from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
My concern was that you appear to be supporting the
idea that due to
differences in cultural norms it is acceptable to
censor content on
some wikipedias and not others. If I have
misunderstood you I
apologise.

No, you are correct.
I support differences in cultural norms to be acceptable to decide the content to be displayed on some wikipedias and not on others.
And I support each community to decide which norms it should follow.

Currently, you are suggesting that if the autofellatio image is kept by the english wikipedia, it should be accepted by all other projects
Sorry, but I absolutely do not agree with this position.
The english wikipedia has the entire responsability to decide whether to keep it or not to keep it, but its decision should only have a local impact.
There is absolutely no argument to say that it should impact all other projects. The english wikipedia has no authority over the other projects. It has certainly experience to bring, it has plenty of good people to listen to, but it is not the boss of other projects.

There is a strong reason for this.
While we have a general agreement that our projects should avoid censorship, we would be fools to pretend a certain degree of censorship is not currently and naturally applied in all communitites.

Let me cite a couple of examples, some possibly being in your local project, but some perhaps not.
* picture of a man shitting on his girlfriend
* picture of a man forcing a kid to eat shit under torture
* venerial diseases and consequences on sexual organs
* photo of a man and a woman making love
* photo of a clitoris

* goatse image
* photo of a man raping a woman
* photo of a man fucking with a sheep
* movie of a group of 5 men raping a teenage boy (with the cries of the boy who is still conscious)
* movie of a man raping a baby girl, with the blood resulting from an exploded vagina
* photo of Nick severed head
* photo of a girl cutting a man balls
* movie of soldiers torturing another soldier by burning him with cigarette (with the screams, when internet is able to, let's not forget the smell of burnt skin)
* photo of bodies cut into pieces by a madman
* photos of a woman giving birth
* Zoom photos of bloated bodies after a tsunami
* photo of a man vomiting
* movie of a little girl slowly drowning between logs after an earthquake, while journalists take pictures of her calling her mom

I could go on and on forever.
All this exist.
Most is informative.
Some is already in Wikipedia. Most is not.

Is it censorship NOT to put these pictures in Wikipedia ? YES, IT IS CENSORSHIP.

Should these absolutely be in wikipedia ? To my opinion, some should be, some should not, and others, I do not know.
I am all ready to admit that I have a pov on those. Just as everyone else. But the point is, not only editors have each a pov, but whether we like it or not, different cultures have different povs directions.

For example, being french, I am quite confortable saying that the americans generally have a much stronger taboo with regards to sex than we do, and that northern european have less taboo than french regarding to nudity. I also understood that japanese have some habits that I regard as very odd (such as collecting teenager girls pants) and practice bounding much more than my culture does. It would not be very strange that they have different povs than us on what is shocking or not shocking regarding sex fun.

In some cultures, some of the things I listed might be more shocking than in other cultures.
This means that we will have tendencies to censor different things, due to our taboos.
It is just plain non acceptable that one of our cultures decide for the other cultures what is taboo and shocking from what is not.

And the very fact the current english wikipedia does not have most of the item listed above SHOW THAT THERE IS CENSORSHIP.
And maybe some of the things the english speaking people censor will not be censored on the other pedias.

We consequently have three options.
First solution : we decide for a totally censor-free content (and in this case, all the items listed above are to be included and displayed directly online on all projects). I am pretty confident we will rather admit that it would be best that we censor a little bit, even though our goal is not to censor...
Second solution : we decide that we should collectively take decisions on what should be censored and what should not be (and in this case, I invite all editors on all projects to go vote on the autofellatio, clitoris and severed head matters). I do not support that solution, in great part for practical reasons
Third solution : we all share a common goal of non censorship, but we admit we censor a little bit nevertheless and we admit that these decisions should be taken locally, by local communities.

Needless to say, I am all for the third one. I think minorities opinions should always be considered, and the argument that the english wikipedia community is the bigger so should be the one to decide for other communities is not valid as far as I am concerned. We have common goals, we have common big rules, but we have essentially local applications of these rules.

It is my strongly held position that if you wish to
censor, then you
are not in agreement with the ideals of the overall
project and you
would be better off with your own fork.

Now, since you call for me to quit the community and to set up a fork where I could act as a censor, I would like to add this.

I think my goal of letting each project independant on such decisions as much as possible is much more supported than your opinion that only one frame of mind in what should be censored or not censored should be.

Here is what I did for all the past year.

I think all participants are aware of our guidelines of non-censorship.
Most reasonable participants will also realise that the strongest interest of that guideline is essentially to give something to cite to those keeping/protecting the project from pov pushers. I do not think it means "we should not censor anything", but rather "we should aim at not censoring ourselves due to our personal taboos". In short, the idea is not to totally prevent censorship, but to follow a general and collective goal to find a reasonable path. When an editor alone is deleting autofellatio image, this image can be reverted on the grounds that "we should not self-censor ourselves". But if the community decides the image should be deleted, then it should. If the community is able to decide an image is not informative enough in balance with the amount of shock it generates, then it should just not be there.

Generally, all big wikipedias have a strong and diverse community, absolutely able to make that decision. And generally, I think Wikimedia Foundation should not get involved in such decisions, because the communities are strong enough to make the GOOD decision. I do not know if the english wikipedia will keep or not the autofellatio image and whatever the decision, I will not oppose it, because when say 100 people in a culture make that type of decision, then it is certainly a better decision than I could have taken myself.

Same for all big wikipedias, such as the french or the dutch or the spanish ones (since they recently have troubles with the image concerned).

Where I think the board is involved, it is only for trying to keep and promote the big picture, the guideline, and ONLY help those communities which are not able to take a decision by themselves, or too small to do so.

Couple of examples in the past year
* a very small wikipedia starting in an african language. Only one editor and he started adding advertisement for his organisation on the main page. There was no community, I got involved and stopped this.
* the french wikinews : very very small community and one of the most involved does not believe NPOV, does not want to follow it, and consider neutrality is even illegal. I keep a careful eye on this, because it might be very detrimental to our project. If needed, I will either block the person, or even stop the project
* The hebrew wikipedia seemed to delete all interwiki languages some time ago, but for the english ones. We considered this against our general principles and reacted. Very recently, an hebrew editor reported possible censorship, since I do not read hebrew, I suggested Danny (a very trusted person) to check what was going on.

Whatever my own position on the autofellatio image, I will never interfere on big wikipedias in one way or another, because I think communities are more able to decide than I what is okay or not. However, if I felt there was a very strange misdirection, I would get involved. Yes, a strange direction could be to censor all articles about sex, or excluding all editors who have a communist pov, or similar things.
I am confident this can not happen on any of the big wikipedias, where there is a strong base of very involved people.

> Who is "you" ???

Whomever you speak for that has decided that whatever
language you are
editing needs a differing policy with respect to
neutrality and
censorship than the more heavily trafficed wikipedias.

French, Spanish, Dutch wikipedias are amongst the most heavily trafficed wikipedias. French is number 4, Dutch is number 5.
They are absolutely in their right to have differing policies than the bigger English wikipedia. If they decide to delete the autofellatio, while the english decide to keep it, it is their absolute right. And telling them to fork for thinking different from the English is frankly uncalled for.
Neither the community deciding to keep it, nor the community deciding to delete would be wrong. They would both be right in their diversity.

> May I suggest that the english wikipedia is NOT the
> Foundation. And that if I recognise the rights of
the
> english wikipedia to decide itself what is good
taste
> from what is bad taste, I do not recognise its right
> to decide alone what is censorship and what is not
> censorship. And I do not recognise its right to
decide
> what should be on all the other projects from what
> should be absolutely.

Is there not a consensus that denying, by policy, the
inclusion of
useful, informative, and encyclopedic information is
censorship?

Maybe the arguments of the dozen of editors supporting the deletion of that image would be enough to answer your question.

Of course everyone has a right to decide what you will
add... but if
you wish to procedurally remove informative
contributions because of
some non-neutral position, than you would be better
off involved with
another project that includes such a non-neutral slant
as part of its
charter.

Procedurally ?
Uh, I do not get what you mean here ?
You mean by vote ?
Do you think all editors supporting the deletion of that picture should fork ???

> And when editors are complaining of large vandalism
> displaying porn pictures on their talk page, I think
> it would be good manner to recognise there is a
> problem and find a solution to it.

Agreed.

However, your proposals included censoring wikipedia.
Not only would
this not solve your problem (bad guy just uploads the
image under a
new name and you're even more shocked, because you
cant just click the
firefox adfilter plugin option to block it forever if
they keep
changing the name), but it is not an acceptable means
for preventing
vandalism because it compromises the core goals of the
project.

No, there were not my proposals. These were A list of proposals.
One of these proposals is not a proposal; it is was is actually happening (ie, french editors voting for deletion on the english wikipedia).
I do not say this is a good idea, and my call for help is precisely to avoid this to happen.

