subject: [WikiEN-l] New user log ?

body:
Perhaps Brion can implement something that allows automatic transliteration
of eastern fonts for people who choose it in their preferences. Or maybe he
can attach some recognizable attribute to such accounts people can use to
distinguish between similar eastern names.

Mgm

On 12/21/06, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett schreef:
> > On 12/21/06, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> > > How would he know if it's the correct article to add the interwiki
> links
> > > to?
> >
> > Perhaps because the Japanese article he was working on has an
> > interwiki link to this article. I've updated interwiki links on
> > foreign Wikipeida's before without being able to read the language.
> > Only in Latin-based scripts, but I think the principle is the same.
>
> There is no need for that; there are bots that do that equally badly as
> you can do it by hand.
>
> Eugene
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crediting images inside the article text

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> It is unfair to provide inline attribution for images when we don't
> provide it for text. (And certantly we could provide it for text..
> Most articles don't have many authors, and if it were done by hand as
> the image attribution is being done, it could be placed at the bottom
> of the article)

Actually, we do somewhat require it for direct quotations, we're supposed
to reference it.  Couldn't we simply throw a <ref> on it with the
attribution in the references area?  Seems like the best of both worlds,
IMO.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric
	policy affects other communities

body:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 18:44:45 +1000, "Peter Ansell"
<ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:

>that situation screams the remains of british imperialism
>through and through?

Postage stamps come in two kinds: British stamps, in sets, at the
beginning of the album, and foreign ones all jumbled up at the back.
Any gibbon can tell you that...

(yes, it's a quote)

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


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
On 11/24/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> Whether the copyvio is an inward or outward bound one in each case is
> sadly beyond the scope of my programming skills, so I leave that to
> you.

I don't think this is a programming program -- its a conceptual problem.

A good copyvio bot -- one which doesn't waste one's time with false
positives or outward copyvios -- would be one which monitors NEW
additions and did not try to parse previously existing material. If
someone says, "This is new, original text" but it gets Google hits, it
is almost certainly copy-and-pasted (whether that makes it officially
a copyvio still needs to be decided, but it is a vastly simpler
problem than the previous one).

Trying to go through the entire database by finding random pages and
taking random lines seems extremely hit-and-miss to me, and if you
have to worry about mirrors and false positives then I can't see how
that would possibly be productive. The odds of finding a copyvio are
going to be quite low, and the amount of time needed to sort through
them is going to be quite high. Monitoring RC for copyvio seems much
simpler by comparison -- if finding previously-existing copyvios is
going to be an impossible effort to automate successfully (which I
think it is), preventing new copyvios would be comparatively easier.

(I started, ages ago, to work on a program which could do things like
this, but got bogged down and lacked time. Sigh...)

Just my two cents...
FF


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

references:
<40mjo2hhv72id9ha0abu13vtppmfupne1j@4ax.com>
	<43348cda0612201654u25e8484epf519645bfd8816d5@mail.gmail.com>
	<ndmko2p08g7namllslvr7slv25h9rr598j@4ax.com>

body:
On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:54:03 -0500, "James Hare"
> <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Case in point: Captain Jean-Luc Picard(r).
>
> So a caricature of Picard would be forbidden?  Really?

It might count as fair use under certain conditions. A painting of
Patrick Stewart would probably be a safer bet although there would be
other issues with things such as in the US at least the Right of
Publicity.

>I am honestly
> confused here.  What about, say, a painting of an aircraft?  Is that
> unfree by virtue of the manufacturer's rights, or the airline's logo?

It could be under some conditions and depending on the country it is in.

> I have a friend who is a commercial artist, that is not an idle
> question.

If they want legal advice they should talk to a lawyer.

--
geni


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
> wrote:
>> Actually, we do somewhat require it for direct quotations, we're
>> supposed
>> to reference it.  Couldn't we simply throw a <ref> on it with the
>> attribution in the references area?  Seems like the best of both worlds,
>> IMO.
>
> Still leave us with the text image inequality, but at least that would
> make it unugly. The problem then becomes that were seriously overloading
> rev... Already it's hard enough to tell if an article has any sources.

It's not that hard to tell if an article has any sources, and, technically
speaking, attribution is sourcing.  The more I think about it, the more
sense it makes to toss the attribution into the reference area, even if
the rationale doesn't explicitly require it.
>
> ... plus another issue that I didn't bring up, more frontline
> attribution risks creating a mismotiviation to contribute. How long do
> we use the ref tag before people figure out that it's a fun way to
> cram external links into our articles?

Why should that be an argument against attitribution?  Our
referencing/verification policy already sorta does the same thing, but
we'd never stop referencing articles.

-Jeff


list: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte SB

subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
	affects other communities

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > en.WP's username policy is incompatible with SUL.
> > This is a problem.
> [snip]
>
> Just a minor correction: Your claim is factually
> inaccurate. Enwiki
> can go on blocking non latin charset names. SUL can
> go about its merry
> way. The result will be that users with non-latin
> names will need to
> create a second account. This is not an ideal
> situation by anyone's
> judgement, but it is not an incompatibility.
>

I disagree

It is incompatible because unified accounts would be
broken.  There would be one long-in for the latin
username and one log-in for the non-latin username,
but not a S(ingle) U(ser) L(ogin).  Encforcing the
creation of a second latin username with blocks is not
compatible with having a S(ingle) U(ser) L(ogin)
across wikis.

Birgitte SB

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


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Automatic username transliteration for SUL

body:
2006/12/21, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> At issue is that the function of NOT seeing the characters, hence the
> ??????, is a function of your local system. It is easily remedied by
> installing fonts. These are for the majority of languages available as
> part of your operating system.

Well, I do see where this is not as easy as you might seem it to be. To do
this, you will need to know:
* which character set the name is in
* where to download a font for that language to install.

I am going around Wikipedia a lot, and sometimes get to languages where I
don't have a font installed. Usually I find those Wikipedias where such
problems arise (that is, those that are written in relatively rare alphabets
rather than Cyrillic or such) have a link to a downloadable freeware font on
an easy-to-find page (the Main Page or its talk page). But if someone would
use such a font on English Wikipedia, you might not even know whether it's
Thai, Kannada or Cree, let alone where to download a font.

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


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
 other communities

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Neil Harris schreef:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Neil Harris schreef:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Neil,
>>> I have some 170*2 users on the Wiktionary projects all called GerardM
>>> and RobotGMwikt. With SUL people will be able with one click to see that
>>> this is indeed the same person on all of these projects. RobotGMwikt has
>>> probably the most edits on most Wiktionaries. The way things are
>>> configured are such that I can only have one user. I can promise you
>>> that I will not change any of these users. If I am forced to do this, I
>>> will stop running the bot that I have been running for more than a year
>>> without any complaints as to the naming of these users.
>>>
>>> I will again say how much I resent this policy of the English language
>>> Wikipedia, it is discrimination pure and simple. With SUL it will be
>>> easy to check WHO it is that is doing the editing. The most charitable
>>> way I can look on this huha is that when SUL is finally there, this
>>> discussion will prove to be a storm in a tea cup.
>>> Thanks,
>>>      GerardM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Which part of "no-one is asking _anyone_ to change their name" did you
>> miss in the above?
>>
>> Under any of the most recent proposals aired here, you won't have to do
>> a thing. Some kind of default disambiguation tag will simply be
>> displayed next to your username in all the relevant contexts: probably a
>> number in Arabic numerals.
>>
>> And voila! All your accounts, robot and human respectively, are
>> disambiguated for those who can't read the Latin alphabet, in the same
>> way as the hypothetical User:? (102343), would be, before he decided
>> (for purely social, human reasons) to change his nick, to be displayed
>> as User:? (Takeshi) on Latin-script wikis, without changing his true
>> username at all: it was, is, and always will be just "?", regardless of
>> how many wikis he uses it on.
>>
>> Thus, the only requirement for all users would be the need to recognize
>> strings made from the symbols "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9", which is about as
>> culture neutral as it is possible to get, as people from most cultures
>> already either use, or can recognize the digits of the Arabic number system.
>>
>> And users who don't want to do anything won't have to do anything at all.
>>
>> If this does not satisfy you, perhaps you can come up with a better
>> solution which will let Latin-only readers distinguish at a glance
>> between ?, ?, and ?, (only one of whom is a vandal) and make them
>> sufficiently memorable that they can remember them distinctly some time
>> later?
>>
>> -- Neil
>>
> Hoi,
> The notion that the numbers used in the Latin script are universal is
> also a fallacy.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
Yes, but it's quite a good approximation to reality. For example, the
front pages of ar:, am:,he:, ru:, el:, th: and zh: are clear evidence
that use of ASCII Hindu-Arabic numerals is widespread in common
practice, even in cultures with their own distinct historic numeral
systems.

