body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>What??? Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images, and indeed
>>there have already been several scans of this encyclopedia that have
>>been put into Wikimedia projects. We don't need to use bit torrents
>>unless this is a move to do bit torrents for all Wikimedia projects
>>(perhaps a good idea but a seperate discussion). There is also a
>>license tag that has been specifically established on commons just for
>>content from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica because of the large
>>number of potential images that can come from this source. Look them up
>>right now with the associated categories at
>>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template%3APD-Britannica
>>
>>
>
> Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images of text? If that's what
>you're saying, I disagree. I think maybe we were talking about two different
>things, though.
>
No, this is still the same issue.  I'm not exactly sure where the best
place for scanned pages of historical text ought to go in this case.
 The images themselves should be in commons, and perhaps as a temporary
"Wikiproject" within commons to extract those images might be useful to
have the full scanned pages available.  Wikisource also has an image
repository independent of commons, so that may be more appropriate, but
that is something that ought to be decided within the Wikisource
community itself.  Figures and engravings do need to go to Commons.

>
>One thing I see missing from this discussion is working in cooperation
>
>
>>with Distributed Proofreaders, who is not only transcribing the contents
>>of this encyclopedia into plain ASCII text (and XML markup as well), but
>>is also providing scans of the figures and images from within the
>>volumes and making them available with a public domain license. What
>>more do we want here? The slow going on that project with Distributed
>>Proofreaders is something that goes to show how large of a project it is.
>>
>>
>
> AFAIK Distributed Proofreaders hasn't released the raw images out to the
>public. If that's still the case, I'd say *that* is the reason for the slow
>going. The wiki process would be much more efficient.
>
>That trying to organize the content onto a Wiki has been difficult, yes.
>
It is not that difficult to get the raw image scans from Distributed
Proofreaders if you really want them.  They are not of the best quality
(DP has other goals in mind) but they are usable for the purpose of
transcription of the text.  I also fail to see how using a Wiki for
proofreading is going to be any better than what DP is doing.  Indeed,
the DP standards for proofreading are much higher than anything on any
Wikimedia project, and once it has gone through the proofreading rounds
through DP you can be generally assured of transcription accuracy that
is as good if not better than any other trascription service,
professional or amature.  I have seen the efforts of the 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica project on Wikisource and the efforts to
improve textual fidelity for those articles have been absolutely
miserable, and Distributed Proofreaders does a much, much better job.
 All we are trying to do on Wikisource anyway is to do MediaWiki markup
and linkages into existing Wikimedia projects like Wikipedia and
Wiktionary where appropriate, as well as to link back to Wikisource for
historical reference.

The few articles that attempts for cleanup due to the textual source not
coming from DP or Project Gutenberg sources have been frankly a joke and
have incredible errors in the transcription.  Performing textual
trascriptions of historical documents is simply not something that
MediaWiki software is set up to deal with except on a very limited
basis.  Marking up (adding bold words and italics) and hyperlinks is a
much more appropriate task and something MediaWiki software does very
well, which is the big strength of Wikisource as a project in general.

>
>
>>That is the real issue here, because you can copyright a scan of an
>>image. Weak copyright protection at best, but you can copyright the
>>scan itself which would in turn force you to have to find the original
>>materials and do the scan seperately. In the case of the 1911
>>Encyclopaedia Brittanica, however, that is much easier to do than some
>>other older works. Again, working with the Distributed Proofreaders on
>>something like this is going to make life much easier because they have
>>done the scans themselves and are granting explicitly the scanned images
>>and content into the public domain. It also avoids duplication of labor
>>with a huge project like this.
>>
>>--
>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>
>
> I thought scans of 2D public domain images were public domain. I've
>certainly read that on Wikipedia somewhere.
>
>Anthony
>
>
This is an area of copyright law that is still working its way through
the court system.  Most notable is the assertion of copyright by museums
on classical artwork and university library special collections
departments who have scanned images of historical works.  The only way
they can assert copyright is to claim copyright on the scan or the image
of the artwork, not on the original material itself.  For instance,
there is a huge collection of photographs from the University of
Michigan that you can look at here:

http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/labadie/labadie.html

The Univeristy of Michigan is asserting copyright on the whole
collection, even though many photographs in the collection were
physically made before 1923 and therefore would be considered in the
public domain through copyright expiration.  Personally, I think there
are some interesting photos in this collection and I'd like to add them
to the Wikimedia Commons, but in this case because of the copyright
assertion I am very reluctant to do so.  In this case, it is very
unlikely that I would gain access to the photos in the special
collections area of that library to do my own scans just for licensing
purposes.  I am using this as just an example, but something that would
be useful for all Wikimedia projects and to describe independently the
issues of grabbing images at random and assuming that you have copyright
authority to do with them as you please.

BTW, using Wikipedia as a scholarly reference is hardly a supporting
argument.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911
	Britannica	onWikimedia


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica
	onWikimedia

body:
On 11/9/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Each volume is about 150-200MB. I don't see too many people lining up to
> download that much just to get one specific illustration they want to
> add to a Wikipedia article. We're trying to make the encyclopedia not
> only freely available, but easily accessible. Bittorrent or any such
> middle-man is just another easily-avoidable layer of difficulty for the
> end-user.

 I don't see too many people downloading it either, as long as it's still in
image form. I just think bittorrent would make it easier to download for
those who do want to download it. It'd be nice if the database dumps were
available this way as well.


from_name: Brian

body:
Well, I agree that it should be easily downloadable, so maybe a torrent
could be set up as well, I don't know. But the main option for now
should be to display the images. Since every page is indexed properly,
people won't have to search around trying to find the right page. If
they can spell what they're looking for, the exact page can be found
immediately. This is ideal for people with slower connections.

Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Each volume is about 150-200MB. I don't see too many people lining up to
>>download that much just to get one specific illustration they want to
>>add to a Wikipedia article. We're trying to make the encyclopedia not
>>only freely available, but easily accessible. Bittorrent or any such
>>middle-man is just another easily-avoidable layer of difficulty for the
>>end-user.
>>
>>
>
> I don't see too many people downloading it either, as long as it's still in
>image form. I just think bittorrent would make it easier to download for
>those who do want to download it. It'd be nice if the database dumps were
>available this way as well.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
Ah, I see what you're saying. Makes sense. I was thinking of it more as raw
data to be used in other projects but I suppose the images could be useful
in themselves.
 On 11/9/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, I agree that it should be easily downloadable, so maybe a torrent
> could be set up as well, I don't know. But the main option for now
> should be to display the images. Since every page is indexed properly,
> people won't have to search around trying to find the right page. If
> they can spell what they're looking for, the exact page can be found
> immediately. This is ideal for people with slower connections.
>
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >On 11/9/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Each volume is about 150-200MB. I don't see too many people lining up to
> >>download that much just to get one specific illustration they want to
> >>add to a Wikipedia article. We're trying to make the encyclopedia not
> >>only freely available, but easily accessible. Bittorrent or any such
> >>middle-man is just another easily-avoidable layer of difficulty for the
> >>end-user.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > I don't see too many people downloading it either, as long as it's still
> in
> >image form. I just think bittorrent would make it easier to download for
> >those who do want to download it. It'd be nice if the database dumps were
> >available this way as well.
> >_______________________________________________
> >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] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>This legwork has already been
>>accomplished, and the real question is why should this work be
>>duplicated by a seperate organization?
>>
>>--
>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>
>
> That's simple, really - time and money. The people who donated to Wikimedia
>donated the money thinking it would be used to create books, encyclopedias,
>etc., not to run a school. That's the money story, but the more important
>one is time. The board of Wikimedia is stretched too thinly as it is.
>Wikipedia editors can't even participate in Wikibooks or Wikinews without
>creating separate logins. Admins on one project often have to go through a
>long process just to be able to effectively fight vandalism on another
>project. There is very little communication between the different projects.
>Starting up yet another half-baked project with no clear leadership is only
>going to make matters worse.
>
This is a project that has been openly debated within the Wikimedia
community as a whole.  This debate has been brought onto as large of a
forum and had far more participation from all opinions and philosophies
as any single issue has ever had for any topic in the entire history of
the Wikimedia Foundation or even Wikipedia.  That you have a point of
view is obvious, and you are entitled to that opinion, but I have a
contrary opinion that Wikiversity as a seperate domain and a seperate
"sister project" under the Wikimedia Foundation can succeed and benefit
all of the Wikimedia projects.  This is not "another half-baked project"
but something with a real goal in mind and some very clear leadership.
 That there are multiple opinions on how to accomplish the goals of
Wikiversity is more the issue, and many people fighting in the arena of
ideas are trying to figure out how to accomplish the goals of Wikiversity.

