body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I have an email addres, wp at davidgerard.co.uk, set up for en:wp press
> queries. Of course, it gets used as a sort of OTRS replacement.
>
> One query I've gotten a bit lately is "may we reuse this text?" or
> "may we reuse this image?" I email back explaining how the original
> contributor owns it and there will be a license attached, which may be
> easy or hard to keep to the terms of.
>
> There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
> contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
> people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
> page anywhere else that serves this purpose?
>

Well, there's the OTRS templates:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_image
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_text

(No, they're not live)

> (Let's assume for the moment I have little interest in diving
> headfirst into Commons politics.)
>

Politics is silly.

--
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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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] Commons content reuse how-to?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I have an email addres, wp at davidgerard.co.uk, set up for en:wp press
> queries. Of course, it gets used as a sort of OTRS replacement.
>
> One query I've gotten a bit lately is "may we reuse this text?" or
> "may we reuse this image?" I email back explaining how the original
> contributor owns it and there will be a license attached, which may be
> easy or hard to keep to the terms of.
>
> There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
> contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
> people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
> page anywhere else that serves this purpose?
>

Well, there's the OTRS templates:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_image
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_text

(No, they're not live)

> (Let's assume for the moment I have little interest in diving
> headfirst into Commons politics.)
>

Politics is silly.

--
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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list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

body:
As ever I am in profound sympathy with Anthere's analyses, if only
because I believe that she is one whose views have been shaped by the
principles that underlay the development of Wikipedia, and not by the
vagaries that accompany unrestricted growth.

Jimbo has been the inspiration without which this process would never
have succeded.  His tireless role as spokesfather has resulted in a
popularity for Wikipedia that knows few rivals. and all that growth has
evolved from a few fundamental concepts into a daughter of whom he can
be justly proud.  This precocious daughter has grown faster than anyone
might have expected; she has been exposed to ideas that were not put
there by her father.  That makes it more difficult for a father to
protect that daughter to the extent that he believes she should be.  As
the long list of suitors lines up at the door the uncertainty grows.
The best solution then will be to trust her to carry on with the values
that he taught her, and that she will someday let him hold the
grandchildren.

I do not view Jimbo as a person captivated by details, or as one who
could sit at length unravelling legal minutiae, or as a person who could
dwell on the niceties that distinguish between "help and support" and
"manage and govern".  Other people do.  That range of visions goes from
the seemingly anarchic view that a few principles stand above all else
to the other extreme that attaches priority to a well run and well
organized machinery.  Together they must find the neutral point that
works best with all the appropriate checks and balances.  Such a theme
and such a dynamic has been at the heart of all the major internal
disputes that Wikipedia has faced.

Governance for the kind of entity that has built up brings us into a lot
of uncharted territory.  There are no guidelines for such a massive
loosely connected organism that spans almost the entire world.  Imposing
a paternalistic corporate structure is not going to do much for assuring
and trusting that it can evolve an appropriate form of governance.

Ec

Anthere wrote:

>There is a discussion on the french wikipedia, precisely on this topic.
>I invite you to have a look here :
>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo
>
>One of our contributor raised the issue over what the bylaws say
>"The goal of the Wikimedia foundation is to develop and maintain open
>content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those
>projects to the public free of charge."
>
>And what Jimbo says
>"Of course the foundation governs and manages the projects."
>--Jimbo Wales 07:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
>
>As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation
>to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
>By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help
>set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of
>the content created. Not govern. Not manage.
>
>Some editors try to push us in "governing the project", and I can not
>blame them. When decisions are tough to take collectively, it is quite
>easy to ask a small group of people to take the responsability of making
>a decision.
>But imho, pretty often, this should not be the job of the Foundation.
>
>The problem with this is that one of the board members (Jimbo) not only
>is on the board, but also the foundator and for the english wikipedia
>the visionary/leader guy. Quite naturally, Jimbo has a lot of influence
>on how things are organised and on policies. This influence is much more
>limited in non english languages. The enwikipedia is governed by Jimbo
>because it accepts to be governed. But it is not governed by the board.
>
>Seems like just "chatting" to you ? Seems not important ?
>
>Then, give a thought to editors trying to publish a wikijunior on
>internet (activity plainly allowed by our licence), to see it removed
>within 24 hours after announcement on this very list.
>
>Then, just quietly think of the future you want (before pushing the
>validation button on the board vote).
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: John Ky

subject: [Wikitech-l] Readable and easy to remember passwords

body:
Hi Brion,

Yes, I would prefer that solution the most.  Will it make its way into
the software?

-John

On 9/2/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Really it shouldn't be generating passwords ever. :)
>
> In the cases where it does generate a password, this should be changed to a
> temporary code that lets you get in just far enough to set your own password.
>
> Among other things, this would ensure that people don't have all their account
> passwords sitting in their e-mail archives for any opportunist to type
> "password" into their Gmail search...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search index update status

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Currently the build process is running on maurus since last night; it's
> currently about 1/3 through enwiki and doesn't appear to have spewed any errors.
> I'll check in on it again this evening and if things look ok I'll set up the
> synchronization process.

I had to downgrade IKVM (Java-.net adaptor used for reading the XML dump into
the search indexer) because some problems seem to have slipped into Classpath's
XML parser, and wikis containing 4-byte UTF8 chars were failing.

For reference; IKVM 0.22 works, 0.30 doesn't. Somewhere in the middle is
probably the cutoff...

Started the test build again, I'll look in on it in the morning...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer

body:
On 2 Sep 2006, at 20:00, Fastfission wrote:

> On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions'
>> images.
>
> Overrule it? No way. It's just that I find it a little silly that we
> can just change "with permission" images to "fair use" and pretend
> that changes much. In practice, we're still using it with permission,
> as much as we pretend not to care about being given that permission.
> I'm not sure whether labeling it "with permission" or "fair use" is
> more helpful to re-users in figuring out what they can use or not.
>
> This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict --
> Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the
> non-commercial/with-permissions problem. But in the end, Wikipedia is
> still using said images non-commercially and with-permission, no
> matter how sternly it says, "Honestly, we'd be using it even if we
> weren't completely within the terms of this license."
>
>> Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images
>> that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will
>> give us permission to display them on their website.
>
> Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.

A significant number of people will be willing to release
images for free if asked.

Perhaps in this case the owner could release an internet
resolution image with the presumption that someone who
wanted to print it would want much higher resolution and
would still pay for this.

And of course he may lose no income from internet
images anyway in practice.


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Recent changes page improvements to help catch
	spam & vandalism

body:
Jeff Carr wrote:
> I use mediawiki on a lot of sites which have minimal traffic.
>
> It's very time consuming to go click through things on the "Recent
> Changes" page to check for spam & vandalism.
>
> What would make it easier to quickly detect is a "Recent Changes diff
> page". I'm thinking something that just shows the wiki diff for
> several pages at once.
>
> For example on this page:
> http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Documentation&diff=prev&oldid=31100
>
> Now just imagine that after the diff part on that page, instead of
> having: "Revision as of 18:36, 19 June 2006" and then the page itself,
> it would just have the next recent diff.
>
> This would make it much easier to review lots of recent changes
> (50/100/250 at a time).
>
> It would also be useful if this activity could be coordinated.
> "Trusted" or formally registered users could mark the anonymous
> submissions as reviewed. The the time of good people wouldn't be
> wasted on duplicate effort looking for bad stuff.

