from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:
> Users who [emphasize community over encyclopedia-building] need to be
> pointed to [[WP:NOT]]. Users who [advocate encyclopedia-building *only*]
> need to be gently reminded of the value of collaboration and consensus.

With that said, however, I think we all need to remember just how
very powerful and inevitable the community aspects can be.  Nick
wasn't trying to deny them entirely and neither is [[WP:NOT]],
but sometimes, some of our efforts to "quash" certain community
aspects run headlong into that inevitability.  And in particular,
the "value of collaboration and consensus" is only part of the
equation.  Yes, good community values that foster collaboration
and build consensus are important, but those aren't the only
community values that matter -- there's more at stake here;
there are other inevitabilities.

For anyone at all interested in these issues, there's an essay
by [[Clay Shirky]] that I think is required reading.  It's got
the strange and provocative title "A Group Is Its Own Worst
Enemy", and it's at

	http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html

I'm sure plenty of people here have read it, and I'm sure some
disagree with it.  But I think it's very, very apropos, and it's
definitely worth a read, even if you've read it before.  (As an
added bonus he even talks about Wikipedia, and notes that we're
doing remarkably well, which does not mean we get to ignore the
pitfalls that have fatally fractured other communityesque projects.)

There are two things he says, in particular, that strike me as
absolutely crucial:

	The people using your software, even if you own it and
	pay for it, have rights and will behave as if they have
	rights.  And if you abrogate those rights, you'll hear
	about it very quickly.

So in our case, just because the Wikimedia Foundation says
something (and no matter how much some of us might agree with
it), doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen, doesn't
necessarily mean it's going to work, doesn't necessarily mean
groups of users aren't going to absolutely insist on doing
something else.

The second crucial thing is one of the basic patterns that Shirky
quotes Bion as having discovered about groups:

	The identification and vilification of external enemies.

My take on this is that groups are going to do this no matter
what, so we can't hope to quash it, all we can do is try to
channel it constructively.  And the way to do that, I think,
is to make sure that the vilified external enemies are in fact
external.

As long as Wikipedians imagine that "the enemy" is one of those
non-wiki Encyclopedias like Britannica, or some open but
hopelessly POV resource other than Wikipedia, that's fine.
As long as Wikipedians feel that their main opposition is other
encyclopedias, and are thereby inspired to make this one even
better, that's fine.

But the problems, of course, arise when one subgroup of Wikipedia
editors identifies another subgroup as an enemy, or when a group
of users identifies "the admins" as an enemy.

I haven't mentioned userboxes yet.  The group and community
issues Shirky talks about apply to far more questions than just
userboxes, although lately userboxes have been the most obvious
and probably the purest example.

And userboxes are, if anything, a real paradox.  On the one hand
they obviously make some users feel good about their membership
within the encyclopedia-building community, and that's good.
But on another hand they can help some users identify themselves
within subgroups and factionalize against other users who then
become enemies, and that's bad.  But then, on yet another hand,
if "old-guard users" and administrators are too heavyhanded in
arguing against or deleting or banning userboxes, users will
obviously start identifying admins and anti-userbox users as
the enemy, and that's even worse.

I'm not posting this message to claim I have an easy answer to
the userbox problem, or to any other hard community problem.
I'm not posting this to claim that Clay Shirky Is Right about
Everything.  But I do think that some of these community-related
issues are absolutely inevitable, and that we cannot necessarily
make them go away just by listing them on [[WP:NOT]], or asking
people who disagree to leave.  In many cases, we've got to figure
out ways to accommodate them, while making sure they don't
counteract the goal of building an encyclopedia.

					Steve Summit
					[[User:Ummit]]


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] blatant state-sponsored copyright violations (by
	Baide Baiku of the PRC)

body:
On 6/3/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> It is nice to see impressive terms used like "cost benefit analysis"
> only to find that there has been no such thing.

Glad to please.

> It is also nice to
> know that we all can individually sue them bastards.
>
Is that sarcastic?