As far as admins from one project fighting vandalism on another project,
my experience is that admins from Wikipedia (just as an example)
generally don't understand the philosophies and policies on the other
projects very well unless they have been active participants and gone
through the process of learning just like they had to do on Wikipedia in
the first place.  I for one don't feel too comfortable on Wikipedia and
the high pressure of trying to resolve conflicts in a short period of
time is not my style.  I am always telling editors who are more familiar
with Wikipedia that when editing and making changes on Wikbooks,
particularly dispute resolution like VfD discussions, Wikibooks simply
takes more time to accomplish the same task.  Have a little bit more
patience and try to acknowledge that it isn't the same group of editors
you were previously used to working with.

I don't think the seperate login is as bad of a thing as you seem to
think it might be.

As far as the people who donated to Wikimedia hoping that it would be
used only for Wikipedia, I think that is both shortsighted on your part
with regards to the donors as well as something the donors should be in
general better informed about when they give money to the Foundation.
 Most of what Wikiversity is going to be doing on the website anyway is
writing curriculum standards, course syllibi, instructional examples,
and testing materials.  How is that any different from writing books or
encyclopedia articles.  Besides, all of these tasks have been happening
on Wikibooks anyway.  The only real debate is if these tasks should
happen as a seperate project or if it is something that belongs within
Wikibooks.

In addition, this whole discussion wouldn't be happening at all if it
weren't for the fact that the German Wikiversity,
http://de.wikiversity.org/ hadn't been started already without going
through the new project discussions and procedures.  The VfD discussion
on Wikibooks was in part triggered by a move on the part of a Wikibooks
admin who requested that en.wikiversity be started as well.  I hope that
no new projects get started on the fly like the German Wikiversity, and
my forcing a vote on the issue was only to try and get Wikiversity
started the way it should have in the first place rather than as a
"stealth" project with no discussion.  I've shot down Wikijunior as a
seperate project for the same reason, strongly suggesting that if the
one user trying to push for Wikijunior to be a seperate Wiki domain
wants that accomplished, that he needs to go through the established new
project procedure instead.  That seems to be too much work and he wants
to short-circuit the whole process.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

body:
On 11/9/05, Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2005/11/9, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org>:
> > But maybe I'm wrong. Has anyone accomplished anything by saying "yeah,
> I'm
> > a reporter for some website, you can go to this url and look at a page
> that
> > anyone in the world can edit, and that proves it"?
>
> "Reporters" of pl.wikinews tried it two times. Once during a press
> conference, then trying to get into a place for photographers, to make
> a good photo for the article. We weren't let in, because we had no
> press credentials.

 There also might be an issue wrt privacy and publicity rights, but then
again this might not be a problem for Wikinews since news reporting is
generally an exception.
 But don't news reporters have to identify themselves and their company in
order to be allowed to publish the quotes and/or the photos? Or is this just
a courtesy?
 I don't know anything about this, but maybe someone on here would.

There you go. The point of this email is just to prove that we NEED
> press credentials, press badges, and stuff like that. But this also
> has to be international. This has to be discussed between the
> Wikinewsies of the major Wikinews languages and the Board.
>
> --
> Pozdrawiam,
> Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Adding a new tab

references:
<dkm303$j24$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dkq1sp$e7q$1@sea.gmane.org>	<ba1b6b9f0511080753k5442d92dkd9789e1b6d10e32a@mail.gmail.com>
	<dkr1n9$2be$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
candy wrote:
>
> Thanks Andrew but the mediawiki I installed doesnt have any
> javascript code. It has monobook.php and css files In tht case can I
> use the js code. If so how or else whats the alternative?

You can use the js code by placing it on the page
[[MediaWiki:Monobook.js]] on your wiki. Not a file in your file system;
a wiki page. However, note that it will only work in the Monobook skin.
Since other skins don't use tabs at all, you will have to find a
different way for those, or just not care about the few people who don't
use Monobook.

Timwi


list: wikien-l

from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] disputing block: 69.108.172.162, lysdexia

body:
On 11/8/05, Autymn D. C. <lysdexia at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> I consider many possibilities beforehand. They were and are provably
> wrong.

Then PROVE them wrong. You don't do so - instead, you merely state that you
are right and others wrong, and insist that everyone else is too stupid to
understand the right anyway.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. You insist that your
grammatical usage is correct and everyone else's wrong - not just the
Wikipedia editors you are personally dealing with, but the overwhelming
majority of users of the English language. That is, to my mind, an
extraordinary claim.

Anyway, I've already proven my cases in the talk pages.

I cannot see such a proof, merely, again, an assertion, and insults.

I had no bad grammar, so this question is meaningless. I still left a
> note.

Once more, assertion, not proof.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: CheckUser questions

body:
Aphaia wrote:

> Hello,
> Danny's mail brought rrelevant questions rather than comments to me
> which I've held since last night after a communication on JA WP Pump.

I can clarify some of those.

> On 11/9/05, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>>Although I have not been following this discussion, I was asked this  evening
>>to grant 5 arbitrators on the English Wikipedia CheckUser powers.
>
>
> Although I don't know not all those five closely, personally I have no
> opposition to any of them, however,  frankly I was a bit surprised by
> so many people requested (I found it first on meta), because I
> understood only two people could be granted it on a local project.
>
> As for the number of checkuser priviledge holders, I understood as the
> below: if a project is large but lacks its own arbcom, two users (and
> not one, nor more than two) can given the checkuser right. Yesterday
> an editor said "more than two: would be given it Perhaps I was wrong.
> Or not. If any explanation is given, this guy (or girl) will be very
> appreciated.
>
> Let me continue a talk on assumption; if more than two may granted on
> a project, it isn't worthy for a surprise that five people request for
> checkuser priviledge. Otherwise, a question arises; a big project with
> arbcom can have more than two checkuser granted editors. a rather
> small but still big project without arbcom (like Ja or De) can be with
> two such users. It seems to me somehow strange.
>
> For your information, few months ago JA WP had a discussion about
> checkuser request. Then we argued how many checkuser group editors
> would be needed; a certain opinion said three would be the best mainly
> due to availability and frequency of such investigation.
> So "two' or "more than two" is not a petty thing to that community.

The "two" is a minimal number and is there to ensure that there are at
least 2 editors who can watch each other activity. This was proposed to
reduce the impact of lack of public log.

There is no maximal limit.

As a reference, which might be interesting, David makes checks every
day. Yesterday (a bad day I guess), he made over a hundred checks. At
this rate, clearly, more than 1 and actually more than 2 must have the
tool in the hand.

As a second interesting reference, the second biggest project (dewiki)
has it seems never made a request (even to a steward). The third
community (frwiki) had two "valid" requests in a month or so. The fourth
(jawiki) never asked either. Seeing Oscar and Waerth log activity, the
nlwiki is ready to use the tool as well.

Might be interesting from a cultural perspective though...

>>While the request was made, I think it is sage for us to let it sit there
>>for some time to see if there are any valid protests to giving it to these
>>individuals. Usually, steward requests can remain for several days until someone
>>acts upon them, and I don't see why this should be any different.
>
>
> One interesting point to me, the request submitted Raul mentioned to
> Jimbo's participation to the discussion about request. I have no
> argument about it; it is simply nice for such participation and
> approval. On the other hand, such participation couldn't be expected
> on most projects couldn't. It means in most cases the Board and
> Foundation has to rely on  their credibilitygiven by a community -
> another question arises here to me, wheter "70%-80% approval with more
> than 20-30 supports" is truly acceptable (Not personally, just a
> question).
>
> A relevant thing: a sysop election on a big project can gather
> sometimes over 50 or close to 100 support vote (like vote on elian
> last year) - I am not sure if the current criteria is enough for some
> meta-project with 10,000+ registered users. If everyone is happy, no
> problem.

The numbers were proposed to limit the access for small projects with
only 2-5 editors. Two reasons for this
* first, the needs are less important, and can be handled by steward
ponctually.
* second, on small wikis, sysophood is just given with no vote right
now. And we have several times observed that the new sysop aquire a sort
of special status, with special rights over the others. On some
projects, the sysops are the only ones authorized to vote over
decisions... on some projects, sysops are free to block a page on which
they are in edit war with someone... on some projects, the bureaucrats
decide who shall be sysops :-) This shall pass as the community grow. I
would just prefer that tiny projects with a handful of editors have the
time to gather a real community before having access to the tool. So the
criteria is just here for those tiny community.

Any community with more than 20 editors active enough to vote is a big
and diverse enough community.

>>I also wonder whether they should be given the power on a permanent or a
>>need-to-know basis. That is, should they always have this ability, or should
>>they only be given it when a case requires invesigation, and then have it
>>removed? Personally, I favor the latter option. I do not think anybody needs to  be
>>able to do this in all instances.

