from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:40 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> > You've twisted my arm enough, here you go:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people
>
> Excellent. Thanks.
>
> Now we need to ask Tawker or Essjay to modify their IRC bot (irc://
> irc.freenode.net/vandalism-en-wp), to watch over this recent changes
> subset, and create a new channel in irc.freenode for the bot.

On a related note... is it possible to give a vandalism-bot its own
watchlist? My understanding (which may be flawed) is that the bots
cannot follow all recent changes due to volume; it would be very handy
to be able to specify an article or articles where we could be sure
these bots caught every change.

(Not a substitute for human watchlisting and cultivation of the
article, of course, but a good way of alleviating headaches)

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


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007 - bidding process - deadline and
	process reminder

body:
Hi all,

There is much activity on the "unofficial" bids for Wikimania 2007,
which is great, but none of the bids are "official" yet.

It would grandly help if those who *really* intend to present their
bid to the jury moved their city bid to the "official list" so that we
know which bids are being pursued.

For the first round, remember that we are aware that this is a *work
in progress* and will need fine tuning, so do not be afraid to put up
an official unfinished bid.

I remind you all that the deadline is September 10th to make an
official bid. No bid will be accepted as official after this date. For
those of you who have hidden bids (I know there are some out there),
please *do* make those public as soon as possible (ie. today would be
great), it is very annoying both for the jury and the other
participants to see a bid springing out of nowhere at the last minute
and you are keeping potential helpers out by hiding your bid in a
corner.

Again, making a bid official does not prevent you from working on it,
and bids will not be considered as "finished" until the very final
deadline of September 24th, we know that it takes some time to get
final approvals and fine tune things and deals.

Thank you and happy bidding!

Delphine
PS. Dear translators, thank you for translating this for the relevant
local lists.

--
~notafish


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2007 - bidding process - deadline and
	process reminder


list: commons-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] proposed policy - Commons:Trademarks

body:
Anthony wrote:

>Dangerous how?  Do you know of any cases where an encyclopedia was
>sued for violating trademark law when it included a trademarked image
>in one of its articles?  Are there any trademark holders threatening
>to sue Wikimedia for trademark infringement, in cases where the
>copyright status is clear?
>
>What about the forks and mirrors?  Have any of them complained that
>*they* were getting threatened over trademark issues?
>
>I don't know the answer to these questions, so maybe it is a problem
>and I just don't know about it.
>
The kind of things that do happen is as follows:
* In an article, we describe some product under a brand name, perhaps
with the false belief that this brand name is a "common term" and not a
trademark.
* In the same article, we use an image of a product from a competitor.
* Both the producer of the item described in the article and the
producer of the photographed item may argue that we infringe on their
trademarks.

See? It's a question of context.

(When I say "that do happen", I mean that I have actually seen such
complaints sent to the Foundation or local chapters.)

> If it is a problem (dangerous from a legal perspective), then we
should be talking about banning trademarked images from all Wikipedias,
not just from Wikimedia Commons.

I'm sorry, but the world is not in binary.

If you want not to risk trademark infringement, you would have to
prohibit ever mentioning a brand name in Wikipedia, since merely
mentioning a trademarked brand name in a context where the brand name is
misattributed to another holder may expose us to litigation. This is a
rather ridiculous proposal.

My humble opinion is that trademarks in images do not pose special
issues as long as the context of use of these images is reasonable for
our encyclopedic goals (i.e. we don't describe Foobie Cola by putting a
can of Foobar Cola).

Now, you will tell me that this makes in practice "unfree" images
because you won't be able to use them for any purpose. Another false
problem. Our images of living persons are not usable for any purpose in
a number of major jurisdictions, simply because misusing such images may
constitute an infringement on those person's privacy or "right to
image". As an example, if you take a photograph of a personality and
photoshop it onto a nude body, the personality may well argue that you
deliberately misrepresented her. Also, if you use a photograph of a
recognizable person in an advertisement, without that person's
authorization, that person, in many jurisdictions, will be able to argue
that you misused her image. Again, it's all about context.

>  maybe French Wikipedia is especially paranoid about lawsuits over
photos of buildings, for instance

I think a much more reasonable proposal, instead of trying to placate
all possible litigation aspects (which is ridiculous given how our way
of operating makes us a huge target for libel complaints), is to take a
pragmatic view: what do we reasonably risk?

-- DM


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sam Pointon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 07/09/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > > ScottL wrote:
> > >
> > > >maru dubshinki wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>>Guettarda wrote:
> > > >>>
> > > >>>
> > > >>>>Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> > > >>>>NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> > > >>>>Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> > > >>>>NPOV policy asks.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>
> > > >>> If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were
> > > >>>originally set up based on astrological principals. Would it violate
> > > >>>NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to keep
> > > >>>using months?
> > > >>>
> > > >>>
> > > >>But those astrological measurements are objective and empirically
> > > >>verifiable in a way that AD/BC is not, and often track significant
> > > >>events, such as the changing of the pole star.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war.
> > > >The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable?
> > > >
> > > We also need to abandon our days of the week.  It is clearly a breach of
> > > NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every seven
> > > days.
> >
> > A significant difference being that nobody worships the
> > Norse/German/Roman gods these days
>
> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.

So, how far deep can we get these headings to go?

And now for something vaguely on-topic, I know some Discordians who
would be irritated to be called 'neopagans' just because they worship
She Who Resides In That Gland Of The Brain Which Sounds A Bit Like A
Tree Found In Norway, And Who Happened To Be Known To The Ancient
Greeks (The Goddess, That Is, Not The Gland).

Yours hoping-people-get-the-joke-despite-recent-threads-ly,
Sam


from_name: Brock Weller

body:
On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > > ScottL wrote:
> > >
> > > >maru dubshinki wrote:
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >>On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>>Guettarda wrote:
> > > >>>
> > > >>>
> > > >>>>Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
violates
> > > >>>>NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus
is the
> > > >>>>Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
what the
> > > >>>>NPOV policy asks.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>>
> > > >>> If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were
> > > >>>originally set up based on astrological principals. Would it
violate
> > > >>>NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to
keep
> > > >>>using months?
> > > >>>
> > > >>>
> > > >>But those astrological measurements are objective and empirically
> > > >>verifiable in a way that AD/BC is not, and often track significant
> > > >>events, such as the changing of the pole star.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war.
> > > >The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable?
> > > >
> > > We also need to abandon our days of the week.  It is clearly a breach
of
> > > NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every
seven
> > > days.
>>>
>>> A significant difference being that nobody worships the
>>> Norse/German/Roman gods these days
>>
>> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.

>I doubt their numbers are in the billions, or that they exert a
>dominating influence on Western culture.

Ahh, if only NPOV were such. Numbers, or influence, has absolutly 0 to do
with NPOV. Just because a group is popular does not mean it's POV is more
dangerous then one not so popular. I prefer CE/BCE, but your argument is so
ludicrous as to actually damage the rationale to use it.

-Brock


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

body:
On 9/7/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> I know there's a formal desysopping process, but I can't remember what
> it is.  I'd appreciate it if someone with the authority to do so would
> please remove my sysop privs from the English Wikipedia.

I've de-adminned you and John. The normal place to request this is
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access

Angela

--
Angela Beesley
http://a.nge.la


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject:
[Wikitech-l] SVN: [16269]
	trunk/phase3/includes/SpecialDisambiguations.php

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

David Gerard schrieb:
> On 06/09/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:

>> 998. Death in Venice (Edit) -> Apollo
>> 999. (Edit) -> Amerika
>> 1000. Koufax (Edit) -> Amerika
>> What is line 999? I miss an article...
>
>
> The HTML is:
>
>
 (?ndern) ?  title="Amerika">Amerika

>
> but you could have guessed that ;-)
>

I could have but I havn't looked into the HTML source :-( But the
question remains... why "ERROR"? What happens?

Raymond.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFAGLop+qUcbEr56YRAuftAJ95CJfK+Q3/Pcpa+Y3fKZKfydMPRwCdGEKj
WNm3zGU7KqlswN7KeYFeFag=
=SPaz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
On 9/5/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> Oh, please, please, don't even _think_ about option 3. You are now
> required to chant WP:LAME backwards whilst throwing salt over your left
> shoulder.

Ok, I'm going to plead ignorance. Is the problem with option 3 that
1995 is a better name for an article than AD 1995, or that renaming
1995 to *anything* is not worth the trouble?