> It is also nice to know that the WMF does not need to care when the
> Freedom is taken away from what used to be Free content.

No such thing is happening.

> If anything
> it is easy to argue that the WMF in order to achieve its goals has to
> protect the Freedoms that are clearly written as being part of the
> aims of the Foundation.

I wouldn't mind it if the Foundation sent troops into China to free
anyone jailed for distributing Wikipedia.  But I doubt it's going to
happen.

> You might consider it "only" a test case. But
> you forget that by establishing jurisprudence it prevents people
> taking increasingly more liberties from the Freedom that the GFDL aims
> to protect.

The GFDL aims to protect the freedom to modify and distribute.  *You*
are the one recommending that we place a limit on that freedom, not
me.

> When this jurisprudence becomes anchored in the Chinese
> legal system it is only the country with the highest number of
> people.. apparantly that is not really relevant.
>
Sure it is.  If China didn't have the highest number of people sending
in troops to free anyone jailed for distributing Wikipedia might be a
more reasonable option.

> Please do not use big terms that have meaning next time.
>
OK.  You too.  Especially terms like "Freedom".

> Thanks,
>    GerardM

You're welcome,
Anthony


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Being a volunteer is a little like being a super hero.  The world is always
in trouble and everyone is happy to have the superhero round to save the
day.  If Superman charged US$ 1 million / hour we'd certainly use him more
appropriately than to rescue Fluffy from a tree or continually stop bank
robbers.  He could invade Iraq on his own, for instance.

Volunteers are thought to be always available.  Who cares what their main
skills are or what else they may be doing.  Heaven forbid they should get
tired and need a vacation - hurry back soon.

WMF has gotten big.  Very quickly.  An organisation that could be easily
understood and navigated by a few volunteers now needs a lot more effort.

I'm sure developing the job description for the CEO was a useful exercise.
The CEO is the Chief Executive Officer.  I stress this.  They are there to
execute tasks.  A large number of the objectives and responsibilities listed
by the board are left very vague:  "as defined by the board of directors",
"consistent with board-approved policies".

It is no good starting with a CEO and then figuring out who needs to be
hired next and what they're going to be doing.  It's as bad as hiring an
office with no idea of who needs to be there.

Imagine going on a road trip with no map, no idea of where you are, and then
giving the job of steering to a CEO who has to take directions from the
committee in the back seat who never declare where they want to go for fear
of hurting people who want to go somewhere else.

I reiterate:  first develop the system you wish to see in its entirety;
list all the tasks, responsibilities and line functions as they relate to
each other and along with their dependencies; group related tasks together
as single areas of responsibility; decide on the tools necessary to support
these functions ... and so on.

Once this is in place then it is easier to hire people and easier for them
to know what they do on Day 1, and thereafter.

The newly hired professionals may still not know where WMF is going, but at
least they can keep everything running in tip-top condition until a way
forward is presented.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] carrying out elementary operations on wiki variables

body:
Hello,
  I would like to ask you if there is a way to carry out elementary numerical operations with wiki variables, e.g. (that's I'd need)

  CURRENTDAY mod 2 = 0 if CURRENTDAY is even, 1 if CURRENTDAY is odd

  Many thanks.
  Yours sincerely,

  Claudi

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


subject: [Wikitech-l] bibliographical references

body:
Hello,
  I would like to ask you for some bibliographical references (preferably in English) about wiki software, css and javascript (if I understood correctly the meaning of .css and .js extensions).
  My level is: beginner in informatics, but advanced in mathematics.
  Many thanks.
  Yours sincerely,

  Claudi

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail r?invente le mail ! D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail et son interface r?volutionnaire.


