list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Logo] One True Wiktionary logo

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Aphaia wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> [[m:Logo]] claims logo should be consistent. I agree.
>> This document shows us the "scrabble" type logo as Wiktionary logo; at
>> least it was a result of straw poll. I am not sure if the Wiktionary
>> active editors love it. Perhaps not.
>> On the Wikimedia Foundation website, on "Our projects" table and
>> [[Wikimedia:Our projects]], both pages show visitors the old one (dic
>> entry type) logo as project logo.
>>
> Has anyone bothered to check whether the Scrabble people have any IP
> issues with using that logo?
>
> Ec

If I recall correctly, the logo was intentionally a cross between
Scrabble and Mahjong. I'm not sure if it would help us that the generic
Mahjong tile design isn't trademarked, if it ever came to dealing with
"the Scrabble people". (lol, that just reminds me of the old children's
TV show "The Letter People". [1]

In my opinion, it's not that big of a deal if the Vietnamese Wiktionary
is the only edition to adopt the tiles; the Galego Wiktionary has always
featured a logo that appears to be a lectionary or Bible. I get the
feeling that many of the editions would've already switched if they saw
enough of the other editions switching. The Italian Wiktionary, for
example, has an enormous copy of the tiles logo right under the fold,
and the Korean Wiktionary uses elements of the logo throughout the site.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Letter_People

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Censorship: Speedy deletion of porn articles

body:
Hoi,
I have no problem with Pokemon articles, they are cuddly, friendly and
articles on individual characters are allowed on some Wikipedias and not on
others. I could have chosen characters from Star Wars to make my point as
well,

There is no reason at all why all subjects that are permitted on the English
Wikipedia should be permitted on another project. The notions of the English
Wikipedia are not universal. Individual Pokemon articles et al are denied on
the German Wikipedia and when individual people and or movies notable in the
porn industry are not permitted on a particular project, I have no problem
with it at all.

There are much more important issues to do with censorship on Wikipedia
projects. On some projects articles on the holocaust are severely censored
because "it is not an accepted fact that it happened the way you have it
portrayed". This means that articles, even featured articles of the English
Wikipedia associated with the second world war, cannot be literally
translated into these particular language versions of Wikipedia.

In many cultures the porn industry is not noted nor is porn permitted.
Insistence on having it included in Wikipedia is against the laws and morals
of such countries. I stand by my position that a comparison with the Pokemon
characters is valid; a Wikipedia article does not have to allow the
inclusion of all of them.

PS I am not outraged, I think your premise is wrong.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I strongly resent your reply. It seems like you have some similar issues
> with Pokemon articles and that's the reason you lashed out the way you
> did.
> The reason I raised this issue on this mailing list is not because of some
> misplaced sense of outrage. The incident I was talking about took place
> two
> months ago and the only reason I mentioned it was to fully disclose any
> relevant information so other people don't come on here later on and say
> that the only reason I'm bringing this issue to the attention of others is
> due to a vendetta against the Hebrew Wikipedia or something of the sort.
> This isn't about me trying to provoke anything. It's about a certain group
> of admins ignoring the fact that speedy deletion of porn articles was
> never
> passed as a policy on hewp (and there is more than one sysop who can
> attest
> to this). As I said previously, I don't have any particular interest in
> porn
> and the fact that I've never edited an article that has anything to do
> with
> this topic on the english wikipedia supports that. Ron Jeremy and Jenna
> Jameson are both notable enough to have their own article on any
> wikipedia,
> whether it be English, Hebrew or Malaysian. Attempts have been made to
> resolve this issue "in-house" have failed, otherwise I wouldn't have
> posted
> it to this mailing list. I can't find the specific meta page at the moment
> but it isn't English Wikipedia only policy that wikipedia isn't censored.
> If
> the german wikipedia decided to delete all articles regarding Nazi
> Germany,
> etc. would you have reacted the same way? Or maybe if the Chinese
> Wikipedia
> decided to ban all articles on the issue of democracy? I hope you rethink
> your response and maybe try not to treat me as a troll when I really am
> not
> one.
>
> -Yonatan
>
> On 3/8/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hoi,
> > When you think that people are interested in what can be perceived as a
> > provocation, you are wrong. What makes you think that details about porn
> > is
> > of sufficient relevance to warrant an article? You have to appreciate
> that
> > some Wikipedias are quite happy to even disallow articles about Pokomon
> > characters. Now Pokomon creatures are much more educational. They are
> the
> > staple diet of our youth.
> >
> > Danny is a WMF employee, I believe he has more important things to do
> than
> > to indulge your misplaced sense of outrage.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
> >
> > On 3/8/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > It has recently (about two months ago) come to my attention that
> > articles
> > > on
> > > the Hebrew Wikipedia are speedy deleted. I translated the Jenna
> Jameson
> > > article from the English Wikipedia and it was very quickly speedy
> > deleted
> > > and I was indefinitely blocked due to being a sockpuppet of some guy
> (of
> > > course no checkuser request was done). By the way, I don't
> particularly
> > > like
> > > porn articles or anything of the sort; in fact, I don't believe I've
> > ever
> > > edited a porn article on the enwp which I'm very active on. After a
> few
> > > days
> > > (during which I complained on Danny's enwp talk page and thus got the
> > > attention of a Hebrew Wikipedia admin and later spoke on the phone
> with
> > > another admin from hewp) I was unblocked. I'm guessing there have
> > probably
> > > been other people who just gave up after they were banned and didn't
> > > return.
> > >
> > > The situation is basically that if a user who isn't well-known on the
> > hewp
> > > (someone outside of a group of about 100 users) creates such an
> article
> > he
> > > will probably be perm-banned and if anyone else does so, the article
> > will
> > > probably just be speedy deleted. No rule has been passed on the Hebrew
> > > Wikipedia regarding this and even if it had been passed, it would be
> in
> > > violation of WMF (?) guidelines as Wikipedia is not censored. Some
> claim
> > > that a rule has been passed but many admins disagree with this. The
> > "vote"
> > > was passed about two years ago and had 10-20 participants. In addition
> > to
> > > this, the vote came at a time when the Hebrew Wikipedia was repeatedly
> > > vandalized by a certain user and many of the voters supposedly for the
> > > banning of porn articles referred only to this specific case (this is
> > > supported by their comments on the page).
> > >
> > > By the way, just so nobody corrects me, on the Hebrew Wikipedia *there
> > are
> > > votes* since consensus is hardly ever reached and the total needed to
> > pass
> > > a
> > > vote is a ridiculous 55%. Anyway, despite all the above, a few admins
> > have
> > > said that they will speedy delete any porn articles created on the
> > Hebrew
> > > Wikipedia. Currently there are a few porn articles which are about the
> > > movie
> > > Deep Throat and two other articles that I don't recall at the moment.
> > This
> > > is a foundation issue because the situation right now is effectively
> > > censorship of articles that some people feel do not have a place on
> the
> > > wikipedia. I know I will probably have those who disagree with me be
> > > notified of this discussion at some point at which point the
> slandering
> > > will
> > > begin and I will be called a "snitch" and possibly other more colorful
> > > terms
> > > so I ask ahead of time for this discussion to remain civil. Although I
> > > hate
> > > to burden Danny, who probably has a lot of more important things to
> do,
> > he
> > > is the only one who speaks both Hebrew and English and could take care
> > of
> > > this issue since he is obviously a person trusted by most. Anyway I
> > think
> > > I've written more than enough on an issue that should be pretty
> > > straightforward, that is, that wikipedia is not censored.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Yonatan
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: luke brandt

body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:
............
............
> violation of WMF (?) guidelines as Wikipedia is not censored. Some claim
> that a rule has been passed but many admins disagree with this. The "vote"
> was passed about two years ago and had 10-20 participants. In addition to
> this, the vote came at a time when the Hebrew Wikipedia was repeatedly
> vandalized by a certain user and many of the voters supposedly for the
> banning of porn articles referred only to this specific case (this is
> supported by their comments on the page).
>
> By the way, just so nobody corrects me, on the Hebrew Wikipedia *there are
> votes* since consensus is hardly ever reached and the total needed to pass a
> vote is a ridiculous 55%. Anyway, despite all the above, a few admins have
.............
.............
>
> Thanks,
> Yonatan

Hi Yonatan,

Why not try and organize another vote on the issue to gauge local
opinion without the vandalism issue to affect the voting. Perhaps your
views will now prevail? - Best, luke


list: commons-l

from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
On 2/23/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 2/20/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Erik, if a Flickr user misclicked on the dropdown and selected the
> > wrong license unknowingly and unintentionally they did not make a
> > valid release under that license.
>
> There is no dropdown on the upload screen. Licensing is a user
> preference, and not an easy to find one (I just took about 3 minutes
> to find it again, even though I've been there several times -- it's
> under "Your account|Privacy & Permissions|Defaults for new uploads").

I would agree that it's vanishingly unlikely that a Flickr user would
accidentally select a Creative Commons license rather than 'All rights
reserved'.  The latter is the default; changing the upload default
isn't the most obvious thing in the Flickr interface, as Erik says.
Changing the license on an image post-update is easier, but again
unlikely to be done accidentally.

