faster MediaWiki startup

references:
<e97k44$15i$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e983j7$grn$1@sea.gmane.org>	<e985si$ojr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e98at6$b2a$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Still trying to be helpful, How do you plan on clearing these serialized
> caches?

filemtime()

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

references:
<5668b2t6g8nvmutcivoaaja49qs73c55rl@4ax.com>
	<2b76523c0607141453g34b97f3eo872e9567bc964b1e@mail.gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70607150716h7648e1f0q10fb4ab457796e20@mail.gmail.com>
	<pb0ib2dom1o71renkfvd06d8d074marfq5@4ax.com>
	<b8ceeef70607150936j185736dai66314e64a4ef56e9@mail.gmail.com>
	<qdeib21c5qsj61v387pr1aploikl5qc6k0@4ax.com>

body:
On 7/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:36:15 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Honestly, I don't really see much need for a reliable source for a
> >joke. If we say that a joke has a premise, a genre, a punchline etc,
> >then we give an example that meets the criteria - I don't really see
> >the harm if we invented the joke on the spot. If a better example
> >comes along, so much the better.
>
> Policy means nothing here, then?  We can allow OR and subjective
> judgments as to which jokes do or don't represent the genre?

I don't think we require that illustrations need citations to prove
they're representative, do we?  We do allow subjective judgments on
Wikipedia.

That said, academic citations would be cool - I'm sure there are
academic papers on jokes.

-Matt


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:16:45 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>Totally agree with you. An article about jokes that does not have
>enough examples to illustrate the concept of a joke is remiss. On the
>other hand, an article about jokes that includes 50 examples is also
>in error.

I'm happy with that, as long as we can cite reliable sources for the
jokes in question being widely considered representative of their
type.  As it is we don't even have cites for the listed types of joke
being considered as such.

*an* eaxmple.

Not twenty examples, mainly added by drive-by anons who just heard
this great joke.  And definitely not the
lets-see-who-can-find-the-most-offensive-joke cruft.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I am curious to know whether very many people agree with me that "human
> dignity" is a valid reason for a "delete" vote in a case like this.

Since we don't have a real policy on notability, anything is a valid
reason for voting delete if the people participating in that
particular AFD discussion think it is.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
On 7/14/06, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> There was a wikipedia guideline that I can't remember the name of --
> something like "show, don't just tell": if you're writing an article

[[WP:GRAPEFRUIT]], from memory.

> about trees it's good to have a photo of a tree; if you're writing
> about music, it's good to have a sound clip.  This is the same
> principle.  Should we remove all the photos at [[Tree]] because
> they're not totally reprentative of all trees?  It seems like the
> solution for [[Joke]] is to get an expert review, not to bulldoze a
> shabby but vibrant public space.

Totally agree with you. An article about jokes that does not have
enough examples to illustrate the concept of a joke is remiss. On the
other hand, an article about jokes that includes 50 examples is also
in error.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On Jul 15, 2006, at 2:08 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
> 20 years from now, it will have been
> totally superseded and no one will give a shit - it will not interest
> future historians, archeologists or anthropologists, any more than
> archives of usenet from the early 1990s interest today's historians,
> archeologists or anthropologists.

20 years is about 10 times too little aging for something to interest
an archeologist; maybe 5 times too little aging for a historian, and as
for the anthropologists - there are already a few studying usenet (I
think I remember reading anthro papers on usenet culture), and there
are sure to be many more. I think you radically underestimate both the
desperation of academics for interesting topics, and the sheer value
(to academics) of a massive archive of primary source material.
Presuming Wikipedia talk page data is available in 20 to 50 to 150
years, I expect considerable scholarly interest in it.  As for the
articles, probably less so, but they will probably interest historians
as much as any other old encyclopedia, like [[Suda]], for example.

As for whether there will be a free-content, reader-editable
encyclopedia around in some form in 50 years - I strongly suspect (and
hope) so.  Will it be called Wikipedia?  No idea.

Jesse Weinstein


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 7/15/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> This is an interesting line of discussion... Just what does everybody
> think is likely to be the future of Wikipedia in ten, one hundred,
> one thousand, ... years?

1,000 years is too far in the future to judge anything. If there
difference between 1000 AD and 2000 AD is any sort of barometer, 2006
will look pretty distant to 3006, not only technologically, but
politically, nationally, globally, etc.