Steve


from_name: ScottL

body:
jayjg wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>> ScottL wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> maru dubshinki wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Guettarda wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>>>>>>>> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>>>>>>>> Messiah/God. BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
>>>>>>>> NPOV policy asks.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If I am not mistaken the beginning and ends of the months etc were
>>>>>>> originally set up based on astrological principals. Would it violate
>>>>>>> NPOV (since we would then be making astrological assertions) to keep
>>>>>>> using months?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> But those astrological measurements are objective and empirically
>>>>>> verifiable in a way that AD/BC is not, and often track significant
>>>>>> events, such as the changing of the pole star.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war.
>>>>> The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable?
>>>>>
>>>> We also need to abandon our days of the week.  It is clearly a breach of
>>>> NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every seven
>>>> days.
>>> A significant difference being that nobody worships the
>>> Norse/German/Roman gods these days
>> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.
>
> I doubt their numbers are in the billions, or that they exert a
> dominating influence on Western culture.
>
> Jay.

   Why should the size of a group/belief/idea  impact NPOV?

SKL


from_name: Ben McIlwain

subject: [WikiEN-l] The creationists are coming ..

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

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>>
>> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
>> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
>> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
>
> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
> Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
> lot of evolutionist POV creep.

It would also be nice to get some Ptolemaist scholars to review our
entries on gravitation and the solar system systematically; I suspect
there's a lot of Galilean POV creep.

Seriously though, legitimate POV disputes are one thing ... but when one
side has all of the science behind it and the other side has nothing
behind it, giving equal weight is fallacious.  Our articles on the shape
of the Earth, global warming, what caused 9/11, and HIV causing AIDS are
similarly reality-based.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFFALx1vCEYTv+mBWcRAvIEAJ9X/bfhe1y6CeXflDXt2rvLoTJrxwCdFL5g
XoE+Bh9yK17KyiHiUh/NNvk=
=tCYb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
Ben McIlwain wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>> Erik Moeller wrote:
>>> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
>>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>>>
>>> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
>>> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
>>> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
>> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
>> Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
>> lot of evolutionist POV creep.
>
> It would also be nice to get some Ptolemaist scholars to review our
> entries on gravitation and the solar system systematically; I suspect
> there's a lot of Galilean POV creep.
>
> Seriously though, legitimate POV disputes are one thing ... but when one
> side has all of the science behind it and the other side has nothing
> behind it, giving equal weight is fallacious.  Our articles on the shape
> of the Earth, global warming, what caused 9/11, and HIV causing AIDS are
> similarly reality-based.
>
> - --
> Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

   I suspect his suggestion was review of what we say about them.  A
group so unpopular that they are characterized as they have been on this
thread probably has some legitimate concerns about being misrepresented.

SKL


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a
	long	time ago

body:
On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Why was this user not banned months ago?
It is blocked for 1 month now, and copyvio images being deleted.

-- Jossi


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

references:
<44FFD7F2.5090703@student.canberra.edu.au>
	<fb7fdd9c0609070427l63aa54ceo9fe06e37be71744d@mail.gmail.com>
	<450023AD.8000809@student.canberra.edu.au>

body:
Yes, scale back. At least you'll still be around.
Time away from the stressfull stuff will do you good.

:)

On 9/7/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> G'day Mgm,
>
> > Did I miss something?
> > Why do you want them removed?
> > You're not leaving are you?
>
> Well, sort of.  My pattern the last month or two has been to appear once
> (occasionally twice) a week, act really crabby, do some stressful grunt
> work (clear CSD and AfD backlogs, yell at some idiot from CVU, etc.),
> then piss off again for another week.  It's not fun, and it's not
> sustainable.
>
> I still use Wikipedia for research, particularly at work (the list of
> Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory was a life-saver
> recently), and if I spot something that needs correcting, I correct it.
> So I'm not gone.  And I'm still subscribed the list.
>
> But I don't intend to hang around AN/I and suchlike and get involved in
> the political fighting and so on.  And I don't intend to do anything
> that involves me getting snappy and biting someone's head off unfairly.
> And I *don't intend to do anything adminny*.
>
> This isn't "goodbye", and it certainly isn't [[meatball:Goodbye]].  I
> just don't have the time or energy I used to have, and am not interested
> in putting the limited reserves I have to use on Wikipedia, particularly
> since I don't feel I'm doing much good.  So, I'm scaling back my
> activities.  And I don't think my account should have admin privs if I
> don't intend to use them.
>
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Tuvic wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> Ok, I'm going to plead ignorance. Is the problem with option 3 that
>> 1995 is a better name for an article than AD 1995, or that renaming
>> 1995 to *anything* is not worth the trouble?
>>
>
> It may be that 1995 is a better name, but renaming 1995 to *anything is
> indeed not worth the trouble. After 2060 page moves, you have to check for
> double redirects, and maybe correct all links to "1995". Also, you're left
> with the choise: do you leave the 2060 redirects the way they are, or do you
> make a disambiguation page from them? Of worse, do you move the number where
> the year used to be.
>
> Whatever you do, interwikilinking will be totally (and really totally)
> broken for the year-articles, and will probably take years to correct it. In
> my point of view, this is the most significant reason to not move the
> year-pages.
>
>
>
And, _then_, you will have problem of fixing all the links in the
continual move/edit war that will inevitably result from this, as each
of the 2060 different year articles is repeatedly moved from [[AD X]] to
[[X CE]], to [[X AD]], then to [[X]] again, and on, and on, and on,
whilst each group of combatants desperately tries to fix the links in
all linking articles to point to their preferred version, in the
greatest and [[WP:LAME]]st ever edit war in the history of Wikipedia.

-- Neil
>
>


from_name: Bradypus

body:
Yep, here I am.

I have followed the thread and I would like to thank most of you, including
Jimbo, for taking some moments to try to bring answers to my questions.

I have of course a special thank for Anthere, who brought the issue here.

For some of you, I would like to make things clear: in asking these
questions, I never made a legal threat, I never made any threat at all, I
was never rude to anybody and I never considered anybody's input otherwise
than by assuming good faith.

At some point, of course, I had a small issue with Jimbo, as I am pretty
sure he did not read my second and last message on his page. But I fully
understand he is a super busy guy. I am just telling this because some have
questionned my capacity to read what others are writing ;-)

In case you would be interested by what my conclusion is, well you can read
it there: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo
The page has been completely reworked to facilitate reading for both
language speakers (french and english).
My current conclusions are pretty much the same as what they were a week
ago, and the same as what lots of people said here.
So I guess now I did get it, although I think Anthere may be right when she
says using words such as "govern" and "manage" might create an issue also
with the outside world.

Still happy to discuss.

Bradipus
aka Vincent

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 07, 2006 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>The problem is that whilst "you" and "I" will generally agree on the
>>>concept, you can not expect that people will read "properly" terms which
>>>have different meaning and implications depending on languages.
>>
>>
>> Then I trust that you will help me by explaining my meaning in French,
>> to French people, since I can speak only English and (barely) German.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>
>
> Yup. Done.
> Hmmm, since then Bradypus has decided to join foundation-l :-)
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2007 - bidding process -
	deadline and process reminder

body:
Are we in any state to work on this?

- d.

On 07/09/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is much activity on the "unofficial" bids for Wikimania 2007,
> which is great, but none of the bids are "official" yet.
> I remind you all that the deadline is September 10th to make an
> official bid. No bid will be accepted as official after this date. For
> those of you who have hidden bids (I know there are some out there),
> please *do* make those public as soon as possible (ie. today would be
> great), it is very annoying both for the jury and the other
> participants to see a bid springing out of nowhere at the last minute
> and you are keeping potential helpers out by hiding your bid in a
> corner.


from_name: Sherool

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer

body:
On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:44:02 +0200, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
wrote:

<snip>
> I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis ? they work on a
> "per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a
> low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a
> high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current
> caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image
> have independent copyright status.

Ok, IANAL, but my understanding is "yes and no".

Copyright is granted for the work, no question about it. Anyone create
something creative have full copyright for that work and any derivatives.
HOWEVER the copyright holder is fully within his right to *licence* one
spesific version (or copy) of the work under a free licence without
loosing any sort of controll over source work.

A number of  of software companies base theyr entire business model on
this principle. They offer one version of theyr code for free under the
GPL licence (or whatever), and one version under a commercial licence
where people can pay a fee in exchange for not beeing bound by the GPL
terms (release source code, licence result under GPL etc).

