body:
Anthony schrieb:
> On 7/13/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Robert
>>
>> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I am curious how you plan to compile these books in a format that looks
>>> good on paper and not strictly as a web format.  While this can be
>>> automated to an extent, I do think there are some issues that come from
>>> trying to move content from a web format to a printed page, and not all
>>> of these can be completely automated.
>>>
>> As you have pointed out, an automatic conversion of html (or mediawiki
>> markup) into latex can not be automated in a way that the book is
>> absolutely perfect.
>> But right now we are pretty satisfied with the results - even though we
>> are still working on improvments of the conversion.
>> The conversion is done with a parser we developed from scratch - as
>> mentioned in a previous post. The mediawiki markup is translated
>> into an internal representation which then gets transformed to latex (to
>> be more precise "context") - this is the hard part. It is slightly easier to
>> transform the internal representation back to html since some css-style
>> information can be maintained.
>>
>>
> As I've mentioned before, I'd love to see a Wikimedia project which
> does exactly this.  Then the latex could be edited collaboratively to
> make things more "absolutely perfect".  It's nice to see it's at least
> somewhat possible, though I'd say the quality of the previews right
> now is fairly low.
>
My wiki2xml converter is in the subversion repository. It is a set of
scripts to convert MediaWiki markup into XML, and from there into other
formats, including plain text, HTML, DocBook, and ODT
(OpenDocument/OpenOffice format). OpenOffice is also open source and can
generate PDFs natively.

I admit that wiki2xml is currently less advanced than the impressive
pediapress software, as it does not render <math> tags, does not make a
list of figures, etc. which is due to me being busy, and being too lazy
merging in patches by others ;-)

Magnus

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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
That's a scary thought.

What's the article on Israel on Arabic or Farsi Wikipedia like?

On 7/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
> > translation by a kind soul):
> > Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
> > Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> > policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
> > here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
> > we take any action over this issue.
> >
> > Sound okay?
>
>
> Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list and IRC about the Urdu
> Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> policy sitenotices of that type should not be used on wikimedia
> foundation projects. In particular it conflicts with the principle
> that wikipedia is written in NPOV (this includes religious
> endorsements). As a result we would like to disscuss the removal of
> the the text from site notice.
>
> That gives the reasons but the ending is too weak.
>
> Incerdentaly what is their article in Israel like?
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


list: wikien-l

from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are you [Fred] seriously equating article names with torture???
> > Obviously we've hit a nerve here, but ... gentlemen, please, calm down.
>
> I had thought that was a bit odd as well.
>
> -Stevertigo

Actually I thought it was a brilliant analogy.  Obviously he isn't equating
editing with torture, not even using it as a metaphor for torture.  Trying
to read it as anything other than an analogy is just plain silly.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion - VOTE PLEASE
 AND SOME ACTION PERHAPS

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jul 13, 2006, at 2:24 PM, Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>1. A final decision on the name change (I would like to see "Aniyvwiya
>>Gadugi" as the new name since this name will create
>>the impression the site is endowed with the spiritual energy of our
>>people and serve to attract Cherokee to the site, just a
>>suggestion, BTW.
>>It's a cultural thing and the disclaimer ("We are not endoring the
>>Cherokee Belief System in making this the name for the site, we did
>>so to
>>make the site more familiar and comfortable for Native Cherokee
>>authors,
>>etc." -- end quote). The name for "Cherokee Books"
>>"Tsalagi digoweli" should be reserved for a Cherokee Wikibooks site
>>when
>>the time comes.
>>
>>
>>2. Integration of the chr2syl program so people can actually USE the
>>site from a regular PC keyboard. Most Cherokee edit in text in any
>>event and we convert to syllabary with custom tools and fonts, but the
>>average joe Schmoe Cherokee wil only have a text based computer.
>>
>>I think Fred Bauder would like to see the site come to life, and I
>>know
>>Danny and Brad also have such a view. Can we move forward
>>please. Time for a Vote.
>>
>>Thanks for the consideration.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>
>I'd like to try it out.
>
>Fred
>
>

Thanks Fred,

Jeff

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


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
Sarah wrote:

>On 7/13/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>In my view the
>>principle is clear: if a person meets notability for a biographical
>>article, then the whole of their life is notable even if on its own
>>it would not qualify them. For example, Bill Clinton is not a notable
>>saxophone player - he would not qualify for an article based on
>>having played the saxophone - but it is reasonable to mention this
>>fact in his article because it is a significant part of how he was
>>perceived.
>>
>>
>>
>The difference between Clinton's saxaphone playing and this situation
>is that the mention of the former is not harmful to Clinton; and the
>difference between a politician whose career is ruined by a scandal is
>that it'll have attached itself to his name, whereas in GLF's case,
>that appears not to be the case.
>
>Wikipedia doesn't benefit from including the information about GLF,
>but he will be harmed if we do. Therefore, we ought not to. Fairness
>is as important as accuracy when writing about living people, if not
>more so.
>
>
How does Wikipedia not benefit from including the information?  If
Wikipedia biographies are to be accurate articles, they should not
selectively exclude facts deemed inconvenient.  When I buy a biography
written by a reputable historian, if it has a section on a politian's
life after office, I expect that section to be accurate and reasonably
complete.  For example, if 10 years from now Clinton gets arrested for
drunk driving, I would expect a biography written after that to mention
this fact.  I would expect no less of Wikipedia articles.

-Mark


from_name: Volker Haas

subject: [Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

body:
Hi Jack,

thanks for your comment!
It is now possible to look at the pediapress main page without having
cookies enabled. But it is still not possible to order books without
cookies. The reason is that we store session information in the cookie.

-- Volker

Jack wrote:
> May I suggest that pediapress not require cookies to just look at the
> site, tho I can understand requiring cookies when a customer builds up
> a book.
>
> Wikipedia for instance only creates cookies when account holders wish
> to be automatically logged in - no cookies are required to just read
> articles.
>


list: commons-l

from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject: [Commons-l] repositories of content

body:
  Danny,

> Deputy CIO of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He has given us permission to
> use any and all of the material created and licensed by that Museum
> according
> to the terms of our license. This includes images, video, video  transcripts,
snip
> All they  are asking for in
> return in attribution. Essentially, although this was not said  in so many
> words,
> they are releasing all of their in-hourse material according  to the terms of
> the GNU-FDL. Larry was especially excited by the prospect of our  people

  Is this some kind of Wikipedia-only licensing?  If it is, are we making an
exception to our rules on reusability?  If not, do they really understand what
they're agreeing to?  How are they going to react when some Neo-Nazi website
makes unpleasant derivative works of their material?  I'm sure that you and
Brad know what's involved here, and this seems to be a fantastic opportunity
for us; I suppose that I'm just asking for reassurance about what seems to be a
remarkable change in either our policy or theirs.

                                       Jkelly


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A customary part of [[military terminology]] is the usage and promotion of military
> terms to frame political disputes in the language of a particular POV, or else to frame
> indecent acts of violence in sterile and quasi-scientific language. "Liquidation" and
> "pacification" are probably the most canonical examples; from WWII and the Vietnam War,
> respectively. The Rumsfeldian usage of the term "humane" also comes to mind.
>
> Current issues, include the inclusion of the term "Operation Just Desserts" in the
> [[2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon]] article in the lede.

Wow.  Did you come up with "2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon" as a
"neutral" name?

Jay.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN for Language Select Javascript?

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Language select allows users to hide foreign languages on multilingual
> pages. This would, for example, allow a French reader to see only French
> text on multilingual pages (though they would still see Spanish on a
> Spanish-only page). (as seen from
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_select )

I'd love to have this in the MediaWiki core, we were discussing just a few
days ago how much a feature like this would help Commons. Adding a
javascript variable describing the user's currently selected language is on
my to do list, for this exact application.

I think we could put a loader stub in wikibits.js and have the bulk of the
feature in a separate file, how does that sound?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
In the words of Strong Bad,

PRROOOBLEMMMATTTIICC.

