from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
To be perfectly clear, I am *not* opposed to seeing material produced by
Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other project published per se. Nor do
I believe that the person who did this acted in bad faith. I do not.

What I find problematic is as follows:
1. The material is presented as being copyrighted by the Wikimedia
Foundation. It is not.
2. Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content.
We are not in a position to accept such liability.
3. A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the
Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly,  it
nonetheless infringes on our trademark.
4. All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a
grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of
the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you  are
already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually,
we didn't know that."

Of course, I defer to Brad and the other lawyers on the WMF to tell me I am
wrong about this.

Danny


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

>
>Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
>licensing component is a requirement?
>
>
>
To make it simple, on Wikibooks we have been developing some content now
for close to three years, some of which is nearing a publishable state
that the contributors would like to be able to "share with the world".
 And since these are books that have been developed, it seems reasonable
that they be made into bound printed matter at some point, particularly
if they are of value to other people.  One of the stated goals of
Wikibooks is to produce textbooks that can compete with other
educational texts, and that would also include physical books as well
for this purpose.  Having physcial books like this is something that
adds value to the Wikibooks project as a whole, and acts as a validation
for what we are trying to accomplish.

I think I can speak for most Wikibooks users to say that we don't want
to harm the WMF, but rather even see that this can be something
beneficial to help out the foundation and "pay back" for the generosity
of being able to have a place to develop this sort of content.  Even in
the case of the Wikijunior Big Cats, the user who put it up for sale
wasn't even making any profit, all he wanted was to make it available in
some form, and the cost was simply the publication fee alone.  From my
own experience trying to publish similar content, the price he was
asking was typical in North America for small print runs for books of
that size if you went to any printer.

This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia
users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to
participate and make this sort of content available.  There is also no
need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on
their own direction.  Certainly once it is apparent that you can make
some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen
different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution
is justified.  In this case, we are talking about publishing content as
a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.

Ideally, what I'd like to see is some sort of "official" WMF store that
is able to offer books like this.  There should be some restrictions
placed on such content that are primarily quality based restrictions.
 This would imply some sort of "editorial board" or some others that
would have the ability to accept or offer suggestions on improving the
content to meet publication standards.  All of this can be accomplished
with volunteers, and doesn't require anything new other than some extra
web pages to help organize the effort and helping select the editorial
board.  In addition, any such gatekeepers should be selected by the
community and come up from the users rather than something appointed by
the WMF board, as is the tradition for other such people like admins,
stewards, etc.

If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia
project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board
for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow
added to the WMF store.  Other "features" at the store can include
featured books, or the host of things you find for book retailers.  Or
simply make the book available with an ISBN and it would be available
from Amazon.com or a bunch of other on-line bookstores.  The exact path
to publication isn't so important as that it is made available.

This is something that I see local Wikimedia chapters being involved
with, as they can help find local printers to make content like this
available to people in their respective countries.  Certainly it would
make much more sense to print a book in Poland for Polish readers than
ship something from North America to do the same thing.  Still, it would
be nice to have an established process to show high quality Wikimedia
materials that would enhance rather than detract from Wikimedia projects.

I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to
help reduce costs.  Particularly in the printing business, there are
economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly.  This book
which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even
less in large volumes.  It only makes sense that this is something that
can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this
reason alone.

One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control.
 As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen,
cause damage, and a host of other related problems.  Lulu Press does
offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit
businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve
other compromises.  Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer
in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be
the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.

There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks.
 You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined
exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their
trademarks and logos used on publications.  If it is an "official"
publication, there is obviously some more lieniency than for
"non-official" publications, and some clear guidelines should be in
place for at least people like me (an admin) can point to and say "it
says here that you can (can't) do what you are asking."  I think
[[b:en:Wikibooks:Copyrights]] does a pretty good job for instance, but
that was something written by decidely a non-lawyer when Wikibooks was a
much smaller project  (Thanks mav for your work on that!)  Certainly
that needs to be reviewed formally by the WMF to see if that is what is
intended, together with similar copyright statements on the other
Wikimedia projects.

BTW, thanks to everybody for your comments on this matter.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] [Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning schrieb:
>
>
>
>>Why do you think I brought it up at all on this list?
>>
>>
>
>My post was not meant to say that someone did not communicate. I was
>just trying to add to Eriks points as there is more than just a legal
>point of view.
>
>My apologies if you felt offended by me.
>
>Mathias
>
>
No offense taken.  Thanks for the apology.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for Wikipedia in European Portuguese

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Hoi,
> What "we" call Chinese is no longer considered a language..
> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=zho
> Thanks,
>   GerardM

It might not be a spoken language, but written Chinese is more or less
one language.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On 7/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (and as pointed out, they could get themselves another email
> address...but as I mentioned, that's a hassle)

...and as I mentioned, it's a necessary one. Surely we can move on now.

Ryan


from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

body:
2006/7/4, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> > Hoi,
> > What "we" call Chinese is no longer considered a language..
> > http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=zho
> > Thanks,
> >   GerardM
>
> It might not be a spoken language, but written Chinese is more or less
> one language.
>

Not really. Read:

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%99zyk_chi%C5%84ski

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Foundation-l] Native Cherokee Langage XML Dumps posted for
	20060702 Wikipedia

body:
On Jul 4, 2006, at 12:03 AM, Mathias Schindler wrote:

> On 7/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> The Native Cherokee Language Translation Project has posted XML dumps
>> against enwiki 07-02-2006 at
>>
>
> Hi Jeffrey,
>
> thanks for all your efforts here but I honestly fail to see the
> connection to Wikimedia Foundation related matters. You might find
> more
> people interested in this on a Native Cherokee mailing list. As the
> data
> is a machine translation from enwiki, the related mailing list might
> also be slightly more relevant to you posting.
>
> As you brought up the topic anyway, I would also suggest to stop
> calling
> the pages at http://www.wikigadugi.org/ a "Wikipedia". It might be a
> wiki based encyclopedia. However, this project is currently not
> part of
> the Wikipedia (which could be debated, nontheless).
>
> Thanks and Greetings,
> Mathias

Certainly he should not call Wikigadugi a "Wikipedia". But Jeffrey is
definitely part of our community. Whether some agreement will ever be
reached for close integration is ever reached does not matter. We
have had enough trouble together.

Fred


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 7/4/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> To be perfectly clear, I am *not* opposed to seeing material produced by
> Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource, or any other project published per se. Nor do
> I believe that the person who did this acted in bad faith. I do not.
>
> What I find problematic is as follows:
> 1. The material is presented as being copyrighted by the Wikimedia
> Foundation. It is not.

I'd like to see it stated officially somewhere that Wikimedia
disclaims all copyright interest in Wikijunior Big Cats (and whatever
other content it wishes to disclaim copyright on).  It's unclear that
you are speaking on behalf of the foundation with this statement you
just made, and it's also unclear that you are authorized to make such
a statement.

I also should point out that the copyright statement you're talking
about has been in the PDF distributed by Wikimedia since at least
December 2005.  It nothing new, and it's still there, Go to
[[Wikijunior Big Cats]] and click on "Print Version (PDF) (as of
December 11th, 2005. pp. 65)" -
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf

If Wikimedia wants a different copyright statement in any print
version, a PDF with such a copyright statement on it should be
available.

> 2. Being copyrighted by the WMF would mean legal liability for the content.
> We are not in a position to accept such liability.

So in your opinion everyone who contributes to Wikipedia is liable for
the entire content?  This seems like an odd legal position.

> 3. A third party, Lulu Press, is using the trademarked name of the
> Foundation to sell a book. While I believe that they are doing this unwittingly,  it
> nonetheless infringes on our trademark.

How are they using the trademarked name of the Foundation to sell a
book (or, how were they, as they pulled it)?  How can a verbatim copy
(under the GFDL) be produced which doesn't do this?

This relies in part on whether or not you think the PDF at
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikibooks/en/c/cc/Big_Cats.pdf is a
trademark infringement.

> 4. All of this is taking place in the midst of negotiations to obtain a
> grant to secure more money for the development of the Wikijunior books. One of
> the issues being discussed is print. When they come to us and say "But you  are
> already printing the books," we will look pretty stupid answering "Actually,
> we didn't know that."
>
Well, now you know.

> Of course, I defer to Brad and the other lawyers on the WMF to tell me I am
> wrong about this.
>
> Danny

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Liviu Andronic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] My apologies

body:
No, Mark. The status quo is what you want. Not a compromise.

Deleting/closing the Moldovan Wikipedia is - generally speaking - what we
want.

Moving the existing contents from mo.wikipedia.org to a certain
mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would be a compromise. And, once again,
 this compromise doesn't destroy anyone's work. Just as Sabine said: "Vivi e
lascia vivere".