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


body:
Sherool wrote:
> On Sat, 02 Sep 2006 21:44:02 +0200, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis ? they work on a
>> "per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a
>> low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a
>> high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current
>> caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image
>> have independent copyright status.
>>
>
> Ok, IANAL, but my understanding is "yes and no".
>
> Copyright is granted for the work, no question about it. Anyone create
> something creative have full copyright for that work and any derivatives.
> HOWEVER the copyright holder is fully within his right to *licence* one
> spesific version (or copy) of the work under a free licence without
> loosing any sort of controll over source work.
>
> A number of  of software companies base theyr entire business model on
> this principle. They offer one version of theyr code for free under the
> GPL licence (or whatever), and one version under a commercial licence
> where people can pay a fee in exchange for not beeing bound by the GPL
> terms (release source code, licence result under GPL etc).
>
>
Indeed. I would expect the commercial image libraries to get an endless
source of commercial sales leads for their high-resolution works, in
exchange for free (as in freedom) use of the low-resolution versions of
their images throughout the GFDL-sphere.

Note that by doing this, the libraries would _not_ be making the
low-resolution versions of their works available for use outside the
GFDL, so they should lose very little in sales from the low-res
versions, and no loss at all from the high-res versions, which would not
be released to anyone at all, other than under normal commercial terms.
They could even watermark the GFDL'd images with a special watermark, if
they wished, signifying "this low-resolution image copyright X, year,
licenced under the GFDL only", so they can catch unlicenced commercial
non-GFDL reusers of the low-res images and chase them for payment.

Everyone wins.

Best of all, the libraries can dip a toe in the water by trying this on,
say, a few hundred of their images first, which would be only a tiny,
tiny fraction of their library, so their loss is limited even if this
strategy turns out to be a bad idea.

-- Neil


from_name: Tuvic

subject: [Foundation-l] Use of Wikimedia-Logo's in articles

body:
> It's probably not a violation of the GFDL, any more than Red Hat
> putting proprietary works onto a Red Hat Linux CD violates the GPL
> (which it doesn't).
>
> There also doesn't seem to be any guidance from the foundation, so
> that leaves it up to each project to decide for itself, I suppose...

Ok, that would be nice. Only a little vote and we can move on.

> You've just described what we call "with permission images" that are
> removed on sight these days.

Damn, not nice any more :-( Bye-Bye, vote!

>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cvutan.png
>
> I really like this. :-)

That's not quite what I had in mind when I was talking about the logo's :-)

So, it seems like nobody actually knows exactly what is allowed or what not.
Use will probably be permitted by the Foundation (can they sue themselves
for using it in an article?), but reuse of forking could be problematic,
which is against Wikipedia idealogy.

Also, is it deliberate that the Board is silent, or do they just didn't
notice this thread. (stupid question to ask: either way, I won't receive
answer :-)).

Greeting, Tuvic


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 9/6/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>
> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.

Most Creationists are fortunately not very subtle. They aren't
satisfied with POV creep, they have to insert the equivalent of "It's
only a theory! And a GIANT LIE!" with just about every edit.

(There are exceptions, to be sure. But 90% of Creationist editing to
Evolution articles are like this. Even the ones who stick around
usually lapse into it at highly regular intervals.)

It'd be great if we could get intelligent, intellectually honest
Creationists who are interested in creating neutral articles. I
wouldn't hold my breath, though. I say this as someone who is pretty
far from thinking that our articles should be nothing but the
"scientific point of view". But I'm generally not very impressed by
Creationists, and certainly not the ones who spend their time trying
to further their cause on Wikipedia.

FF


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>
> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.

It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
lot of evolutionist POV creep.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060907/708d4c5a/attachment.pgp


subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Ok, I'm going to plead ignorance. Is the problem with option 3 that
> 1995 is a better name for an article than AD 1995, or that renaming
> 1995 to *anything* is not worth the trouble?

It may be that 1995 is a better name, but renaming 1995 to *anything is
indeed not worth the trouble. After 2060 page moves, you have to check for
double redirects, and maybe correct all links to "1995". Also, you're left
with the choise: do you leave the 2060 redirects the way they are, or do you
make a disambiguation page from them? Of worse, do you move the number where
the year used to be.

Whatever you do, interwikilinking will be totally (and really totally)
broken for the year-articles, and will probably take years to correct it. In
my point of view, this is the most significant reason to not move the
year-pages.

Greetings, Tuvic


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: the dave ross

subject: [Wiktionary-l] New logo for Wiktionary

body:
The actual voting will take place on this page:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo go to it!
- Dave

On 9/7/06, Pill <wiki.pill at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The voting for a new Wiktionary logo has started today, all contributers
> are invited to vote for their favourite! This first voting period goes
> on for 2 weeks till September, 21st. A description of the exact voting
> procedure can be found on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiversity/logo#Voting_procedures.
>
> Greetings,
>
> --Pill (wiki.pill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>


from_name: Ragib Hasan

subject: [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
On Tue Sep 5 20:13:59 UTC 2006 David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote:

>> Some will be improved with good promotion, others will need efforts
>> extended from our virtualworld community. And it would be a possible
>> task and challange for the Foundation, but for that, a careful and
>> thoughtful approach, collaboration of other organizations both local
>> and global etc will be expected.

>Has anyone asked Free Software Foundation India if they're interested
>in this? It's not absolutely part of their primary mission, but open
>content is quite related to open software, and it's under the GFDL,
>which is an FSF licence; and pride in local content can be developed
>into pride in local software (under a free licence), not least in
>helping Mediawiki localisation.

I'm just joining the thread, but I can answer your question to some extent.

I am a bureaucrat of the Bengali Wikipedia (bn), which has increased
in size from 500 articles in March 2006, to 8970 articles as of now.
This phenomenal growth has been achieved via a full scale media
campaign in Bangladesh, which has 75-80% (150 million) of all Bengali
language speakers. Bangladehs Open Source Network, a proponent of
Bangla localization and other open source technology, has promoted
this a lot.

We have regular updates in the local (Bangladeshi) news media, and a
BBC Bengali World service programme (radio) covered the movement in
this May. Actually, we had set a target of 10,000 total articles and
1000 total good quality ones by May 2007, but with a lot of efforts,
and somewhat semi-automated imports, the 10k article will probably be
reached within 15 days from now.

Access to the Internet is a privilege in Bangladesh ... until a few
months ago, the country only had satellite linkage (V-SATs) to the
Internet, only got submarine cable connection 2 months ago. So,
Bangladesh Open Source Network has taken up an office, and arranged so
that interested writers can send content via postal mail, which can be
entered into bn-wiki by people who have Internet. I myself have
received articles via email (from people with offline Internet
access), and added them.

So, we have a huge number of interested people in Bangladesh, and the
Bengali Wikipedia development is gaining a lot of media coverage
there. This shows up in the statistics from Kelly Martin, where,
Bangladeshi editors have added up to 60% of total edits. Around 25%
came from the US, but that's most likely the few (2 or 3) Bangladeshi
and West Bengali expatriates here (including me), who are very active.

Definitely, we are planning to open a Wikimedia chapter in Bangladesh
soon. A limited edition of Bengali wikipedia on CD is also planned for
the Language Movement commemorative Book Fair in February 2007.

Thanks

Ragib

(en:Ragib , bn:Ragib )

--
Ragib Hasan
PhD Student
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
201 N Goodwin Avenue
Urbana IL 61801

Website:
http://www.ragibhasan.com
http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/www


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a long
	time ago

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thegingerone

Massive copyvios stretching back for months, 20 or so notices on his
talk page (by bots doing good botwork).

Why was this user not banned months ago?

--Jimbo


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
There's recently been a spate of extensive vandalism to high-use
transcluded templates - the other night I dealt with dozens of OTRS
complaints which could be traced back to someone (or multiple
someones) vandalising {{cquote}}, {{otheruses}} & {{taxobox}} in the
same manner. I've seen this form of vandalism before ({{bio-stub}} is
the one I recall...), but rarely to the same extent - any particular
vandal incident is rare if it generates two or three seperate
complaint emails, and there were bucketfuls here.

I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
before, but never implemented; after I mentioned these attacks on
WP:AN, someone protected all three. Is anyone capable of coming up
with a list of all individual templates transcluded on, say, more than
a couple of hundred pages? Even if we don't *protect* these (I
strongly suggest we do - they mostly shouldn't be edited without a
good reason, much like the MediaWiki messages), having a few dozen
admins watchlisting them would be helpful.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a long
 time ago

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

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thegingerone
>
> Massive copyvios stretching back for months, 20 or so notices on his
> talk page (by bots doing good botwork).
>
> Why was this user not banned months ago?