And if we really wanted to, we can also represent the same set of
decimal digits in other writing systems, for example Devanagari
numerals, since we already have the localization code to do this ready
to go.

I like Stephanie's suggestion of User:?????? <#2352562> as a display
format: we could quite easily arrange that User:#2352562 would be an
alias for User:?????? throughout the system, with ?????? remaining that
user's true name everywhere.

Thus, for the user "Examplename", User:Examplename would be their user
page on every wiki, with User_talk:Examplename being their discussion
page, and so on... but, for wikis where the script used in their name is
not one of the native scripts for that wiki,

    [[User:Examplename|Examplename]] <[[User:Examplename|#425256]]>

would appear in every context where the machine-generated text

   [[User:Examplename|Examplename]]

would have appeared before, and "#425256" (or its equivalent with the
decimal numerals in any other script) would also be usable in the
software as a synonym for their real-name throughout the SUL universe.
That is to say:

* User:#425256 would be a redirect to User:Examplename on every wiki.
* Blocking User:#425265 would have the effect of blocking User:Examplename
* Special:Contributions/#425265 would have the same result as
Special:Contributions/Examplename (and would display "User contributions
for [[User:Examplename]]" at the top on home-script wikis, and "User
contributions for [[User:Examplename]] <[[User:#425256|#425256]]>" at
the top on others...

Note that the numeric tags would only appear on ''system-generated''
text: no user would ever be required to use their alternative numeric
tag in any human context (unless they wanted to, of course).

Net effect:

* for most practical purposes, no visible change on any wiki, except in
the immediate context of a username with "foreign-script" characters
* no user will need to rename any of their accounts
* no user will need to create any nicknames if they don't want to
* most users won't even notice the change, since 99% of all editors tend
to have same-script names
* only formerly-unreadable "foreign script" names will appear with
numeric tags on any given wiki, yet
* either tags or names will work in any computer-input context such as
blocking or user page display, throughout the entire SUL universe, but
with the system always giving the true name display priority

Just to gild the lily a bit more, we could also add a bit of latitude
about what constitutes a "foreign" script: for example, if the community
on zh: agreed that they could distinguish Latin characters (which they
can in practice), or the community on en: was to agree that they could
generally distinguish and remember Greek and Cyrillic characters, the
software could be configured so that numeric tags could disappear on
usernames in those scripts within those wikis. Or, contrariwise, if a
community so desired, numeric tags could appear on all system-displayed
usernames, even their own.

-- Neil


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>>From: zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>Now I log into a well-known depository of legal
>>journals and search for this issue.  I get about 20 hits.
>>Then I look at each of these hits (articles published
>>in peer-reviewed law journals) and in all cases the
>>writer gives opinion A.
>>
>>Ok, so now I am itching to write in Wikipedia
>>something like: "The consensus amongst legal
>>scholars is that opinion A is correct"  (or similar),
>>with a footnote stating the evidence.
>>
>>Can I do that?
>>
>>
>
>The point is, _you probably don't need to_. If your opinion is firmly
>founded on facts, there's no need to state it at all. You don't need
>to spell it out for the reader. You can just say "All men are mortal.
>Socrates is a man," and leave it at that.
>
>Sidestep the issue by stating the facts _without_ explicitly stating
>my interpretation. Pick a couple of the best or most-respected
>journals, or the articles that state opinion A in the flattest and
>most succinct way. In the article, put "According to [bigshot author]
>in [leading journal] says 'A is absolutely correct because blah
>blah,' while [distinguished writer] in [respected journal] says
>'Because of compelling reasons yada yada, A is correct.'"
>
>In the footnote, after citing the sources actually quoted, if you
>think it is important you could add "other sources with similar
>opinions are" and cite and quote a couple more of the best.
>
>I think you can document my borderline-original-research on the Talk
>page, saying I found these twenty references or whatever, because I
>believe it's perfectly OK to present original research on Talk pages
>in hopes of influencing other editors' behavior.
>
>Don't try to keep opinion B out of the article if it's sourced. If
>the legal community thinks opinion B is bizarre, though, by all means
>find someone who says so and cite and quote them.
>
>For a recent concrete example... so recent that my success or failure
>isn't clear yet... although looking at my interactions with another
>editor I think it's going to stick...
>
>in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_bombing I had written "The term
>was popularized by the controversial psychiatrist Margaret Singer."
>An editor objected to the word "controversial."
>
>So, I changed the sentence to "The term was popularized by the
>clinical psychologist Margaret Singer, who has become closely
>identified with the love-bombing-as-brainwashing point of view."
>
>And I added a source citation, and a quotation, in a footnote,
>reading, ""One particular California psychologist, Margaret Singer,
>has been involved in offering testimony supporting cult brainwashing
>theories in over 40 such cases.... Such testimony, even though
>apparently effective, has drawn the ire of some scholar studying
>newer religions. These scholars claimed that such testimony should be
>disallowed because itdoes not represent a consensus position of
>scholars in the relevant fields of study, and it disregards
>considerable evidence that participation is virtually always a
>volitional act."
>
>You see the point? Is Singer "controversial?" Instead of drawing that
>conclusion for the reader, I briefly state a fact which explains why
>she _might_ be controversial, and back it up with a source citation
>and a quote so that anyone can judge whether my brief statement is a
>fair statement of the gist of the source.
>
My objection to the word "controversial" is that it is gratuitously
argumentative.  To say that a person is controversial is a
characterization.  The quotation strongly suggests that the issue, but
not necessarily the person, is controversial.

You may also want to check the quote where it says "has drawn the ire of
some scholar studying newer religions".  The singular "some scholar"
carries a tone of disdain that is not there with the plural.  If the
author really did use the singular then adding "(sic!)" after the word
would be appropriate.

Ec


body:
habj wrote:
> 2006/12/21, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk>:
>
>
>> On the other hand, if our fictional user ? has his name rendered beside
>> a Latin script nick on en:, other users will instantly be able to put a
>> name to him: specifically, his real name, Takeshi, the same one as in
>> the kanji version of his true username, which will always be present
>> beside it on en: (Indeed, if they talk with or about him for long
>> enough, they will come to recognise that kanji character, too.)
>>
>
> Could you please specify what you mean by "nick" in context? Do you
> refer to the username, which is a common meaning of "nick" and
> "nickname" - or to an addition, something to be shown along the
> username for easier identification for those who can not see the
> characters in question?
>
> I understood the suggestion as people should be able to have a
> username with any kind of characters in it on any wiki, but they
> should be asked to add something - not into the actual username, but
> in some field that we currently do not have - in some kind an alphabet
> understandable on the local wiki, or similar, for easier
> identification. It is similar to Brigitte's suggestion of displaying
> the user number, but with something more easy to remember than just a
> number. GerardM's reactions make me wonder if i misunderstood.
>
> /habj
>
>
You have it exactly right.

-- Neil
>
>
>


from_name: Stephanie Erin Daugherty

body:
> Hoi,
> At issue is that the function of NOT seeing the characters, hence the
> ??????, is a function of your local system. It is easily remedied by
> installing fonts. These are for the majority of languages available as
> part of your operating system. Making this a display option will get you
> into problems too. It would help if we knew what the primary language is
> of the person involved. That is something that is relatively easy to
> address as we have to address it in the "Multilingual MediaWiki". Here
> it is however not compulsory to make this info available.
>
> I want to repeat my question I posted before: Is this the Wikimedia
> Foundation that allows people to edit its project anonymously ? Does
> this whole idea not reek of bad faith ? How hard is it to have people
> install fonts if they object to having to see ??????
>
*I* know I need to install fonts for proper multilingual support, but
doing that doesn't get me multilingual text input, and very, very few
people who have not already had to deal with such things as input
methods will know how to input characters in foreign character sets,
much less know what they are to input them correctly.

So the argument stands that this is as much a technical problem as a
social one - and yes, the attitude of going against anything you don't
understand, or inconveniences you slightly is one of our worst examples
of bad faith - and I venture to say a typical Americanism.

This technical problem is not likely to be confined to en though, it's
just better managed in cultures that are multilingual, since Wikipedians
exposed to such cultures are more likely to already have or have been
exposed to the tools (fonts and input methods) needed to work
efficiently with foreign character sets, and are more likely to know how
to use them.

The biggest thing we need to solve IMHO, is making sure that it's
possible to type usernames, or something corresponding to usernames,
without needing to have special input methods set up, and without using
any characters that can't be directly typed on a typical keyboard for
the language in question. Until a better solution arises, the ability to
use the numeric userid as a "surrogate" for the username in URLs and
text entry seems to be the safest bet.