100 years is the difference between 1900 and 2000. Again, pretty hard
to judge. But here we do have some institutions and regularly-produced
documents that can be a sort of barometer. Encyclopedia Brittanica is
the most useful analog to what we are talking about, and it is three
hundred years old. But even just looking back to the 1911 edition,
while some of the content is useful to use in 2006, much of it would
now be seen as not only out-of-date in the type of knowledge which
would be most expected to "age" (i.e. scientific knowledge) but even
things which would not even be assumed to "age" quite as much are
often pretty questionable (historigraphical method, for example, has
changed considerably, and it is hard to even tell the same story about
the same facts as one would a hundred years ago). But OK, even then,
that's a pretty good aspiration -- the 1911 serves as a base for a new
project, with new methods, and it does so primarily because it
currently exists in a very open copyright context (i.e. it is public
domain). Wikipedia's copyright context has been more-or-less open from
the beginning (the "more-or-less" reflects my own uneasiness with the
actual implementation of the GFDL, not its goals), though the
free-content movement is so young that it is hard to know what the
long-term effects will be (it may be that it effectively renders the
content unusable, because it may be less commercially viable to use
viral marketing, as one potential economic reason that it might not
take off in the way the advocates would expect).

The technology used to construct it will surely be out of date in 100
years, if not 5 or 10. The World Wide Web dates only from the early
1990s, let us not forget, and Wiki technology is even younger than
that. If the technology and information-production model is *not*
out-of-date within the decade, it will be somewhat depressing.

Another view might be that the essence of Wiki technology -- communal
editing -- could very well spread to many different aspects of
internet usage. Wikipedia's "edit this page" could become a lot less
special, and Wikipedia could lose out among all of the potential uses
of people's time. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Personally I think the long-term prospects of Wikipedia are probably
better than most websites, but that doesn't say very much. Even
without postulating technological-singularities and other over-hyped
futurism, the web seems to me to have a pretty limited lifetime, and
though I suppose the free content movement and most of the ideals of
its adherents, I don't really believe in the permanency of
information, on or off the web.

Most academics know that their work is going to be seen as "of a
previous generation" in less than a decade. It's not really as dire as
it sounds -- if it wasn't the case that most information aged rather
poorly, there would be precious little work left to do in all fields
of knowledge. If you aren't generating the future, then you're a
doorstop. That being said, the fact that information can "age in
realtime" on Wikipedia might make it a good deal more dynamic than
things which came before it, and it could really stand out as
something which could buck historical trends.

Personally, I'm a little pessimistic, but that doesn't mean that I am
going to support the project any less, or believe its work to be
futile. If Wikipedia stays "healthy" it could have a long life ahead
of it, and with any luck its free content model could be useful to
other projects in the future.

FF


subject: [Wikitech-l] How to change default options for blocking users?

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

Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Thanks to Tim bug 550 is fixt and now it is possible to be more specific
> who and what you like to block.

According to the bug report, the bug still isn't fixed. I'll investigate
recent checkins, but I'm doubtful that mere sysops can change it. You
can file another bug report requesting the default be changed.
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Can this be specified somewhere by a sysop on the wiki?

Default values are hard-coded in includes/SpecialBlockip.php and cannot
be changed via a Sysop. Please file another bug report.
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from_name: Mei Wu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Ontology import

body:
Hi all!

I am trying to import Ontologies into Mediawiki. I downloaded a couple of
ontologies from the web in .rdf format and imported them using the "Import
ontologies" Special page. However, every time I hit Import an error message
appears (see below).
I am running MediaWiki 1.6.7 and SemanticMediaWiki extension 0.4.3.2. I also
added the rdfapi-php to the SemanticMediaWiki "libs" folder. It looks like
the .php script is not recognized but I do not really know what the problem
is.

Does anybody has experiences with importing ontologies and have an idea what
the cause of this problem might be?

Thank you very much!