> I admire your ability to discuss an issue. I report 3
> different wikipedias complaints about large scale
> vandalisme, and your answer is "fork".

I admire your ability to discuss an issue. Three
different wikipedias
have a problem with a class of vandalism which can be
reduced by
simple technical/procedural means (soft redirects +
three mouse
clicks), and your answer is to censor.

When editors asked for the technical/procedural means to the technical team, their request was rejected.
Hence my desire to talk about it openly... which is interpretated as censorship.
Censorship INSIDE the project will exist the day when we are not able to talk about a topic without someone accusing you of censorship.

> There is currently strong support for deleting this
> image.

Throughout history there has been strong support for a
lot of things
that we view in hindsight as very wrong. Neutrality is
a core value of
these projects. By supporting this venture you are
attempting to
impose your values on others, it's not neutral. If
we abandon this
goal in the favor of a few practical gains we abandon
much of what
makes the project special.

Supporting which venture ?
If I wanted to impose MY views on editors, I would have long time ago DELETED that image.
I did not. I limited myself to just vote for its deletion with no comments whatsoever.
As things are, I took great effort all along the past year, to avoid giving my opinion on many topics, to avoid to impose my views on others.
However, when editors contact me to ask me to help them into a matter, I try to help them, and I do not appreciate at all this is viewed as trying to impose *my* views.

> > Wiki vandalism is unfortunate, but it is not a
> > sufficient cause to
> > reduce the available knowledge and the free
exchange
> > of information to
> > mankind. It is not an excuse for censorship.

>
> I do not think a talk page being replaced by
> pornographic pictures will reduce world knowledge.
And
> I do not think a man sucking is cock being limited
on
> one article only rather than thousand of pages will
be
> a bad blow in free exchange of information.

Why do you now limit your remedies to talk pages?
In your initial message you proposed censoring the
images available
for use in all wikipedias to be the least common
denominator. It
would hurt knowledge, and it wouldn't help your goal.
I'd attach a
copy of the image to this email to demonstrate how
censoring wikipedia
doesn't protect you from unwanted content.... If
you're that
concerned, you can browse with images off. (or use the
firefox adblock
plugin to filter it with two mouse clicks).

Then read again my initial message.
I did not propose to censor the image; I indicated that unless a technical solution be found and implemented, the image will found itself naturally censored by all non english editors tired of seeing their main page or talk pages replaced by porn.

By the way, I can not use Firefox on my old system 9. So, I have no filter.
In all cases, you seem to be unable to understand that I currently talk in the name of many editors and not in my proper name.

However, I think the Foundation hold a certain responsability on user talk page. If editors do not want their talk page to display porn images, it would be a good idea that we help this not to happen. I think that this is hurting our image. Incidently, I do think it would be a serious blow in our image that jimbo talk page be replaced by the picture of a man sucking his cock. It is hard to go negociate with outside people when so.

> However, I do think that such reactions to other
> people opinions is a bad blow in wikilove that we
> should all try to respect.

I respect peoples feelings, but feelings are more
transitory than
freedom and feelings are less universal than
knowledge. If the
project goals were amended to say that it is the
primary objective to
make people feel good, then I would not be making the
same argument
now.

As I already said, you are entitled to your opinion.
But an autofellatio image displayed in thousand of copies on editors talk page is NOT helping free knowledge.

Sometimes, there is need to balance things. And consider the weight of a decision. It may help on one hand, and have detrimental impact on the other hand.

Upsetting several wikipedias with many vandalised talk pages and telling them "guys, guys, please tolerate sex images on your talk pages for the sake of free knowledge. We decided for you this picture was okay on wikipedia" is not exactly the good move. Imho.

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list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship and guidelines


list: foundation-l

from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Development tasks and project needs

body:
In a similar vein, what reasons are there for not hosting each project
on its own server?  Especially if we have extra small boxes lying
around.  It would be most gratifying if only one project went down at
a time, and if smaller projects were never slowed down by database
locking issues on the larger ones.

SJ

On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 19:14:33 -0800, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I'm close to being out of my depth on some of this discussion, but
> perhaps somebody would be able to explain for me. A few people have
> raised the possibility that what is technically desirable on one project
> may not be so on another.

--
+sj+


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Development tasks and project
	needs


subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship

body:
>> You know Anthere is on the foundation board, right?

>Oh I knew. :)

>But I think the ideas are wrong and at odds with the published goals.
>If I do not misunderstand Anthere and the views are truly
>representative and accepting censorship based on some peoples
>non-neutral value judgements is acceptable ... then I think we should
>discuss the matter, because I think a lot of people are misled by the
>principal of neutrality 'as advertised'.

I think you are confusing censorship and neutrality

If we were claiming autofellatio is not possible, we would be incorrect.
If we were saying autofellatio is bad, we would be non-neutral.
If we were deleting the autofellatio article and pretending it does not exist, it would be censorship.
If we display a picture of autofellatio in the autofellation article, it is possibly displaying offensive content, or possibly not.
If we decide to use a drawing rather than the image in the autofellatio article, it is possibly admitting a taboo, or possibly not.

If we display autofellatio image in user talk page, it is hurting people who do not expect to see such a picture on a talk page (while they can choose not to go to the autofellatio)
If we do nothing to help those who spent hours cleaning up, it is lacking respect for other people time. It is unwikilove.

Both neutrality and censorship are "strong guidelines".
But neither are *rules*, in the sense none strictly and thoroughly explain exactly what should be from what should not be done. There is no page saying "if there is 1 cm3 blood, display. If there are 5 cm3 do not." There are examples given, but essentially, those are *guidelines*.

As for all guidelines applications, only editors have the authority to try to set rules to attempt to follow the guidelines.

On wikipedia, there is a strong desire to follow a couple of mandatory guidelines/principles, but there is an equally strong desire to let editors create themselves their own rules to try to fit the guidelines.

I think accepting that cultures have different taboos is right.

Calling other communities rules and opinions, when differing from yours, "non-neutral" is wrong. This is what you are doing. The decision of the english wikipedia is fine, but the rules applied on the english wikipedia, belongs to the english wikipedia. They should not impair the right of other communities to set their own rules, without those being called censorship.

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] (no subject)

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:13:17 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> No, but this is precisely what is happening right now. Which is why I
> raise up the issue.
>
> Two weeks ago, there was a wide call on the french pump to go vote for

> the deletion on the english wikipedia. The intent of such a vote was
> only to prevent this vandalism. This was the only solution some french
> editors found to limit vandalism locally. I do not think it is a good
> solution. It should be the choice of english editors to keep it or not
> keep it. And the vote should be strictly limited to voting for a regular
> use (on article).

So, why do you propose in the FIRST of your three possible solutions
that "in this case, I would like that a common vote is held to decide
the
deletion of this image from the english wikipedia." First you propose
it, then you attack people who think it is censorship, and now you say
you do not want it. You could have saved a lot of discussion by not
proposing/endorsing things that you nor anyone else here wants.

Andre Engels

Because Andr?, this is what is CURRENTLY happening.
If this begins to be used as a solution with some images, then we should generalized it, or on the contrary admit it is not a good idea.

We can not pretend nobody wants it, when it is happening

Ant

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Violet/Riga

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Ultra slow again - preventing deletion and moves

body:
> In addition my watchlist seems to perpetually consist of "Internal
> error" .... I assume I am not the only one.

Nope, you're not!  Well I say that but in the last half hour it seems
to be working again - I'll leave the [[WP:RM]] stuff until tomorrow
though.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject:
[Foundation-l] Development tasks and project needs (was: Positive
	discrimination related to smaller communities and projects)

body:
On Tuesday, March 29, 2005 1:15 AM, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com]>
wrote:

> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

[Snip]

> > However, I have offered in the past to act as a development task
> > coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation, and that offer still
> > stands.
>
> For what it is worth you have my support. :)

Mine, too, very much so, though that's no doubt worth much less. ;-)

> > Such a task coordinator would prioritize tasks, maintain contacts to
> > potentially interested sponsors, and make recommendations on
> > spending a certain part of our internal budget on development
> > tasks. He would write the basic specifications, try to locate
> > interested developers (both by inviting them directly, and by
> > having public calls for tenders), watch over the implementation,
> > and decide whether it meets the specs (together with the Board and
> > the MediaWiki Release Manager, Brion Vibber).
>
> Sounds more like a Chief Technical Officer to me.

Chief Software Co-ordinator, perhaps? CTO suggests a hardware role as well
(unless that was meant to have been included in the suggested scope, but I
don't think it is).

> If we can't pay you to do this, then you might as well have a nice
> title to put on your resume.