> Sounds wise. One concern is time expirinng and steward availability.
> In some circumstances investigation should be done within a day or
> hours (like emergent request for desysoping). If stewards don't care
> to be bothered with frequent on-time basis requests, it would be
> prudent. On the other hand, if they are so trusted, it would be
> unlikly problematic to give them permenent right.

Well... on enwiki, the checks are done everyday. It would be unworkable
to have to restore status everyday...
Now, I suppose that if some requests are done on a temp basis by editors
we generally trust very much, we could just give them a temp status ?

> --
> Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
> email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: CheckUser questions


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

body:
I see no cause for recusal. There is no requirement for arbitrators to
recuse themselves in every case in which they have had prior dealings with
one of the parties.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Try out the rating scheme

body:
On 11/9/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
>
> Wikimedia has no test servers? All of them are production systems?
>

The code has already been tested in such a fashion - the question is whether
it can stand a production load.

Perhaps the true problem is that we do not have any method of simulating a
production load adequately.

-Matt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Search very intermittent on :en:

references:
<dknu3d$82k$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dkp80u$5hc$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dkq22f$e7q$2@sea.gmane.org>	<dkqfqp$ttr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<4371CD77.5010408@pobox.com>

body:
> (This is localizable and configurable as MediaWiki:Lucenefallback)

Will this go live later? [[MediaWiki:Lucenefallback]] doesn't seem to
exist on en yet.


body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images of text? If that's what
>>>you're saying, I disagree. I think maybe we were talking about two
>>>
>>>
>>different
>>
>>
>>>things, though.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>No, this is still the same issue. I'm not exactly sure where the best
>>place for scanned pages of historical text ought to go in this case.
>>The images themselves should be in commons, and perhaps as a temporary
>>"Wikiproject" within commons to extract those images might be useful to
>>have the full scanned pages available. Wikisource also has an image
>>repository independent of commons, so that may be more appropriate, but
>>that is something that ought to be decided within the Wikisource
>>community itself. Figures and engravings do need to go to Commons.
>>
>>
>
> I think we're probably all in agreement that the processed images should go
>in the Commons. And the processed text should go into Wikisource. In the
>mean time, well, I don't think it really matters that much.
>
>
>
>
>>>AFAIK Distributed Proofreaders hasn't released the raw images out to the
>>>public. If that's still the case, I'd say *that* is the reason for the
>>>
>>>
>>slow
>>
>>
>>>going. The wiki process would be much more efficient.
>>>
>>>
>>It is not that difficult to get the raw image scans from Distributed
>>Proofreaders if you really want them.
>>
>>
>
> How? I've looked for this before and couldn't find them. I just looked
>again a half hour ago and couldn't find them. If they're easy to get from
>DP, well, then I don't see the point in hosting them somewhere else. I guess
>there's the index files, which apparently DP doesn't have?
>
>They are not of the best quality
>
>
>>(DP has other goals in mind) but they are usable for the purpose of
>>transcription of the text. I also fail to see how using a Wiki for
>>proofreading is going to be any better than what DP is doing.
>>
>>
>
> There's a much lower threshold for editing on a wiki. You don't even have
>to create an account. It might not be better, but I think it would be much
>faster.
> I've used DP before and it seems to be a very closed project compared to
>Wikipedia. Like I said, I can't even find out where I can download a dump of
>all the data.
>
>
It isn't that closed of a project as you think.  There is just a
heirarchy that you may not understand, and that you earn "privileges" to
do different aspects of DP much slower than comparable privileges on
Wikimedia projects.  I've been able to participate very well and have
made some meaningful contributions, although I am not even close to an
uber geek type of person on the project.

I didn't say that it was easy to find the DP scanned images for
Encyclopedia Britannica, but they are there if you want to get at them.
 I don't completely understand the reasoning for why DP doesn't want to
let the scanned images be available widely and easily, but I suspect it
is something to do with bandwidth issues rather than copyright status.
 The scanned pages take up quite a bit of server space, as you could
imagine.  If you try to do a contribution for one of the current books
being proofread, you can see just how easy it is to get at the scanned
images in general, as that is precisely how they get you to contribute:
 You look at the scanned page and then you either transcribe the text or
work on OCR'd content and try to make corrections.  It is very tedious
work but something that is rewarding it its own way.

If you dig around a bit more, you can look up any project that is
currently going through review, including Volumes 2-5 of the
Encyclopedia Brittanica.  By finding the project page, you can then find
not only the proofread text but also the original scanned pages.  It is
not going to be in a nice clean zipped bundle for you to use at random,
but you could download all of the scans onto your own hard drive if you
wanted.  Nobody is going to stop you from doing that.  Getting access to
these files is simply a matter of registering as a user and then looking
around.  You don't even have to make an edit if you don't want to in
order to see these scans.  This takes no "permission" from any admin or
any human-to-human interaction.  That is why I was saying that it wasn't
too difficult to get at if you really wanted to get at them.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [WikiEN-l] Longitudinal analysis

body:
On 11/9/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
>
> There are many other issues which are completely ignored by taking a
> static
> view. For instance, someone noted that general articles on basic issues
> are
> often in a much worse shape than highly-specialised articles on obscure
> topics. This has sometimes been an issue in math. It's something that
> needs
> to be thought about.
>

I see this frequently. I think it's because it's easy to write a specialised
article - the literature available to cite is small and easy to find, the
topic is small and self-contained, and it's easy to tell when you have
covered the subject adequately.

It's a lot harder to write a comprehensive, NPOV article about a general
topic. Partly because drawing general conclusions without POV is quite hard,
and generally involves much review of sources. Partly because many editors
feel inadequate to the task.

Note how it's much harder to get a general topic through FAC than a specific
topic.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 11/9/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> I think creating free content is much more subversive.
>

Does the one preclude the other?

-Matt


body:
On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> The advantage of working with the Wikimedia Foundation is that the
> fundraising activities for simply paying for the server and the physical
> equipment that runs the internet services has already been organized.
> This is also precisely the reason why so many people want to have their
> "pet project" idea become a sister project to the Wikimedia
> Foundation... because this support system is already in place. The
> legal tax status for doing the fundraising in many countries has already
> been thought through, and if Wikiversity were to go off on its own it
> would have to do all of that all over again, including establishing
> "chapters" in other countries. This legwork has already been
> accomplished, and the real question is why should this work be
> duplicated by a seperate organization?
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

 That's simple, really - time and money. The people who donated to Wikimedia
donated the money thinking it would be used to create books, encyclopedias,
etc., not to run a school. That's the money story, but the more important
one is time. The board of Wikimedia is stretched too thinly as it is.
Wikipedia editors can't even participate in Wikibooks or Wikinews without
creating separate logins. Admins on one project often have to go through a
long process just to be able to effectively fight vandalism on another
project. There is very little communication between the different projects.
Starting up yet another half-baked project with no clear leadership is only
going to make matters worse.
 You've gotta get users before you can get donations. By the time the number
of people dedicated to the project reaches the level where tax deductibility
of donations really matters I don't see what the big deal is with getting
that status then. I can only speak for the United States, but here it's
really not that big of a deal at all. An unincorporated association can be
started for almost no cost, and you don't even have to file taxes unless you
make more than $5000 in gross revenues. Maybe other countries are more
difficult in this respect, but I still don't think that would become a
problem until you've got plenty of money to solve it.
 If Wikimedia wants to donate web space to the project while it's getting
started that's always a possibility too. But Wikimedia's legal
organizational structure should focus on its core purpose - creating and
distributing media, not running a university.
 If the project is limited to creating teaching resources, I think that fits
within the goal. If instead the project wants to start running online
courses, I'd say it doesn't.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbiter recusal

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

Jack Lynch stated for the record:

> There have been recent concerns regarding Kelly Martin, but none so
> serious as her decision not to recuse herself in the case of an editor
> whom she has clear animosity toward. Please review:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Silverback#Recusal

And after that, review [[barratry]].

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Videmus nunc per speculum in
 sean at epoptic.org | aenigmate. Nunc cognosco ex parte.
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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
On 11/9/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> You can either enter raw wikitext, or a list of article titles.
> Templates can be automatically resolved (which is necessary for some
> pages, as otherwise the wiki syntax is invalid and rendered as plain
> text). Article and template texts are fetched from the given MediaWiki site.

There has been some discussion on IRC about potentially changing
syntax so that this doesn't happen. (It horribly breaks WYSIWYG
editing, it muddles up history, etc).

I'd like to see a longer and more thought out discussion on the list.

My thought is that if we consider the parse tree of wikitext it should
be that templates should only be able to affect a subtree under the
node where they are included, not make changes to the syntax at their
level or above.  I.e. you should be able to completely parse the
wikitext, then go in and insert subtrees at the templates and not
change anything else.

This *will* break a few things people have done on enwiki (I know this
because I ran into pages that broke my parser), but I don't think
there is anything useful that breaking this prevents accomplishing.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Look

body:
geni wrote:
>
> Well I have a long standing policy of only voteing in the cases of
> users I've herd of.