-Stephanie


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> WP:NOR prevents people from just making stuff up for the purpose of
> putting their name in the citations.

Okay.  Still not catching the relevance.
>
> Attribution is not a reference, if you actually think that then you
> completely misunderstand the purpose of citing our articles.

I disagree.  It's a reference regarding where the infomation comes from,
and it's similar - similar, not identical - to adding a source for a
direct quote.  Thus, if you have a CC photo of, say, a dead person who's
appearance was not well known, attributing this photo makes sense, as it
sources the claim to a specific place.

I'd hope we'd do that for photos like that, and there's no real reason why
that shouldn't occur for others.

-Jeff


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/21/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> I noticed that some people add credits of photos inside the articles,
> saying that CC-BY requires attribution.
>
> Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
>
> I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
> contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
> edit history.
>
> AFAIK, there's no policy disallowing photo credits, but there should
> be one clear policy to discourage that -- it would also be a place
> to point people when asking about that. :-)
>
> (I'm not referring to photos by famous photographers who have their
> own articles, but to photos uploaded by users or found on Flickr)

It is unfair to provide inline attribution for images when we don't
provide it for text. (And certantly we could provide it for text..
Most articles don't have many authors, and if it were done by hand as
the image attribution is being done, it could be placed at the bottom
of the article)

Furthermore it's tacky and distracting... and I'd argue that if we do
it for some then we can be required to do it by all (since all the
free content licenses require attribution in a consistent and fair
method which is consistent with the standard in the medium, for wiki
that used to be on a second page). If we're required to do it by all
we're going to end up being forced to reject more uploads by
OffensiveUserNameN, and we're going to have a a world of hurt
extracting the data from the free form image pages.

I've long advocated that we create a second talk namespace for the
main NS called "Credits". There, interested editors could add their
name if they wish to be credited. Images could be credited there as
well.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
jayjg wrote:

>On 12/17/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
>
>>In the footnote, after citing the sources actually quoted, if you
>>think it is important you could add "other sources with similar
>>opinions are" and cite and quote a couple more of the best.
>>
>>
>Yes, this is a better approach. If one has 20 good sources backing a
>view, and in particular if one has no good sources opposing the view,
>then it is actually *better* to state these things as simple fact,
>with the sources in the footnote, avoiding the original research of
>claiming there is a "legal consensus".
>
It follows from this that this is really a question of proper wording,
and not of original research.  Two people see the same evidence and draw
their conclusions differently.  I might still dispute what is meant by a
"good" source, but that's a different argument.

It's interesting that this question should arise about law in the light
of Brad's comments in the "Office actions" thread.  Lawyers' opinions
are still just opinions no matter how many of them are given.  A single
unappealed decision by a low-level judge would be a precedent that could
throw all 20 scholarly opinions out the window.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>You are allowed to assume that your sources are correct, as long as
>they appear reliable (something published in a law journal counts as
>reliable). That's why we cite sources, so in the event that the source
>is wrong it is clear who is at fault, and we can't be charged with
>libel, or whatever else the consequences of false information may be.
>
But "reliable" is a statement of opinion.  One can cite the source, and
leave the reader to determine whether it is reliable.

A source may be wrong, but this should not necessarily imply a finding
of fault.

"Libel" takes us even further afield.  Very little of the information,
whether sourced or unsourced, will be libelous.  The primary consequence
of false information would be a loss of credibility.  It clouds the
issue when we dramatically try to make more of that than is warranted.

Ec


body:
On 12/21/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Actually, we do somewhat require it for direct quotations, we're supposed
> to reference it.  Couldn't we simply throw a <ref> on it with the
> attribution in the references area?  Seems like the best of both worlds,
> IMO.

Still leave us with the text image inequality, but at least that would
make it unugly.
The problem then becomes that were seriously overloading rev...
Already it's hard enough to tell if an article has any sources.

... plus another issue that I didn't bring up, more frontline
attribution risks creating a mismotiviation to contribute. How long do
we use the ref tag before people figure out that it's a fun way to
cram external links into our articles?


body:
--- Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > Are there any en.WP editors who believe blocking
> users
> > on sight based on their font is not a useful
> enough
> > process to be worth breaking SUL for other
> editors?
> >
> > Is there anyone outside of en.WP who believes that
> SUL
> > is not a useful enough process to be worth
> creating
> > bad blood between wikis?
>
> Hang on now.  This is a gross oversimplification of
> the problems that
> this issue is caused by.
>
> Firstly, SUL is a *good thing*.  It will make
> contributing to
> Wikimedia easier and more convenient.  I am certain
> that the *vast*
> majority of people agree with this and totally
> support its
> implementation.
>
> However, there are issues that it raises.  No-one
> wants good editors
> from, say, the Arabic Wikipedia getting blocked from
> en.wikipedia
> because their usernames are incomprehensible to
> other users of the
> wiki.  But, on the other hand, there are many
> Wikipedians who can only
> read the Latin script (let's face it, this is the
> vast majority).
> Should they be expected to identify a username with
> a user when the
> username is incomprehensible to them?
>
> I can't read Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or Thai
> scripts.  I would find
> it *extremely* difficult to tell the difference
> between a user I knew
> and a vandal if their names were in one of these
> scripts.  This is
> obviously a big problem.  You can't dismiss this in
> the manner of "oh,
> those English Wikipedians, they should get over it."
>
> This is a serious problem, and other wikis will
> suffer from it if they
> get the same concentration of vandalism as the
> English Wikipedia.  It
> must not be dismissed.
>
> So let's try to satisfy both the need to implement
> SUL and the
> problems that this raises.  The current en.wikipedia
> policy uses a
> sledgehammer to crack a walnut, that's true enough.
>  But rather than
> ignoring these concerns, how about looking to make
> this policy
> unnecessary?
>
> --
> Sam
>

I said above that brion had said the implementation
details of SUL was not-negotiable.  I cannot find an
email by him with the message I remember.  Perhaps
someone else made that comment, or maybe my mind has
just started making up email messages in my sleep.  I
am sorry for the misquote there.

I was going to start to answer you by quoting the
non-existant message.  :P I think a technical solution
to the issue would be great.  The question is first
which  technical solutions can be developed before SUL
is implented?  And second which of those options is
prefered?

Birgitte SB

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


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

body:
What about setting things up so that to create a SUL username with say,
Tegulu characters, you *must* register at TE, no other language's
registration form will accept it. That will significantly cut down on vanity
and vandal usage of the such characters.

Nick

Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:50:33 -0500
From: Stephanie Erin Daugherty <stephanie at sosdg.org>

This is especially true when abusive users have deliberately taken advantage
of this fact in order to make the lives of administrators and of other
Wikipedians as difficult as possible, and it's also true for those handful
of users that will mix character sets to "look cool" at the inconvenience of
others.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
> > the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-complete)
> > absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
> > impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
> > less a positive result...
>
> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the
> same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one has
> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you happen
> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)

If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.

Steve


body:
On 12/21/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> Why should that be an argument against attitribution?  Our
> referencing/verification policy already sorta does the same thing, but
> we'd never stop referencing articles.

WP:NOR prevents people from just making stuff up for the purpose of
putting their name in the citations.

Attribution is not a reference, if you actually think that then you
completely misunderstand the purpose of citing our articles.


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
This is insane. Noone would EVER EVER EVER consider this a copyright
violation.

On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:54:03 -0500, "James Hare"
> > <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >Case in point: Captain Jean-Luc Picard(r).
> >
> > So a caricature of Picard would be forbidden?  Really?
>
> It might count as fair use under certain conditions. A painting of
> Patrick Stewart would probably be a safer bet although there would be
> other issues with things such as in the US at least the Right of
> Publicity.
>
> >I am honestly
> > confused here.  What about, say, a painting of an aircraft?  Is that
> > unfree by virtue of the manufacturer's rights, or the airline's logo?
>
> It could be under some conditions and depending on the country it is in.
>
> > I have a friend who is a commercial artist, that is not an idle
> > question.
>
>
> If they want legal advice they should talk to a lawyer.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

body:
On 12/21/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the December 18, 1857 morning edition of [[The New York Times]] an
> acceptable source?  It's rather hard to find a copy of it these days.
> How about the [[ISO 9000]] standard?  The International Standards
> Organization charges thousands of dollars for access to it.

The sooner this, and related discussions shift from trying to define
some "acceptable/unacceptable" line, to establishing a series of
"preferable/less preferable" relationships, the better. Of course
that's an acceptable source in certain contexts. Of course you
wouldn't want to use it if you had better ones.

There are very few things that are truly unacceptable at Wikipedia:
slander, copyright violations, deliberate falsehoods to name a few.
Everything else is just a series of improvements that takes the
crappiest stub to the best featured article.