I suspect that what Greg is concerned about is that someone may intend
a CC license but inadvertently select one that is different from the
one they intended, or one they do not understand the implications of.

Since no compensation has been given to the Flickr user, no implied
contract exists and thus we don't have that protection against
accidental mis-licensing as Greg says.  I'd suspect Wikipedia and our
user who uploaded it would be fairly protected against any lawsuit for
damages, but it would still be an irritation for all.

I suspect you're both right here; Erik, that checking the status of
FlickrLickr images is a lower priority, and Greg, that it's still
ideally worth doing.

-Matt


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Chris Picone [mailto:ccool2ax at gmail.com]
>Sent: Thursday, March 8, 2007 10:47 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] yet another credential idea...
>
>Why not just have no credential stuff at all? I mean, it doesn't
>matter if the writer is an expert or not (since facts have to be
>verified and attributed nonetheless) and creds only hurt. Why not just
>disallow use of credentials while editing? Or maybe even allow a user
>to claim they have a BA in X, but not mention it editing? Just a
>thought.
>
>--Chris is me

So long as folks are honest, it is usually useful to know someone's expertise and the basis for it, even if if it only skillful reading and understanding, the essential lawyer's skill.

Fred


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model

body:
stvrtg wrote:
> On 3/8/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> For me, the external problem went well beyond the press. Essjay claiming
>
>> he had a couple of doctorates was not so good, and using them in content
>> disputes was worse.
>>
>
>
> Would somebody please provide a source for the claim that he used his fake
> credentials to "strongarm people" or to influence "content disputes?"
>

I was hoping not to rehash this stuff anytime soon, but strictly because
you asked on the list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_noticeboard/Essjay#Outside_finding_of_fact_by_Doug_Bell

both the items at the top and other ones mentioned in the endorsements.

In particular, this is the one that I found most clear:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Imprimatur&diff=12614544&oldid=12191093

It's his fourth edit, where he defends his very first edit. In it he
says, "I believe the entry to be correct as it reads, and I offer as my
reference the text Catholicism for Dummies" [...] This is a text I often
require for my students, and I would hang my own Ph.D. on it's credibility."

Note that I personally don't think part was a huge deal; as I mention
elsewhere, this is not an uncommon thing for a teenager with a shiny new
identity to do, and from there it looks like he just let it get out of
control. Since he didn't do it a lot, and since we are famously
uninterested in credentials anyhow, I think this did little harm. It was
the lies to real professors and real journalists that were more of an
issue for me, and the coverup on top of that that suggested Essjay had
not developed the character that I look for in somebody holding such
positions of trust.

> This is nonsense.  Essjay's standing was never based on his academics, it
> was based on his
> work and community involvement. Wikipedia's credibility doesn't rest on
> credentials, but on
> its content. Which suffers not thanks to its many anonymous and
> knowledgeable contributors, credentialed or otherwise.
>

Essjay's internal standing was not based on his academics. However, his
standing when he wrote to professors as a "fellow professor" and his
social standing in the New Yorker article were based his claim of high
academic success. Whether or not people should have taken him more
seriously because of that is an interesting question, but not one that's
relevant. They did, and they will continue to hold professors in high
regard no matter what we think about it.

If we have this problem again it will be a pattern, which will look
especially damning. Although I don't think PR should be the main driver
for anything, keeping the trust of our readership is important to me. To
the extent that credential fraud will make the public trust us less, I
think it's important to address it.

William

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Shooting the messenger ... was ... Why have
 admins of unblock-en-l blocked me?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 09/03/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Because you are a racist :-) You probably even deny the indigenous
>>>status of the Ainu.
>>>
>>>
>>I would hope that's not the reason... if we were to block people for
>>holding objectionable opinions (even exceedingly objectionable ones), I
>>could submit a very long list of names of people to be blocked,
>>including many admins!
>>
>>
>
>To paraphrase Harry Truman:
>
>"[They] blocked him for continually trolling, not for being a dumb
>son-of-a-bitch - which he was, but that's not against the law for
>people on the internet. If it was, three quarters of them would be in
>jail"
>
>

Unfortunately on this mailinglist and on local wikipedia's the practise
of shooting the messenger and shooting off anything we do not want to
hear is practised more and more widely. Also putting our heads in the
sands like an ostrich is.

The tactics used are simple:

Tactic 1:
We see someone post something we do not like, or we do not like the
poster in the first place. We then start digging up past transgressions
by the poster and with that we kill the topic because it becomes a
flamefest and no one is talking about the topic anymore.

Tactic 2:
We just tell someone to solve the problem locally, even though it is the
reason it couldn't be solved locally in the first place that the poster
is talking about it.

These tactics are more and more employed, both on this mailinglist,
other wikimedia mailinglists, and on the foundation projects.

Please read about a topic, do not charge the poster.

Waerth


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] yet another credential idea...

body:
On 09/03/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> So long as folks are honest, it is usually useful to know someone's expertise and the basis for it, even if if it only skillful reading and understanding, the essential lawyer's skill.

The essential human skill!

"Wikipedia is not 'reliable'. It's good and useful, so it's popular.
If you keep your wits about you, you'll get value out of it." - me,
over and over and over.

Some university-level lecturers are now using Wikipedia as an example
for dealing with unreliable but useful information sources. That is to
say, most of them.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
> * Is this not somewhat redundant, given that discussion pages can have
> "new section" links, and that InputBox can handle this, to some
> extent?
>
> * The extension outputs a lot of invalid XHTML, which can *break the
> whole thing* if MediaWiki is configured to output the MIME type
> text/xml.
>

It doesn't seem to be redundant - based on over 2 years of
communicating with wikihow users, they seem to appreciate being able
to type the message right below the one the are reading and hit post
from the same page.

Feel free to change it if you think it can be improved. This extension
works for us, I decided to share it, our users like it, it might not
be useful for everyone.


subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
> I was a bit disappointed (and surprised) that "reply to ......." sends
> a message to their talk page, rather than an indented reply to the
> thread. The latter behaviour would have been quite useful (and
> unique).
>
> Steve

Yeah, I can see why that might be misleading. To respond to the post,
users just have to go use the textarea at the bottom, but to reply to
a user directly, you can click on that link. Most of our users respond
to each other's talk page on a discussion so the new messages
indicator lights up for them, and this link comes in handy for that.

Travis


body:
On 09/03/07, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> beyond content accuracy, going on as well -- if I really am a professor, why
> state that when anyone else can as well (and clearly get away with it pretty
> easily)? Why be associated with that kind of nonsense? Why be subject to
> possible distrust in the future (are you *really* a professor, or do you
> just say you are?) Professorship is hard-won in most cases, and most people
> don't take kindly to impersonation.

A lot of editors put their organisational affiliation on their user
page, or even a link to their university or organisational web page,
which is of course immediately verifiable.

But others don't want to put everything on their user page, precisely
because of stunted obsessives like Brandt, or worse.

> p.s. like essjay, I have an OTRS account. Does that mean that I could verify
> my own credentials under Erik's plan?

It all comes down to starting with the assumption that people are
basically honest and not going to lie. As I said, after this Essjay
disaster, *no one* of good faith is going to fib about their
credentials to cover their tracks ...

- d.


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Telegraph article on Essjay

body:
On 3/9/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > (They refuse to see their biased use of
> > the term "Irish Republic" as unacceptable - it's not like Irish newswriters
> > use silly terms like British State for the United Kingdom).
>
> How is "Irish Republic" biased? It's has exactly the same meaning as
> "Republic of Ireland", it's just a different way of saying it. It's
> probably wrong, strictly speaking, but it isn't biased. For something
> to be biased it has to come from a particular POV, what POV are you
> accusing the BBC of having?

It's probably an [[informal code word]] or something.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
luke brandt wrote:

>Yonatan Horan wrote:
>
>
>>Some claim
>>that a rule has been passed but many admins disagree with this. The "vote"
>>was passed about two years ago and had 10-20 participants. In addition to
>>this, the vote came at a time when the Hebrew Wikipedia was repeatedly
>>vandalized by a certain user and many of the voters supposedly for the
>>banning of porn articles referred only to this specific case (this is
>>supported by their comments on the page).
>>
>>By the way, just so nobody corrects me, on the Hebrew Wikipedia *there are
>>votes* since consensus is hardly ever reached and the total needed to pass a
>>vote is a ridiculous 55%. Anyway, despite all the above, a few admins have
>>
>>
>Why not try and organize another vote on the issue to gauge local
>opinion without the vandalism issue to affect the voting. Perhaps your
>views will now prevail? - Best, luke
>
This seems to be closer to the real issue.  NPOV doesn't really enter
into this unless there is some doubt that the person is really a
"star".  There seems to be no doubt that the person in fact did make movies.

I've consistently upheld the importance of project autonomy, even if it
results in articles with very different language versions.  When another
language is involved it's difficult or impossible for any non-speakers
to evaluate the content.  Discussions that led to acceptance on enwp
could have had a parallel discussion in another language with exactly
the opposite result.  Anything else would allow the larger project to
dominate the smaller.

