from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
If we're getting rid of things, I'd much rather see AfD go.

-Snowspinner

On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:56 AM, Jack Lynch wrote:

> Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically outweighs
> the good.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wiktionary-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Muke Tever

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: English orthographies

body:
Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> The etymology is also different.
>>
>> Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
>> everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin), but
>> in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
>
> Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
> and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
> for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
> when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It would
> be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases we do
> know them.

Indeed, but hopefully the area of the entry where spellings are given will be
able to contain notes describing the who/what/where/why/when of the spelling--
tho thus far all I've heard about is the who, i.e. dialect and so-called authorities--
and it won't have to be lumped in with the etymology, whose job is to explain
the etymon or etyma of a word and shouldn't have to touch on spelling (unless
perhaps to explain why a certain spelling came to be, but even that could be
handled by an annotation to the spelling itself).

	*Muke!
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
There are no aspects of the autoblocker that I think are unmanagable.

-Snowspinner

On Sep 22, 2005, at 12:08 PM, geni wrote:

> On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically
>> outweighs the good.
>>
>> Jack (Sam Spade)
>>
>
>
> Yes and no. there are cartian aspects of the auto blocker I'd like to
> see go. 1. The automatic 24 hour extension. 2. The inabilty to switch
> it off if you want to.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

body:
That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
monobook.js, and then use a version of the
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
might lead to some heavy transclusion though).

--gkhan

PS. I'm crap at these things really, so please someone else comment :P

On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> On the German Wikipedia, I've noticed they've got a nifty trick with
> templates whereby you can include a button to hide an infobox, in the same
> way as you can hide a contents box.  See an example down at the bottom of
> this page:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematische_Navigation_Deutschsprachige_L%C3%A4nder
>
> I don't know of any templates to do the same thing on en:, and when I
> tried to replicate the code on the German templates it didn't work.  Does
> anyone know how one might get something similar working on en:?
>
> WT
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
On 9/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of your
> papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if
> they just find out that the author is no one special?
>
> There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the negative
> is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is
> easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability).
>
> I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a dedicated
> wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either creating
> a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The
> other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable ones
> out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in
> implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very
> unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork.
>
> Anthony
>

Tell and what. As and when every article about a country is up to date
and contains a reasonable amount of info. I'll acturly waste some
mental energy of showing the falws in your proposal.

--
geni


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
geni wrote:
> Yes and no. there are cartian aspects of the auto blocker I'd like to
> see go. 1. The automatic 24 hour extension.

That's been fixed, at least for short blocks. I was blocked recently for
an hour and the autoblocker only got me for 56 minutes or so, however
much was left of the hour.

 >2. The inabilty to switch it off if you want to.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Then using yourself was a bad example, because the fact that you shouldn't
have a Wikipedia article on you has nothing to do with notability.
 Anthony

 On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
>
> Thing is, the only verifiable thing about me in this context would be that
> I was one of the authors of a paper. If I am no-one special then ipso
> facto I shouldn't have an article. I may have an Erdos x Bacon number of
> 27 but I reckon anything below about 10 for that is not notable enough :)


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Thing is, the only verifiable thing about me in this context would be that
I was one of the authors of a paper.  If I am no-one special then ipso
facto I shouldn't have an article.  I may have an Erdos x Bacon number of
27 but I reckon anything below about 10 for that is not notable enough :)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anthony DiPierro [mailto:wikispam at inbox.org]
> Sent: 22 September 2005 12:17 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings
>
>
> Why isn't Wikipedia best served by both? If someone comes across one of
> your
> papers and wants to know more about the author, isn't that useful, even if
> they just find out that the author is no one special?
>
> There's clearly a potential benefit, and I just don't see what the
> negative
> is. As long as you stick to insisting that everything in the article is
> easily verifiable, anyway (which is already a rule outside of notability).
>
> I suppose you could argue that such an article is best served by a
> dedicated
> wiki, one for all authors, for instance. But that would mean either
> creating
> a fork or taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia entirely. The
> other alternative, to have notable authors in Wikipedia and non-notable
> ones
> out of Wikipedia, would likely cause way too many problems in
> implementation. Taking all articles on authors out of Wikipedia is very
> unlikely to happen, so you're basically ensuring a fork.
>
> Anthony
>
> Nah, I disagree with that. I've written several papers in astronomy, and
>> a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field,
>> but I'd hate to see an article about myself. The specific field I am
>> allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article,
>> although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote
>> that)
>> and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].
>>
>> Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field
>> in
>> the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal
>> contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of
>> published academics.
>>
>> WT
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
> PLEASE NOTE: THE ABOVE MESSAGE WAS RECEIVED FROM THE INTERNET.
>
> On entering the GSi, this email was scanned for viruses by the Government
> Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by
> Energis
> in partnership with MessageLabs.
>
> Please see http://www.gsi.gov.uk/main/notices/information/gsi-003-2002.pdf
> for further details.
>
> In case of problems, please call your organisational IT helpdesk
>
>
> **********************************************************************
> This email and any files transmitted with it are private and intended
> solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed.
> If you have received this email in error please return it to the address
> it came from telling them it is not for you and then delete it from your
> system.
>
> This email message has been swept for computer viruses.
>
> **********************************************************************
>
>
> The original of this email was scanned for viruses by the Government
> Secure Intranet (GSi) virus scanning service supplied exclusively by
> Energis in partnership with MessageLabs.
>
> On leaving the GSi this email was certified virus-free
>


from_name: Carbonite

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm sure we could each think of some benefit or another it provides,
> but I daresay their is consensus that certain aspects of it are
> unfortunate. IMO a risk/gain ratio assessment makes it rather clear
> that the auto-blocker does far more harm than good.

 What are the harmful parts that you'd like to see eliminated? In my
opinion, the 24 hour extension is harmful. The autoblock should end when the
block it's based on ends. If an user tries to edit 5 minutes before their
block expires, they should only have their IP autoblocked for 5 minutes, not
24 hours. In general, some form of autoblocking is necessary or blocked
users will be able to simply log out and conitnue editing.
 Carbonite


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brian

subject: [Wikitech-l] Map of Wikipedia

body:
   - "...a tool for individuals and groups to publish and protect their
   work in context."
      - What is meant by "protect their work"? Will their work be made
      free?
       - ...will allow digital recordings, high resolution images, and
   interactive visualizations to be located and shown...
   - The experts themselves in any given area would hash it out over
   which materials best illustrate and/or serve as an index on any given topic.
   - Simply seeing where the experts do not agree tells a story by
   itself.
      - Sounds like Wikipedia!
       - CDT generates maps and graphics to show simplified overviews
   of these processes...
      - See also: Touchgraph:
      http://www.fxparlant.net/Special:Touchgraph
      - See also: Ultimate Wiktionary:
      http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design

Cheers,
/Alterego
http://www.qwikly.com<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design>

On 9/22/05, deborah.macpherson <deborah.macpherson at cox.net> wrote:
>
> I am interested in making a map of Wikipedia in order to streamline the
> content,
> provide an overview of different areas, and connect Wikipedia to digital
> archives
> maintained by museums and laboratories all around the world. For more
> information
> please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CDT_proposal .
>
> If you would like to collaborate, or if you already have similar efforts
> underway,
> please contact me.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Deborah MacPherson
>
>
> *************************************************
>
> Deborah MacPherson, Projects Director
> Accuracy&Aesthetics, A Nonprofit Organization for the
> Advancement of Education, Cultural Heritage, and Science
> www.accuracyandaesthetics.com <http://www.accuracyandaesthetics.com>
> www.deborahmacpherson.com <http://www.deborahmacpherson.com>
>
> mailing address: PO Box 52, Vienna VA 22183 USA
> phones: 703 585 8924 and 703 242 9411
> mailto:debmacp at gmail.com
>
> The content of this email may contain private and confidential
> information. Do not forward, copy, share, or otherwise distribute
> without explicit written permission from all correspondents.
>
> **************************************************
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: FW: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body:
Dude, I'd say anybody with an Erd?s-Bacon product of 27 is notable :P

On 9/21/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > I'll go one further, in fact. I think everyone who has been main or
> > sole author on a publication in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal
> > deserves a Wikipedia article. Yes, this would include a whole lot of
> > grad students. But if they're making or have made verifiable
> > contributions to their field, we should be including them. No question.
> >
> > -Snowspinner
>
> Nah, I disagree with that.  I've written several papers in astronomy, and
> a referee's report has even described me as a world leader in my field,
> but I'd hate to see an article about myself.  The specific field I am
> allegedly a world leader in does not even deserve its own article,
> although it gets a mention in [[planetary nebula]] (because I wrote that)
> and one of my papers is cited in [[Cat's Eye Nebula]].
>
> Wikipedia readers are far better served by a brief mention of my field in
> the appropriate context than they would be by any article on my personal
> contribution to that field, and I suspect the same is true for 90% of
> published academics.
>
> WT
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 9/22/05, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org> wrote:
> But what if an American document was quoted in the article? Surely we
> wouldn't want that to be converted. Same if we say in the article
> colour that the American spelling is color, we wouldn't want that to
> be converted.