Steve


body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I said above that brion had said the
> implementation
> > details of SUL was not-negotiable.  I cannot find
> an
> > email by him with the message I remember.  Perhaps
> > someone else made that comment, or maybe my mind
> has
> > just started making up email messages in my sleep.
>  I
> > am sorry for the misquote there.
> [snip]
>
> Again, SUL and the practice of a language wiki
> blocking usernames
> which are not comprehensible to speakers of that
> language are not
> mutually exclusive.
>
> Please don't invoke Brion to argue for you, he's
> able to make his own
> arguments.
>
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012390.html
>

That is not the message I was thinking of.  I really
am not sure what it is that I am remembering but I
have read all his messages in the archive twice and it
is *not* by him.

You misunderstand me.  But my premise was mistaken, so
there is no point in explaining what I meant before I
realized that I was mistaken. :P

Birgitte SB

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is insane. Noone would EVER EVER EVER consider this a copyright
> violation.

You must be kidding. Please see:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/notice.cgi?NoticeID=7

Generally we avoid the problems of derivative illustrations because
they are not encyclopedic. This doesn't mean that such issues don't
exist.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/21/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Make the whole of template space editable by admins only, and loosen the
> grip on adminship.  Templates are probably an area which should be kept
> to trusted users, and admins are our trusted users.  Might make the
> community face up to rewiring RFA.

Hell no. There are too many templates which need too much maintenance.
There's no reason for navigation boxes to be protected like that, and
they do get updated fairly often.

Restrictions on what can go into an unprotected template might be
worth pursuing though.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> The real problem here is that trusted users should be given the sysop
> bit and are not.  No big deal?  Not these days.

Yes. Put differently, we lack a middle ground. Admin is too powerful
to give to everyone. But there's nothing to give to our trusted users.

Steve


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> en.WP's username policy is incompatible with SUL.
> This is a problem.  We have heard from brion that the
> implementation of SUL is not negotiable.  We have
> heard from several en.WP editors that they are not
> willing to give up the non-Latin username blocks
> without further development work to mitigate the
> issue.

That's not my position at all; my position is that SUL being implimented
tomorrow would either break a key en.WP vandal fighting tool, or result en
en.WP doing highly unfriendly things to editors whos native account is in a
non-latin script in another WP project, or possibly both.  The consequences
for en.WP and the project as a whole would be terrible.

That is not "Don't do SUL".  That is not "en.WP reserves the right to
continue banning non-Latin names forever".  That is "I don't think we're
ready for it and I don't think we've thought it all through yet".

I personally like the idea of SUL.  But I have not seen anywhere near the
degree of due dilligence applied on any side to thinking about the side
effects with regard to this en.WP policy, so far.

Any disambiguator, be it the existing anti-name-spoof detector work, a
numeric output (in either latin or localized for other WPs...) of the
user_ID would be an adequate solution in my opinion based on what I
understand.

That is not the only possible solution.  It's a solution that I hope is
adequate and comprehensive, which would require some development.  But I
don't have any reason to believe that it's the only globally acceptable one.

  Considering that the brion (the developer) is
> not negotiating, I find the arguments about exactly
> which technical developments en.WP would demand in
> order for a policy change strange.
>
> This appears to be heading to a showdown.  I think
> *that* is the worse than blocking ru.WP admins and
> non-latin vandals going to town at en.WP together.  I
> would like to hear from anyone who does not strongly
> disagree with one of the two polar positions that have
> restated many times.
>
> Are there any en.WP editors who believe blocking users
> on sight based on their font is not a useful enough
> process to be worth breaking SUL for other editors?
>
> Is there anyone outside of en.WP who believes that SUL
> is not a useful enough process to be worth creating
> bad blood between wikis?
>
> Birgitte SB
>

The conflict here is being exaggerated.  There is only one reason for there
to be a "showdown" here - if SUL is right around the corner and we haven't
had time to think through the implications for the en.WP policy and come to
agreement on how to deal with those.

If SUL is right around the corner, with all due respect to its importance to
the project as a whole and its importance in development, can it be held off
long enough to discuss appropriately and develop a reasonable global
consensus?

Letting an artificial schedule drive us into a large inter-project conflict
seems insane.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
	affects other communities


body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> Thursday, December 21, 2006, 6:46:56 PM, Jeff wrote:
>
>> I disagree.  It's a reference regarding where the infomation comes from,
>> and it's similar - similar, not identical - to adding a source for a
>> direct quote.
>
> So you think it would be ok for me to make a bot which spams my name in
> the 200+ articles which use my photos? ;-)

Did you take them?  If so, then I think a case could be made for it, yes.

I can certainly accept being in the minority on this one, but I'd also
think that we'd want to have valid sourcing on an image regarding its use
in an article, too.  Preferably without having to leave the article page
itself to a separate image page with a bunch of templates and text that
isn't of use to the casual reader.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 18/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/17/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>OR is when you go out and test the evidence yourself. Finding sources to
>>>>corroborate a point is called research, not original research.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>No. In Wikipedia, OR is when you do the interpretation of evidence
>>>yourself. We should simplify the OR rule to make this clearer:
>>>"Wikipedians are dumb. We cannot interpret, only repeat."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>So, in theory every entry could be written by a bot, eh?
>>
>>/me imagines RamBot adding articles on every court decision and piece of
>>legislation...
>>
>>
>
>I'm manually writing articles on pieces of legislation - sadly the
>data isn't available to make it bot-generable, otherwise I'd set that
>going and tidy the results up.
>
>Which neatly brings out another aspect of pushing-OR. I open my copy
>of "Tudor Constituional Documents", and proceed to write something
>like:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridges_Act_1530
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_Act_1555
>
>The problem is, all that the source contains is (a translation of?)
>the original text; I've recast it in a more modern style and converted
>from long and tedious legalese to a fairly comprehensible precis, but
>I've done it solely working from the original and not from any
>secondary synopsis of the Act.
>
>Is this original research? If not, why not - where does "rewriting"
>end and "interpreting" begin? Does it depend on the complexity of the
>source document?
>
>I think I'm in the clear - but I'm curious to know where we would draw
>a line on this sort of thing.
>
You can't possibly draw a clear line on this sort of thing.
Nevertheless there is a clear parallel between what you have done with
these statutes and writing a synopsis of a novel based on nothing other
than reading it.  In doing so one does not add interpretive commentary,
though there is no prohibition against translation.

What would make this more interesting would be to add a copy of the
referenced acts to Wikisource.  A preferred source would be the oldest
one findable in the original language of the time.  Joseph Robson Tanner
died in 1931 so his version would be in the public domain.  The edition
that you cite was a reprint of the 1930 second edition.

Ec


subject:
[WikiEN-l] issue with an admin refusing to allow me "right to
	vanish"

body:
On 12/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > It's the hidden from non-admins part that is a problem.
> > If you did any significant editing, the discussions on your talk page
> could
> > be of interest to other editors even after you leave. It could be tagged
> as
> > belonging to a left user, it can be protected from trolls, and it might
> even
> > be blankable, but it cannot be deleted.
>
> In general, I do not agree with this approach.  Allowing people to
> vanish, including deleting their user and user_talk pages, is often the
> best way to part company with dignity.  "Could be of interest" should
> not be the standard, I think, but rather "Is indispensable to the
> functioning of the encyclopedia."
>
> There can be exceptions, of course.  If a user repeatedly joins and
> deletes (perhaps sockpuppeting), causing a lot of disruptive demands to
> delete their userpage, we could just ignore it if that seemed like the
> best way to deal with it.
>
> But in general, I see no reason to have a general policy of keeping talk
> pages around that make someone who would like to leave us unhappy.

The specific claim here is that this was a rootology sockpuppet, rootology
having been banned in the ED arbcom case.

The evidence is being closely held, but I trust the admins in question.

I find this all sort of unfortunate, because before that case rootology
seemed like he might be contributing positively, but he left in rather a
huff and under a cloud.

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


body:
On 12/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> The SUL is almost a year late as it is. All issues have been discussed
> >> at length at the time. Postponing it now it not really an option. There
> >> is also no capacity to come up with a technical solution. There is even
> >> no consensus as to what the problem is.
> >>
> >
> >
> > So you really are saying that your only answer to the concerns raised
> > is "fuck you"? That's disappointing. How do you plan to get every
> > en:wp admin to go along with you?
> >
> >
> > - d.
> Hoi,
> Again you misquote. To what extend do you think the admins of other
> projects are asked what they think about the imposition of all kinds of
> functionality that was discussed at length at the en.wikipedia or some
> such. Really, much of the problem has already been solved. With SUL it
> will be even easier to find if someone is a know good or a known troll.
> You just seem to be unwilling to acknowledge these facts, by also using
> not so polite language you make yourself less relevant in my eyes.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

I find your lack of assumed good faith disturbing.