What worries me is this tendency to treat votes as final.  A 55% passing
vote may be quite valid, but then so too should a 55% negative vote a
month later.  The circumstances when the broader community intervenes in
the internal afairs of a project need to be extremely limited; most
issues relating to which articles should be allowed and what the
articles should contain must be left to the project itself.  The
takeover of a project by a small group intent on driving a project in a
particular direction over the wishes of that community may be valid
grounds for intervention, but I am not in a position to state that this
is or is not now happening in hewp.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autograph pages

body:
On 3/9/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't mind trends like this because they help to build the
> community. Why would it be sensible to move it off Wikipedia and
> outside the community?

I think it's a question of balance. Users who spend 95% of their time
at Wikipedia building the encyclopaedia, and 5% engaging in a bit of
silliness are of course fine. But users who spend 95% of their time
building their user page, chit chatting with others and collecting
autographs - those we can live without. And if those users start
interfering with the "good" users, something has to be done.

Anyway, hopefully the autograph page trend will die off quickly.

Steve


from_name: Jim Hu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error on search in 1.8.3

body:
I get the following fatal error

[Fri Mar  9 10:04:13 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member
function getText() on a non-object in /Volumes/dimer_web/WebServer/
Documents/colimod/colipedia/includes/SpecialSearch.php on line 333

When I search for "MG1655" at

	http://ecoliwiki.net/colipedia/index.php

But other searches work just fine.  MG1655 does not correspond to an
existing page when I add it to the url.  Searching for nonsense
strings that don't have pages does not cause this crash.   MG1655
occurs as a text match on lots of pages (10069 matches in the text
table), but I don't see why line 333 should care.  In fact, I don't
see how the code ever reaches 333, which is for a single hit result.
Here are some db queries, in case these give any clues:

mysql> select * from page where page_title like "%MG1655%";
Empty set (0.54 sec)

mysql> select count(*) from text where old_text like "%MG1655%";
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|    10069 |
+----------+
1 row in set (6.92 sec)

Any thoughts?

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054


subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
No, it doesn't. We tried several different approaches to threaded
discussions with the standard Mediawiki framework and none of them
seemed effective for the complexity they required. At one point we had
a drop down menu above the textbox that was populated with the section
names of the discussion page and you could post a comment any
particular section. For our purposes, it was overkill and ended up
confusing enough of our users that we took it out and went back to a
single-thread model.

This extension is by no means meant to be an extensive solution to
discussion page problems (I'll leave that to Liquid threads), it's
just a simple extension that works for smaller wikis. So far we've had
over 150,000 talk page messages posted with it and our community seems
to like its simplicity.

Travis

On 3/9/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yeah, I can see why that might be misleading. To respond to the post,
> > users just have to go use the textarea at the bottom, but to reply to
> > a user directly, you can click on that link. Most of our users respond
> > to each other's talk page on a discussion so the new messages
> > indicator lights up for them, and this link comes in handy for that.
>
> It seems this extension doesn't support threaded discussion, which
> limits its usefulness.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with juvenile vandalism

body:
On 3/8/07, darthvader1219 at gmail.com <darthvader1219 at gmail.com> wrote:
> edits made live yet, and will only make anonymous editing (which from
> what I understand constitutes the majority of the editing that takes
> place) of any highly trafficked article more annoying and stressful
> and could reduce the amount of editing that takes place altogether. It

That's one possible outcome.

> would (considering the speed at which any blatant vandalism is
> reverted) only moderately improve how the encyclopedia looks for the
> majority of readers at the expense of a rather large amount of

Vastly reducing the chance of driveby vandalism being visible to the
outside world is a "moderate improvement"?

> inconvenience for the majority of editors, and from my point of view
> it is simply not worth the negative effects.

What inconvenience for the majority of editors? Logged-in editors
would see no difference. Anons would see no difference in most cases,
unless the particular text they want to edit has been modified. Minor
inconvenience.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with juvenile vandalism

references:
<4de603bb0703071644k2fee61b3wfd203e7a634a36ed@mail.gmail.com>
	<002101c76122$b879f090$296dd1b0$@com>
	<4de603bb0703071746g742ba9d6kbe74f3aeeeaf9fcc@mail.gmail.com>
	<45EF6D17.1060508@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<45EFD59E.4040008@telus.net>
	<jbovu25eank38lm4jmmvesh9r1lmd9bmdj@4ax.com>
	<4313.69.21.252.114.1173369276.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<45F03469.4020706@hackish.org>

body:
On 3/9/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I recall bringing the issue up on this mailing list (or possibly
> wikipedia-l?) a few months ago, and not only was consensus strongly in
> favor, but there wasn't a *single* post opposed to it. There were just
> disagreements over the best way to do it.

Depends what issue you're talking about. I strongly prefer a time-lag
model to a stable version model. If you're conflating the two, yes I'm
in favour of doing *something*. If you're separating them, I'm against
the stable version model.

The stable version model is along the lines of certain users
designating a particular revision as being "stable" and that being the
one displayed to the outside world, permanently, until another "stable
version" is chosen. It seems to have such obvious drawbacks:
- choosing users to do the designation
- stable versions being horribly out of date
- killing the wiki model completely (now almost no one can edit and
get the instant feedback)

Steve


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error on search in 1.8.3

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

Jim Hu wrote:
> [Fri Mar  9 10:04:13 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member
> function getText() on a non-object in /Volumes/dimer_web/WebServer/
> Documents/colimod/colipedia/includes/SpecialSearch.php on line 333
>
> When I search for "MG1655" at
>
> 	http://ecoliwiki.net/colipedia/index.php
>
> But other searches work just fine.  MG1655 does not correspond to an
> existing page when I add it to the url.  Searching for nonsense
> strings that don't have pages does not cause this crash.   MG1655
> occurs as a text match on lots of pages (10069 matches in the text
> table), but I don't see why line 333 should care.  In fact, I don't
> see how the code ever reaches 333, which is for a single hit result.

This could perhaps happen if you have some inconsistency in the
database; for instance if the listed current revision entry is missing
for the page that matches the search query.

This query will show you any pages where the current revision (listed in
page_latest) doesn't exist, so you can try to clean them up:

  select
    page_id,page_namespace,page_title,page_latest
    from page
    left outer join revision on page_latest=rev_id
    where rev_id is null;

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF8Y+twRnhpk1wk44RAhPfAKDGcIVTfYR7aWb5mhdiwmHWKL5fdACfc9Si
WWe2cJ/EHUofZcb5IhIjZWM=
=TqU6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Error on search in 1.8.3

body:
I "fixed" the problem by creating a page for MG1655... so I tried
some other searches for words that I know occur lots of times in the
pages.  One other factor is that most of these pages were created by
maintenance/importDump.php from a script that makes up the XML.
Searching for "W3110" gives the white page of death, while searching
for "Gene" using Go gives:

The database did not find the text of a page that it should have
found, named "Gene".

This is usually caused by following an outdated diff or history link
to a page that has been deleted.

If this is not the case, you may have found a bug in the software.
Please report this to an administrator, making note of the URL.

with the following in the error logs:

[Fri Mar  9 10:43:08 2007] [error] PHP Notice:  Undefined variable:
data in /Volumes/dimer_web/WebServer/Documents/colimod/colipedia/
includes/Article.php on line 373
[Fri Mar  9 10:43:08 2007] [error] PHP Notice:  Trying to get
property of non-object in /Volumes/dimer_web/WebServer/Documents/
colimod/colipedia/includes/Article.php on line 373

Searching for "gene" with Search gives the white page of death.  I'm
going to try rebuildall.php.

Jim
=====================================
Jim Hu
Associate Professor
Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
2128 TAMU
Texas A&M Univ.
College Station, TX 77843-2128
979-862-4054

On Mar 9, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Jim Hu wrote:

> I get the following fatal error
>
> [Fri Mar  9 10:04:13 2007] [error] PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member
> function getText() on a non-object in /Volumes/dimer_web/WebServer/
> Documents/colimod/colipedia/includes/SpecialSearch.php on line 333
>
> When I search for "MG1655" at
>
> 	http://ecoliwiki.net/colipedia/index.php
>
> But other searches work just fine.  MG1655 does not correspond to an
> existing page when I add it to the url.  Searching for nonsense
> strings that don't have pages does not cause this crash.   MG1655
> occurs as a text match on lots of pages (10069 matches in the text
> table), but I don't see why line 333 should care.  In fact, I don't
> see how the code ever reaches 333, which is for a single hit result.
> Here are some db queries, in case these give any clues:
>
> mysql> select * from page where page_title like "%MG1655%";
> Empty set (0.54 sec)
>
> mysql> select count(*) from text where old_text like "%MG1655%";
> +----------+
> | count(*) |
> +----------+
> |    10069 |
> +----------+
> 1 row in set (6.92 sec)
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Jim
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
> Associate Professor
> Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics
> 2128 TAMU
> Texas A&M Univ.
> College Station, TX 77843-2128
> 979-862-4054
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Aude wrote:

>" Developping some kind of working arrangement with the school involved
>would make more sense."  - don't think this is practical given the volume of
>vandalism coming from so many different school IPs, compared to our current
>level of resources. ( e.g. Wikipedians)  We can always allow students to
>create accounts, so the impact on good users is minimized.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:156.3.138.6 - just blocked this one,
>after they started vandalizing immediately after coming off of a block.  I
>looked at a sample of edits from this IP address and don't see any positive
>contributions.  Just vandalism.  There is a large {{schoolblock}} template
>at the top that explains that users can create accounts and edit with
>those.
>
>Unless someone wants and can take the time to contact this school and the
>numerous others, I don't see any other choice at this point.
>
As long as there is no attempt to deal with the school administrations
the problem will never be solved.  All we'll have is short term
paper-overs.  If these schools had been dealt with correctly from the
beginning the problem now would not seem so overwhelming.