So in order to get your vote I would first have to clone a whole herd of
myselves?


from_name: Ryan Hudy

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper

body:
Does anyone know if the mwdumper program has image import capabilities?  I'm
able to import wikipedia data into my wiki, but I also need to import
certain images, but can't find a way to perform that function effectively.

Ryan


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Voting is evil (was CheckUser policy)

body:
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JAY JG wrote:
<snip>
> User RfCs are a mess - in theory they are a platform for addressing and
> solving community issues.  In practice, they are often venues for
> warring camps to air grievances, and for certain notorious individuals
> (who feel they don't get enough attention) to use as soapboxes for their
> own speechifying (i.e. yet another "outside view").  Obvious trolling is
> rarely addressed - the complainants outline their case, and a dozen or
> so regular editors vote in support.  The troll provides a lengthy
> response, and three or four troll buddies/generall trolls/people with
> grievances against the complainant line up and vote in support of him,
> or add another "outside view" that has little to do with the case at
> hand, and is mostly about their own issues with the complainants.
> Nothing changes, and everyone goes away bitter.
>
> The "toxicity" of AfD is nothing compared to what you find at RfC, and
> in the end it's often only a precursor to RfAR, just a perfunctory
> "tick-box" on the "attempted previous dispute resolution" form.
>

Having tried to cross AfD with RFC, I can only agree with you. Someone
should take all the previous RFCs and publish an essay on Wikisource
entitled "A study on groupthink in online communities".

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
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Mark Williamson wrote:
> Unforunately I'm still learning the glorious language of the beautiful
> enchanted lands of Zlatibor, so I'd probably not be able to read it.
> The Zlatiborians who have moved to cities, such as SellackAlex or
> Djordje, however, will surely read it. ;p
>

I am most curious as to why the lands of Zlatibor are enchanted. Do they
have some particularly fine drugs that are not available elsewhere?

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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body:
On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> What??? Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images, and indeed
> there have already been several scans of this encyclopedia that have
> been put into Wikimedia projects. We don't need to use bit torrents
> unless this is a move to do bit torrents for all Wikimedia projects
> (perhaps a good idea but a seperate discussion). There is also a
> license tag that has been specifically established on commons just for
> content from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica because of the large
> number of potential images that can come from this source. Look them up
> right now with the associated categories at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template%3APD-Britannica

 Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images of text? If that's what
you're saying, I disagree. I think maybe we were talking about two different
things, though.

One thing I see missing from this discussion is working in cooperation
> with Distributed Proofreaders, who is not only transcribing the contents
> of this encyclopedia into plain ASCII text (and XML markup as well), but
> is also providing scans of the figures and images from within the
> volumes and making them available with a public domain license. What
> more do we want here? The slow going on that project with Distributed
> Proofreaders is something that goes to show how large of a project it is.

 AFAIK Distributed Proofreaders hasn't released the raw images out to the
public. If that's still the case, I'd say *that* is the reason for the slow
going. The wiki process would be much more efficient.

That trying to organize the content onto a Wiki has been difficult, yes.
> It may also be a good idea to access a direct scan of the image to
> compare against the transcribed text. The real question is if the
> contents of a whole DVD ought to be moved to commons or not, especially
> if the source of the scans is in the public domain.
>
> That is the real issue here, because you can copyright a scan of an
> image. Weak copyright protection at best, but you can copyright the
> scan itself which would in turn force you to have to find the original
> materials and do the scan seperately. In the case of the 1911
> Encyclopaedia Brittanica, however, that is much easier to do than some
> other older works. Again, working with the Distributed Proofreaders on
> something like this is going to make life much easier because they have
> done the scans themselves and are granting explicitly the scanned images
> and content into the public domain. It also avoids duplication of labor
> with a huge project like this.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

 I thought scans of 2D public domain images were public domain. I've
certainly read that on Wikipedia somewhere.

Anthony


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CheckUser policy (was Status of Wikimedia)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Walter van Kalken wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Alphax wrote:
>>
>>> I was just thinking that. The people who currently have checkuser status
>>> were granted it by the developers, who currently already have that
>>> capability. The developers were effectively approved to do (whatever) by
>>> the board; hence, the board decides who is allowed access to the
>>> checkuser function.
>>
>>
>>
>> The board does not approve developers. Developers approve themselves.
>>
>> The majority of users with checkuser access are stewards. Stewards
>> have been approved by the community, neither by developers, nor by the
>> board, nor by Jimbo.
>
>
> Errrrrmmmm there is one thing that is oversighted in this discussion.
> Stewards can actually grant themselve or anyone else  checkuser rights.
> There is no developer needed for that. From having used it two or three
> times, I know it is not just Taw and David Gerard using it.
>

Given that stewards are likely to be active across a number of
communities (ie. various languages and projects), wouldn't it be a
better idea that the stewards decide who gets checkuser?

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] 'Proper' languages and bumper stickers

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I'd agree with you there, except that ISO is not always nessecarily correct.
>
> For starters, ISO 639-2 excludes lots and lots of languages (cf Ethnologue).
>
> The (provisional) ISO 639-3 solves this, but as of yet it is not final
> or officially official.
>
> Now, the problem with that is that it follows Ethnologue's divisions
> of languages vs dialects for the most part. Thus, while Moroccan and
> Tunisian Arabic are considered separate languages (even people who
> advocate for separate languages within "Arabic" would consider them
> both part of Maghrebi Arabic), Yavapai and Havasupai or Lithuanian and
> Samogitian are not. Zlatiborian, of course, is not even mentioned.
> Give it time, perhaps.
>

Show me where "Upper New York on the west side" exists in the
ethnologue, and I will show you Zlatiborian.

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

body:
Alphax wrote:

>Actually, given the number of customisations that have been carried out
>to our wikis, I'm not entirely sure that the results would be valid. We
>need the exact same conditions with only 1 variable changed (the
>presence of the validation feature) for the results to be valid in any way.
>
>
Wikimedia has no test servers?  All of them are production systems?


body:
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Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Having tried to cross AfD with RFC, I can only agree with you. Someone
>> should take all the previous RFCs and publish an essay on Wikisource
>> entitled "A study on groupthink in online communities".
>
>
> I'm filing an RFC against Alphax unless he does it!
>

Hey, I'm an engineer(ing student), not a sociologist! :)

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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body:
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geni wrote:
> On 11/8/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>We need MC reform as well as RFA reform as well as RFC reform as well
>>as AFD reform... pretty much all of the wikipedia name space process's
>>need work. Not to give too many pats on the back, but the system that
>>currently seems to be working best is ArbCom...
>>
>>Jack (Sam Spade)
>>
>
>
> Then again look at the speed with which both RFC and RFA delt with the
> Stevertigo issue compared to arcom. On the other can lack of speed has
> never really been given as a downside of mob justice.
>

I hereby propose renaming [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]] to
[[Wikipedia:Article mobbing]].

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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body:
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geni wrote:
> Just find someone with serves access to a non mediawiki wiki and turn
> it on and see what happens. If all else fails the person who runs the
> other wiki project I work on would love to have this feature.
>

I think you meant "non-wikimedia" - given that we're talking about
features of Mediawiki...

Actually, given the number of customisations that have been carried out
to our wikis, I'm not entirely sure that the results would be valid. We
need the exact same conditions with only 1 variable changed (the
presence of the validation feature) for the results to be valid in any way.

Given that Commons has traditionally been a place of innovation and
trying out new features, why not start there?

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
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Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
>> I put "Category:Soviet spies"  on Categories for Deletion, but even
>> though most of the people thought a name change was a good idea, since
>> most of them did not vote to Delete, the ruling was to Keep.  I
>> objected, but got no response.
>>
> It seems strange to me that any category which could be defamatory would
> be subject to the whims of the voting process.  This is not just a
> question of "Soviet spies".  Any category suggesting a criminal activity
> of any kind should be viewed as POV.
>

Do we have "Category:Convicted rapists"?

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

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser questions

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Although I have not been following this discussion, I was asked this  evening
> to grant 5 arbitrators on the English Wikipedia CheckUser powers.
>
> While the request was made, I think it is sage for us to let it sit there
> for some time to see if there are any valid protests to giving it to these
> individuals. Usually, steward requests can remain for several days until someone
> acts upon them, and I don't see why this should be any different.
>
> I also wonder whether they should be given the power on a permanent or a
> need-to-know basis. That is, should they always have this ability, or should
> they only be given it when a case requires invesigation, and then have it
> removed? Personally, I favor the latter option. I do not think anybody needs to  be
> able to do this in all instances.
>
> I welcome comments.
>
> Danny

I'm CCing this to the English language Wikipedia list as I think we
should get some feedback from the actual community where it is occurring!