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

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

Birgitte SB wrote:
> I can see two ways where this will not be possible.
>
> *There is only a shared user creation log; local logs
> no longer exists.
>
> *Local logs exist but do not distinguish from new
> users to the shared database and existing database
> users who have just edited for the first time locally.

Would prefer local logs which do distinguish.

> Is there any defintive information yet on how the user
> creation log will work after SUL?

No, that hasn't been written yet so nothing definitive can be said.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> So you think that every sentence should have a tag denoting who wrote
> the sentence?

Every sentence, no.  Every section that takes its reference from a
specific source, yes.  I come from a history background, I'm a bit intense
about sourcing.

> Again, you misunderstand citations. They are not for attribution they
> are for factual tractability.

They're really for both - attribution of the factual tractability, if you
may.  Remember, we don't deal in truth, but in verifiability.  We source
things that may not be true, even though they're verifiable.  Why?  To
attribute such statements to a certain thing.  If I upload a picture of my
grandfather, and say he's J D Salinger at the supermarket in 2005,
attributing that photo to me does the same thing as my quoting a book abut
whether a full grown man can fit into a chess machine.

Attribution serves multiple purposes.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
> If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.

Obvious question: How do we fix it?


subject: [WikiEN-l] New user log ?

body:
On 12/21/06, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> If a Japanese editor cannot read or understand any word written in Latin
> script, I don't want him or her editing the English wikipedia.

What if he's just adding interwiki links?

Steve


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> When you get ?????? it makes sense to install more fonts. The use of IPA
> is problematic because it is often done incorrectly and most people have
> not had training to do IPA correctly. It takes a lot of training to do
> this correctly. My name for instance is notoriously difficult to
> pronounce for people who are not Dutch while even a name like "Bob"
> should be written in many ways when you consider in how many ways it is
> pronounced.

Indeed. But we're not going to be able to make it a requirement of
editing en:wp that users install more fonts on their (arguably broken)
default-install Windows box.

- d.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
geni wrote

> Adminship is a big deal. You may not want this to be the case but it is.

'No big deal' still implies that admins shouldn't swagger around on the site.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi,

I agree that the current policy and practice on the English Wikipedia is
wrong. With SUL, a common rule is needed accross all languages, so the
English Wikipedia can't keep its own rules independently of other
languages about accounts. There needs to be a common solution.

I find Guillaume Paumier's proposition quite good.

Regards,

Yann

Aphaia wrote:
> Japanese editors around me is worried when they would be forced to
> change their username and thought SUL as the Coming of such Latin-name
> age. They worried with sadness to cast away their familiar accounts
> which some of them have used for years or cannot choose good
> alternation of their current username. For them, introduction of SUL
> is equal to application of English Wikipedia naming policy. I would
> like to say English Wikipedia community blocked one of foundation wiki
> editor permanently only because his account wasn't in Latin and he had
> a good history of edits for years. For my eyes the current "fighting
> vandalism" on English Wikipedia is beyond the limit of common sense.
> Before doing such rude and unthoughtful action, they could have
> checked his contributions or user page.
>
> And I would like to say the editor I introduced on the above is not
> the first one who was blocked from this reason and forced to change
> his username. I know another editor who was blocked permanently and
> then was asked to change username. I think it is not a kind
> persuasion. I wouldn't like to call their "request" voluntary. They
> are not happy and feel treated as second citizens. One of such editors
> came to me and said (in Japanese); I am accepting the fact the fact
> preferences of English community takes over after all." That is the
> result of what English Wikipedia is doing. Result of their
> ethnocentric and rudeness.
>
> Shifting to the general issue, As Gerald said, I am afraid "changing
> user name with latin literation" is not a good idea from two reasons -
> 1) if they want, they would have done so already; Commons folks may
> know Searobin, a Commons admin; his account on Japanese project has no
> Latin character part. If they don't now, it could mean they don't like
> so - most of them prefer to keep consistency of username on several
> projects. And generally forcing someone to change their username in
> that reason is not good. If we are going to recommend a modified
> signature, it is fine for me and perhaps for others. 2) We have no
> reason all Wikimedia editor know Latin-character. It would not make a
> sense to have a username consisting in two parts, but nothing of them
> cannot read for the editors. Latin-script using people may think that
> too theoretical, but it could happen. Specially for young people in
> non-Latin script language world, or rather illiterate folks. I am
> afraid from this reason your idea is still Latin-character-centric.
>
> I would like to point out the English Wikipedia rejected my proposal
> for asking those people to render such combined signature. I thought
> it a compromise but they didn't. So I am afraid, Neil,  you are better
> first to go to them and persuade them to think compromise and
> improvement. Now they are driving other communities even to folking.
> It would be bad and disrespectful if we persuade non-Latin script
> account editor to change their signature and after they follow, again
> go to them and say "sorry, it couldn't be a comparison. You should
> alter your username or just go away".

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Biblioth?que libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
> >     3. Disciplinary sanctions for defying the action  should not be the
> > responsibility of the office.
> >
>
> Who else is there? Stewards? Generaly stay away from en.

ArbCom. That's their job.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >     3. Disciplinary sanctions for defying the action  should not be the
> > > responsibility of the office.
> > >
> >
> > Who else is there? Stewards? Generaly stay away from en.
>
> ArbCom. That's their job.

Sometimes actions are needed in timescales of less than a month.

--
geni


body:
On 12/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> George Herbert schreef:
> > On 12/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> David Gerard schreef:
> >>
> >>> On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> The SUL is almost a year late as it is. All issues have been
> discussed
> >>>> at length at the time. Postponing it now it not really an option.
> There
> >>>> is also no capacity to come up with a technical solution. There is
> even
> >>>> no consensus as to what the problem is.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> So you really are saying that your only answer to the concerns raised
> >>> is "fuck you"? That's disappointing. How do you plan to get every
> >>> en:wp admin to go along with you?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> - d.
> >>>
> >> Hoi,
> >> Again you misquote. To what extend do you think the admins of other
> >> projects are asked what they think about the imposition of all kinds of
> >> functionality that was discussed at length at the en.wikipedia or some
> >> such. Really, much of the problem has already been solved. With SUL it
> >> will be even easier to find if someone is a know good or a known troll.
> >> You just seem to be unwilling to acknowledge these facts, by also using
> >> not so polite language you make yourself less relevant in my eyes.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>     GerardM
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > I find your lack of assumed good faith disturbing.
> Hoi,
> What do you expect when it is the return that I get is as if I said
> "fuck you" ? You call that good faith ? What do you expect when for a
> second time I am misquoted ?
> Sorry, but it is not me who used foul language. So how do you conclude
> that I am of bad faith. :(
> GerardM

I do not see the en.WP folks ignoring or arguing against the SUL benefits,
but I do see you enthusiastically telling us that the negatives due to the
impact of SUL with current en.WP policy are imaginary or evidence of us
being insensitive or culturally imperialist (paraphrasing).

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


body:
Hi,

James Hare wrote:
> I like that idea -- where usernames are automatically transliterated
> depending on which wiki you'd go to. If you're on a wiki that uses Latin
> alphabet, then the name is in Latin script. If on Hebrew Wikipedia, Hebrew
> script, etc... It can work like the Automatic Conversion script on Chinese
> Wikipedia.

It won't work, as there is no automatic transliteration for many scripts
and languages.

Regards,

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://fr.wikisource.org/ | Biblioth?que libre
http://wikilivres.info | Documents libres


subject: [WikiEN-l] New user log ?

body:
On 12/21/06, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> How would he know if it's the correct article to add the interwiki links
> to?

Perhaps because the Japanese article he was working on has an
interwiki link to this article. I've updated interwiki links on
foreign Wikipeida's before without being able to read the language.
Only in Latin-based scripts, but I think the principle is the same.

Steve


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 12/20/06, sean at epoptic.com <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 02:48:48PM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> > The issue isn't really ethnocentric, or language-centric, it's
> > script-centric. SUL should have a feature that allows you to
> > transliterate your name into various scripts (or even does it for you
> > if possible, there isn't necessarily a one-to-one relationship between
> > characters [or sequences of characters] in different scripts, so it
> > could be quite hard) and it uses the appropriate one on each project.
> > The same name written in two different scripts is still the same name,
> > it's just written in a way that the people reading it can understand.
> >
> > It's not just a matter of distinguishing between two Japanese, say,
> > names, it's also a matter of pronoucing them - it can slow down
> > reading quite a lot of some of the words aren't pronouncible to you
> > (even if you aren't reading out loud).
>
> So ... what would you do about names like "Seabhcan" (or "Sean," for that
> matter) that are pronounced in ways nonintuitive to most Anglophones?