Ec


body:
William Pietri wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Not at all.  That's a simplistic solution.  Such blocks would have an
>>effect of blocking all users from the school, including the good ones
>>who do not condone vandalism.  Developping some kind of working
>>arrangement with the school involved would make more sense.  Work with
>>them to identify and deal with the offenders at a local level.  Find out
>>if they have local policies requiring students to log on that would lead
>>to a possible identification of which users were on line at the time
>>that the vandalism took place.
>>
>>
>Might this call for some sort of bot that watches for IP range warnings
>and sends emails to any contacts listed on the talk page for the IP? The
>system would take a while to get started, but it seems like it would
>help close a feedback loop that is now often slow or broken.
>
Absolutely.  Talking to people is always a good way to solve problems.
It will take a while to build contact lists, but it's always good to
srive for long-term solutions.

Ec


from_name: Robert Horning

body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:
> The question here isn't about notability. The two examples given by geni are
> well notable in Israel and Hebrew-speaking culture (even those who are for
> the deletion of all porn articles will say that). The problem is that the
> articles aren't judged on a case-by-case basis, if they have anything to do
> with porn, it is very likely that they will be very quickly speedy deleted.
> You can't ban a whole subject on a wikipedia just because you don't like it.
> By the way, I am well aware of what goes on on the English Wikipedia as I am
> more active there than on the Hebrew one and I'm not saying the Hebrew
> Wikipedia needs to allow articles on many esoteric porn actors like en but
> by the same token they can't just delete articles on porn (especially not
> notable subjects) without passing a vote to make this policy and without
> complying with WMF guidelines.
>
> Thanks,
> Yonatan
>
There are often times "informal" or "defacto" policies, that while they
are not necessarily "ratified" or "official", do tend to influence the
decisions of administrators on a given project.  I will note especially
on en.wikibooks this has been a fairly common practice, although efforts
to move some of the unofficial policies (even when written down) into an
official status has some momentum.  It would take somebody with a
sociology degree to try and explain why some policies may get this
defacto status over others, but it is something I have seen especially
on the smaller wikis.  The larger communities tend to be more formal
mainly because there is usually somebody to challenge the policy unless
it is official.  Both that and there tends to be less communication
between the admins on larger projects to discuss general philosophies.

Certainly by almost any measure, he.wikipedia has a much smaller
community than en.wikipedia, so you shouldn't expect the same sort of
rigid social heirarchy and policy structure to be the same on both projects.

I will also admit that smaller projects have a tendancy of being
influenced by a single individual or a small group of like minded
individuals that can push their opinions onto the rest of the project.
As long as there is room for opposing viewpoints and a chance to reverse
policies, I don't see this as a a serious problem.  At the extreme is
when somebody can't edit due to significant differences in opinions, and
the people opposing the content editing is an an administrator or
bureaucrat position.

The added problem here is that pornography is also a very strong
religious issue, and is also illegal in many places as well... even
"softcore" porn.  The issues and justifications for keeping it is
similar to arguments that can be made about articles or books (for
Wikibooks) about engaging in illegal activities.  This became a major
issue on en.wikibooks when the "Manual of Crime" was created, which was
more or less a how-to book about engaging in various criminal activities
such as money laundering, extortion, rape, and murder.  This book (with
a strong prompting by Jimbo) was eventually deleted, and policies now
exist to keep similar content from being created.  Still, the arguments
about where the line to censor Wikimedia projects against content of
this nature is an ongoing point of discussion, as clearly some content
is simply too far "out there" to reasonably consider worth our time.

One of the strong arguments in favor of removing some of this material
is also "how much does this detract from the main mission of the
project?"  If keeping a specific kind of content is going to generate so
much controversy that it keeps the rest of the project from being
written, perhaps as a practical matter it should simply be banned and
deleted.  It should be noted that this says nothing about the nature of
the content, but is more a way to cope with the social nature that we
all have, and the fact that some things certainly would be much more
controversial in some cultures than others.  Porn on the Dutch Wikipedia
may not be controversial at all, but it would be a huge deal on the
Arabic Wikipedia., for example.  But articles about the Aryan Nations
and other neo-Nazi groups would have problems on the German Wikipedia
instead.  This certainly was the excuse that was used for removing the
video game books from en.wikibooks, even though it is clear that writing
a book about the video game "America's Army" (one of the larger books
formerly on Wikibooks) can hardly be called writing about illegal activity.

-- Robert Horning


subject: [WikiEN-l] Conservapedia

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>>
>>
>>>On Thu, 8 Mar 2007, "Steve Bennett" wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>These arguments seem to be predicated on the false assumption
>>>>that any
>>>>English speaker can write equally well in British or US spelling.
>>>>It's
>>>>not the case. Most Americans think "tyre" is a typo, not a British
>>>>spelling.
>>>>
>>>>
>>They never tyre of their differences. :-)
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>So, how do the British spell "Nineveh?"
>
See John Masefield's poem "Cargoes" for an example.

Ec


body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> Then you need to go make your arguments to the folks on that Wiki or
> fork the Hebrew Wikipedia
> and head off on your own if you cannot make headway. The folks here are
> not going to dictate to
> another group to do something contrary to their culture. It's an open
> internet after all.
>
> Good luck.
> :-)
>
> Jeff
>
If accounts are being blocked because of content editing issues like
this, it makes trying to make a persuasive argument to overturn a policy
difficult or even impossible to make.  I just got through with one of
these content editing disputes where it became registered user vs.
admin, and the ordinary user had his account blocked.  There were other
issues involved here too, but if you can't make your case in the first
place, you can't even get started to make a counter argument.

As far as doing a full fork of a project, I would agree that is always
an option, but it is an option of very last resort.  And something that
I hope is not encouraged at all except in the most extreme situations.
At best a fork will divide the community with redundant efforts
happening for the same general effort (such as happened with the
es.wikipedia some time ago).  Even then, the move to make a fork will
create so much ill will for everybody involved, including or especially
with the people who create the fork.  There is no reason to allow a
group to take over a project because you have some ideological differences.

--Robert Horning


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] [Fwd: Wikibooks e-mail]Link spamming

body:
I'm forwarding an e-mail I got through the Wikibooks e-mail service.  As
I very rarely get spam this way (I think this is the first genuine one),
I think it does deserve some note and I'm letting others on this mailing
list to make sure you don't make the mistake of actually trying to make
the massive links to this guy's website.  I don't think that is a
serious problem with regular Wikibookians, but a mass reply to this guy
to let him know he has stepped over the line may be appropriate.

I also mention this to Wikibooks admins that there may be some attempts
at link spamming by this indivdual and others, depending on how far this
individual has gone through the Wikibooks user list.

--Robert Horning


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

body:
On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:

> As to the valid ISO 639 code.. It is valid indeed in the eyes of the ISO,
> but also according to the official POV of the Party of Communists in RM (I
> suspect), of the Transnistrian authorities and might have been in the eyes
> of the Soviet Authorities.

And I bet they drive on autobahns too. Bastards!

I think you just extended Godwin's Law.

- d.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
Robert Horning wrote:

>If accounts are being blocked because of content editing issues like
>this, it makes trying to make a persuasive argument to overturn a policy
>difficult or even impossible to make.  I just got through with one of
>these content editing disputes where it became registered user vs.
>admin, and the ordinary user had his account blocked.  There were other
>issues involved here too, but if you can't make your case in the first
>place, you can't even get started to make a counter argument.
>
>As far as doing a full fork of a project, I would agree that is always
>an option, but it is an option of very last resort.  And something that
>I hope is not encouraged at all except in the most extreme situations.
>At best a fork will divide the community with redundant efforts
>happening for the same general effort (such as happened with the
>es.wikipedia some time ago).  Even then, the move to make a fork will
>create so much ill will for everybody involved, including or especially
>with the people who create the fork.  There is no reason to allow a
>group to take over a project because you have some ideological differences.
>
>--Robert Horning
>
>
>
I completely agree with your comments here. However, wikipedia, and even
the wikis
which host other languages should not be platforms for porn sites to
hyperlink through
an encyclopedia. There's a lack of balance with internet porn sites
being listed
at enwiki at present. Most of these articles are simply little more than
advertising of particular
websites with links to their sites which allow search engines to scrape
Wikipedia
and its page rankings in order to get free advertising. What's sad is
there are a lot
of articles about these smut peddlers which are larger and more fleshed
out than
articles about technology companies or other forms of businesses which
do not market
internet porn.