Agreed. :-)

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Positive discrimination related to smaller
	communities and projects

body:
For what it's worth, (and partially as an aside) I think everyone who
thinks that structured data, or complex applications and the wiki
paradigm don't mix should go to www.jot.com and request a beta. Those
folks managed to build a pretty awesome looking wiki platform that
supports applications developed in a certain wiki-script, and
structured data storage.

-ilya

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:16:15 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'd like to say that indeed, I find GerardM proactive approach very
> positive.
> Ie "Do not give up, get your community to grow and
>  > find out what you really need. And work at it."
>
> Ant
>
> GerardM a ?crit:
> > Hoi,
> > I think the worst we can do is fork. It will mean that we will not
> > benefit from the economies of scale that the Wikimedia Foundation
> > offers. These benefits are huge, with a project that is part of the
> > larger community, you will be known and otherwise you have to struggle
> > to get the same "facetime". You will be just another project
> > struggling to get recognition. You will have to find programmers, you
> > will have to find hardware, you will have to do all the hard work that
> > is already done really well.
> >
> > Take me as an example, I did not give up on Wiktionary, I worked hard
> > to get an idea of what we should have (by putting in a lot of work) I
> > got some community going and learned that we need one database to rule
> > them all .. :) I discussed this and learned about Wikidata. This is
> > the necessary building block for the "ultimate wiktionary". I found
> > someone to program it, I found someone to pay the programmer and, the
> > development has started. Wikispecies will benefit from this if we get
> > enough traction (read also but not only money) to make this happen. I
> > have uploaded some 3000 soundfiles and now the upload screen is
> > uploaded to such an extend that I can upload a Dutch pronunciation in
> > a fraction of the time.
> >
> > My point to you is: Do not give up, get your community to grow and
> > find out what you really need. And work at it. My point to the list in
> > general is, there are many things that need doing We need resources to
> > make the things happen to grow the projects and communities other than
> > Wikipedia. When we agree to have all these projects and communities,
> > we have to invest in their well being. It is a defeat of who we are
> > when we get a fork because of unresponsiveness. It is certainly a pity
> > when we CAN hire programmers to create the desperately needed
> > functionality.
> >
> > An example: It is easier to upload Dutch, English, German soundfiles
> > than Farsi soundfiles I can do easily 10 times more words in the same
> > time. It upsets me that a soundfile obscures text in Hebrew, Arabic or
> > Farsi because of this stupid symbol that is seen because Commons is
> > seen as an external resource.
> >
> > I want to have dia shows when we have too many pictures for a subject.
> > I have ideas about "language immersion training" it needs some
> > software to allow for different target languages. Those are only my
> > ideas.... there are so many even better idea's....
> >
> > We can get money for functionality, we can get money for servers. We
> > just have to ask. That is why the Foundation can be such a powerfull
> > organisation. It can be an enabler. That is in my opinion what we have
> > done brilliantly, given the outrageous success that Wikipedia is. We
> > just have to work hard on making the other projects a success too.
> >
> > Define projects, define functionality, get a community interested in
> > change find money, find programmers. And let's make things even
> > better..
> >
> > One thing you cannot do is expect others to do the work for you. If
> > you cannot do the programming, find someone who can and who will. If
> > you do not have the money find someone who does.  If you cannot define
> > your needs, find someone who can because without a well defined need
> > you are snookered and, on your own it will be only worse,
> >
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> >
> >
> > On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:35:24 -0800, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
> >
> >>In wikinews there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the
> >>unresponsiveness of the mediawiki team to issues considered critical to
> >>the project. This has now become a discussion regarding a fork of both
> >>hardware and software, and contributors are actively working toward
> >>doing so. I don't think this is the best choice, but it is beginning to
> >>look like the only choice.
> >>
> >>Amgine
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] apologies for Tony and anyone who might have felt
	offended

body:
My apologies for you Tony if you were hurt by some of the points I made. I may also not foresee the crudeness of certains words I see used everyday.

But yes, I wanted like to make a point.

I am ready to be called a censor if needed. However, I do not think we can pretend we are currently doing no censorship at all. I do not think it is correct to tell me to lead my own fork for my belief this image should be deleted. I do not think it is correct to say I am going against the goal of the Foundation for reporting that non english wikipedia are tired to see their user talk page "dirtied" by unwanted pictures. I do not think it is correct to say I am trying to impose my views on the project while I have been terribly careful for the full year not to impose any decision on image deletion. And I do not think it is correct to remind I am not a representative of editors when I am giving so much of my free time so that every editor's opinion be taken into consideration.

When someone does not agree with another, trying to comment on what the other say is okay, trying to attack the person is not okay and to tell her she should fork, she is hurting the project and she is outstepping her role is not okay. It is not wikilove. And morally very wrong.

Very wrong.

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from_name: b schewek

subject: [Wikitech-l] Potential additions to 1.5 database schema

body:
>
> As the change from 1.4 to 1.5 db will be a big step anyway, two
> additions come to mind:
>
> * Language links
> Should we finally put these into a real table? At least, additionally to
> keep them in the text? With an interwiki link table up and current, we
> could then switch to "real" interwiki management at a later stage.
>

Have there been any considerations to add support
for the following ideas:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reviewed_article_version

Schewek

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Alfio Puglisi (puglisi at arcetri.astro.it) [050329 01:34]:
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2005, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> >Simple. Let's get rid of interwiki redirects altogether. They have *always*
> >been more trouble than they are worth due to transporting readers to another
> >wiki without any obvious way for them to know, nor any obvious way to revert
> >the redirect.

> I must confess that I didn't even know that interwiki redirects were
> possible. Are they actually used for some purpose?

There are some en:Wikipedia: space pages that are now redirects to the
equivalent on meta: . That's all I can think of.

- d.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>For example, I think it is a good thing that the German
>wikipedia is quite strict against fair use, because most re-users of
>that work will be trying to distribute it in Germany, and relying on
>the more liberal provisions of fair use/fair dealing that en.wikipedia
>relies on would be unwise.
>
>
Is that really a good reason for this difference?  You could make the
same argument for removing fair-use from en: as well, because there are
many English-speaking countries that have laws as restrictive as.(or
more restrictive than) Germany's.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes


subject:
National chapters (was Re: [Foundation-l] UK Wikimedia Foundation
	notes)

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050329 02:15]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > Things to watch out for: local foundations being used for nationalist
> > POV-pushing.

> This is one of the reasons it is so important to work very hard from
> the start to make sure that chapter organizers understand that they
> are not taking control of a particular language wikipedia.

One that springs to mind: ownership of essential servers would need to stay
with the central Foundation, not with local chapters.

> Chapters are going to be a major part of what we're doing going
> forward, and we have to be *extremely* careful *now* to make wise
> decisions that lead to global harmony rather than nationalist rivalry.

Why are sr:, hr: and bs: still separate wikis, despite the languages being
barely different than British and American? (And Cantonese still hasn't got
a wiki ...)

(I can guess the answers: they're called separate languages for obvious
local political reasons, and the participants have no interest in merging
them.)

- d.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes

body:
Delirium wrote:
> >For example, I think it is a good thing that the German
> >wikipedia is quite strict against fair use, because most re-users of
> >that work will be trying to distribute it in Germany, and relying on
> >the more liberal provisions of fair use/fair dealing that en.wikipedia
> >relies on would be unwise.
> >
> Is that really a good reason for this difference?  You could make the
> same argument for removing fair-use from en: as well, because there are
> many English-speaking countries that have laws as restrictive as.(or
> more restrictive than) Germany's.

These things are judgment calls which I think have to be made
carefully, and there will be no simple formulaic answer.  Because of
the _way_ that we make decisions (i.e. with a fair amount of autonnomy
for different languages, and with efforts to find consensus rather
than hard-and-fast rules of voting or whatever), we will sometimes
find ourselves being inconsistent in some minor ways.

As a matter of fact, I *do* make the same argument for removing
fair-use from en as well.  I think we should avoid fair-use images
much much more strongly than we do now.

At the same time, I think that fair use is a *good thing* in general,
because it is an acknowledgement that there are limitations on the
rights of copyright holders, and we should use it when we really do
need it.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> If your interest is to censor encyclopedic content on any wikimedia
> wikipedia, then your goals are at odds with the goals of the
> foundation.  Because you do not share the same goals, you should fork
> and produce your own project with censorship among it's goals.

This is really over-the-top, Gregory.

> If you continue to endorse censorship you are harming the project.
> Please allow those who want to share knowledge freely the ability to
> do so on wikipedia by taking your censorship someplace else.

My problem with people using the word "censorship" in talking about
this very complex issue is precisely that we get responses like yours,
which are really not very helpful and short-circuit our ability to
think critically about the issue.

We are *all* (the major participants) opposed to censorship (in the
sense that you mean), including (very strongly) Anthere.  It is our
goal to educate and inform, not to shock, offend, or titillate.

Of course there is a tiny majority of people who are interested in
censoring Wikipedia.  Fine.  Ignore them.