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
On 6/3/06, Gavin Chait <gchait at gmx.net> wrote:
> In response to Anthony and other related posts:
>
> > Someone is needed to bootstrap the
> > organization ... I think it's important to make it
> > clear that this isn't a permanent position, though.  In part, because
> > it's dangerous to assign such a position when you really have no clue
> > what the position is
>
> > One thing I think is important though is the interim CEO should be
> > made aware that a big part of eir job is going to be explaining eir
> > actions to the entire membership
>
> So far the CEO / COO / Director *interim* position can be summarised as
> follows:
>
> "We need help real fast.  We don't know what help we need and would like you
> to tell us.  Please don't ruffle any feathers.  Don't do anything without
> telling everyone in the community.  We'll get back to you about what we
> decide."
>
> So, appointing an *interim* CEO / COO / Director will have a result
> equivalent to not appointing an *interim* CEO / COO / Director.  The core
> problem: "We don't know what to do next and we need help deciding what to
> do," won't have been solved and can't be solved until the board and
> community decide.
>
I don't see how appointing an interim CEO/COO/Director doesn't solve
that problem.  My presumption is that such a person would know what to
do next, and would be able to convince the board and most of the
community that she's right about it.

> > You've given your own suggestions above, but what is the board going
> > to do, say "hey, Gavin Chait said this is how we should do it, so lets
> > go with it"?  I don't think it's going to happen.
>
> Why not?  I have 15 years experience in South Africa developing and running
> non-profit organisations in fields as diverse as HIV / AIDS, education and
> small business development.  I've worked with student-run, university-based
> organisations, corporate funded ones, and institutional versions.  I have
> fund-raised, written proposals, developed ideas and implemented them.  Some
> of my ideas even work.
>
> I'm probably not the only person with this sort of experience on this list
> but I do have some idea of what it takes to run a self-sustaining non-profit
> social benefit organisation.
>
> So why not listen to my suggestions?  They are my opinions, based on my
> experiences.  They are freely and honestly given.  I don't have all the
> answers but I may be able to save you some bother.

Well, I'm personally a big believer that there needs to be a competent
central figure during this process.  Maybe you agree with me, and
maybe you don't.  I'm also a big believer that Jimbo, the only current
candidate, is *not* competent at such a task.

So hey, if you could convince the board that you have what it takes,
I'd say hire *you* as interim CEO.  Unlike some others I don't think
the interim CEO has to have a tremendous resume as a top leader of
huge organizations - someone with the experience you describe would
probably be good enough, and probably a *lot* cheaper.

Maybe you'd even be willing to take on such a role for free.  If so,
even better.

As an alternative it'd be nice to get someone with your type of
experience on the board.  Preferably as an additional member, but if
Jimbo's control issues won't allow the board to expand then maybe Ant
or Angela would be willing to step down (we could give her some sort
of new title like "Volunteer advocate" and an advisory position).

Of course, all of this is dependent on you being 1) willing, and 2)
able to demonstrate your ability to handle the task.  And it goes
equally well for anyone on this list who can convince Jimbo that ey
can do it.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Portal:Taiwan is missing on Chinese Wikipedia

body:
Hsiang-Tai Chien wrote:
> Thanks for your help, most portal pages are been restored. However, there
> are still subpages in some portals on Chinese Wikipedia are missing (for
> example, [[Portal:???????/????]]), can you help to check again?

There's nothing to check; no namespace conflicts are left.

Are you sure you have the page name right? Did you check the list in
Special:Allpages? Are you sure it existed before? Has it been deleted or
renamed? etc

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060603/b2bec435/attachment.pgp>


list: wikien-l

from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFC needs your help!

body:
On 6/3/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > The few people who work at "Articles For Creation" are getting
> > overworked.
>
> Isn't that a clear hint that AfC shouldn't exist, and that unregistered
> users should be able to create articles again?

Perhaps not. The rate on AFC (I sometimes help out) for rate articles
is really quite horiffic. Perhaps one in ten is optimistic.