Best,
Mei

------------------error
message------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* * @package sparql */ class SparqlClient extends Object { var $server; var
$output; /** * Constructor of SparlClient. * * @param String $server server
address. */ function SparqlClient($server){ $this->server = $server;
$this->output = "array"; } /** * Sets the output format for a SELECT or ASK
query. Possible formats are "xml" for * Sparql Query Results XML Format (
http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-XMLres/) or array * for the format described
in our SparqlEngine. * * @param String $format the format. */ function
setOutputFormat($format){ if(strtolower($format)=="xml") $this->output =
"xml"; if(strtolower($format)=="array") $this->output = "array"; } /** *
Main function of SparqlClient. * * @param ClientQuery $query the ClientQuery
object. * @return mixed returns an array that contains the variables an
their bindings or a MemModel * */ function query($query){
if(!is_a($query,"ClientQuery")) die;//ErrorHandling $url =
$this->_buildurl($query); $result = $this->_http_get($url); return
$this->returnResult($result); } /** * Helper function that builds the url. *
* @param ClientQuery $query the ClientQuery Object. */ function
_buildurl($query){ $url = ""; $url =
$this->server."?query=".urlencode($query->query); foreach($query->default as
$defaultg){ $url = $url."&default-graph-uri=".$defaultg; }
foreach($query->named as $namedg){ $url = $url."&named-graph-uri=".$namedg;
} return $url; } /** * Returns the query result. * * @param String $result
the result. * @return mixed */ function returnResult($result){
if(strpos($result,"generateModel(substr($result,strpos($result,"output ==
"xml"){ $pos = strpos($result,"output == "array"){ // $pos =
strpos($buffer,"parseResult($result); } return $result; } function
parseResult($buffer){ include(RDFAPI_INCLUDE_DIR.PACKAGE_SYNTAX_SPARQLRES);
$parser = new SparqlResultParser(); return $parser->parse($buffer); } /** *
Executes the GET Request. * * @param String $url the url. * @return String
result. */ function _http_get($url) { $url = parse_url($url); $port =
isset($url['port']) ? $url['port'] : 80; $fp = fsockopen($url['host'],
$port); $replace = $url['path']; fputs($fp, "GET
".$replace."?".$url['query']." HTTP/1.0\n"); fputs($fp, "Host:".
$url['host']." \r\n"); fputs($fp, "Accept: text/html \r\n"); fputs($fp,
"Connection: close\n\n"); $buffer = ""; while ($tmp = fread($fp, 1024)) {
$buffer .= $tmp; } // return $buffer; $pos = strpos($buffer," * * @package
sparql */ class ClientQuery extends Object { var $default = array(); var
$named = array(); var $prefixes = array(); var $query; /** * Adds a default
graph to the query object. * * @param String $default default graph name */
function addDefaultGraph($default){ if(!in_array($named,$this->default))
$this->default[] = $default; } /** * Adds a named graph to the query object.
* * @param String $default named graph name */ function
addNamedGraph($named){ if(!in_array($named,$this->named)) $this->named[] =
$named; } /** * Adds the SPARQL query string to the query object. * * @param
String $query the query string */ function query($query){ $this->query =
$query; } } ?>
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------end
error message---------------------------------


from_name: Freply Spang

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 7/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...20 years from now, it will have been
> totally superseded and no one will give a shit - it will not interest
> future historians, archeologists or anthropologists, any more than
> archives of usenet from the early 1990s interest today's historians,
> archeologists or anthropologists.
>
>
Yeah, but the retro-nerds will have RFA re-enactment parties, and they'll
ironically put old-style "userboxes" all over their cyberpersonas. :-)

Freply


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
On 7/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I'm happy with that, as long as we can cite reliable sources for the
> jokes in question being widely considered representative of their
> type.  As it is we don't even have cites for the listed types of joke
> being considered as such.

Honestly, I don't really see much need for a reliable source for a
joke. If we say that a joke has a premise, a genre, a punchline etc,
then we give an example that meets the criteria - I don't really see
the harm if we invented the joke on the spot. If a better example
comes along, so much the better.

> *an* eaxmple.

Or even a couple, if they illustrate different types of jokes,
different forms etc.

> Not twenty examples, mainly added by drive-by anons who just heard
> this great joke.  And definitely not the

Definitely not. [[Jumping the shark]] is the definitive example of
that problem (or at least was, the last time I checked).

> lets-see-who-can-find-the-most-offensive-joke cruft.

Definitely, definitely not. But I don't believe in including offensive
material in general, except for the most mitigating circumstances. Eg,
if a politician's career was ended by telling a short, racist joke,
then it might be appropriate to repeat that joke. Maybe.