I oppose granting it at the moment. I suggest waiting for the
Arbitration Committee elections (or appointments) in December, and
granting it to people who become arbitrators. Two of the people
mentioned above (Kelly and Jayjg) have only temporary positions (as they
were appointed by Jimbo Wales), out of process with how the other
arbitrators were chosen. I think the English language Wikipedia can
survive until the new Arbitration Committee members take their seats.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] CheckUser questions


subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser questions


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper

body:
Ryan Hudy wrote:
> Does anyone know if the mwdumper program has image import capabilities?
> I'm able to import wikipedia data into my wiki, but I also need to
> import certain images, but can't find a way to perform that function
> effectively.

Not at this time, sorry.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper

body:
Gordon Joly wrote:
> And....
>
> Is it possible to dump all the sql from WIkipedia without shell access?

For the most part I'd be surprised if you've got an account allowing
that much disk space usage in the database but no shell. :)

If you have something like phpMyAdmin, it may be possible upload the
giant (multigigabyte for some languages) SQL file and have it source it in.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
On 9 Nov 2005, at 04:40, Matt Brown wrote:
>
> There is a strong argument that those concerned with freedom should
> aggressively use the provisions of Fair Use - explicitly to never
> allow the
> fiction that copyright owners have absolute control to establish
> itself.
> Fair Use is equivalent to a public right of way, in a sense - and
> should not
> be a right allowed to lapse through unuse.

I think creating free content is much more subversive.

Justinc


subject: [Wikitech-l] Custom Namepsace

body:
Amruta Lonkar wrote:
> I have created a new namespace for references in our local wiki. I have added
> it to the DefaultSeetings.php file as mentioned in help.

You should pretty much never edit DefaultSettings.php. It's part of the
software, and will be overwritten when you upgrade.

Custom namespace declarations should go in your LocalSettings.php.

 > I wanted to know if i
> need to add an entry in the languages.php file also, in the nstab section of
> language.php also?. The references in this wiki work i a similar fashion as
> images with each reference having its own talk page like any other article.
>
> Do i need to make any other changes anywhere within the code for this
> namespace to work?

Nope.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images of text? If that's what
> >you're saying, I disagree. I think maybe we were talking about two
> different
> >things, though.
> >
> No, this is still the same issue. I'm not exactly sure where the best
> place for scanned pages of historical text ought to go in this case.
> The images themselves should be in commons, and perhaps as a temporary
> "Wikiproject" within commons to extract those images might be useful to
> have the full scanned pages available. Wikisource also has an image
> repository independent of commons, so that may be more appropriate, but
> that is something that ought to be decided within the Wikisource
> community itself. Figures and engravings do need to go to Commons.

 I think we're probably all in agreement that the processed images should go
in the Commons. And the processed text should go into Wikisource. In the
mean time, well, I don't think it really matters that much.

> > AFAIK Distributed Proofreaders hasn't released the raw images out to the
> >public. If that's still the case, I'd say *that* is the reason for the
> slow
> >going. The wiki process would be much more efficient.
>
> It is not that difficult to get the raw image scans from Distributed
> Proofreaders if you really want them.

 How? I've looked for this before and couldn't find them. I just looked
again a half hour ago and couldn't find them. If they're easy to get from
DP, well, then I don't see the point in hosting them somewhere else. I guess
there's the index files, which apparently DP doesn't have?

They are not of the best quality
> (DP has other goals in mind) but they are usable for the purpose of
> transcription of the text. I also fail to see how using a Wiki for
> proofreading is going to be any better than what DP is doing.

 There's a much lower threshold for editing on a wiki. You don't even have
to create an account. It might not be better, but I think it would be much
faster.
 I've used DP before and it seems to be a very closed project compared to
Wikipedia. Like I said, I can't even find out where I can download a dump of
all the data.


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

geni wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
<snip>
>>Actually, given the number of customisations that have been carried out
>>to our wikis, I'm not entirely sure that the results would be valid. We
>>need the exact same conditions with only 1 variable changed (the
>>presence of the validation feature) for the results to be valid in any way.
>>
>
>
> If we were looking at wether it would be a bulk server hog I think we
> could get away with that. Hardwear setups would be more of an issue
> but even limited data is better than none
>
>

I was thinking more in terms of "given the number of extensions that
have already been applied, will adding validation break them, be broken
by them, or cause the whole thing to crash?" However I am reasonably
certain that the devs have made sure this is not the case.

What I'm not convinced about is the complex server structure...

>
>>Given that Commons has traditionally been a place of innovation and
>>trying out new features, why not start there?
>
>
> Because rateing the kind of material they have there doesn't make a
> hudge amount of sense. If we wanted to test it on a smaller wikimedia
> project then one of the non english wikipedias would be most logical.
> Which one would depend on the size of test you wanted to carry out.
>

Actually that was a pretty stupid statement of me to make. Commons has
done quite a few things wrt. multilingualism (cf. Babel) but in terms of
actually getting content out there and available, de: has been the
leader (cf. the DVD and such).

So: should we ask the de: community what they think? Try it out over there?

- --
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
We should have a similar categorisation in place for Soviet spies removing
the word academic. For example, Kim Philby was not convicted of being a
Soviet spy but there is little doubt that he was a spy. He even held a job
with the KGB after his defection.
 There have been accusations against other people such as Sir Roger Hollis,
former head of MI5, but these claims have yet to be proven one way or
another. If we wanted to put these people into a category, it should be
alleged spies.
 Regards
  *Keith Old*

 On 11/9/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No, but we do have [[Category:Rapists]]. However the description page
> for the category says that "This category is for individuals who have
> been convicted of rape, or those for whom there is little academic
> doubt as to whether they committed the crime."
>
> If we limited [[Category:Soviet spies]] to people who had been
> convicted or for cases where there is little academic doubt, it would
> be a pretty small list. That's part of the reason that the people
> opposed to renaming the category are opposed to it -- it de-emphasizes
> the point they want to make (see my last posting) if the category is
> small.
>
> You couldn't classify Ethel Rosenberg as a "Soviet spy" in this
> definition -- there is considerable academic doubt whether she
> participated in espionage. There is no doubt that she was convicted
> for it*, though -- it is a plain fact.
>
> FF
>
> *Well, technically for "conspiracy to commit espionage", but now we're
> splitting hairs.
>
>
> On 11/8/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA256
> >
> > Ray Saintonge wrote:
> > > Chip Berlet wrote:
> > >
> > >> I put "Category:Soviet spies" on Categories for Deletion, but even
> > >> though most of the people thought a name change was a good idea,
> since
> > >> most of them did not vote to Delete, the ruling was to Keep. I
> > >> objected, but got no response.
> > >>
> > > It seems strange to me that any category which could be defamatory
> would
> > > be subject to the whims of the voting process. This is not just a
> > > question of "Soviet spies". Any category suggesting a criminal
> activity
> > > of any kind should be viewed as POV.
> > >
> >
> > Do we have "Category:Convicted rapists"?
> >
> > - --
> > Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> > Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> > "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32)
> > Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> >
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> > P8mZ3jxCUamRQdHXYoNaJNmiUSOccjGqa9Q0h6YXASASvphKqZNL4pvQ2m0mIeoh
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> > Q27/1QQe/ErV2WeDfHDg3S0xVDsJWyh6KavVj/qWTqT+1M6LTRXE4Ewr14VSkFn9
> > e32u9J9I8VvR+chxsv6sI9Jdku2LtYTJ5wIbOz+AnBPqzK2slbNmIw==
> > =916B
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> As far as admins from one project fighting vandalism on another project,
> my experience is that admins from Wikipedia (just as an example)
> generally don't understand the philosophies and policies on the other
> projects very well unless they have been active participants and gone
> through the process of learning just like they had to do on Wikipedia in
> the first place.

 Well, that's kind of my point. I see that as a bad thing.

As far as the people who donated to Wikimedia hoping that it would be
> used only for Wikipedia, I think that is both shortsighted on your part
> with regards to the donors as well as something the donors should be in
> general better informed about when they give money to the Foundation.

 You misquoted me. I never said donations should only be used for Wikipedia.
But instead of repeating myself I'll be precise: "The specific purpose for
which [Wikimedia] is organized is: to create and freely distribute freely
licensed encyclopedias, textbooks, reference works, and other literary,
scientific, and educational information in all languages of the world."
That's straight from the amended articles of incorporation. To spend any
significant portion of donations on anything else is at best unethical.

> Most of what Wikiversity is going to be doing on the website anyway is
> writing curriculum standards, course syllibi, instructional examples,
> and testing materials. How is that any different from writing books or
> encyclopedia articles. Besides, all of these tasks have been happening
> on Wikibooks anyway. The only real debate is if these tasks should
> happen as a seperate project or if it is something that belongs within
> Wikibooks.