On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Please see the messages from Sabine Cretella.
>
> The status quo is the compromise.
>
> If you care about Wikipedia, it makes sense to take care of your own
> instead of trying to destroy what others have built, which is exactly
> what you are doing here. There is no reason for this to continue.
>
> Mark
>
> On 03/07/06, TSO1D From Wikpedia <tso1d at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Of course, a conflict requires at least to sides, and only leaving one
> side standing would end the dispute. However, I don't believe that this is
> likely to happen in this case. By the same token one could make the argument
> that if you would disappear (as you are virtually the only active
> contributor on mo) then viable opposition to the closure of the project
> would cease and the admnistration would have to acquiesece. Nevertheless, at
> this point, the unwillingness of some administrators to act on a resolution
> reached almost by concensus (with few dissents), practically constitutes
> endorsement of the current status quo, thus autmatically negating the
> partiality claimed by them.
> >
> >   I agree with you, though, that simply closing the encyclopedia might
> not bring about a complete end to the dispute, though you ability to reopen
> the debate and subjequently the wiki will be greatly reduced unless you were
> to produce a native speaker intersted in pursuing the project. For this
> reason, I find it best if all sides could agree on one solution and
> compromise if need be. For example would you agree to set up a
> transliteration tool that would convert articles from RO to Cyrillic and
> have that available at ro-cyr or mo-cyr (assuming the tool could be
> perfected to funciton adequately)?
> >
> > Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >   The conflict will end if you stop making it such an issue.
> >
> > Without you and your friends, there simply is no conflict.
> >
> > Enforcement is not all that is lacking. There are many issues here.
> >
> > Currently, the position of those in charge seems to be to try to seal
> > the situation off from the outside and let both sides duke it out.
> >
> > And who's to say the conflict would end if the Wikipedia were closed?
> > I know that I would hold polls for it to be reopened, try to put the
> > content elsewhere, etc.
> >
> > Until Bogdan and Jacky made an issue of this, it was dormant, nobody
> > paid attention to mo.wiki except those who actually care about it.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 03/07/06, TSO1D From Wikpedia wrote:
> > > In my view this is discussion cannot be viewed as separate from the
> past ones on the topic, but rather the continuation (and hopefully the
> culmination) of the issue. If such a resolution has already been made, then
> what is the purpose of continuing this discussion and wasting even more
> time. The only thing lacking is enforcement, and why souldn't that be
> carried out in accordance with the general conclusion of the debate, whether
> in the past or the present.
> > >
> > > I understand how some users might feel frustrated with the
> continuation of the discussion and the war of words, however by not acting
> the conflict will not end, and I believe you are actually giving tacit
> approval to the project in its current state. I am sorry if others spent a
> great deal of time looking at the dispute and now may feel irritated, but
> others also were involved in this debate, to an even higher degree, and
> simply stating that all this work was in waste as you do not intend to act
> in any way seems a grave neglect of your duties and even a lack of respect
> for those who have invested their time to try to find a solution to the
> problem and find the best way to resolve it.
> > >
> > > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > Is this relevant to the *current* discussion?
> > >
> > > Everybody already knew about that. It was clear that that decision was
> made.
> > >
> > > However, it was never enforced, and since then, you have taken against
> > > yourselves by turning the heat up where it was absolutely not
> > > necessary and making everyone stop caring.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 03/07/06, Jacky PB wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I would like to apologize to all of you for my
> > > > interventions here. I just missed an e-mail of anthere
> > > > more than 6 months old.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043897.html
>
> > > >
> > > > My only excuse is that it happened on another thread
> > > > than the one I followed.
> > > >
> > > > Yours,
> > > > :en:Dpotop, :ro:Dpotop
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > __________________________________________________
> > > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> >  Get on board. You're invited to try the new Yahoo! Mail Beta.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange versions

body:
On de.wikipedia, people noticed a handful of odd revisions/dates:

http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philadelphia_76ers&diff=prev&oldid=4856562
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=prev&oldid=4807551
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Regensburger_Dom&diff=prev&oldid=4922059
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Diskussion:Riemannsche_Mannigfaltigkeit&diff=prev&oldid=4819117
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cynic&diff=prev&oldid=4909086
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christentum&diff=prev&oldid=4851312

In all of these, the "newer" revision has a date significantly /before/
the "older" one, more specifically, some time on January 4, 2003.

Is that just an annoyance, or an indicator of a larger problem (database
corruption)?
Can someone fix it, or should it just be ignored?

Magnus

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body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>I'll let Brad respond to this rather than trying to guess his response
>(I do have a good guess though).  Note that German Wikipedia is
>published by Directmedia, not Wikimedia.
>
>Anthony
>
>
The difference with the German Wikipedia is that Directmedia has, on
their own inititive, created the "product" and are selling it according
to the terms of the GFDL.  Some arrangements have been made with the
WMF, but that is to deal with the fine points of trademark issues.

I guess it is the same thing in this case, as far as a bold user going
off and publishing a book of Wikimedia content on his own.  Certainly no
"permission" is needed from the WMF, but it does help if this sort of
thing is coordinated somehow.  There is a percieved need for something
like this with the Wikibooks community, and it would involve more than
simply a distribution of a CD-ROM set.  Some of my solititation of
comments on this matter is to see just how involved the WMF really wants
to get in this sort of publication, or if a group of project users can
(or should) get together and form another "company" to deal with this.
 That was more the direction I was going to go simply because it seemed
as though the WMF didn't want to get involved.

I would rather work through the WMF as it does solve some legal hassles,
but I can understand if they (the WMF board) wants to stay away from
this completely.

If this content is made available, the other real issue that I havn't
seen addressed in the replies is what policy should be in place to
external websites that offer content like this for sale?  If there were
an "official" WMF website, it would be much more reasonable to have a
policy that only the "official" site could be linked from project pages,
especially if they are very prominent pages like [[Main Page]].  It
would be from my perspective to be reasonable to ban all other types of
site links, although in some ways this does deal with the whole ISBN
link issue that has plagued this mailing list in the past.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
Tomasz Ganicz napisa?:

>> It might not be a spoken language, but written Chinese is more or less
>> one language.

> Not really. Read:

> http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%99zyk_chi%C5%84ski

Which confirms my statement.

W przypadku j?zyka chi?skiego nale?y tak?e wyra?nie odr??nia? j?zyk pisany i m?wiony, przede wszystkim ze wzgl?du na u?ycie pisma morfosylabicznego, kt?re nie notuje wymowy i przyczyni?o si? do wykszta?cenia i trwa?o?ci pisanego standardu.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange versions

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> On de.wikipedia, people noticed a handful of odd revisions/dates:

Magnus, this is an old issue. Some servers had bad clocks for a few hours last year.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Where are the decision makers?

body:
Everyone will start ignoring it, as soon as the Moldovan Wikipedia gets out
of the mo.wikipedia.org domain. No one would give a damn about it.

On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> Would it really make everyone happy?
>
> No.
>
> There would still be people whinging endlessly that it should be
> closed and/or deleted.
>
> Mark
>
> On 03/07/06, Liviu Andronic < landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree that simple ignoring of this project would make it disappear in
> a
> > one-two year time.
> >
> > What the you do not get is that there is one simple solution: move mo to
>
> > mo-cyr. And everyone gets happy.
> >
> > Is this so difficult?
> >
> > On 7/2/06, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hoi,
> > > You do not get it.
> > >
> > > It is an annoyance. One of the points made is that the Moldovan
> > > wikipedia is just trolling. Consider what makes a troll thrive;
> > > attention. The more attention that you give it, ANY attention the more
> > > it will get entrenched. There is this saying: "I do not care what they
> > > say about me as long as they write my name correctly", all this
> > > attention makes the mo.wikipedia "relevant". If it is not relevant,
> > > refrain from giving it attention and at some time it will just
> > > evaporate. If it does not, it cannot be considered trolling and you
> are
> > > plain wrong.
> > >
> > > The best thing for you to do: shut up. Ignore this project. Everybody
> > > will be happier and maybe you will be proven to be right.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >     GerardM
> > >
> > >
> > > Liviu Andronic wrote:
> > > > I would have to object to the position taken by people who can make
> a
> > > > difference.
> > > >
> > > > IMHO, all this Moldovan issue annoys you as much as it does me. I do
> not
> > > > want to dispute on this, as much as you do not want to read all this
> > > junk.
> > > >
> > > > I am wondering if the Moldovan Wikipedia is such unimportant an
> issue. I
> > >
> > > > agree that it is a rarely used Wikipedia. And still, for an
> unimportant
> > > > Wikipedia, it does create a lot of headache to the entire community.
> If
> > > this
> > > > issue flames every three months on this mailing list and on all
> possible
> > >
> > > > Talk pages and triggers revert-wars on related English and Moldovan
> > > > Wikipedia articles, then I believe that there is obviously a
> problem.
> > > >
> > > > Not that this entire dispute be fair or ethical - it is a dirty war
> that
> > > I
> > > > personally detest -, but is it an ethically correct position for
> those
> > > who
> > > > can make a difference to just ignore?
> > > >
> > > > Is it so unimportant that a whole Wikipedia section could create
> > > confusion
> > > > and desinformation? Isn't Wikipedia supposed to provide a "free
> > > encyclopedia
> > > > of the highest possible quality"?
> > > >
> > > > Personally for me, it is strange how people with the ability to take
> and
> > >
> > > > implement a decision, simply choose to ignore. All possible and
> > > impossible
> > > > arguments were already presented here, on the mailing list, and all
> over
> > > > the English and Moldovan Wikipedia, and on Metawiki. What rests to
> do is
> > > use
> > > > common sense to decide on this issue.
> > > >
> > > > It is even stranger for me the way a decision already taken by
> stewards
> > > and
> > > > bureaucrats was simply ignored and not implemented.
> > > >
> > > > But, then, it is up to the decision-makers to decide the stance to
> > > adopt. I
> > > > still hope that they will choose as soon as possible to stop
> > > deliberately
> > > > ignoring this issue. The problem is that this issue will not cease
> > > > re-appearing on this mailing-list. My reason for this is that an
> entire
> > > > country and population (this makes an approximate 3.5 million
> persons)
> > > are
> > > > incorrectly represented on Wikipedia. And one of these, or me - if
> no
> > > one
> > > > else does it -, will certainly re-open this discussion in a
> two-three
> > > months
> > > > time.
> > > >
> > > > If you managed to read till this point, thank you.
> > > >
> > > > Liviu
> > > >
> > > > On 6/30/06, Brion Vibber < brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Jacky PB wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> Where are the decision makers? Isn't there nobody
> > > >>>
> > > >> No one else is interested in this issue, and getting involved would
> > > mean
> > > >> wasting
> > > >> a lot of time with people fighting a lot over something
> unimportant.
> > > The
> > > >> safest
> > > >> course is thus to leave a rarely-used wiki sitting there, same as
> we do
> > > >> with
> > > >> dozens of other rarely-used wikis and nobody minds.
> > > >>
> > > >> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > >> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > >> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Liviu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Native Cherokee Langage XML Dumps posted
 for	20060702 Wikipedia