I assign a mental pronunciation that is probably quite incorrect. The
key point is that I *can* assign a pronunciation to "Seabhcan" or
"Cthulhu", and I can easily tell the difference between the two.  I
can't do that for something like "??????".

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Iain Huxley

body:
 >Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?

 >I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
 >contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
 >edit history.

This could have the effect of greatly reducing the images available
for use, particularly those of high quality and/or limited availability.

I recently have been up against such an issue when trying to find
some good photographs of whale images for the sperm whale and blue
whale pages (the blue whale page has resorted to using a postage
stamp as its main image).

It turns out any underwater photos of these creatures - let alone
good ones - are in very short supply.  After a while of searching I
found the stock agency http://seapics.com which has many fantastic
pictures you'd have trouble finding elsewhere (while not a fair
comparison, to get an idea try searching for sperm whale or blue
whale at seapics.com and then try the same at images.google.com).

I'm now writing a letter to seapics (snail-mail still has an extra
value sometimes :) to try to obtain explicit permission for use on
wikipedia.  These folk sell images for tens or even hundreds of
thousands of dollars depending on use (some info at
http://seapics.com/information/clients/pricing.html).

Due to the high exposure, allowing just one of their images to be
used in wikipedia would be a significant donation to wikipedial; to
be honest I don't think I have a particularly good chance of success here.

**But** if I couldn't guarantee credits where used, I could be pretty
sure my chances would be nil.

My understanding is that we currently accept images with credit
required when used, so changing this policy would also mean a massive
amount of work.

I'm strongly in favor of allowing credits inside the article, but
discouraging it - favoring images where the copyright holder has no
such requirements.

--Iain
[newbie]


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> When you get ?????? it makes sense to install more fonts. The use of IPA
>> is problematic because it is often done incorrectly and most people have
>> not had training to do IPA correctly. It takes a lot of training to do
>> this correctly. My name for instance is notoriously difficult to
>> pronounce for people who are not Dutch while even a name like "Bob"
>> should be written in many ways when you consider in how many ways it is
>> pronounced.
>>
>
>
> Indeed. But we're not going to be able to make it a requirement of
> editing en:wp that users install more fonts on their (arguably broken)
> default-install Windows box.
>
>
> - d.
>

And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom left,
and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")

-- Neil


body:
On 21/12/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
> user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
> recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
> It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
> straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
> squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom left,
> and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
> middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")

Obviously, with SUL any en:wp editor who does not learn to read all
other scripts used on Wikimedia is simply being a cultural
imperialist.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>Which neatly brings out another aspect of pushing-OR. I open my copy
>>of "Tudor Constituional Documents", and proceed to write something
>>like:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridges_Act_1530
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_Act_1555
>>
>>The problem is, all that the source contains is (a translation of?)
>>the original text; I've recast it in a more modern style and converted
>>from long and tedious legalese to a fairly comprehensible precis, but
>>I've done it solely working from the original and not from any
>>secondary synopsis of the Act.
>>
>>Is this original research? If not, why not - where does "rewriting"
>>end and "interpreting" begin? Does it depend on the complexity of the
>>source document?
>>
>>
>I think you're ok. You're working from a primary source, so all you
>can state is facts, but those facts are fine. Rewriting something
>which isn't open to interpretation isn't OR, however if there are
>multiple ways to interpret it, choosing one of them certainly is. Of
>course, determine whether or not something is open to interpretation
>is very difficult (you may simply have not noticed the alternative).
>It's probably best to stay as close to the original wording as
>possible...
>
If one were to take that position to its logical conclusion no
translation would be allowable since they are all original research.  In
the case of 16th century statutes the language has certainly changed
since their promulgation, and the choice of the appropriate modern
terminology is not always a simple matter.  So we end up with either a
modern language version that you would see as original research, or an
original version that no-one understands.

Ec


body:
On 12/21/06, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> I can certainly accept being in the minority on this one, but I'd also
> think that we'd want to have valid sourcing on an image regarding its use
> in an article, too.  Preferably without having to leave the article page
> itself to a separate image page with a bunch of templates and text that
> isn't of use to the casual reader.

So you think that every sentence should have a tag denoting who wrote
the sentence?

Again, you misunderstand citations. They are not for attribution they
are for factual tractability.


body:
On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> en.WP's username policy is incompatible with SUL.
> This is a problem.
[snip]

Just a minor correction: Your claim is factually inaccurate. Enwiki
can go on blocking non latin charset names. SUL can go about its merry
way. The result will be that users with non-latin names will need to
create a second account. This is not an ideal situation by anyone's
judgement, but it is not an incompatibility.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>"Thomas Dalton" wrote
>
>
>>We don't need to go through and put "So-and-so says"
>>at the beginning of every sentence in the encyclopaedia.
>>
>>
>I basically agree. The referencing junkies will push us back a notch, to where we have the 'materials for an encylopedia', not the encyclopedia itself. Or perhaps that has always been where we are. In which case we are delaying the day when we have 'finished' articles.
>
I don't believe that we will ever have "finished" articles.  Referencing
still needs to be balanced with readability.  Some sentence adverbs are
there to maintain the flow of text, but there is an art to not
introducing bias through their use.

>Is this good or bad? Well, the Internet is full of argumentative people, and many topics are contentious. The way to deal with those people and topics may well be to summarise controversies. But we really do need, even there, a degree of concision; otherwise we are going merely to recreate the scholasticism of past centuries.
>
Verbatim!  All of it! ;-)

>And then, in fact, people want to look up facts in encyclopedias. They don't always want quibbles.
>
Exactly.  They do not want to become a part of the controversy.  Most
are not even interested in critical evaluations.  Many will be satisfied
with urban legends and conspiracy theories that relieve them from the
responsibility of thinking.

>As with many things here, we'll sort this out; but not very quickly.
>
At one time "factoring" talk pages was considered a virtue.  The few
times that I tried it showed me that the task was nearly impossible when
en:wp had fewer than 50,000 articles.  The impossibility has scaled very
well.

Ec


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> > USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
> >
> No, it isn't.  Fair use is not a violation of copyright...

According to what I understand, fair use is a defence for copyright
violation -- thus it assumes that copyright violation has already occurred.

--
theProject


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Banner Change to Fundraiser

body:
I have cleaned up the Cherokee Wikipedia Foundation site, but I need to
update the banner to add the fundraiser.  It currently still
reflects Wikimania of last year (????)  Which MediaWiki variable
controls the banners on the top of the wiki?

Jeff


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:41:06 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>Sometimes actions are needed in timescales of less than a month.

For this we have temporary injunctions.

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


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] interface question - viewing wiki source read-only

body:
Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo?action=raw&ctype=text/css -
replacing "Foo" with the name of the article.

-Gurch

zero 0000 wrote:
> Is there a way to examine the wiki source of an article except by
> clicking "edit"?  I'm confident this is a newbie question so please
> forgive me.
>
> Zero.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/21/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> geni wrote
>
> > Adminship is a big deal. You may not want this to be the case but it is.
>
> 'No big deal' still implies that admins shouldn't swagger around on the site.

Of course.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 12:41:06 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Sometimes actions are needed in timescales of less than a month.
>
> For this we have temporary injunctions.
>

And sometimes a couple of days isn't fast enough either.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> A respect for the legal culture of other countries helps to build mutual
> co-operation even if there is no conceivable avenue for enforcing those
> laws.  Why shouldn't North Korean, Chinese or Iranian law be respected
> when they are relevent?

So, no maps showing that Kashmir is not entirely and undisputedly part
of India.  No pictures of women with uncovered faces.  No criticism of
Kim Jong-Il.  No mention that Arab countries call it the Arabian Gulf,
or that most other countries call it the Persian Gulf.

