body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 17:54, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> I am not responding to the rest of your email right now. Not out of
> disrespect but instead because I think we can go much further once one
> misunderstanding is cleared up.
>
> On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Let's repeat.
>> Images with permission? Not allowed.
>> Fair use images? Allowed.
>
> Images which would be fairuse/dealing in places where that is
> permitted (which is far more than 4 or 5 countries) plus permission?
> Allowed.

How are you going to obtain it?
There's no way for an italian (or other people from other countries
which don't have fair use/dealing) to upload an image "under fair use".
The only way to upload these images, is by permission. But permission
doesn't mean "You have the right to use it in every way you want":
permission means "You can use it in these precise conditions".
Then: it's impossible for a "image with permission" to be tagged as
"fair use", cause a tag like this would not respect the deal who
brought to the permission.

I'm not sure if I've been clear.

The way permission works is:
"Ehy, copyright holder, could we use an image of your *whatever* on
Wikipedia?"
"Yes, wikipedian. You can use it ON http://it.wikipedia.org, but no
printing" (or similar)

That's why, if I put a "fair use tag" or permitt another one to use a
"fair use tag", the deal is broken.

> Wikimedia is an international project. Where the laws of nations
> differ we must deal with a few hard constraints (the laws of where the
> WMF itself legally operates) and otherwise try to strike a balance
> which makes the most sense in most of the world.

That's the point. UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and
Singapore are not "the most of the world".
Surely we can't allow copyrighted images, that's why we can't allow
fair use images.

> Yes, the foundation sees permission as more restrictive than fair
> dealing, because it is for the foundations larger goals.

Making money in the Commonwealth?
Distributing information in the Commonwealth, where fair use images
are legal?

> Itwiki is
> still able to accept permission, it only must also make an effort to
> make sure these images would be fair use/fair dealing in the places
> where these concepts are codified in law.
>
> Again, what do you lose?

Again, "all media on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that
specify non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission
for Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media
that does not have these restrictions"

Gatto Nero


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l]  Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
Pedro Sanchez wrote on Thu Feb 8 20:23:36 UTC 2007:
>I'll try to reword Gregory's argument since I think it's still not
>clear to you (and for what I see, most it: people).
>
>1. On italy, you're allowed to publish with permission but not under fair use.
>2. So you can upload if you get permission
>3. Once the file has been uploaded in italy with permission, USA
people can access it
>4. Should the cirterion met, USA people can reuse the content under
fair use (since there,
>fair use applies no matter what the licencing terms are (permission or not))
>
>therefore he's suggesting you to tag your images with the text
>* This image has been published in  Italy with permission (not under
nonexistent "italy fair
>use")
>* This image *could* be used on some other countries as fair use
where those countries
>law allow it
>
>Am I right greg? Did I explain it correctly?

Yes, although I should make sure to be really clear.  (2) is only okay
if (4) would be possible. The reason for this is that we want the
material submitted to itwikis to be maximally free in the rest of the
world. Itwiki is used far outside of Italy... Even 15% of its edits
come from outside Italy.

We don't care about only the US, we also care about the whole world..
Countries that I believe have explicit law similar in intent to fair
use include Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Germany,
Hungary, Japan, Poland, Sweeden, United Kingdom.. and pretty much
every place that was at one point a UK holding. Of course, it's also
the case that it exists in Italian law too, but people here are
insisting that it only applies to text. This doesn't appear to be the
case to me, but I will not argue.

I think that is far too much smoke here for such a small amount of
fire. On itwiki the images impacted by this seem to be mostly tagged
with {{Copyrighted}}.  If we look at the whatlinkshere
(http://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Speciale:PuntanoQui/Template:Copyrighted&limit)
 we find that there are less than 2,000 images in this state. Is all
this concern from itwiki really just about 2,000 images or are there
several other templates that I am missing?

In any case, if you go through these images you will find many images
that anyone could take, public buildings and such. You will also find
many images created by Italian Wikipedians who are deciding to not
release their work under a free license.  This is a terrible thing,
and it's deeply troubling that anyone thought that these images were
ever okay.


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On 2/8/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> For Firefox:
> See: "Bug 79021 - All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering media"
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
> [Open 5.5 years, no activity in past 3.5 years]
>
> For IE:
> Don't care - reporting bugs to MS is an exercise in pain and frustration,
> involving having to provide your credit card details to do their QA for
> them on their products (and then they say "sorry, we can't help" -
> completely useless), or if you use the web feedback forms they just
> ignore you for 9 years (at which point they discontinue the product)
> even though it was clearly a 1-line trivial fix ... or at least these have
> been *my* experiences reporting bugs to MS. And as the piece-de-resistance,
> their IE bug database is now closed ( https://connect.microsoft.com/IE )
> to both reads and writes. Nope - I'm leaving this one to a masochist.

At least this explains why we have half as many CSS loads as page views. :)


from_name: Claudio Mastroianni

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 17:56, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> but is this only because you have misrepresented it to them?
>
> I'd like to understand how you came to represent all of itwiki.
>
> With your loud and abrasive style, you do not appear to be someone I
> would have selected to represent me.

Sorry. I've just reposted the *whole* email of Kat, and made two
statement.
Everyone has been able to read it in his wholeness (even in a
translated form *not made by me*), and to make their opinion.

Gatto Nero


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

body:
On 2/8/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> For Firefox:
> See: "Bug 79021 - All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering media"
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
> [Open 5.5 years, no activity in past 3.5 years]

Well, of course, if you don't vote for it.  :)


subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
On 2/8/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> You've therefore made the point that our current policies favor the broadcasting of the
> activities of the US government. So much for NPOV. :-)

Lets pretend for a moment that the Republic of Iceland had a fantastic
space program, but they kept it utterly secret because they are afraid
that that Norway would take credit for it anyways.

  Would we be violating NPOV because our lack of knowledge of the
program prevented us from giving it coverage equal to the coverage we
give NASA?

I don't think that it does... and to whatever extent that it does, I
think we would do well to look at Iceland as the cause rather than
Wikipedia.

I do not see how the real situation with the ESA could be any worse.
At least we can still write articles about their activities since they
are not secret. We are only limited in the media  which they do not
release freely.

The ESA has chosen a copyright policy which limits the freedom the
world can take with work, presumably they have good reasons for this,
but their decisions have negative consequences as well.  One of those
negative consequences is a reduction in how widespread information of
their work can travel, and Wikipedia is just a single symptom of that.

I also don't see this as any different to the fact that most of our
astronomical photographs are from NASA, while there are many
University and private telescope's whos works we do not use because
they are not released freely. Are we promoting NASA because we use
their pictures more often than pictures which are not freely release?
... Perhaps,  but since free content is our mission, I think that if
there is any promotion of sources of free content, it is both
unavoidable and not a bad thing.


list: wikien-l

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).

We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
need to learn to do right?

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


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 08/02/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:

> Big error, read the signature of the first mail by Kat Walsh:
>
> "Thanks to everyone for your input and hard work.
>
> For the Wikimedia Foundation,
> Kat Walsh"
>
>
> *For the Wikimedia Foundation,"

Or, perhaps, we could read the second sentence of her email, which
explicitly says what Gerard alluded to:

"A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet
been made and will be forthcoming; however, we hope that this longer
message will provide the explanation behind the resolution."

In other words - she is speaking for the Foundation, but this is not
the formal announcement, it's an outline of what the announcement is
broadly intended to be.
--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: David Strauss

subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
 (some important points)

body:
I do not see fair use as evil. True, fair use and fair dealing do not
exist in many jurisdictions, but the legal statutes of a country have
never alone been justification for labeling something "good" or "evil."

On the contrary, I see fair use is an essential component of free
speech. It is the right to contextualize commentary and criticism.
Without context, such forms of speech wane in relevance.

The justification for copyright is to create incentives for people to
produce works of merit. Whether fair use is ethical should hinge on its
effect on those incentives. Fair use is specifically designed to avoid
undermining these incentives, and I believe it succeeds in that goal.

With that settled, what could still make fair use "evil"? Is it evil
because some people cannot use it? By that standard, we would have to
limit many topics on Wikimedia projects, but we readily allow material
that would be banned for viewing -- let alone republishing -- in many
countries.

If we're willing to stand for the right to fairly cover the Falun Gong,
we should be willing to stand for the right to fairly cover a
world-famous Beatles album, including a discussion of the album art.

Instead of charging ahead to eliminate fair use everywhere, we should
celebrate our ability to use it *when necessary*.

Our goal is to liberate knowledge, and fair use is an important part of
that goal. Our goal is also to provide more than facts; it's to provide
facts with context. Fair use is part of that, too.

This is not to say that we should seek out fair-use media. Of course, we
should use free alternatives at every opportunity. But we should never
be ashamed of invoking fair use when it allows us to improve Wikipedia.