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jul 4, 2006, at 12:03 AM, Mathias Schindler wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 7/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>The Native Cherokee Language Translation Project has posted XML dumps
>>>against enwiki 07-02-2006 at
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Hi Jeffrey,
>>
>>thanks for all your efforts here but I honestly fail to see the
>>connection to Wikimedia Foundation related matters. You might find
>>more
>>people interested in this on a Native Cherokee mailing list. As the
>>data
>>is a machine translation from enwiki, the related mailing list might
>>also be slightly more relevant to you posting.
>>
>>As you brought up the topic anyway, I would also suggest to stop
>>calling
>>the pages at http://www.wikigadugi.org/ a "Wikipedia". It might be a
>>wiki based encyclopedia. However, this project is currently not
>>part of
>>the Wikipedia (which could be debated, nontheless).
>>
>>Thanks and Greetings,
>>Mathias
>>
>>
>
>Certainly he should not call Wikigadugi a "Wikipedia". But Jeffrey is
>definitely part of our community. Whether some agreement will ever be
>reached for close integration is ever reached does not matter. We
>have had enough trouble together.
>
>Fred
>
>

Thanks Fred. The XML dumps call themselves Wikipedia. I'll change then
name to "Wikipedia Mirror" which
should help clear up the confusion. Wikipedia lists sites on its pages
which import te XML dumps as
"Wikipedia Mirrors".

As for community problems, they are in the past. All I ever wanted was
fair treatment and Mr. Wales in the end
made certain this happened, so as far as I am concerned, all of these
problems belong in the past, and we can move
forward with a fresh new day -- turn the page, next chapter.

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit (was: Wikibooks for sale)

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 7/4/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>It would also be nice
>>to once and for all answer the question as to whether or not Wikimedia
>>claims to be the "publisher" as the term is used in the GFDL.
>>
>>

Under US Law, Wikimedia is the "publisher" because they create
"collections" of works of the
Wikipedia site and "publish" them to the world as XML dumps. Whether
electronic or in book form, they
are publishing. This being said, given the nebulous and undefined state
of internet IP law,
whether they are a publisher or not, there's no legal precedence to
determine liability, so at present
they are operating in an area of experimental law on the frontiers of
human knowledge.

Jeff

>
>This is the first time this has come to my attention, and I would also
>appreciate a response on this issue. The GFDL explicitly requires the
>"publisher" to be credited in the history of modified versions
>(section 4.I), though not in the title (indeed, it explicitly states
>that the new publisher should be credited instead). It does not
>provide a definition for the term "publisher." It is not our current
>practice to require publisher credit to the WMF, though it is also
>somewhat unclear when section 2, "Verbatim Copying" and when section
>4, "Modifications" would apply; "Verbatim Copying" only places minimal
>requirements on third parties.
>
>Does the WMF consider itself the publisher?
>
>I think it would be quite important to have a legally authoritative
>interpretation of the GFDL as it applies to Wikimedia Foundation
>project content. So far we've been basically "playing it by ear" when
>it comes to GFDL compliance. As the Wikibooks case demonstrates, this
>can lead to serious problems when contributors try to do the right
>thing, but end up doing the opposite of what we want.
>
>I suggest that such an interpretation be undertaken after a community
>consultation on Meta, so that as many people as possible can add their
>questions about the GFDL (which does not necessarily mean that all of
>them will be answered, of course).
>
>Erik
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
Man, you play with your kid for a couple of hours and look what you miss!

So, I think the issues are being fairly well vetted here.  We are
differentiating GFDL compliance and copyright/authorship on the one hand,
and use of a registered trademark on the other.  That doesn't need a whole
lot of further discussion; everyone seems to intuitively agree that there is
a good way for projects like this to proceed, and another way that tends to
get people in a fluster.  The important point is that it is being discussed.

The trademark issue is another one altogether.  We have a "brand" (technical
trademark term) to manage.  It is valuable.  It can be misused.  There exist
people who would do us ill will, and who will attempt to profit improperly
from our brand.  For this reason it is extraordinarily important that the
community understand that WMF will be vigilant in enforcing its trademark
rights against the bad guys.  By the same token, however, it is our
intention and hope that we can work out very simple licensing agreements for
those who wish to "brand" their works as being associated with the
Foundation.  That may or may not involve money changing hands for the
benefit of the Foundation.  We obviously are not going to charge a fee for
licensing a handful of books for schools in Africa.

>From my perspective, WMF has a portfolio of valuable rights which it can
license and which can bring in revenue.  Good for WMF - we get money for
other people's use of our logo and trademark.  This is pointedly *not* about
any compromise on free as in free, not as in beer or anything of the sort.
It is the byproduct of the interaction of our projects with capitalism.  We
should benefit from that.

As to publishing, our safe harbor is online, so taking the step into the
publishing world is a large one indeed.  Licensing others to publish, from
the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial
advantage.  For those who are not familiar with the particulars, please be
careful about comparing for-profit activities and non-profit activities.
This is a rich and deeply complicated area of US tax law, with several
contrary reported cases, and people who are not attorneys should proceed to
offer their "IANAL" advice with caution.  The typical example is a museum,
which has a gift shop.  Licensing the museum's works for the art is a pure
royalty; the tshirts are not, and the costs of that operation are part of
what is termed "unrelated business taxable income".  See generally
http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96106,00.html and related
documents, if you care to look for yourself.

To wrap up, it's a great thing to see books coming out of the projects.  It
is also something that should be done in a proper fashion.  Taking the good
intentions of those on this list to heart, we can work to streamline the
process for licensing for published works.

Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
licensing component is a requirement?


from_name: TSO1D From Wikpedia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] MO-RO, a request for help

body:
This site: http://domino.kappa.ro/guvern/istoria-e.html has some good information about Romanian history in general and it does discuss the bronze age.

Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:  Hi again,

sorry for getting out of the script war and talking business in instead. I
am currently compiling an article on the Bronze Age for pms.wiki. Here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_age I have a wonderful pic of rumenian
B.A. findings, but NO info about the rumenian Bronze age. Can any of you
help me?

B?rto

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

---------------------------------
Want to be your own boss? Learn how on  Yahoo! Small Business.


body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>>If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia
>>project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board
>>for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow
>>added to the WMF store.
>>
>>
>
>I'd like to see this process eventually involve much more
>collaboration than it currently does.  Right now the process seems to
>be that someone takes the content offline, builds a pdf, and then
>uploads it.  Can't we make this a wiki process, where the pdf source
>code can be edited online directly, and then the pdf generated on
>demand?  Sure, before the print run starts a stable version has to be
>chosen, but before that it'd be nice to be able to edit things.  It's
>also a GFDL requirement to provide the source code.  Is the source to
>[[Image:Big_Cats.pdf]] available somewhere?
>
>
Sorry to break this up into two replies, although this is two different
topics.

