from_name: jayjg

body:
On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
> >On 9/6/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>ScottL wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>According to [[March]], the month is named after Mars the god of war.
> >>>The fact that he is the god of war is empirically verifiable?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>We also need to abandon our days of the week.  It is clearly a breach of
> >>NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every seven
> >>days.
> >>
> >>
> >A significant difference being that nobody worships the
> >Norse/German/Roman gods these days, nor do people live in cultures
> >dominated by worshippers of Norse/German/Roman gods. Another is that
> >the names of the days are named after Norse/German/Roman gods, but do
> >not assert that they *are* gods. On the other hand, billions still
> >worship Jesus and assert he is "our God", as does the designation A.D.
> >
> The last comment is a non-sequitur.

You must be using some novel definition of the term "non sequitur".

>  I would also question the numerical
> accuracy of your exagerated billions; the United States population isn't
> that high.  The term "a large number" would have sufficed.

There are over 2 billion Christians in the world; if you're going to
get pedantic, then please get your facts straight.

> Be that as
> it may, the fundamental premise that you and many others assert Jesus to
> be your God may be true, but that implies nothing about the designation
> A.D. or those who use it.

Now *that's* a non sequitur, since I never said or implied that said
anything about the people who use it.

> I do not accept Jesus as God, but I still use A.D.  I think that we all
> should be free to use whichever form we want,

Feel free to use what you want, Ray. In this thread we were talking
about Wikipedia's usage.

> without being constantly
> besieged by the forces of political correctness.

They're nothing compared to the "forces of hyperbole".

Jay.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

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

body:
On 06/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> We also need to abandon our days of the week.  It is clearly a breach of
> NPOV to go around celebrating a barbarian God like [[Thor]] every seven
> days.

Not to mention all this use of "he" and "she." We have neutral
pronouns! Just 'cos they're crap and almost nobody you'd actually want
to talk to uses them doesn't mean they don't exist!

- d.


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Better as a workshop (was Re: Wikimedia Youth
	Camp?)

body:
On 06/09/06, Jim Redmond <jim at scrubnugget.com> wrote:

> *Make it open to all ages, not just "youth"
> *Keep it brief - no more than a couple hours
> *Hold it at a public facility, like a library or school
> *Cover the absolute fundamentals - basic wikisyntax, core policies,
> where to go for further help
> *Offer it for free or for a nominal fee
> *Have local chapters present it, or recruit a presenter from a local
> university, LUG, or free content group

This'd be a great way to do a London meet as well. Free should be
quite manageable if we can get the space free.

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Raimond Spekking

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

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

>Revision: 16269
>Author:   yurik
>Date:     2006-08-29 09:51:11 -0700 (Tue, 29 Aug 2006)

>Log Message:
>-----------
>* Ordered the query results by disambiguation page title

Is this change activated/implemented on the WikiMedia projects? The last
 update on dewiki
(http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:Disambiguations&limit=1000&offset=0
- - The following data is cached, and was last updated 06:58, 6 September
2006.) shows an unsorted list.

BTW: extract of the actual list:

998. Death in Venice (Edit) -> Apollo
999. (Edit) -> Amerika
1000. Koufax (Edit) -> Amerika

What is line 999? I miss an article...

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

iD8DBQFE/xYwp+qUcbEr56YRAhbZAJ9Enc17LGc37jv42Dcl8ATqt82wnQCgtC67
skyj4prM4yVPmHeEWzhZoew=
=txc4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Can a wikimedia-b list be setup

body:
On 06/09/06, Pat Gunn <pgunn at dachte.org> wrote:

> The "Explosive growth" you say should be our
> goal is dangerous in the same way that cancer is -- it can easily
> become a perversion of our hopes and structure in the name of
> size.

Our growth is horribly fast as is and we are barely keeping up with
it. Which is why the downtime page has a PayPal button on it ;-)

- d.


body:
On 06/09/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  We
> should create a business list or perhaps a "content
> re-user" list and leave it unmoderated.  Re-affirm in
> the sign-up message for this list that it is an open
> discussion list and that official requests should be
> sent to Foo at wikimedia or whereever they should go.

This is a *great* idea. And even as someone who writes en:wp articles
and does Foundation stuff and has little interest in running a mirror,
I'd be very interested to know what people do and want to do with our
hard work. The idea of open content is "Use our stuff," after all.

So what do we need for this to happen?

- d.


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

body:
On 06/09/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
>Author:   yurik

> >Date:     2006-08-29 09:51:11 -0700 (Tue, 29 Aug 2006)
> >* Ordered the query results by disambiguation page title

> 998. Death in Venice (Edit) -> Apollo
> 999. (Edit) -> Amerika
> 1000. Koufax (Edit) -> Amerika
> What is line 999? I miss an article...

The HTML is:

 (?ndern) ? Amerika

but you could have guessed that ;-)

- d.


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] How does living bio patrol actually work?

body:
On 9/6/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sort by category. As in, a Recent Changes page where only edits to
> > articles in Living Persons or subcats there of are shown.
>
> As you wish:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people
>
> ....
> Which is exactly why living persons is not supposted to have subcats.
>

Neat! I had no idea you could do Related Changes for categories.

~maru


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cluesticks needed regarding WP:BLP and WP:RS

body:
On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:35:19 -0700, "Matt Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> >* A man who posted nude pictures of himself on websites whose domains
>> >he registered advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay prostitute can
>> >not be identified as a prostitute.
>> Seemingly absurd, but actually fixable as long as reliable secondary
>> sources call him that.
>I'd suspect the problem is that the original primary source no longer exists?

Not a problem if reliable secondary sources repeat the claim;
otherwise it's original research (given that it required synthesis
from primary data, the name not, as I recall, being given in full on
the contact ads).

>> >* The Columbia Journalism Review is a reliable source.  A blog run by
>> >the Columbia Journalism Review on the website of the Columbia
>> >Journalism Review is not.
>> Seems fair.
>Hmm?  Some blogs are trustworthy, some are not, despite what some
>people want WP:RS to read (generally, they want an 'All blogs are
>untrustworthy' stance, despite the evidence).  I'd say an official
>blog of an organisation is trustworthy.  Blogs where we can be sure of
>the author and that their opinions are notable are also reliable, at
>least for that individual's thoughts and opinions.

Yebbut all blogs are essentially opinion rather than reporting.  So
they might be reliable in terms of documenting the blogger's opinion
on a given topic, but in this case they are analogous to the
newspaper's leaders or opinion pieces, which are typically not used as
sources for factual data.

>> >* The New Republic, among other reputable, long-standing publications,
>> >cannot be used as a source because they are "too partisan".
>> Reliable in respect of one party's view of something and if balanced
>> from the other perspective, I'd say.
>Many (most?) sources are partisan one way or another; it's our job to
>strive for NPOV, regardless.  (And NPOV does not mean 'balanced' in a
>journalism sense; we don't have to give equal airtime to unequal
>opinions).

Which is why, without more detail, it's hard to form a view.  It might
be a case of someone pushing the Aryan Nation website as a "balancing"
view on the holocaust, or it might be wanting to cite the majority
view that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are Complete Bollocks (i.e. a
majority view in an article which mainly discusses the minority view),
or more likely it's somewhere between the two.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


references:
<3bd63d170609051335h4e2b65e0yade70d59e30568d9@mail.gmail.com>
	<bdurf2p8jhika0lmfp5u9s05ujp7ih1inj@4ax.com>
	<42f90dc00609051635h7822fac1jf449c432860d4b5e@mail.gmail.com>
	<199uf2907vfvdc1jhiuprn0mrvkg0g0p0n@4ax.com>

body:
On 06/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:35:19 -0700, "Matt Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
> wrote:

> >Hmm?  Some blogs are trustworthy, some are not, despite what some
> >people want WP:RS to read (generally, they want an 'All blogs are
> >untrustworthy' stance, despite the evidence).  I'd say an official
> >blog of an organisation is trustworthy.  Blogs where we can be sure of
> >the author and that their opinions are notable are also reliable, at
> >least for that individual's thoughts and opinions.