I don't know.  It sounds like OrphanBot may need a slight tweak to keep
track of how many unsources images a user is uploading, and then start
raising red flags if it exceeds a certain number.  That's how the
Vandalbots work; normally they just revert the vandalism and leave a
warning message, but if the account/IP exceeds a certain amount of
vandalism in a certain time period then the bot starts throwing red
flags, including a notice on the "Vandalism in progress" page and
messages in the IRC vandalism channels.

- --
Cyde Weys

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFFAOTRvCEYTv+mBWcRApmyAJwN4leR1pbEC91LUpQdig+eIPrs+gCgpW38
SYn0Eo4AgtEOACuYAFNv5qo=
=y4qB
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
Guettarda wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Erik Moeller wrote:
>>> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
>>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>>>
>>> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
>>> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
>>> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
>> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
>> Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
>> lot of evolutionist POV creep.
>
>
> There is constant "creationist review" of these articles; new people come
> along, raise complaints, and one of three things tends to happen:
> (a) they are pointed towards the copious supporting citations,
> (b) they point raise a point that gets discussed at length, often with the
> wording being adjusted or (additional) supporting citations are supplied
> (c) since they rant about evolutionist POV, but fail to supply concrete
> suggestions, there is no progress.
>
<snip>

Oh right, so the whole thing's an astroturfing campaign.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060907/cc268b85/attachment.pgp


from_name: Anthere

body:
Tuvic wrote:
>>It's probably not a violation of the GFDL, any more than Red Hat
>>putting proprietary works onto a Red Hat Linux CD violates the GPL
>>(which it doesn't).
>>
>>There also doesn't seem to be any guidance from the foundation, so
>>that leaves it up to each project to decide for itself, I suppose...
>
>
> Ok, that would be nice. Only a little vote and we can move on.
>
>
>>You've just described what we call "with permission images" that are
>>removed on sight these days.
>
>
> Damn, not nice any more :-( Bye-Bye, vote!
>
>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cvutan.png
>>
>>I really like this. :-)
>
>
> That's not quite what I had in mind when I was talking about the logo's :-)
>
> So, it seems like nobody actually knows exactly what is allowed or what not.
> Use will probably be permitted by the Foundation (can they sue themselves
> for using it in an article?), but reuse of forking could be problematic,
> which is against Wikipedia idealogy.
>
> Also, is it deliberate that the Board is silent, or do they just didn't
> notice this thread. (stupid question to ask: either way, I won't receive
> answer :-)).
>
> Greeting, Tuvic

Uh, no. I noticed it.
I just have no idea what to say. The logo is copyright. Period.
It is correct that using it is "with permission", so by some standards,
not allowed (not free content).

I have no comment to make on this, because I think it would be stupid to
remove it as obviously the Foundation is not gonna argue, nor sue.
On the other hand, if we follow the will of our most convinced editors,
indeed the logo should not be there.

I will propose a rule of thumb. If the logo is in an article, who may be
published or republished by any website without us feeling unconfortable
with, then do publish it.
If the logo use is of such type we would prevent reuse by legal means or
ask money for the re-use, then do not put in the encyclop?dia.

but well...


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

body:
G'day Mgm,

> Did I miss something?
> Why do you want them removed?
> You're not leaving are you?

Well, sort of.  My pattern the last month or two has been to appear once
(occasionally twice) a week, act really crabby, do some stressful grunt
work (clear CSD and AfD backlogs, yell at some idiot from CVU, etc.),
then piss off again for another week.  It's not fun, and it's not
sustainable.

I still use Wikipedia for research, particularly at work (the list of
Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory was a life-saver
recently), and if I spot something that needs correcting, I correct it.
  So I'm not gone.  And I'm still subscribed the list.

But I don't intend to hang around AN/I and suchlike and get involved in
the political fighting and so on.  And I don't intend to do anything
that involves me getting snappy and biting someone's head off unfairly.
  And I *don't intend to do anything adminny*.

This isn't "goodbye", and it certainly isn't [[meatball:Goodbye]].  I
just don't have the time or energy I used to have, and am not interested
in putting the limited reserves I have to use on Wikipedia, particularly
since I don't feel I'm doing much good.  So, I'm scaling back my
activities.  And I don't think my account should have admin privs if I
don't intend to use them.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


from_name: Pill

subject: [Wiktionary-l] New logo for Wiktionary

body:
The voting for a new Wiktionary logo has started today, all contributers
are invited to vote for their favourite! This first voting period goes
on for 2 weeks till September, 21st. A description of the exact voting
procedure can be found on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiversity/logo#Voting_procedures.

Greetings,

--Pill (wiki.pill at gmail.com)


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-08

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Ben McIlwain

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

ScottL wrote:
> Ben McIlwain wrote:
>> It would also be nice to get some Ptolemaist scholars to review our
>> entries on gravitation and the solar system systematically; I suspect
>> there's a lot of Galilean POV creep.
>>
>> Seriously though, legitimate POV disputes are one thing ... but when one
>> side has all of the science behind it and the other side has nothing
>> behind it, giving equal weight is fallacious.  Our articles on the shape
>> of the Earth, global warming, what caused 9/11, and HIV causing AIDS are
>> similarly reality-based.
>
>    I suspect his suggestion was review of what we say about them.  A
> group so unpopular that they are characterized as they have been on this
> thread probably has some legitimate concerns about being misrepresented.

That's the problem with the whole "intelligent design" movement though:
the entire point of their existence is misrepresentation.  "Intelligent
design" exists because "scientific creationism" was ruled
unconstitutional in the late 1980's (as a public school subject,
anyway).  ID's mantra is basically, "We're not creationism, we're
scientific" ... even though it's the same people, the same flawed
arguments, and indeed, the same creationism.  Obviously this simple
truth must be in the article, but if you let the ID'ers go over the
article and correct anything they feel is a "misrepresentation", you're
basically enabling their agenda.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFFAO89vCEYTv+mBWcRAlUXAKCXHn2ElXaZkUMLi2sM6ECORBln3QCfe/E9
FscSRvG74t4hM64LgiHkL38=
=Y31q
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Time to Seek Professional Lawyers Advice?

body:
> Hi!
>
> I have not good feelings about several recent
> discussions on Deletion
> requests: trademarks and PD-Soviet. Discussions are
> more like politics
> where more important is number of supporters, not
> arguments of sides.
> And they are more like pack vs. pack fights, since
> supporters opinions
> are defined by project where they are participating.
>
> Professional lawyer advice could resolve such
> conflicts. So may be
> it's good idea to seek such advice in such cases?
>
> Eugene.
>

Hello.

David Gerard forwarded this message of Eugene to the
foundation-l.  I waited to see if there would be a
definite answer from the Foundation, but little
happened. I had some chats with different people, and
I was told that in reality, the Foundation doesn't
involve itself on these matters. Commons admins are
more or less free to decide by their own what goes and
what stays. One reason for this is that there is a gap
between what is illegal and what is merely against the
policy of the Commons. This was surprising for me, but
I've learnt that I don't need to say "lets ask the
Foundation first" anymore.

/ Fred-Chess


body:
You say Anthere is eccentric? :-o
I think I agree with you, but Anthere had raised an interesting issue that
was interesting.
It is really all about what a court would think in front of an organisation
that would at the same time say "I am not accountable for the content of
Wikipedia" and "I am governing and managing Wikipedia".
Do you want to test that?
Not sure just looking at the Webster solves the issue: it can only be solved
by the appropriate persons, i.e. US lawyers.
I myself have a law degree, but a european one. And I heard such strange
things about the legal system they have in the colonies ^_^

Bradipus

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> It is inaccurate to cast this issue in the framework of false friends
> that characterize a language based difference of meanings.  The
> uncertain meaning is just as much there in English alone.
>
> As I quoted before:
>
>>Thus according to the 2001 New Oxford Dictionary of English:
>>    "govern": conduct the policy, action and affairs of; control,
>>influence or regulate.
>>    "manage": be in charge of, administer, run, regulate; maintain
>>control or influence over.
>>
> When there is a possibility that future confusion would arise it is
> better to find common ground on the meaning of words, rather than depend
> on a single person's subjective and perhaps eccentric interpretation of
> those words.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/7/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> It sounds like OrphanBot may need a slight tweak to keep
> track of how many unsources images a user is uploading, and then start
> raising red flags if it exceeds a certain number.

I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.

Anthony


body:
On 08/09/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
> > On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> >>> A significant difference being that nobody worships the
> >>> Norse/German/Roman gods these days
> >> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.

> > I doubt their numbers are in the billions, or that they exert a
> > dominating influence on Western culture.