But don't imagine that those of us who think that, for example, it is
blatantly obvious that the [[Imgae:Autofellatio_2.jpg]] image is wildly
inappropriate for wikipedia are simply prudish censors.  Such a view
really fails to respect and understand the point that we are making.

A respectful discussion of this difficult issue is hard to have if
anyone who is in favor of deleting some images from wikipedia is to be
shunned as a censor who ought to leave the project and fork.

Especially, for goodness sake, Anthere, who is a hero to us all.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> I find it admirable that you are so utterly certain that you know what
> the goals of the foundation are better than members of the Board of
> Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and are so unhesitatingly willing
> to accuse those Trustees of harming your project, and are so quick to
> request that Trustees leave your project.
>
> Admirable, and very wrong.

Sean, thank you for this.

--Jimbo


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales (jwales at wikia.com) [050329 05:21]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > Why are sr:, hr: and bs: still separate wikis, despite the languages being
> > barely different than British and American? (And Cantonese still hasn't got
> > a wiki ...)
> > (I can guess the answers: they're called separate languages for obvious
> > local political reasons, and the participants have no interest in merging
> > them.)

> I think it's a bit worse than that on our part.  I think it just
> happened by accident historically, and they have all continued forward
> in a state of general neglect.  I would strongly support a merger of
> these to whatever extent is practical.  (There is a problem of script
> for 2 of the 3, as I recall, and I don't know how if there's a simple
> machine solution.)

Worse than that even - sh: was Serbo-Croatian, then they were separated at
some stage. Anyone know the history?

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> And in particular, an image should not be deleted from the *English*
> Wikipedia because it is inappropriate at the *French* one.

Yes, I very much agree.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Sean Barrett a ?crit:
> Gregory Maxwell stated for the record:
>
>> If your interest is to censor encyclopedic content on any wikimedia
>> wikipedia, then your goals are at odds with the goals of the
>> foundation.  Because you do not share the same goals, you should fork
>> and produce your own project with censorship among it's goals.
>>
>> If you continue to endorse censorship you are harming the project.
>> Please allow those who want to share knowledge freely the ability to
>> do so on wikipedia by taking your censorship someplace else.
>
>
> I find it admirable that you are so utterly certain that you know what
> the goals of the foundation are better than members of the Board of
> Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, and are so unhesitatingly willing
> to accuse those Trustees of harming your project, and are so quick to
> request that Trustees leave your project.
>
> Admirable, and very wrong.
>
> But admirable.
>
> Well, sorta.

Well, thank you Sean. I was sorta feeling squeazy this morning.

I apology for not feeling very happy toward that picture.
However, I just limited myself to vote for its deletion on the english
wikipedia, and will absolutely accept very willingly any decision the
community will find toward its future.

Ant


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes

body:
> >On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 09:45:30 +0100, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What EXACTLY does the law in these countries say?

According to the Japanese Copyright Law, a fair quotation (?????)
should fulfil two conditions:
1) quotation should be shorter than the text of the author who makes that quote
(so here the current Wikiquote style can't filfile this condition.
There is almost no "background" text for quotations)
2) quotation should be used in a context which has necessity to make that quote

and there is a court sentence for a mere quotation book of copyrighted
sources without permissions of copyright holders; the publisher of
this book was judged as copyright law infringement.

> Laws may very well restrict our activities, but there should be no
> obligation to interpret them in the most restrictive way.

There is already an established analysis by the court and I have no
intention to attempt if we have a different luck. There are many
quotation sites on the net but anyway they are non commercial use -
under GFDL the situation is different, if I understand correctly.

> When a particular law gives a ridiculous result, that is the time to see if
> there are legal arguments available for interpretations that are more
> favorable.

Do you think we have already attempt it? And I don't think it is not
rediculous - Wikiquote in the current style can't be sufficient both
conditions Japaense law demands obviously. In other words, to correct
quotations of copyrighted stuffs as bunchs of quotations without no
contexts, at least under the Japanese law, we need to get permissions
from each copyright holders. Or It seems to be a violation of right of
editing, a sort of derivetive works in this context.
--
Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
 > 1) Brion is on the case already. There's a code change in CVS that will
 > allow InterWiki redirects to show a "Redirected from" like regular
 > redirects.

This is a good idea. It allows to fix things more easily.

 > 2) Angela pointed out to me that even if the image was deleted from the
 > English Wikipedia, it could still be on any of the other wikis on the
 > InterWiki map (e.g. all Wikicities), all of which can be used for
 > InterWiki redirects. So you wouldn't just need a cross-Wikipedia
deletion
 > or linking policy, but pretty much one across all wikis. That is
clearly
 > not a workable solution.
 >
 > 3) The autofellatio image may be a case where many people agree that
it is
 > inappropriate in any context, but many images which we clearly want,
such
 > as the photos GerardM uploaded of venereal diseases, would be clearly
 > inappropriate on user talk pages. That doesn't mean such images
should be
 > deleted.

No, but this is precisely what is happening right now. Which is why I
raise up the issue.

Two weeks ago, there was a wide call on the french pump to go vote for
the deletion on the english wikipedia. The intent of such a vote was
only to prevent this vandalism. This was the only solution some french
editors found to limit vandalism locally. I do not think it is a good
solution. It should be the choice of english editors to keep it or not
keep it. And the vote should be strictly limited to voting for a regular
use (on article).

Ultimately... finding tools to deal with this type of vandalism will
help such images to be kept on projects.

 > We should simply consider this vandalism, and improve the tools we
use to
 > deal with it. 1) helps a great deal already. Single login will also
help,
 > as people will not suddenly be thrown into a wiki whose language they
do
 > not speak once they have set their language user preference. We may,
 > however, want to consider disabling InterWiki redirects specifically
for
 > non-Wikimedia wikis whose policies are beyond our control.
 >
 > All best,
 >
 > Erik


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Positive discrimination related to smaller
 communities and projects

body:
I'd like to say that indeed, I find GerardM proactive approach very
positive.
Ie "Do not give up, get your community to grow and
 > find out what you really need. And work at it."

Ant

GerardM a ?crit:
> Hoi,
> I think the worst we can do is fork. It will mean that we will not
> benefit from the economies of scale that the Wikimedia Foundation
> offers. These benefits are huge, with a project that is part of the
> larger community, you will be known and otherwise you have to struggle
> to get the same "facetime". You will be just another project
> struggling to get recognition. You will have to find programmers, you
> will have to find hardware, you will have to do all the hard work that
> is already done really well.
>
> Take me as an example, I did not give up on Wiktionary, I worked hard
> to get an idea of what we should have (by putting in a lot of work) I
> got some community going and learned that we need one database to rule
> them all .. :) I discussed this and learned about Wikidata. This is
> the necessary building block for the "ultimate wiktionary". I found
> someone to program it, I found someone to pay the programmer and, the
> development has started. Wikispecies will benefit from this if we get
> enough traction (read also but not only money) to make this happen. I
> have uploaded some 3000 soundfiles and now the upload screen is
> uploaded to such an extend that I can upload a Dutch pronunciation in
> a fraction of the time.
>
> My point to you is: Do not give up, get your community to grow and
> find out what you really need. And work at it. My point to the list in
> general is, there are many things that need doing We need resources to
> make the things happen to grow the projects and communities other than
> Wikipedia. When we agree to have all these projects and communities,
> we have to invest in their well being. It is a defeat of who we are
> when we get a fork because of unresponsiveness. It is certainly a pity
> when we CAN hire programmers to create the desperately needed
> functionality.
>
> An example: It is easier to upload Dutch, English, German soundfiles
> than Farsi soundfiles I can do easily 10 times more words in the same
> time. It upsets me that a soundfile obscures text in Hebrew, Arabic or
> Farsi because of this stupid symbol that is seen because Commons is
> seen as an external resource.
>
> I want to have dia shows when we have too many pictures for a subject.
> I have ideas about "language immersion training" it needs some
> software to allow for different target languages. Those are only my
> ideas.... there are so many even better idea's....
>
> We can get money for functionality, we can get money for servers. We
> just have to ask. That is why the Foundation can be such a powerfull
> organisation. It can be an enabler. That is in my opinion what we have
> done brilliantly, given the outrageous success that Wikipedia is. We
> just have to work hard on making the other projects a success too.
>
> Define projects, define functionality, get a community interested in
> change find money, find programmers. And let's make things even
> better..
>
> One thing you cannot do is expect others to do the work for you. If
> you cannot do the programming, find someone who can and who will. If
> you do not have the money find someone who does.  If you cannot define
> your needs, find someone who can because without a well defined need
> you are snookered and, on your own it will be only worse,
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 06:35:24 -0800, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
>>In wikinews there has been an ongoing discussion regarding the
>>unresponsiveness of the mediawiki team to issues considered critical to
>>the project. This has now become a discussion regarding a fork of both
>>hardware and software, and contributors are actively working toward
>>doing so. I don't think this is the best choice, but it is beginning to
>>look like the only choice.
>>
>>Amgine
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:12:27 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think you are confusing censorship and neutrality

I don't think I am...