Delphine M?nard wrote:
> Tell me anything but don't tell me that fair-use can be used for this
> that and the rest and that it's not so bad, after all. (at least, this
> is what I repreatedly hear, this manichean speech that says ND/NC and
> permission are EVIL, fair use is LESS EVIL). Don't even hint at it. I
> said it earlier, I believe fair-use is evil. ;-) And it seems I am not
> the only one.
>
> If anything, I think it very sad that the biggest Wikipedia is
> condemning itself to be distributed "as such" only in countries where
> the fair use doctrine exists, and bars itself from being distributed
> in the rest of the world.
>
> I have, however, faith that the other wikipedias will show the light.
> Slowly, but surely...
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Delphine
>


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fluctuating Google result count with Firefox

body:
On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I know we're all a fan of Googlecounting results. But this is weird:
> When I search for a term in Firefox's Google box, the result count is
> exactly 200% what it should be.
>
> 1. Search for "Wikipedia is great" in the FireFox search box.
> 2. Mostly (but not always), Google reports 29,600 matches.
> 3. Repeat the search just by pressing Google's "Search" button.
> 4. Google reports 14,800 matches.
>
> Strangely, the difference in count seems to correspond to a difference
> in layout. The 14,800 count groups related matches by indenting. (The
> second match is [[All your base are belong to us]], indented under
> [[WIkipedia:Why Wikipedia is so great]].) The 29,600 match shows no
> indenting.
>
> FYI, here's the URL I'm using.
> http://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22wikipedia+is+great%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&client=firefox-a
>
> Constantly pasting that into FireFox, sometimes I get 29,600,
> sometimes I get 14,800. Pasting into IE7 I always get 14,800. Anyone
> have an explanation?
>
> Steve

Posing the question to a guy I know who works at Google received this response:

>The count of results is just an approximation; it's not the actual count.

So I assume that he means it's figured on the fly, and is subject to
random variation? Just proves you can't put any real stock in the
number returned.

-anon


from_name: luke brandt

subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
..................
>
> The worse news is that the dumps would be so huge that no one will
> actually be able to get or use them anyway. ;)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)

Brion,

Care to elaborate? Also I asked Mark Bergsma 2 months ago how much
bandwidth is taken by images on the English and German Wikipedias for
comparison. Do *you* have any idea of the figures and relativities.

Many thanks - luke


subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
Kat Walsh wrote:

>
>
>Ah, good, I was writing a response to that post but it seems better
>coming from another Italian. :-)
>
>This is a fair statement, and this sort of discussion is what you
>should have on itwiki to determine what you ultimately decide to
>allow... it is not perhaps so bad as some are thinking and I don't
>know that I am the one to convince you.
>
>-Kat
>
>
>
Thanks Kat. Of course the itwiki community is not just composed by Gatto
Nero and me, and to be honest I haven't read yet what's going on on our
Village Pump. Here I'm just representing myself.Also, I'm looking
forward to see the Board decision on the limits of the
Wikimedia-accepted fair use, with possibly some estimate on how many
fairuse images on en.wiki will be deleted because of this decision. The
Italian community may find the policy more acceptable if they're made
aware that, say, 50% of the images tagged as fair use on en.wiki won't
be accepted any more. When Jimbo recently wrote that we should get rid
of  non-free material, many a voice was saying: "Hey, why shouldn't we
used stuff we worked hard to get permission when en.wiki uses
{{fairuse}} for the same purpose?"

Marco (Cruccone)


subject:
[Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
	(some important points)

body:
On 2/8/07, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> If anything, I think it very sad that the biggest Wikipedia is
> condemning itself to be distributed "as such" only in countries where
> the fair use doctrine exists, and bars itself from being distributed
> in the rest of the world.
[snip]

I will offer you an interesting point for consideration here:

If and only if we are really good at only allowing "fair use" when no
free image is possible (i.e. only after we've tried to get the
copyright holder to make a release, only after we're sure that no
Wikipedian can create a comparable image)  AND only if we are really
good about tagging the non-free images in a machine readable way....

Then:

It would only take a trivial script to make a computer instantly
convert "Wikipedia, The Free* Encyclopedia. *includes some non-free
parts"  into  "Wikipedia, The Free (and we really mean it)
Encyclopedia".

To me, this would be a perfectly fine solution which does not
represent a compromise of our ideals. You may not agree, but I hope
you agree that it is better than many other alternatives.

However, for it to be true, we need to be really good at figuring out
what we can and can not expect to become free ... and we need to exert
constant pressure to move in the direction of freedom.  We are
certainly not there yet... our tagging isn't even really machine
readable and this reaction has shown us that there are still too many
people in our communities who do not share the dream of free content.

But ... I think we can do it. In order for it to work, however, we all
need to stand together.

I hope that those of us who don't think any concession to the non-free
world is acceptable, even temporally, can still stand along side those
of us who are more favor getting there through successive
approximation.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Mail archives

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>>The messing about with archives and the INCREDIBLY AWFUL htdig search
>>>are causing problems ...
>>
>>Yeah, I still don't get why you guys are blocking Google from indexing
>>it.
>
> Maybe you should see a doctor about your memory problem? :)

There is no problem with my memory. You just haven't provided any good
reason for it. All you said is that you're tired of complaints from
stupid people who post personal information. That is not a good reason
at all to remove the most useful functionality for all the hundreds of
people who would use it. I keep saying that and you keep ignoring me.

Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 08/02/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:

> be accepted any more. When Jimbo recently wrote that we should get rid
> of  non-free material, many a voice was saying: "Hey, why shouldn't we
> used stuff we worked hard to get permission when en.wiki uses
> {{fairuse}} for the same purpose?"

Note that en:wp used to have a LOT of with-permission images, which
many contributors worked very hard to get permission for (e.g.
User:Secretlondon ... who is now carrying her camera everywhere to
generate free images). I believe these are almost all now gone. That
is: en:wp went through this already.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] If you don't object to this, you're consenting

body:
On 08/02/07, Larry Pieniazek <lar at miltontrainworks.com> wrote:

> I'm an OTRS Newbie but I agree with Stephen that this approach is sound, and
> that keeping a single point of contact for legal concerns is likely to be
> the best approach, and that the OTRS gang does a generally good job of
> binning things correctly...

Yeah. My main question for OTRS was, will "Legal concern" in the
subject line get it the proper attention (i.e. someone looks over the
content and drops it in the "legal" bin)?

- d.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 20:39:09 +0200, "Cool Cat"
<wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:

>There are lots of useless categories out there. Peoples disabilities, sexual
>orientation, their religion, as well as other trivial information is being
>used to categorize. We have a lot of underpopulated and useless categories
>out there

I quite agree.  Pride is a fine thing, but I remain unconvinced that
many people want a navigational aid to all the notable people who are
or might have been gay / Jewish / Methylated Wesletarian / whatever;
much more likely that they will go along thinking "I am gay / Jewish /
Methylated Wesletarian / whatever, show me that lots of famous people
were as well, to validate that".  I'm also convinced that a lot of
this categorisation is used to pursue an agenda.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> > break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
> >
> > We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> > ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> > need to learn to do right?
>
> We need esperanza!
>
> -ducks-

Nobody expects the Spanish Waterfowl?

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/8/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/02/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > be accepted any more. When Jimbo recently wrote that we should get rid
> > of  non-free material, many a voice was saying: "Hey, why shouldn't we
> > used stuff we worked hard to get permission when en.wiki uses
> > {{fairuse}} for the same purpose?"
>
>
> Note that en:wp used to have a LOT of with-permission images, which
> many contributors worked very hard to get permission for (e.g.
> User:Secretlondon ... who is now carrying her camera everywhere to
> generate free images). I believe these are almost all now gone. That
> is: en:wp went through this already.
>
>
> - d.
>

a bit over 600 left although the exact number depends on how full CAT:CSD is.

--
geni


body:
On 08/02/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/02/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > be accepted any more. When Jimbo recently wrote that we should get rid
> > of  non-free material, many a voice was saying: "Hey, why shouldn't we
> > used stuff we worked hard to get permission when en.wiki uses
> > {{fairuse}} for the same purpose?"
>
>
> Note that en:wp used to have a LOT of with-permission images, which
> many contributors worked very hard to get permission for (e.g.
> User:Secretlondon ... who is now carrying her camera everywhere to
> generate free images). I believe these are almost all now gone. That
> is: en:wp went through this already.

Yeah. Edict to kill was May '05 (or so); they hung around for a long
time, but are now all gone AIUI. (Someone did a big cleanout lately)

(I seem to be carrying my camera everywhere too, now; go for a
ten-minute walk after lunch and try to photograph something, anything,
just to get in the habit. Most days, admittedly, this is rather futile
- I work in a secluded location in the countryside - but I've a lot of
nice photos of the Oxfordshire landscape out of it, and you never know
what interesting things will appear at short notice...)