~maru


subject: [WikiEN-l] AFC needs your help!

body:
On 5/22/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear RC patrollers and vandal hunters,
>
> This is a desperate plea for help!
>
> The few people who work at "Articles For Creation" are getting overworked.
> They almost can't keep up with the new requests and a lot of dubious
> submission are left
> with no idea how to handle them. Even worse, occasionally
> "Wikipedia:Articles for creation"
> and "Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Today" get blanked by a newbie who
> isn't reading the
> instructions. Unfortunately, those blankings aren't always discovered in
> time, and this way
> a lot of good submissions are missed. Once they get archived, they're almost
> never touched.
>
Why not set up a system where each article proposed for creation
exists as a separate page.  And there could be a special page set up
which points to each of them.  This special page could list the date
and time created, the name of the proposed page, the number of bytes
of the page, and the username or  IP address of the proposer.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] AFC needs your help!

body:
On 6/3/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> This special page could list the date
> and time created, the name of the proposed page, the number of bytes
> of the page, and the username or  IP address of the proposer.
>
Ooops, that should read "the date and time proposed for creation".  I
guess I gave myself away :).

Anthony


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML normalization, transclusions, nesting

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> <snip>
>
> ** Mixing of HTML and wiki tables
>
> Running tests on pages from French Wikipedia, I found a cute bugger that does
> something like this:
>
>   {|
>   <caption>A table caption</caption>
>   |-
>   |blah
>   |}
>
> Since tables haven't been replaced in the output yet, this <caption> is in a
> <body> context as far as the HTML normalizer sees and it fails. But the old code
> let it through, in both tidy and non-tidy mode.
>
> While this kind of admixture looks *supremely ugly* to me, do we have any reason
> to disallow it?

This is probably a case of users not realizing that there is a wiki
syntax for table captions ( |+ ). I did this a lot at the Vietnamese
Wikipedia before I realized that this syntax even existed, because you
don't see it as often as |- or ! for example. But couldn't cases like
these be handled by having a bot replace the misplaced HTML with
wikimarkup beforehand?

> Should we think of the wiki table syntax as just a shortcut/transformation to
> HTML table tags, or should they be entirely separate entities?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
On Sat, 3 Jun 2006, Gavin Chait wrote:

> equivalent to not appointing an *interim* CEO / COO / Director.  The core
> problem: "We don't know what to do next and we need help deciding what to
> do," won't have been solved and can't be solved until the board and
> community decide.

Right.  Discussions about goals and priorities, and group introspection on
the past and present, need to happen.  Nothing will substitute for that.

> fund-raised, written proposals, developed ideas and implemented them.  Some
> of my ideas even work.
>
> I'm probably not the only person with this sort of experience on this list
> but I do have some idea of what it takes to run a self-sustaining non-profit
> social benefit organisation.

I like the ideas and examples you've shared, though some may be less
relevant to WMF than to other s-s n-p sbo's ... Wikipedia is an unusually
self-defining, scaled, and vibrant project, and traditional rules of thumb
each deserve a second look to see how they might apply.

IIRC, there are a number of people with relevant experience on this list.
I hope many more of them will chime in.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
None of them are in my mind completely correct -- the two are
thoroughly inseparable in this case, for the Wikipedia is *both* an
encyclopedia and a community. The community makes the encyclopedia,
the encyclopedia is the site of the community, and the whole things is
a giant loop of action and reaction.

That being said, there is good rhetorical sense in saying the
encyclopedia is primary. The goal of such a statement is to make sure
people stay on topic and hopefully consider all of their actions in
respect to the encyclopedia. Amen to that. The goal in the end though
is still to make sure that people don't make the error of trying to
separate them -- to remove the encyclopedia from the equation.

But realistically we have to keep in mind that the two cannot be
easily separated at any point in it. I should think at this point this
should be very clear -- things which become extremely detrimental to
the community are also detrimental to the encyclopedia, and vice
versa.

