body:
On 1/31/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>  "David Gerard" wrote
>
> > Another bad publicity storm such as happened last week to Microsoft is
> > absolutely not in Wikipedia or Wikimedia's interests. We don't want to
> > make organisations fearful of coming near us.
>
> OK. How long is it going to take before self-styled "press officers" actually inform >themselves _properly_ about WP?
>

Why should they? It isn't as if we are a major part of their job.

> I mean, the teaboy in the PR room is going to be given the job of actually editing the site.

Seeing as it is possible he is the one who knows most about wikipedia
that may not be a bad thing.

>But people who are _employed_ to know about PR should be
_professional_ in their >approach. Not assume that 'free to edit' is
'free PR'; that's an entirely amateur view, that it >costs nothing and
never can have any downside or fallout.

In most places it means exactly that. Who's who, various business
directories these are free PR. Wikipedia is rather odd in that
respect.
--
geni


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoconfirmed threshold

body:
> Interesting premise, but it does fail to differentiate between
> "something's gone wrong, stop this person for five minutes" blocks,
> and 'punishment'/'cooling-off' blocks. Hmm.

Making it an option on the block page (in place of the "anon users
only" check box would work well) would fix that. When blocking
vandals, you want to unconfirm them, when blocking someone for a minor
bit of incivility, or a 3RR violation, you might well not want to.

> It used to be "the most recent n% of users", and was used to determine
> who could move pages. Then we enabled semi-protection, and it seemed
> sensible to reuse this definition as the target group. At about the
> same time the definition was changed from something based on number of
> accounts to a fixed three-or-four day limit, which was roughly the
> same period of time but less of a logistical hassle (and harder to
> game by flooding new accounts)

Excellent!


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] We really need to avoid the next
	Microsoft-Wikipedia bad publicity storm

body:
On 31/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I got a call yesterday from a press officer for a major UK bank. My
> > number was one of the few contact numbers they could find.
> > They spent lots of time yesterday morning adding stuff to the bank's
> > article from their websites and having it reverted as a copyright
> > violation. They couldn't work out what she was doing wrong, so they
> > called me. They hadn't heard about the Microsoft mess at all. Oh dear.

> Eh normally that kind of person doesn't have permission to release the
> companies property under the GFDL.

Yes, and I pointed that out too! That submitting it under GFDL means a
loss of control over the material. And to be really sure they wanted
to do that.

> How pragmatic are you prepared to be? From a purely PR viewpoint It
> doesn't matter so much if a minor company screws up.
> Thus we are only interested in making sure major companies have some
> way to make contact.
> One approach would be to launch a new service for them to moan at us
> and see if we can get mentioned in the various trade magazines (there
> is a
> Financial Director magazine I assume there is a PR person magazine)
> Try and directly mention it to as many of the fortune 500, FTSE 200,
> whatever the equiv is for other countries companies as possible.
> Probably going to have to throw in most media groups as well.
> This should get the word out while keeping the whole thing as focused
> on the group we are interested in as possible.

Heh, maybe.

You can be sure word will get out and every malcontent on teh intarweb
will flood it with complaints about their Time Tetrahedron article.
But anyway.

> As I said before your best bet for recruiting is to go and ask newbie
> admins directly on their talk pages and see if any sensible people
> have failed RFA of late

Ah yes, sorry, I forgot *ahem*

> (has the side benefit of annoying the RFA
> regulars).

:-D

> > (I'm tempted to submit this to Ask Slashdot for ideas ... any objections?)

> You think you will be able to pick them out between the the anti
> Microsoft rants and the fights between the pro and anti wikipedians?

I would happily look through 500 comments of stupid if the right idea
is lurking in there. I don't expect anyone else to ...

> Remember whatever we do we can't stop companies being stupid.

Indeed. "Whoops, you hit the electric fence. Better not do that. Do
this instead."

- d.


list: wikimedia-l


list: commons-l

from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject:
[Commons-l] Commons search engine ranking,
	Was: Killing the main namespace?

body:
Good idea. Who is going to bug the devs?

On 1/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/01/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Problem with search engines is that they are being too inteligent.
> > Posible solutions:
> > *Use <a type="text/html" href=".../Image:Foo.png">
> > **I wasn't expecting it, but the a element *supports* the type attribute.
> > **Validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional
> > **Search engines probably don't support it, but we are providing the tags.
>
>
> Run it past someone suitable at Google, Yahoo and MSN, let Slashdot
> know so everyone else knows?
>
> The image search engines would undoubtedly want to index our image
> pages; if we can distinguish image pages ending in .jpg from actual
> JPEGs in a proper and conformant way, that should I expect be just
> what they would need to work with.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Well I'm not running squid, and here's the test script I'm running and the timing results I'm seeing on my local test wiki:

--------------------------------------
root at bling:~/tmp# cat test.sh
#!/bin/bash
time wget --output-document=index-1.js  "http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js"
time wget --output-document=index-2.css
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000"
time wget --output-document=index-3.css
"http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411"
root at bling:~/tmp#
root at bling:~/tmp# ./test.sh
--12:40:44--  http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js
           => `index-1.js'
Connecting to 192.168.0.64:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3,788 (3.7K) [text/javascript]
12:40:45 (212.50 MB/s) - `index-1.js' saved [3788/3788]

real    0m0.237s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.000s
--12:40:45--  http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000
           => `index-2.css'
Connecting to 192.168.0.64:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 28 [text/css]
12:40:45 (2.97 MB/s) - `index-2.css' saved [28/28]

real    0m0.198s
user    0m0.008s
sys     0m0.004s
--12:40:45--  http://192.168.0.64/wiki/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411
           => `index-3.css'
Connecting to 192.168.0.64:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 75 [text/css]
12:40:45 (8.94 MB/s) - `index-3.css' saved [75/75]

real    0m0.228s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.004s
root at bling:~/tmp#
--------------------------------------

I.e. total time = 0.237 + 0.198 + 0.228 = 0.663 seconds.

I take it for the Firebug timing values, that you're going Tools -> Firebug -> Open Firebug -> click on "Net" -> make sure "All" is
selected -> read the timing values for the various scripts?

If so, my times are 10 ms, 150 ms, and 160 ms, respectively for the above 3 files.

However, ajaxwatch.js for me shows as taking 351 ms, which seems rather long.

However, when I try to fetch ajaxwatch on the command line, I get a very different result:

--------------------------------------
root at bling:~/tmp# time wget --output-document=ajaxwatch.js "http://192.168.0.64/wiki/skins/common/ajaxwatch.js"
--12:56:20--  http://192.168.0.64/wiki/skins/common/ajaxwatch.js
           => `ajaxwatch.js'
Connecting to 192.168.0.64:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3,916 (3.8K) [application/x-javascript]
12:56:20 (219.68 MB/s) - `ajaxwatch.js' saved [3916/3916]

real    0m0.008s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.004s
root at bling:~/tmp#
--------------------------------------

I.e. only 2.3% of the time that Firebug reports. A 43-times difference like this is an enormous difference - the difference between
blazingly fast, and pig slow.

Refreshing the page shows that Firebug thinks Monobook.css took 791 ms; however the command line repeatably shows values between
0.197s and 0.210s.

I think there may be a few problems or explanations here:
* The Firebug times I suspect include the time that Firefox spends client-side processing the CSS or JS (i.e. not just the time to
fetch from the network). I.e. image rendering times, JavaScript execution times, page layout times, etc. If that's correct, what
would be useful would be is if the Firebug times separated out network fetch times, and local client processing times, for each
item.
* The Firebug times do not seem to be as repeatable as one would like for systematic testing (e.g. total page display times varied
between 2.5 seconds and 3.5 seconds). Part of this may be the Observer effect (i.e. Firebug is embedded in Firefox, and the act of
observing Firefox and continuously reporting on its rendering times probably makes Firefox slower, and/or introduces variability).
* I have gzip compression turned on, and probably Firefox uses this, whereas wget probably does not.

Basically, I'm unsure what to make of the Firebug times, except to say that the times Firebug reports do not immediately appear to
correlate well with the time taken to retrieve the raw content from the network.

Also, on a related note, for requesting ajaxwatch.js, we should probably be tacking on the "?52" version string thing somewhere
(which from the Firebug output it looks like we're not currently doing).