> If we were claiming autofellatio is not possible, we would be incorrect.

Right, which is a reason why the image is useful.... It says that it
is possible in a manner which is difficult for text or drawings to do
alone.

> If we were saying autofellatio is bad, we would be non-neutral.
> If we were deleting the autofellatio article and pretending it does not exist, it would be censorship.

If we delete an informative part of the article because we think that
autofellatio is bad, or because we think that images of
nudity/sexuality are bad, it would be censorship *and* it would be
nonneutral because we are deciding content based on the same type of
value judgement you provided above.

At least, that is my position.

> If we display a picture of autofellatio in the autofellation article, it is possibly displaying offensive content, or possibly not.
> If we decide to use a drawing rather than the image in the autofellatio article, it is possibly admitting a taboo, or possibly not.

I think it's pretty obvious that some people are offended by the
image, for they think images of such things are bad just as some are
offended by the concept alone, and would like to see the whole  thing
deleted.

> If we display autofellatio image in user talk page, it is hurting people who do not expect to see such a picture on a talk page (while they can choose not to go to the autofellatio)
> If we do nothing to help those who spent hours cleaning up, it is lacking respect for other people time. It is unwikilove.

Right, I don't argue for keeping it in talk pages....
Do you think that this isn't known to the people spamming the talk
pages with this image?    There are many many more offensive images on
the internet, but they don't have a possible place on the wikipedia
because they are not informative about such a subject. It's quite
possible that the vandals motivate is to make a problem of the image
so that you will have it deleted because they are morally opposed to
it's availability.. And in that case, you are playing right into their
wishes.

We must consider the matters of censorship and vandalism as completely
separate matters, unless we wish to be forced to abandon our ideals
due to the agenda of anyone with a webbrowser and the time to
vandalize.

> Both neutrality and censorship are "strong guidelines".
[snip guidelines examples]
>
> As for all guidelines applications, only editors have the authority to try to set rules to attempt to follow the guidelines.
>
> On wikipedia, there is a strong desire to follow a couple of mandatory guidelines/principles, but there is an equally strong desire to let editors create themselves their own rules to try to fit the guidelines.

I contend that censorship is a matter of neutrality because it imposes
good/bad value judgements on articles.

What I'm reading here is that neutrality is negotiable.
I did not think this was the case.

> I think accepting that cultures have different taboos is right.
>
> Calling other communities rules and opinions, when differing from yours, "non-neutral" is wrong. This is what you are doing. The decision of the english wikipedia is fine, but the rules applied on the english wikipedia, belongs to the english wikipedia. They should not impair the right of other communities to set their own rules, without those being called censorship.

I'm having a problem getting over the cognative dissonance here.
People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true
for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures. When
we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others,
this is non-neutral and this is censorship.

For what it's worth, as best I can tell, the image is quite offensive
to many people in the United States, ... This isn't a matter of it
being non-offensive to one group and not others.


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Editorial decisions are not the same as censorship

body:
In a recent letter Anthere makes a number of good points;
I agree with almost all of them. She offers a list of
disturbing images is given, for good purpose:

> I could go on and on forever. All this exist.
> Most is informative.
> Some is already in Wikipedia. Most is not.
> Is it censorship NOT to put these pictures in
> Wikipedia ? YES, IT IS CENSORSHIP.

On this one point, I respectfully disagree.  Censorship is
an act which prevents the free discussion of ideas. The
term is really only meaningful when it comes to repressing
ideas due to a social, religious or political agenda.

When a newspaper, encyclopedia or other source decides not
to publish a photo because it does meet editorial
standards, that is *not* censorship by any definition of
the word. In this case we are merely excercising editorial
policy.

Let me give an example: The English Wikipedia has an
article on fertilization of an egg, pregnancy and giving
birth.  But we do *not* have photographs of men having sex
with women, impregnating them!  That is an editorial
decision, made for very good reasons.  The decision not to
publish any given sex photograph is in no way, shape or
form censorship.

Now, some religious or political zealots could attempt to
delete articles on sex, fertilization and preganancy,
believing that public discussion of such topics is
immodest, or a violation of their religion or philosophy.
*That* position would be censorship.  In this case people
are preventing us from accurately discussing a subject.  It
is the represssion of ideas for social, religious or
political purposes.

But having a group of editors, or the collective decision
of a Wiki-community, decide on appropriate images to use
has no relationship to censorship in any way.  In fact, by
definition, it is the job of encyclopedia and newspaper
contributors and editors to decide which information to
add, and which not to.

Otherwise we end up not with an encyclopedia, but just a
massive ugly image-dump and text-dump, of no encyclopedic
value.

If we start using the word "censorship" every time an image
or text isn't used, then we destroy the meaning of the
word. Let's use this term wisely.

Anthere writes:
> The english wikipedia has the entire responsability to
decide whether
> to keep it or not to keep it, but its decision should
only have a
> local impact. There is absolutely no argument to say that
it
> should impact all other projects. The english wikipedia
has no
> authority over the other projects. It has certainly
experience
> to bring, it has plenty of good people to listen to, but
it is
> not the boss of other projects.

I agree. Decisions made by the communal consensus of a
Wiki-community for one Wiki do not have to impact the
decisions made on another wiki.

In the end, let us remember that the entire point of our
project is to create a reliable and respected encyclopedia
that people actually USE.  If we will it with images of
explicit violence, sex, and filth, the vast majority of
people in the world will simply not use or encyclopedia.
Then what is the point of our prject? To make ourselves
feel good?

We're here to accomplish a goal for the greater good, and
unless our project is read by many others, it can't do
that.

Sincerely,

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


body:
Tomer Chachamu (the.r3m0t at gmail.com) [050329 06:30]:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 03:30:25 +0800, b schewek <schewek at linuxmail.org> wrote:

> > Have there been any considerations to add support
> > for the following ideas:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reviewed_article_version

> People have not yet agreed on [[meta:Article_validation]] - even some
> basic issues, such as whether to show to anons the reviewed or latest
> version. I can't imagine support for this will be in 1.5.

That's a really bad thing, considering a pile of plans are hung waiting for
just that feature or something like it.

The current suggestion is to try running ratings and see if they end up
with sensible results. So rather than using the results, we just ... gather
the data then the data is sanity-checked. This would mean making sure the
feature was *stable* (production-ready) rather than *ideally
feature-complete*, because what's done with any ratings would almost
certainly change.

Would a test version of the feature (that gathers data but does not do
things with it) be more of a prospect for 1.5?

- d.


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
Tony Mobily IMAP wrote:

> I understand you were making a point, and I also understand I am the
> new kid in the block.
> However, I would like to suggest that such a crude list could be
> avoided without weakening your point.
>
> If not, I don't think I will last very long in this mailing list.

Thank you for saying that, Tony.

Tom Haws


body:
Thank you.  You are right about this.  And I support you.  I understand
the difficulty of "feeling" the emotional impact of words in a
non-native language.

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."

Anthere wrote:

>My apologies for you Tony if you were hurt by some of the points I made. I may also not foresee the crudeness of certains words I see used everyday.
>
>But yes, I wanted like to make a point.
>
>I am ready to be called a censor if needed. However, I do not think we can pretend we are currently doing no censorship at all. I do not think it is correct to tell me to lead my own fork for my belief this image should be deleted. I do not think it is correct to say I am going against the goal of the Foundation for reporting that non english wikipedia are tired to see their user talk page "dirtied" by unwanted pictures. I do not think it is correct to say I am trying to impose my views on the project while I have been terribly careful for the full year not to impose any decision on image deletion. And I do not think it is correct to remind I am not a representative of editors when I am giving so much of my free time so that every editor's opinion be taken into consideration.
>
>When someone does not agree with another, trying to comment on what the other say is okay, trying to attack the person is not okay and to tell her she should fork, she is hurting the project and she is outstepping her role is not okay. It is not wikilove. And morally very wrong.
>
>Very wrong.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes

body:
>
>
> Laws may very well restrict our activities, but there should be no
> obligation to interpret them in the most restrictive way.  When a
> particular law gives a ridiculous result, that is the time to see if
> there are legal arguments available for interpretations that are more
> favorable.
>
Not just that. May I remind people that German is not just spoken in
Germany. Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland come to mind. So if it
is not allowed under German law, but is under their law we could always
make a writ that the de.wikiquote is meant for country xxx .