 I already said I have no problem as long as the purpose of Wikiversity is
limited to creating and distributing learning materials, and doesn't include
actually using those materials to teach.
 In any case, I think the project should stay within Wikibooks. Further
fragmenting the community is not useful, and where would the line be drawn
between what goes on Wikibooks and what goes in Wikiversity? I don't see it.
 But if the Wikibooks community really doesn't want the project, then fine,
start Wikiversity. Of course the likely outcome of that is that if
Wikiversity ever becomes successful it will probably make Wikibooks
obsolete. I can't think of anything that should go in Wikibooks that
shouldn't go in a repository of teaching resources.

In addition, this whole discussion wouldn't be happening at all if it
> weren't for the fact that the German Wikiversity,
> http://de.wikiversity.org/ hadn't been started already without going
> through the new project discussions and procedures. The VfD discussion
> on Wikibooks was in part triggered by a move on the part of a Wikibooks
> admin who requested that en.wikiversity be started as well. I hope that
> no new projects get started on the fly like the German Wikiversity, and
> my forcing a vote on the issue was only to try and get Wikiversity
> started the way it should have in the first place rather than as a
> "stealth" project with no discussion. I've shot down Wikijunior as a
> seperate project for the same reason, strongly suggesting that if the
> one user trying to push for Wikijunior to be a seperate Wiki domain
> wants that accomplished, that he needs to go through the established new
> project procedure instead. That seems to be too much work and he wants
> to short-circuit the whole process.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Poe, Marshall

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 BritannicaonWikimedia

body:
Anthony wrote:
> I think we're probably all in agreement that the processed images
should go in the Commons. >.And the processed text should go into
Wikisource. In the mean time, well, I don't think it >.really matters
that much.

Maybe all processed images should go on Commons, but isn't it the case
that *some* processed images would serve the purposes of WikiSource, and
therefore go on Wikisource as well?  Imagine, for example, that you had
a good image of the original draft of the Magna Carta, or the
Declaration of Independence.  Wouldn't WikiSource benefit from the
inclusion of such a source?

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


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica on Wikimedia

body:
Brian wrote:
> For those who don't know, the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica is a famous
> public domain encyclopedia, advertised as the "sum of all human
> knowledge" in 1911.
>
> I recently (today) acquired a DVD containing scans of every page of the
> 1911 Britannica, along with index files for it all, organized by letter
> and page number. I've already talked with avar, TimStarling, and brion
> on IRC, and TimStarling specifically asked me to tell you all that he is
> "confident that the server requirements will be minimal." They would set
> up a domain name, generate some web pages automatically using the index
> files, and host the entire set of 29,700 files totaling about 4 GB.
>
> One more thing, these are black and white TIFs, and there is discussion
> about whether they should be mass converted to PNGs to be easily viewable.

A few notes on this: firstly it seems that the guy who made the scans has no
intention of claiming any rights to them. He seems to be interested in
disseminating the material widely, for religious reasons. His webpage is here:

http://freierscientologe.netfirms.com/booksbritannica.htm

The CD/DVD sets are apparently quite rare, Brian was lucky to get his hands
on one at a fairly cheap price.

There's the trademark issue -- Britannica may attempt to scare us with legal
threats over this. A disclaimer on every HTML page declaring non-affiliation
with Britannica would probably put us on sound legal footing, although I'd
be willing to hear advice about this from people who are more knowledgeable.
If the "LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia" (1911encyclopedia.org) can host
this content, then we should be able to find a way too. And we can do it
without the abominable license restrictions and "copyright traps" scattered
throughout the work to enforce them.

Wikipedia owes a lot to the 1911 edition -- we've copied many of its
articles. A public, canonical copy will be a valuable tool to deal with
LoveToKnow's frequent OCR errors, its incompleteness, and its specious legal
threats against us based on our use of unspecified copyright material hidden
in their doctored online copy. Hopefully the availability of page images
will spur development of a complete and accurate OCR copy.

The only question in my mind is the domain: should this be under
eb1911.wikipedia.org? We could make it visually distinct, to avoid confusion
with Wikipedia itself. Or would eb1911.wikimedia.org be better? Or
eb1911.wikisource.org?

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wiki-to-XML

body:
On 11/9/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
> > My first (two-character) test input:
> >
> >     {|
> >
> > yields invalid XML as output. ;-) In general, it does so whenever the
> > close-table markup (|}) is missing.
> I hacked in a fix for nested tables minutes before announcing here, so
> it's probably a side effect of that. I'll have a look, thanks for noticing.
> >
> > Also, you seem to be ignoring all whitespace at the beginning of the
> > input, which makes it output a <paragraph> when the first line should
> > have been a <pre> because it starts with a space.
> Yep. Already fixed by changing "trim" to "rtrim" :-)
> >
> > Otherwise: Very impressive!!
> Thanks! I hope with added OpenDocument export, this will become useful
> one day.

It's useful already...  The complexity of the wikitext syntax (from a
programmers perspective) is quite high and this adds a substantial
level of friction to creating tools which can look for content in
pages. Even doing something as simple as extracting all the text of an
article and excluding content in images can be a pain.  The XML
representation is much easier to work with.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
I just wanted to announce that
* my PHP-based wiki-to-xml converter now supports the whole syntax
* is now in the "php" directory of the CVS module "wiki2xml"
* can be tested at http://magnusmanske.de/wiki2xml/w2x.php

You can either enter raw wikitext, or a list of article titles.
Templates can be automatically resolved (which is necessary for some
pages, as otherwise the wiki syntax is invalid and rendered as plain
text). Article and template texts are fetched from the given MediaWiki site.

Please report any bugs you find. I will now start and try (again) to
write a converter to OpenDocument format. Any help would be appreciated.

Magnus


from_name: Amruta Lonkar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Custom Namepsace

body:
Hi,

I have created a new namespace for references in our local wiki. I have added
it to the DefaultSeetings.php file as mentioned in help. I wanted to know if i
need to add an entry in the languages.php file also, in the nstab section of
language.php also?. The references in this wiki work i a similar fashion as
images with each reference having its own talk page like any other article.

Do i need to make any other changes anywhere within the code for this
namespace to work?

Thanks,
Amruta


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation categories?

body:
Dr Spui,
 Because a majority of voters voted to keep it as a Category and doing this
could provoke an edit war.
 Perhaps you would be better places putting a message on Texas Wikipedians
board asking for viewpoints and/or leave messages on the userpages of the
users who wanted to keep it.
 If you did something like this, you would possibly build concensus in
favour of the move or alternatively develop an understanding of their
position.
  Regards
    *Keith Old*
User: Capitalistroadster
 On 11/9/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A while ago I was reading an article about something in Texas and came
> across http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Handbook_of_Texas_citations
> on the bottom. That category is added by
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Handbookoftexas , a useful
> external link template. But the category seems like simple clutter in
> the list of categories on the article. So I listed it for deletion (
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2005_September_23#Category:Handbook_of_Texas_citations
> ). Due at least in part to someone spamming the talk pages of Texas
> Wikipedians, the category was kept.
>
> I honestly don't understand any of the arguments for keep. Some are
> plain erroneous (one person likens it to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:1911_Britannica , which is for
> articles that *contain* text from the 1911 EB) and others don't make
> sense.
>
> Basically I'm asking for a reason why this category should exist, and
> why I shouldn't be bold and remove it from the template.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: AW: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
On 11/9/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> That will break quite a few things on en, for example succession boxes,
> where they do something like this:
> {{table start}}
> {{succession|some position}}
> {{succession|some other position}}
> {{succession|yet some other position}}
> {{table end}}

A small syntax change could fix that.. something like:

{{table start||
{{somesomething|data}}
||}}

The parser might not know what the heck "table start" is, but it would
know that all of it's effects are contained inside the table start tag
itself.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > There's a much lower threshold for editing on a wiki. You don't even
> have
> >to create an account. It might not be better, but I think it would be
> much
> >faster.
> > I've used DP before and it seems to be a very closed project compared to
> >Wikipedia. Like I said, I can't even find out where I can download a dump
> of
> >all the data.
> >
> >
> It isn't that closed of a project as you think. There is just a
> heirarchy that you may not understand, and that you earn "privileges" to
> do different aspects of DP much slower than comparable privileges on
> Wikimedia projects. I've been able to participate very well and have
> made some meaningful contributions, although I am not even close to an
> uber geek type of person on the project.

 If you're talking about hierarchies and privileges and such I think it's
clear that it's a much more closed project than a wiki.
 You may very well have been able to make meaningful contributions even
though you're not an uber-geek. I still think more people would be able to
contribute more if you didn't even have to for instance create an account.

I didn't say that it was easy to find the DP scanned images for
> Encyclopedia Britannica, but they are there if you want to get at them.