Software has the way to solve exceptions, too.

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I'm not so sure it's needed.
>
> Unlike Serbian or Chinese, rather than using different writing systems
> we just have slightly different spellings.

But, from time people are asking for new (English) Wikipedias. Why not
to solve it if it is possible?


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change page color

body:
On 22/09/05, Roth Philippe <philippe.roth at epfl.ch> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Thank you for your message, but I do not understand exactly...
> I know where the CSS is but:
> - Where could I find those namespaces?
> - Where should I insert or modify those 'ns-x'?

The ns-x are already there, as are the namespaces - Talk:, User:,
Wikipedia: etc. Each has a number used inside the software (0 for the
"main"/"article" namespace, 1 for "talk", etc), and these appear in
the source of pages as CSS selectors. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Namespace for more.

Perhaps the best explanation is by example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css contains code to
make everything except articles have a blue background; it starts by
making everything blue, and then changes "ns-0" (articles) back to
white:

#content {
    background: #F8FCFF; /* a light blue */
}

.ns-0 * #content {
    background: white;
}

[it goes on to do this for things like the background of the tabs at
the top, so they fit better]

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css takes a more
long-winded approach, and defines a default "sky blue" background but
then overrides it for each namespace one by one:

/* Couleur par d?faut */
#content { background : #F8FCFF; }  /* bleu ciel */
#p-cactions li { background : #F8FCFF; }
#p-cactions li a { background : #F8FCFF; }

/* Couleur de fond des articles */
.ns-0 * #content { background : white; }
.ns-0 * #p-cactions li { background : white; }
.ns-0 * #p-cactions li a { background : white; }

[and so on for ns-1, ns-2, ns-3, etc]

HTH
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Map of Wikipedia

body:
I am interested in making a map of Wikipedia in order to streamline the content,
provide an overview of different areas, and connect Wikipedia to digital archives
maintained by museums and laboratories all around the world. For more information
please see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CDT_proposal .

If you would like to collaborate, or if you already have similar efforts underway,
please contact me.

Thank you,

Deborah MacPherson

*************************************************

Deborah MacPherson, Projects Director
Accuracy&Aesthetics, A Nonprofit Organization for the
Advancement of Education, Cultural Heritage, and Science
www.accuracyandaesthetics.com
www.deborahmacpherson.com

mailing address: PO Box 52, Vienna VA 22183 USA
phones: 703 585 8924 and 703 242 9411
mailto:debmacp at gmail.com

The content of this email may contain private and confidential
information. Do not forward, copy, share, or otherwise distribute
without explicit written permission from all correspondents.

**************************************************


subject: [Wikitech-l] Recent changes/Watchlist bug

body:
Old Church Slavonic (diff; hist) . . El C (Talk) (he:???????? ???????? ?????

I can't write it from Gmail, but note that sign ")" is after "he:",
not after right-to-left Hebrew text.


from_name: Juanma Barranquero

subject: [Wikitech-l] Which tables are needed after upgrading?

body:
A few questions about database tables:

  - It is safe to assume that, after a successful upgrade to 1.5, the
following tables are not needed and can be dropped: blobs,
brokenlinks, cur, links, linkscc and user_rights?

  - maintenance/tables.sql specifically singles out searchindex as
having to be MyISAM. What about trackbacks, transcache and
user_newtalk, whose create instructions do not specify an storage
engine?

  - And speaking of transcache, it is needed for day-to-day
operations, or it is an artifact of the updating procedure? (It is not
listed in maintenance/tables.sql.)

Thanks,

                    /L/e/k/t/u


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
On 22/09/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> I am sure that it is possible to make a software for conversion
> between British and American English, such Zhengzhu did for Chinese.
> All people would work on one Wikipedia and all people would use their
> own variant.

This is something that was indeed discussed when that software was
being developed. Apart from how to deal easily with exceptions, there
are problems with differences in meaning of the same word - to pull an
example out of the air, if a British user types "pants", it should be
converted to "underpants" when viewed by a US one; but if it was typed
by the US one, it should appear as "trousers" when viewed by the Brit.
I'm not 100% sure the Chinese orthography issue has these kinds of
double-mappings, but I can't remember. And what of words with two
meanings, such as "fall" for "autumn" - you wouldn't want text coming
out as "large trees sometimes autumn over"...

Plus, as I was recalling elsewhere, another problem is that there are
many more than two varieties of English, so if you gave every user a
choice of US or British, an Australian wouldn't know which to choose.
And if you created a version for every variety, you would have to
create and maintain lookup tables for converting between all those
different versions.

In the end, you'd be writing an entire machine translation system,
which isn't something generally considered all that easy. As I've
said, I'm not dead against such a system, but I'm increasingly
sceptical about its implementation.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

body:
This is a problem I've been thinking about fairly specifically as of
recent. Specific fair use tags serve a number of useful functions --
they help categorize an overly large category, they help specify
specific criteria for "fair use" images in that category (at least, in
the rewritten ones), and they may at some point be able to be linked
to specific fair use rationale pages (specific to that type of media).

The downside is that people read them (especially the old,
non-rewritten ones) as being unlimited "get out of jail free cards".
Which is dangerous and bad and promotes sloppy thinking.

One way to get around this is to of course modified the captions to
say that they MUST be used in actual *articles* (i.e., in the article
namespace). I might do that soon.

One of the big things which is a problem at the moment is that there
are two or three different places to list CV/Fair use disputed images
for deletion (WP:CP, WP:PUI, WP:IFD). This promotes confusion, lack of
standardization, and long nasty debates with people who are sad that
their favorite image of some supermodel is nominated for deletion (and
they hastily try to insert it into articles to make it seem "used" and
for "analysis", etc.). It doesn't make it easy to nominated
copyrighted images for deletion, it makes it very hard in practice.
Add the fact that there are a lot of people who are relatively
clueless about copyrights, or have drastically divergent opinions
about what is "fair" or not, and we get nothing but logjam.

In a project of this sort, it should be *easy* to delete copyrighted
material. The difficulty should be in defending them from deletion.
The burden of proof should be heavily on the person to convince that
it is *not* copyright infringement. All use of non-free images should
be considered copyright infringement *by default*, and only considered
otherwise after convincing reasoning. It's a place where "assume good
faith" is a bad idea (I've had people criticize me for not "assuming
good faith" when people just label images as PD without providing any
explanation and I ask for some reasoning) because there's more at
stake here than a user's desire to help the project (i.e. a user's
understanding of the copyright categories they are dealing with).

I don't have the slightest idea how to change this though, at least
not from my level of things (I have absolutely no authority, either on
Wikipedia or by means of claiming to be a lawyer or expert, neither of
which I am). But I think it's a general problem at the moment, one
which hinders intelligent reform quite a bit. Someone with some sort
of authority (on Wikipedia or in a legal/expertise sense) could
probably do a big favor by trying to work this out in an intelligent
way. I don't think it's something which lends itself to collective
discussion and decision, because of the ambiguity of the legal issues.

(Of course, in the absence of said Voice-on-High, I'm happy to mull
about as usual. Something is better than nothing. I think we're doing
some good work at WP:WPFU, getting a much better understanding of the
salient issues at the very least, and are being forced to confront a
lot of assumptions and find good ways to talk about them. Much better
than nothing.)

I'm *almost* inclined to suggest that we just NOT accept "fair use"
images at all. Not because our use of them is likely "unfair", or even
dangerous, but because this is a legal problem beyond the knowledge
base of most of our users, and we leave most of the impetus on *them*
to figure out what's legal or not. Almost inclined... but not
completely. It would simplify things, but we'd be poorer for it, as an
encyclopedia, and we'd also look like we were copyright paranoid or
cowed, neither of which is a good reputation to have. But it's a
thought.