Walter/Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] german wikiquotes


from_name: Richard Holton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Britannica proud to lag years behind recent
	developments such as SARS and nanotechnology

body:
On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 08:45:55 +0100, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>   March 23, 2005 07:00 AM US Eastern Timezone
>
> New Britannica Keeps Pace with Change; Revised Encyclopedia Boosts
> Coverage of People, Science & Changing World
>
> CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 2005--New and revised articles
> spanning science and technology, literature and the Middle East are at
> the center of the just-published Encyclopaedia Britannica for 2005.
>
> Among the new articles included in the 32-volume work are a substantial
> number in science and medicine, such as SARS, monkeypox, nanotechnology
> and computer crime.
>

We should work hard to make featured articles out of [[SARS]],
[[Monkeypox]], [[Nanotechnology]], and [[Computer crime]].

-- Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
> to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder

That is not a featured article. In fact it is not even an article - it is a
hoax. It will be removed as would any other sneaky vandalism masquerading as
valid content.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Magnus Manske

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

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales schrieb:
> Yes, I think we need to have an understanding of what needs to be done
> in this 1.5 version.  We do *not* need to decide such issues as
> whether to show anons the reviewed or latest version.  All we need for
> starters is... starters.
>
> What I envision for 1.5 is the simplest possible data gathering tool.
>
> People rate articles, and we record everything about that rating --
> who did the rating, what was the rating, what version was rated, etc.
> Then we do nothing at all with the data except study it.  We can
> anonymize it and share it, and people can run studies of various kinds
> on how to combine the ratings effectively.  We can look at the ratings
> and see if they are sane, or where they are sane... do anons do a good
> job of rating? do experienced editors tend to give the same ratings,
> etc.
>
> The beauty of just gathering data and studying it for awhile, with *no
> actual implications for the site*, is that we don't have to "a priori"
> figure out how to prevent the ratings system from becoming a
> slashdot-style karma-whoring game.  We just gather the data, and think
> really really hard about it.

Done. :-)

(In case you didn't notice, I re-implemented the validation feature in
1.5, and Brion wants to run a demo on his own server soon.)

Magnus
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body:
Brion Vibber (brion at pobox.com) [050329 09:22]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >Worse than that even - sh: was Serbo-Croatian, then they were separated at
> >some stage. Anyone know the history?

> The ISO 639 language code 'sh' for Serbo-Croatian was officially
> deprecated over five years ago:
> http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/codechanges.html

yay w00t!

> While I'm sure a happy world in which the violent breakup of Yugoslavia
> never happened would be great, the fact is that it did happen, and the
> resulting nations are heavily invested in playing up nationalistic
> ethnic and linguistic differences.
> I don't particularly care whether someone attempts to re-merge them or
> not, but you're going to run into very annoyed people either way.

Possibly not a great place for an officially affiliated Foundation chapter
as yet.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Michael-
> Do we have a conscious preference for having all sites on basically the
> same software configuration? For example, could we get something like
> dynamic listing, for which I can see the usefulness on Wikinews, without
> applying the same thing to Wikipedia where it might be detrimental? Is
> this sort of thing happening already more than I'm aware of? Why would
> this not be possible within the MediaWiki framework?

My take on this is that it is desirable to take a feature to a state where
it is generally usable on all wikis, for multiple reasons:

1) If you give people a new tool, they may often use it in ways which you
have not anticipated. For example, I can easily see how a dynamic list or
RSS feed of articles matching a set of categories, sorted by date, could
be used by
 - Wikipedia, for showing me the latest articles in a category I'm
   interested in, to systematically review them,
 - Wikimedia Commons, for subscribing to media feeds about certain topics
   (cf. Flickr),
 - Wikibooks, for getting new book modules directly into my RSS readers,
 - Wikiquote, for sending me new quotes about my favorite subjects,
and so forth.

There are areas in Wikipedia, such as the Wikipedia Signpost which you
edit for, that would benefit from more Wikinews-like features. There may
be people who want to maintain a blog on their Wikipedia user page. It
pays off to think broadly instead of narrowly, to allow yourself to see
more than one application for a particular technology.

2) The larger the divergence, the more difficult the Wikimedia Grid
becomes to maintain. Our server admin volunteers often don't know what's
going on in a particular project. It will be increasingly difficult for
them to track down when something is wrong if every project has a
different set of functions. If, however, something like Special:Feed
exists as part of the general MediaWiki functionality, it is relatively
easy for us to tell if it's causing problems.

3) It encourages laziness. The reason the dynamic list extension is not
currently live is that it is not implemented in a scalable fashion. I can
see the argument that it should go live on Wikinews anyway, but who knows
that we have the proper replacement in place when we need it? It is
undesirable to have all of Wikinews suddenly stop working because a
developer decides that the extension no longer scales, and then have to
code a replacement within a couple of days.

4) There is no particular reason why any of the features we discussed
should not be able to scale.

5) The features we discussed are not fundamentally different from things
such as some of our special page reports (most wanted articles), which we
enable on all wikis. For all these features, we should look for ways to
make them scale.

I think the MediaWiki developers are highly aware of the problem of
feature creep. To extend our software in ways which go beyond its original
scope is not automatically feature creep. The creepiness factor for me is
actually higher with an approach where you build software out of lots of
extensions which do not interoperate well and which are not maintained as
part of the main tree. Take a look at TikiWiki to see what I mean.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

references:
<4247E259.7000709@yahoo.com> <9ThczkVhpVB@erik_moeller>
	<4248E3ED.9010105@yahoo.com>

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:13:17 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> No, but this is precisely what is happening right now. Which is why I
> raise up the issue.
>
> Two weeks ago, there was a wide call on the french pump to go vote for
> the deletion on the english wikipedia. The intent of such a vote was
> only to prevent this vandalism. This was the only solution some french
> editors found to limit vandalism locally. I do not think it is a good
> solution. It should be the choice of english editors to keep it or not
> keep it. And the vote should be strictly limited to voting for a regular
> use (on article).

So, why do you propose in the FIRST of your three possible solutions
that "in this case, I would like that a common vote is held to decide
the
deletion of this image from the english wikipedia." First you propose
it, then you attack people who think it is censorship, and now you say
you do not want it. You could have saved a lot of discussion by not
proposing/endorsing things that you nor anyone else here wants.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Ant-
> Unless I am entirely mistaken somewhere, I was elected
> to be a representative of editors.

Just to clarify, in case you are referring to your official position, you
were elected to be the representative of "contributing members" (paying
members of the Wikimedia Foundation). Angela was elected to be the
representative of volunteer editors. The distinction has become moot at
this point.

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Ant-
> No, but this is precisely what is happening right now. Which is why I
> raise up the issue.

Fair enough, but please acknowledge that it is not a "porn on Wikipedia"
issue. It is an "inappropriate images posted to user talk pages" issue.
Whether these images are of autofellatio, of venereal diseases, or of Abu
Ghraib prisoner abuse, is entirely irrelevant. We've got more than enough
photos on Wikimedia which you don't want to suddenly show up on your
screen when you don't expect it. The last thing we need is another anti-
obscenity crusade.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Development tasks and project needs

body:
Daniel-
> Yep. Such as pages devoted to news in particular nations. We could register
> wikinews.us, for example, and redirect it to the U.S. news page on the
> English Wikinews. If and when other Wikinews' U.S. news pages get busy
> enough, then we could have xx.wikinews.us redirects as well. But wikinews.us
> by itself should still auto redirect to the English version (and wikinews.ru
> should always prefer the Russian Wikinews even if other xx.wikinews.ru
> redirects exist, ect for each nation/primary language spoken in that
> nation).

I'm not too fond of getting those domain names, because we have to look
after them. People link to them, put them in their bookmarks, etc., and if
one of them stops working, we have a big problem - and may not even notice
it. I'd prefer short canonical URLs (some of the arguments why this is bad
on Wikipedia don't apply to Wikinews), but Brion opposes that.

>> Such a task coordinator would prioritize tasks, maintain contacts to
>> potentially interested sponsors, and make recommendations on spending a
>> certain part of our internal budget on development tasks. He would write
>> the basic specifications, try to locate interested developers (both by
>> inviting them directly, and by having public calls for tenders), watch
>> over the implementation, and decide whether it meets the specs (together
>> with the Board and the MediaWiki Release Manager, Brion Vibber).

> Sounds more like a Chief Technical Officer to me. If we can't pay you to do
> this, then you might as well have a nice title to put on your resume. :)

Two problems with that:
- I am not qualified, by myself, to give good hardware recommendations;
software is my main focus of interest.
- The position should exist alongside that of the MediaWiki Release
Manager, not above it. In the long term, I believe that the RM position
should be an official Wikimedia title.

But, in line with Sj's comments about mobilizing volunteers, an
alternative would be a "Research Committee" with an elected or appointed
chair (Chief Scientist or Chief Research Officer). This also makes it
clear that everything the committee comes up with are recommendations that
can be ignored by the board, by the Release Manager, and by the other
developers (though it would be helpful, in the long term at least, if a
reason was required for ignoring the recommendations).

