from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
On 9/29/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Brad Patrick wrote:
> > Dear Community:
> >
> > The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
> > Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
> > phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
> > edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
> > self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it
> > should be.  However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
> > act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
> > self-editing and vanity page creation.  This is simply out of hand,
> > and we need your help.
> >

Srticles are only one problem. There are aparently people prepared to
pay money to people ho can get links into wikipedia.

> > We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are
> > to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
> > cannot be tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page
> > patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
> > which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no
> > question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
> > has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
> > Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
> > time.  They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
> > their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
> > they incur.
> >

This would be covered by CSD a7 for the most part.

> > Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I am
> > here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
> > encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
> > for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
> > energy.  We must put a stop to this now.
> > Thank you for your help.

Afd. In theory prod/CSD should take care of most of it. Problem is
that figureing out the notibility or whatever of companies is a pain
in the neck since most of us don't have a vast amount of experence in
that area.

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikien-l

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] FUTEF - Wikipedia-based search engine

body:
I've just been pointed to this - http://futef.com/

It seems to search on keywords, and then produce a related list of
categories for browsing as well as the keyword results. I haven't had
much of a chance to play around with it, but it's certainly promising
- any thoughts?

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


list: foundation-l

body:
On 9/29/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> I am amazed at this terminology that is such that I do not understand at all
> what you try to say.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CSD#A7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PROD

--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> On Sep 29, 2006, at 3:26 PM, Jake Waskett wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
>>> The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability
>>> with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.
>> What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of
>> inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to
>> show
>> them.
>
> Go write the code.

You're being needlessly brusque, and also misleading. Do you mean that
only people who have the time and ability to actually do Wikimedia
programming get to decide what Wikipedia looks like and how it
functions? If I were to sit down and write the code to add a preference
allowing users to add blink tags to all wikilinks, that'd go in without
any discussion by non-coders? I wouldn't think so. Programmers with any
sense of professionalism should pay at least a little attention to what
the users of their software say about it.

That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references
have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple
stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble
programmers.

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from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
There are two issues that may be addressed. There is an apparant need for
organisations to be VISIBLE. They want to use Wikipedia for that while we do
not consider them to be of relevance in an encyclopedic setting. The content
that they created would be of some value to Yellowikis. This is where this
information is welcomed.

By moving it sideways, we do exactly what is current practice for other
content that does not fit Wikipedia. We are not as confrontational as we
could be, but the teflon quality of our projects would be increased and this
may lead to fewer angry people in our projects as well.

PS I am totally behind the notion that we should not have non-encyclopedic
content in Wikipedia.. for me it is a matter of strategy.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 9/29/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
> Brad,
>
> One very easy solution to all of this is to segregate the live edited
> wikipedia site from the published site scraped by the
> search engines.
>
> In other words, setup the community server "anyone can edit" at
> something like draften.wikipedia.org and publish reviewed
> dumps of the community server to a read only external server for
> scraping like I am doing at Wikigadugi. I have ZERO
> vandalism problems , ZERO content dispute problems, and ZERO vanity page
> problems and I host the entire English
> wikipedia as well as several other languages.
>
> Very simple solution. People won't waste the time creating vanity pages
> when they know they may not get published in the
> "official" external official site.
>
> Jeff
>
> Brad Patrick wrote:
>
> >Brad Patrick wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Dear Community:
> >>
> >>The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
> >>Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
> >>phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
> >>edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
> >>self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it
> >>should be.  However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
> >>act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
> >>self-editing and vanity page creation.  This is simply out of hand,
> >>and we need your help.
> >>
> >>We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are
> >>to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
> >>cannot be tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page
> >>patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
> >>which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no
> >>question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
> >>has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
> >>Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
> >>time.  They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
> >>their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
> >>they incur.
> >>
> >>Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I am
> >>here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
> >>encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
> >>for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
> >>energy.  We must put a stop to this now.
> >>Thank you for your help.
> >>
> >>-Brad Patrick
> >>User:BradPatrick
> >>Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> >>
> >>
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Hoi,
I am amazed at this terminology that is such that I do not understand at all
what you try to say.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 9/29/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/29/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Brad Patrick wrote:
> > > Dear Community:
> > >
> > > The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
> > > Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
> > > phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
> > > edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
> > > self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it
> > > should be.  However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
> > > act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
> > > self-editing and vanity page creation.  This is simply out of hand,
> > > and we need your help.
> > >
>
> Srticles are only one problem. There are aparently people prepared to
> pay money to people ho can get links into wikipedia.
>
>
> > > We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are
> > > to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
> > > cannot be tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page
> > > patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
> > > which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no
> > > question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
> > > has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
> > > Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
> > > time.  They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
> > > their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
> > > they incur.
> > >
>
> This would be covered by CSD a7 for the most part.
>
> > > Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I am
> > > here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
> > > encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
> > > for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
> > > energy.  We must put a stop to this now.
> > > Thank you for your help.
>
> Afd. In theory prod/CSD should take care of most of it. Problem is
> that figureing out the notibility or whatever of companies is a pain
> in the neck since most of us don't have a vast amount of experence in
> that area.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mike O

subject: [Wikitech-l] ParserFunctions hook

body:
I tried to load the ParserFunctions hooks by Tim Starling in Mediawiki 1.7 but it doesn't work. I put the required line at the bottom of LocalSettings.php file and copied the two necessary scripts to the extensions subdir, But when I then load a page that would use these hooks (such as India) nothing happens to process the {{#if statements. Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?

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

Mike O

--
_______________________________________________
Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way:
Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com

Powered by Outblaze


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 9/29/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just been pointed to this - http://futef.com/
>
> It seems to search on keywords, and then produce a related list of
> categories for browsing as well as the keyword results. I haven't had
> much of a chance to play around with it, but it's certainly promising
> - any thoughts?

Hmmm, I played with a couple of searches on this and almost never, the
"main article" about the search came on this page first.

"google" -> first article: google bomb.
"groklaw" -> SCO vs. Reality
"Jimmy Wales" -> James

and so on. Nice concept, fast results, poor quality.

Mathias


body:
On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>  The fact is that they do not want to be on Yellowiki, which no one has ever heard of. They >want to be on Wikipedia, which is a household name. And for that we need real solutions.
>
>  Danny

How about FUD? You know stuff along the lines of "do you really want a
page you can't control being the number one search result for your
company?"

--
geni


from_name: Jake Waskett

body:
On Fri, 2006-09-29 at 14:15 -0400, Robth wrote:
> The problem is to balance the desire for this kind of verifiability
> with the desire not to clutter up the article excessively.

What's wrong with a technical solution? Write the article with lots of
inline references, but make it a user preference whether or not to show
them.


body:
On 9/29/06, ?ukasz Garczewski <tor at oak.pl> wrote:
> That would be an issue for controversial companies. Most are not
> controversial. I assume they know about NPOV and expect to have a
> neutral article which people will actually *read* (as opposed to the
> marketing gibberish they have on their homepage).

You relise a fair number of things deleted as copyvios are direct
coppies of companies "marketing gibberish"?

--
geni


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] A Wikimedia sidebar box for wikipedia.org

body:
On 9/29/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 9/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > What doesn't work about it?
>
> Let's start with the most obvious bit: WMF is an international
> organization, and we want volunteers to contribute as many
> translations as possible of key pages on the WMF wiki, no matter how
> few there are of them.

It would be wounderful, but not feasable I think. Most of
international organizations  limit their official language into a
number we can count by our two hands. Their regional branches issue
publifications in the regional languages, but those two - official
publification from the organisation itself and local publification
from its branch or sister organizations - are different matters.

Languages are not equally spoken on the globe. They are less equally
read and listened. Some are definitely required, others are cool if
available, but not critical if they are lacked, since speakers of
these languages could read other languages in most cases, if
necessary. As far as we are relying on volunteer based translators, I
strongly oppose to that we have "as many translations as possible of
key pages" type ideas as middle term goal (10y or so). There is no
enough incentives and from my experience, the most effective
publification & promotion of the Foundation is its projects in the
target language. Only a project reaches a critical mass, the
Foundatoin seem to have a good reason to have PR in that language. And
some projects, like German language Wikipedia community, lack such
motivations, even after it becomes the second largest project. Through
my Wikimedia experience, German has been one of the most difficult
language I can find translators.

And also, if we need to validate every content, the trustness issue
arise here; one cannot validate the content written in an unknown
language to him or her.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


list: commons-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
 need	YouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 29/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Better yet, let's allow uploads of material in any format -- and offer
>> a conversion service, storing the result in a free format.
>
>
> This is a *fantastic* idea. Where would the server need to be hosted? Hungary?
>

Probably Iran...