All the best,
Nick.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Alex Powell
> Sent: Wednesday, 31 January 2007 2:18 AM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Performance of loading custom style sheets
>
>
> Hi,
>
> No not that. I have a 2 GHz core duo at both ends, runnning no AV software
> (!), or anything else. The machine is "sufficient". Wiki pages without those
> two (stripped them out) take 180millis by Firebug.
>
> Testing against the wikipedia, it took 200millis on first hit, and then 16
> millis on subsiqent. I suspect the squid caches had it in their mits at that
> point. The page is pulled with some unusual parameters, I was wondering if
> that was pushing the code down an unusual path...
>
> Alex
>
>
> On 1/29/07, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> >
> > Alex Powell wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Mediawiki's performance has improved substantially over the versions.
> > and
> > > 1.9 seems the snappiest yet. When I upgraded I found I had some slow
> > stuff
> > > being loaded in addition to MW. Using Firebug beta (v cool BTW) I
> > noticed
> > > something odd. The index.php for the page loads blindingly fast, but the
> > > following:
> > >
> > > /index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js<
> > http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js
> > >
> > > /index.php?title=MediaWiki:
> > Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000<
> > http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000
> > >
> > > /index.php?title=User:Alexp/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css<
> > http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=User:Alexp/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css
> > >
> > >
> > /index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411<
> > http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411
> > >
> > >
> > > ... seem to run very slowly (one was taking 2 seconds and each take over
> > > .5secs, on a page that took 16ms to render). What can be done to speed
> > them?
> > > As far as I can see they are just simple js direct from the DB. Am I
> > missing
> > > something or is there a performance hole there?
> >
> > Get a better computer. Seriously, I suspect firebug is timing the
> > firefox rendering time (for css) and execution time (for js). Try using
> > wget, it will be faster (or disable javascript).
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
> > http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
> > IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next Microsoft-Wikipedia
	bad publicity storm

body:
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 01:09:21 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>Remember my proposal a month or two ago for a big friendly "Report a
>problem" button that appears to anon readers of articles? That would
>then divide up into wizards for different categories of problems like
>copy vios or libel or whatever? Is that a good starting point?

I'd say it was.  We need to make it much easier to lead people along
the right paths.

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


from_name: Boris Eetgerink

subject: [Wikitech-l] Performance of loading custom style sheets

body:
Alex Powell wrote:
> I agree that Firebug times are erratic. I have put much of this down to
> normal network lag/server lag. I am running a windows server running PHP
> using the DLL version, and I think it sometimes gets locked during the
> request. I am looking into getting FastCGI working to see if it is more
> consistant but have never been fond of recompiling and XAMPP doesn't seem to
> like to load any of the versions out there.
>
> Don't suppose anyone has any experience of FastCGI under windows? Is it
> worth it over the DLL? Does it make the server more stable? I'm running PHP
> 5.2.0 with APC at the mo.
[...]

I don't have experience with that, but I use WAMP Server:
http://www.wampserver.com/en/

It's Apache, MySQL and PHP in one package for windows. Very useful.

Boris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoconfirmed threshold

body:
On 1/30/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> I like 4 days, AND 25 edits is a good threshold for en:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mets501" <mets501wiki at gmail.com>
> To: "'English Wikipedia'" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 12:56 PM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoconfirmed threshold
>
>
> > According to Simetrical:
> > "It is now possible for wikis to require a certain number of edits, as
> > well
> > as a certain registration time period, for users to become autoconfirmed.
> > Thus, for instance, accounts that have existed for several weeks but have
> > made fewer than five edits might be prevented from moving pages or so on.
> > If
> > a particular wiki would like this enabled for them, it can file a bug
> > report
> > after community agreement."
> >
> > I think we should enable this with a threshold of 10 edits.  10 edits is
> > reasonable for a vandal to go through the whole warning system and get
> > blocked, while at the same time not too much so as to discourage new
> > contributors.
> > --Mets501
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Ugly top post! I agree with 4 days and 25 edits.

--
-Royalguard11


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 1/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
> (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
> cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
> non-existent article.

I saw a mention of this -- very interesting, not sure why it hadn't occurred
to me. I'm of the opinion that it may still sometimes be better to use
{{deletedpage}} (unless we have some way of very quickly explaining to
people how and why this cascading protection is being used to salt a given
article).

Has anyone set up a central page for this, yet? Since the actual
transclusion list would have to be admin-protected, it might be a good idea
to have a "policy page," which then transcludes the (admin-protected) list
of deleted pages. Sort of the reverse of our usual "protected template with
unprotected documentation subpage" structure.

-Luna


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 1/30/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's the way I saw it on usenet. An honest detractor would have a
> non-troll posting history in the group in question or at least in
> other groups. A troll drops out of the sky and starts flaming people.

They don't even have to be a troll. Anyone who joins a new group and
immediately starts criticising and telling the group they've got it
all wrong is going to be rejected - whether they're right or wrong.
Nothing to do with groupthink, it's just normal behaviour.

Steve


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
teun spaans wrote:

>>I am curious if anybody who is a regular participant on this mailing
>>list has ever come across an equivalent peer to Wikipedia (aka
>>Britannica or a major website like cnn.com) that would use modern art
>>works (I'm defining modern as created by anybody who has died since
>>1924) and publish reproductions of them using fair-use as the only
>>justification for their inclusion?
>>
>>
>
>
>Not me. I have three paper encyclopedias, none of them mentions anything on
>the source of photographs.
>
>
Encyclopedias sometimes put photo credits on a page that is not
necessarily adjacent to the article, but on some sort of "credits" page
that is listed elsewhere.  Encyclopedia Brittanica used to acknowledge
authorship of its artlces with just the author's initials, and it was
only in the first volume that even listed the names of the authors.  At
least this is something to look at before jumping to too much of a
conclusion.

Also, even if no source was explicitly mentioned, that reference is not
strictly necessary for a photographic license.

I know this is a tough thing to prove, but one really good example is
all I'm asking for here.  The rationale for using such images is very
weak if you can't find a clear example in other published media, proving
that this is a bleeding edge copyright situation instead of common
publishing industry practice.  While not perfect for a legal defense, it
does help if you can show that others who might be peers have done this
and nobody has cared.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] table text is full

references:
<d45df5100701301542k49a49157j32b6f95f355541fb@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKIENFJOAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<d45df5100701310636ha97f7d1t8ad37d4c25be7712@mail.gmail.com>
	<d45df5100701311004i3858101l80c4398d50f09bbd@mail.gmail.com>

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

Travis Derouin wrote:
> Looking at the structure of things, it looks like the first revision
> gets stored as a ConcatenatedGzipHistoryBlob which has all of the
> revisions compressed into one, and subsequent revisions are replaced
> with Stubs that point to the initial ConcatenatedGzipHistoryBlob
> revision.
>
> The problem that I'm having is that there is no initial
> ConcatenatedGzipHistoryBlob revision for these problematic histories,
> all of the revisions are stubs, which looks like the data was lost for
> these affected pages when I ran compressOld.php.
>
> This is not good! We have backups, but it will be a pain to fix. Is
> the best way to load the old back up into a separate db and then do
> something like
>
> UPDATE current_wiki.text
>  SET current_wiki.text.old_text = backup_wiki.text.old_text,
>           current_wiki.text.old_flags = backup_wiki.text_old_text
>    (assign other relevant fields here)
> WHERE
>           current_wiki.text.old_id = backup_wiki.text_old_id
> AND current_wiki.text.old_id in (BAD TEXT ENTRIES)

Should work, yeah...

> I'm going to try to reproduce what happened to see if I can narrow
> down the problem.

Great... bugs in that code are not fun. :(

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFwSKUwRnhpk1wk44RAliGAJ4ue6MWVhRCosAAHVEnU6VRpakaHwCfUR7m
NQUhoUOV13nhqNUZA7Zh4yw=
=/YvX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Our IP was blocked by mistake

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

mdd4696 at gmail.com wrote:
>> We provide regular database dumps to make the information freely available
>> in a manner that is friendlier to our servers, and that is usually easier to
>> process and import - it's much more convenient for both parties to import
>> all the revision text at once, rather than crawling for it.
>
> The last time the full enwiki dump (All pages with complete edit
> history, pages-meta-history.xml.7z) completed was on 2006-11-04. Any
> idea if the current one will finish?

It will unless it breaks.

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

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qc1LmQumjwKzdTXV/BZwMoE=
=M80d
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body:
On 31/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Run it past someone suitable at Google, Yahoo and MSN, let Slashdot
> > know so everyone else knows?
> > The image search engines would undoubtedly want to index our image
> > pages; if we can distinguish image pages ending in .jpg from actual
> > JPEGs in a proper and conformant way, that should I expect be just
> > what they would need to work with.

> Cute. I like, but it may be akin to moving the earth.

Oh, I dunno. "Hi, I'm Greg Maxwell, a developer on MediaWiki, the
software that runs Wikipedia. I want to add something to MediaWiki so
that our image pages get indexed by Google Images. I expect you'd like
that too. How's this idea ... [...] What works best for you, in a
standards compliant manner?" Worth a try!

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] interface URLs resolution order (splitted from
 "Major flaws...")