> Yebbut all blogs are essentially opinion rather than reporting.  So
> they might be reliable in terms of documenting the blogger's opinion
> on a given topic, but in this case they are analogous to the
> newspaper's leaders or opinion pieces, which are typically not used as
> sources for factual data.

"typically" isn't even close to "all".

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
On 9/6/06, Jan-?ke Larsson <jalar at mai.liu.se> wrote:
> On a side note, I read in another thread that:
>
>  > The procedure is to file a feature request (bug) at
>  > http://bugs.wikimedia.org/, then attach this as a patch.  That
>  > provides a centralized place to discuss, note updates, get people to
>  > vote for it, etc.
>
> Should perhaps I follow this advice, and watch the created bug instead
> of lurking on this list?

Probably a good idea.  Certainly lower-upkeep on your part, you won't
have to pick through all the list messages.


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

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

body:
On 06/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sounds plausible on the surface. But.
>     * What about spurious trademark claims? Apple has been threatening
> everyone who uses the prefix "i-" or the suffix "-pod".

Well, images don't suffer the problems of text in that regard.
Restrict it to demonstrated trademarks. Many things are obviously
trademarked which don't need to be examined that closely. There are
trademark offices, right? So we look them up. Or whoever's so keen to
delete looks something up.

But basically stick to the idea of: is it intending to primarily show
a trademark? If so, then this applies.

>     * Trademark law is far from uniform internationally. Which sets of
> trademark laws do we decide to ignore?

Well it's just like copyright then :) The general principle of
respecting the laws of the country of origin [of the thing, not the
image creator] works well IMO.

>     * How many and which countries must it be trademarked in?

See above, potentially just one.

>     * How do we deal with claimed trademarks that are not registered trademarks?

Hm... I mostly intend this to apply to registered trademarks. So I
don't know - status quo - they can stay?

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Draining the cesspits

body:
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Draining the cesspits

body:
A proposal to end one of the more festering sores, RFCs which linger
indefinitely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28proposals%29#Closure_of_RfCs

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
Hmm . . . have you considered digging up some voting theorists and
e-mailing them for advice on how to set this up?  I suspect that any
system that hasn't had a great deal of systematic thought put into it
will inevitably be deeply flawed on various levels.  If you could get
a professor interested in having e-mail chats who could hook you up
with some equations that get at what we want, I think you'd probably
avoid all the issues that people brought up above, plus most of the
issues they didn't think of.

On 9/6/06, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> How do extensions generally deal with images and stylesheets that need
> to be available outside the extensions directory, such as in the skins
> directory, when users are accessing them through SVN?

Hooks, surely?  The skins must have hooks in lots of convenient
places.  What do you mean, available outside the extensions directory?
 You're only running code inside the extensions directory.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 9/6/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Neat! I had no idea you could do Related Changes for categories.

That feature is a non-insignificant part of why category:living
persons actually exists..  It's documented on the category page, and I
pointed it at least a dozen times while I was still bothering to argue
with people who were opposed to it because it's not a good category
for navigation.... :)  If you could come up with a way to make people
more aware of it, it would be greatly appreciated.

Now.. If I could only talk a javascript jockey into writing some user
JS that overrides the watch this page button so that clicking opens a
dropdown and lets you select one of several user defined pages...
after selecting a page the script adds a link directed at the current
page to the selected page....  Thus, with the help of related changes,
facilitating public multi-user collaboratively edited watchlists.


body:
On 06/09/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Why?

This is answered on the Talk page.

Also to resolve the uneasy situation of especially German copyright
law, which appears to consider many designs "PD-ineligible" which
other countries would not. We have had many repetitive arguments about
this issue and a clear policy statement should cut a lot of them down.

Lest this sound terribly anti-dewiki, it's not about trying to catch
them out. It's about making our policies more in line with our
ultimate aim, to provide freely usable media. If we're doling out
trademarks, *regardless of their copyright status* we're not really
achieving that.

Brianna


body:
On 06/09/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Anyway, thinking about this more I have to say that providing free
> images for people to use on their bottles of dish detergent is at
> least currently outside the scope of Wikimedia.

So you propose to change (or make more specific) the [[Commons:Project
scope]]. I am not necessarily opposed to that either. I just dislike
living in perpetual limbo-land and with the lack of guidance from
on-high, making concrete policies is one way to resolve it.

But anyway, I note that we've (the collective Wikimedia community,
that is) abolished WikipediaOnly permissions. Do you support that or
not? Because you can use those in Wikipedia et al, yet we require
stronger permissions. We also abolished non-commercial (NC) clauses,
even though Wikipedia itself is a non-commercial enterprise. Do you
support that?

I am not trying to be paranoid here, but I feel uneasy that we
recognise a (2D) video cover design is not free and yet somehow we
accept the infamous "Pringles photo" (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pringles_(aka).jpg ) simply
because the original object is 3D. And also
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:BibelTV-logo.jpg ... doesn't
seem quite right.

Brianna


body:
I get asked this by the press a lot. So I thought I'd come here and
ask how it actually works.

1. What is the actual process?
2. How are new living bios spotted?
3. Who watches edits in them, on what sort of schedule?

And 4. the big one:

Is there anything that can be done to make the living bio patrolling
volunteers' work easier and more efficient? What magical software
features would you like? Is there anything that some as-yet-unwritten
bot software could do to assist?

I'd love to be able to answer "we have a volunteer patrol who look out
for any rubbish going in living biographies. We're not perfect but I
think we do pretty well" and be able to give more detail if they ask
;-)

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
My primary goal with this proposal is to stimulate knowledge building
and training activities around Wikimedia. I will be upfront about my
own beliefs: I do think that such training must be done in an
age-appropriate way. I confess to being "ageist" in that I believe, on
average, people are in different stages of personal development at
different ages, and different generations have different ways of
learning due to cultural influences alone.

That said, I also recognize that young people active in Wikimedia are
often exceptional individuals. That's why I would like to draw on
their creativity and ingenuity to get young people who are not yet
Wikimedians interested in the project. Helping young people to educate
young people is, in my opinion, not patronizing at all; it is a
celebration of generational difference.

That said, a warning to the members of the younger generation:
political correctness is one of the more questionable accomplishments
of your parents. I started using and running bulletin board systems
when I was 13 years old and attended and organized many meetings where
I was the youngest member of the group. I've got my own stories to
tell about age discrimination, but let's not get bogged down in age
politics.

Instead, what I'd like to do is actively invite the young people in
Wikimedia to work on a proposal and make it theirs. I think some
opinion polling will be useful to gauge the direction such a project
should take. I'll post more in the coming weeks, though I'd be equally
happy if someone else -- young or old -- would pick up the idea and
run with it.

As for the logistics of attending a Youth Event, I think
decentralization will be key in the long run. But like Wikimania, it
might be nice to have a single designated big event per year for those
who can manage to attend. Each large event will, of course, also be
very attractive for youths in the region where it takes place.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


body:
On 06/09/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:

> That pretty much sums up my past frustrations when folks don't listen to
> reason.

Most annoying thing about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects of any
sort: you are obliged to work with people you consider blithering
idiots. It's not optional.

(Hopefully it's good for the soul ;-)

- d.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-07

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

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

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: geni

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

body:
On 9/7/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>
> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
> entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
> probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.

I don't. Our anti creationist mob know what they are doing.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?

body:
On 9/7/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> How far were you allowed to travel for this when you were 13?

It was more a matter  of "could" than "were allowed to". I was too
much of a sissy to go on big journeys of my own (I've remedied that in
the last few years), though I'm sure my parents would have encouraged
me to and helped me along. Then again, I have wonderful parents.

I do feel that we need to support regional initiatives very much.
Again, that does not preclude major, more centralized events.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Youth Camp?


body:
On 9/6/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> I am asking for something simpler... A "recent changes" page that
> only shows articles on Category:Biographies of living people.

Ah, thats a great idea.

[snip]
> So, David: How do we get the developers to provide us with a recent
> changes page, for BLP?

You've twisted my arm enough, here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people

enjoy.


body:
.. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html

It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Jossi Fresco

body:
On Sep 6, 2006, at 10:40 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> You've twisted my arm enough, here you go:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Special:Recentchangeslinked&target=Category%3ALiving_people

Excellent. Thanks.