The issue right now for editing the PDF file is mainly dealing with the
markup of whatever system you are using to generate the PDF file.  The
process I've used in the past is to import the HTML into Open Office and
do some minor fix-up of the content where HTML doesn't seem to do a good
job for publication.  This involves downloading higher resolution images
and clearing out fluff that comes from HTML that looks good on-line but
doesn't seem to work with a print format.

Some efforts have gone into streamlining this process, including using
transclusion to make an entire Wikibook available as a single web page,
and adding the <includeonly> <noinclude> markup tags at various places
to help determine what is going to be in the final publication.  Still,
there is unfortunately a bit more hand labor to get the process
accomplished than I would normally like, and there is some personal
taste and flavor that goes into formatting a book.  An automated HTML to
PDF process may be possible, but I do question if HTML is really up to
the task.

Essentially, this is an issue where there are people with
editing/processing skills that are not developers, and part of the gulf
that seperates the Wikimedia contributor/editors from the MediaWiki
developers.  Certainly an "automated" process would be desireable, but
at the moment we are doing as best as we can with the tools currently
available.  Making a Wiki-syntax to PDF converter would be a non-trivial
task that could be a whole major software project unto itself.  I'm not
convinced that the results from such a converter would look good either,
or if it would look very amaturish simply because the content isn't
designed to be displayed as a PDF for most of the Wikimedia project
pages.  Certainly PDF to HTML converters (like found on Google) look
forced and don't seem to work out very well either, although in that
situation it is mainly to read the content rather than having something
"pretty" to look at.

BTW, if you want the "source" to Big_Cats.pdf, the full downloadable
version is at:
 http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Big_Cats/Complete_Edition

It is from this version that the pdf was created, although admittedly
with some minor tweaks.  It is debateable if this conforms to the GFDL
completely, but all of the original source material is there in machine
readable form.  It at least complies with the spirit of the GFDL and we
are doing as best as we can.  Perhaps the original *.swx files need to
be uploaded as well, but any major update is going to need to come from
the original source HTML anyway.  This is an experiment just to test the
waters and see what direction we really need to head, so certainly any
criticisms of what is going on are welcome.

Criticisms of creating the PDF and the "source files" can also be made
to [[b:en:Image:Wikijunior bigcats frontpag.jpg]], which is also
published under the GFDL but the "source" layers are not available for
manipulation.  I see these two issues as essentially the same thing.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
This isn't totally accurate.

There are Latin-script schools, and Cyrillic-script schools.

A couple years back, the Latin-script schools were all closed by the
government; they were reopened a while later but as private schools.

Currently, at least it seems, there are more students studying in
Cyrillic than in Latin. This may be because space is limited at Latin
schools, which are funded mostly by the Republic of Moldova and
foreign charities; there are also Russian-Moldovan bilingual schools,
all of which use Cyrillic script. Some parents would send their kids
to these schools because of the perceived economic advantage Russian
will give them.

Mark

On 04/07/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>    From the BBC article posted way way back on this thread it appears
> that the schools for ethnically Moldavian children in Transdniester
> actually use the Latin script if they can, and some times they do it
> when they are officially being persecuted.  At least that is what the
> article said.  As far as I can tell the (non-moldavian speaking) people
> in power are trying (unsuccessfully) to impose this script.  Now it
> probably is likely older people in the region still use it and its
> probably in public use but I am not sure you can say that its in many
> schools. At least not to a point where students are learning it to the
> exclusion of the Latin based script.
>
> SKL
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > It incorrectly represents Moldova? Come on!
> >
> > Wikipedia uses language as a MEDIUM. If somebody wants to know about
> > the language, they would go to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language or
> > http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldau or whichever language they speak
> > article.
> >
> > They will NOT go to mo.wikipedia.
> >
> > And you are clearly not in touch with reality. In schools east of the
> > Dniestr river, which teach Moldovan, the Cyrillic alphabet is taught.
> > This fact is a fact and you cannot contest it. This is the usual
> > script.
> >
> > Now, unless you want to challenge the territorial integrity of
> > Moldova, it seems reasonable to accept that Moldova is, in fact, a
> > biscriptal nation.
> >
> > As Gerard noted, mo-cyr is not acceptable because it violates conventions.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 04/07/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> This is what would reasonably happen, Mark. In my opinion, of course.
> >>
> >> Currently people "give a damn" because it represents incorreclty Moldova.
> >> Personally, I cannot stand when my country is represented n'*importe comment
> >> * on Wikipedia.
> >>
> >> We don't use this writing, Mark. Apart from exceptions, nowhere. This
> >> writing, for all areas of life, is a reality of the past. And do not try to
> >> discredit my words stating that "he is not in Moldova". I lived my whole
> >> life in Moldova, which makes, roughly, 20 years. I read news. I return to
> >> Moldova at least one time per year. I know what happens there. We don't use
> >> this writing. Other Moldovans that are currently in Moldova could easily
> >> backup this.
> >>
> >> If you want to write articles, I have nothing against it. Moving all you
> >> have done on mo.wikipedia.org to mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would in no way
> >> interrupt your work. And your work would cease disturbing people
> >> concerned.
> >>
> >> But enough on this. Let's see the way the current
> >> vote<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Closure_of_Moldovan_Wikipedia>on
> >> meta ends.
> >>
> >> On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> Is that a threat?
> >>>
> >>> Why should anyone "give a damn" now? What reason is there for people
> >>> to not just ignore it and work on the Romanian Wikipedia? Really,
> >>> there is no good reason. Any good Wikipedian should focus on fixing
> >>> articles, writing new articles, etc., instead of fussing about
> >>> something like this.
> >>>
> >>> I just want to write articles, but you and your friends insist on
> >>> interrupting.
> >>>
> >>> Mark
> >>>
> >>> On 04/07/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> Everyone will start ignoring it, as soon as the Moldovan Wikipedia gets
> >>> out
> >>>> of the mo.wikipedia.org domain. No one would give a damn about it.
> >>>>
> >>>> On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
> >>>>> Would it really make everyone happy?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> No.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> There would still be people whinging endlessly that it should be
> >>>>> closed and/or deleted.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Mark
> >>>>>
> >>>>> On 03/07/06, Liviu Andronic < landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>> I agree that simple ignoring of this project would make it disappear
> >>> in
> >>>>> a
> >>>>>> one-two year time.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> What the you do not get is that there is one simple solution: move
> >>> mo to
> >>>>>> mo-cyr. And everyone gets happy.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Is this so difficult?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> On 7/2/06, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>> Hoi,
> >>>>>>> You do not get it.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> It is an annoyance. One of the points made is that the Moldovan
> >>>>>>> wikipedia is just trolling. Consider what makes a troll thrive;
> >>>>>>> attention. The more attention that you give it, ANY attention the
> >>> more
> >>>>>>> it will get entrenched. There is this saying: "I do not care what
> >>> they
> >>>>>>> say about me as long as they write my name correctly", all this
> >>>>>>> attention makes the mo.wikipedia "relevant". If it is not
> >>> relevant,
> >>>>>>> refrain from giving it attention and at some time it will just
> >>>>>>> evaporate. If it does not, it cannot be considered trolling and
> >>> you
> >>>>> are
> >>>>>>> plain wrong.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> The best thing for you to do: shut up. Ignore this project.
> >>> Everybody
> >>>>>>> will be happier and maybe you will be proven to be right.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Thanks,
> >>>>>>>     GerardM
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Liviu Andronic wrote:
> >>>>>>>> I would have to object to the position taken by people who can
> >>> make
> >>>>> a
> >>>>>>>> difference.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> IMHO, all this Moldovan issue annoys you as much as it does me.
> >>> I do
> >>>>> not
> >>>>>>>> want to dispute on this, as much as you do not want to read all
> >>> this
> >>>>>>> junk.
> >>>>>>>> I am wondering if the Moldovan Wikipedia is such unimportant an
> >>>>> issue. I
> >>>>>>>> agree that it is a rarely used Wikipedia. And still, for an
> >>>>> unimportant
> >>>>>>>> Wikipedia, it does create a lot of headache to the entire
> >>> community.
> >>>>> If
> >>>>>>> this
> >>>>>>>> issue flames every three months on this mailing list and on all
> >>>>> possible
> >>>>>>>> Talk pages and triggers revert-wars on related English and
> >>> Moldovan
> >>>>>>>> Wikipedia articles, then I believe that there is obviously a
> >>>>> problem.
> >>>>>>>> Not that this entire dispute be fair or ethical - it is a dirty
> >>> war
> >>>>> that
> >>>>>>> I
> >>>>>>>> personally detest -, but is it an ethically correct position for
> >>>>> those
> >>>>>>> who
> >>>>>>>> can make a difference to just ignore?
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Is it so unimportant that a whole Wikipedia section could create
> >>>>>>> confusion
> >>>>>>>> and desinformation? Isn't Wikipedia supposed to provide a "free
> >>>>>>> encyclopedia
> >>>>>>>> of the highest possible quality"?
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Personally for me, it is strange how people with the ability to
> >>> take
> >>>>> and
> >>>>>>>> implement a decision, simply choose to ignore. All possible and
> >>>>>>> impossible
> >>>>>>>> arguments were already presented here, on the mailing list, and
> >>> all
> >>>>> over
> >>>>>>>> the English and Moldovan Wikipedia, and on Metawiki. What rests
> >>> to
> >>>>> do is
> >>>>>>> use
> >>>>>>>> common sense to decide on this issue.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> It is even stranger for me the way a decision already taken by
> >>>>> stewards
> >>>>>>> and
> >>>>>>>> bureaucrats was simply ignored and not implemented.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> But, then, it is up to the decision-makers to decide the stance
> >>> to
> >>>>>>> adopt. I
> >>>>>>>> still hope that they will choose as soon as possible to stop
> >>>>>>> deliberately
> >>>>>>>> ignoring this issue. The problem is that this issue will not
> >>> cease
> >>>>>>>> re-appearing on this mailing-list. My reason for this is that an
> >>>>> entire
> >>>>>>>> country and population (this makes an approximate 3.5 million
> >>>>> persons)
> >>>>>>> are
> >>>>>>>> incorrectly represented on Wikipedia. And one of these, or me -
> >>> if
> >>>>> no
> >>>>>>> one
> >>>>>>>> else does it -, will certainly re-open this discussion in a
> >>>>> two-three
> >>>>>>> months
> >>>>>>>> time.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> If you managed to read till this point, thank you.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> Liviu
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>> On 6/30/06, Brion Vibber < brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> Jacky PB wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>> Where are the decision makers? Isn't there nobody
> >>>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> No one else is interested in this issue, and getting involved
> >>> would
> >>>>>>> mean
> >>>>>>>>> wasting
> >>>>>>>>> a lot of time with people fighting a lot over something
> >>>>> unimportant.
> >>>>>>> The
> >>>>>>>>> safest
> >>>>>>>>> course is thus to leave a rarely-used wiki sitting there, same
> >>> as
> >>>>> we do
> >>>>>>>>> with
> >>>>>>>>> dozens of other rarely-used wikis and nobody minds.
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>>>>>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>>>>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>>>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> --
> >>>>>> Liviu
> >>>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >>>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Liviu
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Liviu
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >>
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatic translator