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

Daniel Arnold wrote:
> Per Brions request I split the isues into single pieces (although I wanted to
> avoid having different parallel threads on related issues):
>
> 1)
> Usually UI interface links (such as "MediaWiki:Mainpage" that defines the URL
> of the main page) are not localisable by default (pages
> like "MediaWiki:Mainpag/de" get ignored). However you can whitelist their
> i18n with "$wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg = array();" individually in
> LocalSettings.php.
>
> 2)
> In the past maintenance/update.php did copy every UI message from the default
> language UI message file into the wiki database.

> On whitelisted UI interface
> links it even did copy the default language link target into the language
> sub pages in every language if there wasn't one created by hand before (for
> example the content of MediaWiki:Mainpage was copied into
> MediaWiki:Mainpage/de if it was empty). So if there was the link target
> existing in the default language it was not possible to link people in other
> languages into non-existant "localised" pages after running
> maintenance/update.php (side note: this specific behaviour of
> maintenance/update.php can't have been an accidential not intended side
> effect).

... What? I don't understand.

"Link people in other languages into non-existant "localised pages""?

> Now maintenance/update.php was changed that way that it doesn't copy UI trings
> anylonger into the wiki and even removes the old automatically added entries.
> This is in principle a good thing as this allows for some other fixes (for
> example in mutilingual wikis) and reduces problems with hidden message
> strings.

Right.

> However one important thing was forgotten: The special treatment of
> whitelisted interface links. Now they point into the nowhere by default after
> running maintenance/update.php (since the link definitions from the localised
> message string files get used now).

The localized message string files and default-initialized localized
message pages are identical. If there's a difference in behavior, we'll
need it described.

> How to solve that (I don't want the old copy behaviour back as this is a
> hakish solution)?
>
> Change for link target strings (all that now need whitelisting) the
> interface string resolution order from:
>
> Mediawiki:$Message/$language-code ->$language-code-UI-String-File-$Message
> [further steps left out]
> to
> Mediawiki:$Message/$language-code -> Mediawiki:$Message (default language) ->
> UI-String-File-$Message (default language)

I'm very confused. Can you provide an example?

> That way people don't get linked into nowhere on whiletlisted link targets -
> and of course you also could entirely remove the need for
> $wgForceUIMsgAsContentMsg switch in Mediawiki (and you
> would get rid of one Wikimedia server maintence issue that fills your
> Bugzilla).

Don't understand.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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=vkFb
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from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
Can the detailed discussion about what should or
should not be done by bots on en.WP take place
somewhere else, where it would be on-topic.

BirgitteSB

--- The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 1/31/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > The Cunctator wrote:
> > > On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >>> My issue is that I don't think people should
> be using bots to remove
> > >> images
> > >>> with questionable status.
> > >> All deletion is done manualy.
> > >
> > >
> > > Deletion of the actual image is done manually --
> removal of the image
> > from
> > > articles is done by a bot.
> >
> > The bot comments out images, with an explanation.
> Anyone who edits the
> > page can see that the image was there, what its
> caption was, and why it
> > was removed.
>
>
> Yes.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Volunteer Services

subject: [Foundation-l] AGENDA

body:
January 31st, 2007

  To Whom it May Concern:

  The Committee on Lost Stuff will not meet on Tuesday January 31st, 2007.

  AGENDA

  1. Roll Call

  2. Hearing of John Doe's Lost Toe
      A. John Doe, Chair
      B. Jane Doe, Co-Chair

  3. Hearing of Jane Doe's Lost Hand
      A. Jane Doe, Chair
      B. John Doe, Co-Chair

  4. Adjourn

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] AGENDA


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 1/31/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Has anyone set up a central page for this, yet? Since the actual
> transclusion list would have to be admin-protected, it might be a good idea
> to have a "policy page," which then transcludes the (admin-protected) list
> of deleted pages. Sort of the reverse of our usual "protected template with
> unprotected documentation subpage" structure.

Pardon me, answering my own question:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_titles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protected_deleted_pages

The first appears to be directed at this new cascading protection method;
the second seems more concerned with the use of {{deletedpage}}. Perhaps
merging the two would be a wise idea?

-Luna


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove images
with questionable status.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 1/31/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>
> So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this?  I'm waiting for the first
> day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
>

Also an important question, and the exact reason I think this should be as
centralized as possible. If anything, one page listing the protected deleted
pages would be easier to keep an eye on than a multitude of pages which may
or may not have pages, and which people may even forget to protect, and all
sorts of other issues.

If it's all kept on one page, it seems to me it'll only be that much easier
to keep track of.

-Luna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoconfirmed threshold

body:
> > Would it be possible to unconfirm people when they get blocked
> > (possibly as an extra option for admins on the block page)?
>
> Not at the present.  You could file a feature request at
> bugs.wikimedia.org.  But it doesn't seem terribly useful to me (you
> have to simmer for four days before making trouble again?).

The reason I suggest it is because the reason most people give for an
edit count requirement is that once you've reached X edits, we'll know
if you're a vandal or not. However, us knowing isn't much good if you
get autoconfirmed anyway. Unless we want to indef block all registered
vandals as their first block, an edit count is useless without it
being possible to prevent autoconfirming if the edits aren't
acceptable ones.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

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

Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
> So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this?  I'm waiting for the first
> day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
>
> -Jeff

Already done; I did it. A user began

for $ZODIAC_SIGN ("Pisces".."Capricorn") {
  create [[$ZODIAC_SIGN (notable persons)]]'
}

They began being properly deleted before he completed the full set of
twelve.  He began recreating them.  I protected as empty the few that he
hadn't gotten to yet.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | A thunder of jets in an open sky,
 sean at epoptic.com | A streak of gray and a cheerful "Hi!"
                  | A loop, a whirl, a vertical climb,
                  | And once again you know it's time....
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aAuqoNW5X2IaBszVP2KcOiQ=
=az9K
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next Microsoft-Wikipedia
 badpublicity storm

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 03:46 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia', 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next Microsoft-Wikipedia bad	publicity storm
>
>I got a call yesterday from a press officer for a major UK bank. My
>number was one of the few contact numbers they could find.
>
>They spent lots of time yesterday morning adding stuff to the bank's
>article from their websites and having it reverted as a copyright
>violation. They couldn't work out what she was doing wrong, so they
>called me. They hadn't heard about the Microsoft mess at all. Oh dear.
>
>I explained that editing the article about yourself is a conflict of
>interest, and pointed them at the talk page and said this was the
>right place to put stuff - that they should introduce themselves, etc.
>And that people might argue, but that happens on the Internet. I also
>said I'd have a look myself.
>
>Well, that's one more innocent disaster averted ...
>
>But we really need something to handle this sort of thing and make it
>widely known. Something as n00b-friendly as possible - just type on a
>page (or in a form) or send an email.
>
>Which will mean another firehose of crap to find volunteers to deal
>with. This is the tricky bit. Compare to OTRS, which has the twin
>problems of (1) a firehose of crap with a few important things in it
>and (2) too few volunteers, who then get (understandably) tetchy and
>close to burnout, and not great success at recruiting more.
>
>So:
>
>0. I submit that we really do need this.
>1. Most n00b-friendly interface possible. This is not a big problem.
>2. How to get volunteers interested in wanting to look at this? This
>is the tricky one.
>
>Ideas please!
>
>(I'm tempted to submit this to Ask Slashdot for ideas ... any objections?)
>
>Another bad publicity storm such as happened last week to Microsoft is
>absolutely not in Wikipedia or Wikimedia's interests. We don't want to
>make organisations fearful of coming near us.
>
>
>- d.

We need to add a notice to the software either above (preferable) or below the edit box about conflict of interest. The Arbitration Committee is also devoting too much retail attention to this wholesale problem.

Fred


subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next
 Microsoft-Wikipedia badpublicity storm


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
The problem in groupthink is, problems go unnoticed.  Nobody speaks up or
brings the obvious to the groups attention.  Thus an intimidation factor may
present.

nobs01


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Vandalism Not Getting Caught soon Enough

body:
Vandalism seems to be going longer until noticed of late for some
reason.  I am running accross a larger number of vandalized
articles in importing dumps from en.wikipedia.org.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star

http://www.wikipedia/wiki/Stomp_Dance  (look for the word "africa")

are some examples.

Jeff


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Marc Riddell wrote

> Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility"; can we
> make the change :-).

Well, no. Why replace a good dictionary word with a profanity? Are you assuming that everyone who edits the English Wikipedia is a native speaker of English, who shares your likes and dislikes? You'd be very wrong about that. In fact the very acceptance of WP:DICK shows a basic level of crassness, if you ask me.

Charles

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next
	Microsoft-Wikipedia	bad publicity storm

body:
geni wrote

charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> > OK. How long is it going to take before self-styled "press officers" actually inform >themselves _properly_ about WP?

> Why should they? It isn't as if we are a major part of their job.

WP is as big a part of their job as their employer makes it. In the Microsoft example, it clearly started requiring some management time.