On 7/13/06, Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
>
> http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
>
> I can translate it:
>
> "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many
> other
> countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> world says that in a country called Israel some
> Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
>
> This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.
>
> --heema
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 9:26:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice
>
> That's a scary thought.
>
> What's the article on Israel on Arabic or Farsi Wikipedia like?
>
> On 7/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > > That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
> > > translation by a kind soul):
> > > Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
> > > Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> > > policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
> > > here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
> > > we take any action over this issue.
> > >
> > > Sound okay?
> >
> >
> > Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list and IRC about the Urdu
> > Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> > policy sitenotices of that type should not be used on wikimedia
> > foundation projects. In particular it conflicts with the principle
> > that wikipedia is written in NPOV (this includes religious
> > endorsements). As a result we would like to disscuss the removal of
> > the the text from site notice.
> >
> > That gives the reasons but the ending is too weak.
> >
> > Incerdentaly what is their article in Israel like?
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Commons-l] repositories of content

body:
As Mindspillage can verify, my mouth dropped when they made the offer. I
asked all of the questions you asked (at least a half dozen times each) and they
were quite firm in their belief that the idea is to get  information to the
world.

That said, I still think we should wait until this is formalized.
Nevertheless, the door is wide open, and this can be an important incentive, as  Sabine
pointed out, to begin looking at other repositories as well.

Danny
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from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Good advice for administrators, arbitrators, and, indeed. anyone. I
> think it is a good thing.
>
> Fred

I think it is torated with a new quote at reguar intervels.
--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Sue Reed

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

body:
While working on something completely different, I came across the page for [[Eric_the_Midget]].

My first inclination is to stub it and nominate it for AfD.

Sue Annesreed1234 at yahoo.com


from_name: Keith Tyler

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>>> But in the end, no.  I don't think we should have an article on
>>> somebody who is in the end "famous" solely because, well, a group of
>>> sophomoric fucktards got their rocks off laughing at his appearance.
>>>
Then you'd need to delete Star Wars Kid and Gary Broslma, for starters.

>> And in the end, I don't think we should *not* have an article on
>> somebody simply because they have a serious disability which makes
>> some people laugh at them.  Equal rights, and everything, I say.
>>
>
> How many articles do we have on people known only for their
> deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.
>
FWIW, see Category:Conjoined twins and Category:Sideshow attractions.

-KeithTyler


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wow.  Did you come up with "2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon" as a
> > "neutral" name?
>
> At least I'm trying.
>
> -Stevertigo

If you're going to argue for neutrality, it would be helpful if you
made more neutral suggestions.  The current article name, [[2006
Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict]], is at least neutral, although it
suffers from being unwieldy and a Wikipedia invention (i.e. original
research).

Jay.


from_name: Shlomi Fish

body:
On Thursday 13 July 2006 16:15, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Anthony schrieb:
> > On 7/13/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
> >> Hi Robert
> >>
> >> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >>> I am curious how you plan to compile these books in a format that looks
> >>> good on paper and not strictly as a web format.  While this can be
> >>> automated to an extent, I do think there are some issues that come from
> >>> trying to move content from a web format to a printed page, and not all
> >>> of these can be completely automated.
> >>
> >> As you have pointed out, an automatic conversion of html (or mediawiki
> >> markup) into latex can not be automated in a way that the book is
> >> absolutely perfect.
> >> But right now we are pretty satisfied with the results - even though we
> >> are still working on improvments of the conversion.
> >> The conversion is done with a parser we developed from scratch - as
> >> mentioned in a previous post. The mediawiki markup is translated
> >> into an internal representation which then gets transformed to latex (to
> >> be more precise "context") - this is the hard part. It is slightly
> >> easier to transform the internal representation back to html since some
> >> css-style information can be maintained.
> >
> > As I've mentioned before, I'd love to see a Wikimedia project which
> > does exactly this.  Then the latex could be edited collaboratively to
> > make things more "absolutely perfect".  It's nice to see it's at least
> > somewhat possible, though I'd say the quality of the previews right
> > now is fairly low.
>
> My wiki2xml converter is in the subversion repository. It is a set of
> scripts to convert MediaWiki markup into XML, and from there into other
> formats, including plain text, HTML, DocBook, and ODT
> (OpenDocument/OpenOffice format). OpenOffice is also open source and can
> generate PDFs natively.

Nice. I've been meaning to write something like that. But we also need a way
to convert from DocBook/XML to MediaWiki markup.

Regards,

	Shlomi Fish

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish      shlomif at iglu.org.il
Homepage:        http://www.shlomifish.org/

Chuck Norris wrote a complete Perl 6 implementation in a day but then
destroyed all evidence with his bare hands, so no one will know his secrets.


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Heema Khan schrieb:
>>I belive this this has already been disscused on ur.wikipedia. They
>>have come to thier descision. Now we are going to have to deal with
>>that problem.
>
> Yes, the matter was discussed there and the discussions
> are finished on the 8th of July, so it seems that
> Sitenote is permanent for now.

The purpose of the sitenotice is to announce important, wikimedia
specific news like a fundraising campaign, the international wikimania
conference or important project specific news like a policy change or
whatever.

Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
tool and should be removed immediately.

If urdu wikipedians want to fill the sitenotice, there's wikimania to
announce at the moment.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> tool and should be removed immediately.

Absolutely. Does Urdu even have a translation or independent version
of the NPOV policy? It's not listed on the interwikis for en:WP:NPOV.

On Wikinews, we make it mandatory that a few key policies are
translated or created before a new language is set up, including NPOV:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:
> I think a quote from Jimbo would be inappropriate. If there are angry
> reactions, there is no reason for Jimbo to be the target of their
> anger. It was not he who raised the issue initially. Afterall, the
> foundation should be able to function with or without Jimbo (he does a
> priceless, invaluable job and is very good at it, but the foundation
> is a seperate entity). I don't think every decision relating to, or
> by, the Foundation should be supplied with a quote by Jimbo. Let it
> stand on its own two feet.

Well, unless Brad does in in an official capacity, or I do it in an
official capacity, or a board member does it, or the board votes, or
Danny does it per instructions of one or more of the prior, or.... then
it is not a decision "of the foundation" and should not be presented as
such.

As it stands, I think it is a community matter, not a foundation matter,
and as such I think it is perfectly fine to quote me on it to that
effect.  If the foundation wants to do something, it can.

If there are angry reactions, it is ok with me if people get mad at me.
 That is part of my job, to serve as the brunt of people's anger. :)

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
You're absolutely right, the discussion should be raised over there,
and it appears that it already has. However, I don't quite understand
the comments of Heema - when you say that the discussion is over and
the decision has been made, do you mean that there was an overwhelming
argument or that someone with a level of authority stepped in? The
latter seems unlikely because theoretically there isn't anyone except
the board of a local arbcom that could do that, afaik. Could you
clarify this, please?

On 13/07/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Sean Whitton wrote:
>
> >In response to this I would say that #2 is the most important pillar,
> >something which Jimbo used to quote on his userpage (this seems to
> >have gone now). I would agree with him because a projects as wide
> >reaching as the foundation's cannot prosper without this. We need to
> >keep things as open and accessible as possible and only through NPOV
> >can we encourage people to get involved. If I was a non-Muslim speaker
> >of Urdu, I can imagine being concerned that the site was heavily
> >orientated in that direction, which is not the idea. Referring to #1,
> >it's an encyclopedia and the only purpose of having different
> >languages is to allow others to read and edit, not to make any other
> >divisions.
> >
> >
> But are you a non-Muslim speaker of Urdu who has complained and dealt
> with this locally on the project?  I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't
> raise concerns, but a knee jerk reaction is also not called for if there
> is a place to address this within the Urdu Wikipedia and getting active
> users from within that project to deal with the issue.  I just havn't
> see what steps are being done from within the community to address the
> issue.  If you have tried to deal with this issue and admins are being
> belligerant in keeping this sitenotice up, that would be a completely
> different issue altogether.  Even then, we are only getting one side of
> this issue and assuming bad-faith.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--

	?Xyrael
		Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On Jul 13, 2006, at 4:53 PM, jayjg wrote:

> This was an official Hezbollah operation. Hezbollah is *part* of the
> Lebanese government. There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the
> government.
>
> Jay.