This committee could eventually also cover hardware recommendations,
though perhaps it would be sensible to have a separate elected chairperson
for that department.

I would be willing to set up this Committee and the elections for its
chairperson(s) on Meta, but I'd like to get at least a basic go-ahead from
Jimbo et al. before doing this - there's not much point if the committee
is going to be ignored.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:26:33 -0500, Gregory Maxwell
<gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote (in part):

> I'm having a problem getting over the cognative dissonance here.
> People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true
> for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures. When
> we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others,
> this is non-neutral and this is censorship.
>
I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong". I think
that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong
(though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would
take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article
about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that
is should not be covered.

However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in
that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this
is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case,
you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences
of opinion within some cultures.

Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an
article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is
appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.

To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an
image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available,
is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as
insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either
way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.

-- Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


subject: [Wikitech-l] looking for way to convert mediawiki markup to html

body:
Frederik Eaton wrote:

>Has somebody written a script to convert mediawiki markup to html? I'd
>need something which works with embedded latex. Looking at the
>mediawiki source it doesn't seem like it should be *that* hard but I
>haven't tried yet.
>
>
Maybe Text_Wiki could be something for you. As written on the Developer
page it is able to transform wiki structured text into an output format
such as XHTML, RTF, LaTeX and so on.

You can find it here:
http://wiki.ciaweb.net/yawiki/index.php?area=Text_Wiki
Even may freshmeat.net be a fine source to find similar programs.

Greets
Andreas H.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia on Radio 4 today

body:
The BBC Radio 4 programme "Nice Work" will include a part about
Wikipedia today in a section on Knowledge Management.

The show is on from 4-4.30 (BST) (15-15.30 UTC). and can be listened
to online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/live_feed.html

Details of the programme are at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/nicework/

Angela.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:53:14 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Then read again my initial message.
> I did not propose to censor the image; I indicated that unless a technical solution be found and implemented, the image will found itself naturally censored by all non english editors tired of seeing their main page or talk pages replaced by porn.

Maybe YOU should read your message again.

You wrote:

> So, I suggest that
> * either we all agree to share common images, since they can impact us
> and in this case, I would like that a common vote is held to decide the
> deletion of this image from the english wikipedia

You did not say that this would be a bad thing, you *suggested* it as
one way of resolving the issue. My dictionary (Concise Oxford
Dictionary of Current English, 9th edition) defines "suggest" as
"propose". So YES. You DID propose it.

> However, I think the Foundation hold a certain responsability on user talk page. If editors do not want their talk page to display porn images, it would be a good idea that we help this not to happen. I think that this is hurting our image. Incidently, I do think it would be a serious blow in our image that jimbo talk page be replaced by the picture of a man sucking his cock. It is hard to go negociate with outside people when so.

So we remove pictures of a man sucking his cock from all Wikis to
avoid that? Better remove editing of user talk pages too then. Because
it will be hard to negotiate if the page says spoken obscenities in
large font too.

> As I already said, you are entitled to your opinion.
> But an autofellatio image displayed in thousand of copies on editors talk page is NOT helping free knowledge.

Then again, a picture of a tree displayed in thousand of copies on
editors talk page is not helping free knowledge either. So should we
remove those too?

> Upsetting several wikipedias with many vandalised talk pages and telling them "guys, guys, please tolerate sex images on your talk pages for the sake of free knowledge. We decided for you this picture was okay on wikipedia" is not exactly the good move. Imho.

Who is saying we are to say they should tolerate it? Let them remove
it, just like other vandalism is removed. No reason to have them say
"Hey, you cannot have this image on your project because there are
places on our project where we don't want them!"

Andre Engels


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 07:42:32AM -0800, Robert wrote:
> Let me give an example: The English Wikipedia has an article on
> fertilization of an egg, pregnancy and giving birth.  But we do *not*
> have photographs of men having sex with women, impregnating them!
> That is an editorial decision, made for very good reasons.  The
> decision not to publish any given sex photograph is in no way, shape
> or form censorship.

I agree with you that this is not censorship.  However, your description
implies that we don't have such pictures at all.

The articles on [[fertilization]], [[pregnancy]], and so forth all link
to [[Sexual intercourse]].  That article, as it so happens, starts out
with a photograph of two lions engaging in sexual intercourse, and goes
on to include line-drawings (but not lion-drawings) of people doing the
same.

So no, we do not editorially exclude images of sexual conduct.  We -do-
place them on articles whose focus is sexual conduct, for instance
[[Sexual intercourse]], rather than on articles whose focus is the cell
biology of reproduction or the course of pregnancy.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
Sj-
> Nonsense.  Money is an excellent resource when properly applied, but
> there is no fundamental reason why we should have fewer volunteer
> developers than Linux has, for instance.  After all, what are we
> writing but the kernel for our collective intelligence?

An interesting comparison. However, it is worth noting that there is a
billion dollar industry behind the Linux kernel, and many of its most
active developers are directly employed by corporations like IBM, Novell
and Red Hat. Hence, development tends to be driven by corporate interests.

It is no coincidence that the growth of desktop Linux, both on the kernel
level and in the userspace, is depressingly slow (we're talking about a
product which is almost 15 years old). It is facing many of the exact same
problems that Wikimedia is facing, and the long-term solutions are likely
to be identical: getting money from users to developers.

Open source, and volunteer activity in general, is not some kind of magic
pixie dust which you can dispense to make everything just wonderful. This
is especially true as the complexity of the project increases. We've had
more offers for help on MediaWiki than we can count. Volunteers who say
"I'm going to write some code" are easy to find. Those who actually do
something are very rare indeed. Those whose code gets past Brion ...

Fundamentally, I also believe there is a moral obligation for each one of
us, as individuals, to work on turning the free content world into a real
economy, instead of trying to find ways to get ever more people to exploit
themselves to an ever larger degree. We are not just dealing with
"resources," we are dealing with human beings who deserve to be treated as
such. I personally would encourage people to stop working on MediaWiki, or
Wikimedia, if I can see that it harms their life, their children, their
loved ones, their career.

That being said, here are some things we can do that will attract
volunteers, short term and long term:

- provide an easier to use sandbox for people to work with the MediaWiki
codebase, e.g. allow anyone to create a test-wiki from CVS HEAD, and
perhaps even make the code wiki-editable. (Chroot jails, regular re-
initialization, developer approval and the like help to keep the whole
thing secure.)

- reach out to university CS departments. These give out projects to their
students, and Wikimedia is highly loved in those circles, so it should be
relatively easy to convince some of them to have their students work on
MediaWiki.

- systematically improve the technical documentation and pages like "How
to become a MediaWiki hacker". The parser documentation is especially bad
to non-existent.

- do a better job of organizing the development-related pages. Meta is a
mess. wikipedia.sourceforge.net is a static HTML page. It used to be a
wiki, but SF.net was not suitable as a host. MediaWiki.org, in my opinion,
should be a server outside our regular co-location facility, and be used
for things like the above sandboxes, internationalization work, etc.

- use Subversion instead of CVS. It has a CVS-like syntax, so should be
easy to learn for existing volunteers. It makes life a lot easier: atomic
commits, very easy branching, moving files while preserving history is
simple, etc. While we're at it, we could try to centralize extension
development in one place.

- write and enforce a clear policy that new code needs to follow certain
documentation standards before it is allowed into the HEAD branch.
Undocumented code can be removed.

- long term: encourage the use of collaborative real-time editing tools
like SubEthaEdit, use them in combination with Voice over IP to tutor new
volunteers.

Needless to say, even the work that needs to be done to increase the
efficiency of our volunteer efforts can be done faster if it is paid for,
or at least organized under an official title. For the tasks for which you
are qualified to do so, I highly encourage you to put ideas into action.
Talk like above is cheap. Real work is worth paying for.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Whaples

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
> I am absolutely zero when it comes to technical topics, but I can hardly
> imagine that it be impossible for servers to exclude single computers -
> regardless of the User Name apllied.

Consider this an education. We cannot idenfity individual computers.
Computers just don't send out their processor's unique serial number with
every HTTP request, or anything like that... and if they did, they might
just be faking it. Any form of ID 'cookies' and the like can be erased.
The IP address is really the only thing that can't be faked. We can only
identify individual IP addresses. On the Internet, many computers may
share an IP address (ever hear of 'proxies' and 'NAT', 'Network Address
Translation'? Look them up on Wikipedia) and many computers can jump
around between many IP addresses (dial-up networks and AOL users, in
particular). The end result is that we cannot block them by individual
computer: we can only block them by their IP address, and (if the IP
address is variable) by their internet service provider, and there are a
*lot* of people out there who can be affected by such a block,
particularly in the case of AOL.


from_name: Ivan Vighetto

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
Nowadays full text search is too heavy for wikimedia server. I think it
could be very useful text search limited to page titles, expecially for
readers: not so difficult modification to existing code and much more
lighter than complete text search.

en.wikipedia:User:Sbisolo
it.wikipedia:Utente:Sbisolo


body:
Brion-
> Sites like Wiktionary or Wikinews are not really suitable for a wiki to
> begin with.