body:
Second this request, but add that Runic script should be implemented as well.

Mark

On 04/07/06, sajasaze <sajasaze at laposte.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm the gothic wikipedia's sysop, and I would like to know how
> to create an automatic translator between gothic and latin
> alphabet as it already exists on the chinese wikipedia.
>
> Hoping you'll help me,
> Sajasazi.
>
> Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net
> 3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34 ?/mn)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki Cherokee Langage Extension

body:
I have created a language extension PHP which allows these tags:

<cherokee>

phonetics text

</cherokee>

which converts to syllabary after an article is saved. It needs another
week or so of testing.

Such an addition to the chr.wikipedia.org Cherokee site will make it
usable for syllabary editing.

Now who do I get with to provide the parser extension?

Jeff


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Foundation-l] Toolserver Logo

body:
On 7/4/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/4/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The toolserver is a project of Wikimedia Deutschland. So there is no
> > need for an(other) agreement.
>
> Unless the toolserver logo incorporates the Foundation logo, which
> sounds eminently possible.

Wikimedia Deutschland's trademark agreement covers the use of all
logos (assuming Annex I of the contract is up-to-date), including the
Wikimedia medallion used here.

Austin


subject: [Foundation-l] Toolserver Logo


body:
On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

> Under US Law, Wikimedia is the "publisher" because they create
> "collections" of works of the
> Wikipedia site and "publish" them to the world as XML dumps. Whether
> electronic or in book form, they
> are publishing. This being said, given the nebulous and undefined
> state
> of internet IP law,
> whether they are a publisher or not, there's no legal precedence to
> determine liability, so at present
> they are operating in an area of experimental law on the frontiers of
> human knowledge.
>
> Jeff

Not exactly and now that you are a "publisher" too, let us discuss
the problem. Someone comes on your wiki and enters the information,
"John Doe murdered his wife, Jane". You don't notice it and after 6
months or so John Doe files a libel action. You might want to claim
that the anonymous ip who entered that information was the publisher,
not you. There is a variant where that edit was contained in an XML
dump that you did not notice. Meanwhile Wikipedia has deleted it
completely, even from the history of the article. This is all pretty
theoretical until there is significant distribution of a serious
libel, but I throw it out to think about. Now suppose you did notice
the information and rather than deleting it you just corrected the
grammar and spelling. Are you the publisher  now? And who is "you"?

Fred


body:
On 7/4/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> As to publishing, our safe harbor is online, so taking the step into the
> publishing world is a large one indeed.  Licensing others to publish, from
> the WMF perspective is not a big step, and is to WMF's great financial
> advantage.  For those who are not familiar with the particulars, please be
> careful about comparing for-profit activities and non-profit activities.
> This is a rich and deeply complicated area of US tax law, with several
> contrary reported cases, and people who are not attorneys should proceed to
> offer their "IANAL" advice with caution.  The typical example is a museum,
> which has a gift shop.  Licensing the museum's works for the art is a pure
> royalty; the tshirts are not, and the costs of that operation are part of
> what is termed "unrelated business taxable income".  See generally
> http://www.irs.gov/charities/article/0,,id=96106,00.html and related
> documents, if you care to look for yourself.
>
There are other exceptions to UBTI, though.  Two appropriate ones
would be the sale of donated (and volunteer produced) goods and the
provision of token goods to donors.  And then of course there's the
fact that the purpose of Wikimedia is not the same as the purpose of a
museum.  Distributing content (including in print form) *is* the
purpose of Wikimedia.

I'm glad a foundation employee with knowledge of these things is
finally getting involved in discussing them publically, though.

All this said, there seems to be very little in Wikijunior Big Cats
which needs to be licensed.  Even if the term Wikijunior is considered
to be trademarked by the foundation, it's easy enough to drop that
word from the title.  The Wikijunior brand, if it even exists, isn't
very valuable right now.  In this sense I can see how it's important
that Wikimedia be involved in the first print publication.

Anthony


references:
<44A9E5D1.9090902@wolfmountaingroup.com>	<48502b480607032303j21fed98araa4791e39a7c2cfd@mail.gmail.com>
	<E375D119-904B-43B2-AA23-D3286AFFD2E4@ctelco.net>
	<44AA9A04.1000304@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<44AAA065.4040001@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
On Jul 4, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>
> I have created a language extension PHP which allows these tags:
>
> <cherokee>
>
> phonetics text
>
> </cherokee>
>
> which converts to syllabary after an article is saved. It needs
> another
> week or so of testing.
>
> Such an addition to the chr.wikipedia.org Cherokee site will make it
> usable for syllabary editing.
>
> Now who do I get with to provide the parser extension?
>
> Jeff
>

Are you offering this for the Cherokee Wikipedia?

Fred


body:
James Hare wrote:

>Ah Jeffrey, our Cherokeee Wikipedia guy.
>
>Anyways, I'm looking there and it appears I don't have the Cherokee script
>installed. How could I get the Cherokee script to appear in my browser? (I
>use Mozilla Firefox.)
>
>--James
>
>
>

There are two fonts listed on the main page at wikigadugi.org,
CODE2000.ZIP and CODE2001.ZIP. Download CODE2000.ZIP
and install it and select CODE2000 as your default browser font and you
will then be able to view the site.

Jeff

>On 7/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I have created a language extension PHP which allows these tags:
>>
>><cherokee>
>>
>>phonetics text
>>
>></cherokee>
>>
>>which converts to syllabary after an article is saved. It needs another
>>week or so of testing.
>>
>>Such an addition to the chr.wikipedia.org Cherokee site will make it
>>usable for syllabary editing.
>>
>>Now who do I get with to provide the parser extension?
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
I do not know who you try to convince in Polish, but in order to /write
/Kantonees, you need to extend the number of characters available to
you. These were added in a later version of the Unicode standard. I do
not know the situation for the other Chinese languages.