Charles

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from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autoconfirmed threshold

body:
> Interesting point.  At present, the reason for autoconfirmed is
> basically to stop certain forms of casual vandalism.  You have to do
> some preparation if you want to engage in page-move vandalism, which
> due to software limitations has historically been more of a pain to
> deal with.  I would tend to view edit counts as an extension of this:
> not only must you sign up and wait, you also have to make some
> innocuous edits.
>
> I suspect that if a user is dedicated and sinister enough to plan out
> ten edits and four days to get autoconfirmed before going on a
> page-move spree, he's probably going to make some whitespace changes
> with his ten edits, not vandalism, so I'm not sure this will help at
> all.

For page-move vandalism, you're probably right, but autoconfirm also
lets you edit semi-protected pages, and I don't think your point
applies to that form of vandalism.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
We really need a good policy on speedy closing AfD nominations where
the nomination contains obviously false claims and whacking votes
that are just plain idiotic. Case in point, http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cyrus_Farivar_%284th_nomination%
29 where the nominator proclaimed that the article was kept because
of the journalist's involvement in an Internet hoax. In fact, it was
kept because this is a freelance journalist who has written for
Wired, The Economist, and the New York Times. As anyone actually
looking at the previous deletion debates would quickly notice.

Equally fun is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Greenlighting_hoax_%282nd_nomination%
29, where we have people citing a disputed guideline as policy, and
people declaring an article that's sourced to Slate (a publication
owned by the Washington Post) as having no sources.

I'm only mildly invested in the second as an article to keep around
(although I think deleting the first would be appalling), but this
kind of sloppy voting and sloppy nominating needs to stop. It's far
too clear that people are voting without even looking at what they're
voting on, and that despite our pretending that AfD is not a vote, it
is far too often treated as one. (And don't even get me started on
the latest and greatest bit of deletion DoubleSpeak, the ever-
wonderful Categories for Discussion.)

Personally, I'd support a speedy-close policy on any AfD with false
information in the nomination, and a standard "comment removed due to
obvious inaccuracy" template to put into place on the "discussions"
for when people cite policies that don't exist, claim lack of sources
where sources exist, or otherwise flagrantly decline to engage with
reality.

-Phil


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] We really need to avoid the next Microsoft-Wikipedia
	badpublicity storm

body:
On 1/31/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> We need to add a notice to the software either above (preferable) or below the edit box >about conflict of interest. The Arbitration Committee is also devoting too much retail >attention to this wholesale problem.

Generaly we try to keep [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]] as short as posible.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove
> images
> > with questionable status.
>
> All deletion is done manualy.

Deletion of the actual image is done manually -- removal of the image from
articles is done by a bot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove
> > images
> > > with questionable status.
> >
> > All deletion is done manualy.
>
>
> Deletion of the actual image is done manually -- removal of the image from
> articles is done by a bot.
>

Which I should note includes removal of caption text which obviously is not
covered by any image license. It's certainly true that in most cases the
caption is meaningless without the image sometimes the caption text is
significant to the article on its own.

I believe that removal should be done manually.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
On Jan 31, 2007, at 4:48 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> Start by educating admins and make sure that concensus is properly
> defined
> as determined by arguments rather than votes. Than people can claim
> false
> assertions all they like without them making any difference.

Yes, certainly a miraculous transformation of attitudes surrounding
AfD would work, but I'm not exactly sure how to implement it.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:

>on 1/31/07 12:29 AM, William Pietri at william at scissor.com wrote:
>
>
>>Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I have no doubt that what you say here is true. I simply have a difficult
>>>time with telling anyone what they can and cannot say.
>>>
>>>
>>Is that always true for you?
>>
>>
>In my work (which is a large part of my life) yes. In my personal life I
>don't find words directed at me to be harmful - simply educational. Persons
>teach me a great deal about themselves by how they express themselves.
>
>
Wouldn't this be an important part of your professional experience.  A
psychologist who helps people to find their own solutions is bound to be
more successful than one who is always giving solutions to the clients.

Ec


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] What is in the "page extracts for Yahoo" file?

body:
> > In such a situation, hovering a mouse cursor over the link, and
> > having some JavaScript fire off to fetch the two or three sentence
> > abstract, which was then shown in a tooltip, could be ideal.
> >
> > All the best,
> > Nick.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation_popups
>
> -Gurch

Very nice! It even does popups on your popups, which is kind of fancy ;-)

> It looks to just be the first two sentences of the article.

Well I was looking for something that removes tables / disambiguation notices / etc at the start of articles - but the Navigation
popups seems have this well and truly covered ;-)

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:

>on 1/31/07 7:39 AM, David Gerard at dgerard at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>Wikipedia is a working environment - a volunteer one (which has its
>>own social rules, of course), but nevertheless it's a project with a
>>particular purpose. I've seen how obnoxious editors scare off newbies,
>>and it's not nice at all and is actually damaging to the project.
>>
>>I think the basic rule, which I hold is the fundamental rule of all
>>social spaces, is "Don't be a dick." Every other social rule we have
>>is a special case of that.
>>
>>
>Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility"; can we
>make the change :-).
>
A significant minority finds the word "dick" offensive because of the
sexual overtones.

>Seriously, is there an attempt made by other, more seasoned editors, to give
>support to these newbies to assure them they are supported by the majority
>of the project?
>
I'm sure we all would when the direct opportunity arises, but it takes a
great deal of maturity and patience.  It takes honest recognition of the
difference between a newbie and a troublemaker.  The police mentality of
the vandal hunters and other recent change patrol tends to shoot first
and ask questions lateer.  I think that many of them attach great
importance to ridding us of a wide range of troublesome people, but
their tactics can be extreemely disconcerting for newbies who are really
trying to make an honest but awkward effort.

Ec


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 1/31/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
> (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
> cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
> non-existent article.
>
> Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the
> horrible {{deletedarticle}} template.  Users get a reasonably helpful
> message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on
> Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the
> Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as
> allowing us to be kind to them).  I can't think of a downside offhand.
>
> Guy (JzG)

Really? Nice!

The protected deleted pages still appearing on Google *are* sometimes a problem.

-Kat

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 31/01/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Jan 31, 2007, at 7:59, Marc Riddell wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility";
>>>can we
>>>make the change :-).
>>>
>>>
>>I have to agree that "Don't be a dick" is a far better handling of
>>the policy... "Be civil" means "respect our social contract"; "don't
>>be a dick" is the contract. Much more to the point.
>>
>>
>This summary wins a small prize. I think we need it enshrined somewhere.
>
I don't know about that distinction about the social contract and
repecting the social contract.  If the social contract includes being
respectful then respect too is the social contract.  It seems like
making too much of a fine point of distinction.

One point which for me makes "Be civil" preferable to "Don't be a dick"
is that it advocates something that people should be in preference to
what they should not be.  It has a more positive outlook.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 31/01/07, wrote:
>
>
>>Marc Riddell wrote
>>
>>
>>>Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility"; can we
>>>make the change :-).
>>>
>>>
>>Well, no. Why replace a good dictionary word with a profanity? Are you assuming that everyone who edits the English Wikipedia is a native speaker of English, who shares your likes and dislikes? You'd be very wrong about that. In fact the very acceptance of WP:DICK shows a basic level of crassness, if you ask me.
>>
>>
>It wasn't - it was shoved over to Meta.
>
>(Then Aphaia tried to delete it because it was particularly offensive
>if translated into Japanese, apparently.)
>
That last bit is really a fundamental problem of translations, and is
where literal translations can become a problem.  What was really needed
was a translation of the meaning instead of the words.

Ec


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
On 31/01/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Marc Riddell wrote

> > Terrific! I much prefer the term "Don't be a dick" to "incivility"; can we
> > make the change :-).

> Well, no. Why replace a good dictionary word with a profanity? Are you assuming that everyone who edits the English Wikipedia is a native speaker of English, who shares your likes and dislikes? You'd be very wrong about that. In fact the very acceptance of WP:DICK shows a basic level of crassness, if you ask me.

It wasn't - it was shoved over to Meta.

(Then Aphaia tried to delete it because it was particularly offensive
if translated into Japanese, apparently.)

- d.


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
On 1/31/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> One point which for me makes "Be civil" preferable to "Don't be a dick"
> is that it advocates something that people should be in preference to
> what they should not be.  It has a more positive outlook.

Besides that, I can't remember a *single* occassion where linking [[m:DICK]]
has ever done anything to calm a situation down. Of *course* the other
person is going to be offended, and anyone linking this in a heated dispute
is a fool to expect otherwise -- at the very least, get somebody neutral to
do the linking. When the directly involved (and most biased) parties start
giving each other dick/civility scoldings, it rarely ever calms anything
down.

If we want the level of discourse to be more civil, we must first ourselves
behave in a civil manner. Nine times out of ten, that precludes linking
[[m:DICK]] in my opinion.