Steve


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Human dignity

body:
On 7/15/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> I don't even see what's so undignified about this particular incident
> that anyone would argue it on that basis in the first place. Everyone
> does boneheaded things from time to time.

This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
is AP's reportage using a full name. What would likewise be
undignified would be the immortalisation of this in a biography,
forever linking this person's name with this event and this event
alone (there is no other biographical information available), as if
that was the sum total of their life.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiFilter

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>
>> That being said, I can't really see a
>> DVD installing a *web-server* too in order to be read
>>
>
> This is how the early Britannica CD sets worked, along with a bunch of
> other encyclopedias that I've used ages ago. It's not an uncommon
> approach. You don't have to actually install anything -- simply run the
> webserver from the DVD/CD directly. The task is made especially easy if
> you code your webserver in, say, Python, as you can make things
> reasonably cross-platform without too much effort.
>
> I have a hacker trying to see if the parser component can be easily
> extracted and used separately.
>
>
Full MediaWiki and zero-install web server with a few demo pages
(Windows-only, 23 MB):
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/history05.zip

All I did was add a SpecialDatabase file to read raw text files as
articles, which can be generated by my wiki2xml script collection
(included).

Magnus

P.S.: I'm not the hacker mentioned above ;-)


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Campaigns Wikia

body:
2006/7/15, Ronald Chmara <ron at opus1.com>:

> Taking a ball and going home is not very productive. Feel free to do
> so, however, if you cannot collaborate, in a positive way, with the
> millions of software developers on the 'net who are just trying to Do
> The Right Thing(tm)'

If insulting me and other users for trying to be helpful is the right
thing (tm), then indeed I cannot collaborate with people who are
trying to do the right thing.

And since I cannot do so, I am going off this list NOW. Please Cc any
reactions that you want me to read to my address.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Campaigns Wikia

body:
On Jul 15, 2006, at 7:08 AM, Francis Tyers wrote:
>>> Please
>>> re-read the context below - of course, you're right that "wiki" is
>>> not
>>> equal to wikip/media - but that's not what Andre or Ruth were saying
>> How were they saying otherwise? They thought wikia = wikipedia?
>> -Bop
> Are you being deliberately obtuse? Nowhere did anyone say "Wikia -
> Wikipedia" apart from you.
> Ruth mentioned the following:
> "On July 4, 2006, Jimmy Wales opened a new wiki devoted to political
> topics. You can find it at"
> Andre mentioned:
> "So? So nothing. Ruth is just warning people who expect to get to some
> kind of Wikipedia as to what to actually expect."

This statement makes an assumption that a single wikia/wikicities
community is meaningfully related in some way to Wikipedia.

> Now, I don't see anywhere there where they say "Wikia is Wikipedia".

Why even *bother* mentioning wikia/wikicities, then?

> I think it is quite a reasonable thing to announce on the list and we
> would have saved everyone a lot of time if you hadn't have gone off on
> one over something you thought you read.

Wikia/wikicities was already announced a *long* time ago.  The general
project has been around since at least the 8th of December, 2003. It's
a totally separate project, and its ~1500 sub-wikis has nothing to do
with "what to actually expect" from Wikipedia (or vice versa), unless
Andre knows something that none of the rest of us do.

> Incidentally, Ruth is right, it is not "just another Wiki", it is "just
> another Wiki run by the guy who runs/owns/$your verb here$ Wikipedia".
> Hence interesting, but another Wiki, say "Wikiporn" (recent AfD
> candidate) would /not/ be interesting because it isn't run by Jimbo
> Wales.

Jimbo is involved in a *lot* of wikis, Wikipedia is one of them. They
(wikis he is involved in, in some way) have a very broad range of
rules. Looking at one that is not Wikipedia does not tell us "what to
actually expect" from Wikipedia, and looking at Wikipedia does not tell
us "what to expect" from his, or any other, wikis. There was a
deliberate attempt made to imply some form of linkage, where there
isn't any, other than Jimbo's involvement.

In regards to wikiporn, the closest wikia I've found is wikifur, at
furry.wikia.com. Been around since July 29, 2005. Should we should
announce it to the list as 'what to expect' from Wikipedia, or that
people expecting Wikipedia should realize that there are furries over
there, with different rules on their content than Wikipedia? Or that at
althistory.wikia.com, verifiability is nonexistent, so we should
announce it? With Jimbo involved in over 1,500 separate wikis, each
with their own rules, that's gonna create a *lot* of list traffic, as
compared to just realizing "hey, wikis that are not Wikipedia do not
have Wikipedia's rules, so people should not expect those other wikis
to be anything like Wikipedia."