FF

On 9/22/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/20/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've just removed two references to [[Image:Mac Internet
> > Explorer.png]] and two to [[Image:XPlogo.png]] from user pages. While
> > both of these images have a good argument for fair use on the
> > appropriate articles about their related products, there is no fair
> > use argument for placing these on user pages or in cutesy little
> > "product endorsement" boxes (see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]) for people to
> > put on their user pages. Wikipedia doesn't need to carry
> > advertisements for anybody, especially not using copyrighted logos.
> >
> >
> I see this fundemental lack of understanding all the time. And it seems to
> be exacerbated with specific fair use tags.
>
> One example I recently ran across was a user uploading a lot of porn and
> nude screenshots from various movies. I listed these on the copyright
> problems page. Instead of the images being deleted, the person processing
> the copyvios added a {{screenshot}} tag to a bunch of them. These were
> orphans. They had zero fair-use rationale. But what the hell, there was a
> {{screenshot}} tag to use.
>
> I just ran across
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JilKelly-BonitaSaint-DevenDavis-Perfect_Pink.jpgthis
> morning and am wondering if it is even worth the effort to list on
> WP:CP.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Roth Philippe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change page color

body:
Hello,

Thank you for your message, but I do not understand exactly...
I know where the CSS is but:
- Where could I find those namespaces?
- Where should I insert or modify those 'ns-x'?

Many thanks in advance and have a nice day,
PRoh

>Bonjour,
>Using CSS, you can change page color according to the namespace. Tthe
>content div have a class of 'ns-x' where 'x' is the namespace number.
>Using JS you can make many more things like change color according to
>the page name or so on (but don't forget not everybody using JS).
>
>Aoineko
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
On 21/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> You really are barking mad, aren't you?
> The vast majority of those aren't even real differences.

I think that is more than a little over-harsh. Declaring that the
differences don't exist is exactly the kind of attitude purists like
Jack object to.

Of course, it's amazing how many "Americanisms" end up being accepted
to the point that you don't even notice any more - my mum still
cringes at whichever of "fill in" and "fill out" came over from the
US, but I don't even notice the difference. In contrast, "write me"
instead of "write to me" still jars horribly whenever I encounter it.
Who knows what will change in the future, but there are certainly many
differences there.

Another point worth noting is that a lot of the US forms would be
easily understood - if it was realised from context that the speaker
was American - because of the large amount of US mass media
encountered in the UK. But that doesn't make them part of British
English - somebody else has mentionned not talking about your "fanny"
[which if you weren't aware means vagina in the UK] already, so I will
just expand on it by pointing out how [childishly] amusing the concept
of a "fanny pack" is...

> "note" vs "bill" -- "bill" would probably not be understood in the UK,
> but referring to them as notes would be understood in the US.

So, it's a difference. "Bill" would in fact be likely to be understood
as "request for payment" - what is known in the US as a "check".

> "bill" vs "check" -- uhh... we use both.

In the UK, a "bill" is never a banknote, and a "check" is never
anything to do with money. We have "cheques", which are the things you
write on and sign to pay for something, but that's something different
again.

> "autumn" vs "fall" -- we use them both as synonyms on this side of the
> pond. You guys don't?

No, we don't. Next question?

> "tick" vs "check" -- not the same thing. a check is a distinct symbol,
> as is a tick, and they are two different symbols.

Although I agree that they're different symbols, I think the idea of
"checking a box" rather than "ticking" it does sound distinctly
American to the British ear. Like "fill in"/"fill out", it may well be
forgotten in a generation which is which.

> "pissed off" vs "pissed" -- WTF!? first of all, this won't be found in
> most encyclopaedia articles. second of all, we say both here.

Yes, and in Britain, we *don't* use both. "Pissed" means "drunk";
newspapers quoting New Orleans' mayor recently had to clarify that he
had publically declared himself "pissed [off]", to avoid confusion
over him drinking on air...

> "trousers" vs "pants" -- although we consider "trousers" to be a bit
> old-fashioned, it will be widely understood here. I did used to think
> it meant shoes though.

So, once again, how is this "not a real difference"? You could never
make that mistake growing up in, say, Southern England, because
"trousers" is simply the single, normal, and unambiguous word for
them. "Pants", meanwhile, are unambiguously what you call
"underpants", another fun cause for confusion.

> "pedestrian crossing" vs "crosswalk" -- we use both here.

And "crosswalk" would mean absolutely nothing to a Brit. As wouldn't,
I would hazard to guess, a "pelican crossing" to you.

> "chemist" vs "drug store" -- "chemist" isn't common here, but it's
> better than "apothecary", which is probably less ambiguous than either
> of the other two.

A "drug store", if we weren't subjected to so much US media, would
sound like somewhere which sold illegal substances - we don't tend to
talk about "drugs" when we just mean "medicines".

> ".co.uk" vs ".com" -- that's not a linguistic difference. There are
> plenty of UK companies that have a .com, as it's supposed to be
> international (as opposed to .us)

Agreed.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

references:
<200509221214.j8MCEqqb006677@nexus.csse.monash.edu.au>
	<ba1b6b9f050922063767febc11@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.sximxazl2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>

body:
On 9/22/05, Muke Tever <muke at frath.net> wrote:
> Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> The etymology is also different.
> >>
> >> Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
> >> everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin), but
> >> in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
> >
> > Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
> > and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
> > for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
> > when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It
> > would be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases
> > we do know them.
>
> Indeed, but hopefully the area of the entry where spellings are given will
> be able to contain notes describing the who/what/where/why/when of the
> spelling--tho thus far all I've heard about is the who, i.e. dialect and so-
> called authorities--and it won't have to be lumped in with the etymology,
> whose job is to explain the etymon or etyma of a word and shouldn't have
> to touch on spelling (unless perhaps to explain why a certain spelling came
> to be, but even that could be handled by an annotation to the spelling itself).

I think either place for notation of spelling variants is valid but
the proposed UW
way makes the connection explicitly in the data rather than in the text of the
notation. This means easier analysis by computer - which will be a good thing
with a very large and structured dictionary.

I don't agree with the "authority" concept. Or maybe it's just the chosen name
for the concept I find unsettling. I would have chosen "orthography" before
reading Jim's comments on orthography vs. spelling. For instance I would've
thought in the case of German that "the pre-1998 German orthography" would
be a valid concept. If I substituted the word "spelling" in this
phrase it sounds
like it refers to a specific word rather than the whole language.
Maybe "spelling
standard" works better for Jim?

Another thing to think about is that changes in spelling happen for various
reasons. The -our in English was inspired by the French of the time. But many
others reflect things such as pronunciation changes, re-analysis of how the
word was formed, or differing pronunciations in different communities.
So while saying "spelling isn't directly related to etymology" is
true, I think it's
quite a bit less than the whole truth also.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> 	*Muke!
> --
> website:     http://frath.net/
> LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
> deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/
>
> FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
> http://wiki.frath.net/
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> In a project of this sort, it should be *easy* to delete copyrighted
> material. The difficulty should be in defending them from deletion.
> The burden of proof should be heavily on the person to convince that
> it is *not* copyright infringement. All use of non-free images should
> be considered copyright infringement *by default*, and only considered
> otherwise after convincing reasoning. It's a place where "assume good
> faith" is a bad idea (I've had people criticize me for not "assuming
> good faith" when people just label images as PD without providing any
> explanation and I ask for some reasoning) because there's more at
> stake here than a user's desire to help the project (i.e. a user's
> understanding of the copyright categories they are dealing with).

I agree completely. Last time I checked, the deletion policy is very much so
biased toward keeping everything by requiring a supermajority to delete. It
should be the other way around whenever a fair use claim is made.

Please, let's change the deletion policy on this ASAP.

-- mav

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


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improper speedy taggings

body: We don't need permastubs.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

body:
That's really cool. Is there any reason we shouldn't be bold and implement it?

On 9/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
> monobook.js, and then use a version of the
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
> might lead to some heavy transclusion though).
>
> --gkhan
>
> PS. I'm crap at these things really, so please someone else comment :P
>
> On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > On the German Wikipedia, I've noticed they've got a nifty trick with
> > templates whereby you can include a button to hide an infobox, in the same
> > way as you can hide a contents box.  See an example down at the bottom of
> > this page:
> >
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematische_Navigation_Deutschsprachige_L%C3%A4nder
> >
> > I don't know of any templates to do the same thing on en:, and when I
> > tried to replicate the code on the German templates it didn't work.  Does
> > anyone know how one might get something similar working on en:?
> >
> > WT
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Again, TINC (Was: Potential Wikipedian growing pains)

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:
<snip>
> (Sometimes I doubt anyone even reads my emails to this list -- but
> that's another subject entirely.)
>

I know exactly how you feel :)

(pretends to read email)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


body:
Jack Lynch wrote:
> On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>TINC, but there are many mini-cabals. :P
>
> And LOTS of cliques.
>

Inclusionists and Deletionists are the two biggest, and they have the
power to tear Wikipedia apart.