There is a setting for turning on "patrolled edits"
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Patrolled_edit>. For Wikimedia
wikis, you can file a bug at MediaZilla asking for the developers to
turn it on for administrators. Several Wikimedia wikis have already done
this.

> An option to email a daily or weekly diff formatted with the pretty
> mediawiki html output would also be a great feature.
>
> Any hints as to how I might go about trying to implement this?
>
> Maybe: includes/RecentChange.php & includes/DifferenceEngine.php ?

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and external
	links

body:
Anyone interested in doing for citations what the stub-sorting project
did for stubs?

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com>
Date: 02-Sep-2006 22:39
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and external links
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
can move it to the WP space.

On 9/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> > I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> > fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> > subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> > to do the thinking.
>
> Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> cites, for example
>
> <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
>
> So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and external links

body:
On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
> wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
> collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
> Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
> can move it to the WP space.

I've forwarded this to wikien-l as well.

- d.


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] My irreverant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
stevertigo wrote:
> --- ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>
>>> Do you have a source for that?
>> WTF?
>
> When you make a sweeping generalised claim about how people actually behave and
> perceieve things as if it were a fact, particularly as this applies to a particular
> case which should be easily supported or not - its fair to ask for a citation.
> In this case you were making some claim about how peoples eyeballs worked and that
> this automatically invalidated everything else I said.

   Actually it was not my claim.  The post you were replying too was
made by someone else.  The WTF was that, not being in an article common
sense and personal experienc should suffice for such an obvious statment.

>
>>  You seem to be confusing editors with casual readers.  Most of the
>> features you point at are for editors.  People who will take the time to
>> get use to the conventions and terms used.  Some people just want to
>> find the right article.
>
> No, Im not. I also read lots, and in the course of reading I make little changes, and
> sometimes more major ones. Im more of a gnome who looks at wiki from the point of view
> of readability.
>

    You are on this list, which means you are more involved in wikipedia
than most of the people who read it.  Given the numbers (17th most
visited site for the month) I think it is reasonable to say that people
who have never edited a single article are the majority of readers.
Everyone else is just at an editor at a different stage of advancement.

> So I disagree that my suggestion is a bad one, just because people here say so, and
> particularly because all of the arguments against seem to rest on this notion that 1)
> its fine the way it is 2) its confusing 3) its against policy.
>
> 3 - DIS policy is borked and needs correcting. Peppering articles in the sciences with
> hatnotes referencing pop culture (especially particular bits that in themselves dont
> merit an article on their own) is called LINKSPAM and falls under SPAM and not DIS.
> 2 - People arent stupid, unless they are taught to act that way.
> 1 - It would probably be fine if every single case were handled by a disambiguation,
> and
>     not left to discretion. If that was consistent, then we wouldnt see any "for the
>     b-side by the Spice Girls" links.
>
> -sv.

   It has been a wile since I looked but my if memory serves all the
print encyclopedias do it the same way we currently do it.  Only they
have fewer articles so they don't have the "embarrassment" that you seem
to be feeling.

SKL


from_name: Anthere

body:
There is a discussion on the french wikipedia, precisely on this topic.
I invite you to have a look here :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo

It is in english, translated in french (or the reverse).

One of our contributor raised the issue over what the bylaws say
"The goal of the Wikimedia foundation is to develop and maintain open
content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those
projects to the public free of charge."

And what Jimbo says
"Of course the foundation governs and manages the projects."
--Jimbo Wales 07:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation
to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help
set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of
the content created. Not govern. Not manage.

Some editors try to push us in "governing the project", and I can not
blame them. When decisions are tough to take collectively, it is quite
easy to ask a small group of people to take the responsability of making
a decision.
But imho, pretty often, this should not be the job of the Foundation.

The problem with this is that one of the board members (Jimbo) not only
is on the board, but also the foundator and for the english wikipedia
the visionary/leader guy. Quite naturally, Jimbo has a lot of influence
on how things are organised and on policies. This influence is much more
limited in non english languages. The enwikipedia is governed by Jimbo
because it accepts to be governed. But it is not governed by the board.

Seems like just "chatting" to you ? Seems not important ?

Then, give a thought to editors trying to publish a wikijunior on
internet (activity plainly allowed by our licence), to see it removed
within 24 hours after announcement on this very list.

Then, just quietly think of the future you want (before pushing the
validation button on the board vote).

Anthere

Delirium wrote:
> Jan Kulveit wrote:
>
>>just a link-post, but IMO highly interesting
>>http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
>>
>>often various examples how various free / opensource groups
>>organize their matters are posted here: This is a post from
>>one of NetBSD founders describing what problems led the once
>>prospective project into irrelevance. (management, culture,
>>Foundation going wrong,..)
>>
>
>
> I find this part especially interesting, on the need for a strong
> separation between a Foundation that provides infrastructure and a
> community that manages the project:
>
> 6) The existing NetBSD Foundation must be disbanded, and replaced with
>    an organization that fulfills its original purpose: to merely handle
>    administrative issues, and not to manage day-to-day affairs.  The
>    extra committees, which mostly do nothing, must be disbanded -- they
>    serve only to obfuscate things.  Everything else must revert to the
>    historically separate entity, the NetBSD Project, to be managed based
>    on technical merits.  There must be no perceived glamour in
>    participating in the Foundation; it must be composed of people doing
>    it because they are dedicated and want to help the project.
>
>
> -Mark


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-03

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: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
> site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
> blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
> Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362

Ah when this first came out we were somewaht worried. now less so but
the threat was real.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Elections official: James and Jon okay

body:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:election_officials2

Resolved that: The Board appoints James Forrester and Jon Harald S?by as
additional Assistant Election Officials. This appointment is aiming to
reduce the current workload of Election Officials.

Approved by Michael, Angela and Anthere


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] CategoryTree extension

body:
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:fbad4e140609020051r4496dd07l82bff42bd0c213b3 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 02/09/06, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> > In case you haven't noticed, Duesentrieb's category tree extension is
live
> > on all Wikimedia wikis. The subcategory list on category pages is
displayed
> > as a tree by default. You can click "show as list" to show it in the old
> > display format. This additionally sets a cookie so that further requests
> > will show a list by default (except pages cached as a tree on the
client).
>
>
> That's fantastic! Is 'expand all' a reasonable future feature? Perhaps
> with a limit, in case someone cleverly clicks "expand all" on
> [[:en:Category:Fundamental]].
>

Unfortunately, this will have problems with cyclic categories.  If you have
CatA > CatB > CatA then you will end up with infinite recursion.  This Is A
Bad Thing (tm).

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and
	external links

body:
On 03/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Anyone interested in doing for citations what the stub-sorting project
> > did for stubs?

> You mean create an arcane bureaucracy that tries to efface anything it
> considers "unapproved" and screams bloody murder if anybody uses
> "their" terminology without asking for permission?
> Somehow this doesn't strike me as a good idea.

At least they're not editing the article text!