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: David Russell

body:
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Mak wrote:
> I've just attempted to explain why having inline citations can be
> misleading. If a fact is widely agreed on, and you ascribe it to a single
> source or author, it makes it seem as though that person is the sole
> proponent of that idea, when in fact pretty much everyone in the field is in
> agreement.
>
> If you look at [[Dido and Aeneas]] you will see that it does cite it's
> sources. In the oh-so-cryptically named "References" section. It does not
> have inline citations because when I wrote the majority of the article, I
> was 1) brand new 2) inline citations had not become all the rage 3) *it
> doesn't contain controversial assertions. No one has challenged a single
> fact in the article. If you know anything about either the work or Purcell
> or English Baroque music, you probably won't challenge any of the article's
> assertions because they are *not* controversial.

Would it be all that hard to provide a specific page reference as a
footnote. e.g. (hypothetical example) <ref>See, for example, J. Doe
/Origins of Somethingorother/ p.29, J. Bloggs /Somethingorother
explained p.60</ref>.</ref>? And there is no need to cite a source after
every fact - after every paragraph or subtopic would be fine. But no
citations is unlikely to result in a successful GA review, at least
unless/until the proposed changes to the GA criteria are accepted.

Cynical

David Russell
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of Gileki
 wikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
SJ wrote:
> 48 supports, no opposition, 5 actively interested editors including a
> native speaker.  It certainly has the requisite # of interested
> parties.  Wikitech-l is perhaps more likely to grab the attention of a
> developer who can set up the new wiki... where did you send previous
> emails about this?
>

I think it's probably about time that we created a batch of new wikis. Are
there any other suitable candidates that we can do at the same time?

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval
 of Gileki wikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
SJ wrote:
> 48 supports, no opposition, 5 actively interested editors including a
> native speaker.  It certainly has the requisite # of interested
> parties.  Wikitech-l is perhaps more likely to grab the attention of a
> developer who can set up the new wiki... where did you send previous
> emails about this?
>

I think it's probably about time that we created a batch of new wikis. Are
there any other suitable candidates that we can do at the same time?

-- Tim Starling

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


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Interesting article on Alexa

body:
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Given the number of people who seem to use Alexa 'rankings' as the basis
of an Afd decision on website articles, I thought you guys might be
interested in this article:

http://www.johnchow.com/index.php/why-alexa-is-worthless/

It has been clear for a long time that Alexa 'rankings' are utter crap,
as they are based not on website visitors and links (as Google or Yahoo
rankings are) but on the activities of those infected with Alexa's
spyware-esque toolbar.

Cynical
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body:
GerardM wrote:
> Hoi,
> Many people are in favour of adding Gilaki to the list of languages.. There
> is one issue outstanding as far as I am concerned. At WiktionaryZ the Babel
> templates are in an Arabic script.. The first Gilaki word however is in both
> the Latin and this Arabic script.
>
> Another issue is that the language is called Gilaki and only Wikipedia calls
> it Gileki ..
>
> It would be nice to have these issues resolved first..

Couldn't we create it first and resolve the issues later? Unless you are
suggesting that the existence of these issues implies that the proposers
don't know anything about the language, I don't see any problem with
changing either the default text direction or the language name after the
wiki is created.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
By saying that we are big and they are small, it must be clear that it
is NOT a solution right ??. So the solution is to be blunt and destroy
all the effort that these people did put into what they hoped to be
acceptable for Wikipedia.

By moving it to Yellowikis, Yellowikis gets content that it wants to
have; their content is GFDL as well so there is NO problem in doing
exactly this. By providing an alternative we give less of a reason to
complain and we provide Yellowikis with the content that is what they
are there for. What you could appreciate is that by having such a teflon
strategy, we will be better able to ruthlessly remove from Wikipedia
what is not encyclopedic in the first place.

Thanks,
    GerardM

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>  What Gerard suggests is NOT a solution. There are reasons people are spamming Wikipedia and not adding content to Yellowiki. We are the fourteenth largest website in the world, while Yellowiki does not count in the top one hundred thousand. We have a consistently high google rating and our links ensure that they will have a high google rating, Yellowiki does not. We can offer some modicum of respectability, while they cannot Compare these two statements: "Look at me! I'm in the encyclopedia!" v. "Look at me! I'm in the phonebook! "
>
>  The fact is that they do not want to be on Yellowiki, which no one has ever heard of. They want to be on Wikipedia, which is a household name. And for that we need real solutions.
>
>  Danny
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
>  To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>  Cc: bpatrick at wikimedia.org
>  Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 1:48 PM
>  Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
>
>   Hoi,
> There are two issues that may be addressed. There is an apparant need for
> organisations to be VISIBLE. They want to use Wikipedia for that while we do
> not consider them to be of relevance in an encyclopedic setting. The content
> that they created would be of some value to Yellowikis. This is where this
> information is welcomed.
>
> By moving it sideways, we do exactly what is current practice for other
> content that does not fit Wikipedia. We are not as confrontational as we
> could be, but the teflon quality of our projects would be increased and this
> may lead to fewer angry people in our projects as well.
>
> PS I am totally behind the notion that we should not have non-encyclopedic
> content in Wikipedia.. for me it is a matter of strategy.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> On 9/29/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>> Brad,
>>
>> One very easy solution to all of this is to segregate the live edited
>> wikipedia site from the published site scraped by the
>> search engines.
>>
>> In other words, setup the community server "anyone can edit" at
>> something like draften.wikipedia.org and publish reviewed
>> dumps of the community server to a read only external server for
>> scraping like I am doing at Wikigadugi. I have ZERO
>> vandalism problems , ZERO content dispute problems, and ZERO vanity page
>> problems and I host the entire English
>> wikipedia as well as several other languages.
>>
>> Very simple solution. People won't waste the time creating vanity pages
>> when they know they may not get published in the
>> "official" external official site.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>> Brad Patrick wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Brad Patrick wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Dear Community:
>>>>
>>>> The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
>>>> Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
>>>> phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
>>>> edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
>>>> self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it
>>>> should be.  However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
>>>> act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
>>>> self-editing and vanity page creation.  This is simply out of hand,
>>>> and we need your help.
>>>>
>>>> We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are
>>>> to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
>>>> cannot be tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page
>>>> patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
>>>> which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no
>>>> question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
>>>> has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
>>>> Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
>>>> time.  They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
>>>> their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
>>>> they incur.
>>>>
>>>> Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I am
>>>> here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
>>>> encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
>>>> for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
>>>> energy.  We must put a stop to this now.
>>>> Thank you for your help.
>>>>
>>>> -Brad Patrick
>>>> User:BradPatrick
>>>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.


body:
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Phil Sandifer wrote:
> Baloney. MoS is a hellhole of process - exactly what Good Articles
> were made to get around. Good Articles need to be pretty darn good -
> not perfectly adhere to an absurd bit of process that grew
> organically in a manner similar to kudzu.

Er... if Good Articles were meant to get around MoS then why is citation
of sources one of the Good Article criteria?

Cynical
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Mak wrote:
> The only resolution to
> that I could find was to attach references to single sentences, which as you
> can see results in an article with a list of citations practically as long
> as the article. And this is on a fairly non-controversial topic.
> Makemi

Fine - since the list of citations appears at the end of the article,
nobody has to read it if they don't want to.

Cynical

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from_name: Gatto Nero

subject: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

body:
2006/9/29, Gianluigi Gamba <gigamb at tin.it>:
> Gatto Nero, I understand your disappointment, but
>
> * disappointing 7 teams out of 8 was unavoidable;
> * the jury decided legitimately taking into account all the available
> information they had - they have the right and the duty to consider
> geo-political strategies for better achieving the goals of the Foundation.
> And I might be wrong, bringing access to the free knowledge where such free
> knowledge is somehow obstacled is one of them.
>
> suspicious innuendos about how the decision has been taken aren't of any
> help for anyone.

Oh Paginazero, per favore: la giuria ha deciso legittimamente?
Dear Paginazero, this politically-correctness is starting to disgust me.
I really am not so able to lie. My lie-ability level is really low, I
can't stand lies over lies. I'm sorry.

Should we deny that Taipei has been shortlisted with no secure
sponsorship at all?
(Just read what their bid said about sponsor at the time of the
shortlisting decision:
"The bidding team has contacted several potential sponsors. Some of
them have shown great interest in sponsoring Wikimania and covering
the core expenses in total on venue, accommodation, and catering. If
Taipei is selected as the host city for Wikimania 2007, the detailed
sponsorship arrangement will be finalized. According to our
conservative estimation, local sponsorship will be no less than
NT$1,500,000 (US$45,600+)."
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimania_2007/Taipei&oldid=435116#Local_sponsorship_opportunities
)
Why then include Taipei and exclude the other? On which basis?