>    Why should the size of a group/belief/idea  impact NPOV?

The idea above is evidently that the larger the group, the less their
POV should be taken seriously. So therefore we should put into place
changes that *no-one wants whatsoever* or we are in violation of NPOV.

- d.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] customizing wiki search

body:
Liz Kim wrote:

> We have a wiki directory site which is a simple table with names, phone
> numbers. ect..
> I was thinking about creating a search script to do a look up, go through
> this file and find by anything in the content.  I can think of two ways to
> approach this..
> 1. Somehow customize the search to ONLY search within the page for this
> directory page.
> 2. Write a script that goes into the database to do a search..
> Any inputs/suggestions?

If you use a MediaWiki template to enter the information in the
tables, you get a kind of semantic markup of the data. This can
then be harvested, either from an XML dump, or by modifying the
MediaWiki software to do the harvesting when a page is saved.

Instead of writing in the page:

{|
|-
! Name || Phone No.
|-
| Lars || 47
|-
| Liz  || 32
|}

You can write:

{|
|-
! Name || Phone No.

{{phonebookentry|name=Lars|no=47}}
{{phonebookentry|name=Liz|no=32}}

|}

That kind of markup is a lot easier to harvest and analyze,
because it hints at what the values are supposed to mean. And then
you let the Template:Phonebookentry contain this:

|-
| {{{name}}} || {{{no}}}

One such harvesting attempt for Wikipedia's contents is described
on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LA2/Extraktor

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> There's recently been a spate of extensive vandalism to high-use
> transcluded templates - the other night I dealt with dozens of OTRS
> complaints which could be traced back to someone (or multiple
> someones) vandalising {{cquote}}, {{otheruses}} & {{taxobox}} in the
> same manner. I've seen this form of vandalism before ({{bio-stub}} is
> the one I recall...), but rarely to the same extent - any particular
> vandal incident is rare if it generates two or three seperate
> complaint emails, and there were bucketfuls here.
>
> I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
> before, but never implemented;

This is not true. We have protection for several high use templates
([[template:cite web]] for example). And I was quite closely watching a
couple of them. But it was sometimes difficult to convince admins to
protect some stuff.

I sent several emails to admins in the past to protect such templates
with varying success. After all, I can't deposit a request on-wiki
reading "hello, please protect template X, it is used on 20,000 pages"
(vandals would thank me).

The other problem is that edit requests for templates are afterwards
largely ignored by admins, because a lot of admins are writing featured
articles and aren't that much interested in template hacking.

And template experts like AzaToth are opposed on RfA because they didn't
write any featured article and do not have enough main space edits.

--Ligulem


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have a way where we can scan talk pages for such warnings and
> come up with a record of those with 20+?

OrphanBot's top-50 list.  The "tagbot.log" warnings are about new
uploads; the "orphanbot.log" warnings are about existing uploads.

     54 orphanbot.log:Warning user Phatcat68
     42 orphanbot.log:Warning user Giantcn
     41 tagbot.log:Warning user MaindrianPace
     37 tagbot.log:Warning user Johnnyfog
     35 orphanbot.log:Warning user Pazuzu413
     35 orphanbot.log:Warning user JJstroker
     31 tagbot.log:Warning user Attilios
     30 tagbot.log:Warning user Twodos
     30 orphanbot.log:Warning user Earl Andrew
     28 tagbot.log:Warning user Dudeman74
     28 orphanbot.log:Warning user Trampikey
     28 orphanbot.log:Warning user PM Poon
     26 orphanbot.log:Warning user Rick lay95
     25 tagbot.log:Warning user Princeofpersia1
     25 orphanbot.log:Warning user Cadursun
     24 orphanbot.log:Warning user JillandJack
     23 tagbot.log:Warning user VG Cats Tipe 2
     23 tagbot.log:Warning user Quorbin10
     23 orphanbot.log:Warning user Take Me Higher
     23 orphanbot.log:Warning user Gerald Farinas
     23 orphanbot.log:Warning user CanbekEsen
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user Witkacy
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user Muppeteer
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user Mtabraiz
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user KenL
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user Jonny2x4
     22 orphanbot.log:Warning user GeorgeC
     21 tagbot.log:Warning user Rialbbe
     21 orphanbot.log:Warning user SkaTroma
     21 orphanbot.log:Warning user Richard Arthur Norton (1958- )
     21 orphanbot.log:Warning user Joeystuff
     21 orphanbot.log:Warning user Fitz
     20 tagbot.log:Warning user Ades3
     20 orphanbot.log:Warning user Prin
     20 orphanbot.log:Warning user Larsinio
     20 orphanbot.log:Warning user King of the Dancehall
     19 tagbot.log:Warning user Tonyfuchs1019
     19 tagbot.log:Warning user Scorpion prinz
     19 tagbot.log:Warning user Mannyjr95
     19 tagbot.log:Warning user Candyo32
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Wlkernan
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Microphon200
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Harishmukundan
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Gorgeousp
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Fuzzyworcester
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Dtowng
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Dprevot
     19 orphanbot.log:Warning user Bcsurvivor
     18 tagbot.log:Warning user Kulasman
     18 tagbot.log:Warning user Fluence

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/09/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
> > jayjg wrote:
> > > On 9/7/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> On 9/6/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >>> A significant difference being that nobody worships the
> > >>> Norse/German/Roman gods these days
> > >> I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.
>
> > > I doubt their numbers are in the billions, or that they exert a
> > > dominating influence on Western culture.
>
> >    Why should the size of a group/belief/idea  impact NPOV?
>
>
> The idea above is evidently that the larger the group, the less their
> POV should be taken seriously. So therefore we should put into place
> changes that *no-one wants whatsoever* or we are in violation of NPOV.

Not really. To begin with, the claim that *no-one whatsoever* supports
this change is clearly not true. In addition, the argument is actually
that use of BC/AD further helps entrench Christian cultural
domination, which is already quite dominant based on Western history
and the sheer numbers of Christians in the world, and supports, to a
degree, an environment which has structural bias against
non-Christians.  Those who support use of BCE/CE see this as being
inappropriate for countries which claim to endorse
multi-religious/multi-ethnic/multi-cultural societies, and which
strive to create environments which are welcoming to many religions,
not just Christianity. And the current risk of a neo-pagan,
Norse/Germanic/Roman god worshipping cultural domination being
entrenched by use of terms like "Saturday" and "Thursday" is, in my
view, pretty low.

Jay.


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 9/7/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > Why was this user not banned months ago?
> It is blocked for 1 month now, and copyvio images being deleted.
>

I'm assuming Jimbo knows about the one month block, since he made that block
himself. Can we construe his post as being a formal request to have him
permabanned?

DP


body:
On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It sounds like OrphanBot may need a slight tweak to keep
> > track of how many unsources images a user is uploading, and then start
> > raising red flags if it exceeds a certain number.
>
> I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
> that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
> which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.

The Creative Commons Sharealike license might not require attribution
of the author, but Wikipedia requires that the source of the images be
provided so that we can verify the license.  I can add you to
OrphanBot's do-not-notify list, but that will just mean that the
images are deleted without you ever knowing about it.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] customizing wiki search

body:
2006/9/8, Liz Kim <lizkim270 at gmail.com>:
> Hi,
> We have a wiki directory site which is a simple table with names, phone
> numbers. ect..
> I was thinking about creating a search script to do a look up, go through
> this file and find by anything in the content.  I can think of two ways to
> approach this..
> 1. Somehow customize the search to ONLY search within the page for this
> directory page.
> 2. Write a script that goes into the database to do a search..
> Any inputs/suggestions?
> Thank you

Number 1 could be done by making the directory a separate namespace,
or by having a template on all those pages, and search on the wanted
text in combination with the text of the template.

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


from_name: Carl Peterson

body:
I think he's asking why it took so long for someone to get around to
blocking the user, as I suppose he could issue a permaban himself if he
wanted.

Carl

On 9/8/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/7/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> > > Why was this user not banned months ago?
> > It is blocked for 1 month now, and copyvio images being deleted.
> >
>
> I'm assuming Jimbo knows about the one month block, since he made that
> block
> himself. Can we construe his post as being a formal request to have him
> permabanned?
>
> DP
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikitech-l] draft of WikiCreole 0.1 available for comment

body:
On 9/8/06, Chuck Smith <chuckssmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It looks like your homepage just got overwritten.  You might want to
> apply
> > clue-by-4 to someone's head and restrict write access a bit more...
>
> Or I could wait until someone restores it back to normal.  That
> vandalism apparently lasted 19 minutes.  Not bad.  Restricting access
> is very much against the wiki way.
>
> Chuck
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

This is the wikipedia equivalent of allowing the en.wikipedia front page to
be world-anon-editable.