The Search Engine project over at Wikia is certainly a good place for
the porn peddlers
to advertise -- where they have to PAY Wikia for these services.
Wikipedia should be scrubbed
of this content as much as possible and these folks articles moved to
Wikia and then billed for
the free advertising they are all getting. Over 60% of Google's revenues
at present come from
these porn peddlers.

Using lame "notability" arguments to justify writing articles about porn
sites and porno should be
discouraged on Wikipedia and a lot more content from Wikipedia should
get pushed to Wikia and then
billed, since most of these sites are doing little more than using
Wikipedia as an advertising engine for FREE.

The internet porn market was valued at over 30 billion dollars last
year. More than Novell, Microsoft, and most
large high tech companies. Time these people paid for their free
advertising.

I would suggest that all porn articles (porn is defined as articles
about porno sites Vivid Video, etc. ) be tagged and
moved to a "porn sites" category and billed with a click system rather
than junking up the encyclopedia. It's not
an issue of free speech as Erik Moeller eloquently stated, its an issue
of site misuse and commerce.

Jeff


from_name: Florence Devouard

body:
William Pietri wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
>> Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous
>> email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified
>> under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?
>>
>
>
> Is there possible compromise between your position and Eric's?
>
> There are plenty of companies in the credential validation business.
> Most of them are set up for slightly different uses, but I'm sure there
> are some creative ones we could work with.
>
> The notion is that for anybody who would like their credentials
> validated, they can pay a third party to do the work. The Foundation
> would only get involved to select trusted vendors and verify the vendor
> accounts on Wikipedia. In addition to verifying credentials, they could
> perhaps verify real names, or that the user has only one verified
> Wikipedia account. For the limited cases where the Foundation wanted
> things verified, they could cover the cost of the verification;
> otherwise, people would be on their own.
>
>
>
> Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on this topic, but I thought
> I'd suggest the possibility.
>
> William

Hello,

As of today, the Foundation does not have the infrastructure to deal
with this. We are working on a very limited staff, so the only
verifications that have ever been done were for example for candidates
on the board of Trustees. The office also know all the real identities
of the checkusers I was told. Practically, this can only be small scale.

But more importantly, it is important to limit the legal risk of the
Foundation. When someone is unhappy about a false statement about him or
a defamatory comment in an article, they rarely try to sue the author of
the statement (they will often try to hunt him down though). Usually,
they want to sue the Foundation. In most cases of course, if there is a
real problem, the bad content is fixed, but a few people behave in bad
faith, and try to get the opportunity of a mistake in an article to sue
us, get famous and get rich.

A very nasty guy could sue us and get us down. One of the ways we can
decrease our liability is by presenting Wikimedia Foundation pretty much
as a host provider rather than as a publisher/editor in the traditional
sense.

As long as editing rules are in the hands of the community, we have a
stronger case claiming that we are only host providers.
Other situations, including Wikimedia Foundation "deciding who the
arbitrators are", "deciding who should be blocked", "deciding what the
rules for deleting porn images are", "deciding which articles should be
deleted", "collecting information about users to give them access to
certain tools" etc.... are all actions which tends to indicate that the
Foundation is not only a host provider, but rather acting as the "editor
in chief".

Which is why, aside from any scalability issues, I think it is not the
Foundation business to enter into any credential controlling activity.
It makes sense for board candidates. It makes sense for checkuser
because there is a technical access to data with confidentiality
agreement. But getting involved in the process of collecting credentials
is something we better stay away from.

I think Erik is perfectly on agreement with me on this point. But I
wanted to explain in a clearer way the reasoning.

Cheers

ant


subject: [Commons-l] Join us now and free the video

body:
Nice chat with someone from FourDocs
(http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/) yesterday, about freeing content
or at least making it a useful resource for our projects.

"We'd love our stuff on Wikipedia. It's all Creative Commons!" They've
released a pile of documentaries under CC by-nc-nd, which is about as
paralysingly unfree as you can get and still tag it CC. We talked
about really-free-content licences - where you can take something and
reuse and remix it, and even make money off the result, without prior
permission - and how scary they are to those who've spent years
learning the ridiculous twists and turns needed to clear a piece of
footage for a single with-permission use.

That FourDocs could even manage CC-by-nc-nd with streaming only (not
downloadable files) was remarkable given the state of movie copyright.
Even the BBC, which is all about the content, has about half the staff
keen to release everything freely and widely and the other half
horrified at the idea.

Today's question: what the hell can we do to come up with something
big content producers will feel able to release under an actually free
licence? Something they can feel safe to relax control on? If we can
get one, we can get more. What can we do to get that first one?

(Thanks for not much to Creative Commons for making some versions of
CC by-sa 3.0 - not all, just some - not actually free licenses, with
onerous codification of moral rights that are default anyway in the
countries affected. Well done. And then you have wikis using licenses
like by-nc-nd that are nonsensical in a wiki context - thinking a No
Derivatives license doesn't contradict the whole idea of text anyone
can edit, because it's Creative Commons. Stallman was right again.)

- d.


from_name: Liviu Andronic

body:
On 3/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood. Otherwise
> > these are simply skipped.
> >
> .... Really ? ...

At times, this is the feeling that I have. At any rate, verbosity is
necessary to make my arguments clear.

 > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> verified: a
> > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > audience.
> >
> Hoi,
> You are plain wrong. You are also wrong in applying the policy in this
> way. The policy determines how new languages are to be accepted. The
> Moldovan Wikipedia already exists and it does have a valid ISO 639 code.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

Hello,

I have no intent to renew this
debate. This is simply to say that my view over
the entire issue has not radically changed. For the following (same)
reasons:


body:
On 3/2/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Umm... we've been over this a thousand times, Liviu. You have hashed
> and rehashed the same arguments. People see through your lies and
> distortion

Who's accusing others about lies and distortion, if not the master himself..
:)

every time, so trying again isn't going to do anything for
> you.
>
> Mark
>
> On 02/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood. Otherwise
> > these are simply skipped.
> >
> > If, at a given moment, the Board wishes to reconsider its position on
> the
> > Moldovan Wikipedia, please regard the following points:
> >
> > 1. In its current form, mo.wiki is promoting an ideology. There is a
> slight
> > difference between "not being of a neutral point of view" and promoting
> an
> > ideology.
> >
> > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> verified: a
> > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > audience.
> >
> > The Moldovan Wikipedia fails on all three. The valid ISO code and the
> code
> > used for its domain are a coincidence, simply because ISO requires a
> > separate linguistic entity while the domain doesn't host such content.
> There
> > is no uniqueness since it is standard Romanian written in a different
> > script. There is no viable community and audience.
> >
> > 3. A basic objective of providing high-quality content to writers of the
> > "Moldovan language" will be hardly achieved, if you expect contributions
> > written in the Moldovan alphabet to "flow in" (when an un-freeze
> happens).
> > The script is mainly a reality of the past, while this objective could
> be
> > easier achieved if the two relevant projects were merged.
> >
> > You may consider some of these arguments as personal POVs. I believe
> that
> > these are backed up by different sources that are supposed to be
> > western-neutral and academic (the links in my messages are not for
> making it
> > prettier), while others on logical reasoning.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Liviu
> >
> > On 2/28/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hoi,
> > > According to what Erik wrote the other day, the pillars are, at this
> > > moment, not part of a "must have" doctrine for Wikipedia projects.
> Given
> > > that the WMF it self is not on firm grounds, how can you expect that
> the
> > > language committee is more firm. Having said that, you will fully
> > > misunderstand B?rto's position. Your verbiage  is just to cover that
> you
> > > do not want to address what is in front of you.
> > >
> > > Your whole argument is yet another political inspired tirade why
> things
> > > are as you see them. Again, political arguments do not wash.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >     GerardM
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice chat with someone from FourDocs
> (http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/) yesterday, about freeing content
> or at least making it a useful resource for our projects.
>
> "We'd love our stuff on Wikipedia. It's all Creative Commons!" They've
> released a pile of documentaries under CC by-nc-nd, which is about as
> paralysingly unfree as you can get and still tag it CC. We talked
> about really-free-content licences - where you can take something and
> reuse and remix it, and even make money off the result, without prior
> permission - and how scary they are to those who've spent years
> learning the ridiculous twists and turns needed to clear a piece of
> footage for a single with-permission use.
>
> That FourDocs could even manage CC-by-nc-nd with streaming only (not
> downloadable files) was remarkable given the state of movie copyright.
> Even the BBC, which is all about the content, has about half the staff
> keen to release everything freely and widely and the other half
> horrified at the idea.
>
> Today's question: what the hell can we do to come up with something
> big content producers will feel able to release under an actually free
> licence? Something they can feel safe to relax control on? If we can
> get one, we can get more. What can we do to get that first one?
>

We already have the US Federal government. Given that no one else has
followed that I'm not sure the position that if we can get one content
producer  to do it they will all follow will work too well.

Sometimes companies will do it as a one off (the new scientist
published a copyleft article a few years back) but given that their
entire profit model is based around controlling content I can't see
that becoming widespread.

