from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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

What I'd like to see is how they're handling the diffs.  That'll be
interesting for formatted text.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE2fiwqTO+fYacSNoRAoTgAJ42R3ohC+QPz8BkV8ITM1dX+4aVGwCeJsOt
+lssIDWeWl+rh9Xelf4WWjI=
=CEpz
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: commons-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Eugene Zelenko

subject: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

body:
Hi!

On 8/9/06, Siebrand Mazeland <s.mazeland at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Based on Andre's comment I have an idea with a different approach that may
> help.
>
> What if MediaWiki would have a special page indicating which linked
> images/files on the wiki would have no actual file  available locally or on
> commons/a shared filestore? That way wiki administrators could more easily
> get insight in file/image red links and Commons administrators would have to
> delink 'off site' a lot less, since local wiki administrators would have a
> more comprehensive insight in their red links related to images/files;
> together with the Commons Ticker, I may even be no longer required to delink
> off-site if the admin 'does not feel like doing it.'
>
> I have searched http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org and haven't been able to find
> a feature request for such a feature at the moment. As far as I know this
> feature is currently not available, although functionality may be closely
> related to that of Special:Wantedpages. If this approach would serve both
> commons admins and local wiki admins, I think it would be worth trying to
> get this feature built.

See http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6220

With best regards,
Eugene.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Wildrick Steele

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
On 09/08/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
> the steward response of dropping the sysop flag worked to stop it
> spreading further.
>

Actually not. There weren't any stewards around and the perpetrator remained
sysopped for a full day, doing hundreds of random blocks and unblocks. We
had to wait for developer intervention to remove the flag in the database.
Quite a nonperformance for the otherwise well-functioning steward team.
We'll take Wikimania as a good excuse :-)

Cheers,
Wildrick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Vildricianus


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


list: wikien-l

from_name: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The page was created by "Thekohser", and deleted on his request -
>> "There is no such hotel. This article was intended for Sandbox. My
>> apologies." - which is fair enough, we've all accidentally created
>> something in the wrong namespace. I assume it was only ever intended
>> as a fictional mockup.
>>
>> "Thekohser" is Gregory Kohs, who is a reasonably active editor and
>> seems to have clue a'plenty. He is also the founder of, guess who...
>> http://mywikibiz.com/aboutus.html
>>
>> The edits for the company seem to be, nicely and transparently, done
>> under User:MyWikiBiz. Look through the contributions - there's nothing
>> hideously bad there.
>>
>> Paid-for editing is going to happen. We have it being done publicly,
>> cleanly, with standards and with clue. Not sure we've got much to
>> worry about.
>>
>> --
>> - Andrew Gray
>>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>>
>
> Paid for editing has already happened. 'tis a done deal. We have
> bounties, a reward board, the Encyclopedia Project, wikimoney etc. not
> to mention whatever isn't publicly recorded on Wikipedia or that I
> simply don't know about off hand, in addition to MyWikiBiz.
>
> Frankly, we should embrace this. Is not the Linux kernel much the
> better for the contributions by programmers whose companies have paid
> them to contribute? Is not Red Hat a pillar of the Free software
> community for sponsoring the development of so many things? Why not
> us?
>
> ~maru
>
Please note also: http://mywikibiz.com/eligibility.html wherein it is
clearly explained that your company must be notable and what that
entails. Seems transparent and legitimate to me.
-kc-


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Article bragging (was: Re: en: well on the way to
	... 2 million!)

body:
On 8/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Since late April, I've created [[Marc J. Rochkind]], [[Kumler,
> > > Illinois]], [[PALcode]], [[CYGM filter]], [[RGBE filter]],
> > > [[MySociety]], [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]], [[Smart terminal]], [[Smart
> > > Display]] and [[Ctelnet]]. (And a zillion redirectes.)
>
> > I notice that the common thread in all of these articles (except Eric
> > Harshbarger) was that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the
> > topic when I started writing them. Kind of a disturbing trend when you
> > think about it, if Wikipedia is mostly written by people who know
> > nothing about what they're writing about...
>
>
> Heh! That's how I wrote [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]] and [[Smart Display]].
> I saw both terms mentioned on Groklaw, didn't know what they meant so
> looked them up on Wikipedia (it's already a fantastically useful
> computer terminology guide - hence why the [[FOLDOC]] maintainer saw
> it and promptly wondered whether he should continue with FOLDOC at
> all. Since they didn't exist, I promptly researched them and wrote the
> articles. This is where a lot of my articles come from.
>

Oh yeah? Well I created (and am the sole contributor of) the article
[[American Eskimo]], the shining example of a perfect article. So there.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

body:
On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html

Does anyone really call it "wiki-crack"?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of MyWikiBiz's client's articles has been picked up by AfD. It's
> obviously going to be a pretty significant test case for the future of
> this kind of business, so it's worth while discussing it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Norman_Technologies
>
> My position is that Wikipedia's mission is absolutely not served by
> deleting this (or similar) articles. It's informative (could be more
> so!), it's neutral, and there are people out there looking for this
> kind of article. I would like to hear any arguments for deleting it.
>
> Now, is it just me, or do we have a serious bias against corporations?

Well, there's a natural reaction to anything that looks like corporate
advertising, but I wouldn't call it a "bias against corporations".

I don't see anything inherently wrong with MyWikiBiz, esp. since they
are pretty open about what they're doing.  But I also don't think
Wikipedia's mission is served by cluttering up the place with articles
on every small consulting firm in the US. This corporation has only 26
employees and the only citations are a local business journal.  Is
this really a significant enough company to make it into an
encyclopedia?


body:
!vote has my !vote.

On 8/9/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Again, delighted to still be subscribed. A bit worried about the notion of
> "voting", then again, the press don't have the proper term for it (hell,
> Wikipedia still doesn't. It's supposed to be "discussion", last I checked
> :P).
>
> --NSLE
>
> On 8/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 8/9/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> > > > http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html
> > >
> > > Does anyone really call it "wiki-crack"?
> >
> > Yeah, the Guardian does.
> >
> > (that was a wikiwisecrack)
> >
> > Steve
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup language:
http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html

We've been using MediaWiki as our office intranet over the years but
it's never been adopted to a level that we think it could be, because
of the requirement that users learn wiki markup. For this reason
we'll be ditching MediaWiki in our office next year for Apple's Wiki
Server.

The reason I'm posting this is simply put forward the view that I
hope WYSIWYG or some relevant variant will be developed for Wikimedia
projects in the near future, because I think the hurdles that stop
many people from participating on our office intranet apply equally
to Wikimedia projects. And the hurdle is not that wiki markup is
"difficult" or "hard to learn" but that it is intimidating and time-
consuming to learn.

I have little doubt that one day using wiki markup only to edit
websites like Wikipedia will be seen as an anachronism, even more so
as other alternatives to MediaWiki (such as Apple's Wiki Server) come
online, but there's a few hurdles to overcome yet and they're not all
technical ones as far as I can work out.

It's always surprised me that WYSIWYG editing has not been made a
high priority for Wikimedia, considering the fact that it was founded
on the idea of broad participation. Although technical difficulties
are often put forward as the reason, the biggest obstacle, it has
often seemed to me, is an installed base of Wikipedians who see wiki
markup as a way of protecting their territory and minimising
participation by others. I've even had people argue that wiki markup
is some kind of "intelligence" hurdle that people should have to
overcome before being allowed to edit Wikimedia projects. Somehow
this needs to be overcome if WYSIWYG is to gain traction and get a
higher priority it seems to me.

Thanks to those who have been working on WYSIWYG for MediaWiki,
particularly in trying to integrate FCKEditor, and I wish you well.
However, if integrating an editor into the current environment is so
difficult maybe there needs to be a new approach, such as developing
new software/syntax with some type of WYSIWYG editor built in from
the start? Worth a discussion at least, I should imagine.