We all know how long *that* would last as an experiment...

That large parts of it should be editable doesn't mean that all of it should
be all the time to just anyone...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Ragib Hasan wrote:
> On Tue Sep 5 20:13:59 UTC 2006 David Gerard dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>>Some will be improved with good promotion, others will need efforts
>>>extended from our virtualworld community. And it would be a possible
>>>task and challange for the Foundation, but for that, a careful and
>>>thoughtful approach, collaboration of other organizations both local
>>>and global etc will be expected.
>
>
>>Has anyone asked Free Software Foundation India if they're interested
>>in this? It's not absolutely part of their primary mission, but open
>>content is quite related to open software, and it's under the GFDL,
>>which is an FSF licence; and pride in local content can be developed
>>into pride in local software (under a free licence), not least in
>>helping Mediawiki localisation.
>
>
>
> I'm just joining the thread, but I can answer your question to some extent.
>
> I am a bureaucrat of the Bengali Wikipedia (bn), which has increased
> in size from 500 articles in March 2006, to 8970 articles as of now.
> This phenomenal growth has been achieved via a full scale media
> campaign in Bangladesh, which has 75-80% (150 million) of all Bengali
> language speakers. Bangladehs Open Source Network, a proponent of
> Bangla localization and other open source technology, has promoted
> this a lot.
>
> We have regular updates in the local (Bangladeshi) news media, and a
> BBC Bengali World service programme (radio) covered the movement in
> this May. Actually, we had set a target of 10,000 total articles and
> 1000 total good quality ones by May 2007, but with a lot of efforts,
> and somewhat semi-automated imports, the 10k article will probably be
> reached within 15 days from now.
>
> Access to the Internet is a privilege in Bangladesh ... until a few
> months ago, the country only had satellite linkage (V-SATs) to the
> Internet, only got submarine cable connection 2 months ago. So,
> Bangladesh Open Source Network has taken up an office, and arranged so
> that interested writers can send content via postal mail, which can be
> entered into bn-wiki by people who have Internet. I myself have
> received articles via email (from people with offline Internet
> access), and added them.
>
> So, we have a huge number of interested people in Bangladesh, and the
> Bengali Wikipedia development is gaining a lot of media coverage
> there. This shows up in the statistics from Kelly Martin, where,
> Bangladeshi editors have added up to 60% of total edits. Around 25%
> came from the US, but that's most likely the few (2 or 3) Bangladeshi
> and West Bengali expatriates here (including me), who are very active.
>
> Definitely, we are planning to open a Wikimedia chapter in Bangladesh
> soon. A limited edition of Bengali wikipedia on CD is also planned for
> the Language Movement commemorative Book Fair in February 2007.
>
> Thanks
>
> Ragib
>
> (en:Ragib , bn:Ragib )

I am glad to read that :-)

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >On 9/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
> >>>non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>The US goverment would disagree:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >The FTC seems to imply that Kelly is right.
> >
> >http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm
> >
> >18. Are websites run by nonprofit entities subject to the Rule?
> >
> >The Act and the Rule expressly state that they apply to commercial
> >websites and not to nonprofits that would otherwise be exempt from
> >coverage under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Thus, in general, most
> >non-profits are not subject to the Rule. However, nonprofits that
> >operate for the profit of their for-profit members may be subject to
> >the Rule. See FTC v. California Dental Association 526 U.S. 756
> >(1999), for additional guidance on when nonprofits are subject to FTC
> >jurisdiction. Although true nonprofits are not subject to COPPA, we
> >encourage them to set an example by posting privacy policies and
> >providing the protections set forth in COPPA to children providing
> >personal information at their sites.
> >
> >
> The Foundation is exempt, the community is not (communities have been
> ruled to be entities in several court cases since they
> have rights, like the right to privacy and anonymity). It's a seperate
> entity engaged in commerce of Encyclopedic content
> with an FGDL cost structure of $0. It's pretty simple to just play it
> safe and put in an age disclaimer when an account
> is created. Whether it applies or not sounds like one of those
> experimental law questions that would be better NOT ever put
> to the test and an easy solution to bury the whole argument is just to
> put some sort of age verification question on the account
> creation template. It costs and gives up nothing and removes any
> question about stuff like this.
>
> :-)
>
> Jeff
>
>
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I think it helps a lot that neither the foundation nor the projects actually
collect personal information about people as part of project activities,
other than the account's email if the user wants to, and their IP address
(for anons or checkuser usage).

I don't know that "what people can post on their user page is up to them"
and allowing them to identify themselves counts in some way as a collection
of information.  That would be a useful question for the FTC.

A disclaimer statement sure couldn't hurt here.  I suspect it's harmless
anyways, but I don't see it being a problem to put up an enhanced
disclaimer.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
>>non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.
>>
>>
>
>The US goverment would disagree:
>
>Who Must Comply
>
>If you operate a commercial Web site or an online service directed to
>children under 13 that collects personal information from children or
>if you operate a general audience Web site and have actual knowledge
>that you are collecting personal information from children, you must
>comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
>
>http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm
>
>The actual text of the law is complex and I would not venture an
>opinion on what effect it should have on the current activites of the
>foundation
>
>
>
>
The Foundation should require age verification if this is true. It's
pretty simple, just a disclaimer
when an account is created "You cerify that ... blah blah blah ... you
are over <X> years of age".

And yes, they are engaged in commerce.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
>>non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.
>>
>>
>Who Must Comply
>
>If you operate a commercial Web site or an online service directed to
>children under 13 that collects personal information from children or
>if you operate a general audience Web site and have actual knowledge
>that you are collecting personal information from children, you must
>comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
>
>http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm
>
>The actual text of the law is complex and I would not venture an
>opinion on what effect it should have on the current activites of the
>foundation
>
Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
children?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
On 9/8/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
> before, but never implemented; after I mentioned these attacks on
> WP:AN, someone protected all three. Is anyone capable of coming up
> with a list of all individual templates transcluded on, say, more than
> a couple of hundred pages? Even if we don't *protect* these (I
> strongly suggest we do - they mostly shouldn't be edited without a
> good reason, much like the MediaWiki messages), having a few dozen
> admins watchlisting them would be helpful.

See [[WP:HRT]] (1). I put together some stats on high volume templates
when I first drafted that page (2), but they're wildly out of date by
now. Hopefully when the toolserver is working properly again for en,
we'll be able to update those statistics.

--
(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:High-risk_templates
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_templates_by_usage

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEN-l posting] Re: Template usage?

body:
On 08/09/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:

> May I ask you to approve my last posting shown below to WikiEN-l?

Your posts are through and you're unmoderated. I forgot to check
wikien-l this week and it looks like everyone else did too ...

Our apologies to all those whose messages have been held up in the
queue, I'm applying the plunger now.

(wikien-l mods! There's less completely fucked-up penis spam! Really!
Well, a bit less! Come on in, the sewage is fine!)

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 7, 2006, at 3:28 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >> someones) vandalising {{cquote}}, {{otheruses}} & {{taxobox}} in the
> >> same manner. I've seen this form of vandalism before ({{bio-stub}} is
> I checked these templates and I see that there are many eyeballs on
> these and little or not vandalism.

The problem is, a little vandalism can be disproportionately
effective. Let's invent the metric of "vandalised minutes" - if I spam
pictures of penises across the daily featured article, and it's
reverted in a minute, I've made one article-minute of vandalism. If I
do it to another article, it's not caught for five minutes... five
article-minutes.

If I do it to {{NPOV}}, which is in use on three thousand pages, then
being reverted after one minute means a net result of something like
two article-*days*, not minutes, when you account for all affected
pages. (This includes the effect being seen on protected/semiprotected
pages, and I half suspect this is one of the reasons things like
{{taxobox}} were being hit)

Simply being able to clean these up quickly is fine for normal pages,
but substantially less fine for things like this.

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/8/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Thegingerone
>
> Massive copyvios stretching back for months, 20 or so notices on his
> talk page (by bots doing good botwork).
>
> Why was this user not banned months ago?
>
> --Jimbo

Because we have rather a lot of users like that and it is easy to miss
some of them.~~~~
--
geni


body:
On 07/09/06, Sage Ross <ragesoss at gmail.com> wrote:

> The intelligent design articles have never really been in a state
> where rational proponents of ID (they do exist) would agree that their
> views are represented neutrally, though I think they've been getting
> closer.  I say this as a trained biochemist, a former supporter of
> intelligent design, and a historian of evolutionary biology in
> training.