Now we need to ask Tawker or Essjay to modify their IRC bot (irc://
irc.freenode.net/vandalism-en-wp), to watch over this recent changes
subset, and create a new channel in irc.freenode for the bot.

I will send them a message.

-- Jossi


body:
On Sep 6, 2006, at 11:16 PM, Akash Mehta wrote:

>  I'll see if I can
> hack away at the code and build a prototype with the latest stable
> release.
That will be great. And it would be greater yet, if it could be
ported to Java so that your app could run on a Mac, Linux or other
non-Windows OSes... :)

-- Jossi


body:
On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> On Sep 6, 2006, at 2:37 PM, David Gerard wrote:

> > 2. How are new living bios spotted?

> There is a the {{blp}} tag and the {{WPBiography|living=yes}} tag
> that is applied to the talk page. These automatically adds them to
> [[Category:Biography articles of living people]]

OK ... that would need someone watching [[Special:Newarticles]] for
anything that looks like a bio. They'd ideally want a nice little bit
of javascript to hand that adds those tags, if not already present.

The recent changes feed on the category is a useful tool. Except of
course it runs at about 5-10 edits a minute. Fun for all ...

- d.

- d.


body:
On 07/09/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html

"Thanks for your email. Through intelligent design, we have evolved a
response to these."

- d.


body:
On 07/09/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:

> What about version 2: instead of applying to all registered
> trademarks, apply to all registered trademarked logos. This should
> remove the ridiculous cases like you mentioned above (car body shapes,
> landscape, device designs etc). But still includes Pringles boxes &
> German logos.

I think it's the wrong place to apply a policy.

If the usage is the problematic thing, we can't protect people from
using something in a way that contradicts local law, any more than we
can stop them from reusing a GFDL image in print without reprinting
the entire GFDL next to it. A licence template does not constitute
legal advice either, and we can't guarantee something marked with a
particular licence is in fact under that licence - do we remove all
images the Foundation doesn't have signed paper on? (i.e., operate at
the level of assurance the FSF operates at.)

Ultimately we can only be people's mothers to a certain extent.

Commons was conceived as a service project for the Wikipedias, then
people started treating it as an area to make a personal name for
themselves on as if it were a wholly separate entity; if the second
group of people make it useless for the first purpose, then we would
have to duplicate the service project aspect. Which strikes me as
ridiculous.

- d.


from_name: Ron Hall

subject: [Wikitech-l] directly write to database

body:
On a related note - If I have a "skeleton" that lives in the wiki now
and is built with many different templates
is there a way for me to add more documents of this type easily to the
wiki? Now I'm sure I can generate
raw wiki text without too much trouble and even give them all unique
names  - would the methods outlined in a later response also work?

r


body:
On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:07 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Excellent. Thanks.
>> Now we need to ask Tawker or Essjay to modify their IRC bot (irc://
>> irc.freenode.net/vandalism-en-wp), to watch over this recent changes
>> subset, and create a new channel in irc.freenode for the bot.
>
>
> Yep, this is what we need :-)

I have asked them.

>
> Note that when I say 'living bio patrol', I don't mean editors who
> want to purge all blogs or whatever. I mean just quickly checking for
> added rubbish or checking for someone putting a whack of material
> (negative *or* positive) in a living bio with no reference of any
> sort. Mistakes and bad edits will still happen - no-one is expected to
> be perfect, particularly not volunteers doing an important but tedious
> job - but it'll make them less likely.

Sure. That is the idea.

-- Jossi


body:
On 07/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > The recent changes feed on the category is a useful tool. Except of
> > course it runs at about 5-10 edits a minute. Fun for all ...

> If we could develop a system, like VP2, that took the feed and
> allocated edits seperately to different users...

For the RC queue? Nah, that's overengineering. If it turned out edits
weren't being covered, we could just work out a very rough roster of
10-minute chunks, say.

- d.


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
> >
> > It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
> > entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
> > probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
>
> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
> Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
> lot of evolutionist POV creep.

There is constant "creationist review" of these articles; new people come
along, raise complaints, and one of three things tends to happen:
(a) they are pointed towards the copious supporting citations,
(b) they point raise a point that gets discussed at length, often with the
wording being adjusted or (additional) supporting citations are supplied
(c) since they rant about evolutionist POV, but fail to supply concrete
suggestions, there is no progress.

Bear in mind that the blog posting admits that, in violation of WP:AUTO DI
employees have tried to alter the article to their liking.

One of the perennial complaints about the article is that it states that
"all" of the major proponents of ID are connected with the DI (the complaint
being that it should be changed to "most").  That sounds like an eminently
reasonable request, until it is examined carefully.  To begin with, the
statement is referenced and supported by sworn court testimony by both
sides.  In addition, no one has been able to come up with a major supporter
which isn't affiliated with the DI.  While it might seem like common sense
to replace "all" with "most" it would require replacing what sources say
with one's own opinion.  If a major proponent was found that was not
affililated with the DI, the statement might have to be modified to reflect
this, but even so, since "all" comes from an external source the article
would still have to reflect what the source says, rather than our
interpretation of what the source says.

Another perennial complaint involves the statement that ID supporters have
produced no publications in peer-reviewed science journals.  Again, this is
a statement from sources - it isn't really our place as editors to argue
about what constitutes "peer-reviewed science".  There is a list of
"peer-reviewed publications" which Dembski says he compiled in preparation
for the Kitzmiller trial.  This list has been posted to the ID page several
times to "disprove" the assertion.  However, the statement has not been
changed for three reasons: (1) while Dembski's list is presented as being
connected with the trial, Dembski withdrew from the trial, so it is just
speculation to consider whether he would have stood behind that list under
oath; (2) Behe, another major proponent of ID said that there are no ID
publications in peer-reviewed science journals; and (3) it's easy enough to
look at Dembski's list and see that most of the publications he lists don't
do what he claims (e.g., he lists a publication by Behe).

A third change that is made regularly to the article is to redefine ID into
something much more broad than the article currently addresses, usually
unsupported by references ("I think...") or, most recently, using a letter
to the editor to an Iowa newspaper by what appears to be just any old
person.

Ian

--
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


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

Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
Simetrical wrote:
>> Should perhaps I follow this advice, and watch the created bug instead
>> of lurking on this list?
>
> Probably a good idea.  Certainly lower-upkeep on your part, you won't
> have to pick through all the list messages.

OK, thanks <signing off>
/J?

--
"We're working at the intersection of TeX (bizarre and, er, eccentric),
Emacs (bizarre and, er, eccentric) and GhostScript. Why expect
GhostScript to be any less bizarre and eccentric than the rest?"
    Nick Alcock, the preview-latex development team


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki for Project management

body:
Howdy

Anybody know of a wiki or suitable extensions to media-wiki that would
make a good "platform" for project
management issues - tracking etc. It does not have to be fully-loaded
and simpler (in this case) is better.

Thanks for your time.

r


subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

body:
On 07/09/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

> I know there's a formal desysopping process, but I can't remember what
> it is.  I'd appreciate it if someone with the authority to do so would
> please remove my sysop privs from the English Wikipedia.

You go to meta (requests for permissions, I think) and ask them to desysop you.

- d.


from_name: karen marcelo

subject: [WikiEN-l] current categories and subcategories

body:
hi all

i just joined this list so i'm not sure if this is the correct forum to
ask this, but how do i get a master list of
all wikipedia categories and sub-categories?    i looked a the database
download page and took a peek at
pages_articles.xml and see that one can parse out Categories from the
mediawiki tags embedded in the
text.  but is there some other dump with all the categories (even ones
that may not have articles) as well as their
subcategories available somewhere?

apologies in advance if this was the wrong list to post this question
to, but if someone could direct me to the right one
it would be most appreciated.

thanks much!


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I don't see where copyright is an issue with this.  The Library
> of Congress is an arm of the United States Congress whose
> primary purpose is to serve U. S. legislators.  That would put
> its work in the public domain.  Is there any reason to believe
> otherwise?