There's a whole lot that we couldn't include in Wikipedia if we were
to respect all the relevant laws of countries where Wikipedia is
accessible.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
	other communities

body:
On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> In your options below, you forgot the main argument GerardM has
> expressed in this thread: that the problem faced by the English
> Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear *because* of SUL.
>
> Maybe it was not explained enough in details, but how could you overlook
> it? Beside you seem to ignore all other options which have been
> expressed by others (i.e. Guillaume for example).
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> David Gerard a ?crit :
> > On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > That was your precise text I quoted. What part are you claiming I have
> altered?
> >
> >>To what extend do you think the admins of other
> >>projects are asked what they think about the imposition of all kinds of
> >>functionality that was discussed at length at the en.wikipedia or some
> >>such. Really, much of the problem has already been solved. With SUL it
> >>will be even easier to find if someone is a know good or a known troll.
> >>You just seem to be unwilling to acknowledge these facts, by also using
> >>not so polite language you make yourself less relevant in my eyes.
> >
> > Then answer the questions, please, rather than taking an attitude of
> > arrogant dismissal (as you have throughout this discussion) that I do
> > think can accurately be summarised as "fuck you"
> >
> > I have put these as simply as I can. Are you able to answer them at all?
> >
> > Do you acknowledge that it was put in place because of a real problem?
> > [ ] yes
> > [ ] no
> >
> > Do you acknowledge that the problems stated in this thread exist or
> > are thought to exist?
> > [ ] Yes
> > [ ] No
> >
> > Do you have any solutions for these problems other than every
> > administrator on every language Wikipedia being required to learn
> > every script used on Wikipedia to be able to effectively be an
> > administrator on their own-language Wikipedia?
> > [ ] Yes, my solution is ...
> > [ ] No, if I've learnt all these scripts and installed all these fonts
> > they can too
> > [ ] No (some other reason ...)
> >
> > Are you able to answer even "yes or no" questions trying to discern
> > your position as being anything other than arrogant dismissal?
> >
> >
> > - d.
>

SUL does not make the problem go away.  Nobody has posted any explanation of
how it would.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
On 12/21/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Update on an old thread:
> The so-called "bot" has an account (incase the people at BRFA think I
> should use a flagged account). I currently run the script to find
> copyvios in my spare time; I've found three. The galaxy is at peace.

Cool :)

Found any instances of other sites plagiarising us without giving
credit? I found one once where a woman was even using photos I'd taken
on her site...I wasn't sure whether to be flattered, offended, or
just...confused.

Steve


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 12/21/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> I noticed that some people add credits of photos inside the articles,
> saying that CC-BY requires attribution.
>
> Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
>
> I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
> contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
> edit history.
>
Images shouldn't have a special status.  The attribution of the
authors should be part of the article too.  That's what the GFDL
requires, not that the attribution be "a click away".

One difference with images is that many images are copyrighted by
non-Wikipedians.  This is true with some text, but much less so.  So
with text you can argue that the submitter gave an implicit license.
Not true with images which are copyrighted by someone different from
the submitter.

Anthony


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
 affects other communities

body:
Michael Noda wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>> Hoi,
>>> The notion that the numbers used in the Latin script are universal is
>>> also a fallacy.
>>> Thanks,
>>>     GerardM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Yes, but it's quite a good approximation to reality. For example, the
>> front pages of ar:, am:,he:, ru:, el:, th: and zh: are clear evidence
>> that use of ASCII Hindu-Arabic numerals is widespread in common
>> practice, even in cultures with their own distinct historic numeral
>> systems.
>>
>> And if we really wanted to, we can also represent the same set of
>> decimal digits in other writing systems, for example Devanagari
>> numerals, since we already have the localization code to do this ready
>> to go.
>>
>> I like Stephanie's suggestion of User:?????? <#2352562> as a display
>> format: we could quite easily arrange that User:#2352562 would be an
>> alias for User:?????? throughout the system, with ?????? remaining that
>> user's true name everywhere.
>>
>> Thus, for the user "Examplename", User:Examplename would be their user
>> page on every wiki, with User_talk:Examplename being their discussion
>> page, and so on... but, for wikis where the script used in their name is
>> not one of the native scripts for that wiki,
>>
>>     [[User:Examplename|Examplename]] <[[User:Examplename|#425256]]>
>>
>> would appear in every context where the machine-generated text
>>
>>    [[User:Examplename|Examplename]]
>>
>> would have appeared before, and "#425256" (or its equivalent with the
>> decimal numerals in any other script) would also be usable in the
>> software as a synonym for their real-name throughout the SUL universe.
>> That is to say:
>>
>> * User:#425256 would be a redirect to User:Examplename on every wiki.
>> * Blocking User:#425265 would have the effect of blocking User:Examplename
>> * Special:Contributions/#425265 would have the same result as
>> Special:Contributions/Examplename (and would display "User contributions
>> for [[User:Examplename]]" at the top on home-script wikis, and "User
>> contributions for [[User:Examplename]] <[[User:#425256|#425256]]>" at
>> the top on others...
>>
>> Note that the numeric tags would only appear on ''system-generated''
>> text: no user would ever be required to use their alternative numeric
>> tag in any human context (unless they wanted to, of course).
>>
>> Net effect:
>>
>> * for most practical purposes, no visible change on any wiki, except in
>> the immediate context of a username with "foreign-script" characters
>> * no user will need to rename any of their accounts
>> * no user will need to create any nicknames if they don't want to
>> * most users won't even notice the change, since 99% of all editors tend
>> to have same-script names
>> * only formerly-unreadable "foreign script" names will appear with
>> numeric tags on any given wiki, yet
>> * either tags or names will work in any computer-input context such as
>> blocking or user page display, throughout the entire SUL universe, but
>> with the system always giving the true name display priority
>>
>> Just to gild the lily a bit more, we could also add a bit of latitude
>> about what constitutes a "foreign" script: for example, if the community
>> on zh: agreed that they could distinguish Latin characters (which they
>> can in practice), or the community on en: was to agree that they could
>> generally distinguish and remember Greek and Cyrillic characters, the
>> software could be configured so that numeric tags could disappear on
>> usernames in those scripts within those wikis. Or, contrariwise, if a
>> community so desired, numeric tags could appear on all system-displayed
>> usernames, even their own.
>>
>
> I think this can be a fair and readily implementable system, both
> technically and socially.  It solves the problem en.wiki was
> addressing (clumsily) with the username policy, and is fully
> compatible with SUL.  It displays no bias for or against any
> particular character set.  In other words, I now expect that the SUL
> implementation team will account for this proposal, or something very
> much like it, when SUL goes live.  If they're not considering it now,
> I for one think they should.  (Although I like the earlier suggestion
> of salting the account IDs to avoid silly status games over longevity
> :-)  )
>
> I'd just like to express my sadness at the lack of co-operative spirit
> and foresight shown by some defenders of the en.wiki username policy,
> and the lack of assumption of good faith all around.  While I
> personally dislike the policy for its heavyhandedness, it's clear that
> there is a problem that it addresses, and does so in one of the very
> few ways available *in the current technical environment.*  What my
> fellow en.wikipedians are failing to deal with properly is that the
> technical environment is about to change, soon and inevitably.  SUL is
> not going to just go away, because it's too useful to too many people.
>  Plans need to be made now to deal with the major sociotechnical
> changes that will accompany SUL's introduction.  One of those changes
> must be a revision of the en.wiki username policy.  That will come
> about through discussion and (cross-)community consensus, so flinging
> what amount to accusations of bad faith around, right off the bat, is
> less than helpful, to put it mildly.  We need to shed more light and
> less heat on this subject, as soon as we can.  I hope we can come
> together, as a community of communities, and rise to the challenge.
>
> -Michael Noda
>
>
Thanks, Michael!

As I understand it, the current en: Latin-script-only policy is a sad
necessity caused by the need to fight the continual stream of vandalism
directed at en:, combined with the limitations of most en: editors at
distinguishing and remembering non-Latin names in general, rather than a
manifestation of cultural imperialism imposed for social reasons.

This is also a policy that other wikis may be forced to adopt at some
point in the future, for the same reason, when they get large enough
that their level of vandal account creation gets sufficiently high (for
example, can most readers of Arabic read Chinese, or vice versa?)

If a technically feasible system to reduce the social and administrative
difficulties of dealing with editors with different-script names could
be put into place, I think the need for this policy would disappear, and
the policy itself would simply evaporate.

-- Neil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
 affects other communities


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Images shouldn't have a special status.  The attribution of the
> authors should be part of the article too.  That's what the GFDL
> requires, not that the attribution be "a click away".

You've not actually read the GFDL have you?

...
I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and add
   to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
   publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page.  If
   there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
   stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
   given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
   Version as stated in the previous sentence.
K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
   Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all
   the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
   and/or dedications given therein.

In any case, the technological nuance of Wikipedia's user interface
isn't really a matter for the licenses.. It is normal on wikis for
attribution to be kept out of the working document.  To claim that the
license wouldn't permit it would be equivalent to claiming that every
page or even every chapter in a book had to relist the authors.

The CC attribution (2.0) terms used on the flickr images which have
caused this discussion, which are simmlar...