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


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
ikiroid wrote:
> Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the
> workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to
> nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything. There is a lot of
> pressure on admins and admin candidates to act perfectly, all of the time.

I confess that when somebody offered to nominate me for adminship, I
declined. It was partly that I didn't feel quite up to the
have-you-done-everything-a-lot filter in RfA voting, and partly because
it looked like a major time commitment, with a lot of hair-pulling involved.

I don't know if it's correct, but my impression was that ten hours a
week was about a minimum to do it right. I felt like staying an editor
let me keep the ability to put in time as schedule and stress level allow.

Now that I think about it, though, maybe I got that impression from
watching the busy ones burn out.

William


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, SonOfYoungwood at aol.com <SonOfYoungwood at aol.com> wrote:
> To keep burned out admins from leaving, we need to give them praise and
> encouragement. They need to be seen as some of our most valued contributors. We
> might also want to set up incentives.

I agree with this, but we also have the problem that a common (but not
universal) near-the-end trait is blocks or other user admin stuff
which turn out to be very controversial.  How do you say "we really
like what you've done for the project and we want you to stay" and
"...but can you stop beating up newbies this badly?" at the same time?

If it were just a matter of WikiLove it would be easy.

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


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 2/8/07, Claudio Mastroianni <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's starting to be tiring.
> I *don't* think we should admit "images with permission" AND "fair
> use images" TOO.
> I *do* think that is utterly stupid to make a not-existent
> distinction between the freedom of a permission image and a fair use
> image. Cause they're similarly unfree. Worst: it seems that fair use
> images are less free than permission images.

Allow me to disagree here.

Case in point.

Tomorrow, Carlo, residing in Italy decides to take the content of the
Italian Wikipedia and start another encyclopedia project somewhere,
let's call it Carlopedia.
Carlo *cannot* take the images with permission and import them in his
new database, because those images are tied to Wikipedia and nothing
else. If anything, Carlo needs to go back to every single person that
gave the permission to Wikipedia and ask for the permission to be
given to Carlopedia. (minus one for permission images)

Tomorrow, John, residing in the US decides to take the content of the
English Wikipedia and start another encyclopedia project somewhere.
The Johnopedia.
He *can* take the content under fair use and use it in his own
project. (+1 for fair use)

Now, let's say Carlo wants to take the content of the English
Wikipedia, he's stuck and needs to get out the fair-use content
because in Italy, fair-use does not apply. (minus one for fair use)

And if John was to take the content of the Italian Wikipedia to start
his new Johnopedia, he'd be stuck because he's got to go through the
same whole process of asking for new permissions (minus one for
permission images)

For the record, I am as much against the use of fair use as can be. I
hate fair use, I think fair use is *evil* and that it should be
erradicated from every single Wikimedia project.

But if you want to get into one being free-er than the other, by all
means, learn to count.

That's -1*2 for permission = -2 and -1+1 for fair use.=0

Cheers,

Delphine
PS. Thank you Mathias for pointing this out.
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
NB. Cette adresse est utilis?e pour les listes de diffusion. Tout
email personnel envoy? ? cette adresse sera probablement perdu.


body:
On 08/02/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/02/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Note that en:wp used to have a LOT of with-permission images, which
> > many contributors worked very hard to get permission for (e.g.
> > User:Secretlondon ... who is now carrying her camera everywhere to
> > generate free images). I believe these are almost all now gone. That
> > is: en:wp went through this already.

> Yeah. Edict to kill was May '05 (or so); they hung around for a long
> time, but are now all gone AIUI. (Someone did a big cleanout lately)

Not all, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zenon-panoussis-karin-spaink-leipzig-2003.jpg
- which I personally secured permission for, but hey - if it's got to
go, it's got to go.

- d.


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 18:53, Marco Chiesa ha scritto:

> Gatto, the point is: an Italian person which will like to reuse that
> media will have to ask the copyright owner: "Hey, I saw this
> picture on
> Wikipedia, I'd like to use it in Lumacapedia, can I?" An American
> person
> will be able to use it in Snailpedia and print and sell the Snailpedia
> DVD in the US and some other countries without asking the copyright
> owner. That's it.

Gregory - very politely - came to #wikipedia-it on IRC, trying to
explain something (and then flying away, insulting).

As far as I've understood of his clarification, this is right but not
reversable.
A user from Snailpedia can use an image of Lumacopedia (and only in
this case, the image won't be deleted).
But a user from Lumacopedia can't use an image from Snailpedia
without permission. And if he can't obtain this permission, the image
will be stay - in every case - on Lumacopedia, and won't be deleted.

[In italiano:
Se un utente di Lumacopedia carica una immagine con permesso, questa
immagine potr? essere mantenuta solo se gli utenti di Snailpedia
potranno caricarla sulla loro pedia come fair use. Se non sar?
possibile, l'immagine deve essere cancellata.
Non succede lo stessl contrario:
Se un utente di Snailpedia carica una immagine fair use, questa
rester? anche se l'utente di Lumacopedia non potr? utilizzarla.
Cosa vuol dire? Che Snailpedia "sfrutter?" Lumacopedia, ma non il
contrario. E cio? che l'unica cosa che conta ? Snailpedia, non
Lumacopedia.
Ho detto "Beh ma io vedo una cert? disparit? fra le due cose" e lui
ha risposto - circa meno quasi, parafrasando - "Oh s?, c'? qualche
disparit? in effetti, ma whatever"]

If Gregory is right, the question is - personally - worst than I've
imagined.

Gatto Nero


body:
On 2/8/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Greg said:
>
> > The ESA has chosen a copyright policy which limits the freedom the
> > world can take with work, presumably they have good reasons for this,
> > but their decisions have negative consequences as well.  One of those
> > negative consequences is a reduction in how widespread information of
> > their work can travel, and Wikipedia is just a single symptom of that.
>
> Fine with me, but the same is true of museums or heirs of artists who chose not
> to allow free reproductions of their works of art.
>
> There cannot be two rules, two measures. One of the negative consequences,
> for an artist, the heirs thereof, or museums or libraries or whatever owning
> rights to the works, of not allowing free photographs, is to reduce exposure
> of these works to the world, and thus deprive themselves of a kind of
> advertisement on a site in the first pages of Google. They'll have to assume that.
>
> Thus, again: Why that exemption for so-called "modern art"?

We can, as fair use, use images of a copyrighted work to discuss the
copyrighted work so long as we're not going to get a free image and of
course such images don't belong on commons.

So for example, I don't see why we couldn't use the Giotto mission's
image of the Halley Comet on the article about the [[Giotto mission]],
because an image of it's copyrighted output is important to understand
its mission.. But we should probably not use the same image on
[[Halley's Comet]], since NASA provides many free images.

Incidentally, while looking for an example for my reply I noticed that
may enwiki articles for ESA subjects have free images. For example
take a look at [[ERS-1]]. After seeing all these I really wonder if we
haven't been misthinking our approach to ESA images.


body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 21:09:37 +0200, "Cool Cat"
<wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:

>If someone is really gay or is suspected of being gay...
>If someone is a Christian...
>If someone is a Methylated Wesletarian... (whatever that is ^_^' )
>All that can be mentioned in the relevant article...

Yup.  And it's not necessary to have 123,748 cats for every possible
variation thereof.

Oh: Methylated Wesletarian - my dad made that up to describe a rather
unsuccessful Origami model of a church :o)

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


body:
On 08/02/07, Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Enwiki went through something similar when the with-permission,
> non-commercial, and non-derivative images that were permitted (or at
> last tolerated) early on became speedy deletion candidates... many
> people upset at the loss of their hard work, and no one is ever happy
> about making that happen even where the ends are something we want.

That can't possibly be the case! Because that sounds like it's not a
conspiracy against it:wp on behalf of en:wp ...

When do we start shooting the contents of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_used_with_permission ?
Somewhere just under 640 images there, most of which are only
with-permission ... including ones I secured the permission for. Ah
well :-)

- d.


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 19:09, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> I did not intend to insult. My parting comment was
>
> "gattonero, if you are going to try to turn this yet another fight
> about your paranoia about commercial use and Wikipedia, then I will
> not participate. Caio Caio"

No, you're right. You've been very kind and polite to come to
#wikipedia-it, change our topic using *your* point of view, and then
"flying away" calling me a paranoid as soon as other people but me
started to not agree with you.

Me silly.

Gatto Nero.