-Luna


from_name: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
In a message dated 1/31/2007 8:57:22 AM Central Standard Time,
dan at tobias.name writes:

When you  enter a new group with the intent of trying to beat the heck
out of the  regulars there, it exhibits an attitude problem on your
own part, doesn't  it?

Precicely; it was more of a sarcastic comment than anything.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Which I should note includes removal of caption text which obviously is
> not
> > covered by any image license. It's certainly true that in most cases the
> > caption is meaningless without the image sometimes the caption text is
> > significant to the article on its own.
> >
> > I believe that removal should be done manually.
>
>
> Really? Cool.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_of_the_Philippines_government
>
> Needs sorting out (deleting). Some of the stuff there could probably
> be tagged fair use but the rest needs to be orphaned.
>
> Before you do that would you mind orphaning:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Indusvalleyexcavation.jpg
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sistine.chapel.entire.500pix.jpg
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LowerFortGarry.jpg
>
> Because that would allow us to clean out Category: Non-commercial use
> only images once and for all.

I'm not interested in doing that. I'm not an image licensing zealot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Luna wrote:

>Well, let's offer a counter-example -- suppose one person blanks a talk page
>and replaces it with "FUCK YOU." Suppose they do this several times a day.
>Suppose they use sockpuppets and various IP addresses to do so. Is this
>offensive? Definitely. Is this disruptive? Definitely. I would anticipate
>very little disagreement with a proposal to discourage such behavior.
>
The issue is not with the obvious miscreants and what to do about them,
but about the often ephemeral idea of good behaviour.

>To me, this isn't a black-and-white issue. There's a question of degrees.
>Surely not all examples of disruptive behavior are quite as severe as what I
>just offered, but once we admit that there *are* cases where offensive
>behavior is bad and should be stopped, then it becomes a question of where
>we draw the line.
>
"Drawing the line" is itself a troubling concept.  It suggests rigidity
of thought.  The future is in maintaining a high degree of flexibility.

>My personal metrics? (1) Is the person acting in good faith? (2) Is the
>person helping solve more problems then they help to create? Once we've
>answered those two questions, the path to an answer will frequently become
>more apparent.
>
The question about good faith is a tricky one, because it begs the
question about defining good faith, and that one is more difficult than
defining civility.  If one assumes good faith the evidence must come
before a determination of bad faith.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, Gurch <matthew.britton at btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove
> >> images
> >>> with questionable status.
> >> All deletion is done manualy.
> >
> >
> > Deletion of the actual image is done manually -- removal of the image
> from
> > articles is done by a bot.
>
> The bot comments out images, with an explanation. Anyone who edits the
> page can see that the image was there, what its caption was, and why it
> was removed.

Yes.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 1/31/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/31/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 0. I submit that we really do need this.
> > 1. Most n00b-friendly interface possible. This is not a big problem.
>
> Remember my proposal a month or two ago for a big friendly "Report a
> problem" button that appears to anon readers of articles? That would
> then divide up into wizards for different categories of problems like
> copy vios or libel or whatever? Is that a good starting point?
>
> Steve

But we already have that! Click "Contact us" in the left sidebar, and
there you have a wizard-like interface. If you click "Report a
problem", you get to a page which has options like "An article has
used copyrighted content without permission" and "There's a problem in
an article about you or someone you represent". If I'd never seen
wikipedia before and found a problem with an article about me,
"Contact us" would be the first thing I click.

Granted, most of them leads to the otrs queue, but that's a separate
problem. When it comes to directing users to places with help, I think
we've made it as easy as it could be, short of posting a banner saying
"DOES THIS ARTICLE CONTAIN LIBEL ABOUT YOU?" at the top of every
article.

--Oskar


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
On 1/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We really need a good policy on speedy closing AfD nominations where
> the nomination contains obviously false claims and whacking votes
> that are just plain idiotic. Case in point, http://en.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cyrus_Farivar_%284th_nomination%
> 29 where the nominator proclaimed that the article was kept because
> of the journalist's involvement in an Internet hoax. In fact, it was
> kept because this is a freelance journalist who has written for
> Wired, The Economist, and the New York Times. As anyone actually
> looking at the previous deletion debates would quickly notice.

<snip>

Personally, I'd support a speedy-close policy on any AfD with false
> information in the nomination, and a standard "comment removed due to
> obvious inaccuracy" template to put into place on the "discussions"
> for when people cite policies that don't exist, claim lack of sources
> where sources exist, or otherwise flagrantly decline to engage with
> reality.
>
> -Phil

Of course, in the interests of accuracy and full disclosure, you were
somewhere going to mention that the second nomination was closed by an
administrator who strenuously argued in that very discussion for keeping the
article?  And that the third nomination was closed as a no consensus?
Hardly convincing evidence that the previous discussions "were settled on
the grounds that Farivar is a journalist who has written in the New York
Times" rather than "because of the Slate article".  Or even that they were
actually settled.  This article really isn't the best example for your
proposal.

Are you going to deal with the argument put forth by Bwithh and others that
Farivar is not particularly notable among journalists?  Or should we just
ignore them and speedy keep the article?  I happen to disagree with them
when they say that Farivar is not notable enough for an article, but I
respect their opinions.

Give the discussion the full length, make your case, and trust that someone
with a clue will evaluate all the comments and reasoning and make an
appropriate decision.

-- Jonel


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm not interested in doing that. I'm not an image licensing zealot.
>
> Not really relevant. NC images need to be removed and there is no
> significant opposition to doing so.
>
> It would appear that you are afraid of putting your edits where your
> mouth is. You think images should be manually orphaned. Lets see you
> do it.

Heh.

I double dare you.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
>> (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
>> cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
>> non-existent article.
>
> If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly
> beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.

So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this?  I'm waiting for the first
day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.

-Jeff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 31/01/07, Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>
>> Interesting. You know, as I read all of the responses thus far, the
>> one word
>>
>>that my eye and brain keep tripping over is "civility" - perhaps I am
>>associating it with the word "proper" - and that's a button word for me. The
>>only thing I have ever associated with the word civil is disobedience ;-).
>>
>>
>Proper, decent, civil... it may be worth remembering that "decent
>human behaviour" and "campaigns for decency" use the same words, but
>mean very different moral principles :-)
>
Yes, it can be a great marketting buzz-word.

>[I have not read the civility policy or guideline or whatever it is.
>But I know what it needs to say - "play nice"]
>
I admit that I haven't read it either.  Not reading policy keeps me
civil. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia case study (GFDL!) from Harvard Business School

body:
http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/

The Harvard Business School is famous for its case studies.  Two of its
professors put out a case study on Wikipedia, and the history of the
Enterprise 2.0 article (a new term championed by one of the case study
authors; the article was written by others who use the term).

I have a cameo as the admin who recommends starting a new AfD discussion.

The whole study is released under the GFDL, though it will be available
for sale via CD as per usual with new case studies.

Don't forget the check out the exhibits, which are fascinating.

--SJ


from_name: Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
[[The weather in London]] has been created and deleted for the final time.

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 31/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>
>>> If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly
>>> beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.
>>>
>> So dare I ask, what's the oversight on this?  I'm waiting for the first
>> day an article is protected that has never been created, in particular.
>>
>
> Well, pre-emptively protecting [[deliberate example redlink]] may be
> doable now ;-)
>
> In all seriousness, though, the oversight is that it can easily be
> seen what pages are protected in this way - the central "transclusion"
> page for these is public, and can be watched easily enough.
>
> (I suppose people can sneakily cascade-protect trivial obscure
> subpages with fake transcludes... but, then, they could do
> deleted-protected on pages which had never been created under the old
> system, too. So no new way of being a dick...)
>
>


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
Here's another example of a perhaps not false but "bad faith" nom.

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

What really smells about this one is that the nominating account,
"Pizzazz" was created on the same day as the nomination and the only
thing he did was make the nom in question. I would have no problem
with promptly closing such noms regardless of the potential
"deletability" of the article.

If an article is to be destroyed, then let it start with a good faith
nomination from a real user, not somebody's sock/meat puppet.

PS. The article in question was speedy kept.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: David Fuchs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Important Issue to Hebrew Wikipedia and Admin Abuse

body:
This is in relation to a concern a user brought to my attention on
en.wikipedia.org, and which I posted a note on Jimmy Wale's talk page
about. I was instructed that meta might deal with what I describe, and
I basically followed the links to mailing lists and to here.