Should we deny that a bid has been choosen that copied even the idea
of a logo from the Torino's bid? Even.

Should we deny that sj said Taipei was chosen 'cause "in the end they
had the most surplus sponsorship, in fact"?

Should we deny that this decision caused a rift and quite a fight
between the components of the jury?

Who all this denying should be of any help?
The community, not even heard about what they thought about all this
bid (and I talked with someone, lot of them preferred Torino, others -
minus, but my memory could by fallacious - Alexandria, others - more
minus - London)?
Jimbo, or other WMF members?
Or sj, maybe?

I prefer not to lie, and not to deny. I think is more useful find WHY
and HOW all this could have been happened.
And that's what I'd like to be done, more than talking about "maybe
something in Torino in 2008, but wait - in 2008 there's Australia
so... whatever, bye Turin, welcome Sidney".

Gatto Nero

(I started working on wiki full of idealistic thoughts of
collaboration, correctness, and of working for a bigger aim. I'm
really sick at seeing how much economic interests and politic there is
here. Really sick.)


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

body:
geni napisa?(a):
> On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>>  The fact is that they do not want to be on Yellowiki, which no one has ever heard of. They >want to be on Wikipedia, which is a household name. And for that we need real solutions.
>>
>>  Danny
>
> How about FUD? You know stuff along the lines of "do you really want a
> page you can't control being the number one search result for your
> company?"

That would be an issue for controversial companies. Most are not
controversial. I assume they know about NPOV and expect to have a
neutral article which people will actually *read* (as opposed to the
marketing gibberish they have on their homepage).

--
TOR


body:
Hoi,
When people have been removed from Wikipedia with us providing a reasonable
alternative, we have taken the moral highground. When all we can do is
destroy, there is reason to be indignant. The solution that Yellowikis
provides us with is that we provide both a "reasonable" argument and a
"reasonable" alternative.

It therefore does solve a problem; it makes us seem reasonable.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 9/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> That does not solve any problems. The problem is not that they want to be
> online. Many of them have their own websites which get considerable traffic.
> The problem is that they want to be on Wikipedia. That is all they want. And
> as long as they are not on Wikipedia, they will keep coming back, regardless
> of whether they are on Yellowiki or not.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 3:15 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
>
>   Hoi,
> By saying that we are big and they are small, it must be clear that it
> is NOT a solution right ??. So the solution is to be blunt and destroy
> all the effort that these people did put into what they hoped to be
> acceptable for Wikipedia.
>
> By moving it to Yellowikis, Yellowikis gets content that it wants to
> have; their content is GFDL as well so there is NO problem in doing
> exactly this. By providing an alternative we give less of a reason to
> complain and we provide Yellowikis with the content that is what they
> are there for. What you could appreciate is that by having such a teflon
> strategy, we will be better able to ruthlessly remove from Wikipedia
> what is not encyclopedic in the first place.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> >  What Gerard suggests is NOT a solution. There are reasons people are
> spamming
> Wikipedia and not adding content to Yellowiki. We are the fourteenth
> largest
> website in the world, while Yellowiki does not count in the top one
> hundred
> thousand. We have a consistently high google rating and our links ensure
> that
> they will have a high google rating, Yellowiki does not. We can offer some
> modicum of respectability, while they cannot Compare these two statements:
> "Look
> at me! I'm in the encyclopedia!" v. "Look at me! I'm in the phonebook! "
> >
> >  The fact is that they do not want to be on Yellowiki, which no one has
> ever
> heard of. They want to be on Wikipedia, which is a household name. And for
> that
> we need real solutions.
> >
> >  Danny
> >
> >  -----Original Message-----
> >  From: gerard.meijssen at gmail.com
> >  To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >  Cc: bpatrick at wikimedia.org
> >  Sent: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 1:48 PM
> >  Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement
> >
> >   Hoi,
> > There are two issues that may be addressed. There is an apparant need
> for
> > organisations to be VISIBLE. They want to use Wikipedia for that while
> we do
> > not consider them to be of relevance in an encyclopedic setting. The
> content
> > that they created would be of some value to Yellowikis. This is where
> this
> > information is welcomed.
> >
> > By moving it sideways, we do exactly what is current practice for other
> > content that does not fit Wikipedia. We are not as confrontational as we
> > could be, but the teflon quality of our projects would be increased and
> this
> > may lead to fewer angry people in our projects as well.
> >
> > PS I am totally behind the notion that we should not have
> non-encyclopedic
> > content in Wikipedia.. for me it is a matter of strategy.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >    GerardM
> >
> > On 9/29/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Brad,
> >>
> >> One very easy solution to all of this is to segregate the live edited
> >> wikipedia site from the published site scraped by the
> >> search engines.
> >>
> >> In other words, setup the community server "anyone can edit" at
> >> something like draften.wikipedia.org and publish reviewed
> >> dumps of the community server to a read only external server for
> >> scraping like I am doing at Wikigadugi. I have ZERO
> >> vandalism problems , ZERO content dispute problems, and ZERO vanity
> page
> >> problems and I host the entire English
> >> wikipedia as well as several other languages.
> >>
> >> Very simple solution. People won't waste the time creating vanity pages
> >> when they know they may not get published in the
> >> "official" external official site.
> >>
> >> Jeff
> >>
> >> Brad Patrick wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> Brad Patrick wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Dear Community:
> >>>>
> >>>> The volume of corporate vanity/vandalism which is showing up on
> >>>> Wikipedia is overwhelming.  At the office, we are receiving dozens of
> >>>> phone calls *per week* about company, organization, and marketing
> >>>> edits which are reverted, causing the non-notable, but
> >>>> self-aggrandizing authors, to scream bloody murder.  This is as it
> >>>> should be.  However, I am issuing a call to arms to the community to
> >>>> act in a much more draconian fashion in response to corporate
> >>>> self-editing and vanity page creation.  This is simply out of hand,
> >>>> and we need your help.
> >>>>
> >>>> We are the #14 website in the world.  We are a big target.  If we are
> >>>> to remain true to our encyclopedic mission, this kind of nonsense
> >>>> cannot be tolerated.  This means the administrators and new page
> >>>> patrol need to be clear when they see new usernames and page creation
> >>>> which are blatantly commercial - shoot on sight.  There should be no
> >>>> question that someone who claims to have a "famous movie studio" and
> >>>> has exactly 2 Google hits - both their Myspace page - they get nuked.
> >>>> Ban users who promulgate such garbage for a significant period of
> >>>> time.  They need to be encouraged to avoid the temptation to recreate
> >>>> their article, thereby raising the level of damage and wasted time
> >>>> they incur.
> >>>>
> >>>> Some of you might think regular policy and VfD is the way to go.  I
> am
> >>>> here to tell you it is not enough.  We are losing the battle for
> >>>> encyclopedic content in favor of people intent on hijacking Wikipedia
> >>>> for their own memes.  This scourge is a serious waste of time and
> >>>> energy.  We must put a stop to this now.
> >>>> Thank you for your help.
> >>>>
> >>>> -Brad Patrick
> >>>> User:BradPatrick
> >>>> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> ________________________________________________________________________
> Check out the new AOL.  Most comprehensive set of free safety and security
> tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web,
> free AOL Mail and more.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>
> This isn't perfect, since it leaves a "Notes" header in place in
> articles that have it; but it should suffice for the people who
> *really* don't like footnotes.

If you just use

.reference {
    display: none;
}

Then the footnotes remain visible at the bottom of the article but the
superscripted links within the article itself vanish. It's still not
quite perfect since the footnotes' backlinks remain but no longer work,
however it's getting pretty close to what I expect a preference like the
one proposed would do.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Seth Finkelstein in the Technology Guardian

body:
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Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> O RLY?  If a mere MBA is borderline notable (it isn't, of course) I may
> have to rethink taking the [[PMP]] exam.
>
> Not really, but the thought did cross my mind.
>

An MBE is different from an MBA. One is a UK honour, the other is an
exam. Unless that was a typo, in which case I'll shut up :)

Cynical
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from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We need
	YouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
One does not need to pay "patent fees" -- whatever those are -- to Adobe for
using Flash.  Just like people some people can create PDF files and read
those (open office can create PDF files, for example) without paying
royalties to Adobe, same can happen with Flash.