 What does that mean? I want to get at them. They are "there". Where? I want
them. That's what interested me in the post by Brian. He's got these scans
that I've wanted for a long time.

I don't completely understand the reasoning for why DP doesn't want to
> let the scanned images be available widely and easily, but I suspect it
> is something to do with bandwidth issues rather than copyright status.
> The scanned pages take up quite a bit of server space, as you could
> imagine. If you try to do a contribution for one of the current books
> being proofread, you can see just how easy it is to get at the scanned
> images in general, as that is precisely how they get you to contribute:
> You look at the scanned page and then you either transcribe the text or
> work on OCR'd content and try to make corrections. It is very tedious
> work but something that is rewarding it its own way.

 I've used the project before, and from my understanding you could only look
at the scanned images that they chose to send you. You couldn't download
whatever you wanted. Maybe that's changed, though.

If you dig around a bit more, you can look up any project that is
> currently going through review, including Volumes 2-5 of the
> Encyclopedia Brittanica. By finding the project page, you can then find
> not only the proofread text but also the original scanned pages. It is
> not going to be in a nice clean zipped bundle for you to use at random,
> but you could download all of the scans onto your own hard drive if you
> wanted. Nobody is going to stop you from doing that. Getting access to
> these files is simply a matter of registering as a user and then looking
> around. You don't even have to make an edit if you don't want to in
> order to see these scans. This takes no "permission" from any admin or
> any human-to-human interaction. That is why I was saying that it wasn't
> too difficult to get at if you really wanted to get at them.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

 I'll give it a try. Can you get all the images, or just the books still in
progress, or just the pages from the books still in progress that haven't
yet been processed?
 Actually, I'll probably just wait until this stuff gets put somewhere on
Wikimedia.


subject: AW: [Wikitech-l] Wiki-to-XML

body:
On 11/9/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > - templates may be nested inside tags, e.g.
> >   <table {{Prettytable}}>
> >   {| {{Prettytable}}
> > - variables may be used inside tags, see [1]
> >   [[Image:Chs2_{{{2}}}d40.png|{{{65}}}px]]
> >
> I do support #2, but not #1. Should be not overly complicated.
>
> Basically, I agree with you though; Templates everywhere gets awfully messy.

Ah, missed this in my first reply.

In #2's case we should separate objects and attributes. I don't think
we should allow object names to be filled in via variables, only their
attributes. This means that variables will not effect syntax but could
still be used like the #2 above.


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reputation Systems

body:
admin Yellowikis wrote:
> Has anyone tried integrating a reputation system with MediaWiki?
>
I'd also be interested in seeing any prior work in this area; I'm
looking to implement an MSDN style content feedback system on my own
MediaWiki site. I recognize it's an incredibly tricky issue, and I don't
want to go in blind. :)

Thanks,
Ben


body:
Angela wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>The only question in my mind is the domain: should this be under
>>eb1911.wikipedia.org? We could make it visually distinct, to avoid confusion
>>with Wikipedia itself. Or would eb1911.wikimedia.org be better? Or
>>eb1911.wikisource.org?
>
>
> Whether at Wikipedia or Wikisource, I'd rather it was "1911" rather
> than "eb1911". If there are trademark issues with calling it
> Encyclopedia Britannica, then calling it EB just seems a sneaky way
> around that since it's obvious what the EB stands for. It annoys me
> when people use "WP" on sites we'd not approve the use of "Wikipedia"
> since it still implies some official connection, especially
> considering how often the abbreviation is used to refer to Wikipedia.

It's dishonest to call it anything other than the 1911 Encyclopaedia
Britannica. Academics and editors of modern encyclopedias should know what
they are citing. I suggested EB as an abbreviation, not as a way to avoid
trademark issues.

I would appreciate legal advice on the best way to avoid infringing
Britannica's trademark while maintaining academic honesty. Intuitively, a
disclaimer of non-affiliation seemed like a good way to do that.

I didn't suggest 1911.wikisource.org because it violates the following RFC
1035 recommendation by not starting with a letter:

: The DNS specifications attempt to be as general as possible in the rules
: for constructing domain names.  The idea is that the name of any
: existing object can be expressed as a domain name with minimal changes.
:
: However, when assigning a domain name for an object, the prudent user
: will select a name which satisfies both the rules of the domain system
: and any existing rules for the object, whether these rules are published
: or implied by existing programs.

[...]

: The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names.  They must
: start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior
: characters only letters, digits, and hyphen.  There are also some
: restrictions on the length.  Labels must be 63 characters or less.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [HelpDesk-l] permission

body:
Jorge Oliva wrote to helpdesk-l:
> To whom it may concern:
>
> I am a student at Westwood College in Los Angeles trying to get a
> bachelor degree in Video Game Art and Design. We were told to do a
> poster in one of our favorite video games. I chose to do it in the
> diffrence between StreetFighter, and I would like to ask for permision
> to borrow some of the pictures that are in your website.  This poster
> would be only used for educational purposes.
>

This is where allowing "Fair use" images is getting us... what do I tell
them? "Sorry, that's actually a copyright infringment which we can use
via a legal loophole, but nobody else is allowed to"?

I thought the idea was to allow "maximal reuse" and "free content", not
"copyright situations so complicated that nobody can understand them"!

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

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking of Kurdish subdomain in Iran

body:
Hi,

I am one of the admins in the Kurdish Wikipedia (ku). A user from Iran
informed me today that the ku.wikipedia.org
<http://ku.wikipedia.org>subdomain is blocked in Iran. He receives the
following error message:

***
Access Denied!

This page will not be accessible for the reason that in our database it has
been assinged to the category of blocked contents .

In the event the URL does not contain materials that are forbidden by laws,
please fill this form out then hit send.
***

He assured me that this is a standard message for blocked contents. There is
no such problem with other subdomains of wikipedia.org<http://wikipedia.org>.
He did NOT fill out the form.

Before we start any bigger protest, could someone else from Iran please
verify this issue? There was a similar issue with Turkey before, I don't
want to start anything without a clear verification.

Regards,
Erdal


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
Keith Old wrote:

>We should have a similar categorisation in place for Soviet spies removing
>the word academic. For example, Kim Philby was not convicted of being a
>Soviet spy but there is little doubt that he was a spy. He even held a job
>with the KGB after his defection.
> There have been accusations against other people such as Sir Roger Hollis,
>former head of MI5, but these claims have yet to be proven one way or
>another. If we wanted to put these people into a category, it should be
>alleged spies.
>
The Kim Philby situation clearly allows that there may be other criteria
for adding people to the list.  Some were able to avoid prosecution by
ratting on their colleagues.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
Chip Berlet wrote:

>Yes, but I am the one who added "Several denied they
>were spies, and even more were never indicted."
>
>And even that caveat is not sufficient to ameliorate the heading.
>
Perhaps "Soviet spies" could be restricted to a meta-category without
any direct content of its own.  It would include only other categories
such as "convected Soviet spies", "accused Soviet spies", etc.

Ec


from_name: Brian

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>
>>>There's a much lower threshold for editing on a wiki. You don't even
>>>
>>>
>>have
>>
>>
>>>to create an account. It might not be better, but I think it would be
>>>
>>>
>>much
>>
>>
>>>faster.
>>>I've used DP before and it seems to be a very closed project compared to
>>>Wikipedia. Like I said, I can't even find out where I can download a dump
>>>
>>>
>>of
>>
>>
>>>all the data.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>It isn't that closed of a project as you think. There is just a
>>heirarchy that you may not understand, and that you earn "privileges" to
>>do different aspects of DP much slower than comparable privileges on
>>Wikimedia projects. I've been able to participate very well and have
>>made some meaningful contributions, although I am not even close to an
>>uber geek type of person on the project.
>>
>>
>
> If you're talking about hierarchies and privileges and such I think it's
>clear that it's a much more closed project than a wiki.
> You may very well have been able to make meaningful contributions even
>though you're not an uber-geek. I still think more people would be able to
>contribute more if you didn't even have to for instance create an account.
>
>I didn't say that it was easy to find the DP scanned images for
>
>
>>Encyclopedia Britannica, but they are there if you want to get at them.
>>
>>
>
> What does that mean? I want to get at them. They are "there". Where? I want
>them. That's what interested me in the post by Brian. He's got these scans
>that I've wanted for a long time.
>
>
Nope, they are not "there". Only up to C is there. IICC, there are 23
other letters in the alphabet, and most of them wont be there for quite
a long while.