I seriously doubt those two politicians had anything to do with a
commando raid. The Lebanese government is very weak. An invasion is
unlikely to resolve that problem. But to address the topic. I think
we should attempt to find a neutral title for our article on the
incident and I agree with you that the context needs to be part of
the article; it should not simply be Israel invasion.

Fred


from_name: Jack

body:
You may want to take the minor edit
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Minor_edit> flag into account when
determining the "at least five of the principal authors of the
Document".

E.g. in the "USS Nautilus (SSN-571)" article in Tim Cruze's book "Big
Science", "Furry" is listed as one of the principal authors, eventho
user:Furry only made 2 minor edits on 2005-09-30 to the article
(deleting a space and a full stop). user:The Epopt completely rewrote
the article on 2004-01-05t23:52:26z, but is not listed as a principal
author.

Ignoring edits that were reverted <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RV>
would also improve the authors list.

The contact form at <http://pediapress.com/contact/> is reporting "500
- Internal Server Error" on send.
--
user:Jeandr?
Beans: The VD on WP book.


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
Dabljuh wrote:
> Or, we do what's sensible and look what, for example, the
> NY Times calls it, instead of making (possibly) POV names up.
>
> Let's see what we've got just on the title page
>
> - Israel attacks (several times)
> - Israeli incursion (I like the sound of that)
>

The problem is that our article is also about the Hezbollah raid, and
about Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel, so needs some more generic
name.  An article at something like [[July 2006 Israeli incursion into
Lebanon]] would imply that it were only about, well, the Israeli
incursion into Lebanon.

-Mark


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> The problem is that our article is also about the Hezbollah raid, and
> about Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel, so needs some more generic
> name.  An article at something like [[July 2006 Israeli incursion into
> Lebanon]] would imply that it were only about, well, the Israeli
> incursion into Lebanon.

Well, that's what "Prelude" sections in articles on battles and wars
tend to be used for.  There's nothing wrong with including the
background/runup to the actual event the article is titled after in
the article, particularly if it doesn't merit an article of its own.
(Whether that's actually the case here, I have no idea.)

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] AOL ipt.aol.com addresses

body:
Further to the above, the 8 hex digits of *.ipt.aol.com addresses appear
simply to be their public IP addresses written in hex (0xAC = 172).

This supports the idea that these addresses are just dynamically
assigned client computer IP addresses, as their address range suggests.

This suggests that these addresses should be treated in the future in
the same way as those of cable modem accounts.

-- Neil


from_name: Volker Haas

body:
Hi Jack,
thanks for your comment about the principle author list. We try to
improve that.
Sorry for the inconvenience with the contact form - that bug is fixed.

-- Volker

Jack wrote:
> You may want to take the minor edit
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Minor_edit> flag into account when
> determining the "at least five of the principal authors of the
> Document".
>
> E.g. in the "USS Nautilus (SSN-571)" article in Tim Cruze's book "Big
> Science", "Furry" is listed as one of the principal authors, eventho
> user:Furry only made 2 minor edits on 2005-09-30 to the article
> (deleting a space and a full stop). user:The Epopt completely rewrote
> the article on 2004-01-05t23:52:26z, but is not listed as a principal
> author.
>
> Ignoring edits that were reverted <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RV>
> would also improve the authors list.
>
> The contact form at <http://pediapress.com/contact/> is reporting "500
> - Internal Server Error" on send.
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] AOL proxies, etc. (re-sent,
	this time without the attachments)

body:
[This is the E-mail I am referring to in the message that now precedes
this, since it bounced the first time round, since I included a load of
attachments with the original]

I read on the mailing list that AOL are turning on XFF on their proxies.
I have been poking around a bit to find out how the AOL proxy
information squares up with reports of AOL vandalism.

== The boring details ==

First, I did a DNS reverse lookup on the entire AOL Proxy IP range, as
defined in http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html using dig in
batch mode. Out of the 56542 addresses in those ranges, only 6740 give a
valid reverse lookup.

I then went through the list of 116 pages flagged with the {{AOL}}
template, and extracted their IP addresses, and compared them to the
list of reverse lookups generated above.

Out of 116 pages with addresses flagged with {{AOL}}:
* 76 were found in the list of reverse lookups generated above, and
every one of them had an address of the form *.proxy.aol.com
* 40 were not

I then ran the 40 remaining addresses through dig -x.

Of these, 32 had valid reverse lookups, most of which were of the form
[8 hex digits, starting with AC].ipt.aol.com (for example,
ACA40DC5.ipt.aol.com.) Every single one of these was in the address
range 172.128.0.0 - 172.216.255.255, assigned to AOL clients according
to the AOL proxy info page.

Five of the addresses flagged with {{AOL}} did not belong to AOL
addresses at all, namely:

195.9.72.12.in-addr.arpa. 172768 IN     PTR
195.los-angeles-19-20rs.ca.dial-access.att.net.
22.2.25.138.in-addr.arpa. 86369 IN      PTR     www2.itd.uts.edu.au.
176.72.250.134.in-addr.arpa. 86370 IN   PTR     elc214-176.lab.suu.edu.
10.219.196.205.in-addr.arpa. 272 IN     PTR     franc.dreamhost.com.
5.21.196.69.in-addr.arpa. 1773  IN      PTR
CPE00609425bbe3-CM00080d7f2c84.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com.

The remaining five {{AOL}}-flagged pages, which appear to have no
reverse lookup at all, are (with whois lookups):

;163.130.157.152.in-addr.arpa.   -> 152.157.130.163 ->  Washington
School Information Processing Cooperative
;106.209.188.205.in-addr.arpa.   -> 205.188.209.106 -> AOL
;76.164.174.149.in-addr.arpa.   -> 149.174.164.76 -> Compuserve (ie AOL)
;234.96.12.64.in-addr.arpa.      -> 64.12.96.234 -> AOL
;135.209.188.205.in-addr.arpa.   -> 205.188.209.135 -> AOL

and of the last four given as AOL addresses,  all of them were in the
AOL server IP address ranges given by AOL.

== Summary ==

Out of all of the 116 pages flagged as {{AOL}}:
* six are bogus non-AOL addresses, and are probably attempts by vandals
to confuse anti-vandalism efforts
* 32 are from the AOL client range, with *.ipt.aol.com reverse lookups
* 76 are from the official AOL proxy range, with *.proxy.aol.com reverse
lookups; they all appear to be either of the form
cache-XXX-XXXX.proxy.aol.com [74 of them], or
spider-XXX-XXXXX.proxy.aol.com. [2 of them]
* four have no reverse lookup, but are in the official AOL proxy range

Out of the 458 cache-*.proxy.aol.com servers, only 74 are flagged with
{{AOL}}
Out of the 2537 spider-*.proxy.aol.com servers, only 2 are flagged with
{{AOL}}

== Conclusions ==

* It seems safe to assume that *.proxy.aol.com servers are valid AOL
proxies; these account for about two-thirds of all {{AOL}} warnings
* It _might well_ be safe to assume that other servers from the AOL
server range without reverse lookups are also AOL proxies, but I'm not
sure that this is necessarily so; these account for < 5% of the valid
{{AOL}} warnings.
* But about a third of {{AOL}} warnings are about IPs with reverse
lookups of the form *.ipt.aol.com in the AOL client IP address range:
are these AOL proxies or not? They might, for example, be dynamically
assigned client addresses. If so, we should _definitely not_ be trusting
any XFF headers from these.

[On review: not all the figures sum to 100% so I may have dropped a
couple in my counting, but I think the overall conclusions still hold up]

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If you're going to argue for neutrality, it would be helpful if you
> > made more neutral suggestions.  The current article name, [[2006
> > Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict]], is at least neutral, although it
> > suffers from being unwieldy and a Wikipedia invention (i.e. original
> > research).
>
> Hey, dont hide an accusal of bias within a comment that
> purports to itself be neutral.
>
> Aside from the fact that the title you give has the glaring issue
> of completely bypassing any notions of state sovereignty,
> and strangely represents a serious of hostile event as a "conflict,"
> I think its perfectly fine.