-ilya

On 9/29/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/9/29, Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com>:
> > I suggest that if we change our attitude and allow alternative,
> > actually-workable presentation of our media, we will be more correctly
> > fulfilling our mission.  Let's allow Flash for audio and video.
> >
> > -ilya haykinson
>
> And of course YOU will pay patent fees to Macromedia for using Flash ?
> Second thing that those flash movies (like eg. on youtube) are
> disgusting - it's impossible to simply download it, it' working to
> slow on my machine, the player is wrong designed, etc.
>
> I think that the right way is to teach people how use free tools and
> force them to use it, then force everybody to use properiaty software,
> couse it's easier for windows users...
>
> AJF/WarX
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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body:
On 9/29/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think we all recognise that there is a problem with access, but I do
> not think that the solution to this problem is the use of non-free
> formats. The most important reason for this is that I'm not sure we
> could be considered to be delivering "free content" if it is delivered
> in a patent-laden format.
>

Why not?  If files are offered in a commonly-playable format, alongside a
free unencumbered format, we have the best of both worlds.  We both deliver
"free content" as well as deliver content in a format useful to our users.

I think that so long as we insist that the storage of data has to happen in
a free format, and that there must always be a way to get the highest
quality version of material possible in the same free format, we should have
the freedom to offer it in other, less pure but more useful formats.

I guess my main point is that as long as we satisfy the core requirement
(free content), our next guidance should be usability and our users in
general.  And not some theoretical spread of open formats, in general,
usability be damned.  I guarantee you that most users have no clue what a
codec is, and no amount of explanation and instruction will get the point
across.  A single "play" button in the middle of the screen will.

-ilya haykinson
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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category Intersections - some early testing

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
>
> Showing rows 0 - 15 (16 total, Query took 0.3316 sec)
> SQL query: SELECT cl_sortkey, count( * ) AS catcount
> FROM `categorylinks`
> WHERE `cl_to` = 'Fantasy_films'
> OR `cl_to` = 'Disney_films '
> GROUP BY cl_sortkey
> HAVING catcount =2
> LIMIT 0 , 30

I thought I had mentioned before (maybe not to you) that this query is
unnecessarily inefficient (because it scans both categories completely).
Why do you use this adventurous approach when there is a much simpler
and more obvious one, which also happens to be faster?

SELECT c.cl_from FROM categorylinks c WHERE c.cl_from IN (
	SELECT c2.cl_from FROM categorylinks c2
	WHERE c2.cl_to='Fantasy_films'
) AND c.cl_to='Disney_films'


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of Gileki
	wikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
Hoi,
I have fixed the entry in WiktionaryZ for Gilaki; The enty in Gilaki is now
using the Arab script. The name of a language has nothing to do with how the
language is pronounced in the original language or transliterated from the
original language. If it were, my language would not be called Dutch and
Finnish would be Suomi.

The English Wikipedia article was renamed from Gilaki to Gileki and the
content of the article is still about Gilaki. Given that Wikipedia is not
about "original research", it should be named as is usual ie Gilaki.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 9/29/06, M Rastgaar <rastgaar at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you all for your emails,
>
>   1- I have proposed Gileki . Me and other 4 editors are Native Giek. I
> just added (N) to their IDs
>   2- The phonetic of this language is Gil?ki. In English, it is called
> Gileki and in French Gilaki. Ethnologe calls it Gilaki. This means that
> Ethnologe is not showing the correct pronanciation of Gileki.
>   3- Eventhough I had been asked to help to untangle the discrepancy
> ralted to the name of this language in WiktionaryZ, eventually I had to
> change every "Gileki" to "Gilaki", otherwise I have not been able to edit
> it. I think it is a quick wrap up but not necessarily the best and
> considering solution.
>   4- I am sure that this language is not the only one tha has the problem
> of difference between Ethnologe scripts and its phonetic. I will comply with
> whatever is your policy.
>   5- The first word in Gileki wiktionaryZ is in Roman scripts, because It
> was there when I first saw this page. So I assumed it is the WiktionaryZ
> format.
>
>   Thanks
>   Have agreat time
>
>   Rastgaar
>
>
>
> GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   Hoi,
> There are several projects where there are groups fighting each other
> because their project was envisioned to be only about one specific
> orthography or script. It is in my opinion much better to solve these
> issues
> first and be sure that there will be no such fight in the future.
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> On 9/29/06, Tim Starling wrote:
> >
> > GerardM wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > Many people are in favour of adding Gilaki to the list of languages..
> > There
> > > is one issue outstanding as far as I am concerned. At WiktionaryZ the
> > Babel
> > > templates are in an Arabic script.. The first Gilaki word however is
> in
> > both
> > > the Latin and this Arabic script.
> > >
> > > Another issue is that the language is called Gilaki and only Wikipedia
> > calls
> > > it Gileki ..
> > >
> > > It would be nice to have these issues resolved first..
> >
> > Couldn't we create it first and resolve the issues later? Unless you are
> > suggesting that the existence of these issues implies that the proposers
> > don't know anything about the language, I don't see any problem with
> > changing either the default text direction or the language name after
> the
> > wiki is created.
> >
> > -- Tim Starling
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Talk is cheap. Use Yahoo! Messenger to make PC-to-Phone calls.  Great
> rates starting at 1?/min.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
geni napisa?(a):
> On 9/29/06, ?ukasz Garczewski <tor at oak.pl> wrote:
>> That would be an issue for controversial companies. Most are not
>> controversial. I assume they know about NPOV and expect to have a
>> neutral article which people will actually *read* (as opposed to the
>> marketing gibberish they have on their homepage).
>
> You relise a fair number of things deleted as copyvios are direct
> coppies of companies "marketing gibberish"?

Context is everything. Marketing gibberish is only marketing gibberish
when it's on a corporate website. On Wikipedia, however, marketing
gibberish becomes an encyclopedic article. Magic. ;)

--
TOR


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 29/09/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> You mean WP:LIVING, I presume. Cool. One for WP:BIO wouldn't hurt, though.

So it wouldn't :-)

> Precisely because Wikipedia articles about living people can affect the
> subject's life, how about we have some sort of "presumption in favour of
> non-notability" for living bios? That is, if an AfD offered no consensus, then
> it would be deleted, rather than kept as at present.

Not sure ... something about that looks like a quick hack that doesn't
naturally flow from the content policies. OTOH whether defaulting to
keep does is a good question that I'm sure no-one on this list has
anything to say about.

- d.


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 9/29/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> That all said, I just checked the source HTML and see that references
> have 'class="reference"' in the <sup> tags. I suspect a very simple
> stylesheet change is all that's needed, not something that would trouble
> programmers.

A crude form would be:

.reference {
   display: none;
}

.references {
   display: none;
}

This isn't perfect, since it leaves a "Notes" header in place in
articles that have it; but it should suffice for the people who
*really* don't like footnotes.

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> This would be covered by CSD a7 for the most part.
> Afd. In theory prod/CSD should take care of most of it. Problem is
> that figureing out the notibility or whatever of companies is a pain
> in the neck since most of us don't have a vast amount of experence in
> that area.

Yes. The problem is *not* one susceptible to a new rule, because the
problem is not the failure of present rules. The problem is keeping up
with the firehose of crap and not risking doing something really
stupid. Brad, this needs more thought than just adding another rule.

- d.


body:
On 29/09/06, David Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> Phil Sandifer wrote:

> > Baloney. MoS is a hellhole of process - exactly what Good Articles
> > were made to get around. Good Articles need to be pretty darn good -
> > not perfectly adhere to an absurd bit of process that grew
> > organically in a manner similar to kudzu.

> Er... if Good Articles were meant to get around MoS then why is citation
> of sources one of the Good Article criteria?

Because it failed in its attempt to be a lightweight parallel process.

- d.


from_name: Stephen Streater

body:
On 29 Sep 2006, at 10:04, Peter Jacobi wrote:

> In the unlikely case anyone interested has missed it: There
> are some troubles re mandatory in-line citing and science
> articles.

> For an example of the amount of in-line cites requested see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Special_relativity&diff=78107405&oldid=77881051

This level of citing is ridiculous. A theory should
be cited, not every individual statement of the theory.

Some of these articles refer to degree level science.
The layman will not understand them without several
years of study. Adding a few cites won't help this.

OTOH, in [[Mathematics]], there are some sweeping
historical statements which could do with being
cited, and I have no problem with this.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
Two arguments are frequently made which I think have no merit.

1) "It interferes with readability of the articles." Sure it does,
but that's a technical issue, and _if we wanted solutions_ we could
deal with it through tehnical means.  We could define better visual
apparatus for references. One of the examples I keep pointing to is
Laura Hillenbrand's book, "Seabiscuit: An American Legend," not
because it's the only book that uses this style but because it is an
extremely readable bestseller. It is densely cited, but there is not
a single mark within the text. Instead, the references are placed at
the end. They are indicated by chapter, page number, _and phrase_.

This would require modifications to work with Wikipedia, but that can
be discussed.