FF

On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I've spotted many more organisations are sprining up; the majority either
> useless or clones of the CVU or Esperanza.
>
> I made Community Justice, which I think failed, to be honest. CJ aimed to
> improve the encyclopedia through more civil (and hence faster and less
> damaging) disputes.
>
> However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged recently:
>
>    - It is an encyclopedia with a community
>    - It is a community with an encyclopedia
>    - It is an encyclopedia
>    - It is a community
>
> I agree with the first, though many users agree with the second and some the
> third and fourth.
>
> With Web 2.0, I see the Wikipedia becoming more and more like a social
> networking site, which is sad.
>
> There needs to be some way to remind users it's an encyclopedia - perhaps a
> community organisation reminding people to edit the enyclopedia
> (Wikipedia:Community Encouraging the Community to Expand the Encyclopedia
> over the Community, Though That Sounds Ironic). (humour :P )
>
> --
> Joe Anderson
>
> [[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On Jun 3, 2006, at 12:03 PM, Sam Spade wrote:

> On 6/3/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>> The proposed arbitration remedy is very limited, reflecting the fact
>> that the vast majority of your work on Wikipedia is both useful and
>> welcome. Probation permits an administrator to ban you from an
>> article which you disrupt by tendentious editing. It may only be
>> applied in cases where that is what you are doing. Clearly, in a few
>> articles you have done so.
>>
>> If you had been elected to the arbitration committee you would no
>> doubt have found probation useful yourself. It permits action in only
>> the articles which the user has disrupted without interfering with
>> their other activity. I know it is hard to accept, but a case like
>> yours is why it was created, to give some middle ground between a
>> total ban and having to endlessly put up with disruption and edit
>> warring.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> It is not a middle ground, it is an unacceptable insult to my
> character.
>
> A middle ground would have been to talk to me. A middle ground would
> have been to acknowledge that I have already agreed to stop edit
> warring, and that a good faith effort at compromise was never made by
> my complaintents, Bishonen in particular (who refused to talk to me,
> deleting a thread on her talk page prior to the arbitration).
>
> Have you seen this:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/
> Sam_Spade#Sam_Spade_gives_it_a_try
>
> Read the last statement in the thread, made by myself. Is permanant
> probation (or even arbitration) acceptable in such a case? What is the
> purpose of it, if not to drive me off? How are you doing what is best
> for the project?
>
> SS
>

My main plan is to avoid conflict, as it seems less than worthwhile
for me. What else would you like me to do?

That should do it.

Fred

> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin-driven death of Wikipedia: a diatribe

body:
I like top-posting, because I am a man from an opposite universe,
where time runs backwards. Thus, from your limited perspective, when I
read a top-posting thread, I start from the top and work my way done,
with all the annoyances reading in reverse implies, but really in my
time system, I am actually reading the first one at the bottom and
first and then continuing in order, which is nice and convenient. I am
glad to see a fellow expatriate  like Molu in this crazy mixedup
non-backwards universe!

~maru

On 6/1/06, Sam Pointon <free.condiments at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't do it because it disrupts the flow of conversation, and takes
> things out of context. There, I have explained it, probably by
> violating WP:POINT, but I doubt I will be RfAr-ed for a malformatted
> email.
>
> --Sam
>
> On 01/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/31/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > I notice that throughout your extended grumblings you have never managed to tell me how on Earth I'm supposed to stop this thing called top-posting.
> >
> > Sorry to be uncivil, but I notice that throughout his extended
> > grumblings, he has never explained *why* people should not top-post.
> > It seems to me to be a question of taste, and both forms have their
> > advantages and disadvantages. Someone is sure to point me to an RFC
> > which proves that the unix community decided once and for all that
> > top-posting is evil, but amongst the wider community of internet
> > users, I don't think there is anything remotely approaching consensus.
> >
> > If top-posting is preventing people reading or following
> > conversations, then by all means point it out in private mail. But
> > these continued petulant "I have fixed your top-posting" remarks are
> > actually more annoying than the supposed sin they're addressing.
> >
> > </rant>
> >
> > Steve


from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
I've spotted many more organisations are sprining up; the majority either
useless or clones of the CVU or Esperanza.

I made Community Justice, which I think failed, to be honest. CJ aimed to
improve the encyclopedia through more civil (and hence faster and less
damaging) disputes.

However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged recently:

   - It is an encyclopedia with a community
   - It is a community with an encyclopedia
   - It is an encyclopedia
   - It is a community

I agree with the first, though many users agree with the second and some the
third and fourth.