Cheers,
Christiaan

P.S. I originally posted this to mediawiki-l at wikimedia.org but that
was probably the wrong list to post to.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, there's a natural reaction to anything that looks like corporate
> > advertising, but I wouldn't call it a "bias against corporations".
> >
> > I don't see anything inherently wrong with MyWikiBiz, esp. since they
> > are pretty open about what they're doing.  But I also don't think
> > Wikipedia's mission is served by cluttering up the place with articles
> > on every small consulting firm in the US. This corporation has only 26
> > employees and the only citations are a local business journal.  Is
> > this really a significant enough company to make it into an
> > encyclopedia?
>
> That definitely depends on what your definition of "significant
> enough" is. If we had room for only 10 corporations, I would say no.
> But we're not pressed for space, and unlike pure vanity articles (my
> name is Jim and I have a dog called Nelly!), this type of article
> meets a genuine need.
>
> I think there is a valid viewpoint that says "Wikipedia is the sum of
> human knowledge, except for a bit of total dross that doesn't interest
> anyone". However, a genuine company with 26 full time employees that
> has been around for 5 years and does some interesting things at the
> global level is not such dross.
>
> Purely and simply, is Wikipedia better off *with* this information
> than *without* it? If the answer is "without", then why? Because we
> saved a couple of kilobytes?

A case could be made that this is just as much a vanity article as a
personal bio.  It's not just the number of employees that makes it
insignificant for encyclopedic purposes.  If it was indeed doing
things interesting enough to be of encyclopedic note, someone other
than the local Charlotte Business Journal would be writing about them.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 8/9/06, Wildrick Steele <wildrick.steele at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Actually not. There weren't any stewards around and the perpetrator remained
>>sysopped for a full day, doing hundreds of random blocks and unblocks. We
>>had to wait for developer intervention to remove the flag in the database.
>>Quite a nonperformance for the otherwise well-functioning steward team.
>>We'll take Wikimania as a good excuse :-)
>>
>>
>
>Wikimania may have been part of the problem. Also, the request at
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions#Removal_of_access
>seems to have been lost amongst the noise of dozens of other requests,
>which for some reason, no longer get immediately archived, so it's not
>easy to see whether or not there are outstanding requests. Perhaps
>moving urgent requests to a separate section at the top would help in
>future. There is a (not-very-active) IRC channel at
>#wikimedia-stewards, but the #wikimedia channel is often a better
>place to find a steward in an emergency. I don't know whether either
>of these channels were tried before finding a developer.
>
>This might just be a sign that new steward elections are required.
>
>Angela.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
You should desysop any blocked admin until their block expires as a
matter of policy by instrumenting it in the software as
an explicit action with a flag placed by their name in the database. If
they are admins they should not
be getting blocked explicitly. It's an easy matter to identify admin
accounts and flag them if they are explicitly blocked as
opposed to getting caught in IP autoblock ranges and other sanctions.

IMHO.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge: explain NPOV in a sentence.

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

Dabljuh stated for the record:

> Actually I meant to be ad hominem ....

Would the list admins please ban (or at least moderate) this troll?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | These go to eleven. It's one louder, isn't
 sean at epoptic.com | it? It's not ten. --Nigel of Spinal Tap
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE2kWRMAt1wyd9d+URAmL9AJ9u2MNHvgeruZs4JzWuz7+/V5qJMQCdEyag
eRIkgKUTI6aYkhkcYZ7Tzng=
=iWLL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.

If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.

Getting paid to add entries to Wikipedia by the subject of the entries
is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest
issues.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.
>
> If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
> independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
> Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
> FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.
>
> Getting paid to add entries to Wikipedia by the subject of the entries
> is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest
> issues.
>
> --Jimbo
>

He put in a request for {{unblock}} on his talk page. Since it is highly
unlikely someone would want to undo your official action, I reviewed the
unblock and asked him to contact you instead.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
I have his phone number and will try to talk to him today.

Death Phoenix wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.
>>
>> If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
>> independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
>> Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
>> FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.
>>
>> Getting paid to add entries to Wikipedia by the subject of the entries
>> is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest
>> issues.
>>
>> --Jimbo
>>
>>
>
> He put in a request for {{unblock}} on his talk page. Since it is highly
> unlikely someone would want to undo your official action, I reviewed the
> unblock and asked him to contact you instead.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gordhan Das Valasai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Comprehensive template expansion size limit

body:
Unsubscribe this email from your messages.

On 8/9/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> I have in my working copy a set of changes introducing a comprehensive
> template expansion size limit. The limit is configurable (by
> $wgMaxArticleSize), and will probably be set to 1 MB on Wikimedia. This
> prevents a number of DoS vulnerabilities, such as the exponential argument
> substitution attack that we've known about for some time.
>
> The output size of template expansion has long been limited to 1MB,
> limiting
> several attacks. But it was possible to evade this limit by forcing the
> parser to parse a large chunk of text, and then throwing away the result,
> say by putting it into an unused template parameter. The new behaviour is
> to
> limit both the pre-expansion size and the post-expansion size.
>
> This may break some articles, that's why I'm posting this to wikipedia-l.
> In
> particular, it will break articles which use {{#switch}} or similar
> constructs to extract many small fragments of text from large
> pseudo-databases. This practice is extremely inefficient, and I'd very
> much
> like to see it discontinued on the editorial level. This feature will
> probably only break the most flagrant cases, where article parse times
> were
> in the tens of seconds. I'm sure the other developers would agree -- we
> would be very grateful if the remaining cases could be dealt with by
> policy,
> as much as possible. I've been having a discussion with some Wikipedians
> along these lines at:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:TransLink_(South_East_Queensland)_services
>
> When the limit is hit, there will be HTML comments in the parser output
> indicating the problem. For all articles which use more than 1KB of
> templates, there will be an HTML comment at the bottom of the parser
> output
> showing how close the article is to the size limit. This allows
> technically
> capable users to monitor and optimise the expansion size of their
> templates.
>
> At this stage I would like to invite comments. The we can move forward to
> a
> trial, perhaps in a few days, if there are no objections.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Gordhan Das Valasai,
Ph D Scholar,
MUET, Jamshoro, Sindh.
03332743180


body:
No, unfortunately, the only people I know who have access to it at
this point are developers who went to Apple's developer conference on
Monday, and who got a preview version of Mac OS X Server. And they're
under a NDA.

Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 1:46 PM, Plyd wrote:

> On 8/9/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
>> For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
>> wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup
>> language:
>> http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html
>
> Do you know a sandbox where we could try it ?
>
> Plyd


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 8/9/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:39:39 +0930
> "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > ...and your continued trolling is helping HOW, exactly?
>
> ... Same back to you?
>
> Maybe you're one of the people that go "If I ignore
> the problem hard enough, its gonna go away..."
>
> Since your statement appears to imply that you want
> constructive suggestions, here's one.
>
> Give WP:NPOV a "facts override" clause. That is,
> if something is a simple and verifiable fact, npov is
> not meant to relativate it when a majority of people
> are misinformed or simply don't like the information.
>
> Right now: Neurologist tries to change the neuron
> article so it says neurons regenerate (although slower
> with increasing age) and explains the dated myth as
> such. Then he gets bullied into leaving Wikipedia
> for "pushing his pov".
>
> With facts override: Neurologist succeeds, and
> ignorant idiots get their asses kicked.

That's exactly what every crackpot who has discovered "The TRUTH"
insists; they have the real facts, and all the reliable sources,
scientific studies, and peer reviewed articles in the world are simply
the work of "ignorant idiots".  And that's exactly the viewpoint that
got you banned from Wikipedia; you didn't care what the policies said,
or what reliable sources said, because you knew "The TRUTH", and
everyone else was simply ignorant.

Jay.


body:
On 8/9/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 13:55:51 -0400
> jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's exactly what every crackpot who has discovered "The TRUTH"
> > insists; they have the real facts, and all the reliable sources,
> > scientific studies, and peer reviewed articles in the world are simply
> > the work of "ignorant idiots".  And that's exactly the viewpoint that
> > got you banned from Wikipedia; you didn't care what the policies said,
> > or what reliable sources said, because you knew "The TRUTH", and
> > everyone else was simply ignorant.
> >
> > Jay.
>
> Er, yeah.
>
> Read again:
>
> >> Give WP:NPOV a "facts override" clause. That is,
> >> if something is a simple and verifiable fact, npov is
> >> not meant to relativate it when a majority of people
> >> are misinformed or simply don't like the information.
>
> I said verifiable (which also implies reliable sources)

The last time you argued for "simple and verifiable fact", they were
of the "everybody knows it's true" and "it's obvious" sort, but not
the kind that could actually be found in any reliable sources.

> So you're saying... WP's priority is to be neutral rather
> than factual? Are you... Hmm... I see, that explains a couple
> of things.

So you're saying... your priority is to invent strawman arguments for
me rather than address the issues? Are you... Hmm... I see, that
explains a couple of things.