According to the Dutch text about Chinese, many people indicate that
many people are not able to fully read texts and the CIA yearbook is
quoted that there are 14% functionally not able to read and write. Given
that learning written Chinese can be considered as difficult as learning
a second language, this is understandable.
Thanks,
   GerardM

Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> Tomasz Ganicz napisa?:
>
>
>>> It might not be a spoken language, but written Chinese is more or less
>>> one language.
>>>
>
>
>> Not really. Read:
>>
>
>
>> http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%99zyk_chi%C5%84ski
>>
>
> Which confirms my statement.
>
> W przypadku j?zyka chi?skiego nale?y tak?e wyra?nie odr??nia? j?zyk pisany i m?wiony, przede wszystkim ze wzgl?du na u?ycie pisma morfosylabicznego, kt?re nie notuje wymowy i przyczyni?o si? do wykszta?cenia i trwa?o?ci pisanego standardu.
>
>
>


from_name: Niklas Laxström

subject: [Wikitech-l] PDF Export with htmldoc

body:
On 04/07/06, Mei Wu <mwu.mailbox at gmail.com> wrote:
> [03-Jul-2006 23:58:55] PHP Warning:  Cannot modify header information
> - headers already sent in Unknown on line 0
>

Most likely some of the files have U+FEFF aka Byte order Mark at the
beginning. PHP doesn't like these. Remove them and use an editor which
doesn't insert BOMs.
--
Niklas Laxstr?m


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jul 4, 2006, at 10:44 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>Under US Law, Wikimedia is the "publisher" because they create
>>"collections" of works of the
>>Wikipedia site and "publish" them to the world as XML dumps. Whether
>>electronic or in book form, they
>>are publishing. This being said, given the nebulous and undefined
>>state
>>of internet IP law,
>>whether they are a publisher or not, there's no legal precedence to
>>determine liability, so at present
>>they are operating in an area of experimental law on the frontiers of
>>human knowledge.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>
>Not exactly and now that you are a "publisher" too, let us discuss
>the problem. Someone comes on your wiki and enters the information,
>"John Doe murdered his wife, Jane". You don't notice it and after 6
>months or so John Doe files a libel action. You might want to claim
>that the anonymous ip who entered that information was the publisher,
>not you. There is a variant where that edit was contained in an XML
>dump that you did not notice. Meanwhile Wikipedia has deleted it
>completely, even from the history of the article. This is all pretty
>theoretical until there is significant distribution of a serious
>libel, but I throw it out to think about. Now suppose you did notice
>the information and rather than deleting it you just corrected the
>grammar and spelling. Are you the publisher  now? And who is "you"?
>
>Fred
>
>

I would be responsible for any copyright, trademark, or trade secret
violations -- libel
too if I were mirroring the content. Section 230 would shield me to some
extent, but these
laws are changing very soon based on what's going on in Congress.

How would I respond to a libel suit? Most people just want the libel
removed, they are not interested
in drawn out litigation. They also have to serve proper notice, and I
would remove libel immediately
if I received such notice. They could just file without serving notice,
but as you are aware, the CDA
shields you if you have not received notice.

If someone wants to sue me in the end, bring it on. They will have to
show malicious intent, and recklessness,
which is hard to do if I never received proper notice.

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>On Jul 4, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>I have created a language extension PHP which allows these tags:
>>
>><cherokee>
>>
>>phonetics text
>>
>></cherokee>
>>
>>which converts to syllabary after an article is saved. It needs
>>another
>>week or so of testing.
>>
>>Such an addition to the chr.wikipedia.org Cherokee site will make it
>>usable for syllabary editing.
>>
>>Now who do I get with to provide the parser extension?
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>
>Are you offering this for the Cherokee Wikipedia?
>
>Fred
>
>

YES.

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Microsoft Exchange Server and Mediawiki

body:
On 7/4/06, Mei Wu <mwu.mailbox at gmail.com> wrote:
> Right now, the internal Microsoft smtp server, which is included in
> the IIS 5, is running. Because the Wiki is running on the same
> computer as the smtp server does, I am little bit confused what the
> problem might be. I configured the smtp server to allow relay with no
> authentication, but it didn't work.
> Are there any specific configurations I have to make to get the smtp
> server to send out emails in a LAN ?

If you can't telnet to the server on port 25, then that's your biggest
problem. Relaying doesn't even come into it. It's possibly listening
on a different port? I suspect that either:
* the server is not actually running
* it's not actually a genuine SMTP server that receives SMTP requests on port 25
* something else like a firewall is blocking you.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Geographic_references]]

body:
On 7/3/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> The current database download designed for mirrors contains "Articles,
> templates, image descriptions, and primary meta-pages."  How is a
> meta-page designated a "primary meta-page"?  Would that be an
> appropriate description of this page?

Interesting, no idea what that means.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Geographic_references]]

body:
On 7/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I'm not suggesting an infobox. In the case of these Rambot articles, I'm
> proposing that the links to the [[Geographic references]] page be
> replaced (probably by a bot) with the references themselves, wrapped in
> <ref> tags. A part of this operation would of course be to ensure that
> there's a <references/> tag in the article to display them. I suppose
> you could make the individual cites into templates since they'll be so
> widely used, so that for example the bot would go around inserting the
> text <ref>{{cite 2002 US census}}</ref> or whatever.
>
> Pretty much all articles should have a references section anyway, so
> this would be a very positive step IMO.

Sounds good.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPUI requesting unblock

body:
On 7/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're kidding, surely. What's the "privacy" concern with sending an
> email?  That people will know how to communicate with you? That way
> lies madness.

That people might know your real name? And possibly more information
about you? Whereas, normally we make it possible for people to use
Wikipedia pseudononymously.

Now, you may argue that pseudonymity is a bad thing. But it's a
separate argument. As long as people have that right, there's no
reason they should have to forfeit it simply to contest a block.

(and as pointed out, they could get themselves another email
address...but as I mentioned, that's a hassle)

Steve


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject: [Wikitech-l] page move vandalism restrictions not working

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 7/3/06, William Allen Simpson <william.allen.simpson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Which doesn't work well during rapid moves.  Again, the proposal is to
>> throttle pages moves to one per minute.  Not hard, the move is already
>> logged per user, and gives time to respond in the cases of abuse.
>
> I wouldn't be keen if this applied to *all* users. I've done around 50
> page moves in maybe 5 minutes - and I'm not a vandal. Sometimes you
> want to standardise the naming for a category. In my case, I was
> renaming all the French rivers from like "Garonne" to "Garonne River".
>
You are asserting that you moved each page, checked for and fixed all
double redirects, and changed the bold page title; personally reviewing
and verifying 3 or more actions for 50 pages, all in under 5 minutes
(300 seconds, a rate of 2 seconds or less per edit).  Two responses:

  1) There really isn't such a rush, this isn't a competition.

  2) I don't believe you.

> Good detection and blocking tools, definitely. Imposing a random limit
> on everyone because of one or two very new users carrying out
> vandalism? Let's avoid it...
>
It's not random.  It brings all response times back to human scale.


body:
On 7/4/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia
> project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board
> for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow
> added to the WMF store.

I'd like to see this process eventually involve much more
collaboration than it currently does.  Right now the process seems to
be that someone takes the content offline, builds a pdf, and then
uploads it.  Can't we make this a wiki process, where the pdf source
code can be edited online directly, and then the pdf generated on
demand?  Sure, before the print run starts a stable version has to be
chosen, but before that it'd be nice to be able to edit things.  It's
also a GFDL requirement to provide the source code.  Is the source to
[[Image:Big_Cats.pdf]] available somewhere?

> I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to
> help reduce costs.  Particularly in the printing business, there are
> economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly.  This book
> which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even
> less in large volumes.  It only makes sense that this is something that
> can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this
> reason alone.
>
A big question needs to be answered here.  Is Wikimedia more
interested in the greatest distribution, or in obtaining revenue?  If
the books are sold at cost, many more will be sold.  Brad, in
mentioning UBTI, seems to be implying that the sale of books will be a
revenue source, though.  Personally I don't have much of an opinion
either way, but some others probably do feel strongly about this.

> One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control.
>  As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen,
> cause damage, and a host of other related problems.  Lulu Press does
> offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit
> businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve
> other compromises.  Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer
> in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be
> the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
>
I'll let Brad respond to this rather than trying to guess his response
(I do have a good guess though).  Note that German Wikipedia is
published by Directmedia, not Wikimedia.

Anthony


subject: [Wikipedia-l] My apologies

body:
Your reasoning is strange to me, Mark, but that's not important (my not
understanding).

Sabine's intervention required tolerance in the formulated demands and/or
taken decisions. I agree with this. The proposed
compromise (moving mo to mo-cyr) is tolerant:

1. It stops the desinformation currently caused by mo.wikipedia.org.
2. It doesn't destroy your work.
3. It maintains the basis for possible future expansion of the Moldovan
Wikipedia.

I will allow myself to note that this resolution is supported by another
Moldovan, Oleg Alexandrov
(although he maintains his indifference concerning the existance
itself of this Moldovan
Wikipedia).

On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson < node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The status quo is, in fact a compromise. It is a compromise because
> the Romanian and Moldovan Wikipedias are both open.
>
> And as Sabine said, vivi e lascia vivere -- why do you worry so much about
> it?
>
> Mark
>
> On 04/07/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, Mark. The status quo is what you want. Not a compromise.
> >
> > Deleting/closing the Moldovan Wikipedia is - generally speaking - what
> we
> > want.
> >
> > Moving the existing contents from mo.wikipedia.org to a certain
> > mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would be a compromise. And, once again,
> >  this compromise doesn't destroy anyone's work. Just as Sabine said:
> "Vivi e
> > lascia vivere".
> >
> > On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
> > >
> > > Please see the messages from Sabine Cretella.
> > >
> > > The status quo is the compromise.
> > >
> > > If you care about Wikipedia, it makes sense to take care of your own
> > > instead of trying to destroy what others have built, which is exactly
> > > what you are doing here. There is no reason for this to continue.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >

--
Liviu


from_name: Kim Bruning

body:
On Mon, Jul 03, 2006 at 10:02:04PM -0400, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Furthermore, the content was developed as a result of a grant made to the
> Foundation with the stated goal of creating *free* content.