Essentially, to distill this, a user on the hebrew wikipedia, Itay,
was blocked from editing his wikipedia over bad blood between him and
one of the admins (essentially he created a list where he detailed
what he believed were one admin's wrongful actions. It was deleted and
he was subsequently blocked.) Upon appealing to other admins, filing
and RfC, which was removed, filing another and another over various
"errors" in the filing process, and appealing directly to the
essential "head" of he.wiki, he went from being blocked for a week to
being permanently banned. I have corresponded with Itay on numerous
occasions and he has links to all the relevant info, and I believe he
has a strong case that the administrators, or at least four of them,
are acting in a totalitarian and outrightly frightening way to block
and remove edits they deem harmful. Even more worrisome is that there
is no way to appeal to have these admins reviewed on he.wiki. I have
received other emails from other users on he.wiki expressing their
similar concern, quote, "The Hebrew Wikipedia is rotten from the top
down. Plenty of wikipedians who could've contributed a lot to he have
been banned or scared off for either no reason or very minor reasons."
Or, to take part of a run-on sentence, "Several admins have even
clearly stated that "some users are more equal than others" (hinting
at admins > registered users > anonymous users). It's impossible to
have a vote within the community to revoke the admins' rights as
people who have opposed them have either been banned or aren't going
to vote against them because if they do and the rights aren't revoked
they'll be picked on".

Frankly, I'm stumped as to where to turn. This went from a simple AMA
request to a whirlwind of tossabouts. What I am sure I need is a
hebrew/english ambassador who's nuetral in this conflict, who I can
send the evidence to confrim (m Hebrew is pretty basic); I also have
trascriptions for anyone interested. I just have no idea what to do
now... I'm appealing to anyone who has an idea of what my action
should now be.

Sincerily,
David Fuchs
--
? ????', ????????? ?????????????? ??? ????
???????, ???? ?????? ?????? ??????????.
(Go,  stranger, and to Lacedaemon tell,
That here, obeying her behests, we fell)
     -Epigram to the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae


subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
On Jan 31, 2007, at 6:32 PM, Nick Wilkins wrote:

>
> Of course, in the interests of accuracy and full disclosure, you were
> somewhere going to mention that the second nomination was closed by an
> administrator who strenuously argued in that very discussion for
> keeping the
> article?  And that the third nomination was closed as a no consensus?
> Hardly convincing evidence that the previous discussions "were
> settled on
> the grounds that Farivar is a journalist who has written in the New
> York
> Times" rather than "because of the Slate article".  Or even that
> they were
> actually settled.  This article really isn't the best example for your
> proposal.
>

It was closed with the support of Jimbo, on that exact grounds, so
yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that it has been consistently
kept on those grounds.
> Are you going to deal with the argument put forth by Bwithh and
> others that
> Farivar is not particularly notable among journalists?  Or should
> we just
> ignore them and speedy keep the article?  I happen to disagree with
> them
> when they say that Farivar is not notable enough for an article, but I
> respect their opinions.
>

Sure - I'm happy to deal with those. My problem is dealing with them
in an AfD that has already been set up with outright falsehoods, and
with people who are "voting" in line with policies that aren't
policies, precedents that don't exist, and facts that aren't true.

Let me be blunter: if this is standard for how the community
considers deletion (and I've seen precious little evidence of late
that it's not), the community can no longer be trusted with this
function.

-Phil


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] ru.wikt and empty templates

references:
<45BE8B37.7030006@edb.dk> <45BEF4D2.4070907@gmail.com>
	<op.tmzsq6tg2okkek@maadim.hsd1.co.comcast.net>

body:
Muke Tever wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> It is sad that the craze of creating more entries on a Wiki has made a
>> wiki useless. I would support the removal of these 81.496 empty pages,
>> they are not helpful at all.
>
> Useful for checking if a word exists (i.e. spell check).
>
>
> 	*Muke!

But spell check presents suggestions for correcting your spelling. These
essentially content-less entries only inform you -- should you spell the
word right in the first place -- that the word exists in English. If you
happen to know another language well enough and are familiar enough with
Wiktionary, you could hop over to a more developed edition like English.
But if you search the Russian Wiktionary for "berd", you won't find
anything, whereas a spell checker might suggest "bred", "bard", and
"bird", among other things.

Many Wikipedia editions have used bots to generate large swaths of
content-less articles. You might want to take a look at the arguments
some of the bot owners present. [1][2] I'm still not convinced that
these editions have a large enough community to handle the influx of
what Vietnamese speakers would call "frames" (like the frames of an
half-built house, not quite ready for occupancy).

When the Vietnamese Wiktionary imported around 200,000 entries from a
free-content dictionary project, we at least had a lot of content to
work with. Laurent Bouvier was very helpful in making this work. But the
content contained many, many mistakes, both in formatting and content.
With a "community" of two regular contributors at any given moment, it's
been difficult to correct these errors on a significant scale.

The Vietnamese Wiktionary's errors don't impact its usefulness as much
IMHO, because formatting and spelling issues can be corrected
systematically and thoroughly by a bot. (I've got one in the works.)
You'd need some serious AI to *write* original definitions for tens of
thousands of words, and I'm not confident that a community of 500-some
can pull off such a huge feat without some outside help (a free-content
dictionary, for instance).

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_News#Year_stubs
[2]
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_News#Clarification_about_Nepal_Bhasa_Wikipedia

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 31/01/07, Marco Schuster <CDL-Klever at gmx.net> wrote:
> the ones for the big wikis (en,de) need REALLY good machines to import
> (good ram, enough disk...) and even with good machines they need ages to
> import :-(

Lack of hardware is no excuse. To be honest, attempting to mirror a
large web site such as Wikipedia on low-end hardware is a foolish
idea.

Rob Church


from_name: Daniel Arnold

subject:
[Wikitech-l] embedded links in UI messages (splitted from
	"Major flaws...")

body:
On Wednesday 31 January 2007 12:38:38 Platonides wrote:
> Localization is done by volunteers, sometimes with contradictory
> guidelines.

Hardcoded wikilinks inside message strings  to pages not existing in vanilla
Mediawiki are a clear DO NOT. This has to be rule number 1 for all
translation teams and also has to be a strict rule for every svn-committer
who checks in translations for others.

> [[{{MediaWiki:grouppage-sysop}}|administrateur]] fixes it.

I' suggest this short syntax which is even used in some places:
[[{{int:grouppage-sysop}}|administrateur]]

This solution fixes it for the strings linking to adiministrators. But what
about the other hardcoded links in message strings? We would need to
introcude some more mediawiki pages that declare these links.

I advocate for this consistent scheme: MediaWiki:$PAGE-url. This gets used
already for url definition pages (but not everywhere).

These pages (not existing by default) get referenced hardcoded inside message
strings from the MessagesEn.php file (I am not talking about the url pages
like those called from mediawiki:sidebar):
[[{{ns:project}}:Metadata]]
[[{{ns:project}}:Administrators|administrator]]
[[{{ns:help}}:Contents|help page]]
[[{{ns:project}}:Searching|Searching {{SITENAME}}]]
[[{{ns:project}}:Policy]]

Currently there are 151 language files in svn-mediawiki. No let's hope that
other languages do not link even more pages. So 151*5 gives you 755 potential
non-existant pages you'd need to care about.

Ok let's assume currently it is only one fourth of that number (cause of
incomplete files and because of same names of pages in different languages).
These would be still around 190 pages you'd need to make redirects in the
wiki and whatnot in order to point people in every language always to the
right place (or you touch all messages in language you weren't even aware of,
that would be "some" more edits).

> There are 10 ocurrences of [[Wikipedia:Administrators|administrator]] on
> [[en:Special:Allmessages]], all of them on customized messages.

The administrators are just one example. As well you didn't really consider
the amount of interface languages (see above).

> Be aware that when translators start using it and most references have
> been changed to this geeky code, some server admin will start
> complaining about slow rendering and undo all/invent a new way. ;)

I hardly can't believe that. I don't see how a {{int:PAGE-url}} could be more
confusing than {{ns:project}}:PAGENAME. Quite the contrary.

And I can't really see how a {{ns:project}} can perform better than something
using another replacement mechanism.

Arnomane


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove images
> with questionable status.

All deletion is done manualy.
--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


body:
On 31/01/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31/01/07, Marco Schuster <CDL-Klever at gmx.net> wrote:

> > the ones for the big wikis (en,de) need REALLY good machines to import
> > (good ram, enough disk...) and even with good machines they need ages to
> > import :-(

> Lack of hardware is no excuse. To be honest, attempting to mirror a
> large web site such as Wikipedia on low-end hardware is a foolish
> idea.

You don't need a lot to serve a flat HTML version, except disk space.

- d.


from_name: Marco Schuster

body:
David Gerard schrieb:
> On 30/01/07, Webmaster <webmaster at tiosam.com> wrote:
>
>
>> You are probably talking about some other mirror. No faked User-Agent string
>> here. If I wanted to hide something, I'd use a proxy. Ebaita.com and
>> enciclopedia.tiosam.com share the same cache in the same server, with more
>> than 200 thousand cached pages, as you can see when you google
>> "site:enciclopedia.tiosam.com". As pages are cached for 30 days from the
>> date they are requested, you can easily verify that the pages are being
>> served by us.
>>
>
>
> If you're just caching a regular snapshot, what's wrong with the
> database dumps which are created specifically to make a regular
> snapshot available?
the ones for the big wikis (en,de) need REALLY good machines to import
(good ram, enough disk...) and even with good machines they need ages to
import :-(

regards,
marco


from_name: Omegatron

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

body:
On 1/28/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> I mean there are many free quotations (a bit over 4000 years worth).
> It would not be impossible to create a wikiquote that used only free
> quotations.