-Bop
--
Ronald Chmara
4245 NE Alberta Ct.
Portland, OR 97218
503-282-1370


subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:36:15 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>> I'm happy with that, as long as we can cite reliable sources for the
>> jokes in question being widely considered representative of their
>> type.  As it is we don't even have cites for the listed types of joke
>> being considered as such.

>Honestly, I don't really see much need for a reliable source for a
>joke. If we say that a joke has a premise, a genre, a punchline etc,
>then we give an example that meets the criteria - I don't really see
>the harm if we invented the joke on the spot. If a better example
>comes along, so much the better.

Policy means nothing here, then?  We can allow OR and subjective
judgments as to which jokes do or don't represent the genre?

>> *an* eaxmple.

>Or even a couple, if they illustrate different types of jokes,
>different forms etc.

And a couple becomes three becomes four and before you know it we are
back where we were before, with a long list of jokes of variable
(generally poor) quality added mainly by drive-by anons.

>> Not twenty examples, mainly added by drive-by anons who just heard
>> this great joke.  And definitely not the

>Definitely not. [[Jumping the shark]] is the definitive example of
>that problem (or at least was, the last time I checked).

Exactly.  So: one example, with a good source for it being widely
considered representative, is the way to go :-)

>> lets-see-who-can-find-the-most-offensive-joke cruft.

>Definitely, definitely not. But I don't believe in including offensive
>material in general, except for the most mitigating circumstances. Eg,
>if a politician's career was ended by telling a short, racist joke,
>then it might be appropriate to repeat that joke. Maybe.

In the article on offensive jokes, we can include examples of
offensive jokes.  But in high level articles we should be a bit more
considerate.

Mind you, I would also have used :Image: in the Jyllands-Posten
article, so I am a notorious censor and suppressor of information :-)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 11:14:07 -0400, "Daniel R. Tobias"
<dan at tobias.name> wrote:

>This is an interesting line of discussion... Just what does everybody
>think is likely to be the future of Wikipedia in ten, one hundred,
>one thousand, ... years?

Microsoft will buy it.  You know they will - nobody is allowed to have
ay significant presence in the digital world without the Evil Empire
taking an interest.

They will migrate it to .Net, the number of servers will multiply a
hundredfold, performance will suck, and all contributions will be
licensed under the MSFDL, which is sort of like GFDL except with
Microsoft owning everything.

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


body:
MS> neutrality check: would [[Internet filtering in mainland China]] be a
MS> better title?

No. The internet censorship in China is not only filtering, as it
includes "self-censorship" of major news sites (officially, just for
"pornographic and violent Internet content"):
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-04/12/content_565793.htm

as well as censorship of all major forums:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_mama


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 7/15/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
.........
> Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
> actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
> will continue to exist for centuries to come?
>
> --
> == Dan ==

Hmm. Depends on how one defines the subject. I could argue that we
have already seen at least one encyclopedia be open to updates from
the general public for centuries to come- articles from EB and
[[Cyclopaedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences]] have
been incorporated in Wikipedia and updated by the "general public".

~maru


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation policy

body:
I think in the case of place-names, we're pretty lucky in that the
standard US place-name format (City, State) means that there is less
competition for the unadorned article.  This is part of why I fight
vociferously against the idea that comes up every so often that we
should abandon the convention for US placenames.  It avoids a whole
lot of arguments.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 12:20:05 -0700, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:

>> Microsoft will buy it.  You know they will - nobody is allowed to have
>> ay significant presence in the digital world without the Evil Empire
>> taking an interest.

>They *can't* buy it - depending on what you mean by "it".

The Foundation, of course.  And the world.  And a private furnace,
bigger, hotter, far than yours!

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:25:42 -0400, Fastfission
<fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

>1,000 years is too far in the future to judge anything.

"This article has been deleted by the uploaded persona of [[User:Jimbo
Wales]] and should not be re-created until 21 February 3007 at the
earliest"

On WP:DRV: Review of Myg0t, recently re-created after the eight
hundred and fourth deletion.