Jay.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Since late April, I've created [[Marc J. Rochkind]], [[Kumler,
> > Illinois]], [[PALcode]], [[CYGM filter]], [[RGBE filter]],
> > [[MySociety]], [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]], [[Smart terminal]], [[Smart
> > Display]] and [[Ctelnet]]. (And a zillion redirectes.)

> I notice that the common thread in all of these articles (except Eric
> Harshbarger) was that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the
> topic when I started writing them. Kind of a disturbing trend when you
> think about it, if Wikipedia is mostly written by people who know
> nothing about what they're writing about...

Heh! That's how I wrote [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]] and [[Smart Display]].
I saw both terms mentioned on Groklaw, didn't know what they meant so
looked them up on Wikipedia (it's already a fantastically useful
computer terminology guide - hence why the [[FOLDOC]] maintainer saw
it and promptly wondered whether he should continue with FOLDOC at
all. Since they didn't exist, I promptly researched them and wrote the
articles. This is where a lot of my articles come from.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Article bragging (was: Re: en: well on the way to ... 2
	million!)

body:
On 8/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since late April, I've created [[Marc J. Rochkind]], [[Kumler,
> Illinois]], [[PALcode]], [[CYGM filter]], [[RGBE filter]],
> [[MySociety]], [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]], [[Smart terminal]], [[Smart
> Display]] and [[Ctelnet]]. (And a zillion redirectes.)

Ok, my turn. Recently I've created:
[[Adam Elliot]] (how did recent an Oscar-winning director not have an article?)
[[Adam Elliot (missionary)]] (well, I couldn't let the ambiguity go could I....)
[[Eric Harshbarger]] (builds lego stuff, I'm sure he'll get AfD'd)
[[Kate McTell]] - I did a lot of research on this almost totally
non-notable blues singer, who just happened to be married to a blues
legend. I was hoping to get paid for the article, but the person
offering the reward went AWOL 2 months ago :/
[[Mount Buggery]] - couldn't help myself
[[Smooth call]] (poker term)
[[Exposing to the right]] - photography term
[[John Long (climber)]]

And just to match your [[Smart Display]], I have [[Smartglass]]...

I notice that the common thread in all of these articles (except Eric
Harshbarger) was that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the
topic when I started writing them. Kind of a disturbing trend when you
think about it, if Wikipedia is mostly written by people who know
nothing about what they're writing about...

Steve


from_name: Plyd

body:
On 8/9/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
> For your interest, it looks like Apple has come to the party with a
> wiki of its own, without the need for people to learn markup language:
> http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html

Do you know a sandbox where we could try it ?

Plyd


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
I just got off the phone with MyWikiBiz and reached what I think is a
very favorable agreement about this sort of thing.

The big problem with paid editing on wikipedia is NOT that someone is
getting paid to write, but rather that this causes a rather obvious
conflict of interest and appearance of impropriety.  This was my
problem, and they immediately saw why this was not in our interest or
theirs.

Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground
would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV
articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for
them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being
financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia
upon their own independent judgment.  This will avoid, for MyWikiBiz, a
lot of sad fighting with us which is likely to be ugly and unproductive
all around.

This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at
the same time supporting the creation of high quality NPOV content.  I
am very pleased with this idea.--~~~~


body:
On 8/9/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
> Monday, and who got a preview version of Mac OS X Server. And they're
> under a NDA.

A leaky one! :)

Steve


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/9, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:

> You know we are talking about thousands of images... right?
>
> Well you can start at [[Category:Against policy]] and from there it's
> a long slog through [[Category:Unknown]] subcategories... all of them
> more than 7 days old that is. Which is most of them. You can use
> messages from [[User:Pfctdayelise/Translations]] in edit summaries if
> you like.

I know that, I am going through subcategories of [[Category:Unknown]]
sometimes, and do some deletions here and there.

What I was looking for was more a list of images that would already
have been deleted, if it were not being used on projects.

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


from_name: HappyDog

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Jenkins" <nickpj at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: 09 August 2006 08:50
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Interesting behaviour of "ISBN" magic word

> > > RFCs and PMIDs are supported.
> >
> > Ah, so I see. Is all this documented anywhere?
>
> Do you mean formally or informally ?
>
> If you mean informally, then:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PMID
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN
> (couldn't see one for RFC, as [[WP:RFC]] is about a Wikipedia process).
>

Also:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:ISBN
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:RFC
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/Magic_links

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Siebrand Mazeland

body:
Based on Andre's comment I have an idea with a different approach that may
help.

What if MediaWiki would have a special page indicating which linked
images/files on the wiki would have no actual file  available locally or on
commons/a shared filestore? That way wiki administrators could more easily
get insight in file/image red links and Commons administrators would have to
delink 'off site' a lot less, since local wiki administrators would have a
more comprehensive insight in their red links related to images/files;
together with the Commons Ticker, I may even be no longer required to delink
off-site if the admin 'does not feel like doing it.'

I have searched http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org and haven't been able to find
a feature request for such a feature at the moment. As far as I know this
feature is currently not available, although functionality may be closely
related to that of Special:Wantedpages. If this approach would serve both
commons admins and local wiki admins, I think it would be worth trying to
get this feature built.

Cheers, Siebrand

-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] Namens Andre Engels
Verzonden: woensdag 9 augustus 2006 15:12
Aan: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
Onderwerp: Re: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

<snip>

What I was looking for was more a list of images that would already have
been deleted, if it were not being used on projects.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
_______________________________________________
Commons-l mailing list
Commons-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
Dabljuh wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>> (stuff)
>>
>
> So what is the agreement?
>
He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
the merits of the articles.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Dabljuh wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 17:52:50 -0400
> "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Verifiability flows from evidence.
>
> Right right - but you say WP would have
> a bias towards verifiable information. That
> is just wrong - WP has not a bias towards
> verifiable information, but towards mainstream
> ignorance.
>

...and your continued trolling is helping HOW, exactly?

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060809/bbc2fad9/attachment.pgp


from_name: mboverload

body:
I don't know what kind of formatting you need in Wikipedia other than
italics.  We should make it as hard as possible to use stupid shit like
bold.

On 8/9/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Fantastic, thanks Walter.
>
> Christiaan
>
> On 9 Aug 2006, at 6:01 PM, Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
> > [MediaWiki] will also be developed by full-time employees of the
> > private
> > organizations Wikia.com (the company of Jimbo) and Socialtext.com.
> > This
> > should increase strongly the development of MediaWiki. A new component
> > to MediaWiki is expected to make "wysiwyg"-editing possible. This
> > means
> > that you will have an editbox that looks like the compose window of
> > Hotmail or Gmail with options the edit a page without to see all the
> > sourcetext with all the code. There is hope that this will lower the
> > barrier for new people to work on the projects.
> > http://wikiwyg.net/ - with a picture how it will (possibly) look like
> > http://www.socialtext.com/node/90
> > http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/wysiwyg_and_wik.html
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 9 Aug 2006, at 2:00 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 8/9/06, Christiaan wrote:
>> Monday, and who got a preview version of Mac OS X Server. And they're
>> under a NDA.
>
> A leaky one! :)

I hope so! :)

Christiaan


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Rather, what we brainstormed about as a nice mutually beneficial ground
> would be for them to charge customers for writing high quality NPOV
> articles about their companies, with sources and verifiability, but for
> them to work with well known and respected wikipedians who are NOT being
> financially compensated to actually enter the articles into Wikipedia
> upon their own independent judgment.

How will the author attribution and grant of license work?

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Interesting behaviour of "ISBN" magic word

body:
On 8/9/06, HappyDog <wikilist at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:ISBN
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:RFC
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/Magic_links

Ok, I don't really get the organisation of the MediaWiki's help, but
it seems that the only documentation on "magic words" is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Magic_words

(couldn't find anything at mediawiki.org)

However, that doc doesn't refer to "magic links". And neither seems to
refer to the obivous fact that http:// gets converted into an external
link...

Some links between these documentations would be good. I'm not sure if
I can just directly edit those pages?

Steve


from_name: Jim

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Dabljuh wrote:
> > On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400
> > Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >> (stuff)
> >>
> > So what is the agreement?
> >
> He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
> by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
> understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
> own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
> site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
> Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
> the merits of the articles.

>From what I understand on another thread, MyWikiBiz was committed to
producing neutral articles. And would only do so under the MyWikiBiz
username. I, personally, liked the idea of the edits being entered by
MyWikiBiz - that way they could be tracked openly and checked using the user
contributions feature. Having an anonymous editor input the information into
wikipedia seems more likely to result in articles that are not neutral.