Why don't I see any downloadable dump of their entire database?
Providing that would be a great goal for the Wikimedia Foundation.
Here we're freeing the encyclopedia, news reporting, pictures, and
why not the library catalog.  Just think about being able to
importing it to MySQL or PostgreSQL on your own computer, and then
do things like "select count(*)" to find which people translated
most works from Croatian to Hungarian, and make a [[List of
translators from Croatian to Hungarian]], so we can make sure we
have encyclopedia articles for the 50 most active ones.

Currently there is only one entry in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_translators

Today I can download the LoC catalog one MARC record at a time
through a Z39.50 interface.  So far, I'm not aware of anyone who
copied the entire catalog this way and provided it for free
download.  If we had a copy, would the Wikimedia Foundation
provide it for download?  What does the legal councel or
foundation board say?  Do we need a written permission as a legal
security, or can we simply trust that these U.S. government data
are in the public domain?  Are they in fact U.S. government data,
or were they licensed from other sources, and under which terms?

> Other libraries may have different views concerning their
> material, but how much of their material is not in the LoC
> catalogue.

While the LoC catalog is huge in the number of records, and
providing it for free download would be a great achievement, the
assumption that it could replace every other library catalog is
naive.  For the example above, the LoC rarely catalogs which
people translated between which languages.  That information (for
Croatian-Hungarian) is probably only in the catalog of Hungary's
national library.  For Hofstadter's famous "G?del, Escher, Bach"
LoC only finds three hits for three English editions, but none of
this book's many translations to other languages.  The German
national bibliography shows 2 English editions, a dozen German
printings, and 1 each in Dutch, Danish, and Spanish.  The Dutch
Royal Library lists two English and five Dutch printings, but the
last one is documented as being the 9th printing, so the catalog
in fact only covers half of what's been published.  Many Dutch
Wikipedians are likely to own copies of the other printings, and
could provide the missing information if the database was Wikicat.
And these are only languages that are close to English and well
represented at the Library of Congress.

This takes us back to explaining the basics of library &
information science.  We should have a mailing list specialized on
Wikicat and how to free the bibliography.

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


from_name: Anthere

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

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>The problem is that whilst "you" and "I" will generally agree on the
>>concept, you can not expect that people will read "properly" terms which
>>have different meaning and implications depending on languages.
>
>
> Then I trust that you will help me by explaining my meaning in French,
> to French people, since I can speak only English and (barely) German.
>
> --Jimbo

Yup. Done.
Hmmm, since then Bradypus has decided to join foundation-l :-)

ant


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

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

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 05/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.
>>
>
> It's a rumor. Whenever I posted juriwiki-l directly, I got replies
> from both Legal Officer (J-B Souffron) and board member(s). Most of
> those mails were about trademarks. I think they worked not so badly as
> rumored.
Hoi,
I can only confirm the rumour not being a rumour.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Sage Ross

body:
The intelligent design articles have never really been in a state
where rational proponents of ID (they do exist) would agree that their
views are represented neutrally, though I think they've been getting
closer.  I say this as a trained biochemist, a former supporter of
intelligent design, and a historian of evolutionary biology in
training.  The main issue is the choice of which sources are
considered significant/reliable enough to be included, since there is
a wealth of potential sources for each side.  Many of the
anti-intelligent design sources I would consider of dubious
objectivity, even though I agree with their objectives to prevent the
political aspects of the ID Movement from gaining power in the
educational system (as well as their conclusion that ID is no serious
competition to evolutionary theory).  In particular, Mark Perakh,
Forrest & Gross, and Eugenie Scott (among others) are polemicists
whose work responds to the political and ideological aspects of ID and
does not attempt to engage seriously with the (limited but real)
intellectual aspects.

The other problem is the intractable one of which aspects to emphasize
and which not to. I've occasionally tried to insert material about the
diversity of thought within the ID movement and among those who study
it, but it generally gets removed as not significant (which I believe
from personal experience not to be the case, but haven't seen any real
evidence one way or the other).

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

-Ragesoss

On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > .. and they're going to spam our e-mail queue:
> > http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
> >
> > It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
> > entries on the respective topics systematically. I suspect there's
> > probably a lot of creationist POV creep already.
>
> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
> Creatonism and Intelligent Design systematically; I suspect there's a
> lot of evolutionist POV creep.
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


body:
On Sep 7, 2006, at 10:50 AM, Andrew Gray wrote:

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

Tawkerbot and the other bots  used at www.countervandalism.org, have
a watchlist feature that can be enabled.

-- Jossi


from_name: Mark Wagner

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

I know some neopagans who would be quite insulted by that statement.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Chuck Smith

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

body:
I posted a draft of WikiCreole 0.1
<http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Creole0.1> to wikicreole.org and we
believe all the rough edges have been smoothed out, but are still
seeking comments and criticisms from the wiki community.

Please either reply on <http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Talk.Creole0.1>
or just email me.  We plan to release a final spec on **Monday**, so
last day to comment on Creole 0.1 is this Sunday.

Chuck


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
<snip>
> I think that we all should be free to use whichever form we want,
> without being constantly besieged by the forces of political
> correctness.
>

Amen to that.

--
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

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>> I don't see where copyright is an issue with this.  The Library
>> of Congress is an arm of the United States Congress whose
>> primary purpose is to serve U. S. legislators.  That would put
>> its work in the public domain.  Is there any reason to believe
>> otherwise?
>>
>
> Why don't I see any downloadable dump of their entire database?
> Providing that would be a great goal for the Wikimedia Foundation.
> Here we're freeing the encyclopedia, news reporting, pictures, and
> why not the library catalog.  Just think about being able to
> importing it to MySQL or PostgreSQL on your own computer, and then
> do things like "select count(*)" to find which people translated
> most works from Croatian to Hungarian, and make a [[List of
> translators from Croatian to Hungarian]], so we can make sure we
> have encyclopedia articles for the 50 most active ones.
>
> Currently there is only one entry in
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_translators
>
> Today I can download the LoC catalog one MARC record at a time
> through a Z39.50 interface.  So far, I'm not aware of anyone who
> copied the entire catalog this way and provided it for free
> download.  If we had a copy, would the Wikimedia Foundation
> provide it for download?  What does the legal councel or
> foundation board say?  Do we need a written permission as a legal
> security, or can we simply trust that these U.S. government data
> are in the public domain?  Are they in fact U.S. government data,
> or were they licensed from other sources, and under which terms?
>
>
There are benefits in asking nicely.. there are benefits in cooperation.
Needing permission and asking for permission and cooperation makes the
other organisation a party to what we want to achieve. When you select
the translators from Croatian to Hungarian, you get a result where you
want to disambiguate the translators. This is what Wikiauthors will
bring you..

Indeed cooperation is a good thing..
>> Other libraries may have different views concerning their
>> material, but how much of their material is not in the LoC
>> catalogue.
>>
>
> While the LoC catalog is huge in the number of records, and
> providing it for free download would be a great achievement, the
> assumption that it could replace every other library catalog is
> naive.  For the example above, the LoC rarely catalogs which
> people translated between which languages.  That information (for
> Croatian-Hungarian) is probably only in the catalog of Hungary's
> national library.  For Hofstadter's famous "G?del, Escher, Bach"
> LoC only finds three hits for three English editions, but none of
> this book's many translations to other languages.  The German
> national bibliography shows 2 English editions, a dozen German
> printings, and 1 each in Dutch, Danish, and Spanish.  The Dutch
> Royal Library lists two English and five Dutch printings, but the
> last one is documented as being the 9th printing, so the catalog
> in fact only covers half of what's been published.  Many Dutch
> Wikipedians are likely to own copies of the other printings, and
> could provide the missing information if the database was Wikicat.
> And these are only languages that are close to English and well
> represented at the Library of Congress.
>
> This takes us back to explaining the basics of library &
> information science.  We should have a mailing list specialized on
> Wikicat and how to free the bibliography.
>
Indeed cooperation is a sweet thing..
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Travis Derouin

body:
Hi Ron,

This one is ok for tracking tasks:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tasks_Extension

Travis

On 9/7/06, Ron Hall <ron.hall at mcgill.ca> wrote:
> Howdy
>
> Anybody know of a wiki or suitable extensions to media-wiki that would
> make a good "platform" for project
> management issues - tracking etc. It does not have to be fully-loaded
> and simpler (in this case) is better.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> r
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 9/6/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Pictures of living people also have restrictions on them.  In some
> > jurisdictions, there is in fact no way for any model release or
> > contract to remove all restrictions; the person depicted still has
> > some rights over the image.  Pictures which contain living people even
> > incidentally are also restricted, especially if no model release or
> > contract has been signed.  The picture as a whole is PROBABLY legally
> > non-problematic, but if cropped down to show only a person or group as
> > the main subject would be a problem.
>
> Yes... well probably it would do no great harm to have much stronger
> requirements with regards to model releases and the like. I don't
> think policy on this area is complete. Morally we have more of a
> responsibility to develop something watertight here, but from a legal
> perspective trademarks seem more dangerous to me due to large
> companies' deep pockets (and attraction to the courts).
>
Dangerous how?  Do you know of any cases where an encyclopedia was
sued for violating trademark law when it included a trademarked image
in one of its articles?  Are there any trademark holders threatening
to sue Wikimedia for trademark infringement, in cases where the
copyright status is clear?