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

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

Moin,

On Thursday 08 February 2007 06:45:07 Nick Jenkins wrote:
> > > That's six CSS files for most desktop browsers, and seven if you're
> > > using IE.
> >
> > Actually just four and five, respectively.  The media-specific
> > stylesheets will probably not be loaded by clients that aren't using
> > that medium.
>
> I can only speak to what Firefox and IE are actually doing.
[snip]
> I.e. both browsers fetch all 3 media variant stylesheets, at least on a
> full refresh.
>
> ... and exactly why both browsers feel the need to load a
> media="handheld" stylesheet whilst running on a distinctly non-handheld
> device is a question that's probably best directed at the authors of
> those browsers ;-)

Have you filed bug reports with them? :)

best wishes,

tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Feb  8 19:22:58 2007 with key 0x93B84C15.
 View my photo gallery: http://bloodgate.com/photos
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "HOT PACKET ON SERVER ACTION! Click here for FREE ACCESS to streaming
 video of dirty packets penetrating badly-configured firewalls!!!" aanand
 (705284) on 2004-03-20 on /. about the Adult Bit and the Evil bit

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subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> luke brandt wrote:
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> ..................
>>> The worse news is that the dumps would be so huge that no one will
>>> actually be able to get or use them anyway. ;)
>> Care to elaborate?
>
> I believe you can find a detailed explanation on the wiki at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_humor
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)

Thank you :) So we come to the real question - What does the Foundation
think it's doing, and the REAL 'why is it doing it.'  Is it simply a
question of DOGMA. The glib assertion of 'free' will not suffice,
because there are competing freedoms involved.

Eric said (on 19th December last):

"I would add (and perhaps should update this a bit) that especially in
the context of the developing world, local entrepreneurship is
extremely important. Enabling people to make a living by using
Wikimedia content can be a very good and desirable thing. I've had
discussions with education specialists in developing countries, who
_immediately_ recognized that the NC restriction would harm their
countries"

So is the Project Licensing to benefit subsistence economies? Surely
there are better ways to help.

And on 'fair use,' what are the *principles* involved - in view of the
get-outs mentioned

luke


subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 19:23, Gregory Maxwell ha scritto:

> I also talked for many minutes, but as I said, I will not participate
> if you're going to spin this as some evil conspiracy to commercialize
> your labor.

You may have some problems, 'cause that's not the point here.
I've talk of inequity and en.centrism. Not "commercial use of my work".


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF
	"fair	use"	decision

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>To me, reproductions of 2D art,
>>especially when it is the entire artwork that is reproduced even in
>>reduced resolution, essentially reproduced the entire artwork.  The only
>>legitimate "fair-use" example I have seen for this that has been
>>accepted in U.S. common law is for a thumbnail gallery, such as is done
>>on google images.  And even then it is to provide a link to content that
>>appears elsewhere that is legal to use.  Usage of this kind of content
>>in a Wikipedia article just doesn't seem to fit the same sort of
>>criteria, and requires multiple clicks to get to the "original" image
>>and information about the actual copyright owner of the photo.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Reproducing artwork and other cultural artifacts for scholarly
>commentary is pretty well established, and is done literally thousands
>of times per year in academic journals.  Heck, a recent journal article
>I read [http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/montfort] even reproduced
>the entire source code of the 1977 Atari game _Combat_ as part of its
>commentary.  It's not as if this is some sort of amazing new use that
>we're the first to discover.
>
>-Mark
>
>
I've asked before, but are there any publications of the scale of
Wikipedia that acutally use fair-use artwork?  In nearly every instance
I find licensed images instead, including several that have been offered
today on the various talk pages of Wikipedia that were referencing
Encyclopedia Britannica.  I don't see fair use being used to this extent
at all in major publications, even textbooks about artwork.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
Il giorno 08/feb/07, alle ore 19:30, Andrew Gray ha scritto:

> In other words - she is speaking for the Foundation, but this is not
> the formal announcement, it's an outline of what the announcement is
> broadly intended to be.

It's a *wider* explanation of what the formal announcement will be.

"we hope that this *longer*
message will provide the explanation behind the resolution"

Gatto Nero


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
ikiroid wrote:

> Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the
> workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to
> nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything.

Along these lines, one of the huge problems with edit-count-creep is
that we have created a process that systematically selects *against*
people who are careful, take their time, and think before acting. It's
not surprising if the current system generates more people who burn out,
because sometimes their activity reflects their volatility.

We are supposed to be focusing on quality, not quantity, with respect to
the encyclopedia articles. It's high time we did the same for
administrators.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Bandwidth usage

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

Simetrical wrote:
> On 2/8/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
>> For Firefox:
>> See: "Bug 79021 - All stylesheets are loaded regardless of rendering media"
>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=79021
>> [Open 5.5 years, no activity in past 3.5 years]
>
> Well, of course, if you don't vote for it.  :)

Bah, voting is useless. It looks like fixing that bug will be tough
design-wise, so cash would be better.
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body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 21:16:49 +0200, "Cool Cat"
<wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:

>So do you have a suggestion to tackle/quick attack the problem? CfD is a
>slow and inefficient procedure to get rid of nonsense. Too many
>panic/contradictory "Keep" votes just pile up in almost an instant.

No way forward other than to gain consensus.  Without a solid body of
the community behind the change you will be accused of robbing people
of their Jewish / black / gay / unicyclist identity.  Quite how
removing a cat from a Wikipedia article robs someone of their identity
I don't know, but that is what is asserted.  First stop the Village
Pump, I guess.

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


from_name: Conrad Dunkerson

body:
Kat, would you PLEASE put something like your comments below into a nice
neat package specifically clarifying that you were not seeking to spell
out detailed new 'rules' on fair use... because the usual suspects are now
'interpreting' your original statement to mean anything from '90% of all
fair use must be deleted immediately and without discussion' to 'any
reasonable fair use rationale is now valid for all of Wikimedia'. With
resulting deletion purges, cries of 'admin abuse', et cetera breaking out
as the 'jihadists' on all sides arm themselves with this latest excuse to
treat each other badly.

* Kat Walsh wrote:
> I'm afraid you may be disappointed if you are expecting something
> quite so specific; there are so many individual cases and
> circumstances that it would simply be impossible to say in detail
> "this kind is allowed, this kind is not" in such a way that everyone
> would know. For the most part it is up to the informed and reasonable
> members of the community to come to these decisions for their
> projects.

> (Side note, as I think from previous experience that I need to make
> this clear: this is not license to be a jerk when deleting images, and
> on the flip side you do not have license to accuse someone deleting
> these images of doing so to be a jerk. Treat each other with courtesy
> and understanding, darn it.)


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject:
[Commons-l] [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media
	licensing policies

body:
A further thought. Hopefully this announcement will cause projects to
have a look at their image use policies and make them clearer. For
those projects that have never allowed fair use, there is now
essentially no reason they can't turn off local uploads.

So this is a good opportunity for us to develop a more managed process
to help local projects make this transition to "Commons-only", for
their (and our) benefit.