Just checking: Free as in speech, not as in beer, right?

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


subject: [Wikipedia-l] My apologies

body:
Hoi,
For your information, the mo.cyr.wikipedia is not a viable compromise.
It offends to applicable standards.
Thanks,
     GerardM

Liviu Andronic wrote:
> No, Mark. The status quo is what you want. Not a compromise.
>
> Deleting/closing the Moldovan Wikipedia is - generally speaking - what we
> want.
>
> Moving the existing contents from mo.wikipedia.org to a certain
> mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would be a compromise. And, once again,
>  this compromise doesn't destroy anyone's work. Just as Sabine said: "Vivi e
> lascia vivere".
>
> On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Please see the messages from Sabine Cretella.
>>
>> The status quo is the compromise.
>>
>> If you care about Wikipedia, it makes sense to take care of your own
>> instead of trying to destroy what others have built, which is exactly
>> what you are doing here. There is no reason for this to continue.
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On 03/07/06, TSO1D From Wikpedia <tso1d at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Of course, a conflict requires at least to sides, and only leaving one
>>>
>> side standing would end the dispute. However, I don't believe that this is
>> likely to happen in this case. By the same token one could make the argument
>> that if you would disappear (as you are virtually the only active
>> contributor on mo) then viable opposition to the closure of the project
>> would cease and the admnistration would have to acquiesece. Nevertheless, at
>> this point, the unwillingness of some administrators to act on a resolution
>> reached almost by concensus (with few dissents), practically constitutes
>> endorsement of the current status quo, thus autmatically negating the
>> partiality claimed by them.
>>
>>>   I agree with you, though, that simply closing the encyclopedia might
>>>
>> not bring about a complete end to the dispute, though you ability to reopen
>> the debate and subjequently the wiki will be greatly reduced unless you were
>> to produce a native speaker intersted in pursuing the project. For this
>> reason, I find it best if all sides could agree on one solution and
>> compromise if need be. For example would you agree to set up a
>> transliteration tool that would convert articles from RO to Cyrillic and
>> have that available at ro-cyr or mo-cyr (assuming the tool could be
>> perfected to funciton adequately)?
>>
>>> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>   The conflict will end if you stop making it such an issue.
>>>
>>> Without you and your friends, there simply is no conflict.
>>>
>>> Enforcement is not all that is lacking. There are many issues here.
>>>
>>> Currently, the position of those in charge seems to be to try to seal
>>> the situation off from the outside and let both sides duke it out.
>>>
>>> And who's to say the conflict would end if the Wikipedia were closed?
>>> I know that I would hold polls for it to be reopened, try to put the
>>> content elsewhere, etc.
>>>
>>> Until Bogdan and Jacky made an issue of this, it was dormant, nobody
>>> paid attention to mo.wiki except those who actually care about it.
>>>
>>> Mark
>>>
>>> On 03/07/06, TSO1D From Wikpedia wrote:
>>>
>>>> In my view this is discussion cannot be viewed as separate from the
>>>>
>> past ones on the topic, but rather the continuation (and hopefully the
>> culmination) of the issue. If such a resolution has already been made, then
>> what is the purpose of continuing this discussion and wasting even more
>> time. The only thing lacking is enforcement, and why souldn't that be
>> carried out in accordance with the general conclusion of the debate, whether
>> in the past or the present.
>>
>>>> I understand how some users might feel frustrated with the
>>>>
>> continuation of the discussion and the war of words, however by not acting
>> the conflict will not end, and I believe you are actually giving tacit
>> approval to the project in its current state. I am sorry if others spent a
>> great deal of time looking at the dispute and now may feel irritated, but
>> others also were involved in this debate, to an even higher degree, and
>> simply stating that all this work was in waste as you do not intend to act
>> in any way seems a grave neglect of your duties and even a lack of respect
>> for those who have invested their time to try to find a solution to the
>> problem and find the best way to resolve it.
>>
>>>> Mark Williamson wrote:
>>>> Is this relevant to the *current* discussion?
>>>>
>>>> Everybody already knew about that. It was clear that that decision was
>>>>
>> made.
>>
>>>> However, it was never enforced, and since then, you have taken against
>>>> yourselves by turning the heat up where it was absolutely not
>>>> necessary and making everyone stop caring.
>>>>
>>>> Mark
>>>>
>>>> On 03/07/06, Jacky PB wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to apologize to all of you for my
>>>>> interventions here. I just missed an e-mail of anthere
>>>>> more than 6 months old.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043897.html
>>>>>
>>>>> My only excuse is that it happened on another thread
>>>>> than the one I followed.
>>>>>
>>>>> Yours,
>>>>> :en:Dpotop, :ro:Dpotop
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> __________________________________________________
>>>>> Do You Yahoo!?
>>>>> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>>>>> http://mail.yahoo.com
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: James Hare

body:
I don't know how relevant this is, but under the Communications Decency Act,
Wikimedia is technically a provider and not a publisher.

On 7/4/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/4/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > It would also be nice
> > to once and for all answer the question as to whether or not Wikimedia
> > claims to be the "publisher" as the term is used in the GFDL.
>
> This is the first time this has come to my attention, and I would also
> appreciate a response on this issue. The GFDL explicitly requires the
> "publisher" to be credited in the history of modified versions
> (section 4.I), though not in the title (indeed, it explicitly states
> that the new publisher should be credited instead). It does not
> provide a definition for the term "publisher." It is not our current
> practice to require publisher credit to the WMF, though it is also
> somewhat unclear when section 2, "Verbatim Copying" and when section
> 4, "Modifications" would apply; "Verbatim Copying" only places minimal
> requirements on third parties.
>
> Does the WMF consider itself the publisher?
>
> I think it would be quite important to have a legally authoritative
> interpretation of the GFDL as it applies to Wikimedia Foundation
> project content. So far we've been basically "playing it by ear" when
> it comes to GFDL compliance. As the Wikibooks case demonstrates, this
> can lead to serious problems when contributors try to do the right
> thing, but end up doing the opposite of what we want.
>
> I suggest that such an interpretation be undertaken after a community
> consultation on Meta, so that as many people as possible can add their
> questions about the GFDL (which does not necessarily mean that all of
> them will be answered, of course).
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
This is what would reasonably happen, Mark. In my opinion, of course.

Currently people "give a damn" because it represents incorreclty Moldova.
Personally, I cannot stand when my country is represented n'*importe comment
* on Wikipedia.

We don't use this writing, Mark. Apart from exceptions, nowhere. This
writing, for all areas of life, is a reality of the past. And do not try to
discredit my words stating that "he is not in Moldova". I lived my whole
life in Moldova, which makes, roughly, 20 years. I read news. I return to
Moldova at least one time per year. I know what happens there. We don't use
this writing. Other Moldovans that are currently in Moldova could easily
backup this.

If you want to write articles, I have nothing against it. Moving all you
have done on mo.wikipedia.org to mo-cyr.wikipedia.org would in no way
interrupt your work. And your work would cease disturbing people
concerned.

But enough on this. Let's see the way the current
vote<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#Closure_of_Moldovan_Wikipedia>on
meta ends.