If we can't even get public libraries to cooperate (response to asking
if I could use some of their scans of PD work under CC-BY-SA I get
"yes you can use it on your website" no helpful.). I don't think we
have much of a chance with companies who's entire operating model is
based around content control.

So in terms of choice of targets public libraries, museums  and the
various national archives might have a slightly higher chance of
success.

> (Thanks for not much to Creative Commons for making some versions of
> CC by-sa 3.0 - not all, just some - not actually free licenses, with
> onerous codification of moral rights that are default anyway in the
> countries affected. Well done. And then you have wikis using licenses
> like by-nc-nd that are nonsensical in a wiki context - thinking a No
> Derivatives license doesn't contradict the whole idea of text anyone
> can edit, because it's Creative Commons. Stallman was right again.)

However given the number of homespun lisences that add wierd and
contradictory terms (you may use this under the GPL as long as you ask
permission first) I don't think we can really blame CC for that one.

--
geni


body:
On 09/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Today's question: what the hell can we do to come up with something
> > big content producers will feel able to release under an actually free
> > licence? Something they can feel safe to relax control on? If we can
> > get one, we can get more. What can we do to get that first one?

> We already have the US Federal government. Given that no one else has
> followed that I'm not sure the position that if we can get one content
> producer  to do it they will all follow will work too well.

I mean one of the TV production companies.

(In any case, don't you know that US government PD is just an
Americocentric imperialist trick to deny exposure to the European
Space Agency?)

> Sometimes companies will do it as a one off (the new scientist
> published a copyleft article a few years back) but given that their
> entire profit model is based around controlling content I can't see
> that becoming widespread.

No, their entire profit model is based around selling ads.

Really. In commercial television, the ads are the only thing they care
about. The programming really is for filling the gaps. Not owning it
is not a barrier.

That's why the BBC is completely different as an entirely
content-driven enterprise.

See, this is why I think it's more about habits of thinking, and why
getting one would help get others.

> So in terms of choice of targets public libraries, museums  and the
> various national archives might have a slightly higher chance of
> success.

I see no reason not to hammer at this one as well.

(Various people are still working on chipping away at the BBC ...)

> > (Thanks for not much to Creative Commons for making some versions of
> > CC by-sa 3.0 - not all, just some - not actually free licenses, with
> > onerous codification of moral rights that are default anyway in the
> > countries affected. Well done. And then you have wikis using licenses
> > like by-nc-nd that are nonsensical in a wiki context - thinking a No
> > Derivatives license doesn't contradict the whole idea of text anyone
> > can edit, because it's Creative Commons. Stallman was right again.)

> However given the number of homespun lisences that add wierd and
> contradictory terms (you may use this under the GPL as long as you ask
> permission first) I don't think we can really blame CC for that one.

No, I do think we can. "Free content? Oh, that's that Creative Commons
thing, we're that. Yep." "Um, no, not quite ..."

The practical problem for actual free content is that CC is claiming
to be *the* new model that's an alternative to all rights reserved.

- d.


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Telegraph article on Essjay

body:
On 08/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary at xinki.org.uk> wrote:
> I dropped the journalist who wrote this article:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/06/wwiki106.xml
>
> a note commenting on a few errors and she corrected it to this version:
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/07/nspam207.xml
>
> which is more accurate.

And, entertainingly, omits the final paragraph of the previous version
which mentions "Regrettheerror.com, a website that reports on
corrections in the media". The irony is sweet.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Avi Wiki

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
  Which may be why going to a user-to-user web-of-trust paradigm, with certain well-respected editors (who may or may not be board members, but are acting ina private capacity) may be better.

  - --Avi
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ie4Vt8qg81e1cHScE2x/qGQ=
=QWsw
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wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
  1. Re: Proposal for simplified credentials model (Florence Devouard)
From: Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 13:07:04 +0100
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for simplified credentials model

William Pietri wrote:
> Florence Devouard wrote:
>> Many editors of huge quality are not willing to provide their real name.
>> Why would they consider sending this information to a totally anonymous
>> email address handled by volunteers, who are not necessarily identified
>> under their real name and have signed no confidentiality agreement them ?
>>
>
>
> Is there possible compromise between your position and Eric's?
>
> There are plenty of companies in the credential validation business.
> Most of them are set up for slightly different uses, but I'm sure there
> are some creative ones we could work with.
>
> The notion is that for anybody who would like their credentials
> validated, they can pay a third party to do the work. The Foundation
> would only get involved to select trusted vendors and verify the vendor
> accounts on Wikipedia. In addition to verifying credentials, they could
> perhaps verify real names, or that the user has only one verified
> Wikipedia account. For the limited cases where the Foundation wanted
> things verified, they could cover the cost of the verification;
> otherwise, people would be on their own.
>
>
>
> Personally, I don't have much of an opinion on this topic, but I thought
> I'd suggest the possibility.
>
> William

Hello,

As of today, the Foundation does not have the infrastructure to deal
with this. We are working on a very limited staff, so the only
verifications that have ever been done were for example for candidates
on the board of Trustees. The office also know all the real identities
of the checkusers I was told. Practically, this can only be small scale.

But more importantly, it is important to limit the legal risk of the
Foundation. When someone is unhappy about a false statement about him or
a defamatory comment in an article, they rarely try to sue the author of
the statement (they will often try to hunt him down though). Usually,
they want to sue the Foundation. In most cases of course, if there is a
real problem, the bad content is fixed, but a few people behave in bad
faith, and try to get the opportunity of a mistake in an article to sue
us, get famous and get rich.

A very nasty guy could sue us and get us down. One of the ways we can
decrease our liability is by presenting Wikimedia Foundation pretty much
as a host provider rather than as a publisher/editor in the traditional
sense.

As long as editing rules are in the hands of the community, we have a
stronger case claiming that we are only host providers.
Other situations, including Wikimedia Foundation "deciding who the
arbitrators are", "deciding who should be blocked", "deciding what the
rules for deleting porn images are", "deciding which articles should be
deleted", "collecting information about users to give them access to
certain tools" etc.... are all actions which tends to indicate that the
Foundation is not only a host provider, but rather acting as the "editor
in chief".

Which is why, aside from any scalability issues, I think it is not the
Foundation business to enter into any credential controlling activity.
It makes sense for board candidates. It makes sense for checkuser
because there is a technical access to data with confidentiality
agreement. But getting involved in the process of collecting credentials
is something we better stay away from.

I think Erik is perfectly on agreement with me on this point. But I
wanted to explain in a clearer way the reasoning.

Cheers

ant

---------------------------------
Bored stiff? Loosen up...
Download and play hundreds of games for free on Yahoo! Games.


subject: [Wikitech-l] 1.9.3 rebuildall.php hangs with errors

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

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> The rebuildall.php script in MediaWiki 1.9.3 hangs after importing the
> enwiki-20070206 XML dump during text search rebuilding.
>
> The import loaded 4,500,000 pages (1,500,000 articles) and completed.
> When rebuildall.php is invoked, the text search reports
> 2 X the number of pages (9,500,000+), runs till it reaches this number,
> then deadlocks.

The page numbers reported are the page_id; it runs in chunked batches
through the ID space.

(Having a much larger maximum ID number than total number of pages may
indicate that this is your second import on the database. It may throw
off some timing estimates in reporting, but should otherwise be harmless.)

> Thread state is NS (stopped).
>
> There is no state information when attempts are made to use gdb and
> attach to the process.

The text index rebuild script does three things:

1) Drops the fulltext index on the table for faster import

2) Inserts the normalized text for all articles into the search table

3) Re-adds the search index.

This last step is a single ALTER TABLE query, but may take a long time;
potentially a *VERY* long time on a en.wikipedia-sized database. No
progress information is reported back from MySQL, so the script just has
to wait for it to finish.

If you look in the MySQL server's list of open processes, you'll
probably see the ALTER TABLE running; you'd also probably see it in top,
and could gdb or strace the server process.

If you like, you can edit rebuilall.php or rebuildtextindex.php and
comment out the functions that call the drop- and re-add bits:

  //dropTextIndex( $database );
  rebuildTextIndex( $database );
  //createTextIndex( $database );

That would potentially take longer to run, however, as it would be doing
a lot more intermediate work on the index.

Alternatively if you're not even using the MySQL-based search, you might
just disable it altogther.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
On 3/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> No, their entire profit model is based around selling ads.
>
> Really. In commercial television, the ads are the only thing they care
> about.

Well that and getting people to make premium rate calls.

>The programming really is for filling the gaps. Not owning it
> is not a barrier.
>

And unless you have an ND licence people will cut out the ads (yes I
know they do that anyway). Going by the fuss over TiVo TV companies
don't like you doing that.

> No, I do think we can. "Free content? Oh, that's that Creative Commons
> thing, we're that. Yep." "Um, no, not quite ..."
>
> The practical problem for actual free content is that CC is claiming
> to be *the* new model that's an alternative to all rights reserved.

However that is probably better delt with by fixing the GFDL than
moaning about CC. Pure GFDL is not by any reasonable standards a free
lisence either.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Approved BOT Code

body:
On 3/9/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> WP:AWB is also used, though that may be closed source.

I think it went open source when the original author moved on to other
things. It's worked out pretty well.