Wikipedia has a unique _requirement_ for very dense references,
_denser_ than those found in research papers or nonfiction books, so
it is not surprising that traditional solutions are not perfect for
Wikipedia, and that we will need to think of better approaches.

2) "If it appears in numerous textbooks it does not need a citation."
This is silly. The problem is that there is no way the reader or
anybody else can tell the difference between a sentence which lacks a
reference _because somebody has checked_ to make sure that it appears
in numerous textbooks, and a sentence which lacks a reference
because_ someone just typed it in off the top of their head_. They
look the same.

Even if someone goes over an article with a fine-toothed comb today
and has made sure that none of the unreferenced material needs
references, without any sort of markup apparatus there's no way
anyone can tell a week later which portions of the text have been
reviewed.

In other words, if we don't drop something into the article to leave
a breadcrumb trail to where the fact was found, then any work we do
in fact-checking will be wasted effort because it will be obsolete a
week later. We need some kind of marker to where the fact was found.
And the marker needs to be readily visible... at least to those
interested in seeing it... so that anyone can see how carefully the
article has been fact-checked and _which facts in it_ have been checked.

Finally, which is easier to do: check to make sure that a fact is
contained in _three_ textbooks and say "good, it doesn't need a
reference" and not put one in? or check to make sure it's in ''one''
textbook and cite the source?

I sometimes think that at least some people who object to citations
do so because what they really want is to _establish themselves as
authorities_ through social interaction with other page editors. That
is, they want their Wikipedian colleagues to recognize _them_ as
reliable sources, and agree that any fact inserted by
[[User:Pantomath]] does not need a citation because everyone agrees
that User:Pantomath knows everything.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

references:
<s7lah2pihqs0vqiecpaifbaphj43urt5a5@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140609230946g1506a024g26e2447a3c584abb@mail.gmail.com>
	<47683e960609241202h58eebc8fua913fdc8802ae10c@mail.gmail.com>
	<ef754g$jmb$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fbad4e140609252350s7644b094hff6edc5ab124865f@mail.gmail.com>
	<451B9BCC.5020400@wikia.com>
	<38a7bf7c0609281122k32a08d25yebdae4fbfd3c29bf@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:

> On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> So, the current situation is that
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
>>
>> contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and
>> unverifiable paragraph:
>

> I think that using a school website for additional descriptive
> information
> of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.

I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's
view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

body:
On 29/09/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> On 28 Sep 2006, at 19:22, George Herbert wrote:
> > On 9/28/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> >> So, the current situation is that
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_%28town%29%2C_New_York
> >> contains the following completely out-of-context and unverified and
> >> unverifiable paragraph:

> > I think that using a school website for additional descriptive
> > information
> > of the nature of the tidbits above is eminently reasonable.

> I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's
> view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.

The reader will be interested in a summary of what the school thinks
about itself. I don't see how that's not relevant to a useful article.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. The problem is *not* one susceptible to a new rule, because the
> problem is not the failure of present rules. The problem is keeping up
> with the firehose of crap and not risking doing something really
> stupid. Brad, this needs more thought than just adding another rule.

Make it impossible to create orphan articles.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Process wonkery

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

Stephen Streater wrote:
> I disagree. Wikipedia is not about an organisation's
> view of itself, but the view of a disinterested observer.

Yeah, but this idea wouldn't involve using the school's own website to
verify the organisation's POV assertions of itself (e.g. 'one of the
most popular schools in the country') but for more mundane, relatively
uncontested facts (e.g. 'at least one of the child's parents must be an
adherent of the school's religion'). We do this already for corporations
- - for example citing the company's official website as a source to
confirm who the CEO is.

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

iD8DBQFFHY4Rg8fvtQYQevcRAjf+AKCXd9nYV1d7sFOTwga7PFpOsnyblwCglMZA
HY5m0zyMsrp0ssxuvD/4E/8=
=dSFn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Yes. The problem is *not* one susceptible to a new rule, because the
> > problem is not the failure of present rules. The problem is keeping up
> > with the firehose of crap and not risking doing something really
> > stupid. Brad, this needs more thought than just adding another rule.

> Make it impossible to create orphan articles.

"Sorry, you can't have your article unless you apply *this* magic
trick we mention on a page you didn't read, did you."

Bites the newbies badly, and doesn't stop editors of bad faith for a
second. Rules can't cure malice.

- d.


body:
On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Sorry, you can't have your article unless you apply *this* magic
> trick we mention on a page you didn't read, did you."
>

you don't get that becuase the only way to get to a page that allows
you to create a new page is to click a redlink.

> Bites the newbies badly, and doesn't stop editors of bad faith for a
> second. Rules can't cure malice.

You can't create an article that no one else wants without editing an
existing article that someone might care about.

--
geni


body:
2006/9/29, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>:

> I don't recall any bid including signed sponsorship contracts; so in every case
> sponsorship was in some way "not fully secure".   Sponsorship was also only
> one of many factors in the decisions (and conspiracy theories aside,
> it never seemed
> like the most important one).

That's really funny, 'cause noone has been able to bring some
believable reason for this choice. So:
*Taipei has not been choosen cause it was in Asia
*Taipei has not been choosen cause it had some strange sponsorship
Then, why has Taipei been choosen? For the funny weather in summer, rain season?

> > Should we deny that sj said Taipei was chosen 'cause "in the end they
> > had the most surplus sponsorship, in fact"?
>
> Out of context.  Taipei was not chosen "because" of sponsorship, at
> least that was not the
> deciding factor for me, though (see above) that was one of the factors
> considered
> for every bid.
>
> The above quote (I did not say 'because') was in response to the claim
> that Turin had full sponsorship, unlike other bids; when in fact it
> was not the only bid with full sponsorship (and in some ways that bid
> had less sponsorship than Taipei's; cf. breakfasts).  Again, beyond
> noting the bids for which all major costs were covered, the specifics
> of sponsorship amount or surplus was not a deciding factor in the
> discussion.
>

Context:

set 25 02:19:35 metasj	the result this year was uncertain even in the
last days; and the discussion was about the quality of each aspect of
the bids
set 25 02:19:54 metasj	taipei also managed to get everything paid for,
with institutional support...
set 25 02:20:05 AlisonW	so did we
set 25 02:20:11 AlisonW	so did Torino
set 25 02:20:12 metasj	(in the end they had the most surplus
sponsorship, in fact)

> > Should we deny that this decision caused a rift and quite a fight
> > between the components of the jury?
>
> It's funny, it caused a rift a day and a half after the decision,
> after a lot of emotional comments from the community; it did not
> during the jury discussion.
>
> -- SJ

Excuse me sir, it caused a rift THE NIGHT the decision was made. Or
are you saying that the decision has been took before september 25?

Gatto Nero


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of
	Gilekiwikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
Tim, I linked you to an external list compiled (largely) by others
which confirms my list.

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

On 29/09/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Excuse me?
> >
> > On 29/09/06, philip sampson <sampsonphilip at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> STOP !
>
> I think he meant to say that maybe you could have spent a bit more time
> thinking about your messages before you posted them. There's no rush. Then
> maybe one post would have been enough, rather than three.
>
> Anyway, I would rather have a list drawn up, or at least checked, by someone
> other than Mark. In my experience, following Mark's advice on language
> matters can annoy a lot of people.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Robth

body:
On 9/29/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia has a unique _requirement_ for very dense references,
> _denser_ than those found in research papers or nonfiction books, so
> it is not surprising that traditional solutions are not perfect for
> Wikipedia, and that we will need to think of better approaches.
>
> 2) "If it appears in numerous textbooks it does not need a citation."
> This is silly. The problem is that there is no way the reader or
> anybody else can tell the difference between a sentence which lacks a
> reference _because somebody has checked_ to make sure that it appears
> in numerous textbooks, and a sentence which lacks a reference
> because_ someone just typed it in off the top of their head_. They
> look the same.

Yes, yes, yes.  Our articles need to come in with a chip on their shoulders,
as it were.  There is no external reason to believe that what it says resembles
the truth, no author or organization claiming responsibility for the text. The
article needs to make a case for the information it presents being
accurate. Don't
just state facts, show the reader how they can confirm the accuracy of the
statements.  Trusting a Wikipedia article requres a leap of faith; we want to
minimize the distance of that leap.

--
Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Gileki wikipedia is waiting for a provider to
	getstarted

body:
"Mohammad Rastgaar" wrote:
> Hello,
>
>  Gileki language has been supported by many, and there are some
> organizations which want to promote the Gileki wiki once it get started. I
> have contacted few providers but did not get any response. Does any body
> know how I can find a provider to work on this case?
>
>
>  thanks,
>  Rastgaar

A provider?? You should start writing the articles for the Gileki wiki on
the incubator wiki  ( http://incubator.wikimedia.org ) until a proper wiki
is set up.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
David Russell wrote

>It's not as if it is a brand
> new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been
> around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no
> surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.