Well, I didn't come up with the title, it's just what it happens to be
called now.  I'm not sure what you mean by "bypassing any notions of
state sovereignty".  Are you suggesting that Hezbollah, which is part
of the Lebanese government, bypassed any notions of state sovereignty
when it entered Israel, and attacked, killed, and kidnapped Israelis?

>
> --- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Do you consider replacing the title of "Holocaust"
> > with "Jewish-Aryan conflict" as neutral as well?
>
> I think this might be a Godwin's Law violation.
>
> -Stevertigo

Yep. Aside from the fact that it's intentionally offensive, it's also
ridiculous, as "The Holocaust" is the common English name, and we're
discussing an event which does not yet have a common English name.

It's this kind of thinking and attitude that led to Dabljuh getting a
permanent ban.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Dabljuh wrote:
> > Or, we do what's sensible and look what, for example, the
> > NY Times calls it, instead of making (possibly) POV names up.
> >
> > Let's see what we've got just on the title page
> >
> > - Israel attacks (several times)
> > - Israeli incursion (I like the sound of that)
> >
>
> The problem is that our article is also about the Hezbollah raid, and
> about Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel, so needs some more generic
> name.  An article at something like [[July 2006 Israeli incursion into
> Lebanon]] would imply that it were only about, well, the Israeli
> incursion into Lebanon.

Exactly.  Which, no doubt, is what people will next recommend;
anything to divorce Israeli's actions from the context in which they
are taken.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that our article is also about the Hezbollah raid, and
> > about Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel, so needs some more generic
> > name.  An article at something like [[July 2006 Israeli incursion into
> > Lebanon]] would imply that it were only about, well, the Israeli
> > incursion into Lebanon.
> >
> > -Mark
>
> Solution: Two separate articles, one about the Hezbollah kidnappings
> that sparked the whole thing, one about the "Israeli incursion".
> Makes a lot of things easier and keeps stuff tidy.

"Which, no doubt, is what people will next recommend; anything to
divorce Israel's actions from the context in which they are taken."

No sooner said, than done.

Jay.


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
I stand corrected, the SiteNotice shouldn't be used for general good
advice religious or otherwise. My point still stands, though, for
other official areas where good advice is tolerated (say the upload
file MediaWiki message). In these areas, religion shouldn't be used.

On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > Even if the verse were essentually non-religious, a quote from the
> > Qur'an, a religious text, is inappropriate. This verse is blatantly
> > religious though and should be removed as quickly as is possible.
>
> Even if the quote were essentially non-religious, *and* from a
> non-religious text, then it would still be inappropriate for a site
> notice.  To my knowledge, the site notice has never been used to convey
> general good advice or anything of the sort on any project or any
> language.  This is not a matter of religion versus non-religion, it is a
> matter of, well, this is not what the sitenotice is for.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
>
> --
> #######################################################################
> #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> #######################################################################
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> quotes.
>

To be fair the Urdu Wiktionary still has the fundraising notice up.

http://ur.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%DB%81_%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%84

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
So, we are in agreement that it should be removed? If I'm right here,
would a steward care to do it?

On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> > tool and should be removed immediately.
>
> The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> quotes.
>
> --
> #######################################################################
> #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> #######################################################################
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>

--

	?Xyrael
		Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] PLEASE HELP the Welcome log

body:
On 12/07/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The bot only welcomes new users after they have made at least one edit
> > or one upload.
>
> Can we ask the operator of the bot to check the New User Log instead?

Do you want the bot to welcome all users who register even if they
don't ever edit or contribute? Seems unnecessary to me... what is the
benefit?

IIRC 200-300 users register each day, around 90 are welcomed by
Orgullobot each day (so presumably made their first edit/upload that
day).

Brianna


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Commons-l] repositories of content

body:
I just have to say that if this pans out it'll be the best
accomplishment to date for the foundation.  Great job, and thanks for
keeping us up to date.

Anthony


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image statistics -- 374 000+ "fair use" images

references:
<5668b2t6g8nvmutcivoaaja49qs73c55rl@4ax.com>
	<44B4B3D6.3010001@gmail.com>
	<dfd0b40607130609o5d9f0fexe213fa8b0dcb905c@mail.gmail.com>
	<1152811324.44b6813cdccd6@webmail.fas.harvard.edu>

body:
On 7/13/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   User:Kotepho queried the en: database as of July 4, 2006 to get numbers on
> media we are hosting.  The results are at [[User:Kotepho/reports/Images by
> copyright status statistics]].
>
>   In short, we had the following:
>
>   853 215 tagged as having a free license
>   374 304 tagged with a variant of "fair use"
>
>   As a point of comparison, Commons has
>
>   677 813 media files as of this email's timestamp
>
>   Roughly half of our "fair use" images are tagged with the template for
> "magazine cover" or "promophoto".

"Promophoto" is a very ambiguous and often incorrectly applied
template. I have never been happy with it -- most people seem to think
that any image which appears unattributed multiple places on the
internet counts as promotional photograph.

"Magazine cover" and other media covers on the other hand are pretty
straightforward, and are probably legally pretty safe as well (they
are transformative, they do not infringe directly upon the market of
the image creator, their source is obvious).

So in the case of "promophoto", I'd say having so many of them is
probably a bad sign. With "magazine cover", it's not so bad, from a
"safe legal Wikipedia" standpoint. (The "we'd like to have more free
content" standpoint is another question alltogether.)

FF


body:
On 7/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:09:39 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> wrote:
>
> >> But in the end, no.  I don't think we should have an article on
> >> somebody who is in the end "famous" solely because, well, a group of
> >> sophomoric fucktards got their rocks off laughing at his appearance.
>
> >And in the end, I don't think we should *not* have an article on
> >somebody simply because they have a serious disability which makes
> >some people laugh at them.  Equal rights, and everything, I say.
>
> How many articles do we have on people known only for their
> deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.
>
I have no idea how many.  I also don't think it's accurate to say that
Peppers is known *only* for his deformities.  There are plenty of
people more deformed than Peppers, after all.

> >I also think your description of gross sexual imposition as a "minor
> >technical offence" is terribly inaccurate.  Maybe Peppers wasn't
> >actually guilty of this offense (in which case the story is that much
> >more important, by the way), but if Peppers was guilty of the offense
> >I don't think it is minor.
>
> Ahem - that's *attempted* gross sexual imposition (which specifically
> excludes actual sexual contact).  The man is by all accounts disabled
> and his address is a nursing home.
>
Snopes says "registered due to a conviction for Gross Sexual
Imposition in Lucas County, Ohio, in 1998".  It doesn't say
"attempted".  Maybe Snopes is wrong.  And maybe if Wikipedia had an
article on Peppers it would be easier to find out if Snopes is wrong.

> >Regardless of why Peppers is famous a lot of people want to know more
> >about him, and in my opinion it is the job of Wikipedia to inform them
> >about him, if for no other reason than to dispell the rumors spread by
> >"sophomoric fucktards".
>
> Unfortunately the sophomoric fucktards don't want anyone to realise
> they are sophomoric fucktards, and they prevent that fact from
> creeping into the article.
>
So semi-protect the page and ban the fucktards.  C'mon, if we deleted
every article that gets vandalized we'd soon have no articles.

> How many articles do we have on people for whose entire life there is
> precisely one primary (court) and one secondary source (Snopes)?

I don't know.  I also don't know if that assertion is correct about
Peppers, and I don't see the relevance.

> And
> for whom the major source is actually as unreliable as it gets
> (YTMND)?
>
Was that "major source" the primary or secondary one you were referring to?

> Leave the guy alone.
>
I'm not doing anything to the guy.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
This has come up a few times. Here was what I thought the most
reasonable solution was: if the operation name is obviously meant to
influence your opinion about the validity/success of the operation
itself, it should not be used as the article title, and instead
something more neutral and descriptive should be used.

So "Operation Barbarossa" -- no problem. "Operation Crossroads" -- no
problem. "Operation Just Cause" -- should be "United States invasion
of Panama" (which it is). "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- should be
something more neutral (it is currently "Iraq War", which I find a
little too ambiguous, personally, since there have been many Iraq
Wars, but anyway, anything is better than the operation name).