(I'm only half joking)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: AfD Threshold being Revised Downward Again?

body:
Carbonite wrote:
<snip>
> As I explained at length on my talk
> page, the consensus of an AfD was to redirect [[Unalienable rights]] to
> [[Inalienable rights]].

What! No article on [[Alien rights]]?

(Or even [[Alien rites]]?)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
"Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
wrote in message news:9f02ca4c050922054468d07f8a at mail.gmail.com...
On 21/09/05, Mark Williamson
<node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > "note" vs "bill" -- "bill" would probably not be understood in the UK,
> > but referring to them as notes would be understood in the US.
> So, it's a difference. "Bill" would in fact be likely to be understood
> as "request for payment" - what is known in the US as a "check".
> > "bill" vs "check" -- uhh... we use both.
> In the UK, a "bill" is never a banknote, and a "check" is never
> anything to do with money. We have "cheques", which are the things you
> write on and sign to pay for something, but that's something different
> again.

To be fair, we do have "Mr Check Please!", but he's fictional, so he doesn't
count :-)

> > "pedestrian crossing" vs "crosswalk" -- we use both here.
> And "crosswalk" would mean absolutely nothing to a Brit. As wouldn't,
> I would hazard to guess, a "pelican crossing" to you.

How about trying to distinguish between these:
a.. Zebra crossing
a.. Pelican crossing
a.. Puffin crossing
a.. Toucan crossing
a.. Pegasus crossing
(no, I'm not joking, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_crossing )
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Dead End

body:
Are you serious? You have broken several of our primary rules over on WP:RFPP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_page_protection&oldid=23437035#Repeating_DELETED_Request

On 9/22/05, DOJOPRESS at aol.com <DOJOPRESS at aol.com> wrote:
> Been trying to appeal your block. This page says you will get back to me
> within 24 hours, but no one has. All I was asking is that you not publish the
> names of my friends, but you insist doing it and ignoring any attempt by people
> who actually know me to lobby in my favor. I find this terribly unfair.
>
> I remain,
> Ashida Kim
>
> For a complete listing of _Ashida Kim_ (http://ashidakim.com/)  books and
> tapes go to _DOJO Press_ (http://dojopress.com/)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 22/09/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
> > In the UK, a "bill" is never a banknote, and a "check" is never
> > anything to do with money. We have "cheques", which are the things you
> > write on and sign to pay for something, but that's something different
> > again.
>
> To be fair, we do have "Mr Check Please!", but he's fictional, so he doesn't
> count :-)

Yeah, it's always bugged me slightly that he says it "in American" -
but maybe it doesn't seem that way to the writers, in the sociolect
they use; language varies, and language changes...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] User (me) is blocked as IP - but I'm innocent

body:
I don't see why we shouldn't unblock this user. But take great care, because
the IP was posting purported personal information about a user, as well as
threats about pipe bombs.

And I apologize that I didn't reply to your e-mail...when I saw "Media_lib",
I didn't realize that that was your username; I've never received e-mail
through Wikipedia before, and thought that "Media_lib" was the name of the
auto-mailer that Wikipedia used.

-Ral315


body:
See bug 550 on Bugzilla, which discusses different IP blocking that doesn't
affect legitimate users.


body:
I live out in the boonies and have tractor crossing signs. And there's
this sign with what looks like a guy riding a cow. I think it's
supposed to look like a horse, but it looks like a cow. heh.

On 9/22/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Phil Boswell wrote:
> > "Rowan Collins" <rowan.collins at gmail.com>
> > wrote in message news:9f02ca4c050922054468d07f8a at mail.gmail.com...
> > On 21/09/05, Mark Williamson
> > <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [snip]
> >>>"pedestrian crossing" vs "crosswalk" -- we use both here.
> >>
> >>And "crosswalk" would mean absolutely nothing to a Brit. As wouldn't,
> >>I would hazard to guess, a "pelican crossing" to you.
> >
> >
> >
> > How about trying to distinguish between these:
> > a.. Zebra crossing
> > a.. Pelican crossing
> > a.. Puffin crossing
> > a.. Toucan crossing
> > a.. Pegasus crossing
> > (no, I'm not joking, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_crossing )
>
> Damn, I need to add Koala Crossing, Emu Crossing, Wombat Crossing...
>
> (Yes, they're real - try http://ln-s.net/7fx)
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Actually it's ALREADY changed. Stupid fair use claim = delete on sight
> if it's been on the site for atleast a week.

Where is this? I don't see it in wp:csd.


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
>> I'm sorry but there are not a "few" usage differences, there really are
>>quite a lot. And this is more than just dialect we are talking about: I'm
>>not arguing for "equal rights" for each dialect; but for "equal rights" for
>>the two orthographies, in the same way as Scots, and the two forms of
>>Norwegian.
>> this is just an example:
>>http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/~jphb/american.html
>>http://www.krysstal.com/ukandusa.html
>
>
> You really are barking mad, aren't you?
>
> The vast majority of those aren't even real differences.
>
> Some examples:
>
> "note" vs "bill" -- "bill" would probably not be understood in the UK,
> but referring to them as notes would be understood in the US.

A bill is something demanding payment.

> "maths" vs "math" -- any good encyclopaedia should always say
> "mathematics" rather than abbreviating it so lazily.

Agreed.

> "autumn" vs "fall" -- we use them both as synonyms on this side of the
> pond. You guys don't?

Nope. Fall is something that hurts.

> "bank holiday" vs "legal holiday" -- I've lived in the US my entire
> life, and I've never even heard of the latter

Never heard of a "legal holiday", and I don't think we have "bank
holidays" either.

> "tick" vs "check" -- not the same thing. a check is a distinct symbol,
> as is a tick, and they are two different symbols.

Never heard of a check in that context...

> "pissed off" vs "pissed" -- WTF!? first of all, this won't be found in
> most encyclopaedia articles. second of all, we say both here.

Also use both.

> "trousers" vs "pants" -- although we consider "trousers" to be a bit
> old-fashioned, it will be widely understood here. I did used to think
> it meant shoes though.

Trousers are more formal than any old pants :)

> "pedestrian crossing" vs "crosswalk" -- we use both here.

Never heard of a "crosswalk".

> "store" vs "shop" -- this is probably the lamest one on there.

Agreed, but you can always buy things at a shop :)

> "chemist" vs "drug store" -- "chemist" isn't common here, but it's
> better than "apothecary", which is probably less ambiguous than either
> of the other two.

Chemist and Pharmacy all the way...

> "bill" vs "check" -- uhh... we use both.

You can make out a cheque to pay a bill...

> ".co.uk" vs ".com" -- that's not a linguistic difference. There are
> plenty of UK companies that have a .com, as it's supposed to be
> international (as opposed to .us)

Agreed, that's a historical difference - UK decided on .co.uk, NZ
decided on .co.nz, Australia decided on .com.au, and US got .com because
they could.

> "car" vs "automobile" -- we usually just say "car" here. only people
> like you say "automobile".

I say good sir, that's a horseless carriage, and I shall dual any many
who should say otherwise!

> "jug" vs "pitcher" -- absolut rediculos~!
>

Except of course for a Pitcher Plant...

> I could go on. But I'm getting bored. You're mad. End of story.
>

And I'm Australian.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
On the global .css and .js, or just yours? And, did you hard refresh a
few times? Also, there is a common .css file, and probably a .js too,
that's shared by all skins. this should go there, instead of in an
individual skin. (for the glodbal)

On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> I decided to be bold, copied across the relevant code from Monobook.js and
> style definitions from Monobook.css, and created Template:Dynamic
> navigation box, but it seems not to work.  I don't know any javascript so
> it's possible I've ballsed everything up.  Any JS experts care to cast an
> eye on this?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
> Sent: 22 September 2005 2:56 PM
> To: Oskar Sigvardsson; English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de
>
>
> That's really cool. Is there any reason we shouldn't be bold and implement
> it?
>
> On 9/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
> > monobook.js, and then use a version of the
> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
> > might lead to some heavy transclusion though).
> >
> > --gkhan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/22/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> One way to get around this is to of course modified the captions to
> say that they MUST be used in actual *articles* (i.e., in the article
> namespace). I might do that soon.