With Web 2.0, I see the Wikipedia becoming more and more like a social
networking site, which is sad.

There needs to be some way to remind users it's an encyclopedia - perhaps a
community organisation reminding people to edit the enyclopedia
(Wikipedia:Community Encouraging the Community to Expand the Encyclopedia
over the Community, Though That Sounds Ironic). (humour :P )

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On Jun 3, 2006, at 12:32 PM, Sam Spade wrote:

> process of
> competant peer review

Do you have a link to that?

Fred


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Psychology of problem Wikipedians: excessive "need for
	cognition"

body:
Discussion on the LJ of a psychologist friend.

http://sushidog.livejournal.com/541492.html?thread=9649716

Discuss.

- d.


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Saturday 03 June 2006 11:50, Brion Vibber wrote:
> I'm in the process of rewriting the old Sanitizer::removeHTMLTags to
> work much better. The new code properly closes implied end-tags and
> obeys some additional HTML rules about what can go where.
>
> In-progress patches posted at:
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5497
>
> Before I finish this up, though, it would be good if we can agree on
> how to handle a few things.
> ** HTML across template boundaries
[snip]
> However the current system allows the same thing to work with wiki
> tables (eg {|class="fooba") in either mode. I'm pretty sure at least
> the latter are in fairly common use on Wikipedia.
>
> So we either need to decide to Kill Them All, or accept the sacrifice
> for compatibility.

It is very convient to be able to create templates that start tables with
a lot of predefiened markup, so users can just say:

{{start-table-for-specific-purpose-foo}}

instead of creatig manually bordersizes etc. It also makes mass-changing
tables easier.

However, I am not sure you really need the <table> tag for this. Raw HTML
shouldn't be nec. except in very limited circumstances. So what can table
do that "{| |}" can't and can't we teach the wiki code these things and
finally kill normal HTML tables altogether?

> ** Mixing of HTML and wiki tables
>
> Running tests on pages from French Wikipedia, I found a cute bugger
> that does something like this:
>
>   {|
>   <caption>A table caption</caption>
>
>   |-
>   |blah
>   |}
>
> Since tables haven't been replaced in the output yet, this <caption> is
> in a <body> context as far as the HTML normalizer sees and it fails.
> But the old code let it through, in both tidy and non-tidy mode.
>
> While this kind of admixture looks *supremely ugly* to me, do we have
> any reason to disallow it?

Three: Uglyness, cleanliness, simplicity. KISS. Can we please kill HTML
tables? Now? :)

> Should we think of the wiki table syntax as just a
> shortcut/transformation to HTML table tags, or should they be entirely
> separate entities?

I think the wiki syntax should be the norm.

My ? 0.02,

Tels

--
 Signed on Sat Jun  3 12:56:21 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 This email violates U.S. patent #5,546,528 and EU patent EP0689133:

   ________________________________________
   | Header | Body | Attachements |	  |
   |--------+	   +----------------------|
   |					  |
   ~					  ~

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 481 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060603/a2d9d642/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
Joe Anderson wrote:
> However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged recently:
>
>    - It is an encyclopedia with a community
>    - It is a community with an encyclopedia
>    - It is an encyclopedia
>    - It is a community
>
> I agree with the first, though many users agree with the second and some the
> third and fourth.

Users who express the second or fourth views need to be pointed to
[[WP:NOT]]. Users who express the third view need to be gently reminded
of the value of collaboration and consensus.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] carrying out elementary operations on wiki
	variables

body:
On 03/06/06, Claudi Meneghin <clamengh at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> Hello,
>   I would like to ask you if there is a way to carry out elementary numerical operations with wiki variables, e.g. (that's I'd need)
>
>   CURRENTDAY mod 2 = 0 if CURRENTDAY is even, 1 if CURRENTDAY is odd

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

Rob Church


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] AFC needs your help!

body:
> The few people who work at "Articles For Creation" are getting
> overworked.