Heh. Has saying this on the talk pages helped?

> Fortunately, I think there are a couple of scholarly treatments of ID
> in the works from historians and social scientists (science studies
> scholars, broadly speaking) who are not primarily approaching the
> issue as part of the anti-ID movement.  (The proceedings of this
> year's Terry Lectures at Yale, which will take place today and
> tomorrow and eventually be published, are one example.)  This will
> make obtaining less inherently controversial sources considerably
> easier.

Excellent! (Personally, I suspect ID is best treated as a matter for
sociology. Probably not abnormal psychology, but anyway.)

- d.


body:
[wikien-l-owners - see note on switching off mod-for-first-post. Queue
still needs checking for email from humans lost in the spam.]

On 08/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> I remember when my posts took days to get on to wikien-l. Now I've got
> my moderated flag dropped too :) Shouldn't there be a page on en:wp or
> meta where people can request their moderate flag on a mailing list to
> be dropped?

Another page to look at isn't going to make us more efficient ... it's
gathering the strength to look at the mod page.

<PhilSandifer> You didn't tell me Wiki-EN got the most fucked up penis spam
               ever.
<PhilSandifer> I now have a word file just of terrifying penis spam.
<PhilSandifer> I blame you!
<PhilSandifer> YOU MADE ME READ THE SENTENCE "After you cum with Spermamax she
               will be looking for her underwear one hour in the ocean of your
               sperm."

> And from memory, wikipedia-l doesn't auto-moderate.

We were originally unmoderated, then the spam got too awful so we made
it members-only, then we got persistent trolls from hell who morphed
to stay on the list, so we made it moderated-for-first-post. And it's
the official sewer for en: anyway, so keeping the discussion high
quality is harder work than it looks.

Thankfully it's been of remarkably high standard of late. I'm tempted
to switch off the mod-for-first-post and see if we drown in crap
again, since it's making a bit much trouble for good posters. I think
I'll go do that, actually.

- d.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] literacy day

body:
International Literacy Day on 8 September is an occasion to give hope to
the millions of women, men and children who cannot read or write even
their own name.

This year?s theme is ?Literacy sustains development?. It emphasizes that
literacy is not only a positive outcome of development processes but
also a lever of change and an instrument for achieving further social
progress.

Celebrations are taking place throughout the world...

http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=42332&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html


subject: [Foundation-l] literacy day


from_name: Chuck Smith

body:
> It looks like your homepage just got overwritten.  You might want to apply
> clue-by-4 to someone's head and restrict write access a bit more...

Or I could wait until someone restores it back to normal.  That
vandalism apparently lasted 19 minutes.  Not bad.  Restricting access
is very much against the wiki way.

Chuck


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 9/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
>>>non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.
>>>
>>>
>>The US goverment would disagree:
>>
>>
>>
>The FTC seems to imply that Kelly is right.
>
>http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm
>
>18. Are websites run by nonprofit entities subject to the Rule?
>
>The Act and the Rule expressly state that they apply to commercial
>websites and not to nonprofits that would otherwise be exempt from
>coverage under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Thus, in general, most
>non-profits are not subject to the Rule. However, nonprofits that
>operate for the profit of their for-profit members may be subject to
>the Rule. See FTC v. California Dental Association 526 U.S. 756
>(1999), for additional guidance on when nonprofits are subject to FTC
>jurisdiction. Although true nonprofits are not subject to COPPA, we
>encourage them to set an example by posting privacy policies and
>providing the protections set forth in COPPA to children providing
>personal information at their sites.
>
>
The Foundation is exempt, the community is not (communities have been
ruled to be entities in several court cases since they
have rights, like the right to privacy and anonymity). It's a seperate
entity engaged in commerce of Encyclopedic content
with an FGDL cost structure of $0. It's pretty simple to just play it
safe and put in an age disclaimer when an account
is created. Whether it applies or not sounds like one of those
experimental law questions that would be better NOT ever put
to the test and an easy solution to bury the whole argument is just to
put some sort of age verification question on the account
creation template. It costs and gives up nothing and removes any
question about stuff like this.

:-)

Jeff

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


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
>>children?
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>the content of userpages.
>
A new user page is blank.  It has no questions asking for personal
information, or, for that matter, questions of any sort.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Xanga just got hit with big fines for "repeatedly allowing children
> under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's
> consent".  How does COPPA affect Wikimedia projects?

The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.  No Wikimedia site is
operated for a commercial purpose; therefore, the act has no
application to Wikimedia.

Next time, read the statute before you spew FUD, ok?

Kelly


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
> >>children?
> >>
> >>Ec
> >>
> >>
> >the content of userpages.
> >
> A new user page is blank.  It has no questions asking for personal
> information, or, for that matter, questions of any sort.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

From:
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm
-----

*38. I operate a general audience site and don't ask visitors to reveal
their ages. However, I do have a number of chat rooms. *

*(a) What happens if a child visits my site and posts personal information
in a chat room but doesn't reveal his age?*

The Rule is not triggered. It applies to general audience websites if they
have *actual knowledge* that a particular visitor is a child. If such a site
knows that a particular visitor is a child, then the Rule must be followed
with respect to that child. If a child posts personal information on a
general audience site, but doesn't reveal his or her age and you have no
other information that would lead you to know that the visitor is a child,
then you would not have "actual knowledge" under the Rule and would not be
subject to its requirements. Collecting a child's age, however, does provide
"actual knowledge."

*(b) What happens if a child visits my chat room and announces his or her
age?*

If your site has a chat room and no one in your organization sees or is
alerted to the post, then you do not have the requisite actual knowledge
under the Rule. You may be considered to have actual knowledge with respect
to that child: (1) if someone from your operations sees the post in a chat
room; or (2) if someone alerts you to the post. At that point, you should
delete any personal information that has been posted and either ask the
child for a parent's email address for purposes of providing notice and
obtaining consent to future postings, or take reasonable steps to block that
child from returning to the chat area of the site, whether through screen
name blocking, a cookie, or some other means.

If you have monitored chat rooms where the monitors can delete information
from posts *before* they are made public, then your monitors can simply
strip the child's posts of any personal information before they are publicly
posted, thus permitting children to participate in the chat room without the
need for obtaining parental consent. This practice is easily applied to
"auditorium" style chat in which children pose questions which are screened
to a moderator or guest celebrity.
-----

It would appear on first glance that though Wikipedia is probably exempt due
to being a nonprofit, but that if we were a for-profit then a child posting
their own info in a user page (or anywhere else) would fall under the
Question 38 examples above.

Though this is undoubtedly a foundation business/legal decision, it would
make sense to me that Wikipedia might want to follow that recommended
general purpose website guideline above, even if it doesn't apply as a legal
requirement because WP is nonprofit.  It would seem to be a good general
policy.

The FAQ also recommends that general (non child-oriented) and nonprofit
sites have privacy policies, even if we aren't required to.  That sounds
good to me.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Peter <ipbwiki.list at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> why not just use
>> bbcode (=already widespread standard on fora) for your wikicreole standard
>> and add the items for wiki-specific features which are not available yet in
>> bbcode?
>>
>
> If you use BBcode, you may as well use HTML.  The former is just a
> stripped-down version of the latter with a couple of minor tweaks.
> The advantages of wikitext are that it's more readable at a glance
> (the basic shape of '' is very different from that of [[ or {|, for
> instance) and quicker to type (many of the syntaxes rely on doubled or
> tripled characters, for instance).  The disadvantage, of course, is
> that it's hell to parse.
>
> Anyway: why would we want to replace our insane and byzantine markup
> system, which tens of thousands of users have grown used to, with
> another insane and byzantine markup system that's completely
> incompatible with the markup used in probably over ten million pages
> on Wikimedia alone, and unfamiliar to our users to boot?
> Reverse-incompatible markup changes, *maybe* (that's IMO: in Brion's,
> absolutely not, and he's in charge), but only if there's a really good
> reason for each and every change . . . which there isn't, here.
>
Hoi,
There is a reason to change the Wikisyntax when the syntax itself is
incompatible with content. The way we currently indicate italic and bold
is at least incompatible with the Neapolitan languiage. I am convinced
that as we localise more languages, more languages will bring us similar
problems.