- d.


body:
On 02/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There is a discussion on the french wikipedia, precisely on this topic.
> I invite you to have a look here :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo

So, how long before fr: forks? And, looking at the legal threats in
that discussion, will they try to take the 'Wikipedia' trademark with
them?

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] CategoryTree extension

references:
<edb34e$3c9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fbad4e140609020051r4496dd07l82bff42bd0c213b3@mail.gmail.com>
	<edd4rt$78h$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 03/09/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:fbad4e140609020051r4496dd07l82bff42bd0c213b3 at mail.gmail.com...
> > On 02/09/06, Tim Starling
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> > > In case you haven't noticed, Duesentrieb's category tree extension is live

> > That's fantastic! Is 'expand all' a reasonable future feature? Perhaps
> > with a limit, in case someone cleverly clicks "expand all" on
> > [[:en:Category:Fundamental]].

> Unfortunately, this will have problems with cyclic categories.  If you have
> CatA > CatB > CatA then you will end up with infinite recursion.  This Is A
> Bad Thing (tm).

Yeah, it'd need a loop detector, or at least a depth detector. If not
both. SMOP!

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 03/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> > Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:

> Ah when this first came out we were somewaht worried. now less so but
> the threat was real.

It's jawdropping how much software is dumb enough to treat data as
programs. In 1999, I was still able to tell customers the [[Goodtimes
virus]] was impossible, as no-one could dream of making an email
application that would run an email as a program just like that ...

- d.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
> site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
> blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
> Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362
>
>
> --
> == Dan ==

Ahh, come on, that shit is funny! They're loons! It's funny to see
them implode and spew all that misguided hatred, and realise that they
all probably lead, well.... not the most exciting lives. Schadenfreude
and pity, as good a recipe for a smug feeling of superiority as
anything. And I like feeling smug. It's nice :D

BTW, my favorite quote:

"And speaking only for myself, I believe Microsoft to be one of the
few organizations in the world, along with Wal-Mart and the Bush
Administration, to actually be doing more damage to international
culture than Wikipedia."

Al-Qeada, anyone? No? So you're saying that Microsoft and Wikipedia is
the reason I can't listen to my iPod on an airplane. Damn you, Steve
Ballmer, damn you all to hell!

--Oskar

PS. It really is quite funny, I'm serious about that (or am I?)


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus is dying...

body:
>On 9/1/06, Angela wrote:
>> On 9/1/06, Cheney Shill wrote:
>> > User voting, whether by poll or by discussion until one side stops
>> > discussing (aka, into the ground), is original research. So, yes,
>> > consensus applied this way should die.
>>
>> Perhaps consensus polling should be tried instead.
>>
>> http://icannwiki.org/Consensus_Polling
>>
>Perhaps we should stop calling it consensus in those places where
>there is no desire to find a solution everyone can agree upon.

The main problem is that it is still original research.  That's fine for a group of experts deciding whether to call Pluto a planet, call it something else, or to simply describe it without any name.  In terms of the encyclopedia, it leaves the decision to the editors, not the sources.

I do like the Yes/Not Yet concept.  I wish that a definitive yes/not yet threshold would be defined in determining whether something is sourced (and therefore can be included in the article) or not yet adequately sourced (and therefore left out).

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.net/index.php?title=User:Pro-Lick

--spam may follow--

---------------------------------
Get your email and more, right on the  new Yahoo.com


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 9/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> The external links are a good point, but they say our images are infected
> with viruses and trojans. I don't think that's possible as any program
> altered to have an image extension would be rejecte by the upload page,
> right?

If you upload an image with file magic that doesn't match its
extension you get an ominous warning on the image page that the
content might be infectious. ... this is likely what they are talking
about.

And yes, its possible that a user could manage to execute such a file
if it were actually harmful.


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
can move it to the WP space.

On 9/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> > I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> > fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> > subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> > to do the thinking.
>
> Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> cites, for example
>
> <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
>
> So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>


body:
The draft is coming along; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Draicone/WikiProject_Reference_Help
for current progress and feel free to edit.

On 9/3/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
> wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
> collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
> Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
> can move it to the WP space.
>
> On 9/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > Matt Brown wrote:
> > > I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> > > fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> > > subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> > > to do the thinking.
> >
> > Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> > Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> > over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> > cites, for example
> >
> > <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
> >
> > So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> > in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> > available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> > sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> > references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> > 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> > collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
>


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Subject:  More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 2 Sep 2006 at 22:44, "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name> wrote:

> I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
> site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
> blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
> Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362

Now somebody on that thread has "responded" to my message here,
saying that I should be ashamed of myself.

I guess it's time for them to mention that I've mentioned that
they've mentioned what I've said about what they said about
Wikipedia.  Can we try for a few more levels of recursion?

--
== 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/


body:
Well, the plan for templates containing citation data would involve
all templates being substed, so users could freely edit data after it
had been added.

In terms of a bibliographic project where users consults others for
fact checking, I'm not so sure thats viable. There are 'ask an expert'
sites out there which serve the purpose, but Wikipedia would not
really suit such a project and the flexibility would be limited - that
said, I could develop such a site in php for the Wikipedia community
should the need arise (on the toolserver, anyone?).

On 9/3/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>
> >Matt Brown wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> >>fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> >>subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> >>to do the thinking.
> >>
> >>
> >Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> >Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> >over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> >cites, for example
> >
> ><ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
> >
> >So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> >in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> >available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> >sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> >references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> >1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> >collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
> >
> There's something to be said in favour of a bibliographic project.
> Wikipedians could register what they have, in case someone wants details
> looked up.  Maybe the software could even put up a red flag when the
> owner hasn't put up a single edit in the last three months essentially
> telling others that they are wasting their time asking him.
>
> I do have seriously increasing concerns about the trend toward excessive
> templates.  They tend to reflect an obsession toward uniformity that can
> obscure the basic values of simplicity where anyone to edit.  The
> counter-argument may well be, "Go ahead and add the data; we can fix the
> format later."  That still makes it difficult for a non-techie to
> correct data that he considers incorrect.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Maury Markowitz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Very minor technical suggestions

body:
Where do I post about bugs in the MediaWiki software?

The bug I have noticed is that when you click on "my contributions" it does
not turn bold, unlike the other items in the "menu bar". Yes, piquane, I
know.

Maury


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] [Election] Notice on duplicate votes

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:

>geni wrote:
>
>
>>Are you doing anything about deleted edits?
>>
>>
>"Doing anything"? Deleted edits do not count towards a user's edit count
>as far as Special:Boardvote cares; note that moves count as edits in
>this regard nowadays.
>
When someone's qualification to vote is so thin that it depends on this
his time would be better spent doing more editing.

Ec


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Stephen Streater wrote:
> On 2 Sep 2006, at 20:00, Fastfission wrote:
>
>
>> On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions'
>>> images.
>>>
>>>
[snip]
>>> Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images
>>> that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will
>>> give us permission to display them on their website.
>>>
>> Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.
>>
>
> A significant number of people will be willing to release
> images for free if asked.
>
> Perhaps in this case the owner could release an internet
> resolution image with the presumption that someone who
> wanted to print it would want much higher resolution and
> would still pay for this.
>
> And of course he may lose no income from internet
> images anyway in practice.
>
>

How about encouraging the use of suitable boilerplate wording for use in
the image copyright notice, that says something like:

"This low resolution version of a copyrighted image is used under by
permission from its copyright owner, Example Corporation, who have made
it available for use under the GFDL: please see [[WP:GFDL]] for license
terms."