This seemed to me to be commonsensical and in compliance with our NPOV
policy (which trumps MOS, mind you). Most of the operation names are
not, in fact, what the names of such operations are best known by in
English (I ran some numbers with Operation Just Cause awhile ago and
some variation on "U.S. invasion of Panama" was almost always used
first, with the operation name secondarily used if used at all).

However there have been many who have objected to such an idea on some
sort of ill-seated notion that the official name for something is
always the best title of an article. I think that's pretty silly even
if we didn't have a NPOV policy.

FF

On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A customary part of [[military terminology]] is the usage and promotion of military
> terms to frame political disputes in the language of a particular POV, or else to frame
> indecent acts of violence in sterile and quasi-scientific language. "Liquidation" and
> "pacification" are probably the most canonical examples; from WWII and the Vietnam War,
> respectively. The Rumsfeldian usage of the term "humane" also comes to mind.
>
> Current issues, include the inclusion of the term "Operation Just Desserts" in the
> [[2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon]] article in the lede. Likewise the article
> [[Operation Summer Rains]] also a military, hence POV nomenclature and hence needs
> renaming, though I cannot myself determine what to call it.
> Is it an "incursion" (ie. "a limited incursion into the country of Congress") or an
> "invasion", a "retaliation" or a "retribution" etc.
>
> -Stevertigo
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
I think we should tell the community before it is removed; present
them with the Foundation's position and allow members of the community
who are for the message to respond before anything is done. We don't
want to seem like distant bureaucrats unfamiliar with custom and
lacking diplomacy.

On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> So, we are in agreement that it should be removed? If I'm right here,
> would a steward care to do it?
>
> On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > > Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> > > tool and should be removed immediately.
> >
> > The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> > religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> > of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> > quotes.
> >
> > --
> > #######################################################################
> > #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> > #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> > #######################################################################
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
>
>         ?Xyrael
>                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


body:
No, I don't think Hollywood is, or should be, the measure of
notability. There are many famous biologists who deserve articles but
who Hollywood won't honour.

On 13/07/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> > Up for deleting [[Joseph Merrick]]?  Or is there a threshold for
> > "famousness" above which such humanitarian concerns cease to apply?
>
> Yep.  When Hollywood makes Brian Peppers: The Movie, we can restore
> that article.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
translation by a kind soul):
Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
we take any action over this issue.

Sound okay?

On 13/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think we should tell the community before it is removed; present
> them with the Foundation's position and allow members of the community
> who are for the message to respond before anything is done. We don't
> want to seem like distant bureaucrats unfamiliar with custom and
> lacking diplomacy.
>
> On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > So, we are in agreement that it should be removed? If I'm right here,
> > would a steward care to do it?
> >
> > On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > > > Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> > > > tool and should be removed immediately.
> > >
> > > The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> > > religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> > > of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> > > quotes.
> > >
> > > --
> > > #######################################################################
> > > #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> > > #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> > > #######################################################################
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >         ?Xyrael
> >                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--

	?Xyrael
		Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
On 7/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Anthony
> > <mailto:foundation-l%40wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BFoundation-l%5D%20GFDL%20publisher%20credit&In-Reply-To=44B43991.5060907%40telus.net>
> > wrote
> >
> >On 7/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>> wrote:
> >> Anthony wrote:
> >> >It's not just the fact that the distribution is taking place on the
> >> >Internet, though.  The fact that everyone is an editor and every bit
> >> >of content is a constant work in progress makes for a reasonable
> >> >argument that these works are in fact not yet published at all.  The
> >> >more I think about it the more I see this as the most sane
> >> >interpretation.
> >> >
> >> If it has been made public it has been published.  The real question
> >> here is _who_ did the publishing.
> >>
> >{{citationneeded}}
> >
> >
> "For he bat wil pupplische ony thing to make it openly knowen, he wil
> make it
> to ben cryed and pronounced in the myddel place of a Town" - John
> Mandeville, "Travels", 14th century.  The basic meaning has been around
> for  a long time.
>
> Ec
>
And FWIW, the US Code defines "publication" as "the distribution of
copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other
transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering
to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for
purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public
display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a
work does not of itself constitute publication."

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.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> > "Which, no doubt, is what people will next recommend; anything to
> > divorce Israel's actions from the context in which they are taken."
> >
> > No sooner said, than done.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> If a bunch of stray israelis attacked Lebanon without authorization
> of the israeli government in retaliation of a bunch of lebanese
> without authorization of the lebanese government attacking Israel,
> one could talk of an "incident" or "crisis".

This was an official Hezbollah operation. Hezbollah is *part* of the
Lebanese government. There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the
government.

Jay.


subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion

body:
I think it is false to say that a particular language can never be
presented in a secular, NPOV fashion. Of course, it can be the case
that most of the speakers are unwilling to present their langauge in
this fashion (this is not a criticism). Wikipedia will forever be
incompatable with systematic POV, but we would certainly like
something worked out. Are there no Cherokeeans who are willing to work
with the existing Wikipedia model to raise the profile of their
langauge/culture?

On 13/07/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
> >Oldak Quill wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>Not at all. The best way to improve the site would be to work with
> >>other langauge Wikipedias and within Wikimedia. Are you being active
> >>in seeking members?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Yes, I am, however, our culture is alien to the Wikipedia culture and
> >there are going to be issues
> >with the way the site operates.  So far every Cherokee who has edited on
> >WP has gotten banned
> >or scrutinized to the point they leave.
> >
> (NOTE:  This comment pertains to people who were raised in the Cherokee
> Culture and speak the language, not
> Cherokee folks who were raised in American Culture and may have Cherokee
> ancestry but do not know their
> culture or the language -- there are a lot of folks in this category on
> WP today and they seem to be fine, but their
> contributions are nil to nothing in this area becuase they do not know
> the culture and for all intents and purposes,
> they are not immersed in our culture or grew up in it -- I did).
>
> >  We have a concept of respecting
> >the space of a person
> >who is working on something.
> >
> >WP 's policies allow a 16 year old with a computer to come in and
> >disrupt someone else's work and this
> >doesn;t work for us.  Our culture is based on mutual respect, and I
> >believe WP and Wales operate on the
> >premise people on WP should be the same way.  This has not been the
> >course followed.  I think WP should
> >continue and we can do hat we need with the content -- off site where
> >our cultural issues can coexist
> >peacefully.
> >
> >You wont get many native people editing here due to the way the site is
> >organized -- respect for others is
> >lacking in the way articles are edited.  It's ok though, we can still
> >both be successful if we figure out a way
> >to create dual environments where folks can be successful.
> >
> >I am meeting w9ith the tribal council of the Ute, Shoshone, and Unita
> >Nations on July 18, at 1:30 in Fort Duschene
> >on the machine translations for their Wikipedia, so I am making
> >excellent progress.  They also expressed a desire
> >to host their content off Wikipedia due to their review of the issues
> >with how the site works -- its alien to most native
> >cultures.  The Ute's believe their language is sacred and they don't
> >want non speakers working on it for religious
> >reasons.  You are going to find this is a prevalent attitude among
> >Native Peoples.  The ute's did not even allow their
> >langauge to be written down until the mid 1970's due to their religious
> >beliefs, so this is a big step for them.
> >
> >Jeff
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>On 13/07/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Oldak Quill wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
> >>>>>>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
> >>>>>>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
> >>>>>>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
> >>>>>>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>>The name should be:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>???? ????
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>(digoweli gatsanula)
> >>>>>>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
> >>>>>>>language, and was synthesized.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>Just a suggestion...
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>Jeff
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the
> >>>>>name can create something you do not intend.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Let's look at it:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Wi-gi-que-di-ya
> >>>>>
> >>>>>wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
> >>>>>gi - to combine
> >>>>>que - incomplete verb root about an animal
> >>>>>di - plural for a non living object
> >>>>>ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or
> >>>>>topic)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>While it is interesting some of the points and counter points about this
> >>>>issue, isn't this something better left to be discussed on project pages
> >>>>by participants and made as a local decision?  At least I would feel
> >>>>more comfortable with people who are involved with the development of
> >>>>the project (aka Cherokee Wikipedia content developers) instead of
> >>>>getting European or Austrialian attitudes from people who may never even
> >>>>add a single word to that project.
> >>>>
> >>>>This whole discussion strikes me as something very similar to when the
> >>>>name Wikipedia itself was coined, along with all of the other major
> >>>>sister projects and their names.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>There are no participants on the site.   The site has been dead for
> >>>months.  Probably because NONE OF THEM SPEAK CHEROKEE.
> >>>Perhaps best thing is to close the site completely and I'll just manage
> >>>the fork off Wikipedia.
> >>>
> >>>Jeff
> >>>
> >>>Jeff
> >>>_______________________________________________
> >>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
In theory, the number of free-content images on en.wikipedia should be
close to zero (a few meta-images are acceptable). I'm not sure whether
to be more concerned by that fact or by the fact that there are so
many fair use images.