Isn't that a clear hint that AfC shouldn't exist, and that unregistered
users should be able to create articles again?


list: commons-l

from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Official paintings held by the U.S. Government

body:
This issue has been discussed for a while now. First
on English Wikipedia, now on Commons.

The discussion on Commons can be found at:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#Official_paintings_held_by_the_U.S._Government

A lengthy debate on English Wikipedia is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_images/US_government_portraits

The debate in short: The paintings are not Work of the
United States Government, they were made by artists on
commission. Can they be used as public domain?

/ Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
Functionally speaking Wikipedia (as a website running a wiki and all of its
little rules and so forth) is a project to create an encyclopedia (a bunch
of text and images licensed under the GFDL). It is also a website where you
can view said encyclopedia as well.

When people say, "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia," what they mean is,
"Wikipedia, as a project, is primarily to develop an encyclopedia, and not a
group of links, and not a list of all information in the world, and not etc.
etc. etc." They are referring to the goals and the prioirities and drawing
up lines between what the goal of the project is and is not.

I don't think one can take the division between content and method as being
very rigid in this case. The content is unavoidably a direct result of our
method (and it shows, for better or worse), and that remains the case even
when you port it into another context (whether one takes this to mean in
terms of quality, style, appearance, conventions, or even just a statement
about the licensing scheme, it still follows).

This is part of the reason I am very wary when people try to draw very
strict boundaries. Sociologists call this "boundary-work" (we have an entry
on it, for the curious), and recognize that while such line-creating and
line-drawing usually is done in the interest of "method", it has obvious and
often conscious effect on things like "content" as well. (Usually this sort
of analysis is done on the struggles to delineate "science" and
"non-science", or "science" and "politics".)

Which is not to say that we can't have rules which enforce certain
distinctions, and is not to say that all forms of "community" are equal or
positive, but that we should be concerned more with the net effect than the
semantics of the rules, and be very conscious that much of what benefits
"community" will also benefit "the encyclopedia".

As an analog, there have been a number of studies which have convincingly
argued that regulatory frameworks work better when there is no pretense that
the line between "science" and "politics" is going to be murky in such
situations. In contexts where the distinction is perceived to be not only
rigid, but necessary, the entire process usually gets broken down over
pointless and endless debates and accusations. (Hence regulatory debates in
the EU are relatively smooth affairs in comparison with the US, whose system
is set up in a way which  encourages controversy rather than compromise).

FF

On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged
> recently:
> >
> >   - It is an encyclopedia with a community
> >   - It is a community with an encyclopedia
> >   - It is an encyclopedia
> >   - It is a community
>
> Interesting. The dichotomy I most often see, that people have trouble
> deciding on, is :
>
> - Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia
> - Wikipedia is a project to create an encyclopaedia
>
> It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> is it a peek into a work in progress?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> > > imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> > > created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> > > is it a peek into a work in progress?
> > >
> >
> > The principle of the Wikipedia is that it's a work in progress, surely?
>
> A perpetual work in progress? Do we never want to deliver a "complete"
> first version?
>
>
There are reasons why having a set of content that one can consider stable
enough to stop editing on or put on a CD or put on paper is beneficial, but
the project of Wikipedia can never be truly "complete". It will never be a
sum of all human knowledge, because that knowledge is always changing and
there are always different ways to write about it (and different points of
view, changing analyses, etc.) Without an over-arching editor who stamps
"DONE" on it, it will never stop. Since all users get to be that editor, it
seems unlikely that it will ever truly stabilize. Even relatively obscure
topics draw new people and editing to them after awhile, and it is usually
for the better, I think.

CD projects and paper projects are nice sub-projects, and motivate all sorts
of good group-editing efforts, but the "goal" of Wikipedia itself is not to
produce them (in the way that the goal of Encyclopedia Brit. is to produce a
sellable product). It *is* to produce an encyclopedia, but part of the very
nature of Wikipedia is to redefine that from a stodgy, out-of-date set of
books on a shelf, into something more dynamic, up-to-date, with a scope not
limited by the physical or economic limitations of paper. Let's remember
what makes us wonderfully different rather than getting "paper-envy". ;-)

FF


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject:
[WikiEN-l] squeaky wheels (was:To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death
	of Wikipedia)

body:
  Hi,

In re:

> >The main problem I can see is the unbalance between
> >the user rights and admin privileges.
>
> And the main problem as I see it is people who come along with an
> agenda and act like spoiled children when their attempts to push that
> agenda are thwarted, often driving away excellent editors in the
> process.