Steve


body:
On 09/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > The practical problem for actual free content is that CC is claiming
> > to be *the* new model that's an alternative to all rights reserved.

> However that is probably better delt with by fixing the GFDL than
> moaning about CC. Pure GFDL is not by any reasonable standards a free
> lisence either.

It needs both. I've noted on [[Commons talk:Licensing]] that CC's
actions are *actively damaging* to Wikimedia's interests right now -
and we need to make sure this doesn't happen again. Jimbo is on the
board of CC, which may help.

- d.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
> Yeah, I can see why that might be misleading. To respond to the post,
> users just have to go use the textarea at the bottom, but to reply to
> a user directly, you can click on that link. Most of our users respond
> to each other's talk page on a discussion so the new messages
> indicator lights up for them, and this link comes in handy for that.

It seems this extension doesn't support threaded discussion, which
limits its usefulness.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Why have admins of unblock-en-l blocked me?

body:
It becomes an issue when somebody espouses racism in every post and
uses it to personally attack others. "You guys won't listen to me
because you must all be Koreans", for example.

Mark

On 08/03/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> > Because you are a racist :-) You probably even deny the indigenous
> > status of the Ainu.
>
> I would hope that's not the reason... if we were to block people for
> holding objectionable opinions (even exceedingly objectionable ones), I
> could submit a very long list of names of people to be blocked,
> including many admins!
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
You saying over and over that Moldovans say they speak Romanian. Check
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limba_moldoveneasca please where census
results indicate clearly that in fact the majority claimed their
native language as "Moldovan" (especially in rural areas).

You are also saying over and over that all Moldovans hate Cyrillic, or
that nobody uses it today. It is still taught in schools in
Transnistria. You say this is something that kids don't want.
Honestly, when I was in primary school or secondary school, I would
not have cared if they taught us English in the Hebrew alphabet and
told us we were Martians. Since when do kids care so much about
school?

The bottom line is that there are people who use Cyrillic, as well as
many many people who still call their native tongue "Moldovan", both
of which you constantly try to negate using lies and distortion. It is
an undeniable fact.

Mark

On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/2/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Umm... we've been over this a thousand times, Liviu. You have hashed
> > and rehashed the same arguments. People see through your lies and
> > distortion
>
> Who's accusing others about lies and distortion, if not the master himself..
> :)
>
>
> every time, so trying again isn't going to do anything for
> > you.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 02/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood. Otherwise
> > > these are simply skipped.
> > >
> > > If, at a given moment, the Board wishes to reconsider its position on
> > the
> > > Moldovan Wikipedia, please regard the following points:
> > >
> > > 1. In its current form, mo.wiki is promoting an ideology. There is a
> > slight
> > > difference between "not being of a neutral point of view" and promoting
> > an
> > > ideology.
> > >
> > > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> > verified: a
> > > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > > audience.
> > >
> > > The Moldovan Wikipedia fails on all three. The valid ISO code and the
> > code
> > > used for its domain are a coincidence, simply because ISO requires a
> > > separate linguistic entity while the domain doesn't host such content.
> > There
> > > is no uniqueness since it is standard Romanian written in a different
> > > script. There is no viable community and audience.
> > >
> > > 3. A basic objective of providing high-quality content to writers of the
> > > "Moldovan language" will be hardly achieved, if you expect contributions
> > > written in the Moldovan alphabet to "flow in" (when an un-freeze
> > happens).
> > > The script is mainly a reality of the past, while this objective could
> > be
> > > easier achieved if the two relevant projects were merged.
> > >
> > > You may consider some of these arguments as personal POVs. I believe
> > that
> > > these are backed up by different sources that are supposed to be
> > > western-neutral and academic (the links in my messages are not for
> > making it
> > > prettier), while others on logical reasoning.
> > >
> > > Regards,
> > > Liviu
> > >
> > > On 2/28/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > According to what Erik wrote the other day, the pillars are, at this
> > > > moment, not part of a "must have" doctrine for Wikipedia projects.
> > Given
> > > > that the WMF it self is not on firm grounds, how can you expect that
> > the
> > > > language committee is more firm. Having said that, you will fully
> > > > misunderstand B?rto's position. Your verbiage  is just to cover that
> > you
> > > > do not want to address what is in front of you.
> > > >
> > > > Your whole argument is yet another political inspired tirade why
> > things
> > > > are as you see them. Again, political arguments do not wash.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >     GerardM
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Wikitech-l] postcomment extension

body:
On 3/9/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> It's pretty basic. You can see it in action here:
>
> http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Transfer-Cassette-Tape-to-Computer

I was a bit disappointed (and surprised) that "reply to ......." sends
a message to their talk page, rather than an indented reply to the
thread. The latter behaviour would have been quite useful (and
unique).

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3  (and Wikipedia)

body:
I have completed analysis of all downloaded images from Wikipedia for
the last dump of enwiki-20070206.  I ran across something that may be of
interest.  When images are uploaded and contain unicode HTML strings in
the filenames, they are not getting converted into unicode utf8
characters after being uploaded.  MediaWiki is simply storing them based
upon absolute filename.  This is itself is not a problem for downloading
images or rendering, but
may cause invalid references during XML dump import if the programs
reading the XML data attempt to render the names as utf8.

The following images were identified to contain HTML unicode tags in the
filenames themselves in the last dump (not a large number of them, but
interesting).

&-20013;&-33775;&-27665;&-22283;&-20840;&-22294;.jpg
Portret_konny_genera&-322;a_Ignacego_Kruszewskiego.jpg
AM_Pozna&-324;.PNG
H?seyinK&-305;vr&-305;ko&-287;lu.jpg
S&-322;upsk-_Bulwar_nad_rzek&-261;_S&-322;upi&-261;.JPG
Braille&-12288;Writer.jpg
Ra&-1513;&-1493;&-1500;&-1497;_&-1504;&-1514;&-1503;&-1502;&-1493;&-1511;&-1496;&-1503;.jpg

&-1505;&-1490;&-1492;_&-1490;&-1497;&-1497;&-1501;_&-1490;&-1497;&-1512;.jpg

Stanis&-322;aw_Kania.jpg

It may make sense to render the names in utf8 instead of HTML unicode
strings during upload.

Jeff


body:
I think this is a big misunderstanding on your part. The existance of
a Wikipedia in a linguistic entity does not indicate any level of
difference from other Wikipedias' languages. It does not claim that it
is a "language" or a "dialect".

We have Wikipedias in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, and Serbo-Croatian.
It's a bit of a paradox, if we have Wikipedias in the first 3, we
shouldn't have one in the fourth logically.

But this problem is non-existant from a linguistic standpoint
precisely for the reason I stated above. All four are linguistic
entities, despite the fact that Serbo-Croatian is an "umbrella" entity
that allows for the use of the other three. As long as there is a
reason to have these Wikis separate (ie, unless BCS people can agree
to a merger), they will be separate.

Now, I think everybody here knows by now that you would be willing to
merge mo and ro Wikipedias with a script conversion system on
ro.wikipedia. That is fine. Nobody here objects to such a system. What
we do object to is that at this very moment, the proposal has very
little support from the Romanian Wikipedian community. You have been
told many times that you are welcome to try to test the waters,
organize a poll at ro.wp, try to convince people of the utility and
validity of such a system, but you keep complaining to this list about
how it's not your responsibility and about how WE need to do
something.

How can you have not figured out by now that with hundreds of e-mails
repeating the exact same thing in so many words, you are not only
failing to change anything, you are actually making people more and
more firmly against the position you represent?

Mark

On 09/03/07, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > > Verbosity is a prerequisite for my arguments to be understood. Otherwise
> > > these are simply skipped.
> > >
> > .... Really ? ...
>
> At times, this is the feeling that I have. At any rate, verbosity is
> necessary to make my arguments clear.
>
>
>  > 2. According to the recently adopted Language proposal
> > > policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WM:LPP>- that I suppose can be
> > > applied to existing wikipedias to determine their
> > > "validity" - there are three "essential" requisites that can be
> > verified: a
> > > valid ISO-639 code, language singularity and a viable community and
> > > audience.
> > >
> > Hoi,
> > You are plain wrong. You are also wrong in applying the policy in this
> > way. The policy determines how new languages are to be accepted. The
> > Moldovan Wikipedia already exists and it does have a valid ISO 639 code.
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
>
>
> Hello,
>
> I have no intent to renew this
> debate. This is simply to say that my view over
> the entire issue has not radically changed. For the following (same)
> reasons:
>
> From what I know, the tiny wikipedias (like the Moldovan one) were created ?
> partir de a "list" with no formal voting and without following any specific
> guidelines or policy. On this basis, I believe that the newly adopted policy
> could be used  for determining the "correctness" of wikipedias that  were
> created in "obscure" ways. In any case, it  is not up to me to decide such a
> usage.
>
> As to the valid ISO 639 code.. It is valid indeed in the eyes of the ISO,
> but also according to the official POV of the Party of Communists in RM (I
> suspect), of the Transnistrian authorities and might have been in the eyes
> of the Soviet Authorities. [On a side note: I do not understand how you
> expect my arguments to be completely apolitical over an issue that is pure
> politics: considering Moldovan as a linguistic entity.]
>
> However, scholarly research - Western included - disputes this. A lot
> of linguists
> - if not most - do (with the notable exception of Vasile Stati; notable,
> because he is the one). The regulating body of the "Moldovan language" -
> with regard to the Constitution - disputes this. Less important in the eyes
> of the WMF, natives dispute this (though still waiting for someone from
> Transnistria here). Please follow the links  in  my  previous messages if
> you are not persuaded by this paragraph.
>
> And, probably most important  for the Board, the mo.wiki domain does  not
> host content in a linguistic entity different from the Romanian one. It
> simply  hosts transliterated Romanian content. I honestly believe that  it
> is wrong for  the Foundation to blindly follow the ISO specifications over
> this issue. It is also wrong for the Board to adopt - from the NPOV
> perspective, which should be respected even if certain flexibility is
> endorsed - a political POV over a linguistic/historical fact: at a given
> period, in a given region, Romanian was written with a different script.
>
> Regards,
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Telegraph article on Essjay