I beg to differ. If that was the case, we wouldn't have managed to write
1000 decent articles in the last few months on the English Wikinews alone.
To me, wiki is not as specific a thing as you seem to suggest. It is about
utilizing the creative energy of all users to the largest extent possible.

I am on the record as opposing the implementation of my own project idea,
the Wikimedia Commons, before the necessary software was written. It was
launched a bit prematurely; because I didn't want to see it fail, I then
wrote the basic cross-wiki image transclusion code to make it at least
usable. So, I have taken your position in the past.

However, I also know that once a community exists around a certain
project, the pressure is a lot higher to make the necessary software
changes. For each new project, it is important to answer a simple
question: Will it be possible for useful content to arise using the
existing technology? If the answer is yes, then it may very well be
advisable to get the project started, and let the community push for the
software changes they need.

For Wiktionary and Wikispecies, a plan was lacking. It was more of a "We
should do this" thing. A guy named Fonzy asked one of the developers to
set up Wiktionary, and it was done. This is not the case for Wikinews. We
had a plan. We knew what was missing. We could make an educated guess
about how far we could go with the current software.

We also now have a good idea what we need. But as I will continue to
insist, the code changes are only likely to be implemented in a timely
fashion if we pay for them.  Now, as for whether these changes should be
part of MediaWiki proper, I strongly believe they should. The convergence
of wiki and weblog technology is a process which we should lead -- just
like Wikidata, this will allow MediaWiki to boldly go where no wiki has
gone before. I am not open to the argument that we should not do something
new and different just because it is new and different. If it doesn't
work, if it doesn't scale, if it makes life harder for our existing
userbase, that's another story

> I think it's unfortunate that people have so casually thrown
> "Wiki" on the front of the name and slapped up a new project wiki
> without any actual plan for making it work.

Hmm, who created the German Wikiversity again? ;-) I strongly believe that
every new project needs a plan and a vision, and an affirmative answer to
the above question: Can we create something useful with the current
codebase? In the case of Wikinews, I believe these requirements were more
than met. Now the ball is in the Foundation's court again.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
Why don't we use pylucene?

http://pylucene.osafoundation.org/

This was recommended to me by Mitch Kapor when I met him in San
Francisco.  It has the benefits of lucene, but since it runs a
GCJ-compiled versio of the lucene engine, it doesn't have the
dependency on the non-free Sun stuff.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Third solution : we all share a common goal of non censorship, but we admit we censor a little bit nevertheless and we admit that these decisions should be taken locally, by local communities.
>
>Needless to say, I am all for the third one. I think minorities opinions should always be considered, and the argument that the english wikipedia community is the bigger so should be the one to decide for other communities is not valid as far as I am concerned. We have common goals, we have common big rules, but we have essentially local applications of these rules.
>
>
But this is in itself a majority-rules view, in which minority opinions
in a language are ignored.  Languages only correlate weakly with
countries, and so what, for example, people from France say should not
automatically be the deciding factor in what the fr: Wikipedia does.
What French-speaking people from other countries say (and not just
countries that have French as an official language) should also be taken
into account.

Which is why, generally, I strongly oppose language-specific policies
that cater towards "local" sentiment, where "local" is defined as "the
dominant countries that speak the language".  This is fortunately
easiest in the en: Wikipedia, because the U.S. and U.K. are quickly
becoming less and less dominant in terms of English-speakers on the
internet, so will no longer be able to consider en: their "local"
Wikipedia, but a *global* one, but is still a major problem in many
other languages...

-Mark


from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] technical problem

body:
For the past few days, whenever I hit "user contributions" I am taken to my
user contribution page, BUT the most recent contribution listed is from
19:05, 27 Mar 2005 (I have made many edits since then).  Also, it seems to
have logged me out in the process, as "create an account/log in" appears in
the upper right-hand corner of my screen (in place of the usual choices:
Slrubenstein My talk Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log
out).  When I log back in, and try to go the "user contributions," the same
thing happens.

This does not happen why I go to my watchlist or other pages, only when I
go to my user contribution page.

Does anyone know what is going on, and what I can do?

Thanks,
Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

body:
I agree with Pete's point - I'd very much like to avoid the major fight
which seems brewing over this (quite frankly, I regret
ever taking this to a poll in the first place)

After seeing what some people have said WRT other major media
orgainzations doing April Fools hoaxes (the NYT and BBC) I've softened
my position a bit. I'll go along with it if Mav does -- I'm still wary
of putting a hoax article up, but as long as it is
subtly marked as such, I'm OK with it (someone suggested putting it up
as 'Today's featured [[nihilartikle]]")

I'd also like to hear Jimbo weigh in on this.

--Mark


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
> to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder

* '''Support''' (but see also [[Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates]]).
~~~~

--Matt

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Tony Mobily IMAP

subject: [WikiEN-l] Free Software Magazine and Wikipedia

body:
Hello,

My name is Tony Mobily. I am the Editor In Chief of Free Software
Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com).

Our magazine has articles about free software and free culture in
general. All our articles are released under a free license (Cretive
Common, GFDL or Verbatim Only) 6 weeks after the magazine is out.
I KNOW that a Verbatim Only license is hardly free, but it's our
current option for "opinionated" articles about a specific subject.

Some of my authors told me that some of the articles would be perfect
as follow-up articles to wikipedia entries. The beauty of this is that
the follow-up articles themselves would be editable, and would
therefore stay "alive".

For example he article "Format Wars"
(http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_01/
focus_format_history/) would fit very neatly in Wikipedia's
"File_format" entry.

The requirement of course would be that these article are released
under the GFDL. That will depend on the authors, but I have talked to
some of them already and they said that they would be happy with that.

The problem is: do you have a spot in Wikipedia (or in "Wikimedia" in
general) for general articles such as the ones we publish? If the
answer is "no", would it be worthwhile creating such a spot?

Thanks a lot,

Merc.

Tony Mobily
Editor-In-Chief
Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship

body:
I don't know, Ant...

I agree with everything you said except the unwikilove part.

I know it takes time to clean up vandalism, but if you decide you are
too tired of cleaning up a particular vandalism, then just stop
cleaning it up and somebody else will. (not directed at you in
particular, but the people who are complaining)

Also, I think interwiki redirects should be kept, but redirects from
articles to images should not.

Mark

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:12:27 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >> You know Anthere is on the foundation board, right?
>
> >Oh I knew. :)
>
> >But I think the ideas are wrong and at odds with the published goals.
> >If I do not misunderstand Anthere and the views are truly
> >representative and accepting censorship based on some peoples
> >non-neutral value judgements is acceptable ... then I think we should
> >discuss the matter, because I think a lot of people are misled by the
> >principal of neutrality 'as advertised'.
>
> I think you are confusing censorship and neutrality
>
> If we were claiming autofellatio is not possible, we would be incorrect.
> If we were saying autofellatio is bad, we would be non-neutral.
> If we were deleting the autofellatio article and pretending it does not exist, it would be censorship.
> If we display a picture of autofellatio in the autofellation article, it is possibly displaying offensive content, or possibly not.
> If we decide to use a drawing rather than the image in the autofellatio article, it is possibly admitting a taboo, or possibly not.
>
> If we display autofellatio image in user talk page, it is hurting people who do not expect to see such a picture on a talk page (while they can choose not to go to the autofellatio)
> If we do nothing to help those who spent hours cleaning up, it is lacking respect for other people time. It is unwikilove.
>
> Both neutrality and censorship are "strong guidelines".
> But neither are *rules*, in the sense none strictly and thoroughly explain exactly what should be from what should not be done. There is no page saying "if there is 1 cm3 blood, display. If there are 5 cm3 do not." There are examples given, but essentially, those are *guidelines*.
>
> As for all guidelines applications, only editors have the authority to try to set rules to attempt to follow the guidelines.
>
> On wikipedia, there is a strong desire to follow a couple of mandatory guidelines/principles, but there is an equally strong desire to let editors create themselves their own rules to try to fit the guidelines.
>
> I think accepting that cultures have different taboos is right.
>
> Calling other communities rules and opinions, when differing from yours, "non-neutral" is wrong. This is what you are doing. The decision of the english wikipedia is fine, but the rules applied on the english wikipedia, belongs to the english wikipedia. They should not impair the right of other communities to set their own rules, without those being called censorship.
>
>
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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Viajero said:
> Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
>  to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder

Superb, and couldn't come at a better time.  I've been fascinated by the
development of this much-neglected artifact ever since the excavations at
Avebury Stone Circle turned up some fine neolithic examples.