I would greatly approve of that.  IMO there is no fair use for a
nonfree image outside of article space (excluding the temporary use of
one in a user sandbox for an article under development).  I've been
very aggressively deleting references to nonfree images in user space
lately.  There has been some whining but nothing major.

Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
logically cannot be being used as fair use.  I am also aggressively
tagging nonfree images that are used in articles which reasonably can
be replaced by free alternatives (e.g. photos of buildings that are
still standing, or of common objects like late model cars) with
{{fairusereplace}}.  And images which do not appear reasonably
replaceable and which are being used are being tagged as
{{fairuseverified|article}} (with datestamp) to indicate that someone
has looked at the image and its use and verified that its use *in that
article* is likely to be fair use.

I'm being somewhat bold in doing what I'm doing, but based on what
Jimbo's had to say to the list lately and based on my discussion with
other admins, this is what we need to do.  A lot of images are going
to get deleted during this cleanup -- including a great deal of
softcore porn that's currently linked only to user pages -- and I
suspect quite a few editors will get ruffled feathers when some pet
image or another gets either tagged or deleted.

Kelly


body:
On 9/22/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 22/09/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I would greatly approve of that.  IMO there is no fair use for a
> > nonfree image outside of article space (excluding the temporary use of
> > one in a user sandbox for an article under development).
>
> Oh, there's *probably* some plausible uses in Wikipedia: space, but in
> the general case I concur.
>
> > Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
> > article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
> > logically cannot be being used as fair use.
>
> Stupid question: I'm purging my merry way through the {{poster}}
> categories (sorting them into movieposter, &c); is there a tag I can
> slap on images to say "is fairuse, is not linked to anything, Someone
> Do Something About This"?

{{db|orphaned non-free image}} works for me.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
I'll try to fix it. And, I agree.

On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> Did it on the global ones.  Did a few hard refreshes and cache purges, no
> luck.  I suspect I've introduced a JS error in copying it across.  If it
> can be made to work on Monobook then I can move the code into the common
> css.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
> Sent: 22 September 2005 3:56 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de
>
>
> On the global .css and .js, or just yours? And, did you hard refresh a
> few times? Also, there is a common .css file, and probably a .js too,
> that's shared by all skins. this should go there, instead of in an
> individual skin. (for the glodbal)
>
> On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > I decided to be bold, copied across the relevant code from Monobook.js and
> > style definitions from Monobook.css, and created Template:Dynamic
> > navigation box, but it seems not to work.  I don't know any javascript so
> > it's possible I've ballsed everything up.  Any JS experts care to cast an
> > eye on this?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Dead End

body:
I see no sign of friends' names, but I think it could do with a rewording
for the extremely biased language.

The sentence: "Note that, despite the name, nothing in the rules states that
the challenger will receive $10,000 on victory as is implied." is a
statement that has no place in an encyclopedia.


body:
On 9/22/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> In short, if someone makes a fair use claim they should need a consensus
> to
> support it if anything.

''Consensus'' only works when the people involved are knowledgeable about
fair-use. I haven't found this to be the case at wp:cp.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
I decided to be bold, copied across the relevant code from Monobook.js and
style definitions from Monobook.css, and created Template:Dynamic
navigation box, but it seems not to work.  I don't know any javascript so
it's possible I've ballsed everything up.  Any JS experts care to cast an
eye on this?

-----Original Message-----
From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
Sent: 22 September 2005 2:56 PM
To: Oskar Sigvardsson; English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

That's really cool. Is there any reason we shouldn't be bold and implement
it?

On 9/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
> monobook.js, and then use a version of the
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
> might lead to some heavy transclusion though).
>
> --gkhan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
Did it on the global ones.  Did a few hard refreshes and cache purges, no
luck.  I suspect I've introduced a JS error in copying it across.  If it
can be made to work on Monobook then I can move the code into the common
css.

-----Original Message-----
From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
Sent: 22 September 2005 3:56 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

On the global .css and .js, or just yours? And, did you hard refresh a
few times? Also, there is a common .css file, and probably a .js too,
that's shared by all skins. this should go there, instead of in an
individual skin. (for the glodbal)

On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> I decided to be bold, copied across the relevant code from Monobook.js and
> style definitions from Monobook.css, and created Template:Dynamic
> navigation box, but it seems not to work.  I don't know any javascript so
> it's possible I've ballsed everything up.  Any JS experts care to cast an
> eye on this?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wanted - help desk helpers

body:
On 9/22/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> The info-en email address is getting ever more traffic, and once
> again, we are in need of new volunteers to answer these mails, which
> are dealt with using [[OTRS]], the Open-source Ticket Request System.
> Sannse is currently away, so please reply to Kat
> <mindspillage at gmail.com> if you are interested in helping.

A big thank you to everyone who volunteered; Kelly Martin, Nick Boalch
(Ngb), and Tony Sidaway will be joining us.

Everyone else's name is still in consideration in case we need more
help, so you're not safe yet! Thanks again.

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]
--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wanted - help desk helpers


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
I added another javascript function that is required by that, and a
user on IRC tells me it now works for him, yet it doesn't work for me.
Probably just cache issues on my side, so go look. :)

On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll try to fix it. And, I agree.
>
> On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > Did it on the global ones.  Did a few hard refreshes and cache purges, no
> > luck.  I suspect I've introduced a JS error in copying it across.  If it
> > can be made to work on Monobook then I can move the code into the common
> > css.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
> > Sent: 22 September 2005 3:56 PM
> > To: English Wikipedia
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de
> >
> >
> > On the global .css and .js, or just yours? And, did you hard refresh a
> > few times? Also, there is a common .css file, and probably a .js too,
> > that's shared by all skins. this should go there, instead of in an
> > individual skin. (for the glodbal)
> >
> > On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > > I decided to be bold, copied across the relevant code from Monobook.js and
> > > style definitions from Monobook.css, and created Template:Dynamic
> > > navigation box, but it seems not to work.  I don't know any javascript so
> > > it's possible I've ballsed everything up.  Any JS experts care to cast an
> > > eye on this?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
On 9/22/05, Jim Breen <Jim.Breen at infotech.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>
> As a lexicographer I am always interested in etymology. I am a bit
> mystified by the view that it is somehow coupled to spelling. In the
> languages I know, spelling used to be highly fluid and individualistic,
> and
> has only recently been pinned down into recognized norms. In the case of
> English, the fact that there are two "schools" of spelling (which only
> affect a minority of words) is largely the result of the simplifications
> made and promulgated by one man: Noah Webster. Interesting indeed, but
> nothing to do with etymology.

In the UW, an etymology is not related directly to a spelling. Typically an
etymology is linked to a "lemma". Lemmas are typically considered the
combination of a meaning and a word. In the UW a Lemma can be considered a
specific occurrence in the table SynTrans. This way you have the combination
of a Word and a Meaning.

You wrote that you are interested in UW because of a multi language database
that you have particularly for/with Japanese. I do not what you want to
achieve, but if your interest is in an analysis of the possibility to import
your data in UW, then I would love to have a look at your data design. If
you consider importing the content under the GFDL, I would be even more
happy.

One lesson that I will learn, is if I have all the features to include a
Japanese dictionary.

Thanks,
GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
Lupin's popup.js breaks this, and the show/hide button never appears
with it. *shrug* I'll bug him about it


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Well, here we just have ducks.

But I've seen two kinds of deer ("standing deer" and "kicking deer").
Apparently in San Francisco, they have crossings for California Quail.
And I think that in Australia, they have them for kangaroos.

Mark

On 22/09/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Phroziac wrote:
>
> >I live out in the boonies and have tractor crossing signs. And there's
> >this sign with what looks like a guy riding a cow. I think it's
> >supposed to look like a horse, but it looks like a cow. heh.
> >
> Was it udderly correct?
>
> Some of these caution signs reflect local circumstances.  I've seen them
> with silhouettes of alligators in northern Louisiana, or horse-drawn
> buggies in eastern Pennsylvania.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
>article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
>logically cannot be being used as fair use.
>
I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.

Stan


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change page color

body:
Bonjour,
Using CSS, you can change page color according to the namespace. Tthe
content div have a class of 'ns-x' where 'x' is the namespace number.
Using JS you can make many more things like change color according to
the page name or so on (but don't forget not everybody using JS).