On 13/07/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> >   User:Kotepho queried the en: database as of July 4, 2006 to get numbers on
> > media we are hosting.  The results are at [[User:Kotepho/reports/Images by
> > copyright status statistics]].
> >
> >   In short, we had the following:
> >   853 215 tagged as having a free license
> >   374 304 tagged with a variant of "fair use"
> >   As a point of comparison, Commons has
> >   677 813 media files as of this email's timestamp
>
> Um.
>
> I suspect he's double counting somehow.
> A month ago there were only 492,308 *total* image pages on enwiki.
>
> Ditto for his fair use numbers.. about 2x reality from my last
> measurements. The commons total looks about right.
>
> I welcome anyone interested in running stats to contact me for a
> sanity check on their queries... there are a number of common pitfalls
> like  counting directly from the category tables, and failing to
> filter for distinct or assuming images will never have a free tag and
> a fair use tag at the same time... that can cause incorrect results.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:09:39 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>> But in the end, no.  I don't think we should have an article on
>> somebody who is in the end "famous" solely because, well, a group of
>> sophomoric fucktards got their rocks off laughing at his appearance.

>And in the end, I don't think we should *not* have an article on
>somebody simply because they have a serious disability which makes
>some people laugh at them.  Equal rights, and everything, I say.

How many articles do we have on people known only for their
deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.

>I also think your description of gross sexual imposition as a "minor
>technical offence" is terribly inaccurate.  Maybe Peppers wasn't
>actually guilty of this offense (in which case the story is that much
>more important, by the way), but if Peppers was guilty of the offense
>I don't think it is minor.

Ahem - that's *attempted* gross sexual imposition (which specifically
excludes actual sexual contact).  The man is by all accounts disabled
and his address is a nursing home.

>Regardless of why Peppers is famous a lot of people want to know more
>about him, and in my opinion it is the job of Wikipedia to inform them
>about him, if for no other reason than to dispell the rumors spread by
>"sophomoric fucktards".

Unfortunately the sophomoric fucktards don't want anyone to realise
they are sophomoric fucktards, and they prevent that fact from
creeping into the article.

How many articles do we have on people for whose entire life there is
precisely one primary (court) and one secondary source (Snopes)?  And
for whom the major source is actually as unreliable as it gets
(YTMND)?

Leave the guy alone.

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


body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 13:12:41 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
wrote:

>Up for deleting [[Joseph Merrick]]?  Or is there a threshold for
>"famousness" above which such humanitarian concerns cease to apply?

How many films have been made about Brian Peppers?  How many books
written about his life?  Is he a prominent member of London society?
Is his skeleton likely to be kept by the medical community and studied
long after his death?  What are the chances of his being played by
John Hurt in the film?

The parallel is absurd.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
I think a quote from Jimbo would be inappropriate. If there are angry
reactions, there is no reason for Jimbo to be the target of their
anger. It was not he who raised the issue initially. Afterall, the
foundation should be able to function with or without Jimbo (he does a
priceless, invaluable job and is very good at it, but the foundation
is a seperate entity). I don't think every decision relating to, or
by, the Foundation should be supplied with a quote by Jimbo. Let it
stand on its own two feet.

On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
> translation by a kind soul):
> Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
> Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
> here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
> we take any action over this issue.
>
> Sound okay?
>
> On 13/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think we should tell the community before it is removed; present
> > them with the Foundation's position and allow members of the community
> > who are for the message to respond before anything is done. We don't
> > want to seem like distant bureaucrats unfamiliar with custom and
> > lacking diplomacy.
> >
> > On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > > So, we are in agreement that it should be removed? If I'm right here,
> > > would a steward care to do it?
> > >
> > > On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > > > > Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> > > > > tool and should be removed immediately.
> > > >
> > > > The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> > > > religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> > > > of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> > > > quotes.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > #######################################################################
> > > > #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> > > > #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> > > > #######################################################################
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > >         ?Xyrael
> > >                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
>
>         ?Xyrael
>                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
> This has been brought up several times, you may want to review
> [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information
> on the past findings.

Having read through that page I just have to say: Gosh, what an
amazing amount of debate and polling, with most of the people in the
discussion having zero capacity to fix it, and all leading to no real
conclusion.

> The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the
> threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.

I agree, and that's why I'm thinking a high threshold.

User contributions follow a power law (example graph:
http://wikiq.nber.org/figs/png/eswiki-20060620-hist_log_total-edits.png
). i.e. the total number of users who would have edits in the 1000's
is a very small percentage of the total userbase.

Using the figures from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_number_of_edits
(with hasn't been updated since March, but it'll do for a quick
calculation), and the figure of "English Wikipedia had about 1,064,259
registered users" on that same page:

To put this into numbers, looking at just edits (and disregarding
account lifespan), the edit threshold, number of users who meet or
exceed that threshold, and the percentage of the userbase that this
represents are as follows:
Edits  Num users  % of userbase
1500   2500       0.23%
2000   1923       0.18%
3000   1293       0.12%
4000   924        0.09%
5000   711        0.07%

In other words, only a tiny percentage of users would get this, and if
a vandal is willing to make thousands of good edits just to have a
window of opportunity of a few minutes in which to vandalise:
a) It's rather unlikely. Let me put it this way: If someone wanted to
damage the Wikipedia, to me this seems to be an enormously inefficient
and ineffective and labour-intensive way to do it.
b) It's probably a net win anyway. In other words, the vandals would
have to do enough useful stuff to cross a threshold, more than the
damage they would do in those few minutes. In other words, you harness
the power of the vandals, by getting more out of the vandals than you
put in, so you're still better off.

> Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue

You're not being a jerk, and I understand what you're saying.

However, there *is* a significant technical aspect to this, and
ignoring that technical aspect is a good way of guaranteeing that it
won't work. There are two sides to this:
1) Getting general agreement.
2) Implementing it.

Finding something that can be agreed upon does little good if there is
no interest in implementing it, or if implementing it causes so much
load, or difficulty, or takes so much effort that it's not worthwhile,
or just simply can't be done. Therefore the technical aspects cannot
be ignored, and need to be discussed too.

> There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which provides
> about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user

I know, but as you say it's not ideal, and just not as good as a
server-side solution. Furthermore its very existence is evidence of a
desire that the Wikipedia were better in this regard.

> we have an extension suitable for this.

Yes, your GiveRollback extension (
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/GiveRollback/
). I've read through the code, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) it
seems to be a way that bureaucrats can add and remove rollback
abilities for named auto-confirmed existing user accounts.

That's definitely an improvement, although I'm wondering if the
addition and removal can't be largely automated to enormously reduce
the load on bureaucrats (i.e. this would be a good UI for the
exceptions, with the general case being handled automatically).

> I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the
> ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is
> reverting.

When I revert someone they are I think always:
a) an anon
b) have written something like: "YOUSE ARE ALL BOGANS WHO CAN KISS MY
733T FURRY BUTT!!!! WOOT!!! YOUSE HAVE BEEN HAX0R3D BY S0nIc WaV3!!!!"
c) my edit description is usually "revert" or "rvv" or just "rv".

So:
1) Is a more detailed description really necessary? (e.g. "Revert:
Buttocks need branding with hot poker iron" ?)
2) The default "Revert edits by [[User:x.y.z.w]] to last version by
[[NiceGuy]]" that I think you get on rollback are nicer anyway than
the descriptions I use.