The GNAA AfD counter stands at 122,301.  A "nominate GNAA for
deletion" bot has now been approved to run nightly and thus reduce the
rate to one AfD per day.

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


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Thanks to Tim bug 550 is fixt and now it is possible to be more specific
who and what you like to block.

To specify this there are 2 tick boxes with these default settings;

[ ] Block anonymous users only

[X] Prevent account creation

I find these are not good default settings. The default setting should
be the softest block possible. And that is only a block for anonymous
users and account creation allowed.

So that this would be the default setting;

[X] Block anonymous users only

[ ] Prevent account creation

Can this be specified somewhere by a sysop on the wiki?

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Peter,

> Unfortunately, the only way to clear a mysql_error seems to be to run
> another of php's mysql function (like another query() or mysql_ping
> ()) or by closing the connection so my catch has to do something
> pretty inefficient to work around this.

Thanks for reporting this - few direct calls to mysql_error() slipped
in lately, I've replaced them with Database::lastErrno() and
Database::lastError() which deal with connection contexts properly.
Fixed in 15645.

Domas


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
The Encyclopaedia Britannica As We Know It has existed from, say, the
ninth edition (1889) to the present, and is probably in sharp decline
now. Let's say it's had about a 150-year life. I don't think it has
another twenty years in it. And I don't think the Boston Globe will
be available as smudgy ink on pulp paper delivered to front porches
in twenty years, either...

The slide rule as we know it--as a working tool for engineers--lasted
from about 1860 into the 1970s... a bit over a century.

Carbon paper... didn't really come into its own until the invention
of the typewriter... it's lasted a bit over a century, too.

"New media" though, have had a shorter life.

The text adventure game: Colossal Cave, early 1970s, to about 1990
and the folding of Infocom. About twenty years?

The soap opera: 1930 to present. The _radio_ soap opera, though,
obviously had a much shorter life. Thirty years?

Wikipedia is much harder to predict, though, because it is changing
over time and will continue to do so. I'd give good odds that ten
years from now there will be a recognizable "website" on something
called the "Internet" named "Wikipedia" that will be an online
encyclopedia, but I wouldn't bet that its culture and policies will
be closely similar to those in existence today.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 7/15/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wikipedia should avoid gratuitous self-reference, but the blocking of
> > Wikipedia by China is itself newsworthy/articleworthy, IMO.  We have a
> > [[Wikipedia]] article, after all - not all self-reference is
> > forbidden.
>
> I think that's a good assessment, and good criteria to use. The blocks
> have been covered in the major media, and the articles ties in with
> other articles about PRC internet censorship, particularly [[Baidu
> Baike]].

Well as someone living on the front lines of Wikipedia access in
China, I do think moving the article to Wikipedia: namespace is the
correct thing to do. It's not really appropriate for the main
namespace. It wouldn't be appropriate for any of these either:

[[Blocking_of_BBC_in_mainland_China]]
[[Blocking_of_Blogger_in_mainland_China]]
[[Blocking_of_HRIC_in_mainland_China]]

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: ScottL

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation policy

body:
Giuseppe DAngelo wrote:
> I've decided to ask this question here because I am interested in a more international perspective.  My query relates to the use of disambiguation.  Recently a survey was conducted to determine whether Syracuse should be a disambiguation page or whether it should link directly to the original Syracuse in Italy (creating a separate Syracuse disambiguation page for the others, as often happens).  Those who were in favour of it becoming a disambiguation page were overwhelmingly American, and had in mind the fact that Syracuse, New York is today a significant city.  Indeed, many were putting forward the argument that it should own the name outright because more google hits were looking for that particular city.
>
>   I think there is an issue here that goes beyond the original question.  Being an English language encyclopedia (and at the moment, the most international of all the wikipedias), it has to be asked how much such issues should end up being determined by the sway held by the largest group of native speakers (who, as it turns out, have both economic and technical clout).
>
>   As it happens, the survey ended up 15 to 8 in favour of Syracuse linking directly to the orginal and more historically significant Syracuse (after which the modern New York city was named), but a particular ruling clique managed to maintain it as a disambiguation page.
>
>   If you ask a purely American audience, they will clearly vote in favour of the link being to the New York city.  If an international audience is asked, my guess is that it would be to the original and historical one.  Making it a disambiguation page might seem the obvious and fairest solution - but for a serious encyclopedia, is that really the correct answer?
>
>   I finish by noting that Troy currently goes directly to the historical Troy, despite the fact that there are about a dozen place names in the US called Troy (which are dealth with in a separate Troy disambiguation page).   At a minimum, I see a problem of consistency, and I simply wonder whether there is something else at play here.  I hope I have managed to  explain this clearly.
>   pippu d'a
>
>
>
>  Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
>  http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