Aoineko

Roth Philippe wrote:

>Dear All,
>
>I would like to know if it's possible and how to change the page page
>color.
>For example, an article page is white and the discussion page of this
>article is blue for the english Wikipedia and yellow for the french
>Wikipedia.
>Is it also possible to make color different for administrative pages?
>
>Many thanks in advance,
>PRoth
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 22/09/05, Michael Brueckner <brueckner.michael at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, my problem is:
>
> I'm writing from Thailand and got blocked two days ago by [[user:Ral315]].
>
> quote:
> Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Ral315.
>
> The reason given is this:
> Indefinite block was removed, so I'm adding a 1 week block. This IP
> was responsible for some very nasty personal attacks.

203.147.0.44 is proxy.ji-net.com, which is presumably where the
problem comes from - it'll be used by many clients of that ISP.

However, the block does seem to have been a sensible one, this problem
aside - an anon. user, who I assume wasn't you, was posting personal
details (address, telephone number) on a userpage along with a variety
of threats, and then adding "Its quite easy to find out your address,
and people might send you some nasty things in the post. So I thought
I had better warn you before hand." and screeds about letterbombs to
the talkpage!

Hmm. This might be a good moment to try registering an account on en.wiki...

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Muke Tever wrote:

> Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> >> The etymology is also different.
>>>
>>> Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
>>> everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin),
>>> but
>>> in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
>>
>> Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
>> and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
>> for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
>> when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It
>> would
>> be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases we do
>> know them.
>
> Indeed, but hopefully the area of the entry where spellings are given
> will be
> able to contain notes describing the who/what/where/why/when of the
> spelling--
> tho thus far all I've heard about is the who, i.e. dialect and
> so-called authorities--
> and it won't have to be lumped in with the etymology, whose job is to
> explain
> the etymon or etyma of a word and shouldn't have to touch on spelling
> (unless
> perhaps to explain why a certain spelling came to be, but even that
> could be
> handled by an annotation to the spelling itself).

There are times when the etymology can be a guide to the spelling,
especially when questions of double letters are involved.  Thus "toroid"
and not "torroid" or "millennium" rather than "millenium".

Ec


body:
You could always ask, and if there are those for whom my upload gallery
is not blindingly obvious as a holding/tracking area, I could certainly
add a note to the top of it. Seeing as how I'm the person doing the
physical labor of preparing the scan and postprocessing the image, I
don't think it's too much to ask that my process be accommodated, rather
than "assuming bad faith" as was suggested. I've been very conservative
on deciding whether any given stamp image was PD or fair use - just
deleted all the Israeli stamps on commons after researching their
copyright status for instance - so it borders on the insulting to
suggest that I don't take any of this seriously.

Stan

Phroziac wrote:

>How would we know if it was uploaded in anticipation? Why do you
>insist on having it your way?
>
>On 9/22/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
>>>article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
>>>logically cannot be being used as fair use.
>>>
>>>
>>I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
>>an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
>>I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
>>of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
>>scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
>>nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
>>to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.
>>
>>Stan
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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 22/09/05, grm_wnr <grmwnr at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> >Hmm. This might be a good moment to try registering an account on en.wiki...
>
> See [[User:Media_lib]]. I guess he got bitten by the IP autoblocker,
> having an account won't help you then. The thing is really most
> problematic. There was a discussion about that semi-recently, but it
> died off without any consequences that I know of.

Ah. I see the problem.

(On the upside, at least this case is a block where there was an
unarguable reason for putting it in place...)

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


body:
Sometimes a quick look into the contributor's track record will help.
Ec

Phroziac wrote:

>How would we know if it was uploaded in anticipation? Why do you
>insist on having it your way?
>
>On 9/22/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
>>>article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
>>>logically cannot be being used as fair use.
>>>
>>>
>>I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
>>an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
>>I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
>>of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
>>scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
>>nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
>>to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.
>>
>>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically outweighs the good.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

Yes and no. there are cartian aspects of the auto blocker I'd like to
see go. 1. The automatic 24 hour extension. 2. The inabilty to switch
it off if you want to.

--
geni


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
Rowan Collins napisa?u:
Another solution would be something like

"He likes to wear //AmE pants/BrE trousers//", but it looks ugly and
confusing to newbies.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Zephram Stark

subject: [WikiEN-l] Equality

body:
While some people are quite good at diverting sensitive discussion toward whether or not certain editors are evil, or to questions about the mating habits of Jews, none of these things are relevant to my proposal.

As per the numerous quotes I listed, and the governments founded upon those concepts, general consensus amongst political philosophers is that truth, goodness, and beauty will all rise to the top in a system where equality is recognized and supported by the construct of government.

Even though equality is not recognized here at Wikipedia by administrators who think they have the right to punish other editors, it still exists in the form of "vandalism" and other methods of indirect _expression.  To the extent that editors believe there is no better method to influence the content of articles than consensus, vandalism will cease to exist.

The above is a bold statement that would require considerable risk to implement, but it is exactly the same concept that the founders of my country pledged their "Lives," "Fortunes," and "sacred Honor" to protect.  I submit that my nation, the United States of America, is a success because they did so.

It is possible to write the programming code for Wikipedia so that no administrators are necessary and so that nobody can gain undue influence over an article.  I would be happy to write this code for free if we can all agree that it will be implemented.

Zephram Stark zephramstark at yahoo.com 432-224-6991

---------------------------------
Yahoo! for Good
 Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
Weird. Oh well, not too major of a deal.

On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> Great stuff.  I now see the show/hide button on Template:Dynamic
> navigation box.  Only thing is, it appears above the title, instead of to
> the right of it as it does in the German version.  Have scrutinised the
> CSS and JS as best I can but can't see an obvious reason why that would
> be.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
> Sent: 22 September 2005 5:04 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de
>
>
> I added another javascript function that is required by that, and a
> user on IRC tells me it now works for him, yet it doesn't work for me.
> Probably just cache issues on my side, so go look. :)
>
> On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'll try to fix it. And, I agree.
> >
> > On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> >> Did it on the global ones.  Did a few hard refreshes and cache purges, no
> >> luck.  I suspect I've introduced a JS error in copying it across.  If it
> >> can be made to work on Monobook then I can move the code into the common
> >> css.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 9/22/05, Puddl Duk <puddlduk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Actually it's ALREADY changed. Stupid fair use claim = delete on sight
> > if it's been on the site for atleast a week.
>
>
> Where is this? I don't see it in wp:csd.

It falls under "copyright violation".

Kelly


from_name: Worldtraveller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

body:
Great stuff.  I now see the show/hide button on Template:Dynamic
navigation box.  Only thing is, it appears above the title, instead of to
the right of it as it does in the German version.  Have scrutinised the
CSS and JS as best I can but can't see an obvious reason why that would
be.

-----Original Message-----
From: Phroziac [mailto:phroziac at gmail.com]
Sent: 22 September 2005 5:04 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Funky tricks on de

I added another javascript function that is required by that, and a
user on IRC tells me it now works for him, yet it doesn't work for me.
Probably just cache issues on my side, so go look. :)

On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll try to fix it. And, I agree.
>
> On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
>> Did it on the global ones.  Did a few hard refreshes and cache purges, no
>> luck.  I suspect I've introduced a JS error in copying it across.  If it
>> can be made to work on Monobook then I can move the code into the common
>> css.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
"Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:2ed171fb05092209164480fe77 at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> The software made by Zhengzhu for Chinese has this capability already
> with this syntax:
> -{language_code1: text1; language_code2: text2; ...}-
> So it might be something like this:
> -{en-us: pants; en-br: trousers}-

Can you embed links in that? ...and shouldn't it be en-uk rather than en-br?
e.g.:

-{en-us: [[pants]]; en-uk: [[trousers]]}-

(hoi, that should screw up the links table something extra :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> This distinction between Clique and Cabal is an important one. While I
> suppose one could imagine a "developers clique", or a "old hands
> clique" which might be synonymous w some peoples conception of a
> cabal, I really don't see those as being a problem on the wiki. Rather
> the problem I see are users and admins which act as one,  creating
> partisan voting blocks on areas of mutual interest, and coordinating
> efforts to shout down criticism and attempts to NPOV their POV.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>

You might have a case if anyone had ever managed to get the admins to
agree on anything.
--
geni


from_name: Phroziac

body:
But Jimbo is playing puppeteer with me! Why else is he standing over
me and what are these strings doing on me?