cheers
Brianna

On 08/02/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> This email from Kat Walsh, who was recently appointed to the WMF
> board, is great news for Commons in my eyes. To me it confirms that
> our basic "careful, cautious" approach has been correct.
>
> However note this line:
> ===
> However, no project may have content policies less restricive,
> or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons
> and limited fair use.
> ===
>
> That means when we toss out PD-Italy, PD-Soviet, etc, we are
> effectively tossing them out for all projects (I think in these cases,
> some local projects chose to upload some materials locally - true or
> false?).
>
> This probably means that when we delete a longstanding license such as
> PD-Soviet in the future, we will need to announce the case on
> foundation-l when it starts and closes (and pray that not too many
> trolls decide to come).
>
> I also wonder how the German logo thing fits in with this, since they
> are effectively "less restrictive" than we are when it comes to logos.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Kat Walsh <kwalsh at wikimedia.org>
> Date: 08-Feb-2007 13:57
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Greetings!
>
> Because licensing has been an active topic in the community, the Board
> has discussed the issue at its recent meetings; thank you to those
> whose thoughtful input furthered the discussions.
>
> A formal declaration in the form of a Board resolution has not yet
> been made and will be forthcoming; however, we hope that this longer
> message will provide the explanation behind the resolution. The
> resolution will seek to clarify something that has been true for some
> time but may not have been stated in a clear enough form as guidance
> for the various communities to follow.
>
> The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to develop educational
> content under a free content license or in the public domain. For
> content to be "free content", it must have no significant legal
> restriction on people's freedom to use, redistribute, or modify the
> content for any purpose.
>
> It is therefore vital that all projects under the Foundation umbrella
> use these standards, not only because of our desire to enable the
> creation of free reference works, but also because of our commitment
> to allow those works to benefit everyone who wishes to use and reuse
> them. Because of this, all media we allow on our projects must be free
> for all users and all purposes, including non-Wikimedia use,
> commercial use, and derivative works. (Some media may be subject to
> restrictions other than copyright in some jurisdictions, but are still
> considered free work.)
>
> There are many different licenses that allow these freedoms. The
> licensing page on the Wikimedia Commons,
> <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Licensing>, discusses some
> of these license terms and gives links to the many licenses that are
> acceptable to use.
>
> While we appreciate the goodwill of those who give special permissions
> for Wikimedia to display a work, this does not fulfill our greater
> purpose of giving others the freedom to use the content as well, and
> so we cannot accept media with permission for use on Wikimedia only.
> Derivative uses are also important. The value of allowing
> modifications becomes clear to anyone who edits the projects, as new
> work builds on the work of others, and work you cannot change to meet
> your needs and purposes is not free.
>
> Commercial and non-commercial use is more controversial, as many
> people are concerned that allowing commercial uses allows others to
> abuse their generosity. But ultimately Wikimedia's longstanding and
> carefully considered position is, as with many other organizations
> devoted to free content, that disallowing commercial use does not
> provide significant benefit to the content creator or to the public.
> Non-commercial licensing stops many valuable uses that help distribute
> and support free works, and hence does not further our mission. Where
> commercial use spreads the works without taking away others' rights to
> use and distribute them for free, it helps our purpose of making the
> content as widely available as possible. This is a long enough message
> without going deeply into detail, but Erik Moeller's essay at
> <http://www.intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC> is a thorough and
> clear explanation of the reasons why the harm is more than the
> benefit, and so why non-commercial content is not something we use.
>
> It is for these reasons, which we have long supported, that all media
> on Wikimedia sites which are used under terms that specify
> non-commercial use only, no-derivatives only, or permission for
> Wikimedia only, need to be be phased out and replaced with media that
> does not have these restrictions.
>
> Some Wikimedia projects use media that is not free at all, under a
> doctrine of "fair use" or "fair dealing". There are some works,
> primarily historically important photographs and significant modern
> artworks, that we can not realistically expect to be released under a
> free content license, but that are hard to discuss in an educational
> context without including the media itself. Because the inability to
> include these works limits scholarship and criticism, in many
> jurisdictions people may use such works under limited conditions
> without having license or permission. Some works that are under
> licenses we do not accept (such as non-derivative) may meet these
> conditions. Because of our commitment to free content, this non-free
> media should not be used when it is reasonably possible to replace
> with free media that would serve the same educational purpose.
>
> Since individual projects have differing community standards and there
> are potentially legal issues in different jurisdictions, individual
> projects may choose to be more restrictive than Foundation policy
> requires, such as the many projects that do not allow "fair use" media
> at all. However, no project may have content policies less restricive,
> or that allow licenses other than those allowed on Wikimedia Commons
> and limited fair use.
>
> We hope this clears up some of the uncertainty about what types of
> material may be uploaded to and used on the projects as well as why we
> take this position.
>
> Thanks to everyone for your input and hard work.
>
> For the Wikimedia Foundation,
> Kat Walsh
>
> --
> Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
> * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
> mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Marco Chiesa wrote:

>Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>
>>***Your claim that Italian copyright law does not permit fair dealing
>>is incorrect: ***
>>
>>Under Italian law you are permitted 'abridgment, quotation or
>>reproduction of fragments or parts of a work for the purpose of
>>criticism or discussion, or for instructional purposes.'
>>(see Italian Copyright Act Article 70; Nimmer and Geller (1998-),
>>Italy, ?8[2][a])
>>
>>
>IANAL, but I'm not sure this can be applied to works of art, photographs
>and all the non-text things we're talking about. Last months SIAE
>(Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) enforced copyright on an
>amateurial art website which was showing contemporary paintings. The
>website was describing and commenting these works, so the use of the
>pictures was "to illustrate what it was talking about". Still, this is
>copyright infringement under the Italian Law. Instructional purposes
>means that a teacher can distribute N copies of a copyrighted media to
>his/her students, but if you print a book well you have to pay the
>copyright owner his/her fair royalty.
>
It's in the nature of artists' societies to act aggressively, even when
their rights are uncertain.  Did the owners of the website even try to
claim fair dealing?  We don't know what would happen if somebody with a
reasonable case called their bluff.  Just like a poker game.

>Fair use is NOT a license.
>
That's what we've been saying.

>It's a way to defend yourself when challenged
>about copyright infringement.
>
More than that, it's a positive defence.  You can apply it before you're
challenged

Ec


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair
	use"	decision

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> To me, reproductions of 2D art,
> especially when it is the entire artwork that is reproduced even in
> reduced resolution, essentially reproduced the entire artwork.  The only
> legitimate "fair-use" example I have seen for this that has been
> accepted in U.S. common law is for a thumbnail gallery, such as is done
> on google images.  And even then it is to provide a link to content that
> appears elsewhere that is legal to use.  Usage of this kind of content
> in a Wikipedia article just doesn't seem to fit the same sort of
> criteria, and requires multiple clicks to get to the "original" image
> and information about the actual copyright owner of the photo.
>

Reproducing artwork and other cultural artifacts for scholarly
commentary is pretty well established, and is done literally thousands
of times per year in academic journals.  Heck, a recent journal article
I read [http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/montfort] even reproduced
the entire source code of the 1977 Atari game _Combat_ as part of its
commentary.  It's not as if this is some sort of amazing new use that
we're the first to discover.

-Mark


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 2/8/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>IANAL, but I'm not sure this can be applied to works of art, photographs
>>and all the non-text things we're talking about. Last months SIAE
>>(Italian Society of Authors and Publishers) enforced copyright on an
>>amateurial art website which was showing contemporary paintings. The
>>website was describing and commenting these works, so the use of the
>>pictures was "to illustrate what it was talking about". Still, this is
>>copyright infringement under the Italian Law. Instructional purposes
>>means that a teacher can distribute N copies of a copyrighted media to
>>his/her students, but if you print a book well you have to pay the
>>copyright owner his/her fair royalty.
>>
>>
>My understanding from talking to someone I know who is a professor at
>a university is Italy (i.e. not a legal authority), is that the
>Italian law takes a much more aggressive stance on the commercial
>impact of a work than does the law other places.   I don't believe
>that the foundation policy should be to conform to the most
>restrictive laws in the world, ... we should still be able to discuss
>democracy even if the Chinese government forbids such discussion.
>Rather, we should adopt rules reflecting a common subset.
>
Winks and nods seem to work well in Chinese copyright.  The new
unhackable MS operating system was immediately available as quickly as
it came out in the US.  Some countries enforce copyrights by
occasionally seizing a big stack of pirated CDs and running them over
with a bulldozer in front of the cameras. :-)

Ec


from_name: stvrtg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Subject: Re: Project as namespace

body:
The way to do it would be to change the mediawiki default $wgSitename (in
Defaults.php I think) from "Project" to "Namespace", and free up Project to
be used for something useful like Wikipedia:Wikiprojects.

-SV
Damn, forgot to capitalise: Wikipedia:WikiProjects

On 2/8/07, Larry Pieniazek <lar at miltontrainworks.com> wrote:
>
> I would like to see this as a separate namespace for the reasons given by
> the proponents, but I share the concern about the disruption in switching
> over. I suspect it would be a lot of work, even with a lot of bot help. I
> suggest more analysis about how exactly the conversion would be done might
> help.
>
> Larry Pieniazek
> Work mail:   lpieniaz at us.ibm.com
> Hobby mail:  lar at miltontrainworks.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 2/8/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> When Jimbo recently wrote that we should get rid
> of  non-free material, many a voice was saying: "Hey, why shouldn't we
> used stuff we worked hard to get permission when en.wiki uses
> {{fairuse}} for the same purpose?"

I'll use this message to try to clarify a few points.

The idea of "special permission" for Wikipedia is inherently harmful
and utterly antithetical to our mission. The Wikimedia Foundation is
_not_ just running a bunch of cool websites, it's trying to help
people spread free culture across the planet. In its impediment of the
spread of free culture, "special permission" is much more noxious than
even the least free Creative Commons license. If we want to reach
those who need free educational content the most, collaboration with
organizations (and companies or local entrepreneurs) is imperative.
Special permission content is utterly useless in this context. It is a
waste of our time.

Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
especially educational ones, will be permissible as well. Beyond that,
fair use and similar exemptions are a good way to describe a set of
content which we, pragmatically, will accept, but which we can
communicate clearly as being philosophically incompatible with our
core mission. The important point is that there is a clear division
into two spheres:
 * fair use / fair dealing and similar exemptions
 * free content

These two spheres are very different. Files under fair use exemption
are essentially on constant parole. They cannot be put in Commons.
They will be wiped out when orphaned. They require an article context.
They may not be put in galleries. They can and should be replaced
whenever possible with freely licensed ones. They need a rationale.
And in many cases, we will immediately remove them if there is the
slightest problem with them.