On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is that a threat?
>
> Why should anyone "give a damn" now? What reason is there for people
> to not just ignore it and work on the Romanian Wikipedia? Really,
> there is no good reason. Any good Wikipedian should focus on fixing
> articles, writing new articles, etc., instead of fussing about
> something like this.
>
> I just want to write articles, but you and your friends insist on
> interrupting.
>
> Mark
>
> On 04/07/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Everyone will start ignoring it, as soon as the Moldovan Wikipedia gets
> out
> > of the mo.wikipedia.org domain. No one would give a damn about it.
> >
> > On 7/4/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com > wrote:
> > >
> > > Would it really make everyone happy?
> > >
> > > No.
> > >
> > > There would still be people whinging endlessly that it should be
> > > closed and/or deleted.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 03/07/06, Liviu Andronic < landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I agree that simple ignoring of this project would make it disappear
> in
> > > a
> > > > one-two year time.
> > > >
> > > > What the you do not get is that there is one simple solution: move
> mo to
> > >
> > > > mo-cyr. And everyone gets happy.
> > > >
> > > > Is this so difficult?
> > > >
> > > > On 7/2/06, Gerard Meijssen < gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hoi,
> > > > > You do not get it.
> > > > >
> > > > > It is an annoyance. One of the points made is that the Moldovan
> > > > > wikipedia is just trolling. Consider what makes a troll thrive;
> > > > > attention. The more attention that you give it, ANY attention the
> more
> > > > > it will get entrenched. There is this saying: "I do not care what
> they
> > > > > say about me as long as they write my name correctly", all this
> > > > > attention makes the mo.wikipedia "relevant". If it is not
> relevant,
> > > > > refrain from giving it attention and at some time it will just
> > > > > evaporate. If it does not, it cannot be considered trolling and
> you
> > > are
> > > > > plain wrong.
> > > > >
> > > > > The best thing for you to do: shut up. Ignore this project.
> Everybody
> > > > > will be happier and maybe you will be proven to be right.
> > > > >
> > > > > Thanks,
> > > > >     GerardM
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Liviu Andronic wrote:
> > > > > > I would have to object to the position taken by people who can
> make
> > > a
> > > > > > difference.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > IMHO, all this Moldovan issue annoys you as much as it does me.
> I do
> > > not
> > > > > > want to dispute on this, as much as you do not want to read all
> this
> > > > > junk.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I am wondering if the Moldovan Wikipedia is such unimportant an
> > > issue. I
> > > > >
> > > > > > agree that it is a rarely used Wikipedia. And still, for an
> > > unimportant
> > > > > > Wikipedia, it does create a lot of headache to the entire
> community.
> > > If
> > > > > this
> > > > > > issue flames every three months on this mailing list and on all
> > > possible
> > > > >
> > > > > > Talk pages and triggers revert-wars on related English and
> Moldovan
> > > > > > Wikipedia articles, then I believe that there is obviously a
> > > problem.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Not that this entire dispute be fair or ethical - it is a dirty
> war
> > > that
> > > > > I
> > > > > > personally detest -, but is it an ethically correct position for
> > > those
> > > > > who
> > > > > > can make a difference to just ignore?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Is it so unimportant that a whole Wikipedia section could create
> > > > > confusion
> > > > > > and desinformation? Isn't Wikipedia supposed to provide a "free
> > > > > encyclopedia
> > > > > > of the highest possible quality"?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Personally for me, it is strange how people with the ability to
> take
> > > and
> > > > >
> > > > > > implement a decision, simply choose to ignore. All possible and
> > > > > impossible
> > > > > > arguments were already presented here, on the mailing list, and
> all
> > > over
> > > > > > the English and Moldovan Wikipedia, and on Metawiki. What rests
> to
> > > do is
> > > > > use
> > > > > > common sense to decide on this issue.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > It is even stranger for me the way a decision already taken by
> > > stewards
> > > > > and
> > > > > > bureaucrats was simply ignored and not implemented.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But, then, it is up to the decision-makers to decide the stance
> to
> > > > > adopt. I
> > > > > > still hope that they will choose as soon as possible to stop
> > > > > deliberately
> > > > > > ignoring this issue. The problem is that this issue will not
> cease
> > > > > > re-appearing on this mailing-list. My reason for this is that an
> > > entire
> > > > > > country and population (this makes an approximate 3.5 million
> > > persons)
> > > > > are
> > > > > > incorrectly represented on Wikipedia. And one of these, or me -
> if
> > > no
> > > > > one
> > > > > > else does it -, will certainly re-open this discussion in a
> > > two-three
> > > > > months
> > > > > > time.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > If you managed to read till this point, thank you.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Liviu
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 6/30/06, Brion Vibber < brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > >> Jacky PB wrote:
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>> Where are the decision makers? Isn't there nobody
> > > > > >>>
> > > > > >> No one else is interested in this issue, and getting involved
> would
> > > > > mean
> > > > > >> wasting
> > > > > >> a lot of time with people fighting a lot over something
> > > unimportant.
> > > > > The
> > > > > >> safest
> > > > > >> course is thus to leave a rarely-used wiki sitting there, same
> as
> > > we do
> > > > > >> with
> > > > > >> dozens of other rarely-used wikis and nobody minds.
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >> _______________________________________________
> > > > > >> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > >> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >>
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Liviu
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Liviu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: Carlos

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange versions

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> On de.wikipedia, people noticed a handful of odd revisions/dates:
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Philadelphia_76ers&diff=prev&oldid=4856562
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Adolf_Hitler&diff=prev&oldid=4807551
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Regensburger_Dom&diff=prev&oldid=4922059
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Diskussion:Riemannsche_Mannigfaltigkeit&diff=prev&oldid=4819117
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cynic&diff=prev&oldid=4909086
> http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christentum&diff=prev&oldid=4851312
>
> In all of these, the "newer" revision has a date significantly /before/
> the "older" one, more specifically, some time on January 4, 2003.
>
> Is that just an annoyance, or an indicator of a larger problem (database
> corruption)?
> Can someone fix it, or should it just be ignored?

For some reason, some first revisions of articles have high revision
numbers. In [[de:Cynic]], for example, the first revision has number
4909086, the second one 1129003, and then it grows. When you are looking
at the revision with a number a little below 4.900.000, the "diff=next"
will take you to the revision with the next higher number, which is the
first one.

We have some pages in es: with the same problem. For example,
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythrina_crista-galli .

--


subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange versions

body:
Carlos wrote:
> For some reason, some first revisions of articles have high revision

<s>first</s>
--


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity - feedback

body:
Hi all,

I emailed this list (and textbook-l) a few weeks ago about final
feedback on Wikiversity [1], but, surprisingly, there was no response
at all on this list (only on textbook-l). Can it be true that nobody
here is interested in Wikiversity? Or is it that nothing new can be
said at this stage? Or possibly that a lack of response indicates
tacit agreement/approval?

There was, in any case, a single response on the current proposal's
talk page [2] (by Amgine) - which I found instructive. Amgine is still
concerned about a lack of clarity in the proposal - I'm wondering if
anyone here agrees/disagrees, and how so? I see Wikiversity as
occupying a niche within Wikimedia as well as serving the interests of
the other projects, but there is still some ambiguity about some of
these inter-project relationships - particularly with Wikibooks. I'll
briefly define how I personally see this working, and the
distinctions.

* Wikiversity and Wikibooks will both host educational materials - but
of a different kind. Wikibooks attempts to develop its resources into
textbooks; Wikiversity will turn its materials into discrete learning
objects, designed to fit within a course structure (though not
nercessarily), so that students can avail of them in their own
self-directed learning. On top of this, teachers may use these
materials "off the shelf" in their lessons, and Wikiversity will
construct lesson plans to facilitate their ease-of-use. If people want
to do further reading on a subject, they can do so on Wikibooks.

* If someone wants to develop a course (or some sort of body of
information for learning), they can start doing so immediately on
Wikiversity. It may very well be that this material will, through
time, develop into a textbook. I think that the material should then
be *copied* (not moved) to Wikibooks, leaving behind material to be
used in learning activities. (Note: I'm not sure if the mechanics of
this will work within the GFDL licence - I'd appreciate comments on
this.)

* Some learning activities on Wikiversity will be to develop content
on other Wikimedia projects. For example, a learning group/community
will apply their learning in writing a textbook (on Wikibooks) on
their subject of interest, or apply their, say, researching skills in
writing an article for Wikipedia or Wikinews.

* Finally, as a clear difference between it and Wikibooks, Wikiversity
will allow research - though how this is to be done should be left to
its community. Personally, I feel that we should be allowing for
original research to be carried out and published on Wikiversity -
this will then require a peer reviewing process and possibly a way for
work to be "protected". How all this is to be done needs to be worked
out by the community - we have been hesitant to define such a process
on the wikiversity subcommittee, because the project really needs to
be developed through its participant community [3].

As an update, I'm still trying to move this process along within the
Special projects committee, and hopefully there will be something to
show for it soon. Meanwhile, however, I continue to invite comments,
suggestions, criticisms from anyone, however new or peripheral to the
discussion you may feel yourself to be.

Best regards,

Cormac / Cormaggio

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
[2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
[3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity_community


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity - feedback


from_name: Ben Garney

body:
On 7/4/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Yay, I'm superhuman. And I wasn't even trying! Imagine if I trained a
> bit...

Nevermind that human response time lives in the sub-one-second range. If we
had a good enough interface and fast enough servers, you could easily see
people moving ~60 articles/second, doing subsecond edits, etc.

I could especially see frequent edits from someone fixing spelling or
punctuation - pedantic, yes, but definitely adding value to the wiki.

Wikis are designed to be self-healing. Anything that reduces the capacity of
the wiki to be edited is contrary to the nature of the wiki. This implies
that there will be uneasiness - we don't always WANT things to be in flux! -
but that's what a wiki is all about. It's better to have tools that can deal
with that - for instance, by mass reverting a user's contributions - rather
than penalizing all the innocents out there.

Also - never, never, never make assumptions about what's humanly possible or
not. Physically possible, maybe. If it's a real human doing editing then
they may as well go as fast as they want to, and who are we to tell them
it's wrong?

Maybe what would make sense here would be doing something like
stochastically requesting captchas from people doing frequent edits. Give
them credit the more they answer right, so they get them less frequently.
Make sure it doesn't break on massively tabbed edits. ;) Post a safe
threshold under which you'll never get a captcha, so bots can fly under the
radar if they go slowly.

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.