On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> LOL, I'm obviously not talking about "the" admins. I'm talking about
> cliques: People who '''do''' show a vested interest in some
> particular, and coordinate edits accordingly. There are also cliques
> which are primarilly focused on chatting w one another, leaving small
> jokes and images on one anothers pages. The latter are usually a good
> thing, encouraging community and making people happier about editing.
> They can become a problem however when 1 member has a conflict, and
> rallies the others into prejudiced partisan support.
>
> Please be mindful, were talking about middle school style
> '''cliques''', not some outdated usenet concept or crazed conspiracy
> theories w Jimbo playing puppeteer from the shadows.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> On 9/22/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This distinction between Clique and Cabal is an important one. While I
> > > suppose one could imagine a "developers clique", or a "old hands
> > > clique" which might be synonymous w some peoples conception of a
> > > cabal, I really don't see those as being a problem on the wiki. Rather
> > > the problem I see are users and admins which act as one,  creating
> > > partisan voting blocks on areas of mutual interest, and coordinating
> > > efforts to shout down criticism and attempts to NPOV their POV.
> > >
> > > Jack (Sam Spade)
> > >
> >
> > You might have a case if anyone had ever managed to get the admins to
> > agree on anything.
> > --
> > geni
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically outweighs the good.

Jack (Sam Spade)


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>Hmm. This might be a good moment to try registering an account on en.wiki...
>
>
>
See [[User:Media_lib]]. I guess he got bitten by the IP autoblocker,
having an account won't help you then. The thing is really most
problematic. There was a discussion about that semi-recently, but it
died off without any consequences that I know of.

-- [[en:User:grm_wnr]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If they do, they can be blocked again, or their IP blocked. I don't
> see the need for an auto-blocker. Also, it needlessly antagonises a
> user to block them yet longer when they are often unaware they have
> been blocked, or assume the block is over with. Frankly, I am confused
> as to what the upside in all this is.If a user sneakilly logs in
> anonymously and makes acceptable edits, who cares? And if they resume
> where they left off or otherwise make trouble, that will be pretty
> obvious, won't it? They can simply be blocked then, and their IP
> blocked if there appears a need.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

It prevents vandles logginf out and going after a completely different
set of articels. However for blocks on the 3RR and the like it makes
no sense.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
Not sure why they need be mutually exclusive, but can this thread be
about the auto-blocker please? ;)

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/22/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we're getting rid of things, I'd much rather see AfD go.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Sep 22, 2005, at 11:56 AM, Jack Lynch wrote:
>
> > Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically outweighs
> > the good.
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
I'm sure we could each think of some benefit or another it provides,
but I daresay their is consensus that certain aspects of it are
unfortunate. IMO a risk/gain ratio assessment makes it rather clear
that the auto-blocker does far more harm than good.

As far as "unamanageable", in theory everything is managable, but the
results I have seen havn't been managed well at all. I think we'd be
far better off w/o a system requiring so much attention in order to
get it right.

Jack (Sam Spade)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
Snowspinner wrote:

> There are no aspects of the autoblocker that I think are unmanagable.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Sep 22, 2005, at 12:08 PM, geni wrote:
>
>> On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Can we please get rid of it? The harm rather dramatically  outweighs
>>> the good.
>>>
>>> Jack (Sam Spade)
>>>
>>
>> Yes and no. there are cartian aspects of the auto blocker I'd like to
>> see go. 1. The automatic 24 hour extension. 2. The inabilty to switch
>> it off if you want to.
>>
>> --
>> geni
>>
>
>
Couldn't it be made so that the autoblocker only kicks in when
[[Special:Userlogin]] is used? I mean, cookies can be copied and so on,
but someone who's skilled enough to do that is probably skilled enough
to change his IP as well.

--[[User:grm_wnr]]


body:
This distinction between Clique and Cabal is an important one. While I
suppose one could imagine a "developers clique", or a "old hands
clique" which might be synonymous w some peoples conception of a
cabal, I really don't see those as being a problem on the wiki. Rather
the problem I see are users and admins which act as one,  creating
partisan voting blocks on areas of mutual interest, and coordinating
efforts to shout down criticism and attempts to NPOV their POV.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/22/05, Geoff Burling <geoff at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, steve v wrote:
>
> > The use of clique should not be considered a
> > pejorative, and may refer just as much to a "web of
> > trust" as to a "cabal." I dont make any judgements,
> > but rather chose a term which is neutral, and which
> > critics as well as core members of the "cabal" (you
> > and I ;)) may find agreeable.
> >
> > TINC, true, but WIND (democracy) is also true. Whether
> > one prefers the term "core" or "cabal" is a matter of
> > where one is on the map.
>
> You're right about that: Wikipedia does have a number
> of cliques in the neutral sense. I posted in haste & confused
> "clique" & "cabal".
>
> I apologize for my comments to you, Steve, & have restored
> the chunk of respect I deducted -- for whatever that is
> worth.
>
> Geoff
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia English English

body:
> So it might be something like this:
> -{en-us: pants; en-br: trousers}-
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

Yeah, but it's still confusing to newbies, still looks kinda ugly and
has been discussed to death...

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


body:
LOL, I'm obviously not talking about "the" admins. I'm talking about
cliques: People who '''do''' show a vested interest in some
particular, and coordinate edits accordingly. There are also cliques
which are primarilly focused on chatting w one another, leaving small
jokes and images on one anothers pages. The latter are usually a good
thing, encouraging community and making people happier about editing.
They can become a problem however when 1 member has a conflict, and
rallies the others into prejudiced partisan support.

Please be mindful, were talking about middle school style
'''cliques''', not some outdated usenet concept or crazed conspiracy
theories w Jimbo playing puppeteer from the shadows.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 9/22/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This distinction between Clique and Cabal is an important one. While I
> > suppose one could imagine a "developers clique", or a "old hands
> > clique" which might be synonymous w some peoples conception of a
> > cabal, I really don't see those as being a problem on the wiki. Rather
> > the problem I see are users and admins which act as one,  creating
> > partisan voting blocks on areas of mutual interest, and coordinating
> > efforts to shout down criticism and attempts to NPOV their POV.
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
> >
>
> You might have a case if anyone had ever managed to get the admins to
> agree on anything.
> --
> geni
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Carbonite <carbonite.wp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm sure we could each think of some benefit or another it provides,
> > but I daresay their is consensus that certain aspects of it are
> > unfortunate. IMO a risk/gain ratio assessment makes it rather clear
> > that the auto-blocker does far more harm than good.
>
>  What are the harmful parts that you'd like to see eliminated? In my
> opinion, the 24 hour extension is harmful. The autoblock should end when the
> block it's based on ends. If an user tries to edit 5 minutes before their
> block expires, they should only have their IP autoblocked for 5 minutes, not
> 24 hours. In general, some form of autoblocking is necessary or blocked
> users will be able to simply log out and conitnue editing.
>  Carbonite
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

If they do, they can be blocked again, or their IP blocked. I don't
see the need for an auto-blocker. Also, it needlessly antagonises a
user to block them yet longer when they are often unaware they have
been blocked, or assume the block is over with. Frankly, I am confused
as to what the upside in all this is.If a user sneakilly logs in
anonymously and makes acceptable edits, who cares? And if they resume
where they left off or otherwise make trouble, that will be pretty
obvious, won't it? They can simply be blocked then, and their IP
blocked if there appears a need.

Jack (Sam Spade)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It prevents vandles logginf out and going after a completely different
> > set of articels. However for blocks on the 3RR and the like it makes
> > no sense.
>
> OK, well I'll admit I have pretty much no sympathy for vandals
>

Well the problem is that it often hits other editors using the same IP
disproportionately. On the other hand, if we stopped autoblocks altogether
then I think people would simply take advantage of this to perform
logged-out edits if blocked.

I've had a possible solution for some time--permit logged-in edits on the
same IP, but not non-logged-in edits. But because this in its turn is an
imperfect solution that could be exploited in its own way, I have dithered
over incorporating it into the CVS tree.


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
> Can you embed links in that? ...and shouldn't it be en-uk rather than en-br?
> e.g.:
> -{en-us: [[pants]]; en-uk: [[trousers]]}-
> (hoi, that should screw up the links table something extra :-)

Especially if you add also Australian, Kiwi, Canadian, Indian, and
other varieties...

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
> It prevents vandles logginf out and going after a completely different
> set of articels. However for blocks on the 3RR and the like it makes
> no sense.
>
> --
> geni
>

OK, well I'll admit I have pretty much no sympathy for vandals
(provided its '''obvious''' vandalism), so what if it was only used
for them, or other complete nutjobs, and not for personal attacks, 3rr
and minor "disruption"?