What about the forks and mirrors?  Have any of them complained that
*they* were getting threatened over trademark issues?

I don't know the answer to these questions, so maybe it is a problem
and I just don't know about it.  If it is a problem (dangerous from a
legal perspective), then we should be talking about banning
trademarked images from all Wikipedias, not just from Wikimedia
Commons.  If it isn't a problem, then I see no reason for a new
policy.

I've decided to modify my suggestion slightly: "If an image is useable
under the rules of the majority of Wikimedia projects, then it can be
in commons.  Otherwise, it can't."  I suspect the difference between
"the majority of" and "all" is minor, but this removes some corner
cases (maybe French Wikipedia is especially paranoid about lawsuits
over photos of buildings, for instance).

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
On 9/6/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm . . . have you considered digging up some voting theorists and
> e-mailing them for advice on how to set this up?  I suspect that any
> system that hasn't had a great deal of systematic thought put into it
> will inevitably be deeply flawed on various levels.  If you could get
> a professor interested in having e-mail chats who could hook you up
> with some equations that get at what we want, I think you'd probably
> avoid all the issues that people brought up above, plus most of the
> issues they didn't think of.

I hadn't considered that. :) Thanks for the offer. I agree, any simple
schemes definitely won't be perfect, but it might be suitable for
finding which pages are good, and which pages need to be improved.
Another option is to use a forumla similar to IMDB's, which I assume
has been arrived at due to some amount of research.

> On 9/6/06, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> > How do extensions generally deal with images and stylesheets that need
> > to be available outside the extensions directory, such as in the skins
> > directory, when users are accessing them through SVN?
>
> Hooks, surely?  The skins must have hooks in lots of convenient
> places.  What do you mean, available outside the extensions directory?
>  You're only running code inside the extensions directory.

The extension uses images for buttons for rating the pages, and these
buttons have to reside in a directory that is accessible through the
browser, /extensions is not. So, in this case, do extensions generally
just provide a tarball and have the user untar the images into the
skins directory?

Thanks,
Travis


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
On 9/1/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> It's a casual rating system to give people a bit of an idea as to how
> good various people think a page is. Supplemental to stable
> versioning, perhaps, but it still doesn't replace people checking
> their own sources, etc.
>
> Your point about feedback coming from anons is a good one, and quite
> salient, since it's quite correct that most (and the best, from the
> point of view of what our "audience" thinks) feedback will come from
> viewers who might not have accounts.
>
> Whatever is chosen in the implementation is going to be a toss-up,
> because life is not perfect, people are not perfect, and shared IP
> addressing is a sordid reality we have to put up with. :)

If it's just a casual rating system: don't make it a vote.  Allow
everyone to provide input (believe it or not, we do get useful
complaints to OTRS from non-editors)...  Collect everything, expose
what we've collected.... people can then write their own tools to do
things with the data.

The software should implement mechanism but not policy wherever possible.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 07/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

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

I think we can rest assured there will be *quite* a lot of close
attention to all these articles for the coming whatever.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>I don't see where copyright is an issue with this.  The Library
>>of Congress is an arm of the United States Congress whose
>>primary purpose is to serve U. S. legislators.  That would put
>>its work in the public domain.  Is there any reason to believe
>>otherwise?
>>
>>
>Why don't I see any downloadable dump of their entire database?
>Providing that would be a great goal for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
I think that the answer may be quite innocent.  Until Wikimedia came
along who would have wanted the entire database?  If the demand didn't
exist, they would have no reason to make it available.

>Here we're freeing the encyclopedia, news reporting, pictures, and
>why not the library catalog.  Just think about being able to
>importing it to MySQL or PostgreSQL on your own computer, and then
>do things like "select count(*)" to find which people translated
>most works from Croatian to Hungarian, and make a [[List of
>translators from Croatian to Hungarian]], so we can make sure we
>have encyclopedia articles for the 50 most active ones.
>
Again before such a task was undertaken someone had to imagine that it
could be done.  As long as the list had to be created manually, the task
was for all practical purposes impossible.  There are surely many other
databases that need freeing, and they could be just as free if someone
else were doing the freeing.  If that other databse allows you at no
cost to search in such a way that you can find the information you want
is it not effectively free?

>Today I can download the LoC catalog one MARC record at a time
>through a Z39.50 interface.  So far, I'm not aware of anyone who
>copied the entire catalog this way and provided it for free
>download.  If we had a copy, would the Wikimedia Foundation
>provide it for download?  What does the legal councel or
>foundation board say?  Do we need a written permission as a legal
>security, or can we simply trust that these U.S. government data
>are in the public domain?  Are they in fact U.S. government data,
>or were they licensed from other sources, and under which terms?
>
While it's a good thing to investigate these questions more thoroughly,
it would be pointless if proposal were technically impossible.  I have
been looking through http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/ where LC is
indicated as the maintenance agencey for Z39.50/ISO 23950.  Nowhere have
I yet found any mention of copyright for the standard on the site.

This may cover the standard and formats, but what about the content of
any particular entry?  I would venture to say that it is not
copyrightable.  Copyright applies to the expression of information, and
not the information itself.  If the form of expression is predictable,
as in conforming to a public domain standard the result would not be
copyrightable.

One of the greatest threats to open access is the belief that something
is protected by copyright when it isn't.  Any fair use claim presumes
that the material used is copyright protected in the first place.  If
the underlying material is not protected a fair use claim is redundant.

Things that I have looked at while trying to answer this
    http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-06.htm#collateral
    http://www.loc.gov/standards/relreport.pdf
    http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march00/coyle/03coyle.html

>>Other libraries may have different views concerning their
>>material, but how much of their material is not in the LoC
>>catalogue.
>>
>>
>While the LoC catalog is huge in the number of records, and
>providing it for free download would be a great achievement, the
>assumption that it could replace every other library catalog is
>naive.  For the example above, the LoC rarely catalogs which
>people translated between which languages.  That information (for
>Croatian-Hungarian) is probably only in the catalog of Hungary's
>national library.  For Hofstadter's famous "G?del, Escher, Bach"
>LoC only finds three hits for three English editions, but none of
>this book's many translations to other languages.  The German
>national bibliography shows 2 English editions, a dozen German
>printings, and 1 each in Dutch, Danish, and Spanish.  The Dutch
>Royal Library lists two English and five Dutch printings, but the
>last one is documented as being the 9th printing, so the catalog
>in fact only covers half of what's been published.  Many Dutch
>Wikipedians are likely to own copies of the other printings, and
>could provide the missing information if the database was Wikicat.
>And these are only languages that are close to English and well
>represented at the Library of Congress.
>
The Hofstadter example is a good one in that it warns us of the dangers
of simplistic reduction.  Many of our online colleagues seem to be
motivated by some desire to make tasks easier.  This is often done by
ignoring embarassing complexities.

>This takes us back to explaining the basics of library &
>information science.  We should have a mailing list specialized on
>Wikicat and how to free the bibliography.
>
Perhaps, although I'm not sure we're ready for yet another mailing
list.  Full scale freeing of bibliographies can easily lead us into what
amounts to a Union Catalog of private holdings.