"High-resolution versions of this image are available for use under
commercial license terms directly from the copyright owner; please
contact Example Corporation for more details, at
http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code."

generated by:

{{subst:low-res under GFDL|Example
Corporation|http://www.example.com/image-licencing/example-image-reference-code}}

-- Neil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Hoi,
>There are several projects that want to achieve similar aims.
>Wikiauthors, Wikicat are two of them. The initial approach of these two
>is different; one starts of with scientific publications and wants to
>start with disambiguation of authors the other wants to start with
>bibliographic information from the position of librarians. The cool
>thing is, that the people representing these two approaches are talking
>and, that it is feasible to merge many if not all of the ideas for both
>projects. Both projects have people behind them to make this work,
>combined the result will provide us with a central bibliography that is
>based on Wikidata functionality.
>
>There are two things to understand; first the database should be usable
>for all projects and it needs to be usable in many languages and second
>after having set up such a project it still needs integration in the
>Wikipedia and other projects.
>
Sure, but trial and error is also important.  That's often how we find
out what works and what doesn't.

Ec


body:
I suppose its not really correct to liken the cause to what stub
sorting did for stubs, but surely there'd be interest from those
familiar with ref tags and cite templates.

On 9/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 03/09/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Anyone interested in doing for citations what the stub-sorting project
> > > did for stubs?
>
> > You mean create an arcane bureaucracy that tries to efface anything it
> > considers "unapproved" and screams bloody murder if anybody uses
> > "their" terminology without asking for permission?
> > Somehow this doesn't strike me as a good idea.
>
>
> At least they're not editing the article text!
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
The external links are a good point, but they say our images are infected
with viruses and trojans. I don't think that's possible as any program
altered to have an image extension would be rejecte by the upload page,
right?

Mgm


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO

body:
--- THD <theodoranian at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thank you!
>
> THD

Again - a big thanks to everybody who said such kind things! But I really have not done nearly as
much as I hoped I could as CFO. That is why I'm so happy that the foundation has hired somebody
that can do everything that needs to be done.

I'm not leaving; right now I'm helping to organize the fundraising committee.

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 03/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
>>>Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.
>>>
>>>
>>I think... governing and managing have a significant different sens in
>>english and french.
>>
>>
>Apart from all else, they're related but different languages. So the
>words "govern" and "manage" may appear to mean the same thing in both
>(adjusting to each other's spelling conventions) but not. So if the
>French readers are reading the words "governing" and "managing" and
>thinking they have the French meaning when they don't, then all they
>need to do is ASSUME BAD FAITH and then we get pages like that one.
>
>Note that errors of translation combine badly with assumption of bad
>faith. Wikimedia has had blowups recently caused by precisely this.
>And I blame the groundless assumptions of bad faith.
>
You miss the point completely.  Even if Anthere, as a very involved and
very plugged in person, can be convinced that the wording "govern and
manage" is an innocent variation of what is really intended, she is
still only one person.  You belittle the problem by relegating it to
"spelling conventions".  Are you suggesting that all the French who,
because of the inextricable connection between language and culture, see
the wording as more sinister than you believe it to be must be assuming
bad faith?  It puts you an a par with those Englishman who believe that
the only way you can get the French to understand what you say is to
speak louder.

Even in a strictly English language context the terms "govern and
manage" are not as benign as you would have us believe.  Asserting that
words mean exactly what you intend them to mean may work in Wonderland.
In a multicultural environment we do better to seek other words which
reflect our common intent, because each person and each culture has his
or its own preconceptions about the meaning of a word.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>maru dubshinki wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/3/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I think Wikipedia really needs a central bibliography,
>>>because there are many books who are used in more than
>>>one article, some in dozens or even more.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>................
>>
>>If a book is being used for dozens of articles, doesn't that show that
>>it's really important and so should have at least a stub for it? Using
>>articles would seem to fulfill most of your desiderata.
>>
>>~maru
>>
>>
>Hoi,
>When a book is used quite often, it may mean that someone is pushing a
>particular point of view.. When a book is relevant you want to annotate
>that book. But it does not follow that it needs a Wikipedia article of
>it's own.
>
Whether a bibliographic listing implies a whole Wikipedia article is
another matter.  I don't see that as the intent.  The frequent use of a
work could be that it reflects its status as a standard textbook for one
of the sciences, and references to several such textbooks may show that
an idea is widespread.  From a Wiktionary perspective frequent quotes of
Shakespeare's works are excellent evidence that the word in question was
in use during his lifetime.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Francis Tyers wrote:

>I completely agree that a centralised repository of references/
>citations would be desirable, not only would we be able to see
>which books are used where, but possibly (if people think it
>wise) to see who has which books/articles.
>
>For example, I have many journal articles that I have photocopied
>from the British Library (my department paid for it) that I would
>be happy to look up information in for people. They can't be
>distributed because of copyright reasons, but if someone comes along,
>sees that I've cited it and asks me a question about the paper, I
>would have no problem in looking it up etc.
>
Taking that a step further:  User A has made a statement, and claims
that it is supported by a specific reference.  User B questions the
claim and its source.  User C has registered his ownership of the source
in the Central bibliography.  User B can then ask User C to check the
claim to see if it is really in that source, or to see if it has been
misquoted or, more frequently, misunderstood.

Ec


body:
That makes sense, but WikiCite, while having the right idea, seems
rather overcomplicated. I really doubt Wikipedia needs such a flexible
and powerful citation checking system right now, we should really wait
for stable versioning.

On 9/3/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Lovely.  I hope this can someday contribute to a cross-project
> wikicite initiative as well; added linkns to [[m:Wikicite]] to the
> page.
>
> SJ
>
> On 9/2/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The draft is coming along; see
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Draicone/WikiProject_Reference_Help
> > for current progress and feel free to edit.
> >
> > On 9/3/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
> > > wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
> > > collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
> > > Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
> > > can move it to the WP space.
> > >
> > > On 9/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > > > Matt Brown wrote:
> > > > > I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> > > > > fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> > > > > subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> > > > > to do the thinking.
> > > >
> > > > Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> > > > Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> > > > over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> > > > cites, for example
> > > >
> > > > <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
> > > >
> > > > So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> > > > in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> > > > available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> > > > sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> > > > references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> > > > 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> > > > collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > 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
> >
>
>
> --
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Security note for extension authors

body:
A couple quick things which I noticed in CategoryTree yesterday and want to make
sure people are aware of in general:

First, if you use any global variables, set them first! If a site has PHP's
register_globals option on (not recommended, but sometimes on for compatibility)
it's possible to set arbitrary global variables to string or array-of-string
values from any HTTP request.

So something like this is unsafe:
if ( !isset( $wgCategoryTreeMaxChildren ) ) $wgCategoryTreeMaxChildren = 200;

since it allows the other end of the HTTP connection to pass something like
&wgCategoryTreeMaxChildren=1000000 and flood the server with some request. Other
settings might be more dangerous, such as a command line or SQL fragment.