> Not only that, it can generally be
> rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user.

Exactly. This is about making what people can already do easier for
those who have stuck around long enough to know what's expected, and
know outright vandalism when they see it.

At the moment, here's what I'm thinking:

General idea / spec:

Technical rules:
* Upon exceeding 2000 edits and also having an account for more than 2
months and having never been blocked for any period of time, the user
shall by an automated process be granted the ability to do limited
rollbacks.
* These limited rollbacks can only be used on anons (as a technical
restriction). (For named accounts need to do it the old slow way).
* You lose limited rollback ability immediately and automatically for
violating 3RR (i.e. if you use the limited rollback on the same
article within 24 hours, then the limited rollback permission is
automatically removed from your account). [Or perhaps it should just
refuse to let you do a limited rollback in this situation?]
* Maximum of one limited rollback every 5 seconds (e.g. by server-side
sleep() for a few seconds, or by saying "too many rollback requests in
too short a time. Press refresh in a few seconds to try again").
* Bureaucrats can add or remove the limited rollback permission at
their discretion.

Social rules:
* You can only rollback for blatant vandalism or a very obvious
mistake (i.e. an edit description should not be required because the
reason for the revert should be obvious. If an edit description would
be required, then revert manually).

I would appreciate comments on whether:
a) it seems technically feasible and/or sensible
b) if I can deal with the political slog to get agreement, if there is
anyone out there that might potentially be interested in building it,
or a bit of it?
c) if you think it can be improved / simplified
d) Are any of the technical rules not required, or are more required?
(e.g. is 3RR restriction required? Is limited rollback throttling
required? Is there a better way of doing it?)

Comments / thoughts?

All the best,
Nick.


body:
On 7/13/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> While working on something completely different, I came across the page for [[Eric_the_Midget]].
>
> My first inclination is to stub it and nominate it for AfD.
>
> Sue Annesreed1234 at yahoo.com
>
That reminds me of [[Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf]].  I'm sure the
list goes on and on.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:JzG&diff=prev&oldid=63624163

The article in question originally stated that the subject, a minor
far-right Tory, was cleared on appeal of charges; actually it turns
out he was convicted.  Ever since that fact went into the article
there has been a war waged, with legal letters sent to Ed Chilvers,
now threatened to me, Brad involved, and so on.  Having failed to have
the article pulled by Brad they submitted a complaint through OTRS
which resulted in stubbing; we do not know (because nobody will tell
us) whether this was because of supposed imbalance, in which case we
can start rebuilding to NPOV standards immediately, or whether it was
their novel interpretation of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act,
which conflicts with the text of the act as posted.

These people are apparently determined to have a hagiography or
nothing, and they also appear to want to intimidate away anybody who
has any interest at all in keeping the article factual.

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


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
> jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This was an official Hezbollah operation. Hezbollah is *part* of the
> > Lebanese government. There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the
> > government.

Without actually knowing much about this hot news story, Lebanon or its history, I don
know that "There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the government" is *some* kind of logical
fallacy. Im not exactly sure which -probably because its so obvious its not worth
thinking about.

--- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:

> An official Hezbollah operation? Who is Hezbollah? A political
> party in Lebanon that is currently in power, or any lebanese people
> that perform terrorist acts against Israel?

Its obvious that you are reasonably intelligent and articulate, so I can only assume
that you were "banned" (as Jay put) because you crossed the line into making personal
attacks, or making points which violate Godwin's (now sacred) law banning comparisons
to Nazis in internet discussion forums. That itself isnt an issue if you can make your
points without sounding bigoted or incivil; the "come to your senses" and "please
reconsider your own position" comments were inapproprate because our personal views are
beside the point.

There is no enlightened way to take a side between competing nationalisms -- all
concepts of "nationhood" are equivalent, and equally inferior to a universal concept of
civility. Therefore we reserve our distinctions to those which advance civility, and
discard concepts based in one particular culture or another as simply POV.

That said, I appreciate your explanation of the situation, according to your point of
view. It is not a point of view which appears to be sufficiently represented (probably
because people under attack -- by anything bigger than bottlerockets -- means the
electricity is out and there are probably other things to worry about. Thats assuming
you people can write good English in the first place.

-Stevertigo

> Did Hezbollah publish the announcement to capture israeli military
> on their website? their blog? Did the civilian government of
> Lebanon authorize commando actions against israel? Did they
> maybe make a radio speech? Did they vote on those kidnappings or what?
>
> Or was it a small group of terrorists that acted on their own,
> when by now every anti-israel-lebanese calls himself "Hezbollah"?
>
> Ever heard of Al-Quaida, this little CIA-backed group lead
> by the late Osama Bin Laden? Yet almost every anti-american
> terrorist group claims, at least to have links to Al-Quaida.
>
> Its just [[namedropping]]. "We're angry Bob and rabid Robert and
> we take responsibility for these acts of terrorism, which, well,
> mount up to pointing a gun at a lone guy and telling him
> to follow us", just doesn't sound that impressive, does it?
>
> Jayjg, come to your senses.
>
> Israel is attacking a country whos government has condemned
> the very attacks that are now being held against it.
>
> "Hezbollah" is not a homogenous group, nor do they have a strong
> hierarchy. Terrorists organizations especially cannot afford
> strong hierarchies because it would be too easy to take them out.
>
> What you can criticise about Lebanon and its Government, is that
> their police do not seem to delight helping Israel getting their
> citicens back. But you can probably guess why that is.
>
> Pretending that the Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians
> are the just and proportionate answer to the kidnapping of Israelis
> by Lebanese criminals is horribly POV and, bluntly, batshit insane.
>
> Please reconsider your own position.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
On 7/13/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> And FWIW, the US Code defines "publication" as "the distribution of
> copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other
> transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending. The offering
> to distribute copies or phonorecords to a group of persons for
> purposes of further distribution, public performance, or public
> display, constitutes publication. A public performance or display of a
> work does not of itself constitute publication."
>
> 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.
>

Looking further, "To perform or display a work "publicly" means?
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any
place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle
of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of
the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means
of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of
receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or
in separate places and at the same time or at different times."

Seems 2) fits in closer with what Wikipedia is doing than the
definition of "publication".

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
  Hi,

Quoting Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> I welcome anyone interested in running stats to contact me for a
> sanity check on their queries... there are a number of common pitfalls
> like  counting directly from the category tables, and failing to

  Do you have the time to do a "sanity check" on these numbers?

> filter for distinct or assuming images will never have a free tag and
> a fair use tag at the same time... that can cause incorrect results.

  A list of images in both categories would be a useful thing for image cleanup.

                        Jkelly


from_name: geni

body:
On 7/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> How many articles do we have on people known only for their
> deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.
>

articles on people famious for thier phyical abnormalities include

[[Chang and Eng Bunker]]
[[General Tom Thumb]]
[[Lavinia Warren]]
[[Zip the Pinhead]]
[[Myrtle Corbin]]
[[Frank Lentini]]
[[Jane Barnell]]
to a degree [[Sarah Biffen]]
[[The Doll Family]]
[[Johnny Eck]]
[[Elizabeth Green the Stork Woman]]

Etc

--
geni


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/13/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   Hi,
>
> Quoting Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> > I welcome anyone interested in running stats to contact me for a
> > sanity check on their queries... there are a number of common pitfalls
> > like  counting directly from the category tables, and failing to
>
>   Do you have the time to do a "sanity check" on these numbers?

I did. They aren't sane. ;)
I'll run them correctly tonight.

> > filter for distinct or assuming images will never have a free tag and
> > a fair use tag at the same time... that can cause incorrect results.
>
>   A list of images in both categories would be a useful thing for image cleanup.

Will do.


body:
On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > While working on something completely different, I came across the page for
> > [[Eric_the_Midget]].
>
> You could call this "Sterncruft" (SCNR). There's a lot of it on WP. Of
> course, the crucial difference to Peppers is that Peppers did not
> choose to become the object of ridicule and humiliation.

The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony
(and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat
of force).  Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers
is not an innocent victim.