Ec


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
On 9/7/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> >Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I don't see where copyright is an issue with this.  The Library
> >>of Congress is an arm of the United States Congress whose
> >>primary purpose is to serve U. S. legislators.  That would put
> >>its work in the public domain.  Is there any reason to believe
> >>otherwise?
> >>
> >>
> >Why don't I see any downloadable dump of their entire database?
> >Providing that would be a great goal for the Wikimedia Foundation.
> >
> I think that the answer may be quite innocent.  Until Wikimedia came
> along who would have wanted the entire database?  If the demand didn't
> exist, they would have no reason to make it available.
>
> >Here we're freeing the encyclopedia, news reporting, pictures, and
> >why not the library catalog.  Just think about being able to
> >importing it to MySQL or PostgreSQL on your own computer, and then
> >do things like "select count(*)" to find which people translated
> >most works from Croatian to Hungarian, and make a [[List of
> >translators from Croatian to Hungarian]], so we can make sure we
> >have encyclopedia articles for the 50 most active ones.
> >
> Again before such a task was undertaken someone had to imagine that it
> could be done.  As long as the list had to be created manually, the task
> was for all practical purposes impossible.  There are surely many other
> databases that need freeing, and they could be just as free if someone
> else were doing the freeing.  If that other databse allows you at no
> cost to search in such a way that you can find the information you want
> is it not effectively free?
>
> >Today I can download the LoC catalog one MARC record at a time
> >through a Z39.50 interface.  So far, I'm not aware of anyone who
> >copied the entire catalog this way and provided it for free
> >download.  If we had a copy, would the Wikimedia Foundation
> >provide it for download?  What does the legal councel or
> >foundation board say?  Do we need a written permission as a legal
> >security, or can we simply trust that these U.S. government data
> >are in the public domain?  Are they in fact U.S. government data,
> >or were they licensed from other sources, and under which terms?
> >
> While it's a good thing to investigate these questions more thoroughly,
> it would be pointless if proposal were technically impossible.  I have
> been looking through http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/ where LC is
> indicated as the maintenance agencey for Z39.50/ISO 23950.  Nowhere have
> I yet found any mention of copyright for the standard on the site.
>
> This may cover the standard and formats, but what about the content of
> any particular entry?  I would venture to say that it is not
> copyrightable.  Copyright applies to the expression of information, and
> not the information itself.  If the form of expression is predictable,
> as in conforming to a public domain standard the result would not be
> copyrightable.
>
> One of the greatest threats to open access is the belief that something
> is protected by copyright when it isn't.  Any fair use claim presumes
> that the material used is copyright protected in the first place.  If
> the underlying material is not protected a fair use claim is redundant.
>
> Things that I have looked at while trying to answer this
>     http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-06.htm#collateral
>     http://www.loc.gov/standards/relreport.pdf
>     http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march00/coyle/03coyle.html
>
> >>Other libraries may have different views concerning their
> >>material, but how much of their material is not in the LoC
> >>catalogue.
> >>
> >>
> >While the LoC catalog is huge in the number of records, and
> >providing it for free download would be a great achievement, the
> >assumption that it could replace every other library catalog is
> >naive.  For the example above, the LoC rarely catalogs which
> >people translated between which languages.  That information (for
> >Croatian-Hungarian) is probably only in the catalog of Hungary's
> >national library.  For Hofstadter's famous "G?del, Escher, Bach"
> >LoC only finds three hits for three English editions, but none of
> >this book's many translations to other languages.  The German
> >national bibliography shows 2 English editions, a dozen German
> >printings, and 1 each in Dutch, Danish, and Spanish.  The Dutch
> >Royal Library lists two English and five Dutch printings, but the
> >last one is documented as being the 9th printing, so the catalog
> >in fact only covers half of what's been published.  Many Dutch
> >Wikipedians are likely to own copies of the other printings, and
> >could provide the missing information if the database was Wikicat.
> >And these are only languages that are close to English and well
> >represented at the Library of Congress.
> >
> The Hofstadter example is a good one in that it warns us of the dangers
> of simplistic reduction.  Many of our online colleagues seem to be
> motivated by some desire to make tasks easier.  This is often done by
> ignoring embarassing complexities.
>
> >This takes us back to explaining the basics of library &
> >information science.  We should have a mailing list specialized on
> >Wikicat and how to free the bibliography.
> >
> Perhaps, although I'm not sure we're ready for yet another mailing
> list.  Full scale freeing of bibliographies can easily lead us into what
> amounts to a Union Catalog of private holdings.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

I would guess that both the standard and the actual LOC data are covered by
the same rule under which US government publications aren't copyrighted or
copyrightable, and are free for anyone to use.

You're probably right that nobody has probably asked them for the database
dump before.  They may not be in a position to conveniently or reasonably
give it to someone who asks.  But it can't hurt to ask.  Has anyone found
contacts in the LOC organization and followed up on it?

Either Wikipedia or the Internet Archive would be good host locations for
the data; possibly both.

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


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 07/09/06, Alison Wheeler <wikimedia at alisonwheeler.com> wrote:
> I hate to suggest it, but are we looking towards some sort of infobox on
> each image/media page with a table of country/ies and statuses, leaving it
> to the user in each instance to confirm what status applies to their
> proposde use?

We have something a bit like this with
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo-Germany .

Maybe this is the way to go. Many users will ignore such fine print,
though. Though I guess that's a problem then for individual projects,
not Commons...

I don't know. Copyright law also seems to be very difficult to resolve
sometimes, but we are muddling along.

Brianna


body:
On 07/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pictures of living people also have restrictions on them.  In some
> jurisdictions, there is in fact no way for any model release or
> contract to remove all restrictions; the person depicted still has
> some rights over the image.  Pictures which contain living people even
> incidentally are also restricted, especially if no model release or
> contract has been signed.  The picture as a whole is PROBABLY legally
> non-problematic, but if cropped down to show only a person or group as
> the main subject would be a problem.

Yes... well probably it would do no great harm to have much stronger
requirements with regards to model releases and the like. I don't
think policy on this area is complete. Morally we have more of a
responsibility to develop something watertight here, but from a legal
perspective trademarks seem more dangerous to me due to large
companies' deep pockets (and attraction to the courts).

> If commons goes down the road that any restrictions on use at all
> except those specified by GFDL or CC-By-SA are unacceptable, then
> Commons will be a repository only for public-domain art (but beware of
> those copied without the consent of the current owner!), pictures of
> landscapes and growing things (but even then, beware!  Some landscape
> features have been trademarked ...) and suchlike.  That Commons is
> nearly useless to me, and I will not use it or contribute to it.

OK, but you don't need to be so dramatic. No one wants to see that
happen. It's not like I am the last authority on policy anyway -- I
posted this to get other people's opinions, not merely inform you
before it was enacted. ;)

I didn't think this up to be the ultimate killjoy. I thought it up to
try and solve some of the contradictions I see in how we handle images
today. Do you think the Pringles image is free? The German logos?

What about version 2: instead of applying to all registered
trademarks, apply to all registered trademarked logos. This should
remove the ridiculous cases like you mentioned above (car body shapes,
landscape, device designs etc). But still includes Pringles boxes &
German logos.

cheers,
Brianna


from_name: Alison Wheeler

body:
On Thu, September 7, 2006 04:38, Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Maybe this is the way to go. Many users will ignore such fine print,
> though. Though I guess that's a problem then for individual projects,
> not Commons...
> I don't know. Copyright law also seems to be very difficult to resolve
> sometimes, but we are muddling along.

I've put up an idea of what I meant as a status table at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AlisonW/Licensestatustest Obviously
a template solution would be used to get the countries and standard texts
inserted, but it might work and also provides us with a caveat for when
(rather than if!) images get used where they shouldn't be ...

Alison Wheeler


from_name: Aphaia

body:
Late coming eh? However ...

On 9/3/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
> Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.

As Anthere said, those two words can mean the very "involved in every
decision" or at least "responsible in every little decision" in some
cultures/contries. Those who come from those areas could understand
those words in that meaning, not a US guy might have meant. And both
of two can hardly realize they have found different connotations
there. Unless they face the result of different analysis. In this
thread, it arose between two people who have been working together for
years and in good terms, and even that, it took a series of mails. And
as Anthere said, in Japanese (or in Japanese contexts) manage and
govern could mean more serious intervention/responsibility. In another
cultural context, it could mean another attitude and deed.