I can see some benefit in that trolls would target articles created by
MyWikiBiz for deletion and other crap - but that seems outweighed by the
benefit that many users would also be able to quickly identify the articles
submitted by MyWikiBiz and would seek to protect wikipedia's reputation and
make sure our policies are followed. They could only do this if there is
transparency in submitting material.

*Is the feeling that being paid to write articles for wikipedia is against
community standards in general.* What if a wikipedian submitted a grant to a
govt agency or non-profit to edit/contribute x amount of information to
articles around a specific topic? I can see this as being a huge benefit to
wikipedia and to our goal to preserve knowledge by creating a high-quality
comprehensive encyclopedia.

For example, I could see the following as having great benefit:
http://www.foodsovereignty.org issues a grant to write on locating water
sources, low-water agriculture, high temperature yields, etc.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/ issues a grant to write on alternative energy
sources -
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/default.cfm issues a grant to write on a specific
list of endangered animals
...
of course there could be harm as well
http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ issues a grant to make sure specific information is
deleted from articles on nuclear power and to promote non-proliferation
http://www.ispu.us/pages/reports/2855/articleDetailPB.html issues a grant to
influence the articles on islam, christianity, etc.

For all these open acknowledgement of the finanicial relationship and
transparency is a better protection for our neutralilty standards, IMHO.

Jim


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
If I remember correctly, these models (who were twins) had a picture that
was deleted because the modeling agency was pissed at the copyrighted
photo's presence on Wikipedia. Later, the models took a picture of
themselves that they gave to Wikipedia.

Perhaps we could allow something similar to happen?

On 8/9/06, Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Regarding Jimmy Wales's comment here
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3APublicity_photos&diff=66922063&oldid=58823881
> concerning
> fair use.
>
> To quote "In general, ordinary publicity photos of celebrities should not
> be
> used in Wikipedia unless they are released under a free license. We are
> powerful enough now that we can insist on this, and get it, from just
> about
> any celebrity, or we can get a free photo in a number of different ways.
> Using fair use in such cases discourages us from creatively looking for a
> way to enlarge the commons."
>
> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc.
> I
> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.
>
> Garion96
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
> > RFCs and PMIDs are supported.
>
> Ah, so I see. Is all this documented anywhere?

Do you mean formally or informally ?

If you mean informally, then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PMID
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN
(couldn't see one for RFC, as [[WP:RFC]] is about a Wikipedia process).

If you mean formally, then the answer I think is no. (In practice this means that the corner-case behaviour can fluctuate as the
implementation changes - E.g. up until 2 days ago "ISBN ----" rendered as "
ISBN
", and now it renders basically as "ISBN ----"). If you want this level of detail though the source seems to the best reference:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/Parser.php?view=markup
Search for "doMagicLinks" and "magicLinkCallback".

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fwd: HOWTO MediaZilla: MediaWiki extensions - New
 component

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 08/08/06, Cyril DANGERVILLE <cyril.dangerville at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>> I'd like to register a new extension (DynamicPageList2) on the
>> MediaZilla for bug reports. So my question is: how do I add a new
>> "Component" under Product "MediaWiki extensions"?
>> Thanks for your help.
>
> Ask Brion.

I've added it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060809/6c389257/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request for tweak to checkuser

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> I have been doing range blocks to identify the new accounts that the
> vandal General Tojo is creating. He makes about 20 new accounts a day
> including sleepers. The trouble is that doing a checkuser on the
> range of a popular provider not only takes a lot of time, but is also
> doing a lot of grinding as it goes back 30 days. Could an option for
> checkuser be coded to permit checkuser for the last 24 hours? That
> would suffice for an ongoing problem like a persistent vandal.

Proper indexes on the table would probably work even better. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060809/028d27ea/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Puppy

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Article bragging (was: Re: en: well on the way to
 ... 2 million!)

body:
Violet/Riga wrote:
> I actually think that it can be a very positive thing.  I've written
> articles about things I knew nothing about but that just made me do plenty
> of research and referencing, as opposed to writing about things I think I
> know about (and making mistakes).
> Bragging examples include Albert Bigelow
> Paine<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bigelow_Paine>,
> "You're never alone with a
> Strand<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_never_alone_with_a_Strand>",
> Cow fighting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_fighting>, and Conger
> cuddling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conger_cuddling>.  The last two
> reflect my current love for unusual articles.
>
>
> ~~~~ Violet/Riga
>
>
The cow-fighting was interesting. I never heard of it, how did you?
Conger cuddling sounds hilarious.

-kc-


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

body:
Fantastic, thanks Walter.

Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 6:01 PM, Walter Vermeir wrote:

> [MediaWiki] will also be developed by full-time employees of the
> private
> organizations Wikia.com (the company of Jimbo) and Socialtext.com.
> This
> should increase strongly the development of MediaWiki. A new component
> to MediaWiki is expected to make "wysiwyg"-editing possible. This
> means
> that you will have an editbox that looks like the compose window of
> Hotmail or Gmail with options the edit a page without to see all the
> sourcetext with all the code. There is hope that this will lower the
> barrier for new people to work on the projects.
> http://wikiwyg.net/ - with a picture how it will (possibly) look like
> http://www.socialtext.com/node/90
> http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/wysiwyg_and_wik.html


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Wednesday 09 August 2006 01:56, HappyDog wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Warhog (aja Julian Fleischer)" <mediazilla at warhog.net>
> To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: 09 August 2006 00:33
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?
>
> > But that is now possible in any browser. For example in Internet
> > Explorer it is really annoying when pages popup in a new window... on
> > the other hand it is not as easy as in firefox to open a page in a new
> > window in MSIE. I guess there are at least 2 clicks needed to perform
>
> that.
>
> Not true - Shift-Click opens in a new window.

Mouse middle click opens the page in a new tab (!) for me in firefox - left
click in the same tab. (Who wants a new browser windows, anyway?)

To original poster:

So let _me_ decide where I open up links, and stop trying to force me.

best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Wed Aug  9 18:15:07 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "I'm not a vegetarian, but I eat animals who are" -- Groucho Marx

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBRNoKb3cLPEOTuEwVAQLgCAf9FvBmVZfPgeRSoFtDx3Ni4QjxgrEAp6y5
Gt9K+HPanCXk0pMKVfTJuKubFq0idj5QngyTWNbLr5TrlcfExwuLwlltoo0ve9Ou
Aj1VWga16Vv2c9XEH8PgOcnhSXwI9bfYW3uHGToA7VavEa2bQ9x0G1LC9tUnFZ8V
cUNRndelJCoB/Pz+k3I7A3y2uT1DT18Y37GAiYWbiZWkKomlo+5syxltUqwNs6Zj
Jx2CR8Ct1GBee+oHVT8tdIXeHTbJZRjJruK5LzAJhxuA/52rFENzk+OWIN/l7P56
atFI48KCD7b+4iVJHGlSEnsa97d+B5QLORzoJAH6a49SSPnOYlfpCQ==
=Ct/Z
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 09/08/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Does anyone really call it "wiki-crack"?

Presumably Raul did. I'm sure I've used the term too.

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?

body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since we've established that you can override the suggestion provided
> to the browser, no one's forcing anything...

I missed where we established how an average user (IE or unextended
Firefox, say, with default settings) is supposed to a) determine in
advance that a link will open in a new window/tab and b) override the
behavior and open it in the same window/tab.  I can do the latter via
a Firefox extension, but even that requires two clicks plus picking an
option out of a context menu rather than just middle-clicking.


body:
On 8/9/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Mouse middle click opens the page in a new tab (!) for me in firefox - left
> click in the same tab. (Who wants a new browser windows, anyway?)

I tend to use new windows for new "themes" (work vs personal browsing,
Wikipedia vs organising a holiday). 2-3 browser windows is a good
total number.

> So let _me_ decide where I open up links, and stop trying to force me.

Since we've established that you can override the suggestion provided
to the browser, no one's forcing anything...

Steve


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 08/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > On 08/08/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I fully agree - every day I'm trying to see all newimages on
> >> special:newimages and I try to delete all copyvio-looking images. I
> >> know that it's a bit agressive, but I think, that blanking user's
> >> upload is the best method of saying ''hi, something is wrong with your
> >> images''.
> >
> > Er, I hope you write them a note explaining what they're doing wrong?!
> > Simply deleting someone's images tells them nothing about what
> > mistakes they're making, and therefore does not help them to avoid
> > making them in the future.
> >
>
> Writing notes is hard when you have to do it hundreds of times; are
> there any decent templates which explain these things for various cases?
> If so, what are they and where are they listed?