"If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly
digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective
Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and
give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You
are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of
the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to
the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if
any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless
such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing
information for the Work;"

"reasonable to the medium or means" Which is exactly what the image
page is intended to be...


body:
On 12/21/06, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> People who contribute on Wikipedia still own copyright to their content,
> they are merely licensing it under GFDL (and so others can use/modify/copy
> it, subject to the new work being under GFDL).
>
> I understand the point of WP:OWN - but it's not an excuse to avoid crediting
> people for their work. Having the GFDL notice and history page is certainly
> good faith, but it doesn't really seem like particularly good or useful
> attribution. Most of the history page can be viewed as "spam" if you're
> looking at it with an interest in attribution - as the bulk of it is usually
> minor edits (formatting/language/style/accuracy tweaks) and
> vandalism/reverts. The more major the article is, and longer history it has,
> the more useless the history page is in this regard.

Right, I don't follow the concern about [[WP:OWN]] with respect to
that suggestion.

No machine generated list of copyright holders is going to be right..
better to let the folks who are interested add their own name to the
credits. Community standards (and bot based sanity checks) can make
sure no one spams the credit page without editing the article.

::shrugs::


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Importing images (plus deletion)

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

Mark Clements wrote:
> Yes, but the transwiki is an _import_, not an _export_ process (i.e. you
> perform the operation from the target wiki), so how can this process perform
> the remote delete without compromising security?
>
> Perhaps I do not understand how transwiki works.  Is it possible for me, on
> my private wiki, to set up WP as an import source for transwiki?

Yes.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFiwcqwRnhpk1wk44RAjbOAJ9FONTwQm709rVw8659sQoe4S3VEQCgoRQM
B63DUGnFl3sdKJZEcjYPyA8=
=YujZ
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body:
Jon Harald S?by wrote:

>On 12/21/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I have cleaned up the Cherokee Wikipedia Foundation site, but I need to
>>update the banner to add the fundraiser.  It currently still
>>reflects Wikimania of last year (????)  Which MediaWiki variable
>>controls the banners on the top of the wiki?
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>You need to change [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]]. While you're at it, you
>should also +1 at [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice id]], for anyone who might
>have clicked "close" in the header.
>
>
>
Thanks guys.

Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
> 'No big deal' still implies that admins shouldn't swagger around on the site.

Becoming an admin is a big deal, actually being one isn't. I think
that accurately represents the actual state of affairs


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Reverberating self-reinforcing autoregenerative
	circular sourcing

body:
On 15/12/06, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> Someone found what looked like a valuable confirming source: a recent article in the New York Daily News that said, "Rutgers might have joined the fledgling Ivy League and altered its destiny. But the school declined the offer - arguably the dumbest mistake in its history. Ever since then, Rutgers has scrambled to prove itself worthy of playing football with the big boys."
> Good, right? Unfortunately the reporter did not cite his source. So someone contacted that reporter and asked.
> And, guess what: the reporter's source was the Wikipedia article.

I just did an interview with the Press Gazette (UK), who wanted to
know what we thought of journalists using Wikipedia as a source. I
said it's an excellent, convenient and up-to-date resource for a quick
backgrounding, BUT "always describe it as being from a source, say
'According to Wikipedia'", and gave this as an example of the sort of
thing that can happen if you don't ;-)

(article should appear in Jan 5th issue and should show up on
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/ )

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>3. Sarah points out the following text from WP:NOR :
>>      "anyone--without specialist knowledge--who reads the
>>      primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
>>      passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation
>>      of primary source material requires a secondary source."
>>  That seems to be broken.  Examples of specialist knowledge
>>  which might be required are the ability to read a foreign
>>  language and the ability to understand mathematical notation.
>>
>>  Someone who can read music should be able to report from
>>  a musical score that it is in E-flat, even though that requires
>>  specialist knowledge.  What the policy *should* require
>>  (somehow) is that anyone who can read music will agree that
>>  the score is in E-flat.  The fundamental skills of the field
>>  should be assumed, and the policy should reflect that, imo.
>>
>>
>I agree, that needs to be changed, but I'm not sure what to. We need
>to define what kind of specialist knowledge is ok, and what isn't. For
>example, is being able to speak Latin acceptable specialist knowledge
>to use, basically meaning Latin speakers can translate the primary
>source in the article? (It's definately preferable to cite a
>translation, but if there isn't one, it may or may not be ok for a
>Wikipedian to translate it, we need to decide.)
>
The development of translations is one of the aims of Wikisource.  If we
do not allow foreign language references we are cutting off a
significant body of information.  At one time Latin was the lingua
franca of the educated, much as English has assumed that role in modern
times.  In a broader sense if en:wp does not allow foreign language
quotes so too would the other language projects be unable to quote
English language sources.  The potential result of that boggles the
mind.  Perhaps we are confusing special knowledge and specialist
knowledge.  Knowing a foreign language does not imply any specialist
knowledge except in matters about the language, not about specialist
subjects in that language.  Indeed, ordinary speakers of the language
may understand an article about physics or music in their own language
no better than you understand an article about physics or music in English.

Citing the original is preferable to citing a translation, because the
translation only adds a further level of uncertainty.  This doesn't help
those who don't understand the source language.  Perhaps both need to be
there so that the reader may compare if he is so willing and able.  The
person who translated Sherlock Holmes' "last bow" into French as his
"dernier coup d'archet" failed to distinguish between the use of a "bow"
on stage and in archery.  The translation may very well be original.

Ec


body:
On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I said above that brion had said the implementation
> details of SUL was not-negotiable.  I cannot find an
> email by him with the message I remember.  Perhaps
> someone else made that comment, or maybe my mind has
> just started making up email messages in my sleep.  I
> am sorry for the misquote there.
[snip]

Again, SUL and the practice of a language wiki blocking usernames
which are not comprehensible to speakers of that language are not
mutually exclusive.

Please don't invoke Brion to argue for you, he's able to make his own
arguments.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012390.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is insane. Noone would EVER EVER EVER consider this a copyright
> violation.

What world are you living in?  In my experience, an IP holder
generally considers any use of something even remotely resembling
their IP to be a copyright infringement unless they're getting paid.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution
> within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.

It depends whether you count "the work" as being the single article,
or the encyclopedia as a whole, doesn't it?

Printed books often have a photo credits section or the like.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 20/12/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The key point here is that your source for the statement that all the
>>papers say the same thing isn't just the papers, it's the database. If
>>there is a way to reliable cite the database, rather than just the
>>sources it contains (a link to the search results page, perhaps), then
>>it might be ok, but just citing the papers definately isn't.
>>
>>
>A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
>the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-complete)
>absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
>impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
>less a positive result...
>
In law this ties in closely to the presumption of innocence.  The
primary burden of proof falls on the person making the claim, not on the
one denying it.  Perhaps we should have a stock of boilerplate phrases
to express negative search results.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Trying to go through the entire database by finding random pages and
> > taking random lines seems extremely hit-and-miss to me, and if you
> > have to worry about mirrors and false positives then I can't see how
> > that would possibly be productive. The odds of finding a copyvio are
> > going to be quite low, and the amount of time needed to sort through
> > them is going to be quite high.
>
> Daniel Brandt managed it.

Daniel Brandt is an obsessive with way too much time on his hands, it
seems.  Not a practical solution to the overall problem.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:

>>A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
>>the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-complete)
>>absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
>>impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
>>less a positive result...
>>
>>
>Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the
>same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one has
>published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you happen
>to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
>
You can't make the real problem in an article go away by writing the
letters "OR" on a post-it note, and sticking it on.  That's being
simplistic.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
Possibly. I do remember when people were asking for the ability to
filter the watchlist and contributions by namespace, I was hoping all
the relevant special pages, including Whatlinkshere and Relatedchanges,
would get it. That doesn't quite seem to have happened, though. There's
probably a Bugzilla request for it lying forgotten somewhere.

-Gurch

Ryan Wetherell wrote:
> On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 16:24:42 -0800, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I'm not aware of any current black magic solutions to sort by namespace,
>>> unfortunately, although it seems like Javascript would proooobably be up to
>>> the task. I'd also be intrigued if we could sort [[Special:Whatlinkshere]]
>>> results by namespace.
>> OK.  Time for a feature request, then.
>>
>> Guy (JzG)
>
> Wow, has this not been requested yet?  It would be really useful, I think.
>
> --Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/21/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...except admin. Why can't trusted users handle admin? It's not like
> admin is a big deal, so we should hand it out more liberally.

Adminship lets you do lots of very different things, including
protecting/unprotecting, accessing deleted revisions of pages,
deleting pages, blocking users, rollback, modifying protected
articles, templates, and stylesheets and more. This range of powers is
so diverse that it's hard to even imagine one person actually needing
them all. And that can be a problem: we have users who would make
great vandal fighters, but would you really want them with
write-access to the front page, or read-access to sensitive deleted
revisions?

Steve