body:
On 08/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary at xinki.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I dropped the journalist who wrote this article:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/06/wwiki106.xml
>
> a note commenting on a few errors and she corrected it to this version:
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/03/07/nspam207.xml
>
> which is more accurate.
>
> To let people know :)
>
> --
> Gary Kirk
>
>
Just FYI, BBC News online are also good about correcting articles - their
newswatch facility almost in a sense allows moderated edits to articles by
readers. Certainly I've never had them *ignore* any contributions, though
they are dogmatic about some points (They refuse to see their biased use of
the term "Irish Republic" as unacceptable - it's not like Irish newswriters
use silly terms like British State for the United Kingdom).

Of course, some corrections should not have had to be made in the first
place.

Zoney
--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>No - if someone does not label themselves, we do not label them. If we
>do, that is against policy and should be righted.
>
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Node ue

Need I say more?

>Your usage of capital letters and inflammatory language is one of the
>lesser reasons why you (and all of your sockpuppets) are permanently
>banned from the English Wikipedia, the greaters reasons are your
>unwillingness to cooperate with the Wiki process and your extensive
>use of sockpuppets for malicious purposes. I am still not sure why you
>are listened to at all here or why you were trusted with admin privs
>at any foundation-run Wiki. And don't claim I am telling a non-truth
>here, the first person who claimed such things about you on
>mailinglists was Angela Beesley (on wikipedia-l), not me. I think most
>people afford her more credibility than they do you.
>
>
I think this speaks for itself:

http://nv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choinish%27%C4%AF%C4%AFh%C3%AD:Node_ue/Incidents

I am not banned from the English Wikipedia.   I am not going to post the
email threads with Mr. Wales
on this list to enlighten you on this topic, but you are flatly wrong
there.
I stay off that site to keep problems with trolls to a minimum and the
problems they cause there related to
the article about me on that site.

>
>
>>In essence, what I am saying here is that the OPENNESS and NPOV
>>viewpoints are PART OF THE ENGLISH WIKIPEDIA CULTURE. I agree
>>they are erstwhile concepts and important, but they are very much
>>European attitudes, and not all cultures embrace them the same way.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>What you forgot to mention is that you are the only active eitopr on
>that Wiki, and that you singlehandedly wrote that policy. We have yet
>to hear whether or not any other Cherokee speakers support it (I am
>not sure I even believe you are one yourself, considering you use a
>machine translation engine to write articles and your history of
>dishonesty at other projects).
>
>

I have spoken Cherokee since I was a child.  My great grandparents and
my grandmother are native speakers
and it was the first language I learned.  Machine assisted translation
is very helpful for converting words into Syllabary
instead of doing it by hand, which takes a lot longer.    Spoken and
written Cherokee are very different, BTW.

This is a personal attack and trolling does not belong on this list.
Mark, I feel bad that you engage in
sockpuppetry on other wikis and have to post something like this (Node
ue).  I won't be responding to
any more of your posts, BTW.

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Telegraph article on Essjay

body:
> (They refuse to see their biased use of
> the term "Irish Republic" as unacceptable - it's not like Irish newswriters
> use silly terms like British State for the United Kingdom).

How is "Irish Republic" biased? It's has exactly the same meaning as
"Republic of Ireland", it's just a different way of saying it. It's
probably wrong, strictly speaking, but it isn't biased. For something
to be biased it has to come from a particular POV, what POV are you
accusing the BBC of having?


body:
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. While cultural sensitivity is important,
it should not keep us from documenting things that are notable.

Incest is a taboo in many cultures, and many people are not willing to
discuss it in English.  That does not mean we do not have articles on
such a notable topic. We have articles on many indecent and disgusting
things on the English Wikipedia. Of course this will bring the
argument that English speakers have low moral standards, but I am sure
OTRS has received more than a few complaints about "indecent" content
on the English Wikipedia.

That you could simply eliminate an article about sex and sexuality
from any Wikipedia is beyond me, regardless of culture. It may be
taboo, but it is the fundamental root of any society. Although we may
pretend in discussions all we want that we were just wished into
existance by our parents, all mentally-able adults are aware on some
level that they are the result of the procreative process.

And even if we do not wish to talk about human sexuality, what about
animals? Animals have children too.

This is similar to the arguments against Blockinblox when s/he said
that articles about Sexuality should simply not exist at some
Wikipedias.

People may not talk about sex in public in a particular society, but
it is probably still going to the one of the most-searched-for terms
in Wikipedia in almost any culture.

If you don't personally want to write about sex, or make it a priority
to write it or make it a featured article if it is written, but at the
very least, there needs to be a foundation-wide discussion about
whether it would really be acceptable to delete a well-written article
on the topic if it were created.

Also, I'm curious as to what "your culture" is. Is it Cherokee?
Because you seem to claim some degree of proficiency in that language.
Or is it Creek? Because you claim that is your native language.
Perhaps it is Navajo. Or perhaps it is not Navajo, because you very
clearly do not have as deep an understanding of that culture as you
claim (you said my Navajo is incorrect because its word order differs
from English. I studied Navajo in college for three semesters, I think
I know that word order differs greatly from English, even if my Navajo
is not perfect.)

So I am not saying we must have such articles in all Wikipedias, but I
am saying we need to discuss this issue at a foundation level sooner
rather than later.

Mark

On 08/03/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> Yonatan Horan wrote:
>
> >Heh, as I said previously, the block was lifted within three days as it was
> >clear to more than one admin that I was erroneously blocked. I wouldn't have
> >brought this issue to foundation-l if attempts to resolve the issue on the
> >Hebrew Wikipedia had succeeded. All of what you're suggesting has already
> >been done and different compromises were already attempted. The other thing
> >is that while you may not be inclined to believe what I'm saying, the
> >community never decided this should be policy, it's just that some admins
> >enforce it as if it were policy.
> >
> >-Yonatan
> >
> >
> >
> Then you need to go make your arguments to the folks on that Wiki or
> fork the Hebrew Wikipedia
> and head off on your own if you cannot make headway. The folks here are
> not going to dictate to
> another group to do something contrary to their culture. It's an open
> internet after all.
>
> Good luck.
>
> :-)
>
> Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 3/9/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course you don't. The fact that continue it is equally pitiful.
>
> Please elaborate on your class-system idea of this list. I'm sure its
> very fascinating.
>
> -S
>
> On 3/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it was inappropriate. That's what matters here - what I
> > think, and what the list admins think.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 09/03/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hmm, sure. I also think administrative skepticism is > always <
> > > neccessary, regardless of the tally of charges. Demonization is always
> > > a very useful tool against people who have done something wrong, and
> > > is a very effective marginalizer.
> > >
> > > Your initial smarmy, condescending rant was totally inappropriate, and
> > > I was glad that George Herbert followed it up with a measured
> > > description of the problem.
> > >
> > > -S
> > >
> > > On 3/9/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > It becomes an issue when somebody espouses racism in every post and
> > > > uses it to personally attack others. "You guys won't listen to me
> > > > because you must all be Koreans", for example.
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > On 08/03/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > Because you are a racist :-) You probably even deny the indigenous
> > > > > > status of the Ainu.
> > > > >
> > > > > I would hope that's not the reason... if we were to block people for
> > > > > holding objectionable opinions (even exceedingly objectionable ones), I
> > > > > could submit a very long list of names of people to be blocked,
> > > > > including many admins!
> > > > >
> > > > > -Mark

Please stop trolling Mark here...

The reasons that our Asian user was removed from the list have been
explained.  That some of the unblock-en-l participants have also
vented that they don't like him is perhaps not the single most focused
calm response, but neither do they reflect a generic list intolerance
for minority opinions.

We didn't remove them from the list because they're personally
distasteful; we removed him from the list because he's abusive and he
absolutely should not still be seeing anyone else's unblock request
filings.

Had this been an official policy or position statement, it would also
have been inappropriate for Mark to mention that here.  But it was
just an informational response to queries.

I think it's unreasonable to expect us not to form personal opinions
regarding some of the unblock-en-l complaintants.  It's reasonable for
the community to insist that we still deal with them professionally,
and I think we're doing that.

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