No, but there's nothing stopping anyone creating them.

I do find time and time again, that people simply ignore generic
warnings though, whereas a short, sharp, "stop doing X because Y, see
policy Z, if you need help see W, if you continue to ignore this
advice you may be blocked and your images deleted" tends to be more
effective.

Brianna


body:
In 08/08/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> --- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:
>
> > On 08/08/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I fully agree - every day I'm trying to see all newimages on
> > > special:newimages and I try to delete all copyvio-looking images.
> > I
> > > know that it's a bit agressive, but I think, that blanking user's
> > > upload is the best method of saying ''hi, something is wrong with
> > your
> > > images''.
> >
> > Er, I hope you write them a note explaining what they're doing
> > wrong?!
> > Simply deleting someone's images tells them nothing about what
> > mistakes they're making, and therefore does not help them to avoid
> > making them in the future.
>
> Tell people twice? There is a big fat notice telling you what to do
> when you upload an image. The consequences are known (BTW red and even
> fat letters):

People are stupid and don't read instructions; Wikimedians are no
exception. Of course you don't _have_ to (explain what they're doing
wrong). But if you want to stop the root behaviour, I think it's more
helpful than not explaining. Because if you're already at the point
where you need to delete someone's work, it's pretty obvious they
didn't read/understand the instructions.... isn't it?

Brianna


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
One of MyWikiBiz's client's articles has been picked up by AfD. It's
obviously going to be a pretty significant test case for the future of
this kind of business, so it's worth while discussing it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Norman_Technologies

My position is that Wikipedia's mission is absolutely not served by
deleting this (or similar) articles. It's informative (could be more
so!), it's neutral, and there are people out there looking for this
kind of article. I would like to hear any arguments for deleting it.

Now, is it just me, or do we have a serious bias against corporations?

Steve


body:
On 08/08/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:

> > Almost everything that we delete
> > has, in the end, been decided to be a copyvio or a suspect copyright
> > violation.
>
> No, we do not delete because we have the suspicion! This makes the
> thing very tricky. Because the commons-community must prove that we
> have a clear copivio.

How do you account for deletion of no source/license images? As far as
I can see, they're only suspected cases. No one proves anything. (I
suppot their deletion of course. Contrary to what you say, I believe
the onus of proof is on the uploader, not Commons.)

Brianna

> On one hand this is bad because the commons pics have been used on
> several pages in the internet and nobody can tell us wich pic was
> first. On the other hand we have the problem that people ignore the
> warning (and this is the more likely way things happen) and upload
> pics without asking people from commons first.
>
> I therefore suggest adding to the notice "If unsure contact an
> administrator see Commons:Administrators".
>
> > That is after all why we delete no-source/no-license
> > images.
>
> Yep. And that is good!
>
> > That is why we delete screenshots and derivative works and
> > photos of public art in certain parts of the world, and images once
> > believed to be free but found out to be actually not.
>
> Acknowledgement to the first part and but do not understand the second
> part. I will never delete a photo take of 2D art. Taking a picture of
> the e.g. "Mona Lisa" makes nobody get new copyright. Even if the
> museums claim it (the threshold of originality is far to low). But
> maybe you are talking about 3D statues?
>
> > Because we
> > suspect or believe they infringe someone's copyright. So, this is
> > rather where we are right now, rather than a new position.
>
> As I said we must not delete on suspicion.
>
> > > In case of any complains by original authors we can say "sorry for
> > the
> > > violation, but we do our very best to fight against copyvios,
> > every day."
> >
> > Hm, that's a good point, at least morally. I don't know if it holds
> > any legal weight.
> >
> > I also don't know how many, if any, serious legal problems the WMF
> > ever has with regards to images. But that's why my second escape
> > clause was for "OFFICE" style actions, where Jimbo et al intervene
> > due
> > to avoid imminent legal action and the like.
> >
> > > An idea *poke D?sentrieb*: Is it possible to show at CheckUsage if
> > the
> > > project has a CommonsTicker? This can reduce the work to en: and
> > smaller
> > > wikis.
> >
> > I think that's a great idea!
>
> greetings
>
> Paddy
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


body:
On 8/9/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> > http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html
>
> Does anyone really call it "wiki-crack"?

Yeah, the Guardian does.

(that was a wikiwisecrack)

Steve


body:
On 08/08/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/8/7, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:
>
> > Another easy and obvious way is to get [[User:Orgullobot]] delinking
> > for us.  User:Orgullomoore is happy to implement the bot with
> > translations and we have a good 40 languages already done. I have
> > thought we should wait until the single login is implemented before we
> > do this, but it's been 6+ months "coming soon", so I think we should
> > go ahead and if single login happens, well good for it.
>
> I am willing to offer my services here. I am an admin (even
> bureaucrat) on Commons, but have not been active recently simply
> because there's so much more to do; however, I think I can be of much
> use here because I already have logins on basically all Wikipedia
> languages, so I can act as if single logon already exists. If you can
> inform me of images that should be deleted but currently are not
> because they are still in use, I'd be happy to go around and unlink
> them. Letting me do so would I think be better than having a bot for
> it, because I will go and check whether there is any replacement
> available, and replacing is much harder than delinking to do by bot
> (because one has to check whether the subtitle is still applicable).

You know we are talking about thousands of images... right?

Well you can start at [[Category:Against policy]] and from there it's
a long slog through [[Category:Unknown]] subcategories... all of them
more than 7 days old that is. Which is most of them. You can use
messages from [[User:Pfctdayelise/Translations]] in edit summaries if
you like.

Brianna


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 09/08/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh yeah? Well I created (and am the sole contributor of) the article
> [[American Eskimo]], the shining example of a perfect article. So there.

Needs references!

;-p

- d.


body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, actually what I basically meant was, "where would I find a
> comprehensive list of all these magic words?".

You have it: RFC, PMID, ISBN.

On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, so what's the current situation, and what's the goal? All
> mediawiki doc should be at mediawiki.org? What's where atm?

Current situation: Perpetual mess, as with most open-source projects,
because documentation isn't enforced and coding is much more fun than
documenting.

Goal: A reasonably up-to-date overview of all MediaWiki's features in
some sensible format, at mediawiki.org, some released into the public
domain and packaged with new installations, more advanced stuff GFDLd
and kept at mediawiki.org, in as many languages as possible.

What's where: Lots of random stuff at Meta under the GFDL, which is
apparently frowned upon because it restricts distribution and whatnot.
 Some stuff accumulating at mediawiki.org.  Lots of more arcane
details in comments in the code.  All the rest implicit in the code
itself.  Behavior changing on a daily basis.

See also: Mediazilla bug #1, filed two years ago almost to the day, at
the migration of bug tracking from Sourceforge.
http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060809/c2444061/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060809/c2444061/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20060809/c2444061/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 23:43 +0200, Garion96 wrote:
> Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
> big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
> know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
> chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Just to interject here, I think it's worth a shot (if someone at the
Foundation is willing to do it), but I'd be willing to bet that most of
those publicity photos are only offered under non-free licenses (limited
redistribution, no derivative works, etc.). I still think it wouldn't
hurt to at least try, though.
--
Christopher Larberg [[w:en:User:Slowking Man]]
<christopherlarberg at gmail.com>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20060809/c2444061/attachment-0001.pgp>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Using a template to set some character formatting
	to several blocks of text

body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Even using divs and spans didn't work.

It works for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Simetrical/Sandbox&oldid=68707581


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, there's a natural reaction to anything that looks like corporate
> advertising, but I wouldn't call it a "bias against corporations".
>
> I don't see anything inherently wrong with MyWikiBiz, esp. since they
> are pretty open about what they're doing.  But I also don't think
> Wikipedia's mission is served by cluttering up the place with articles
> on every small consulting firm in the US. This corporation has only 26
> employees and the only citations are a local business journal.  Is
> this really a significant enough company to make it into an
> encyclopedia?

That definitely depends on what your definition of "significant
enough" is. If we had room for only 10 corporations, I would say no.
But we're not pressed for space, and unlike pure vanity articles (my
name is Jim and I have a dog called Nelly!), this type of article
meets a genuine need.

I think there is a valid viewpoint that says "Wikipedia is the sum of
human knowledge, except for a bit of total dross that doesn't interest
anyone". However, a genuine company with 26 full time employees that
has been around for 5 years and does some interesting things at the
global level is not such dross.