Free content, on the other hand, is free in every sense of the word.
It can be used throughout our projects, and we encourage its creation
wherever possible. We systematically do everything we can to liberate
as much useful content as possible.

Allowing files under special permission, NC, ND, or any other non-free
license, erodes this wall of separation. This is not hypothetical; it
has happened wherever such licenses have begun to proliferate. They
were used without care, without distinction. Non-free and free were
treated the same. This then reduces the incentive for our community
members to use free licenses. It confuses the public. It advertises
bad licensing choices.

A genuine free culture movement depends on establishing and following
a standard of freedom: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition - without
such a standard, what you end up with is something like Creative
Commons. Not a movement, just a hodgepodge of licenses. Creative
Commons is about giving choices to authors within a legal framework.
Wikimedia is about building free culture.

This is to me the key point of an official licensing policy:
hardcoding the distinction between free and non-free, and clearly
emphasizing one over the other. We can talk, if need be, about putting
some things explicitly in the non-free sphere if a legal system leaves
us no other option. But I'd prefer to always make that decision
implicitly if at all possible, to never mention that a fair use image
is also ND or NC, because these licenses, "Creative Commons" or not,
are in fact an enclosure of the commons. They are anti-commons; they
relate to free content like shareware and freeware relate to open
source software. They should not be advertised.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>Perhaps their position will change now that they see high level
>support for being more careful about what we include?  ... This is the
>advantage of being somewhat strict about our "big goals": People who
>do not care if Wikipedia is free will now help make it more free,
>because they must in order to achieve the pretty articles they desire.
>:)
>
>
Thsat requires standing back, and taking a big picture look at the
situation.  Significant judgements will not be made on the basis of
whether this album cover or that production still is protected.  We can
almost always delete the specific picture in case of an argument from
the owner. The general pattern about how we use these things can be more
convincing if we ever have to present it to a judge.

Ec


from_name: ikiroid

subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
I am personally apathetic towards the whole issue, but I'd like to point out
to Mets that I've while I've met a large amount of people who consider the
word a slur, and Judaism simply a religion, I've also met a decent amount of
people (both Jewish and non-Jewish) who feel the exact opposite.

I was at a seminar awhile back for a certain disorder that one of my family
members has, and a during Q & A a Rabbi in the audience commented about how
nice it was to see science paying attention to a disease in which a
significant percentage of those who had it were "Ashkenazi Jews" [sic]. In
science, certain ethnic groups which contain "Jew" in the title (such as
Ashkenazi) are considered distinct gene pools.


body:
> Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist
and
> still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but
I'm
> still a Jew. Heh, I was about to automatically add ~~~~...
>
> Yonatan

Judaism is not a race.  There is nothing biologically which separates a
Jew(ish person) from a non-Jew(ish person).
It is OK to call it a culture, but not a race.
--Mets501


from_name: Cool Cat

subject: [WikiEN-l]  - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
There are lots of useless categories out there. Peoples disabilities, sexual
orientation, their religion, as well as other trivial information is being
used to categorize. We have a lot of underpopulated and useless categories
out there

I think a spring cleanup is necessary (though we do not need to wait till
spring).
   - Cool Cat


from_name: Aude

subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
I thought the same of the graphic.  Some kind of template or navigation box
to key pages would help.  I don't have anything specific in mind, but what
you suggest sounds okay.  The page should address key issues and questions
that come up when dealing with media inquiries and OTRS -- answers to which
may be less encyclopedic but are suitable for an "about" page.

-Aude

On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/9/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The link goes to [[Wikipedia:About]]. I ask the august embattled
>
> Omg, [[Wikipedia:About]] is like a clone of [[:Wikipedia]]. But not.
> So similar. Yet different. It even randomly links to the encyclopaedia
> article in the text. How horrendously confusing. We should replace the
> graphic in the top right with some sort of navigational box to make it
> look less like an encyclopedia article. Maybe a vertical version of
> the template at the bottom of [[WP:LOP]].
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Aude


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/8/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

We need esperanza!

-ducks-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Perhaps it's the fact that we only really promote to adminship the
workaholics or veterans who slipped through the cracks and we forgot to
nominate, so we end up with a backlog of everything. There is a lot of
pressure on admins and admin candidates to act perfectly, all of the time.


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 2/8/07, Conrad Dunkerson <conrad.dunkerson at att.net> wrote:
> Kat, would you PLEASE put something like your comments below into a nice
> neat package specifically clarifying that you were not seeking to spell
> out detailed new 'rules' on fair use... because the usual suspects are now
> 'interpreting' your original statement to mean anything from '90% of all
> fair use must be deleted immediately and without discussion' to 'any
> reasonable fair use rationale is now valid for all of Wikimedia'. With
> resulting deletion purges, cries of 'admin abuse', et cetera breaking out
> as the 'jihadists' on all sides arm themselves with this latest excuse to
> treat each other badly.

Oh, geez, getting into any active thread on the en: administrators'
noticeboard is something that takes a lot of time and intestinal
fortitude. :-) I don't know what to make a nice neat package out of;
you're certainly welcome to quote those paragraphs (and for that
matter anything else I say on a public list).

-Kat

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone


from_name: Who Cares

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
  >On the other side, his message isn't really just about admins, but
>editors in general.  People who edit articles simply are not valued on
>this project anymore.  Tha'ts a big problem, since it's people who edit
>articles that got us to this point.

They aren't? Unless you're equating being valued with being an administrator, I see no evidence of that.

  -Amarkov

---------------------------------
Don't be flakey. Get Yahoo! Mail for Mobile and
always stay connected to friends.


body:
If someone is really gay or is suspected of being gay...
If someone is a Christian...
If someone is a Methylated Wesletarian... (whatever that is ^_^' )

All that can be mentioned in the relevant article...

        - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 20:39:09 +0200, "Cool Cat"
> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >There are lots of useless categories out there. Peoples disabilities,
> sexual
> >orientation, their religion, as well as other trivial information is
> being
> >used to categorize. We have a lot of underpopulated and useless
> categories
> >out there
>
> I quite agree.  Pride is a fine thing, but I remain unconvinced that
> many people want a navigational aid to all the notable people who are
> or might have been gay / Jewish / Methylated Wesletarian / whatever;
> much more likely that they will go along thinking "I am gay / Jewish /
> Methylated Wesletarian / whatever, show me that lots of famous people
> were as well, to validate that".  I'm also convinced that a lot of
> this categorisation is used to pursue an agenda.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Was that sarcasm? I am a bit confused. Based on that the usage of the word
Jew can be used in a vulgar manner, something we clearly want to avoid.
   - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 2/5/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews
> > >
> > > I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we add
> "people"
> > > to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose"
> votes. What
> > > do you think?
> >
> > For what it's worth, I do find the formulations "Jews", "American
> > Jews" etc rather awkward and find they have unfortunate connotations.
>
> "It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in
> phrases such as 'Jew lawyer' or 'Jew ethics', is both vulgar and
> highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable
> possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this
> construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a
> noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as
> 'There are now several Jews on the council', which is unobjectionable,
> the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of
> Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply
> that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun."
>
> The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> Edition.  2000.
>
> "Jew" is not a dirty word.
>
> Jay.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
So do you have a suggestion to tackle/quick attack the problem? CfD is a
slow and inefficient procedure to get rid of nonsense. Too many
panic/contradictory "Keep" votes just pile up in almost an instant.

   - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 21:09:37 +0200, "Cool Cat"
> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >If someone is really gay or is suspected of being gay...
> >If someone is a Christian...
> >If someone is a Methylated Wesletarian... (whatever that is ^_^' )
> >All that can be mentioned in the relevant article...
>
> Yup.  And it's not necessary to have 123,748 cats for every possible
> variation thereof.
>
> Oh: Methylated Wesletarian - my dad made that up to describe a rather
> unsuccessful Origami model of a church :o)
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
I love all of this consolidated discussion and writing on the subject.
There are still a host of uncertainties... my two cents on clarity:

Core statements - about freedom, accessibility, collaboration, and so
on - benefit from being clear, bold, and without qualification.

Erik: your statement earlier today was powerful -- except for the sections
defending fair use.  This is not because the writing was poor, nor the
logic faulty, but because defending a complicated exemption weakens any
argument.  For instance:

> Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
> especially educational ones, will be permissible as well.

One can make a parallel argument to defend -NC.

> These two spheres are very different. Files under fair use exemption
> are essentially on constant parole. They cannot be put in Commons.
> They will be wiped out when orphaned. They require an article context.
> They may not be put in galleries. They can and should be replaced
> whenever possible with freely licensed ones. They need a rationale.

This is complicated and distracting.  It leaves the door open for
confusion, both on the part of content owners who complain and uploaders
who don't understand these subtleties.  The fact that we cannot benefit
from the obvious advantages of Commons -- and must duplicate such images
on every wiki -- highlights how unfree this is.  [The logical extension of
the Commons prohibition is to have special tags to explicitly and directly
include such images without providing Image: pages for them...]