Instead, just set it directly:
$wgCategoryTreeMaxChildren = 200;

The site admin can customize the setting in LocalSettings.php after the
inclusion of the extension file.

Second, beware of CSS. There are various exciting ways you can abuse it,
including the use of inline JavaScript expressions in Internet Explorer. (It may
also be possible to attach XBL/XUL stuff in Firefox.) This opens up scripting
vulnerabilities and could be used to steal cookies or take over a login session.

The Sanitizer::validateTagAttributes() function is available to whitelist HTML
attributes for a given tag and clean up blacklisted CSS bits. To let
user-supplied CSS style attributes through on your tag, you should run it
through something like this:

$divAttribs = Sanitizer::validateTagAttributes( $argv, 'div' );

You can then either pick out just the style attribute (if present) or pass
through all the attributes that MediaWiki would have allowed on a <div> in wikitext.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> Currently, a book reference is done this way:
>
> <ref>[[Istvan Vasary]] (2005) ''Cumans and Tatars'',
> [[Cambridge University Press]]. ISBN 123546958695,
> page 22</ref>
>
> with a central bibliography, it would be like this;
>
> <book n="Cumans and Tatars" p="22"/>

You could already do this with templates, in the manner along the lines
of what I suggested yesterday;

<ref>{{bibliography/Cumans and Tatars}}, p. 22</ref>

Draicone picked up on my idea and created
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Draicone/WikiProject_Reference_Help to
discuss it further.

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from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
On 9/3/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> I think Wikipedia really needs a central bibliography,
> because there are many books who are used in more than
> one article, some in dozens or even more.
................

If a book is being used for dozens of articles, doesn't that show that
it's really important and so should have at least a stub for it? Using
articles would seem to fulfill most of your desiderata.

~maru


from_name: HeinzJ

subject: [Wikitech-l] no/empty description page for uploaded PDF-Files

body:
When uploading PDF-Files i get no/empty  description page description page.
Uploads are possible. The link to them is working.

Any ideas why?

I use:

* MediaWiki: 1.7.1
* PHP: 5.1.2 (apache2handler)
* MySQL: 5.0.18

thx, heinzJ


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 03/09/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

> Ok, I'll post something to commons-l...

Huh, I thought I was on commons-l and wasn't. Subscribed.

- d.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
>> clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
>> (but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
>> don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
>> licenses we didn't write.
>> Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
>> though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
>> potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
>> requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
>> which aren't?).
>
>
> OK. I've just started:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
>
> Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?
>

Ok, I'll post something to commons-l...

--
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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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
>> clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
>> (but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
>> don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
>> licenses we didn't write.
>> Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
>> though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
>> potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
>> requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
>> which aren't?).
>
>
> OK. I've just started:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
>
> Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?
>

Ok, I'll post something to commons-l...

--
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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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
>> clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
>> (but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
>> don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
>> licenses we didn't write.
>> Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
>> though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
>> potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
>> requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
>> which aren't?).
>
>
> OK. I've just started:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
>
> Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?
>

Ok, I'll post something to commons-l...

--
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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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>> There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
>> clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
>> (but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
>> don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
>> licenses we didn't write.
>> Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
>> though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
>> potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
>> requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
>> which aren't?).
>
>
> OK. I've just started:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
>
> Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?
>

Ok, I'll post something to commons-l...

--
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: geni

body:
On 9/3/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Wikimedians,
> Please note that users can vote only once across all Wikimedia wikis,
> even if they have the technical ability to use the voting system on
> more than one wiki. Multiple votes will be removed by the Election
> Officials.
>
> Sincerely,
> The Election Officials
>
> To translators: please translate this message and put it to your
> Village pump or the equivalent on your wiki. (Village pump is a
> general discussion page on the English Wikipedia). You may want to
> work at meta:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/quick_translation
>
> --
> Kizu Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *

Are you doing anything about deleted edits?

--
geni


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Content reuse howto

body:
Inundated with enquires about how to reuse our content, David Gerad has
started

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

after a short discussion on foundation-l and has asked,

> Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?

--
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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body:
On 03/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
> Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.

There's a bit much "FUCK YOU I WON'T DO WHAT YOU TELL ME!" "Er, I'm
not telling you anything." "I DON'T CARE! FUCK YOU!" to that
discussion Anthere linked.

- d.


body:
On 9/3/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> I'm thinking here for example of cases like the quran quote in the site
> notice of the urdu wikipedia. If the community in a wiki acts against
> the core principles of Wikimedia, for example violates the neutrality,
> it needs someone external to set it right. Of course this is something
> which could also be done by the international community except that this
> is not a body with any authority but a bunch of loosely connected
> individuals with diverse opinions.
>

There are various ways that could be handled from the bottom up.

> And in rare cases, it should be - or the foundation decides to delegate
> these cases to a "Wiki Emergency response team" (WERT ;-) which takes
> care of cases like
> * HELP, all sysops of our Wikipedia are quitting and there is a big
> fight over the ban of an editor!!!

Doing nothing would probably be the best option there. You don't have
nearly enough data to act upon.

> * Why disturb readers of our Wiki with a sitenotice about some
> irrelevant board elections? Let's rather display the football results there

Readers? Tell them about anonnotice.

> * We want to know more about our readers - let's just record every page
> view on an external logfile via the global javascript...

That one falls within the purview of the devs who most people will listen to.

> This team could take over the task individual board members do now: find
> out what's going on, talk to the involved parties, try to moderate
> conflicts and find solutions.

No thank you we've got enough people claiming to act with the
authority of the foundation already.

> Could you be a bit less cryptic here, please, and explain what you are
> refering to?

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior

Someone took a copy to a print on demand publisher who offered it for sale.

--
geni


from_name: ScottL

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 2 Sep 2006 at 22:44, "Daniel R. Tobias" <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
>> site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
>> blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
>> Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>>
>> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362
>
> Now somebody on that thread has "responded" to my message here,
> saying that I should be ashamed of myself.
>
> I guess it's time for them to mention that I've mentioned that
> they've mentioned what I've said about what they said about
> Wikipedia.  Can we try for a few more levels of recursion?
>

My brother plays poker and says that you know you have really got
somewhere when you reach level 7.

SKL


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
geni wrote:
> Are you doing anything about deleted edits?

"Doing anything"? Deleted edits do not count towards a user's edit count
as far as Special:Boardvote cares; note that moves count as edits in
this regard nowadays.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict --
>> Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the
>> non-commercial/with-permissions problem.
>
>
> That's not how I remember it at all. Cite please?
>

It's available at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html - I'll
quote it here just to be sure.

On 19/05/2005, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only
> are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_.  We have
> tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the
> time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Non-commercial_use_only_images
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_used_with_permission
>
> Are the relevant categories.
>
> Examples of images which must be deleted include:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:100_0062.JPG
>
> (This is a standard photo of the Mission District in San Francisco --
> getting a free alternative will be simple.)
>
> and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:167957_7674BoyVerticalBlindsSilhouette.jpg
>
> (This is a non-commercial only image for the purpose of illustrating the
> concept "vertical blinds" -- getting a free alternative will be simple.)
>
> As of today, all *new* images which are "non commercial only" and "with
> permission only" should be deleted on sight.  Older images should go
> through a process of VfD to eliminate them in an orderly fashion, taking
> due account of "fair use".
>
> It is very unfortunate that such images are still being uploaded _new_
> when we have not be happy about them for a long time.  It is not fair to
> contributors who are working on such things, since we have no intention
> to keep them in the long run.
>
> Therefore, these templates should be modified to warn people that these
> images are temporary only and will be deleted soon.
>
> --Jimbo
>

--
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: Steve Bennett

body:
On 9/2/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> There is a difference between if MediaWiki could generate passwords and
> if it should. When there is an engine that generates passwords, this
> same engine could be used to generate passwords for an attack. Choosing
> passwords is the end-users responsibility. It is exactly by choosing a 1
> in stead of an l that a brute force attack becomes slightly more
> problematic.