>I don't completely understand the reasoning for why DP doesn't want to
>
>
>>let the scanned images be available widely and easily, but I suspect it
>>is something to do with bandwidth issues rather than copyright status.
>>The scanned pages take up quite a bit of server space, as you could
>>imagine. If you try to do a contribution for one of the current books
>>being proofread, you can see just how easy it is to get at the scanned
>>images in general, as that is precisely how they get you to contribute:
>>You look at the scanned page and then you either transcribe the text or
>>work on OCR'd content and try to make corrections. It is very tedious
>>work but something that is rewarding it its own way.
>>
>>
>
> I've used the project before, and from my understanding you could only look
>at the scanned images that they chose to send you. You couldn't download
>whatever you wanted. Maybe that's changed, though.
>
>If you dig around a bit more, you can look up any project that is
>
>
>>currently going through review, including Volumes 2-5 of the
>>Encyclopedia Brittanica. By finding the project page, you can then find
>>not only the proofread text but also the original scanned pages. It is
>>not going to be in a nice clean zipped bundle for you to use at random,
>>but you could download all of the scans onto your own hard drive if you
>>wanted. Nobody is going to stop you from doing that. Getting access to
>>these files is simply a matter of registering as a user and then looking
>>around. You don't even have to make an edit if you don't want to in
>>order to see these scans. This takes no "permission" from any admin or
>>any human-to-human interaction. That is why I was saying that it wasn't
>>too difficult to get at if you really wanted to get at them.
>>
>>--
>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>
>
> I'll give it a try. Can you get all the images, or just the books still in
>progress, or just the pages from the books still in progress that haven't
>yet been processed?
> Actually, I'll probably just wait until this stuff gets put somewhere on
>Wikimedia.
>
>
I disagree that the images should be on Commons. I was originally going
to do that, but when it was suggested by one of the wikimedia-tech that
they should be put on a separate subdomain, that seemed best. They will
be a set of 30,000 images which will have html pages listing the indexes
of every page in 1911EB, and linking to every scanned page.
Alternatively, there will probably also be the option to download each
volume. Dumping 30,000 unsorted images on Commons is not the solution.
Presenting them on their own subdomain in an easily-accepted,
highly-sorted manner is the solution.


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

body:
On 11/9/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> The Wikinewsies revoke their credentials, of course.  We have a process
> on Wikipedia (at least on en:) for removing Administrator access when
> admins abuse it, so I see no reason why Wikinewsies can't remove
> credentials from those who abuse them through a similar process.  If
> it's some sort of dire emergency it can be temporarily done by fiat to
> speed things up, of course (the way developers can de-admin someone
> without waiting if it's a major problem).

The accreditation policy does contain a provision for credential
revokation. It also contains a provision about it being done by
request from the board.

-ilya haykinson


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>On 11/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>It seems strange to me that any category which could be defamatory would
>>be subject to the whims of the voting process.  This is not just a
>>question of "Soviet spies".  Any category suggesting a criminal activity
>>of any kind should be viewed as POV.
>>
>>
>
>Well, these are really one and the same issue: the "content war" is
>not limited to these authors but is an ongoing dialogue about the
>history of the Cold War and the value of the VENONA decrypts in
>general, one which has its origins and most of its battles outside of
>Wikipedia.
>
>VENONA, for those who are not aware and don't feel like reading the
>entry on it, was a series of intercepted and decrypted Soviet
>communications during the 1940s and 1950s. They were not released
>until the 1990s, however.
>
>People who would have sided with the Anti-Communists in the 1950s saw
>them as a vindication of Anti-Communism and even McCarthyism, and saw
>them as confirming that a number of people (Alger Hiss, Julius and
>Ethel Rosenberg, etc.) who had had nasty loyalty trials in those days
>were actually Soviet agents. In this view, the liberals have/had it
>all wrong in thinking that McCarthyism was a witch hunt or an instance
>of political persecution.
>
>People who would be inclined to oppose these opinions politically or
>for other reasons would sympathize with the accused took one of two
>tacks. One interpreted the data differently: VENONA showed not that
>McCarthy was right, but that he was wrong; instead of massive
>insidious spying, they depict a limited and loose network of misc. and
>somewhat incompetent agents (Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan espoused this
>point of view in his book _Secrecy: The American Experience_). The
>other approach was to doubt the sources themselves -- emphasizing that
>they were less clean-cut than they appeared: on top of multiple levels
>of "translation", including decryption, translation from Russian, and
>figuring out who all of the code names were supposed to be, the
>scattered phrases released are often as sensible as a Nostradamus
>translation, and to base strong legal and moral statements on such
>sketchy evidence should be done with caution at best. VENONA in many
>ways in not an idea source to rely on by itself, and requires much
>interpretation to make any sense of. So the argument goes.
>
>Anyway.. that's the debate. It's larger than Wikipedia -- it's about
>the history of Anti-Communism -- who was right and who was wrong in
>the 1950s, which is a large part of the mythos of American political
>culture *at the present moment* as well (there are those who compare
>the current concerns with terrorism with Cold War fears of communist
>infiltration, as I'm sure most of us have seen).
>
>In the spirit of complete openness, I should probably note that 1. I
>do some research in this area, and 2. personally I fall somewhere
>between the Moynihan approach and the skeptical approach -- I think
>there's evidence that the Soviets did have a number of agents of some
>sort or another at various times, but that VENONA is a very
>problematic source for a number of methodological and practical
>reasons. Of course on Wikipedia I think a NPOV approach should be
>taken at all times.
>
>Hope that clears up the latent issue here. In any event, I think
>categories which label people as having committed a crime should be
>done in a very careful way. Though this is an appeal to the extreme, I
>would be just as cautious about having a category called [[Child
>molesters]].
>
Many thanks for the background on this issue.  A year or two ago someone
tried to put the text of Polish documents of the sort into Wikisource.

What some of our armchair anti-communists fail to realize is that some
people in the countries involved will interpret these documents as
gospel truth without considering the poor or even speculative quality of
the evidence.  Some of the crazier ones will use the information as a
basis for revenge.  People could get killed.

There are some serious ethical issues connected to handling this kind of
material.

Ec


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the
	1911	Britannica	onWikimedia

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> On 11/9/05, Poe, Marshall <MPoe at theatlantic.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> ...
>>>> The only question in my mind is the domain: should this be under
>>>> eb1911.wikipedia.org <http://eb1911.wikipedia.org>? We could make it
>>>>
>>>
>>> visually distinct, to avoid
>>>
>>>
>>>> confusion with Wikipedia itself. Or would
>>>> eb1911.wikimedia.org<http://eb1911.wikimedia.org>be
>>>> better? Or eb1911.wikisource.org <http://eb1911.wikisource.org>?
>>>>
>>>
>>> It absolutely should *not* be on a Wikipedia subdomain. Wikisource is
>>> the place for this.
>>>
>>> -- mav
>>>
>>> This is exactly right. An encyclopedia from 1911 is a primary source of
>>> historical interest; it's data, not metadata. If it goes anywhere, it's
>>> Wikisource.
>>>
>>> --Marshall Poe
>>>
>>
>>
>> Wikisource is the place for the text, maybe. For the images themselves I
>> don't see the disadvantage of just using bittorrent, maybe by volume.
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
> What???  Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images, and indeed
> there have already been several scans of this encyclopedia that have
> been put into Wikimedia projects.  We don't need to use bit torrents
> unless this is a move to do bit torrents for all Wikimedia projects
> (perhaps a good idea but a seperate discussion).  There is also a
> license tag that has been specifically established on commons just for
> content from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica because of the large
> number of potential images that can come from this source.  Look them
> up right now with the associated categories at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template%3APD-Britannica
>
> One thing I see missing from this discussion is working in cooperation
> with Distributed Proofreaders, who is not only transcribing the
> contents of this encyclopedia into plain ASCII text (and XML markup as
> well), but is also providing scans of the figures and images from
> within the volumes and making them available with a public domain
> license.  What more do we want here?  The slow going on that project
> with Distributed Proofreaders is something that goes to show how large
> of a project it is.
>
> That trying to organize the content onto a Wiki has been difficult,
> yes. It may also be a good idea to access a direct scan of the image
> to compare against the transcribed text.  The real question is if the
> contents of a whole DVD ought to be moved to commons or not,
> especially if the source of the scans is in the public domain.
>
> That is the real issue here, because you can copyright a scan of an
> image.  Weak copyright protection at best, but you can copyright the
> scan itself which would in turn force you to have to find the original
> materials and do the scan seperately.  In the case of the 1911
> Encyclopaedia Brittanica, however, that is much easier to do than some
> other older works.  Again, working with the Distributed Proofreaders
> on something like this is going to make life much easier because they
> have done the scans themselves and are granting explicitly the scanned
> images and content into the public domain.  It also avoids duplication
> of labor with a huge project like this.
>
The scans from Britannica that are currently on Commons are scans of
illustrations, not text. While I think that illustrations from 1911EB
should be on commons, we are talking about pages of text. Since the
project that could benefit the most from the text is the 1911 Britannica
project on Wikisource, it should be on Wikisource. Once people grab the
illustrations out of the pages, then Commons can have those.