   As someone who use to do a bit of disambiguation link repair, I can
think of at least one factor that you left out that might be useful in
making these decisions.  If it is a disambiguation page, of the links
that point to it (or the ones that did point to it before they were
fixed) what percentage went to which article?

   If you point it to the historical city is it going to be a case where
the majority of people who link to it (without checking where that link
is going) are sending people to the wrong place?  Granted I don't think
these sorts of numbers should in all cases be the deciding factor, but
they should be taken into account.

   I try to view the disambiguation pages as technical rather than
editorial.  They are navigation aids to the reader and editor, and I
think there function as such should be taken into account.  TO me the
question is not "which city is more important" but "what will get people
to the page the intended".

Dalf


subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
On 7/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Policy means nothing here, then?  We can allow OR and subjective
> judgments as to which jokes do or don't represent the genre?

Honestly, I don't find creating original examples to be in violation
of NOR. An article about an element of musical theory would not be in
violation if an editor created an original piece of music that
demonstrated that theory. Just like we allow people to create original
diagrams that illustrate concepts. IMHO anyway. Subjective judgements
as to which jokes represent the genre are definitely ok - that's
exactly how Wikipedia functions. The entire thing is full of
"subjective judgements" as to which comparisons to what are relevant -
many articles on cities contain comparisons to other cities, and there
are plenty of examples of "subjective" decisions as to whether or not
the subjective of an example "represents" some other genre - our whole
category system is based on it. Not a problem.

> And a couple becomes three becomes four and before you know it we are
> back where we were before, with a long list of jokes of variable
> (generally poor) quality added mainly by drive-by anons.

No. You decide collectively how many jokes you want, then put a
comment in the text thus:

<joke 1>
...
<joke 4>
<!-- no more jokes please, see discussion: 4 is the right number -->

> Exactly.  So: one example, with a good source for it being widely
> considered representative, is the way to go :-)

One example is too limiting. What would an encyclopaedia do? It would
have the "right number" of "good examples". Something that takes what
one usually calls "editorial judgment". Very tricky to implement at
Wikipedia.

> In the article on offensive jokes, we can include examples of
> offensive jokes.  But in high level articles we should be a bit more
> considerate.

Definitely.

> Mind you, I would also have used :Image: in the Jyllands-Posten
> article, so I am a notorious censor and suppressor of information :-)

Better to be safe than sorry.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia is forever.

body:
On 7/15/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Barring a total catastropic collapse of civilization (and possibly
> even then), it's likely that some copy of some portion of some
> version of Wikipedia will survive somewhere, given its wide
> dissemination.  Such a thing will likely be an imporant resource for
> future historians / archeologists / anthropologists / etc.
> researching human culture of the early 21st century.
>
> However, in such a scenario, the surviving Wikipedia would be merely
> a "dead" historical document, albeit a massive one with many
> alternative versions.
>
> Or, is it the belief here that a "living" Wikipedia, still being
> actively updated and open to such updates from the general public,
> will continue to exist for centuries to come?

Since you asked. I think Wikipedia will continue to exist in pretty
much its current form for 5 years. It will continue to be useful and
referred to for ~10 years. 20 years from now, it will have been
totally superseded and no one will give a shit - it will not interest
future historians, archeologists or anthropologists, any more than
archives of usenet from the early 1990s interest today's historians,
archeologists or anthropologists.

I'm ok with that.

Steve


body:
On 7/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia should avoid gratuitous self-reference, but the blocking of
> Wikipedia by China is itself newsworthy/articleworthy, IMO.  We have a
> [[Wikipedia]] article, after all - not all self-reference is
> forbidden.

I think that's a good assessment, and good criteria to use. The blocks
have been covered in the major media, and the articles ties in with
other articles about PRC internet censorship, particularly [[Baidu
Baike]].

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] ..


subject: [Foundation-l] ..