Heh, check the passwords that most people use, I bet you find they're all
"puppy" and "susie".

Steve


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Translators-l] [Election] Notice on duplicate
	votes

body:
Hi,

On 9/3/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Wikimedians,
> Please note that users can vote only once across all Wikimedia wikis,
> even if they have the technical ability to use the voting system on
> more than one wiki. Multiple votes will be removed by the Election
> Officials.
>

It seems some people haven't read the FAQ... :)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election_FAQ_2006/En#I_have_reached_400_edits_in_several_projects._Can_I_vote_from_each_of_them_.3F

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Anthere wrote:

> As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation
> to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
> By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help
> set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of
> the content created. Not govern. Not manage.

What you mention here are of course the most important tasks of the
foundation. However, my position is a bit different to yours. IMO the
foundation has also the duty to step in as an emergency government in
case the self government of a projects doesn't work. But this should
always be a temporary measure and restricted to single actions.

I'm thinking here for example of cases like the quran quote in the site
notice of the urdu wikipedia. If the community in a wiki acts against
the core principles of Wikimedia, for example violates the neutrality,
it needs someone external to set it right. Of course this is something
which could also be done by the international community except that this
is not a body with any authority but a bunch of loosely connected
individuals with diverse opinions.

> Some editors try to push us in "governing the project", and I can not
> blame them. When decisions are tough to take collectively, it is quite
> easy to ask a small group of people to take the responsability of making
> a decision.
> But imho, pretty often, this should not be the job of the Foundation.

And in rare cases, it should be - or the foundation decides to delegate
these cases to a "Wiki Emergency response team" (WERT ;-) which takes
care of cases like
* HELP, all sysops of our Wikipedia are quitting and there is a big
fight over the ban of an editor!!!
* Why disturb readers of our Wiki with a sitenotice about some
irrelevant board elections? Let's rather display the football results there
* We want to know more about our readers - let's just record every page
view on an external logfile via the global javascript...
* ...

This team could take over the task individual board members do now: find
out what's going on, talk to the involved parties, try to moderate
conflicts and find solutions.

> The problem with this is that one of the board members (Jimbo) not only
> is on the board, but also the foundator and for the english wikipedia
> the visionary/leader guy. Quite naturally, Jimbo has a lot of influence
> on how things are organised and on policies. This influence is much more
> limited in non english languages. The enwikipedia is governed by Jimbo
> because it accepts to be governed. But it is not governed by the board.

good explanation.

> Seems like just "chatting" to you ? Seems not important ?
>
> Then, give a thought to editors trying to publish a wikijunior on
> internet (activity plainly allowed by our licence), to see it removed
> within 24 hours after announcement on this very list.

Could you be a bit less cryptic here, please, and explain what you are
refering to?

greetings,
elian


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
> And what Jimbo says
> "Of course the foundation governs and manages the projects."
> --Jimbo Wales 07:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

This omits significant context from the conversation.  (Ah, the perils
of trying to follow a discussion across multiple wikis, it is not your
fault Anthere.)

I also said, but can't find where, that I think that people are reading
far too much into "governs" and "manages".  I think that, read properly,
there is absolutely no question that the foundation governs and manages
the projects: as always, and this includes Anthere, and everything that
she has supported over the years.

Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.

--Jimbo


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Then, give a thought to editors trying to publish a wikijunior on
> internet (activity plainly allowed by our licence), to see it removed
> within 24 hours after announcement on this very list.

And restored as soon as the license and trademark issues were worked out.

Please do not misrepresent history.

--Jimbo


from_name: Leon Weber

body:
Stephen Bain schrieb:
> On 9/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Heh, check the passwords that most people use, I bet you find they're all
>> "puppy" and "susie".
>>
>
> IIRC, either Brion or Tim did some checking a while ago and found that
> many people did indeed have very short passwords. I can't find the
> message however, it may have had something to do with single sign-in
> stuff.
They shouldn't be able to check this, since passwords are stored as
md5-hashes in the DB, no?
-- Leon


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:

>I suggest that we use the name instead of the ISBN, because
>it can be seen more clearly in the text, when reading the
>wiki-text. Also, there are many books (especially older
>books, but not only), which have no ISBN number and some
>which have many different editions with different ISBNs.
>
>There is still the problem with two books with the same title,
>in which case we need to add the author, too, for disambiguation,
>but I think this problem is less on the kind of books we use for
>reference. Shorter titles are used especially for fiction.
>
I have never been keen on ISBNs either.  In addition to older works that
never had an ISBN in the first place, works with a long history of
different editions can have any number of ISBNs, and at some point it
would be helpful to be able to compare various editions.

Ec


body:
On 03/09/06, Maury Markowitz <maury_markowitz at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Where do I post about bugs in the MediaWiki software?
> The bug I have noticed is that when you click on "my contributions" it does
> not turn bold, unlike the other items in the "menu bar". Yes, piquane, I
> know.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ as well.

- d.


body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation
>>to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
>>By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help
>>set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of
>>the content created. Not govern. Not manage.
>>
>>
>What you mention here are of course the most important tasks of the
>foundation. However, my position is a bit different to yours. IMO the
>foundation has also the duty to step in as an emergency government in
>case the self government of a projects doesn't work. But this should
>always be a temporary measure and restricted to single actions.
>
>I'm thinking here for example of cases like the quran quote in the site
>notice of the urdu wikipedia. If the community in a wiki acts against
>the core principles of Wikimedia, for example violates the neutrality,
>it needs someone external to set it right. Of course this is something
>which could also be done by the international community except that this
>is not a body with any authority but a bunch of loosely connected
>individuals with diverse opinions.
>
The core principles are paramount.  There are times when the Board
should intervene, and a clear policy needs to be established to show
when the Board will intervene and when not.  A discussion on how NPOV
will apply to a specific project does not imply that the project intends
to violate the principle.

>>Some editors try to push us in "governing the project", and I can not
>>blame them. When decisions are tough to take collectively, it is quite
>>easy to ask a small group of people to take the responsability of making
>>a decision.
>>But imho, pretty often, this should not be the job of the Foundation.
>>
>>
>And in rare cases, it should be - or the foundation decides to delegate
>these cases to a "Wiki Emergency response team" (WERT ;-) which takes
>care of cases like
>* HELP, all sysops of our Wikipedia are quitting and there is a big
>fight over the ban of an editor!!!
>
Dealing with emergencies will always be a requirement and hopefully the
"WERT" would be able to review and report back to those who need the
help.  They could then try to resolve the problems based on those
recommendations.  The kind of stagnation that would require Board direct
intervention should be pre-defined.  For the most part the projects need
to take responsibility for their own respective shows, and the Board
needs to restrain the urge to intervene when the project should be
solving its own problems.