That's a fun and difficulty in an intercultural communication. What
you said can be always taken in a different way. What you understand
can be different from what you heard. Vise versa. Essentially there is
nothing different in communication in your neighborhood. Just
differences can be easily amplified.

So, for being well understood, please be aware of those possibility;
here you are talking for people whose cultural backgrounds could be
different. Specially, I would like English native speakers to be
consious to it. International communication is not totally same with
talk to your neighborhood, it needs a different attention, wording,
attention of different type. If someone said very rudeness, it would
be your misunderstood or just his or her misunderstanding.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: jayjg

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

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

Jay.


from_name: Peter

body:
I think the bold and italics notation is confusing, especially the italics
// makes me think about comments instead of italics... why not just use
bbcode (=already widespread standard on fora) for your wikicreole standard
and add the items for wiki-specific features which are not available yet in
bbcode?

Cheers,
Peter.

On 9/7/06, Chuck Smith <chuckssmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I posted a draft of WikiCreole 0.1
> <http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Creole0.1> to wikicreole.org and we
> believe all the rough edges have been smoothed out, but are still
> seeking comments and criticisms from the wiki community.
>
> Please either reply on <http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Talk.Creole0.1>
> or just email me.  We plan to release a final spec on **Monday**, so
> last day to comment on Creole 0.1 is this Sunday.
>
> Chuck
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:

> Excellent. Thanks.
> Now we need to ask Tawker or Essjay to modify their IRC bot (irc://
> irc.freenode.net/vandalism-en-wp), to watch over this recent changes
> subset, and create a new channel in irc.freenode for the bot.

Yep, this is what we need :-)

Note that when I say 'living bio patrol', I don't mean editors who
want to purge all blogs or whatever. I mean just quickly checking for
added rubbish or checking for someone putting a whack of material
(negative *or* positive) in a living bio with no reference of any
sort. Mistakes and bad edits will still happen - no-one is expected to
be perfect, particularly not volunteers doing an important but tedious
job - but it'll make them less likely.

- d.


body:
Bradypus wrote:

>At some point, of course, I had a small issue with Jimbo, as I am pretty
>sure he did not read my second and last message on his page. But I fully
>understand he is a super busy guy. I am just telling this because some have
>questionned my capacity to read what others are writing ;-)
>
>In case you would be interested by what my conclusion is, well you can read
>it there: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo
>The page has been completely reworked to facilitate reading for both
>language speakers (french and english).
>My current conclusions are pretty much the same as what they were a week
>ago, and the same as what lots of people said here.
>So I guess now I did get it, although I think Anthere may be right when she
>says using words such as "govern" and "manage" might create an issue also
>with the outside world.
>
It is inaccurate to cast this issue in the framework of false friends
that characterize a language based difference of meanings.  The
uncertain meaning is just as much there in English alone.

As I quoted before:

>Thus according to the 2001 New Oxford Dictionary of English:
>    "govern": conduct the policy, action and affairs of; control,
>influence or regulate.
>    "manage": be in charge of, administer, run, regulate; maintain
>control or influence over.
>
When there is a possibility that future confusion would arise it is
better to find common ground on the meaning of words, rather than depend
on a single person's subjective and perhaps eccentric interpretation of
those words.

Ec


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage
	of Wikipedia

body:
On 9/2/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> And wouldn't there be a lot of database space taken up by redundant
> categories like this? We could have articles for them, maybe, but at
> this rate we'll need to start 'WikiProject WikiDbCleanup'. If there
> are 12,000 categories, that has to make up a significant body of data.

At a rough estimate, the entire category structure of the English
Wikipedia takes up as much database space as the edit history of
[[George W Bush]].  I wouldn't worry about it.

--
Mark
[[en:User:Carnildo]]


body:
On 07/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Guettarda wrote:
> > > On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> Erik Moeller wrote:

> > >>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html

> > >>> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our

> > >> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on

> > > There is constant "creationist review" of these articles; new people

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

> Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying

I don't know that it's so much [[astroturfing]] as the typical
activist call to arms: POV activist sees carefully referenced
as-neutral-as-reasonably-achievable Wikipedia article, gets upset,
posts to list or blog about opposite-POV bias. That this one is on the
Discovery Institute's news blog is a little more corporate affiliated,
but it's not covert or done by deception. (Any more than anything the
DI does is.)

Usually what happens is: there's an issue, the activists are called to
Wikipedia, and ... being activists, i.e. sincere people working to
make the world better, they often like the idea of Wikipedia and try
to work with it properly. So we get new editors and better articles.
Win-win.

*Maybe* this will happen in this case :-)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

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

Ec


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

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

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

Mark,

While I respect your decision to scale back your activities, might I suggest
that you retain your admin privs? Even if you're not going to remain
involved in the politics, or actively looking for "adminny" tasks to do,
it's always a good thing for Wikipedia to have trusted people who can do
those extra things (alter page protection, deleted pages, etc.) when it's
obviously called for.

This is just a suggestion. Don't feel obligated to explain if you stick with
your original decision.

-Rich
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


body:
On 9/7/06, Chuck Smith <chuckssmith at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I posted a draft of WikiCreole 0.1
> <http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Creole0.1> to wikicreole.org and we
> believe all the rough edges have been smoothed out, but are still
> seeking comments and criticisms from the wiki community.
>
> Please either reply on <http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Talk.Creole0.1>
> or just email me.  We plan to release a final spec on **Monday**, so
> last day to comment on Creole 0.1 is this Sunday.
>
> Chuck
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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

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


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
On Sep 7, 2006, at 3:28 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

>> someones) vandalising {{cquote}}, {{otheruses}} & {{taxobox}} in the
>> same manner. I've seen this form of vandalism before ({{bio-stub}} is
I checked these templates and I see that there are many eyeballs on
these and little or not vandalism.

-- Jossi


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
Well, I'm a developer of [[en:WP:MWT]] and I figure I could port MWT
to fetch recent IP edits to living persons biographies. So, as long as
vandals don't remove the category, it should work. I'll see if I can
hack away at the code and build a prototype with the latest stable
release.

-- Draicone | Akash

On 9/7/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 6, 2006, at 5:22 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> > Of course, the existing bots will also fix vandalism they detect on
> > articles about living persons....  but I expect you mean bots that
> > specifically target the sort of problems we're expecting to catch with
> > living persons patrol.
> >
> > The real challenge in that is identifying things which are clear
> > evidence of vandalism (or at least a good red flag) for the bots to
> > look for. An example might be any edit which introduces "is a fag" is
> > highly suspect. You don't have to be a coder to create lists of such
> > red flags... It would be useful if everyone who sees a lot of
> > vandalism would make note of such patterns that we could expect a
> > computer to detect and ideally provide diff links.
> >
> > Once a good list is built they can be converted into [[regular
> > expression]]s and tested against historical edits to determine their
> > accuracy.   Once we are confident that they are good things to watch
> > for, adding them to a bot would take only minutes.
>
> I am asking for something simpler... A "recent changes" page that
> only shows articles on Category:Biographies of living people.
>
> That could be an excellent first step and a very easy one for
> developers to implement. Once we have that we can ask one of the bot
> writers to apply the current regular expressions they have for
> fighting vandalism.
>
> After that all we need is eyeballs, 10 to 20 editors & admins that
> want to monitor the bot RC.
>
> Then we can tell the world that we have a BLP patrol in place, to
> fight abuse in this specific category of articles.
>
> So, David: How do we get the developers to provide us with a recent
> changes page, for BLP?
>
>
> -- Jossi
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
If we could develop a system, like VP2, that took the feed and
allocated edits seperately to different users...

On 9/7/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 6, 2006, at 2:37 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > > 2. How are new living bios spotted?
>
> > There is a the {{blp}} tag and the {{WPBiography|living=yes}} tag
> > that is applied to the talk page. These automatically adds them to
> > [[Category:Biography articles of living people]]
>
>
> OK ... that would need someone watching [[Special:Newarticles]] for
> anything that looks like a bio. They'd ideally want a nice little bit
> of javascript to hand that adds those tags, if not already present.
>
> The recent changes feed on the category is a useful tool. Except of
> course it runs at about 5-10 edits a minute. Fun for all ...
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
On 9/7/06, Jan-?ke Larsson <jalar at mai.liu.se> wrote:
> OK, thanks <signing off>
> /J?