This ignores the actual history and debate around most policies: 'you mean we have to do A?'; 'No no, dear boy, it's just to stop B. I mean look at X and what has happened to the articles in contentious area P that you never look at.' 'I see, so I just get on and occasionally try and upgrade a few older articles that really do need help.' 'Just so, dear boy, and your fear that we shall all be writing limping prose spattered with footnotes is quite  unfounded.'

So one turns one's back and gets on with the actual business of adding one of many thousand pages that will turn a red link blue. Only to find that suddenly filling a much-needed gap in the references is somehow an issue.

Anyone here see a slight contradiction between having 100K featured articles, and having pedants running riot demanding citations we can reasonably do without?

Charles

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


body:
On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "Sorry, you can't have your article unless you apply *this* magic
> > trick we mention on a page you didn't read, did you."

> you don't get that becuase the only way to get to a page that allows
> you to create a new page is to click a redlink.
> You can't create an article that no one else wants without editing an
> existing article that someone might care about.

Or adding a link to an existing article.

You seem to be assuming the marketers of ill faith will be too thick
to apply the same procedure to create an article that an editor of
good faith would.

Could it be that there is no technical trick that will stop a marketer
of ill faith without stopping editors and newbies of good faith the
same or worse?

Think!

- d.


body:
On 29/09/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> David Russell wrote

> >It's not as if it is a brand
> > new guideline that may be under dispute or unknown - WP:CITE has been
> > around since 2002, if some editors decided to ignore it then it's no
> > surprise that others objected to their work being elevated to GA status.

> This ignores the actual history and debate around most policies: 'you mean we have to do A?'; 'No no, dear boy, it's just to stop B. I mean look at X and what has happened to the articles in contentious area P that you never look at.' 'I see, so I just get on and occasionally try and upgrade a few older articles that really do need help.' 'Just so, dear boy, and your fear that we shall all be writing limping prose spattered with footnotes is quite  unfounded.'
> So one turns one's back and gets on with the actual business of adding one of many thousand pages that will turn a red link blue. Only to find that suddenly filling a much-needed gap in the references is somehow an issue.
> Anyone here see a slight contradiction between having 100K featured articles,

Featured-quality articles (don't assume the FAC process).

>and having pedants running riot demanding citations we can reasonably
do without?

Indeed. I wrote an [[WP:PRO|essay]] about this. Feel like applying
some of the ideas in it? Give the problematic process marks on the
good process and bad process scales therein. Should anyone protest, it
is after all just an essay and explicitly disclaims guideline status,
so you would be applying this because you thought it was a good idea
(were you to apply it).

- d.


body:
On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Or adding a link to an existing article.
>
> You seem to be assuming the marketers of ill faith will be too thick
> to apply the same procedure to create an article that an editor of
> good faith would.
>

As soon as you add a link to an existing article you are more likely
to be noticed by a wikipedian who knows the area. Ever look at how
many prod, speedies and ADFs are orphans?

> Could it be that there is no technical trick that will stop a marketer
> of ill faith without stopping editors and newbies of good faith the
> same or worse?
>
> Think!

Just because someone is acting in good faith it doesn't mean that they
are doing something that we want them to do. There are various tricks
(marketers appear to be rather found of our no comercial use lisence
option on images for example) which could be used to target marketers
but then it gets complex.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsing database dumps

body:
"Mark Clements" wrote:
> As a separate, but related question, why is the namespace not given as
> part
> of the page information?
>
> e.g.
>    <title>Help:Contents</title>
>    <namespace>12</namespace>
>    <pagetitle>Contents</pagetitle>
>
> Surely this would be more useful when it comes to wider application?
>
> - Mark Clements (HappyDog)

I'd add it there as <title ns="12">Help:Contents</title>  (undefined
parameter meaning 'old xml version', not main namespace)
Giving title, namespace and pagetitle is redundant and should be avoided. It
can be several Mb for uncompressed dumps.


body:
On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> As soon as you add a link to an existing article you are more likely
> to be noticed by a wikipedian who knows the area. Ever look at how
> many prod, speedies and ADFs are orphans?

It'd be quite a major move to have to close off new articles to that
extent just because of marketers.

> Just because someone is acting in good faith it doesn't mean that they
> are doing something that we want them to do.

I spent 1.5 hours this afternoon talking to a journalist. About 20
mins of that was him complaining at length that the bureaucracy is too
damned intimidating for newcomers as it is. (I proceeded to more or
less reiterate [[:en:Wikipedia:Process is important]], which I'm sure
those of you who consider me a hack'n'slash enemy of process would
find most amusing.)

I'd suggest that if we want better behaviour from newbies, we need to
make things suck less for the good ones (like this guy) - the crap
newbies will not be stoppable by any force of clue. You watch.

And remember: most text appears to be written by newcomers and
occasional editors, not the regulars. (Numbers not firm on this one
per AaronSw, but I understand others are checking his work.)

> There are various tricks
> (marketers appear to be rather found of our no comercial use lisence
> option on images for example) which could be used to target marketers
> but then it gets complex.

See, that's the sort of thing we're good at. Be open to input from
all, even if a tweaked vandal-checking bot puts it in a patrolling
admin's "#redirect [[round file]]" list.

- d.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

body:
On 29 Sep 2006 at 09:43, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> I was struck by Seth's account of how he "strongly argued the
> case against myself" at AFD.  I suspect that a biographical
> article's subject tends to carry significant but paradoxical
> undue weight at AFD, in two contradictory directions.  Subjects
> who argue that they are notable and that their articles should be
> kept are obviously vain self-promoters, so their articles should
> obviously be deleted.  But subjects who argue that their articles
> should be deleted are obviously trying to hide something (or, at
> least, to unjustly influence the free flow of information), so
> their articles should obviously be kept.

Yeah... reverse psychology would seem to be a productive way of
getting what you want from an AFD, whether it be "keep" or "delete",
if you have the smarts to argue strenuously for the *opposite*
position to the one you really want, and do it as obnoxiously as
possible.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [WikiJA-l] Korean servers to be shuffled: ja, ko,
 ms, th Wikipedias moving

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Just a heads-up; we're planning to move the backend hosting for
>> Japanese, Korean, Malay, and Thai Wikipedias from our Korean server
>> cluster (yaseo) back to the main servers in Florida (pmtpa) later this
>> week.
>
> We'll start at about 18:00 UTC Friday evening (1am Thailand, 2am
> Malaysia, 3am Japan and Korea). It will take a few hours to dump the
> databases, copy them, and re-import them, but if everything goes
> smoothly we hope to have these wikis back to read-write sometime late
> Saturday morning local time.
>
> There will also be a brief read-only period for most of our other wikis
> when we switch database servers during the import. That should last only
> a few minutes, and will not affect en.wikipedia.org (which is on a
> different database server). It should be some time in late evening or
> night European time.

The move is complete. With a better suggestion from Tim Starling, we were able
to reduce the read-only time to a few minutes for the general issues and about
an hour on the wikis actually being moved.

Please let us know about any unresolved problems or issues, of course.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [WikiJA-l] Korean servers to be shuffled: ja, ko,
 ms, th Wikipedias moving


body:
On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd be quite a major move to have to close off new articles to that
> extent just because of marketers.

We shut off article creation for anons because of one media circus. If
you recall the prevent orphan creation was the alturnative I sugested
at that point. It has a lot of benifits. Afd, prod, speedy, all filled
with orphans. It also means we are more likely to get a robust index.
Articles that are orphans are not part of the community of articles.

>
> I spent 1.5 hours this afternoon talking to a journalist. About 20
> mins of that was him complaining at length that the bureaucracy is too
> damned intimidating for newcomers as it is. (I proceeded to more or
> less reiterate [[:en:Wikipedia:Process is important]], which I'm sure
> those of you who consider me a hack'n'slash enemy of process would
> find most amusing.)

Not really. It's because it is important that process and policy and
guidelines should not exist lightly. If process doesn't matter and IAR
is to be the order of the day it matters little how much we have.

>
> I'd suggest that if we want better behaviour from newbies, we need to
> make things suck less for the good ones (like this guy) - the crap
> newbies will not be stoppable by any force of clue. You watch.
>

My proposal would effect everyone. Newbies less so because with luck
they would not even thing of doing what they are being prevented from
doing.

> And remember: most text appears to be written by newcomers and
> occasional editors, not the regulars. (Numbers not firm on this one
> per AaronSw, but I understand others are checking his work.)
>

But how much of this text is added in the form of new articles and how
much is added to existing articles.