Are you in favor of removing all non-free quotations from Wikipedia?

> I tend to feel that the foundation has a valid case for not releasing
> the logo under a free licence. Even debian initialy didn't although I
> understand that has rather broken down.

Are you in favor of removing all non-free content from Wikipedia
except the Wikimedia logos?

> But it hadn't been even though I was able to find free images inside
> 30 seconds. Why do you think that was?

I'm pretty sure it's because a lot of people are indifferent about
replacing legal non-free images with free ones.

Do you think that deleting huge amounts of such non-free content
solves this problem?

Does it cause the majority of deleted content to be replaced with free content?

Does it improve the coverage, reliability, neutrality, or relevance of
the encyclopedia?

Does it improve the net usefulness of the encyclopedia to downstream users?

On 1/29/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>  You could do that, but that would mean leaving out many of the juiciest
> ones used to describe modern society. :-)

"Juiciness" is irrelevant.  Modern society is not released under a
free license and therefore must be immediately removed from our free
<s>encyclopedia</s>!

On 1/29/07, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>  Yes, and we're "Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia".

Yep.  Why do you think it says that?

>  Sorry to be blunt,

Classic.

> We need to discuss fair use policy from the basis that freedom is an aspect of
> our goal, and not just a useful means to an end.

I'm basing this concept of "primary and secondary goals" on the
wording of the fair use policy page itself.  The way the page is
currently worded, writing a high-quality encyclopedia is a means to
the end of creating free content.  This is quite a silly notion, to me
at least.

These arguments that free content is our primary goal is like an
argument that our primary goal is to be a wiki, because hey, it's
right there in the title of the project, right?  This is, of course,
demonstrably false.  The wiki/"anyone can edit" aspect of the project,
while highly important, is regularly ignored when it doesn't serve the
primary purpose of writing a high-quality encyclopedia and making it
available to as many people as possible.

The "wiki" in "Wikipedia" is a means to the end of writing a
high-quality encyclopedia.  The rationale is that breadth and quality
will arise through the contributions of a great number of users.
Unfortunately, allowing anyone to edit *anything* sometimes prevents
high-quality articles from forming, so we block certain people from
editing or (semi-)protect certain pages.

The "free" in "free encyclopedia" is a means to the end of making that
high-quality encyclopedia useful and accessible to as many people as
possible.  The rationale is that free content can be redistributed
free of charge, and continually shared and improved by downstream
users.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of encyclopedic content that
will never be released under a free license, and limiting ourselves to
*only* free content would also limit the breadth, usefulness, and
neutrality of our encyclopedia.  So we allow non-free content whenever
it is encyclopedic, legal and doesn't displace equivalent free
content.

>  It seems fruitless to argue
> about the details of any particular policy if we disagree on the purpose of the
> project.

I think you mean "It's fruitless to try to reach a consensus about the
details of any particular policy when a small group of users have
modified it to suit their ideals and are unwilling to compromise".


from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >
> >>I should note that I got into this whole mess because I was involved
> >>with a group that was trying to write a Wikibook about M.C. Escher, and
> >>I tried to point out that they couldn't reproduce the Escher artwork
> >>unless they somehow were able to obtain a license that could be used
> >>under the GFDL.  The response was that the images were being used on
> >>Wikipedia, so why not Wikibooks?  The Escher reproductions are claiming
> >>fair use, but I think it has gone way too far on Wikipedia, as I believe
> >>these to be merely a copyright violation.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >I would observe that there is one significant difference between the two
> >situations.  It is one thing to use a couple of Escher's art works in
> >Wikipedia to illustrate a biographical article about him; in my mind
> >that could reasonably be viewed as fair use.  The wholesale reproduction
> >of his works in Wikibooks would probably not be.  The difference is in
> >the application in the substantiality rule of fair use law.
> >
> >Of course, it doesn't help to know that some of Escher's works MAY be in
> >the public domain, but it's not up to us to research and make that case
> >on behalf of the uploader.

I have one or two books with his works. Afaik there are no works of Escher
in the PD.

>
> >Ec
> >
> I am curious if anybody who is a regular participant on this mailing
> list has ever come across an equivalent peer to Wikipedia (aka
> Britannica or a major website like cnn.com) that would use modern art
> works (I'm defining modern as created by anybody who has died since
> 1924) and publish reproductions of them using fair-use as the only
> justification for their inclusion?

Not me. I have three paper encyclopedias, none of them mentions anything on
the source of photographs.

I have asked this question repeatedly, and the deafing silence on the
> response is leading me to strongly think that there is no major
> publisher who would want to touch these kind of images in the first
> place without formally contacting the copyright owner in advance and
> obtaining permission to use these sorts of images.  I can't imagine even
> a book about modern art that is being used as a textbook (by any
> publisher selling to a college market) that would go into critical depth
> about a few iconic works of modern art that would be using fair use
> rationale for reproducing that artwork.

Any serious publisher has its own library of photos. Both big and small
publishers employ their own illustrators or have a pool of free lancers they
employ. I once had a question from a publisher asking permission to use one
of my photos in a book, so smaller ones also tend to look around on the web.
They dont suffer from paranoia, but they certainly do a good job of checking
the copyright status of anything they use.

Having been published by Prentice-Hall for a Spanish-language textbook
> suppliment where I was a co-author, I vaguely remember this issue coming
> up when I was working with my main editor.  Fortunately, I was given
> access to an image repository that was owned by the textbook publisher,
> and had so much content that trying to find something that might have
> pushed the envelope was more a waste of time for me.
>
> I do know that copyright paranoia is hardly the best way to describe the
> attitude they had regarding the content we were putting together.  It
> was more like copyright insanity where they were questioning nearly
> every word that was written, and in my case every word that was used in
> the software code (it was a CD-ROM suppliment).  The rationale that is
> being used here by some Wikipedia users wouldn't have been tolerated for
> 5 minues if they had tried to get away with some of the more
> questionable images and been working for this particular publisher.

I agree 100%.

--
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail]

body:
Pilotguy wrote:
>
> Obviously looks to me like it was deleted because it wasn't written to our
> standards. I just took a quick glance at the deletion log, but it looks like
> this article might be worthy of inclusion, that is, if we can find the right
> person to write it. Just my two c's...

Looks more like a case of "things made up in school one day" and "no
reliable third-party sources" to me.

Mind you, I have nothing against parody religions.  But like any other
meme, they do need to establish at least some bare minimum of notability
before being included in an encyclopedia.  Merely setting up a website
on a free webhost and spamming some wikis and discussion boards doesn't
suffice.

According to an "official" list (set up by the founder of the religion)
on PetitionOnline, this one has a grand total of 37 self-described
followers so far:

   http://www.webcitation.org/5MJKL4UYk
   http://www.webcitation.org/5MJJvuscx

Also compare:

   http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?word1=pieism&word2=pastafarianism
   http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?word1=pieism&word2=discordianism

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Gurch

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 1/31/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My issue is that I don't think people should be using bots to remove
>> images
>>> with questionable status.
>> All deletion is done manualy.
>
>
> Deletion of the actual image is done manually -- removal of the image from
> articles is done by a bot.

The bot comments out images, with an explanation. Anyone who edits the
page can see that the image was there, what its caption was, and why it
was removed.

-Gurch


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Platonides

body:
> I hardly can't believe that. I don't see how a {{int:PAGE-url}} could be more
> confusing than {{ns:project}}:PAGENAME. Quite the contrary.
>
> And I can't really see how a {{ns:project}} can perform better than something
> using another replacement mechanism.

It is supposed to be better using [[Project:Foo]] instead of
[[{{ns:project}}:Foo]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which I should note includes removal of caption text which obviously is not
> covered by any image license. It's certainly true that in most cases the
> caption is meaningless without the image sometimes the caption text is
> significant to the article on its own.
>
> I believe that removal should be done manually.

Really? Cool.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Works_of_the_Philippines_government

Needs sorting out (deleting). Some of the stuff there could probably
be tagged fair use but the rest needs to be orphaned.

Before you do that would you mind orphaning:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Indusvalleyexcavation.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sistine.chapel.entire.500pix.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:LowerFortGarry.jpg

Because that would allow us to clean out Category: Non-commercial use
only images once and for all.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
(which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
non-existent article.

Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the
horrible {{deletedarticle}} template.  Users get a reasonably helpful
message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on
Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the
Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as
allowing us to be kind to them).  I can't think of a downside offhand.