Purely and simply, is Wikipedia better off *with* this information
than *without* it? If the answer is "without", then why? Because we
saved a couple of kilobytes?

Steve


body:
On 8/9/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Again, delighted to still be subscribed. A bit worried about the notion of
> "voting", then again, the press don't have the proper term for it (hell,
> Wikipedia still doesn't. It's supposed to be "discussion", last I checked
> :P).

"Forming consensus", usually by counting votes.

Steve


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Christiaan Briggs schreef:
[cut]
> The reason I'm posting this is simply put forward the view that I
> hope WYSIWYG or some relevant variant will be developed for Wikimedia
>  projects in the near future, because I think the hurdles that stop
>  many people from participating on our office intranet apply equally
>  to Wikimedia projects. And the hurdle is not that wiki markup is
> "difficult" or "hard to learn" but that it is intimidating and time-
>  consuming to learn.
[cut]

[MediaWiki] will also be developed by full-time employees of the private
organizations Wikia.com (the company of Jimbo) and Socialtext.com. This
should increase strongly the development of MediaWiki. A new component
to MediaWiki is expected to make "wysiwyg"-editing possible. This means
that you will have an editbox that looks like the compose window of
Hotmail or Gmail with options the edit a page without to see all the
sourcetext with all the code. There is hope that this will lower the
barrier for new people to work on the projects.
http://wikiwyg.net/ - with a picture how it will (possibly) look like
http://www.socialtext.com/node/90
http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/08/wysiwyg_and_wik.html

(Wikizine number 37)

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html

"Most recently he was elected as a member of the arbitration committee
(only those who make 100 edits a week can vote), which is the highest
dispute-settling body in the organisation before you get to Wikipedia
co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, who can deliver a fiat."

Mein gott! Just think of all those arbcom cases I missed voting in!
What a fool I've been, thinking one had to be elected to Arbcom.

~maru


body:
On 8/9/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know what kind of formatting you need in Wikipedia other than
> italics.  We should make it as hard as possible to use stupid shit like
> bold.

Like, the way it's our convention to bold the beginning of every
article's lead where we reference the name?


body:
On 8/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Heh! That's how I wrote [[Envoy (WordPerfect)]] and [[Smart Display]].
> I saw both terms mentioned on Groklaw, didn't know what they meant so
> looked them up on Wikipedia (it's already a fantastically useful
> computer terminology guide - hence why the [[FOLDOC]] maintainer saw
> it and promptly wondered whether he should continue with FOLDOC at
> all. Since they didn't exist, I promptly researched them and wrote the
> articles. This is where a lot of my articles come from.
>
>
> - d.

Did he decide to continue? I have to agree, it does seem kind of
pointless: Wikipedia is GFDL as well, contains many of the sources
FOLDOC draws upon, has inherently better technical facilities (not
just in linking to fuller encyclopedic entries on terms but in
general), better articles etc.

But I've always wondered something about FOLDOC; does its name come
from the foldr and foldl operators in functional languages?

~maru
Shock! Quelle horreur! We don't have [[foldl]] or [[foldr]]!


from_name: HappyDog

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Bennett" <stevage at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: 09 August 2006 16:18
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Interesting behaviour of "ISBN" magic word

> On 8/9/06, HappyDog <wikilist at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:ISBN
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:RFC
> > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec/BNF/Magic_links
>
> Ok, I don't really get the organisation of the MediaWiki's help, but
> it seems that the only documentation on "magic words" is here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Magic_words
>
> (couldn't find anything at mediawiki.org)
>
> However, that doc doesn't refer to "magic links". And neither seems to
> refer to the obivous fact that http:// gets converted into an external
> link...
>
> Some links between these documentations would be good. I'm not sure if
> I can just directly edit those pages?
>
> Steve

True - the documentation is in quite a state at the moment.  There is a move
to sort out the Mediawiki docs, and to consolidate everything at
mediawiki.org, but it is a slow process and so far there are not many people
participating.  Any help is always appreciated, so the short answer is yes -
you can directly edit those pages, and it would be appreciated.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Dabljuh

body:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:39:39 +0930
"Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> ...and your continued trolling is helping HOW, exactly?

... Same back to you?

Maybe you're one of the people that go "If I ignore
the problem hard enough, its gonna go away..."

Since your statement appears to imply that you want
constructive suggestions, here's one.

Give WP:NPOV a "facts override" clause. That is,
if something is a simple and verifiable fact, npov is
not meant to relativate it when a majority of people
are misinformed or simply don't like the information.

Right now: Neurologist tries to change the neuron
article so it says neurons regenerate (although slower
with increasing age) and explains the dated myth as
such. Then he gets bullied into leaving Wikipedia
for "pushing his pov".

With facts override: Neurologist succeeds, and
ignorant idiots get their asses kicked.


body:
On 8/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But I've always wondered something about FOLDOC; does its name come
> > from the foldr and foldl operators in functional languages?
>
>
> Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing.

Well, I knew *that*, from looking in the en entry if nothing else. But
c'mon. Doesn't the "On-Line" look even a little contrived?

>
> > Shock! Quelle horreur! We don't have [[foldl]] or [[foldr]]!
>
> You know what to do!
>
> - d.

Meh. I'll put it on the ToDo list. :)

~maru


body:
On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 13:55:51 -0400
jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's exactly what every crackpot who has discovered "The TRUTH"
> insists; they have the real facts, and all the reliable sources,
> scientific studies, and peer reviewed articles in the world are simply
> the work of "ignorant idiots".  And that's exactly the viewpoint that
> got you banned from Wikipedia; you didn't care what the policies said,
> or what reliable sources said, because you knew "The TRUTH", and
> everyone else was simply ignorant.
>
> Jay.

Er, yeah.

Read again:

>> Give WP:NPOV a "facts override" clause. That is,
>> if something is a simple and verifiable fact, npov is
>> not meant to relativate it when a majority of people
>> are misinformed or simply don't like the information.

I said verifiable (which also implies reliable sources)

So you're saying... WP's priority is to be neutral rather
than factual? Are you... Hmm... I see, that explains a couple
of things.


body:
I mean... isn't FACTS exactly what is speaking
against the relevant points of view of crackpots?

Treating crackpot ideas neutrally just because
they're verifiable... I just plainly don't like that.


body:
On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 14:24:33 -0400
jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The last time you argued for "simple and verifiable fact", they were
> of the "everybody knows it's true" and "it's obvious" sort, but not
> the kind that could actually be found in any reliable sources.

"The foreskin is erogenous" ?

Actually that can be found in reliable sources.

> > So you're saying... WP's priority is to be neutral rather
> > than factual? Are you... Hmm... I see, that explains a couple
> > of things.
>
> So you're saying... your priority is to invent strawman arguments for
> me rather than address the issues? Are you... Hmm... I see, that
> explains a couple of things.
>

Actually I meant to be ad hominem, like you were and still are.
Let me try again:

"Adress the issues"? I can't change that you don't like facts.


body:
On 8/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 09/08/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Oh yeah? Well I created (and am the sole contributor of) the article
> > [[American Eskimo]], the shining example of a perfect article. So there.
>
>
> Needs references!
>
> ;-p
>
>
> - d.

Plus the edit summary was definitely not NPOV.

Garion


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> (stuff)

So what is the agreement?


body:
On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:00:09 +0200
Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Plus the edit summary was definitely not NPOV.
>
> Garion

edit summaries and talk pages don't need to be NPOV,
in my understanding. The edits to mainspace are supposed
to be.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I have indef banned MyWikiBiz from English Wikipedia.
>
> If he wants to do something like this, he should write his articles
> independently, post them on his website, and see if interested
> Wikipedians who are willing to vouch for the articles... WITHOUT
> FINANCIAL COMPENSATION... want to include them.
>
> Getting paid to add entries to Wikipedia by the subject of the entries
> is a serious serious no-no because of the obvious conflict-of-interest
> issues.
>
> --Jimbo

(Note that this screed is independent of any deal Jimmy and MyWikiBiz
may've come to).

This is an absurd block. He was writing perfectly fine, well-written,
*referenced* articles and has so far as I know scrupulously followed
the notability guidelines; would to God that we had a thousand more
like him, and could ditch the bottom thousand editors.  And you are
banning him because the conflict of interest *might* lead to POV? Have
the project abandoned AGF and the notion that one can write in a NPOV
fashion even if POV oneself?

Over Wikipedia's existence, there've been how many articles submitted
by people being paid or who might conceivably have a conflict of
interest?