> See, that's the sort of thing we're good at. Be open to input from
> all, even if a tweaked vandal-checking bot puts it in a patrolling
> admin's "#redirect [[round file]]" list.

Problem is that there isn't much else you can do. Unwikified, linking
to a site that contains the article title in the url and created by a
one off user (and not linking to myspace). But that could apply to so
many things.

--
geni


body:
On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > It'd be quite a major move to have to close off new articles to that
> > extent just because of marketers.

> We shut off article creation for anons because of one media circus. If
> you recall the prevent orphan creation was the alturnative I sugested
> at that point. It has a lot of benifits. Afd, prod, speedy, all filled
> with orphans. It also means we are more likely to get a robust index.
> Articles that are orphans are not part of the community of articles.

True. It would still be a drastic move.

> > I spent 1.5 hours this afternoon talking to a journalist. About 20
> > mins of that was him complaining at length that the bureaucracy is too
> > damned intimidating for newcomers as it is. (I proceeded to more or
> > less reiterate [[:en:Wikipedia:Process is important]], which I'm sure
> > those of you who consider me a hack'n'slash enemy of process would
> > find most amusing.)

> Not really. It's because it is important that process and policy and
> guidelines should not exist lightly. If process doesn't matter and IAR
> is to be the order of the day it matters little how much we have.

IAR doesn't mean "do whatever damn fool idea pops into your head" any
more than "Anyone can edit!" is an invitation to marketers to spam us.

> > I'd suggest that if we want better behaviour from newbies, we need to
> > make things suck less for the good ones (like this guy) - the crap
> > newbies will not be stoppable by any force of clue. You watch.

> My proposal would effect everyone. Newbies less so because with luck
> they would not even thing of doing what they are being prevented from
> doing.

With luck?

> > And remember: most text appears to be written by newcomers and
> > occasional editors, not the regulars. (Numbers not firm on this one
> > per AaronSw, but I understand others are checking his work.)

> But how much of this text is added in the form of new articles and how
> much is added to existing articles.

I can tell you, I'm eagerly awaiting the

> > See, that's the sort of thing we're good at. Be open to input from
> > all, even if a tweaked vandal-checking bot puts it in a patrolling
> > admin's "#redirect [[round file]]" list.

> Problem is that there isn't much else you can do. Unwikified, linking
> to a site that contains the article title in the url and created by a
> one off user (and not linking to myspace). But that could apply to so
> many things.

So? Linkless articles and orphans are easily added to a round-file
list. It's not quite like they hit 'save', think it saved and it
disappeared, but it's that with a delay.

- d.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
> 2) "If it appears in numerous textbooks it does not need a citation."
> This is silly. The problem is that there is no way the reader or
> anybody else can tell the difference between a sentence which lacks a
> reference _because somebody has checked_ to make sure that it appears
> in numerous textbooks, and a sentence which lacks a reference
> because_ someone just typed it in off the top of their head_. They
> look the same.
>

They certainly don't look the same, unless the person "reviewing" the
article utterly lacks any competence to review the article, in which
case they should kindly refrain from doing so.  Anyone who has even very
basic competence knows what is an uncontroversial statement that appears
in numerous textbooks in their field.

I don't agree with the expert-centric approach Larry Sangers advocates,
but we don't have to have only people who have *no* idea what they're
doing editing our articles either.

-Mark


body:
Robth wrote:
> What citations do is massively simplify the process of verifying any
> given statement.  If a statement is not specifically cited, it could,
> for all the reader knows, come from anywhere in any of the books used
> as references, which, on most articles, would be a large amount of
> material to go through looking for confirmation of one specific
> statement.

In the case in question, though, only a handful of short articles were
cited, so this isn't an issue.

-Mark


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-30

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

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

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play. We
	needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
[snip]
> Finally, my opinion of such "alternative" and "embedding options" for videos
> is that it must be up to the user. So we wouldn't embed into our web a java
> applet nor a flash player (ugh!) to show it, but give them a box
> "Here there's XXXX.ogg {video|sound} You can [[media:download it]],
> [[play it on your broser]] (needs xyz plugin) or
> [[play it with flash]] <sup>[[Help:flash|help]]</sup>."

It's funny...

I added a java (GCJ compatible) audio player on enwiki a while back
and I've been mostly unable to get people to even comment it (although
it has been used by tens of thousands)...

It makes me sad to see this thread where so many people are willing to
expend energy talking about how we need to compromise our commitment
to free content in free formats when I can't even get people to help
out with simple free solutions which don't require much compromise.

I guess it's just another example of the meta-pedian illness of talk
over action, and that I probably should just ignore this thread...

But I do want to point out, for the record:

1) The majority of video formats used on the web require some degree
of installation, although some of them can be autodownloaded into
Windows Media Player or use a popular client which many users
installed long ago (Real, for example). Our instructions (on enwiki at
least) for installing video support are effectively a single step, and
if there is room for improvement... {{sofixit}}

2) I'm not aware of any computer make thats ships with flash
installed. So all these flash video sites do require an install..
although it's one install providing for many forms of webcruft. :)

3) There are free software java codecs for both Ogg/Theora and
Ogg/Vorbis. I haven't worked too much with the Theora plugin because
it was a bit buggy under GCJ six months ago, but the java vorbis codec
is very mature and robust.  We couldn't ask for a better framework
from which to build a video player (and there is even a SOC project to
deeply integrate this support with MediaWiki).


body:
On 9/30/06, Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why not?  If files are offered in a commonly-playable format, alongside a
> free unencumbered format, we have the best of both worlds.  We both deliver
> "free content" as well as deliver content in a format useful to our users.

Why don't we just offer something that is both easy to use and which
does not lock the content in encumbered formats?

Ease of use is something that everyone should have, not just people
who can afford commercial propritary systems.

The effort spend arguing that we should use propritary software X
could be better applied into finding a better solution that doesn't
require such a compromise.


body:
It's fine to me having automated ogg2flash for clients, similar to
what we already do providing "adapted" images.

I don't really know how youtube and such webs internally
handle videos, but i think the most important bit is not if they
provide the proper "software" (being flash) but that users
choose to play it and it plays.
If i choose on commons to play a file, i need to wait until my
browser downloads the whole file to get Videolan started.

On the other hand, if i ask videolan to open it, it can start playing it
almost inmediatly, as the same program is getting and playing.
It's the streaming part.
A flash ogg player (what we ideally'd need, though probably
deserves its own project) must be able to show as it receives,
otherwise it will be "too slow". And it is able to do it as it is embedded
on the browser.
Optionally making the urls with another pseudo-protocol such that
the browser passes the url to the target app instead of a downloaded file
would also be nice, even if users had to install another app for it.
(there's no need for another app, should bug the mozilla guys with this...)

Finally, my opinion of such "alternative" and "embedding options" for videos
is that it must be up to the user. So we wouldn't embed into our web a java
applet nor a flash player (ugh!) to show it, but give them a box
"Here there's XXXX.ogg {video|sound} You can [[media:download it]],
[[play it on your broser]] (needs xyz plugin) or
[[play it with flash]] <sup>[[Help:flash|help]]</sup>."

The "play it" links would activate javascript in order to convert the box
into the
proper code to insert it (yes, we're adding another requeriment: javascript
but
i really doubt un-javascriptted users being able to use an activex flash
plugin, they're
fine with the download link). Our users are smart enough to try each of it
until find
one suitable for their system. And they can even install them (most of them
probably
won't care on what plugin they install, the internet is full of sites
installing crap...).

But from the smart user, we give the user the options; our web is
fast-to-download
(extra stuff is on demand), and we don't ask for extra plugins (how's that
plugins
are required to see wikipedia?? / what has launched the java VM??).

Note 1: Yes, we still need the 'magic solution'.
Note 2: I have recently found some ogg audio files made with audacity that
not all ogg players
correctly played (none or part of it). Any comment?


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] needed: Greg's study showing most en: articles have
 one	or two editors

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Needed quickly for a journalist - a link to Greg Maxwell's study
> showing most en: articles have only one or two editors and aren't at
> all controversial. The journalist was very interested and wants some
> numbers. I said I'd email him a link asap.
>
>

Found it. Sent offlist.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
M Rastgaar wrote:

>Thank you all for your emails,
>
>  1- I have proposed Gileki . Me and other 4 editors are Native Giek. I just added (N) to their IDs
>  2- The phonetic of this language is GilƏki. In English, it is called Gileki and in French Gilaki. Ethnologe calls it Gilaki. This means that Ethnologe is not showing the correct pronanciation of Gileki.
>  3- Eventhough I had been asked to help to untangle the discrepancy ralted to the name of this language in WiktionaryZ, eventually I had to change every "Gileki" to "Gilaki", otherwise I have not been able to edit it. I think it is a quick wrap up but not necessarily the best and considering solution.
>
It would make sense if we all had the same name.  I noticed the the WP
article gives the name in Farsi rather than in the language itself.  In
any event, vowels in Arabic script languages are not always written.
When giving the English name of something in another language correct
pronunciation is really a secondary consideration.