PS being able to create correct content in all languages is imho the
best reason to modify the Wikisyntax.
Thanks,
    GerardM


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Global Text Project

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>FYI - we need to talk to these people.
>
>http://globaltext.org/
>
>Global Text Project
>
>    * The goal is to create a free library of 1,000 electronic
>textbooks for students in the developing world
>
>

For myself, I strongly suspect anything that starts with "students in
the developing world" and doesn't acknowledge disadvantaged individuals
even in supposedly "first world" countries to be more or less a scam and
something to stay away from.  If their overall goal is to bring benefits
to people in specific countries but also benefit other people in the
process, I'm much more likly to support such a general project.

Of course, that is why I also consider the OLPC project to be something
of a scam as well, on the same grounds.  They don't mind selling these
laptops to kids in Nairobi, but have a real problem trying to sell the
same thing to kids in New Orleans housing projects.

If instead the stated goal was simply "to create a free library of 1,000
electronic textbooks for students" I wouldn't have nearly the problem
with what is obviously a group of extra-ordinarily condescending
individuals.

BTW, Wikibooks has over 1000 different book titles currently.  That is
not a goal.  That is a fact.  While I will admit that effective
textbooks that are useful for teaching a class are considerably fewer,
this is a group that needs to work with Wikibooks if only to help
coordinate and develop content that may be mutually useful, and the
Wikibooks project already had a team of volunteers willing to get
content developed and actual examples to show for its effort.

I wouldn't even call the XML book to be necessarily the best of
Wikibooks either.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/8/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Friday, September 8, 2006, 2:01:13 PM, you wrote:
>
> > I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
> > that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
> > which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.
>
> Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 *requires* attribution.
> In fact, all the Creative Commons licenses require attribution.
>
I didn't say Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0, I said Sharealike 1.0.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/

Anthony


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Wiktionary-l] Please check
 [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your project

body:
Hoi,
When messages are translated at the BetaWiki, it will be possible to
translate them once and have these messages be promoted in the usual way
and thereby have the translation available for ALL projects in the
language that has the translation done in Betawiki.

The current way of localising MediaWiki is extremely inefficient because
people do it for every project again while it only needs to be done
once. It only needs to be done once well and the messages are available
for MediaWiki itself.

Please do appreciate that I am not criticising the hard work that people
put into localisation. When I see the effects of the lack of
localisation in Wiktionary where I find that Wikipedia has already been
localised, I find it tragic that so much more work is required. It is
also tragic to see that Aphaia has to beg people to help with these
important translations while the work would have been done already if
the BetaWiki had been used in the first place.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Aphaia wrote:
> Hello all,
> now all active members of Wikimedia projects are invited to vote in
> the 2006 Election to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. After one week from the beginning, we have over 1,000
> votes. Thank you for your interest!
>
> On most projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, it is advertised at the
> top of website. On some projects, it hasn't yet. According my
> presumption 8-10% projects hasn't recognized now they are invited to
> give voices (see below).
>
> Hence, local sysops are highly expected to ensure their wiki to be
> informed this Election, and if not yet, please modify
> [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] and put a brief notice about it. If you are
> not a sysop but visit such a project frequently, please let the local
> sysops know about that.
>
> You may want to render meta version or other projects'.
> Here are some examples you can reuse:
>
> En:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Fr:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Es:
> http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Ru:
> http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Id:
> http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Zh:
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
>
> I found by chance  some projects not informed yet, and checked some
> projects including
> - 25 largest Wikipedias +1 I visited by chance; 3 Wikipedias lacked information
> -  5 large Wiktionaries; all had sitenotice
> - 3 relatively large Wikinews; all had sitenotice
>
> 3/31 = 10% projects had no news about Election; I feel unease with
> this result.  One of the reasons would be that they optimized the
> sitenotice for other purposes. In some projects, it was just only the
> former news (like Wikimania scholarship) remained. Anyway, there would
> be terra incognita from several reasons, which all of us are invited
> to develop to assure the integrity of our global community.
>
>


subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Please check [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your
 project


subject:
[Wiktionary-l] [Wikipedia-l] Please check
 [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your project

body:
Hoi,
When messages are translated at the BetaWiki, it will be possible to
translate them once and have these messages be promoted in the usual way
and thereby have the translation available for ALL projects in the
language that has the translation done in Betawiki.

The current way of localising MediaWiki is extremely inefficient because
people do it for every project again while it only needs to be done
once. It only needs to be done once well and the messages are available
for MediaWiki itself.

Please do appreciate that I am not criticising the hard work that people
put into localisation. When I see the effects of the lack of
localisation in Wiktionary where I find that Wikipedia has already been
localised, I find it tragic that so much more work is required. It is
also tragic to see that Aphaia has to beg people to help with these
important translations while the work would have been done already if
the BetaWiki had been used in the first place.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Aphaia wrote:
> Hello all,
> now all active members of Wikimedia projects are invited to vote in
> the 2006 Election to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. After one week from the beginning, we have over 1,000
> votes. Thank you for your interest!
>
> On most projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, it is advertised at the
> top of website. On some projects, it hasn't yet. According my
> presumption 8-10% projects hasn't recognized now they are invited to
> give voices (see below).
>
> Hence, local sysops are highly expected to ensure their wiki to be
> informed this Election, and if not yet, please modify
> [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] and put a brief notice about it. If you are
> not a sysop but visit such a project frequently, please let the local
> sysops know about that.
>
> You may want to render meta version or other projects'.
> Here are some examples you can reuse:
>
> En:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Fr:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Es:
> http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Ru:
> http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Id:
> http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Zh:
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
>
> I found by chance  some projects not informed yet, and checked some
> projects including
> - 25 largest Wikipedias +1 I visited by chance; 3 Wikipedias lacked information
> -  5 large Wiktionaries; all had sitenotice
> - 3 relatively large Wikinews; all had sitenotice
>
> 3/31 = 10% projects had no news about Election; I feel unease with
> this result.  One of the reasons would be that they optimized the
> sitenotice for other purposes. In some projects, it was just only the
> former news (like Wikimania scholarship) remained. Anyway, there would
> be terra incognita from several reasons, which all of us are invited
> to develop to assure the integrity of our global community.
>
>

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
Xanga just got hit with big fines for "repeatedly allowing children
under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's
consent".  How does COPPA affect Wikimedia projects?


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>We don't collect userpages.  We allow people to create them.
>
>COPPA is primarily an anti-data-mining regulation.
>
>Kelly
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
And people can mine userpages externally. There's no protection of privacy.


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

> Kelly Martin wrote:
>
>> We don't collect userpages. We allow people to create them.
>>
>> COPPA is primarily an anti-data-mining regulation.
>>
>> Kelly
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
> And people can mine userpages externally. There's no protection of
> privacy.
>
>
>
>
i.e. "You must be logged in to be able to view User Pages and their
content". Don't let google scrape user page content.


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] CC-SA (was: Example of a user who should have been
	banned a long time ago)

body:
> >
> > > I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
> > > that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
> > > which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.
> >
> > Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 *requires* attribution.
> > In fact, all the Creative Commons licenses require attribution.
> >
> I didn't say Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0, I said Sharealike 1.0.
>

Right, the (disused) CC-SA doesn't have the full attribution requirements of
CC-BY-SA.

Nevertheless, I think some indication of source is, if not legally required,
then a really good idea, and I think this is true even for works explicitly
released into the public domain (as opposed to, say, trivial ones ineligible for
copyright, or stuff with obviously expired copyright).

If nothing else, we'd want some sort of attempt to establish that it really was
released into the public domain (or under CC-SA).

Regards,
Dan


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Xanga just got hit with big fines for "repeatedly allowing children
> > under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's
> > consent".  How does COPPA affect Wikimedia projects?
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
> non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.  No Wikimedia site is
> operated for a commercial purpose; therefore, the act has no
> application to Wikimedia.
>
> Next time, read the statute before you spew FUD, ok?

I asked a question.  You answered it.  Where's the FUD?


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] current categories and subcategories

body:
On 9/7/06, karen marcelo <karen at radarnetworks.com> wrote:
> hi all
>
> i just joined this list so i'm not sure if this is the correct forum to
> ask this, but how do i get a master list of
> all wikipedia categories and sub-categories? i looked a the database
> download page and took a peek at
> pages_articles.xml and see that one can parse out Categories from the
> mediawiki tags embedded in the
> text. but is there some other dump with all the categories (even ones
> that may not have articles) as well as their
> subcategories available somewhere?
>
> apologies in advance if this was the wrong list to post this question
> to, but if someone could direct me to the right one
> it would be most appreciated.
>
> thanks much!

Isn't one of the dumps offered something like "categorylinks"?

~maru