>* We want to know more about our readers - let's just record every page
>view on an external logfile via the global javascript...
>
This is more in the nature of technical assistance.  The Board should
still be able to provide that if people are available to do that, and if
providing that help does not cause undue stress on the hardware.

Ec


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 03/09/06, Leon Weber <leon.weber at leonweber.de> wrote:
> They shouldn't be able to check this, since passwords are stored as
> md5-hashes in the DB, no?

I recall coming across a page somewhere where Tim posted a list of all
users who appeared to be using the same password; this was a long time
ago, before salted hashing, I guess...

...your own conclusions draw you shall. :) Incidentally, the page was
blanked, deleted etc. and Brion was not a happy system admin. This is
also no longer possible to determine since we salt password hashes, so
Don't Panic.

Rob Church


subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [16352]
	trunk/phase3/config/index.php

body:
On 03/09/06, greg at svn.leuksman.com <greg at svn.leuksman.com> wrote:
> Revision: 16352
> Author:   greg
> Date:     2006-09-02 18:14:11 -0700 (Sat, 02 Sep 2006)
>
> Log Message:
> -----------
> Make sure LocalSettings.php ends in a newline.

> -               $localSettings = "<" . "?php$endl$local$endl?" . ">";
> +               $localSettings = "<" . "?php$endl$local$endl?" . ">\r\n";

Shouldn't that be a regular Unix newline character, i.e. "\n"? It
makes no major difference, since the line below it forces a
conversion, but it seems odd to me.

Rob Church


body:
On 03/09/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mostly users suspected of being Lir's sockpuppets, not all users.
> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/31/172233

Yes, well, whatever; nobody cares now. Grevious violation of privacy,
etc, etc. slap on wrist - all administered at the time. I mentioned it
as a point of interest.

Rob Church


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>
>>As far as I (as a board member) is concerned, I consider the Foundation
>>to be there to "support" the projects. Absolutely not to govern them.
>>By support, I mean "provide infrastructure", "provide legal frame", help
>>set up collaborations to collect/create content, help distribution of
>>the content created. Not govern. Not manage.
>>
>>
>
>What you mention here are of course the most important tasks of the
>foundation. However, my position is a bit different to yours. IMO the
>foundation has also the duty to step in as an emergency government in
>case the self government of a projects doesn't work. But this should
>always be a temporary measure and restricted to single actions.
>
>I'm thinking here for example of cases like the quran quote in the site
>notice of the urdu wikipedia. If the community in a wiki acts against
>the core principles of Wikimedia, for example violates the neutrality,
>it needs someone external to set it right. Of course this is something
>which could also be done by the international community except that this
>is not a body with any authority but a bunch of loosely connected
>individuals with diverse opinions.
>
>
That sounds reasonable to me.  In some respects this can be viewed more
as "facilitating" than really "governing".  I think it's clear that if
every Wikipedian could speak Urdu and was active at that Wikipedia, the
dispute you mention would never have happened in the first place---the
Wikipedian community as a whole wouldn't be in favor of putting such a
quote up.  However most Wikipedians can speak only a small subset of the
total languages in the world, so there has to be some active
facilitation to ensure that all the different languages' projects are at
least in broad outlines following the goals of the project.

In some languages, like en:, the facilitation needed is minimal---lots
and lots of people speak enough English to at least be able to tell
what's going on and express their opinion if they think it's going
wrongly.  So not only Americans and Britons, but also Germans, Japanese,
Chinese, Indians, etc. can all directly express their opinion about what
en: should be like, and it's basically impossible for some small group
of people to take it in a direction everyone else disagrees in without
someone noticing and pointing it out.  Preventing that from happening on
smaller Wikipedias in lesser-spoken languages requires some more active
oversight, though.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ

body:
Peter Ansell wrote:
> On 31/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This is in response to the somewhat silly English-language press we've
>> had lately. I'll be sending copies of this out to the sources of
>> recent articles on the subject that got it precisely backwards.
>>
>> The following is, I understand, technically accurate, based on text
>> from Amgine, Phillipp Birkin (de:wp), Jimbo and Mathias Schindler (I
>> think), and comcom discussions (press relations being part of that
>> job). Corrections welcomed - you have about five minutes.
>>
>> (and geni, I expect you to ask how this makes the new patrollers' jobs
>> easier - by having what's effectively a feed of new-editor and
>> anonymous edits, is what I was thinking of.)
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>>
>> "Approved" versions on Wikipedia FAQ
>>
>>
>> * What is changing?
>>
>> We want to open up editing without damaging the reader's experience.
>>
>> We want to be more wiki and let editors edit freely, which is where
>> all the good things come from. At present a small percentage of
>> articles (a few hundred out of 1.5 million on the English language
>> Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/) are locked or partially locked
>> from editing. We want to open these up. But Wikipedia is a top 20
>> website (Alexa ratings, no. 17 on 3 month average; no. 15 on 30 August
>> 2006 - http://www.alexa.com/), so we must keep it good for the
>> readers.
>>
>> The new feature will mean that edits from new or anonymous editors
>> will be delayed before being shown to readers - they will see a
>> 'flagged OK' version by default, with a link to the live version. The
>> idea is to enhance the *reading* experience, and free us to enhance
>> the *editing* experience. If vandalism can't be seen by the general
>> public, there will be less motivation to vandalise.
>>
>> Anonymous or new-editor edits will need to be approved by a logged-in
>> editor. Of the thousands of editors on the large Wikipedias, many
>> concentrate on checking revisions and dealing with odd changes and
>> vandalism - this will assist their work and we do not expect new
>> delays.
>>
>> We are also considering a related feature to flag particular versions
>> of articles as being of high quality. This is to a different end: a
>> high-quality finished product. This will likely be tested first on the
>> German language Wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/), which has
>> already had three stable editions released on CD and DVD, which have
>> sold quite well. If the feature works there, it may be used on other
>> language Wikipedias.
>>
>> These features are not finished, so we don't have a lot of fine detail
>> as to how it will all work as yet. But we hope this change will allow
>> us to do things such as open up the George W. Bush article or even the
>> front page itself to full unrestricted editing.
>>
>>
>> * When was this proposed?
>>
>> Jimmy Wales asked for a time-delay feature for casual readers in late
>> 2004; after very fast editing on the Indian Ocean tsunami produced a
>> very high-quality article
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake) very
>> quickly, but with some highly visible vandalism; we've hotly discussed
>> how to achieve stable high-quality editions of Wikipedia since almost
>> the start of the project, in 2001.
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
> What version would new editors be editing if they found an error on a
> page and attempted to edit what they thought was that page?
>
> Semantically I would think they would have to update in turn from the
> latest available version in the database. There could quickly be
> problems with multiple versions of the page branching, and being hard
> to combine, if they were not editing the latest version.
>
> Peter Ansell
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

   My understanding of the proposal and feature is that only one version
of the article is editable.  The Edit this page link is removed and
replaced with "view current version".

SKL


body:
On 03/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
> > Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.

> I think... governing and managing have a significant different sens in
> english and french.