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
> (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
> cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
> non-existent article.
> Thus, we can effectively protect a deleted article without using the
> horrible {{deletedarticle}} template.  Users get a reasonably helpful
> message telling them why it's not there, and it does not appear on
> Random, does not appear in mirrors, does not show up at the top of the
> Google hits (which will please the foiled vanity spammers as well as
> allowing us to be kind to them).  I can't think of a downside offhand.

*pint* to Werdna!

(He's currently running for admin on RFA. There are those voting
against *because* he's a developer; I would have thought that would
have led to new features being particularly suited to administration
of the site. But presumably I am wrong.)

- d.


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
On 1/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> It was closed with the support of Jimbo, on that exact grounds, so
> yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that it has been consistently
> kept on those grounds.

Jimbo's comments are nowhere on any of the three deletion discussion pages.
Not everyone agreed with him or you (heck, a lot of people aren't even
agreeing with *me* in the fourth discussion ;-) ).  There are a lot of
arguments floating around on each of them, including a number of people
arguing for the article to be kept on grounds of internet history/fame or
the like.  Don't you think it's at least possible that there are other
interpretations of the results?

Let me be blunter: if this is standard for how the community
> considers deletion (and I've seen precious little evidence of late
> that it's not), the community can no longer be trusted with this
> function.

If the community isn't to be trusted with making decisions on deletion, how
should deletion be handled?  There are things that clearly should be deleted
(which tend to speedied, prodded, or die nearly unanimously in AfD), things
that clearly should be kept (Ron's example above shows what happens with
something that clear), and things that aren't precisely clear.  How should
the third category be dealt with?

-- Jonel


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
Start by educating admins and make sure that concensus is properly defined
as determined by arguments rather than votes. Than people can claim false
assertions all they like without them making any difference.

Mgm

On 1/31/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We really need a good policy on speedy closing AfD nominations where
> the nomination contains obviously false claims and whacking votes
> that are just plain idiotic. Case in point, http://en.wikipedia.org/
> wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Cyrus_Farivar_%284th_nomination%
> 29 where the nominator proclaimed that the article was kept because
> of the journalist's involvement in an Internet hoax. In fact, it was
> kept because this is a freelance journalist who has written for
> Wired, The Economist, and the New York Times. As anyone actually
> looking at the previous deletion debates would quickly notice.
>
> Equally fun is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Greenlighting_hoax_%282nd_nomination%
> 29, where we have people citing a disputed guideline as policy, and
> people declaring an article that's sourced to Slate (a publication
> owned by the Washington Post) as having no sources.
>
> I'm only mildly invested in the second as an article to keep around
> (although I think deleting the first would be appalling), but this
> kind of sloppy voting and sloppy nominating needs to stop. It's far
> too clear that people are voting without even looking at what they're
> voting on, and that despite our pretending that AfD is not a vote, it
> is far too often treated as one. (And don't even get me started on
> the latest and greatest bit of deletion DoubleSpeak, the ever-
> wonderful Categories for Discussion.)
>
> Personally, I'd support a speedy-close policy on any AfD with false
> information in the nomination, and a standard "comment removed due to
> obvious inaccuracy" template to put into place on the "discussions"
> for when people cite policies that don't exist, claim lack of sources
> where sources exist, or otherwise flagrantly decline to engage with
> reality.
>
> -Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] False AfD Nominations

body:
On 1/31/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For a start admins shouldn't be afraid to follow concensus rather than the
> voting majority. If, for example, someone bolds delete, but indicates
> they're happy with a merge, there should be no reason that comment can't
> be
> used to support a merge decision.
>
> In fact I see this happen quite often. People are ambiguous about what
> they
> want, yet they seem to only bold one of the two extremes: keep or delete.
> As
> if any sort of middle way can't be discussed.
>
> Mgm

I'd recommend ignoring any word in bold.  Read and consider what commenters
actually say, rather than what they think they're voting.  If the commenter
has done a good job of making their case, the bold word out front is
extraneous.  If they're ambiguous, the bold word is harmful and misleading.

-- Jonel


body:
On Wednesday 31 January 2007 22:23:03 Platonides wrote:
> > I hardly can't believe that. I don't see how a {{int:PAGE-url}} could be
> > more confusing than {{ns:project}}:PAGENAME. Quite the contrary.
> >
> > And I can't really see how a {{ns:project}} can perform better than
> > something using another replacement mechanism.
>
> It is supposed to be better using [[Project:Foo]] instead of
> [[{{ns:project}}:Foo]]

Both are cause severe troubles on multilingual wikis as pointed out by me.

By the way the [[{{int:NAME}}|NAME]] thing doesn't work. int: always expands
to the page in your interface language and not to the page of the wiki
default language which would be needed in that case here.

Arnomane


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Moldavian

body:
On 1/31/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> OTRS has received a request for this wiki to be taken down, stating that
> Moldovian is just Romanian written in cyrillic, in a way imposed by the
> Communists. (I'm not saying this is true, I have no opinion on the
> issue, I'm just reporting.)

Not that simple see:

[[Transnistria]]

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Moldavian


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Freedom of Speech in WP

body:
On 1/31/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> Marc Riddell wrote
>
> >I have been
> > doing minor editing in WP for a year now and, time permitting, would
> like to
> > participate more actively in the project. And, like anything a person is
> > considering becoming a part of, I want to get a sense of its beliefs and
> > values.
> >
> > My work and passion has been, is now, and probably always will be,
> persons
> > and their interactions. That is why this issue is so important to me.
>
> An argument I have produced before, is that bad language and
> aggressiveness as a routine form of interaction appeals mostly to the young
> and male. It happens that males 20 to 25 might be the most significant group
> here. I think it is also the case that such forms of verbal interaction and
> self-assertion are likely to put off many other demographic groups. So
> civility policy is one way of trying to broaden the base of contributors, or
> to retain people who profile is not a good match to those who think freedom
> of speech is mostly about the right to be f****** rude all the time.
>
> Charles

I totally agree with this; being civil is a good way of ensuring that you're
trying to interact in a positive manner with all possible types of
contributors. Online, you never know who's on the receiving end of your
comments: what their background is, what their beliefs are, or how they'll
take something you'll say.

As for free speech, the vast majority of the time it's possible to get ideas
across either politely or offensively. I can say "I don't agree with this
policy, and here's why <list of thoughtful reasons here>"; or I can resort
to Godwin's law: "people who support this policy are nazis and fuckheads!"
Generally, the former should carry more weight. That's not about free
speech; it's about being coherent and respectful of other people (both their
time and their intelligence); we are, as Charles said, colleagues here
trying to get work done on a project. This isn't (shouldn't be?) a forum for
acting out simply because you can*.

-- phoebe

* unless maybe the end result is really, really entertaining.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Air-l] A teaching case on Wikipedia

body:
Karim was on a panel at Wikimania this past summer, as well.
-- phoebe

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Karim R. Lakhani <klakhani at hbs.edu>
Date: Jan 31, 2007 3:37 PM
Subject: [Air-l] A teaching case on Wikipedia
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org

Dear AOIRers,

I wanted to let you know that my colleague Andrew McAfee and I have
prepared a teaching case on Wikipedia.  This case will be taught to
MBA students at the Harvard Business School this spring in the
Managing in the Information Age elective course.

The case is free online and is under the GNU Free Document License.

You can get it here
http://courseware.hbs.edu/public/cases/wikipedia/

Here is a brief synopsis:
Wikipedia has emerged as a robust model for content production by
volunteers working asynchronously on the internet with a
unconventional model for distributed decision making.  The "Articles
for Deletion" process in Wikipedia provides unique insight into the
inner workings of a distributed community.  Wikipedia administrators
have to decide if an article on "Enterprise 2.0" should be deleted,
kept or merged with some other article. The episode illustrates
broader issues of IT-enabled community mobilization and engagement in
distributed setting.

Teaching objective:
To show the delicate balance between issues of authority, expertise,
community consensus and norms of behavior in a distributed setting.
To discuss success and failure modes in online communities.

I hope to have a teaching note for this by April and also a teaching
plan - if some of you use it before hand in class - I would be
grateful if you would share your experience with me.

Also your comments and suggestions for the case are very welcome!

Best

Karim

---------------------------------------
Karim R. Lakhani
Assistant Professor
Harvard Business School
+1-617-495-6741(o)
+1-617-851-1224(m)
http://spoudaiospaizen.net/

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subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/31/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not interested in doing that. I'm not an image licensing zealot.

Not really relevant. NC images need to be removed and there is no
significant opposition to doing so.

It would appear that you are afraid of putting your edits where your
mouth is. You think images should be manually orphaned. Lets see you
do it.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] A quiet revolution

body:
On 31/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> It has been discovered that the new system of cascading protection
> (which protects any element transcluded in a page protected with the
> cascade bit turned on) allows us to transclude and thus protect a
> non-existent article.

If that was deliberate, I would have called it a surpassingly
beautiful hack. But it's serendipitous. That's somehow even *better*.

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