Jack (Sam Spade

p.s. sorry for the private emails, gmail is being weird today


body:
On 9/22/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> I would appreciate it if you would take the trouble to see whether
> an image was uploaded in anticipation of article use. For instance,
> I often upload postage stamp scans in batches, and it may be a period
> of weeks before I write all the articles that will use the uploaded
> scans. You're not doing anybody a service by deleting these beforehand,
> nor are you incentivizing me to create the articles more quickly or
> to write first and upload later - more likely I'll just stop writing.

The policy Jimbo set out allowed a seven day window for a use to be
found for a nonfree image.  If you need an image held longer, I
suggest putting a comment on the image description page so that
patrollers know that is what's going on.

Kelly


from_name: Sravanthi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with database downloads

body:
Hi All,
I was trying to download sql format data of june 23 2005 full_pages.sql from the following link, but was unable to do that
http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/
I have installed wikimedia software on windows and trying to connect the database to that but in the firstplace i wasn't able to download more that 4GB of total data. Please guide me in doing this.. i have even tried on windows server 2003 and it didn't help.
Anyhelp from you is appreciable and help me in progress of my project.
Thanks,
Sravanthi

---------------------------------
Yahoo! for Good
 Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Auto blocker is bad

body:
On 9/22/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well the problem is that it often hits other editors using the same IP
> disproportionately. On the other hand, if we stopped autoblocks altogether
> then I think people would simply take advantage of this to perform
> logged-out edits if blocked.

So give admins the abilty to turn it on or off depending on the case.

--
geni


from_name: Robert S. Harrison III

subject: [Foundation-l] RFC on project proposal in development -- Wikicracy

body:
Hello all,

My name is Robert Harrison and I am in the process of
developing a project proposal. I would like to request
comments on it from anybody and everybody.

The main workspace for this idea is located on my user
sub-page at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Robert_Harrison/Wikicracy

Thank you for your time,

Robert S. Harrison III


from_name: Muke Tever

references:
<200509221214.j8MCEqqb006677@nexus.csse.monash.edu.au>
	<ba1b6b9f050922063767febc11@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.sximxazl2okkek@arcadia.hsd1.co.comcast.net>
	<4333431C.8070305@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> and it won't have to be lumped in with the etymology, whose job is to
>> explain the etymon or etyma of a word and shouldn't have to touch on spelling
>> (unless perhaps to explain why a certain spelling came to be, but even that
>> could be handled by an annotation to the spelling itself).
>
> There are times when the etymology can be a guide to the spelling,
> especially when questions of double letters are involved.  Thus "toroid"
> and not "torroid" or "millennium" rather than "millenium".

Yes, and sometimes the etymology is ignored in the reckoning of correct spelling,
thus "island" and not "iland" and "thumb" rather than "thum". Etymology is never a
proof of spelling, though it is one of the factors that influences it.[1]  That's
why I wrote that the etymology might _explain_ a spelling--I originally wrote that
etymology could be used to suggest the correctness of one valid, accepted, or
otherwise usual spelling over another, but removed that when I realized that kind
of statement, while common in other dictionaries, would be POV-pushing and have no
place in any Wiktionary: if a language already has a standard, we note that (and not
attempt to change it), and if there is no standard it is not our place to instate one.

	*Muke!
[1] Others being: pronunciation, tradition, analogy (whence 'thumb'), folk etymology
(whence 'island'), aligning with or varying from the practices of other nations,
orthographic practices, etc.--all of which IMO are reasons why the reasons for the
spellings' annotations to go with the spellings instead of all over the page.
--
website:     http://frath.net/
LiveJournal: http://kohath.livejournal.com/
deviantArt:  http://kohath.deviantart.com/

FrathWiki, a conlang and conculture wiki:
http://wiki.frath.net/


body:
On 22/09/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would greatly approve of that.  IMO there is no fair use for a
> nonfree image outside of article space (excluding the temporary use of
> one in a user sandbox for an article under development).

Oh, there's *probably* some plausible uses in Wikipedia: space, but in
the general case I concur.

> Several of us are now speedily deleting nonfree images that have no
> article references on the grounds that an image that is not being used
> logically cannot be being used as fair use.

Stupid question: I'm purging my merry way through the {{poster}}
categories (sorting them into movieposter, &c); is there a tag I can
slap on images to say "is fairuse, is not linked to anything, Someone
Do Something About This"?

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


from_name: Michael Brueckner

body:
Hi, my problem is:

I'm writing from Thailand and got blocked two days ago by [[user:Ral315]].

quote:
Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Ral315.

The reason given is this:
Indefinite block was removed, so I'm adding a 1 week block. This IP
was responsible for some very nasty personal attacks.

You can email Ral315 or one of the other administrators to discuss the
block. You may also edit your user talk page if you wish. If you
believe that our blocking policy was violated, you may discuss the
block publicly on the WikiEN-l mailing list. Note that you may not use
the "email this user" feature unless you have a Wikipedia account and
a valid email address registered in your user preferences.

Your IP address is 203.147.0.44. Please include this address, along
with your username, in any queries you make.
end quote.

Please look into my case and remove blocking, because I didn't do
anything against other users. I'm admin in the German WP.

Thank you
Media_lib


from_name: Fastfission

body:
There *was* such a flow chart at one point, or an equivalent of one
(if it has this, go to B, if not, go to C; and in the end you'd end up
with "can use it" or "can't"). The problem was that it was confusing
and rarely ever used.

Thus was my impetus to re-write the tags so that they would be
self-defining. When incorrectly used they make it clear as such. It
seems to have been having some small effect, I've been told, but it's
hard to know for sure.

The problem of course is that there is not an easy way to write a
"blanket" tag -- I'm not at all sure how {{fairuse}} itself should be
rewritten, but it probably ought to be.

Some of what you're suggesting is currently on WP:FU, which was
recently rewritten.

One thought I honestly had on this was to write a little Wikibook on
fair use and copyright law -- it wouldn't be that hard to write a
basic primer that you could refer all people who just don't seem to
get it to. But I haven't had the time.

(And honestly, "reform" gets me down -- it is always met with strong
objections, some good and some less so, from people who do and do not
understand, and people who let the perfect get in the way of the good.
And a project where there is little authority and an emphasis on
consensus, it's hard to be successful at instituting big changes. But
this is hardly unique to just this little effort, which has been
considerably smoother than many others I'm sure. And, perhaps most
fortunately, there are others willing to take on the effort as well,
which really does make a huge difference on an individual level!)

FF

On 9/22/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was actually thinking to create a flowchart for people to easily determine
> the copyright status of images, but lacking the legal know-how, I haven't
> done it.
>
> Not only would such an aid in determining image status be helpful to people
> who are new to legal issues on this, it could also be used as an argument to
> not allow images that don't get through this process for being a copyright
> infringement or faulty fair use claim.
>
> We should also have a page saying how we should only have limited fair use
> images on articles (and not on userpages) where there's no other
> alternatives or 1 such image in an article when it explains a lot (again, if
> there's no other choice).
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 9/23/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I agree completely. Last time I checked, the deletion policy is very
> much
> > > so
> > > biased toward keeping everything by requiring a supermajority to delete.
> > > It
> > > should be the other way around whenever a fair use claim is made.
> > >
> >
> > Remember that a fair use claim would come under the Copyright policy,
> which
> > being a key policy takes precedence over the deletion policy.
> >
> > In short, if someone makes a fair use claim they should need a consensus
> to
> > support it if anything.
> >
> > Under deletion policy, the rule is "if in doubt, don't delete." The
> > copyright policy should adopt the reverse approach. Wikipedia is known for
> > the quality of its product. Let's not ever risk it being known as a
> > purloiner of other people's hard work.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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:
Actually it's ALREADY changed. Stupid fair use claim = delete on sight
if it's been on the site for atleast a week.

On 9/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In a project of this sort, it should be *easy* to delete copyrighted
> > material. The difficulty should be in defending them from deletion.
> > The burden of proof should be heavily on the person to convince that
> > it is *not* copyright infringement. All use of non-free images should
> > be considered copyright infringement *by default*, and only considered
> > otherwise after convincing reasoning. It's a place where "assume good
> > faith" is a bad idea (I've had people criticize me for not "assuming
> > good faith" when people just label images as PD without providing any
> > explanation and I ask for some reasoning) because there's more at
> > stake here than a user's desire to help the project (i.e. a user's
> > understanding of the copyright categories they are dealing with).
>
> I agree completely. Last time I checked, the deletion policy is very much so
> biased toward keeping everything by requiring a supermajority to delete. It
> should be the other way around whenever a fair use claim is made.
>
> Please, let's change the deletion policy on this ASAP.
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>