Apart from all else, they're related but different languages. So the
words "govern" and "manage" may appear to mean the same thing in both
(adjusting to each other's spelling conventions) but not. So if the
French readers are reading the words "governing" and "managing" and
thinking they have the French meaning when they don't, then all they
need to do is ASSUME BAD FAITH and then we get pages like that one.

Note that errors of translation combine badly with assumption of bad
faith. Wikimedia has had blowups recently caused by precisely this.
And I blame the groundless assumptions of bad faith.

- d.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on Wikipedia Review, and Brandt, and Seigenthaler

body:
(and doesn't "More on" go well with that site?)

Somebody e-mailed me that I probably shouldn't be giving more
publicity to that silly bunch of losers, but some monitoring of those
boards might be a good idea because some of the content hints at
possible future attacks on Wikipedia.  Here's one where Brandt
recounts his recent attempts to goad Seigenthaler into digging up the
dead horse of the long-corrected defamation against him last year
again:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3347

Apparently, Mr. Seigenthaler has enough good sense to decline to
become a Brandt meatpuppet and do his bidding; Brandt would like him
to do stuff like sue Wikipedia, or else issue a "do-this-or-else"
demand to have his article completely removed (so as to serve as a
precedent that Brandt can then follow), but he has no interest in it.
 However, Brandt seems to think that Seigenthaler is favorable to
launching a new media campaign against Wikipedia which might be able
to pave the way for future legislation and litigation against it.  Or
maybe Seigenthaler is just being polite to Brandt when they converse,
and has no plans to agitate on this issue.  But it's worth watching
for anyway.  When the media decides something is the menace of the
week, like comic books in the 1950s and a whole succession of drug
menaces (from crack to ecstasy to Oxycontin) from the '80s on, they
can pour on excessive hype and prompt legislatures to take unwise
action.
--
== 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: Anthere

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>And what Jimbo says
>>"Of course the foundation governs and manages the projects."
>>--Jimbo Wales 07:54, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
>
>
> This omits significant context from the conversation.  (Ah, the perils
> of trying to follow a discussion across multiple wikis, it is not your
> fault Anthere.)

eh !
But the french page I mentionned
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo) is
quite informative and provides copies of other discussions as well as links.
What I would like to point out rather... is the general impact of such a
sentence. Maybe it makes sense to make it "illegal" to give quotes out
of their context as some jurisdictions seem to do :)

> I also said, but can't find where, that I think that people are reading
> far too much into "governs" and "manages".  I think that, read properly,
> there is absolutely no question that the foundation governs and manages
> the projects: as always, and this includes Anthere, and everything that
> she has supported over the years.
>
> Does it mean that the foundation is involved in every little decision?
> Of course not, but that is not what "governs" and "manages" means.

I think... governing and managing have a significant different sens in
english and french.

I take it you purchased that "fabulous" book Delphine recommanded us ?
International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior from Nancy J. Aldler ?
If not, ask Brad, he got one examplar.
Go and read Part I, chapter 2, from pages 45 to 62 (How do cultural
differences affect organisations ?).
Have a careful look over the part dealing with "worldwide differences in
managerial style". There is a very interesting question: in response to
the statement "the main reason for a hierarchical structure is that
everybody knows who has the authority over whom". Managers from the USA
strongly disagree and believe management is more about organising tasks
and facilitating problem solving around those tasks. In contrast,
managing in France is pretty much related to authority/power. It is even
higher in countries such as Japan (I invite Brad to relate this with the
request from Aphaia for a board approval of elections officials, as
opposed to his own suggestion that it is not the board business).

We may use the same words (managing, governing), but these words do not
have the same sense in my country and in yours. Saying your sense is the
"correct" one, while our sense is the "wrong" one, would be a very wrong
approach. The best you can do is to "realise" that when you say the
Foundation manages the projects (with the idea of organising things and
facilitating things), we read and understand the Foundation has the full
authority over how the projects are run (to a wide extent, even to the
point of details). Which we would generally agree I am sure, is incorrect.

The problem is that whilst "you" and "I" will generally agree on the
concept, you can not expect that people will read "properly" terms which
have different meaning and implications depending on languages.

Anthere

> --Jimbo


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There is a discussion on the french wikipedia, precisely on this topic.
>>I invite you to have a look here :
>>http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Bradipus/Chat_with_Jimbo
>
>
>
> So, how long before fr: forks? And, looking at the legal threats in
> that discussion, will they try to take the 'Wikipedia' trademark with
> them?
>
>
> - d.

Erroneous conclusion.

Jimbo has been most involved in the french projects around 2004, when we
created the french association and had to deal with "arbitration"
issues. That's the moment he had the most "influence" over local
decisions. Before that date, he was basically unknown. Now, he is quite
known, but only through the press.

In my long history in Wikipedia, I have seen the french complains loudly
pretty frequently, the first time ever when Jimbo complained about the
french setting up a different logo (because the logo at that time was
very english centric, which we viewed as unacceptable). I have a very
strong memory of that day, and of Brion getting it right
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/intlwiki-l/2002-June/000451.html).
I remember it VERY well, because that's the very day when I decided to
get involved in international issues.

Someone can express pretty strongly a disagreement, without it
necessarily leading to a fork. However, yes, that should be seen as a
sign of anxiety. I recommand avoiding "fixing the issue" by saying "they
did not understand me well, they should make the effort to really
understand what I mean".

At least, if we want to develop internationally :-)

ant


from_name: Francis Tyers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
In fact, this brings up an interesting point, having <book>
and <article> for specifics (they tend to be long), and then
having <ref> for miscellaneous stuff.

I completely agree that a centralised repository of references/
citations would be desirable, not only would we be able to see
which books are used where, but possibly (if people think it
wise) to see who has which books/articles.

For example, I have many journal articles that I have photocopied
from the British Library (my department paid for it) that I would
be happy to look up information in for people. They can't be
distributed because of copyright reasons, but if someone comes along,
sees that I've cited it and asks me a question about the paper, I
would have no problem in looking it up etc.

Fran

On Sun, 2006-09-03 at 18:09 +0300, Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> I think Wikipedia really needs a central bibliography,
> because there are many books who are used in more than
> one article, some in dozens or even more.
>
> Currently, a book reference is done this way:
>
> <ref>[[Istvan Vasary]] (2005) ''Cumans and Tatars'',
> [[Cambridge University Press]]. ISBN 123546958695,
> page 22</ref>
>
> with a central bibliography, it would be like this;
>
> <book n="Cumans and Tatars" p="22"/>
>
> and the book database would fill in the details in the
> page displayed to the viewer.
>
> I suggest that we use the name instead of the ISBN, because
> it can be seen more clearly in the text, when reading the
> wiki-text. Also, there are many books (especially older
> books, but not only), which have no ISBN number and some
> which have many different editions with different ISBNs.
>
> There is still the problem with two books with the same title,
> in which case we need to add the author, too, for disambiguation,
> but I think this problem is less on the kind of books we use for
> reference. Shorter titles are used especially for fiction.
>
> There could be some benefits for having a central bibliography,
> other than not having to copy-paste the publishing house/ISBN,
> like knowing which articles refer to a certain book.
>
> _______________________________________________
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