Anthony


body:
On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 7/14/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > > While working on something completely different, I came across the page for
> > > > [[Eric_the_Midget]].
> > >
> > > You could call this "Sterncruft" (SCNR). There's a lot of it on WP. Of
> > > course, the crucial difference to Peppers is that Peppers did not
> > > choose to become the object of ridicule and humiliation.
> >
> > The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony
> > (and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat
> > of force).  Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers
> > is not an innocent victim.
>
> It is, of course, possible to be guilty of one thing and not guilty of
> another. I know a chap who was convicted for a particularly farcical
> robbery attempt; he's guilty, no doubt, and it wasn't a victimless
> crime. But if I wandered around this evening and kicked him in the
> face, he'd be pretty justified in considering himself an innocent
> victim of my mindless assault.
>
> I don't see how Peppers being convicted of something means we should
> help people kick *him* in the face because they feel like it.
>
I'm not advocating that we kick Peppers in the face, I'm advocating
that we provide information about him in Wikipedia.

Peppers either tried to force himself onto a child or lied under oath
about doing so.  Either way I think we have *more* of a right to
provide information about him on Wikipedia than we do information
about Eric the Midget.

Anthony


from_name: David Boothroyd

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
Fred Bauder writes:
>I think you might start with an inquiry regarding what makes Gregory
>Lauder-Frost notable. Is it is political views and activities or is
>it his personal life?

This issue has actually been raised on the talk page. It is generally
accepted that it is Gregory Lauder-Frost's political activities
prior to 1992 which make him notable. Some argue that his activities
as a genealogist are also sufficient to make him notable. A small group
believes he may also be notable for the child custody dispute in which
he was involved (which was contended by his counsel to be connected to
his conviction).

However, that question surely does not help resolve the issue of
whether it is reasonable to mention his conviction. In my view the
principle is clear: if a person meets notability for a biographical
article, then the whole of their life is notable even if on its own
it would not qualify them. For example, Bill Clinton is not a notable
saxophone player - he would not qualify for an article based on
having played the saxophone - but it is reasonable to mention this
fact in his article because it is a significant part of how he was
perceived.

To take another example, how about politicians whose careers have
been terminated by external scandals? One could not plausibly argue
in the case of [[Peter Baker (UK politician)]] that because the
financial scandal that caused his expulsion from the House of Commons
was unrelated to his political career, it ought not to be mentioned.

The legal issues relating to Gregory Lauder-Frost have all been
considered and there is nothing which would prevent a suitable,
balanced, neutral, sourced and factual article being written. In
order to be fully comprehensive, it would have to mention, in its
proper context, the fact of his 1992 conviction.
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: mboverload

subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't find
the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password right?

mboverload


body:
On 7/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Peppers either tried to force himself onto a child or lied under oath
> > about doing so.
>
> No. The charge suggests that the victem was an adult. This was in the article.
>
Then why does the offender details page
(http://www.esorn.ag.state.oh.us/Secured/p23.aspx?oid=13753) say
"Victim(s): Child Female"?  This should also be in the article.

Either way, whether it was a child or an adult, my points are still valid.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
???
I really need it.  I'm going into wikipedia widthdraw here.

On 7/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't
> find
> > the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password
> right?
>
> Shhh.. Don't foil my evil plot to intercept the passwords of all
> admins at Wikimania. ;)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 7/13/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it is false to say that a particular language can never be
> presented in a secular, NPOV fashion.

There are languages out there that aparently don't include the concept
of counting.

There are indeed limits on what languages can express

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
> translation by a kind soul):
> Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
> Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
> here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
> we take any action over this issue.
>
> Sound okay?

Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list and IRC about the Urdu
Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
policy sitenotices of that type should not be used on wikimedia
foundation projects. In particular it conflicts with the principle
that wikipedia is written in NPOV (this includes religious
endorsements). As a result we would like to disscuss the removal of
the the text from site notice.

That gives the reasons but the ending is too weak.

Incerdentaly what is their article in Israel like?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


body:
On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> (sorry for duplicate, Anthony)
>
> On 14/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > > It is, of course, possible to be guilty of one thing and not guilty of
> > > another. I know a chap who was convicted for a particularly farcical
> > > robbery attempt; he's guilty, no doubt, and it wasn't a victimless
> > > crime. But if I wandered around this evening and kicked him in the
> > > face, he'd be pretty justified in considering himself an innocent
> > > victim of my mindless assault.
> > >
> > > I don't see how Peppers being convicted of something means we should
> > > help people kick *him* in the face because they feel like it.
> > >
> > I'm not advocating that we kick Peppers in the face, I'm advocating
> > that we provide information about him in Wikipedia.
>
> ...why? Wikipedia is not a registry of sex offenders. We're an
> *encyclopedia*. Being convicted of a crime was not, last I checked,
> even remotely near any sensible threshold for inclusion...
>
> Yes, we have "more of a right" to provide information about him than
> about some other people... but that doesn't mean we need to, or that
> anyone would be well-served by us doing so.
>
The simplest answer to why is that there are a lot of people who want
to know about him.  Also, there is a lot of misinformation going
around.

Frankly, I thought the answer to "why" was obvious, which is why my
message above focussed on why I think it's OK.

Anthony


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
I would totally agree with you here, and I wanted to float the idea
anyway. As for the language of the message, would it be appropriate to
post both? I wouldn't want to make a mess of the page and yet I
wouldn't want to alienate people from the discussion, which would make
us seem like distant bureaucrats, as someone said above. geni's
message is better than mine, but the ending looks perfectly valid to
me - we don't want to appear forceful, we want to open discussion by
the users of that wiki, which few of us on this list seem to be. So,
are we happy with that suggestion?

On 13/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think a quote from Jimbo would be inappropriate. If there are angry
> reactions, there is no reason for Jimbo to be the target of their
> anger. It was not he who raised the issue initially. Afterall, the
> foundation should be able to function with or without Jimbo (he does a
> priceless, invaluable job and is very good at it, but the foundation
> is a seperate entity). I don't think every decision relating to, or
> by, the Foundation should be supplied with a quote by Jimbo. Let it
> stand on its own two feet.
>
> On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > That sounds sensible, how about something along the lines of (after
> > translation by a kind soul):
> > Discussion on the [[foundation-l]] mailing list about the Urdu
> > Wikipedia's sitenotice has come to the conclusion that according to
> > policy the sitenotice should not be used <perhaps a quote from Jimbo
> > here>. We'd like to hear the opinions of the users of this wiki before
> > we take any action over this issue.
> >
> > Sound okay?
> >
> > On 13/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think we should tell the community before it is removed; present
> > > them with the Foundation's position and allow members of the community
> > > who are for the message to respond before anything is done. We don't
> > > want to seem like distant bureaucrats unfamiliar with custom and
> > > lacking diplomacy.
> > >
> > > On 13/07/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> > > > So, we are in agreement that it should be removed? If I'm right here,
> > > > would a steward care to do it?
> > > >
> > > > On 13/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > > > Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > > > > > Quran quotes (or any other, btw) in the sitenotice are an abuse of the
> > > > > > tool and should be removed immediately.
> > > > >
> > > > > The "or any other" bit is extremely important.  This is not about
> > > > > religion, it is just that the sitenotice is to be used for announcements
> > > > > of upcoming events, news, fundraisers, things of that nature, not for
> > > > > quotes.
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > #######################################################################
> > > > > #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> > > > > #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> > > > > #######################################################################
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > >
> > > >         ?Xyrael
> > > >                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >         ?Xyrael
> >                 Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--

	?Xyrael
		Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


body:
On 7/13/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is the evidence that a lot of people want to know about him?
>
Do you dispute this?  I think it's pretty clear by looking at the
google hits and the Snopes page.

> How many reliable sources do we have on him?
>
A very quick search gives me 4.  I'm sure there are more than that, though.

> Some people on a website have decided to mock him

That can be said about a large number of people on whom Wikipedia has articles.

> I don't think that we
> should have an article on every person who has ever committed an offence
> especially when there are so few reliable sources of information about him.
>
I think 4 sources is plenty for a short article.

Anthony