Greg: your comments likewise make what could be a crystal clear goal and
title a bit ambiguous, but you suggest a solution.

On Thu, 8 Feb 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> It would only take a trivial script to make a computer instantly
> convert "Wikipedia, The Free* Encyclopedia. *includes some non-free
> parts"  into  "Wikipedia, The Free (and we really mean it)
> Encyclopedia".

I like this script idea... let's invert it. "Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia" is a good name.  Keep it, and ditch the caveats.

For fair use enthusiasts: develop a simple script and tags to convert
Wikipedia into "Wikipedia, The Free* Encyclopedia. *includes some non-free
parts". Wikipedia wouldn't host those non-free parts. It would of course
include explicit links to non-free materials, just as it does today.

WP could even host freely-licensed markup that says "there's a cool
non-free part you should insert HERE", which would be invisible to those
who didn't want to see it.  This might be an interesting project.

> However, for it to be true, we need to be really good at figuring out
> what we can and can not expect to become free ... and we need to exert
> constant pressure to move in the direction of freedom. We are certainly
> not there yet... our tagging isn't even really machine readable...

By stating simply that our projects are free, without denigrating the work
of those who want to include more license-encumbered materials, we can at
once clarify our own goals, push part of the burden of clever tagging onto
the less-free efforts, and implicitly exert stronger pressure to find free
representations, images, and recordings of important subjects.

> I hope that those of us who don't think any concession to the non-free
> world is acceptable, even temporally, can still stand along side those
> of us who are more favor getting there through successive
> approximation.

For me this is not a matter of philosophical absolutes, or of what is
acceptable.  It is a question of clarity and focus.  It is a question
of pragmatism, though not in the way Erik suggested.

Even those of us who dream of the best possible "Fair Use + NC + ND
Wikipedia", including the best materials available at every level of
freeness, should support a core project focused on building a Free
Encyclopedia without restriction.

--SJ


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> I know we're all a fan of Googlecounting results. But this is weird:
> When I search for a term in Firefox's Google box, the result count is
> exactly 200% what it should be.

I had a similar problem a little while ago.  Word counts against
Google using Firefox were off by some significant factor (in my
case I think it was *ten*) from results returned by lynx or other
browsers.

It was driving me nuts.  I eventually discovered I could make the
problem go away by... clearing my cookies.  Go figure.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 2/8/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
> > especially educational ones, will be permissible as well.
>
> One can make a parallel argument to defend -NC.
[snip]

I don't agree that one can.

Fair use is not a license, it's an escape clause in copyright that
enables the the public to engage in reasoned and informed discussion
about copyrighted works, effectively a form of free speech.

We do not accept non-free materials which we are licensed to use, but
we may accept some materials whos exclusion would effectively equate
to a suppression of our free speech.  Fair use is special not because
it is a copyright loophole, but because it is critical to free speech.

There are other copyright loopholes which we explicitly reject. For
example, we do not accept copyrighted works from Iran except which we
can make a fair use claim for...  We could legally do so, because as a
non-signature to any of the international copyright treaties, their
copyright law (which is very similar to that of most countries) is not
enforceable outside of Iran.

In my eyes, this confusion you see with respect to fair use is removed
when you view it in this light and don't try to consider fair use a
copyright license. Fair use isn't a license.

>By stating simply that our projects are free, without denigrating the work
>of those who want to include more license-encumbered materials, we can at
>once clarify our own goals, push part of the burden of clever tagging onto
>the less-free efforts, and implicitly exert stronger pressure to find free
>representations, images, and recordings of important subjects.

I'm not sure we disagree so much, since I certainly don't support the
claim that anything we could replace is fair use.


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the
	recent	WMF	"fair	use"	decision

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>I've asked before, but are there any publications of the scale of
>>Wikipedia that acutally use fair-use artwork?  In nearly every instance
>>I find licensed images instead, including several that have been offered
>>today on the various talk pages of Wikipedia that were referencing
>>Encyclopedia Britannica.  I don't see fair use being used to this extent
>>at all in major publications, even textbooks about artwork.
>>
>>
>>
>Well, I just linked you to a journal article freely published online;
>one among many.  Do you want a hit counter on it or something to satisfy
>your "scale" requirement?  I don't see what that would have to do with
>it anyway---How is fair use in a journal any different than fair use in
>an encyclopedia, legally speaking?
>
>-Mark
>
The main point I was trying to offer here is that if you are concerned
about copyright and being in a very public place like Wikipedia is where
people would stand up and pay attention if you violate copyrights in an
obvious fashion (by the owners of that copyrighted material).

I'm actually very surprised about this source code being here, to be
honest.  Atari (or whoever currently owns the Atari brand and the
existing software from that company) still asserts copyright on this
content, and has even licensed it relatively recently to a couple of toy
manufacturers who have made "retro" games based on the old Atari 2600
cartrige systems.  For this to be a complete dump of the content is IMHO
the software equivalent to quoting verbatium an entire poem without
permission and claiming fair use.  I'm not sure this one would hold up
if challenged, even though all that is shown is the object code.

It does, however, fit the definition of "one good example" that I've
been seeking, even though it isn't really traditional art work.
 Computer software, particularly something written nearly 30 years ago,
has certainly depreciated in value to the point that you could
legitimately argue that its publication in this manner does not
adversely affect its marketability.

Traditional art works, however, tends to appreciate in value over time,
particularly when it is art work from popular artists and even more once
that artist has died.  This may be part of why the Louvre is trying to
assert copyrights over some of the paintings in its galleries.  In cases
where the art is still clearly under copyright, I can imagine a much
tougher time to consider the images of that art to be properly
considered fair use and not infringing on the artist's copyright.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Bill Konrad

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expandable dablinks

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What you've done is great. However, I did discover an issue (you may
>> already be aware of this)...If the transcluded disambig page has
>> sections, then those sections show up in the TOC of the transcluding
>> page.
>>
>> No obvious solution comes to mind, short of eliminating sections from
>> disambig pages.
>
> I think it's fairly clear that we could not immediately take every
> disambig page and just declare it suitable for transclusion at the top
> of the relevant pages. Most will need minor reformatting, even if it's
> just sticking <noinclude> around certain bits of text like section
> headings and what-not.

I'm not sure I see the advantages here. Sure it is kind of cool in a bit of
a geeky way, but you still have to click a link to see the disambiguation
information. Is it a significant advantage to have it show up as a drop-down
thingie rather than as a separate page? I don't see it. And it would appear
to make both adding the disambiguation note at the top of pages and possibly
the actual structure of the disambiguation pages more complex and fraught
with potential for error.

Until the method is relatively idiot-proof [1], and there are clear
advantages beyond a little bit of "gee whiz, ain't that neat", I'm
skeptical.

[1] I realize that since *anyone* can edit wikipedia, idiot-proof is at best
a sliding scale

bkonrad


from_name: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
To keep burned out admins from leaving, we need to give them praise and
encouragement. They need to be seen as some of our most valued contributors. We
might also want to set up incentives.

| Tyler | Zorin Deckiller |
| Wikipedia Administrator |  Former SWU member |
| _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deckiller_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deckiller)   |
| _http://www.myspace.com/redsectora_ (http://www.myspace.com/redsectora)   |


body:
Can you initiate a discussion? People will accuse me random garbage if I do
everything. :)

   - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 8 Feb 2007 21:16:49 +0200, "Cool Cat"
> <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >So do you have a suggestion to tackle/quick attack the problem? CfD is a
> >slow and inefficient procedure to get rid of nonsense. Too many
> >panic/contradictory "Keep" votes just pile up in almost an instant.
>
> No way forward other than to gain consensus.  Without a solid body of
> the community behind the change you will be accused of robbing people
> of their Jewish / black / gay / unicyclist identity.  Quite how
> removing a cat from a Wikipedia article robs someone of their identity
> I don't know, but that is what is asserted.  First stop the Village
> Pump, I guess.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
jayig my nomination was to maintain consistency. It wasn't a political
message of any sort. You are welcome to use the word Jew on any article but
when it comes to categorization "people" should be used with it for
consistency among other reasons.

   - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No, it was not a sarcasm. When used as a verb or adverb, "Jew" is
> offensive. When used as a noun, it is not, and, as the American
> Heritage Dictionary points out, implying that the word "Jew" is
> inherently "vulgar" can, in itself, be offensive. There's nothing
> wrong with the noun "Jew", let's not be afraid to use it
> appropriately; there's no need for wordy circumlocutions like "Jewish
> person" when "Jew" works just fine.
>
> On 2/8/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Was that sarcasm? I am a bit confused. Based on that the usage of the
> word
> > Jew can be used in a vulgar manner, something we clearly want to avoid.
> >    - Cool Cat
> >
> > On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 2/8/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 2/5/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_February_2#Category:Jews
> > > > >
> > > > > I proposed a rename as per wikipedias categorization scheme, we
> add
> > > "people"
> > > > > to any ethnicity. There appears to be a number of panic "oppose"
> > > votes. What
> > > > > do you think?
> > > >
> > > > For what it's worth, I do find the formulations "Jews", "American
> > > > Jews" etc rather awkward and find they have unfortunate
> connotations.
> > >
> > > "It is widely recognized that the attributive use of the noun Jew, in
> > > phrases such as 'Jew lawyer' or 'Jew ethics', is both vulgar and
> > > highly offensive. In such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable
> > > possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this
> > > construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a
> > > noun, a practice that carries risks of its own. In a sentence such as
> > > 'There are now several Jews on the council', which is unobjectionable,
> > > the substitution of a circumlocution like Jewish people or persons of
> > > Jewish background may in itself cause offense for seeming to imply
> > > that Jew has a negative connotation when used as a noun."
> > >
> > > The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > > Edition.  2000.
> > >
> > > "Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > >
> > > Jay.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
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> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On 2/8/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>>> Fair use is somewhat different in that many third party uses,
>>> especially educational ones, will be permissible as well.
>>
>> One can make a parallel argument to defend -NC.
> [snip]
>
> I don't agree that one can.

"-NC is somewhat different in that many third praty uses and reuses,
  especially educational ones, are permissible as well."

What's the problem with NC?  Reuse is hard.  Incompatible licenses can't
be merged, and maintaining the separation incurs overhead.  Allowing NC
material, regardless of warnings against it, encourages people to think
that is "free enough".  All this is true for fair use.

We ignore much of this for fair use in part because we as a culture have
been slow at developing tools for editing, splitting, and merging images
and media... but this is changing.

Defending fair use is confusing, as this thread's arguments show, even to
intelligent people who have thought about this and know what it means.

We should not be confusing when inspiring people to create free materials.

--SJ

> Fair use is not a license, it's an escape clause in copyright that
> enables the the public to engage in reasoned and informed discussion
> about copyrighted works, effectively a form of free speech.
>
> We do not accept non-free materials which we are licensed to use, but
> we may accept some materials whos exclusion would effectively equate
> to a suppression of our free speech.  Fair use is special not because
> it is a copyright loophole, but because it is critical to free speech.
>
> There are other copyright loopholes which we explicitly reject. For
> example, we do not accept copyrighted works from Iran except which we
> can make a fair use claim for...  We could legally do so, because as a
> non-signature to any of the international copyright treaties, their
> copyright law (which is very similar to that of most countries) is not
> enforceable outside of Iran.
>
> In my eyes, this confusion you see with respect to fair use is removed
> when you view it in this light and don't try to consider fair use a
> copyright license. Fair use isn't a license.
>
>
>> By stating simply that our projects are free, without denigrating the work
>> of those who want to include more license-encumbered materials, we can at
>> once clarify our own goals, push part of the burden of clever tagging onto
>> the less-free efforts, and implicitly exert stronger pressure to find free
>> representations, images, and recordings of important subjects.
>
> I'm not sure we disagree so much, since I certainly don't support the
> claim that anything we could replace is fair use.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

Alkavar also recently had three of his horribly poor speedy deletions
challenged, and I'm not sure how bad his image deletions were within
that context, or any others.

What do we need to do right?  Maybe elect more admins who can do things
right so they don't get challenged, stressed, and then bail?

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

On the other side, his message isn't really just about admins, but
editors in general.  People who edit articles simply are not valued on
this project anymore.  Tha'ts a big problem, since it's people who edit
articles that got us to this point.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps

body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> On 2/8/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> The worse news is that the dumps would be so huge that no one will
>> actually be able to get or use them anyway. ;)
>
> Not true.. Plus it'll be much easier than downloading each of the
> images one by one.. especially as long as we still are returning zero
> byte content-length replies sometimes.

Agreed.  Many people would be interested in a full media dump.  Once I
have a dump at hand, I would be happy to provide dumps on disk via snail
mail, for the cost of the disk -- there is certainly a demand for the
material.  And I hope that we can develop a network of people willing to
do this.

A while ago I started a page to request dumps; it hasn't gotten any use
yet, but perhaps this will change as dumps grow:
      http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_dumps

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Lack of Image Dumps


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/8/07 9:29 PM, George Herbert at george.herbert at gmail.com wrote:

> We apparently just lost Alkivar (hopefully just on a stress relief
> break, but he says he's out of here indefinitely).
>
> We're doing terribly at keeping identified, overstressed admins from
> ending up going over the edge.  What are we doing wrong, or what do we
> need to learn to do right?

This is tricky because it involves the personal side of a Wikipedia
Community Member. He would need to want to stay badly enough to confront the
reasons he is leaving.

Marc Riddell


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/8/07 10:34 PM, Michael Snow at wikipedia at earthlink.net wrote:

> We are supposed to be focusing on quality, not quantity, with respect to
> the encyclopedia articles. It's high time we did the same for
> administrators.

A resounding YES!

Marc


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complimentary vandalism?

references:
<eqb9ee$omv$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<eqbli0$jtp$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45C963F9.1070803@gatech.edu>
	<eqda57$fmc$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Mark Clements escribi?:
> Is there a way of telling MW to block certain page names, e.g. to disallow
> new pages that match the regex "/index\.php\?title=/i"?  If not then this
> seems like a worthwhile config setting to add.
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)

Setting a captcha for anonymous page creation would be easier. This *is*
a good use of it, instead of adding it /against/ humans...


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] precisions about the recent
	WMF	"fair	use"	decision

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Reproducing artwork and other cultural artifacts for scholarly
>> commentary is pretty well established, and is done literally thousands
>> of times per year in academic journals.  Heck, a recent journal article
>> I read [http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/montfort] even reproduced
>> the entire source code of the 1977 Atari game _Combat_ as part of its
>> commentary.  It's not as if this is some sort of amazing new use that
>> we're the first to discover.
> I've asked before, but are there any publications of the scale of
> Wikipedia that acutally use fair-use artwork?  In nearly every instance
> I find licensed images instead, including several that have been offered
> today on the various talk pages of Wikipedia that were referencing
> Encyclopedia Britannica.  I don't see fair use being used to this extent
> at all in major publications, even textbooks about artwork.
>
Well, I just linked you to a journal article freely published online;
one among many.  Do you want a hit counter on it or something to satisfy
your "scale" requirement?  I don't see what that would have to do with
it anyway---How is fair use in a journal any different than fair use in
an encyclopedia, legally speaking?

-Mark


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/8/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> To me, these include, among others:
> * recent works of art
> * military operations and hardware

US military photos and trade fairs. Also various open days. About the
only think you won't get is NK stuff such as Ch'onma-ho

> * spacecraft

NASA for a lot of stuff and countries tend to put a lot of their space
hardware on display

--
geni


body:
I see where you are getting at. But what do you think of the consistency
issue?

    - Cool Cat

On 2/8/07, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/8/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > jayjg wrote:
> >
> > >The American Heritage(r) Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth
> > >Edition.  2000.
> > >
> > >"Jew" is not a dirty word.
> > >
> > >
> > While true, that's a different question than presented here.  "Greek" is
> > not a dirty word either, and yet our category is at [[:Category:Greek
> > people]], not [[:Category:Greeks]].
> >
> > -Mark
>
> Steve Bennett specifically said that he finds the word "Jew" to be
> "awkward" and have "unfortunate connotations". The response was made
> in that context.
>
> Jay.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Thu, 8 Feb 2007, Andre Engels wrote:

> 2007/2/8, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
>
>> If they are releasing under and ND license, it may even be because we
>> already talked to them and failed to help them understand that a basic
>> strong copyleft licenses will take care of most of the things that
>> they really care about, such as preventing the fraud of someone making
>> new versions and blaming them on the original author.. Whenever we see
>> ND (and NC alike) we are seeing evidence of our own failure to
>> advocate truly free licenses.
>
> If every ND license is such a failure, we are truly in a horrible state,
> because the text of the GFDL itself is under an ND license, and thus we are
> not allowed to put it on a Wikipedia page, except for the fact that we
> must....

This has always been a basic problem with the license.

Neroden puts it well in a comment on the GSFDL draft:

'As usual, this is a "non-free license text". Really, the license text
needs to have a free license. Since some degree of license proliferation
is unavoidable, we want people to reuse good clauses rather than inventing
their own.

Since you don't want to encourage license proliferation or confuse
people, it's OK to grant the permission to make derivative works of the
license text somewhere less prominent, such as on your website. But it
really ought to be done somewhere.'

SJ