For anyone who wishes to follow this, the bug is
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7252.


body:
On 9/7/06, Peter <ipbwiki.list at gmail.com> wrote:
> why not just use
> bbcode (=already widespread standard on fora) for your wikicreole standard
> and add the items for wiki-specific features which are not available yet in
> bbcode?

If you use BBcode, you may as well use HTML.  The former is just a
stripped-down version of the latter with a couple of minor tweaks.
The advantages of wikitext are that it's more readable at a glance
(the basic shape of '' is very different from that of [[ or {|, for
instance) and quicker to type (many of the syntaxes rely on doubled or
tripled characters, for instance).  The disadvantage, of course, is
that it's hell to parse.

Anyway: why would we want to replace our insane and byzantine markup
system, which tens of thousands of users have grown used to, with
another insane and byzantine markup system that's completely
incompatible with the markup used in probably over ten million pages
on Wikimedia alone, and unfamiliar to our users to boot?
Reverse-incompatible markup changes, *maybe* (that's IMO: in Brion's,
absolutely not, and he's in charge), but only if there's a really good
reason for each and every change . . . which there isn't, here.


from_name: Liz Kim

subject: [Wikitech-l] customizing wiki search

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


body:
On 9/7/06, Ron Hall <ron.hall at mcgill.ca> wrote:
> Anybody know of a wiki or suitable extensions to media-wiki that would
> make a good "platform" for project
> management issues - tracking etc. It does not have to be fully-loaded
> and simpler (in this case) is better.

Wikis probably aren't the best choice for that.  You might want to
look into bug trackers like Bugzilla: there are things like priority,
release deadlines, blocking, assignment, etc. that it handles natively
but no wiki software would normally do.

The extension Travis linked to might work, but it appears not to be
maintained, and is basically welding a screwdriver onto a hammer in
any case: there's a lot of excess stuff in MediaWiki that'll just get
in the way, and more than likely the join will break sooner or later.


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

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And they famously never answer. But I suppose yes, I should at least try.

It's a rumor. Whenever I posted juriwiki-l directly, I got replies
from both Legal Officer (J-B Souffron) and board member(s). Most of
those mails were about trademarks. I think they worked not so badly as
rumored.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Ivan Krstić

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> Anyway: why would we want to replace our insane and byzantine markup
> system, which tens of thousands of users have grown used to, with
> another insane and byzantine markup system that's completely
> incompatible with the markup used in probably over ten million pages
> on Wikimedia alone, and unfamiliar to our users to boot?

That's not what WikiCreole is trying to do. Creole is attempting to
provide a small set of standardized markup that wiki engines can support
in addition to their native markup; eight wiki engines, including
MediaWiki, have committed to providing Creole support.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
> You're probably right that nobody has probably asked
them for the database
> dump before.  They may not be in a position to
conveniently or reasonably
> give it to someone who asks.  But it can't hurt to
ask.  Has anyone found
> contacts in the LOC organization and followed up on
it?
>
> Either Wikipedia or the Internet Archive would be
good host locations for
> the data; possibly both.

Sorry for not chiming in earlier as I am in some ways
the instigator of this altercation ;)

In any case I too would tend to think that information
from the Library of Congress's Voyager server is not
copyrighted (almost all of the records ARE authored by
the LoC, not imported) and since in any case the goal
is not to store the exact MARC records, but to extend
their content through collaborative
editing/annotation, I don't see how copyright laws
could apply, even if in the future we supported MARC
export.  With that said, other libraries like the
British Library do enforce copyright on their records
even though they maintain
an open catalog server.  I have started to document
these issues here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikicat_OPAC_Targets

Despite being generally optimistic about the Library
of Congress, I have noticed that they do not divulge
all their data and in fact charge for complete
database dumps in certain cases.  This applies to even
very basic things like authority records:

http://authorities.loc.gov/help/auth-faq.htm#2

In any case this is all speculation and we should
simply ask them.  I know of someone to contact however
I have refrained from doing so as I do not have any
particular organizational standing within the
Wikimedia Foundation and in any case have not gotten
much of a response to the project after its initial
announcement over a month ago.  I could ask as only
myself, but it would be nice if someone from the
Foundation could do so so that our request would be
taken more seriously and other data possibly opened up
to us.

Also, in regard to some earlier points about citation,
I have already gotten the Cite.php/<ref> extension
working with the Wikicat data import function I've
been
coding- notice that the user needs only provide a key
in the <ref> body:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikicat_Cite_screenshoot.png

This is ready to go live now, except that without a
place to store the bibliographic data we would be
banging on the Voyager server with every save/preview-
not a very neighborly way to introduce ourselves :/
Transclusion into the wiki-text could be an option, though...

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


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/1/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>
>> It's a casual rating system to give people a bit of an idea as to how
>> good various people think a page is. Supplemental to stable
>> versioning, perhaps, but it still doesn't replace people checking
>> their own sources, etc.
>>
>> Your point about feedback coming from anons is a good one, and quite
>> salient, since it's quite correct that most (and the best, from the
>> point of view of what our "audience" thinks) feedback will come from
>> viewers who might not have accounts.
>>
>> Whatever is chosen in the implementation is going to be a toss-up,
>> because life is not perfect, people are not perfect, and shared IP
>> addressing is a sordid reality we have to put up with. :)
>>
>
> If it's just a casual rating system: don't make it a vote.  Allow
> everyone to provide input (believe it or not, we do get useful
> complaints to OTRS from non-editors)...  Collect everything, expose
> what we've collected.... people can then write their own tools to do
> things with the data.
>
> The software should implement mechanism but not policy wherever possible.
>
>
Absolutely. There are all sorts of ways to address sockpuppetry, bogus
reviews, and ballot-stuffing.

For example, a Bayesian "rating the raters" approach might be useful,
given a small set of "ground truth" ratings. If this is designed right,
it should even be able to extract useful information from raters who are
actively trying to game the system, for example by performing honest
ratings of numerous other articles as well as plugging their favourites
or down-rating articles they disapprove of.

Yet another approach might be to offer a "rate a random article"
feature. This will both guarantee breadth of coverage from such ratings,
and also make ratings of random articles more difficult to ballot-stuff
by several orders of magnitude. (Note that calling up an article this
way, and then _not_ rating it, would also convey useful information).

-- Neil
>
>
>


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in
 fact	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
G'day David,

> On 05/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>It seems that we constantly assume 'Vandal!' in this case.
>
> How do we get across to the CVU that they can't vote amongst
> themselves to dispose of Assume Good Faith? Which is, ahh, a *policy*.
> Telling them they can't has had no effect.

I don't think username blocks is something we can blame CVU for.

CVU tends to stand for tolerance of bureaucratic nonsense, inexperience,
unfamiliarity with the goals of Wikipedia, militarism, and general
Cluelessness.  All Bad Things, I agree, but they point to a completely
different issue: the phenomenon is of users who don't know how Wikipedia
works or should work but think they know better than the rest of us
because of their CVU "experience".

The admins involved in CVU tend to be either, a) Clueful people who
signed up for reasons which escape me but which I trust made sense to
them; or b) the "CVU admins", who passed RfA on the strength of their
perceived vandal-whacking ability but don't yet know what they're doing.
  In my experience, 'a' is no problem, and 'b' may be overly officious
or process-oriented but don't go out of their way to set up Kafka-esque
username traps[0] for newbies.

I'm more concerned[1] about longer-term admins who've become burnt out
and decided they couldn't be bothered providing reasoning for exceeding
their mandate.

[0] Excuse me, I had some leftover flowery rhetoric burning a hole in my
     literary pocket.

[1] In this specific case ...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] joining John

body:
I know there's a formal desysopping process, but I can't remember what
it is.  I'd appreciate it if someone with the authority to do so would
please remove my sysop privs from the English Wikipedia.

Cheers,

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