Ec


body:
I think we can do without Novial in the same way we can do without
Klingon.  The arguments in its favour seem to give it an importance that
is not matched with reality.  The inclusion of Novial words in the
English Wiktionary does not imply that a full project for this language
is warranted.  The Wikibook about Novial quite properly explains the
language; it does nothing to establish that there is anything other than
translations or books about Novial written about the language.  Who is
the audience for this language?

I would even question the legitimacy of many of the votes in support of
the language.

Ec

Mark Williamson wrote:

>Yes, including:
>
>-Wu (code wuu, native name ??)
>-Mazandarani (code mzn, native name ????????)
>-Newari (code new, native name ????? ????)
>-Lak (code lbe, native name ?????)
>-Sammarinese/Emilian-Romagnol (code eml, native name Emili?)
>-Buryat (code bxr, native name ??????)
>-Upper Sorbian (code hsb, native name Hornjoserbsce)
>-Novial (code nov, native name Novial)
>-Pangasinan (code pag, native name Pangasinan)
>-Austrobavarian (code bar, native name Boarisch)
>-Bishnupriya Manipuri (code bpy, native name ???? ???/????????????? ???????)
>-Dimli-Zazaki (code diq, native name Zazaki)
>-Zeelandic (code zea, native name Ze?uws)
>-Tarantino (code roa-tara, native name Tarand?ne)
>-Zamboageno (code cbk-zam, native name Chavacano de Zamboanga)
>-Classical Chinese/Literary Chinese (code zh-classical, native name ???)
>-North Russian (code ru-sib, native name ????????? / ???????????????)
>-Min Dong (code cdo, native name M?ng-d??ng-ng??)
>
>It may seem like a lot, but in fact each of them has many contributors
>and native speakers (in the case of Novial and Literary Chinese,
>fluent writers) waiting to begin building them, and they have been
>approved by a majority of voters. Most of them have quickly-growing
>test wikipedias already.
>
>For more information, you can see if you like
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
>although that page is rather long and cumbersome now.
>
>Mark
>
>On 29/09/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>>SJ wrote:
>>
>>
>>>48 supports, no opposition, 5 actively interested editors including a
>>>native speaker.  It certainly has the requisite # of interested
>>>parties.  Wikitech-l is perhaps more likely to grab the attention of a
>>>developer who can set up the new wiki... where did you send previous
>>>emails about this?
>>>
>>>
>>I think it's probably about time that we created a batch of new wikis. Are
>>there any other suitable candidates that we can do at the same time?
>>
>>-- Tim Starling
>>


from_name: phoebe ayers

body:
FYI, that lovely logo was designed by Ben Yates (tlogmer) for Wikimania
2006, and the red and blue colors were chosen for 2006 out of a whole
spectrum of possibilities. AFAIK there's not been talk of making it "the
official logo" for future Wikimanias, though there's no reason why it
couldn't be -- it seemed to print and scale quite well, and I heard quite a
bit of unsolicited praise for it :)

best,
phoebe

On 9/30/06, Hsiang-Tai Chien <htchien1225 at yahoo.com.tw> wrote:
>
> I wish to let you know that the logo is the official logo of Wikimania,
> which you can find in
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_(blue-red).svg
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Wikimania_%28blue-red%29.svg>
>
> H.T.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org ] On Behalf Of
> rfrangi at libero.it
> Sent: Saturday, September 30, 2006 6:40 PM
> To: foundation-l
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
>
> Yes. That Logo.
>
> Snowdog
>
> > Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid"
> > you mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the
> > left-under corner of Torino's banner?
> >
> > THD
>
>


from_name: Gatto Nero

body:
2006/9/30, THD <theodoranian at gmail.com>:
> >
> >
> > Should we deny that a bid has been choosen that copied even the idea
> > of a logo from the Torino's bid? Even.
> >
>
>
> Excuse me. Could you clarify what is the "logo from the Torino's bid" you
> mentioned? Do you mean the WM with a green W and red M on the left-under
> corner of Torino's banner?
>
> THD

How can we say...? Maybe the rectangular logo with a black band on the
bottom, the logo of wikimania on the left, the choose to write
"Wikimania2007Taipei" just like "Wikimania2007Torino" (and you were
not obliged to write it in that way: you could write "Taipei 2007" and
"Wikimania" in a lot of different way).
Surely you have not copied the idea of different photos combined, yes,
but all this copying thing is so evident...
I'm not saying that you were not allowed to copy or to take
inspiration from the other bids.
I just find it sad to make it in this way.
Personally, knowing that there were a bid with a logo sooooo strangely
similar to mine (that put it on the page before of me), I had tried to
work more and invent a logo totally different from the other.
It's not that difficult to understand.

Gatto Nero


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] ParserFunctions hook

body:
Mike O wrote:
> I tried to load the ParserFunctions hooks by Tim Starling in Mediawiki
> 1.7 but it doesn't work. I put the required line at the bottom of
> LocalSettings.php file and copied the two necessary scripts to the
> extensions subdir, But when I then load a page that would use these hooks
> (such as India) nothing happens to process the {{#if statements. Anybody
> know what I'm doing wrong?
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions

I'll try to diagnose this offlist.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: ROSC Volunteer

subject: [Foundation-l] Special Education

body:
Does Wiki have a page on Special Education?

  I can't not find one on Wikimedia. If someone can start the article or give me the URL, that would be great!

  Thanks!

---------------------------------
 All-new Yahoo! Mail - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.


subject: [Foundation-l] Special Education


subject: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
geni wrote:
> On 9/29/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 29/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "Sorry, you can't have your article unless you apply *this* magic
>> trick we mention on a page you didn't read, did you."
>>
>
> you don't get that becuase the only way to get to a page that allows
> you to create a new page is to click a redlink.
>
>> Bites the newbies badly, and doesn't stop editors of bad faith for a
>> second. Rules can't cure malice.
>
> You can't create an article that no one else wants without editing an
> existing article that someone might care about.
>

Wouldn't it be better to apply the filter retroactively, i.e. to delete
orphan articles with human confirmation some time after they are created? If
we put in profanity filters to prevent bad page saves, Wikipedia would
suddenly be overwhelmed with 5H1t, if you understand my meaning. But the
current system of IRC notification and semi-automated reversion is strangely
effective.

Let's say for argument's sake that maybe there is a way to automatically
recognise PR fluff, even if the best method is not by orphan status as geni
has suggested. Then you can automate the process of deleting it. Display a
big list of articles with a column of checkboxes, click "select all", select
"CSD a7" from a drop-down list, click "delete". Wham, all gone. Keep the
filters covert as much as possible, e.g. on the client side.

These kinds of features are the things we're trying to encourage with what
I've been calling "hybrid" development, i.e. simultaneous development on the
client and server. Get the client-side developers interested, ask them what
they need on the server side in support, and we server-side developers will
see if we can incorporate it into an API or extension.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

body:
FWIW, what strikes me ( well, lightly taps me ), about this whole
thing with Seth here, is that if he didn't speak fluent geek (with a
decided recieved high USENET tone), most of wikipedians wouldn't give
him the time of day.

Tell me anyone would be arguing a Fields medal winner is non-notable?
A Grammy winner? Even that day-time soap award I cann never remember
the name of...?

Personally I think a little bit of ignore goes a long way here. Tell
Seth to divest himself of the EFF pioneer award, and come back again,
methinks.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro

Candidate for Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation in the
September 2006 elections.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play.
 We	needYouTube-style Flash streaming video.

body:
Gregory Maxwell schreef:

> It's funny...
>
> I added a java (GCJ compatible) audio player on enwiki a while back
> and I've been mostly unable to get people to even comment it (although
> it has been used by tens of thousands)...

Yes, indeed. There is no need to convert the files to other formats or
use flash or so.

For Ogg Vorbis there is;
http://www.jcraft.com/jorbis/

And with that you can play a Ogg Vorbis file without a player at the
client side.

The software is free to download. I can not be very difficult to inclued
this in the wiki so that you have the option to listen to by a webbased
player. A user good in templates can probably do that in in a couple of
minutes. The only thing that really needs to be done is install JOrbis
on the WMF server so that not an external hosted service must be used
for this.

Also for Ogg Theora is there a java-player that can be used;
http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be