Then let's get rid of anything politics related by  Katefan0 (who
you'll remember is a professional journalist covering politics - clear
conflict of interest there) or any of our resident academics who edits
articles relating to their expertise (I'd mention Carl Hewitt here,
but he's already banned for being incorrigibly self-centered). Or
closer to home, let's get rid of [[Fujiwara no Teika]], as the
Encyclopedia Project paid me to edit that article, or [[Encyclopedia
of the Brethren of Purity]] and [[Brethren of Purity]] (ditto). If we
require yet more victims for this witch-hunt and to feed our paranoia,
any article ever listed on the Bounty Board is suspect.

What I see here is a double standard: there's  a tiny wiff of a
problem and a user is indef banned, while vastly worse problems like
vandals and copyright violators at least get the courtesy of the
{{test}} templates.

~maru


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 8/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Guardian article about Wikipedia.
> > http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html
>
> "Most recently he was elected as a member of the arbitration committee
> (only those who make 100 edits a week can vote), which is the highest
> dispute-settling body in the organisation before you get to Wikipedia
> co-founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, who can deliver a fiat."
>
> Mein gott! Just think of all those arbcom cases I missed voting in!
> What a fool I've been, thinking one had to be elected to Arbcom.

Actually, I'm guessing they meant to say that "only those who make 100
edits a week can vote" in the elections during which "he was elected
as a member of the arbitration committee."  Which isn't correct
either, of course; but it still seems like a more reasonable
interpretation.

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 09/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:00:09 +0200
> Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Plus the edit summary was definitely not NPOV.

> edit summaries and talk pages don't need to be NPOV,
> in my understanding. The edits to mainspace are supposed
> to be.

Yep.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> This preserves our independence as a volunteer editing body, while at
> the same time supporting the creation of high quality NPOV content.  I
> am very pleased with this idea.--~~~~

Damnit, Jimmy, you can't just copy and paste stuff from talk pages to
the mailing list. That signature trick doesn't work here .. yet ;-)

Erik


subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
Who's in the top 10? :)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kotepho/admin#Ordered_list_of_total_deletions

Maybe we should award monthly prizes to those who (a) increase their
ranking by the most places, (b) perform the most deletions and (c)
have the largest increase on their previous month's performance.

Then again, perhaps it's not a good idea to encourage such
single-minded obsessiveness. :)

Disclaimer: As Fred wisely noted, quality != quantity. Pissing many
people off is still not a good idea. Reducing large backlogs is,
though. Walk a fine line........

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Ed Sanders

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
Dabljuh wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:38:24 -0400
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
>> by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
>> understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
>> own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
>> site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
>> Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
>> the merits of the articles.
>
> So in essence, you talked him out of editing Wikipedia?
> That is incredible! I understand this was basically his business model
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
His business model still works if the material he writes get used on
Wikipedia - the agreement just means now he won't upload it unless we
approve it first... as far as I understand it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an absurd block. He was writing perfectly fine, well-written,
> *referenced* articles and has so far as I know scrupulously followed
> the notability guidelines; would to God that we had a thousand more
> like him, and could ditch the bottom thousand editors.  And you are
> banning him because the conflict of interest *might* lead to POV? Have
> the project abandoned AGF and the notion that one can write in a NPOV
> fashion even if POV oneself?

I would argue that this goes back to that whole "bringing the project
into disrepute" thing that's come up a few times now.  It may very
well be that his articles are perfectly fine (although I suspect that
many are quite borderline in terms of either reliable outside sources
or notability); but the issue is the *appearance* of impropriety more
so than the contents of the articles themselves.  We cannot afford to
leave the public with the impression that certain articles are in
Wikipedia only because money has changed hands to keep them there; the
way MyWikiBiz was being advertised gave precisely that impression --
regardless of whether he was actually following notability guidelines
or not!  (Indeed, promises like "If your organization is deemed
non-notable, your payment will be immediately refunded" are probably
*more* problematic, as they are likely to be interpreted as giving a
pretty obvious motivation to make sure that the article sticks
around.)

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 15:38:24 -0400
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
> by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
> understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
> own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
> site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
> Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
> the merits of the articles.

So in essence, you talked him out of editing Wikipedia?
That is incredible! I understand this was basically his business model


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
Angela schreef:
[cut]

> easy to see whether or not there are outstanding requests. Perhaps
> moving urgent requests to a separate section at the top would help in
> future. There is a (not-very-active) IRC channel at
> #wikimedia-stewards, but the #wikimedia channel is often a better
> place to find a steward in an emergency. I don't know whether either
> of these channels were tried before finding a developer.
>
> This might just be a sign that new steward elections are required.
>
> Angela.

I do not think there are to few stewards but it is to difficult to find one.

That can be fixt more or less. IRC is the best hope I think to contact a
steward if needed.

1) the stewards need to be online on IRC and best also in the
#wikimedia-stewards channel

-> I will send a message to the stewards to ask to also be in the
#wikimedia-stewards channel when the can. Some will probably not even
really know of the channel.
And to add there IRC Nick to;
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards#Active_stewards

2) Making it more easy for the users to get in that channel. I have
added #wikimedia-stewards to the list of channels you can go to from
http://chat.wikizine.org and included links to in from the steward and
request for permissions page

3) On the IRC channel of the dutch wikipedia there is a bot active to
get the attention of the sysops when a user has a problem. The user
enters a command ( !mod ) and then the  bot posts the names of all the
active sysops online. The then get probably a warning from there
IRC-client that there name is posted and some come to see what the
problem is. The bot operator is on holiday now. I can ask him of he can
provide a similar service for the stewards.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


body:
On 8/9/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 21:00:09 +0200
> Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Plus the edit summary was definitely not NPOV.
> >
> > Garion
>
> edit summaries and talk pages don't need to be NPOV,
> in my understanding. The edits to mainspace are supposed
> to be.
> _______________________________________________

That was a perfect example of why I should always use a " :) " to explain
myself better.

:)

Garion


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] MyWikiBiz

body:
Jim wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> Dabljuh wrote:
>>> On Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:58:44 -0400
>>> Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> (stuff)
>>>>
>>> So what is the agreement?
>>>
>> He agreed not to edit Wikipedia articles when he is being paid to write
>> by the subject of the article, and to help the companies he works with
>> understand that it is probably not a great idea for them to edit their
>> own articles as well.  He will write articles and post them on his own
>> site, under the GNU FDL, and to ask trusted prominent and independent
>> Wikipedians to add the articles, on their own independent judgments of
>> the merits of the articles.
>
>
>>From what I understand on another thread, MyWikiBiz was committed to
> producing neutral articles. And would only do so under the MyWikiBiz
> username. I, personally, liked the idea of the edits being entered by
> MyWikiBiz - that way they could be tracked openly and checked using the user
> contributions feature. Having an anonymous editor input the information into
> wikipedia seems more likely to result in articles that are not neutral.
>
> I can see some benefit in that trolls would target articles created by
> MyWikiBiz for deletion and other crap - but that seems outweighed by the
> benefit that many users would also be able to quickly identify the articles
> submitted by MyWikiBiz and would seek to protect wikipedia's reputation and
> make sure our policies are followed. They could only do this if there is
> transparency in submitting material.
>
> *Is the feeling that being paid to write articles for wikipedia is against
> community standards in general.* What if a wikipedian submitted a grant to a
> govt agency or non-profit to edit/contribute x amount of information to
> articles around a specific topic? I can see this as being a huge benefit to
> wikipedia and to our goal to preserve knowledge by creating a high-quality
> comprehensive encyclopedia.
>
> For example, I could see the following as having great benefit:
> http://www.foodsovereignty.org issues a grant to write on locating water
> sources, low-water agriculture, high temperature yields, etc.
> http://www.eere.energy.gov/ issues a grant to write on alternative energy
> sources -
> http://nationalzoo.si.edu/default.cfm issues a grant to write on a specific
> list of endangered animals
> ...
> of course there could be harm as well
> http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/ issues a grant to make sure specific information is
> deleted from articles on nuclear power and to promote non-proliferation
> http://www.ispu.us/pages/reports/2855/articleDetailPB.html issues a grant to
> influence the articles on islam, christianity, etc.
>
> For all these open acknowledgement of the finanicial relationship and
> transparency is a better protection for our neutralilty standards, IMHO.
>
> Jim

   I had a very similar thought.  The idea that eventually paid
academics might be allowed to spend some amount of their compensated
time contributing is not unrealistic.  Look at all the the programmers
that are paid by large corporations to work on open source projects.
   Thought his is quite a different thing than a company paying someone
to write an article about them (which they would probably not want to be
paying for if it was not going to benefit them and thus putting NPOV in
question).  I think the best option for a company that wants an article
on wikipedia is to simply request it.

Dalf


subject: [WikiEN-l] Norman Technologies AfD

body:
On 8/9/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would argue that this goes back to that whole "bringing the project
> into disrepute" thing that's come up a few times now. It may very
> well be that his articles are perfectly fine (although I suspect that
> many are quite borderline in terms of either reliable outside sources
> or notability); but the issue is the *appearance* of impropriety more
> so than the contents of the articles themselves. We cannot afford to
> leave the public with the impression that certain articles are in
> Wikipedia only because money has changed hands to keep them there; the
> way MyWikiBiz was being advertised gave precisely that impression --
> regardless of whether he was actually following notability guidelines
> or not! (Indeed, promises like "If your organization is deemed
> non-notable, your payment will be immediately refunded" are probably
> *more* problematic, as they are likely to be interpreted as giving a
> pretty obvious motivation to make sure that the article sticks
> around.)
>
> --
> Kirill Lokshin

But this is a poor argument for indef blocking a user, appearances is.
If we cared about appearance more than substance, Wikipedia'd never
have been a wiki in the first place.  I really doubt that the public
cares whether certain articles may've been kept because of money when
they are more concerned about the quality of articles to begin with
(and then about stability and then about features or aspects of the
community or then... heck, when it comes to appearances, people are
far more concerned about vandalism - now there's something that really
can change the apperance of Wikipedia, quite literally).

~maru


from_name: Violet/Riga

body:
On 8/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I notice that the common thread in all of these articles (except Eric
> Harshbarger) was that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about the
> topic when I started writing them. Kind of a disturbing trend when you
> think about it, if Wikipedia is mostly written by people who know
> nothing about what they're writing about...
>
> Steve
>

I actually think that it can be a very positive thing.  I've written
articles about things I knew nothing about but that just made me do plenty
of research and referencing, as opposed to writing about things I think I
know about (and making mistakes).
Bragging examples include Albert Bigelow
Paine<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bigelow_Paine>,
"You're never alone with a
Strand<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_never_alone_with_a_Strand>",
Cow fighting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_fighting>, and Conger
cuddling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conger_cuddling>.  The last two
reflect my current love for unusual articles.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


body:
On Wed, 9 Aug 2006 22:23:32 +0200
Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:

> That was a perfect example of why I should always use a " :) " to explain
> myself better.
>
> :)
>
> Garion

Heh.

The problem is serious, though: people do get accused of
not being NPOV for their user page and talk page contributions.
there should be some sort of stupid gotcha rule like 3RR to deal
with this: "Accuse someone for introducing unverifiable
or POV material to the talk page and you get to take a rest"


references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKKEDFIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<006101c6bbc0$02842f10$0200a8c0@BUNGLE>
	<f1c3529e0608090818r78dca9behfff80a6c6c0b413f@mail.gmail.com>
	<004001c6bbe2$17d11820$0200a8c0@BUNGLE>

body:
On 8/9/06, HappyDog <wikilist at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> True - the documentation is in quite a state at the moment.  There is a move
> to sort out the Mediawiki docs, and to consolidate everything at
> mediawiki.org, but it is a slow process and so far there are not many people
> participating.  Any help is always appreciated, so the short answer is yes -
> you can directly edit those pages, and it would be appreciated.

Ok, so what's the current situation, and what's the goal? All
mediawiki doc should be at mediawiki.org? What's where atm?

Steve


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Using a template to set some character formatting to
	several blocks of text

body:
A mediawiki question. At work, I have some text that looks something like:

*some text {{template}}
*some text

etc. I would like to make this entire block of text turn grey.
Ideally, I would do it like this:

{{grey|
*some text {{template}}
*some text
}}

But this doesn't work - the parser doesn't like it (afaik). With
various testing, I came up with a template like this:

{{grey(}}
*some text {{template}}
*some text
{{)}}

where {{grey(}} opens a table with certain character formatting,
creates a cell, and {{)}} closes the cell and table. Just applying the
style directly to the text didn't work. Even using divs and spans
didn't work.

Is there any remotely elegant way of doing all this?

Steve


body:
On 8/9/06, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
> Violet/Riga wrote:
> > I actually think that it can be a very positive thing.  I've written
> > articles about things I knew nothing about but that just made me do
> plenty
> > of research and referencing, as opposed to writing about things I think
> I
> > know about (and making mistakes).
> > Bragging examples include Albert Bigelow
> > Paine<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bigelow_Paine>,
> > "You're never alone with a
> > Strand<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27re_never_alone_with_a_Strand
> >",
> > Cow fighting <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_fighting>, and Conger
> > cuddling <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conger_cuddling>.  The last two
> > reflect my current love for unusual articles.
> >
> >
> > ~~~~ Violet/Riga
> >
> >
> The cow-fighting was interesting. I never heard of it, how did you?
> Conger cuddling sounds hilarious.
>
> -kc-

I heard about cow fighting on the QI (British TV show) forums at
www.QI.com/talk, which has inspired several of my articles.  In fact,
Wikipedia has inspired many of their facts on the show and is a frequent
source of information.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Regarding Jimmy Wales's comment here
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3APublicity_photos&diff=66922063&oldid=58823881
concerning
fair use.

To quote "In general, ordinary publicity photos of celebrities should not be
used in Wikipedia unless they are released under a free license. We are
powerful enough now that we can insist on this, and get it, from just about
any celebrity, or we can get a free photo in a number of different ways.
Using fair use in such cases discourages us from creatively looking for a
way to enlarge the commons."

Would it be a good idea if the foundation would ask for 'free' images from
big record companies (like Sony music entertainment), actor agencies etc. I
know any editor can do this, but it would definitely have a greater
chance of success if it is coming from the foundation.

Garion96


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: Felipe Sanches

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save Draft button

body:
I suppose that if a user start editing an article that has got a draft
written by somebody else but that wasn't yet commited, then mediwiki
could warn this user about the existence of this draft, possibly also
showing its contents to the new contributor so that he may opt to use
it as a basis for his contribution. This way we can minimize conflicts
that would happen due to the draft feature otherwise.

Juca


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-10

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

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

Passed 413 of 429 tests (96.27%) FAILED!


from_name: Jean-Denis Vauguet

subject: [Foundation-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi,

I've been working on the foundation wiki for three days now, and I wrote
two comments on the local Babel :
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous

Summing it up, it's about cleaning up the wiki using an inventory I
built (I need comments on its entries) and about changes in the look 'n
feel. I think one can answer on my talk page on Meta[1], or on any Meta
page that would be convenient for such a discussion[2].

I noticed this would-be discussion to several people, but got a few
feedback only (both Wikimania and "the lost page on the lost wiki" can't
help :)), so Angela advised me to send an email to foundation-l.

Thank you!
jd / Meanos

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meanos
[2] say, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_site_feedback or
a brand new subpage of it

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060810/85b8276f/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi,

I've been working on the foundation wiki for three days now, and I wrote
two comments on the local Babel :
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous

Summing it up, it's about cleaning up the wiki using an inventory I
built (I need comments on its entries) and about changes in the look 'n
feel. I think one can answer on my talk page on Meta[1], or on any Meta
page that would be convenient for such a discussion[2].

I noticed this would-be discussion to several people, but got a few
feedback only (both Wikimania and "the lost page on the lost wiki" can't
help :)), so Angela advised me to send an email to foundation-l.

Thank you!
jd / Meanos

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meanos
[2] say, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_site_feedback or
a brand new subpage of it

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20060810/85b8276f/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] (no subject)

body:
Hi,

I've been working on the foundation wiki for three days now, and I wrote
two comments on the local Babel :
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Babel#Miscellaneous

Summing it up, it's about cleaning up the wiki using an inventory I
built (I need comments on its entries) and about changes in the look 'n
feel. I think one can answer on my talk page on Meta[1], or on any Meta
page that would be convenient for such a discussion[2].

I noticed this would-be discussion to several people, but got a few
feedback only (both Wikimania and "the lost page on the lost wiki" can't
help :)), so Angela advised me to send an email to foundation-l.

Thank you!
jd / Meanos

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Meanos
[2] say, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_site_feedback or
a brand new subpage of it

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20060810/85b8276f/attachment.pgp>