The squeaky wheels have been especially squeaky recently.  We should always be
keeping in mind those editors who never kick up a fuss but don't have our
exceptional tolerance for drama, bad writing, POV-pushing and trolling.  I read
comments that refer to the amount of "our time" that some problem editors waste;
I suggest that we should also keep in mind the effects of combatitive users on
mainspace-only editors and newbies.

         Jkelly


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/6/3, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org>:

> But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> over this.  The only thing I see them doing *really* harmful is that
> they're censoring content, and this is perfectly legal under the terms
> of the GFDL anyway (I suppose Wikipedia could add an invariant section
> ranting about Chinese censorship, but it's not going to happen).

I see that somewhat different - if Baidu would be convinced to adhere
to the GNU/FDL, anything changed on their site could also be
back-imported into the Chinese Wikipedia. If this is going to be a big
thing that might be a big plus for us as well.

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


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged recently:
> >
> >   - It is an encyclopedia with a community
> >   - It is a community with an encyclopedia
> >   - It is an encyclopedia
> >   - It is a community
>
> Interesting. The dichotomy I most often see, that people have trouble
> deciding on, is :
>
> - Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia
> - Wikipedia is a project to create an encyclopaedia
>
> It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> is it a peek into a work in progress?
>
> Steve

Depending on the context, the term "Wikipedia" is often used to
describe each of those things.  I suppose one could do a study to see
what the predominant usage is.  But this is mainly just a semantical
argument.  Obviously there are many documents served by the
wikipedia.org domain which are not part of the encyclopedia itself.

The saying that "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a ___" is also used
rhetorically to remind people using the resources provided under the
wikipedia.org domain name to focus on the end goal - creating an
encyclopedia.

There are a number of people who don't realize that the reason
Wikipedia was created was to build and distribute a free encyclopedia.
 There are a smaller number that realize this and still want to change
it.  This latter group will most likely fail - there are way more
people committed to sticking to the main goal.

Frankly, I don't think there are many (if any) people on this mailing
list who don't agree that anything not related to building an
encyclopedia should be kept off of *.wikipedia.org (with the possible
exception of sep11.wikipedia.org which was sort of grandfathered in).
I guess what I'm saying is that I don't think there's much of a
dichotomy in the first place.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 35, Issue 10

body:
On 3 Jun 2006 at 16:13, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:

> > Even if the cartoonist would draw Mohammed a third time,
> > he wouldn't need be afraid as long as his drawings wouldn't
> > have been published before.
>
> Cartoonists generally do draw things with the expectation that they will
> be published.

And those with some sort of fanatical need to suppress offensive
cartoons won't necessarily limit themselves to opposing ones that are
published; look at the case of [[Mike Diana]], the only American to
be convicted of obscenity for drawing a cartoon (this happened in
Florida in the 1990s).  As part of the court order following his
conviction, he was ordered not to draw any more obscene cartoons
whether published or not, with the authorities having the right to do
inspections of his home to make sure he hadn't drawn anything
illegal.

--
== 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: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism
	userbox

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm, I seem to recall having read at least twice that more than 50% of
> the US population believes that the world was literally created in
> seven days, around 6000 years ago. But I don't have a source.

Like all such surveys, the responses are highly questionable.  People
answer differently depending on how the question is phrased, and
people often answer what they believe the questioner wants to hear.
Selection bias can also be a problem.

-Matt


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] blatant state-sponsored copyright violations (by
 Baide Baiku of the PRC)

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Selina . <wikipediareview at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 31/05/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't think it would be wise for the foundation to take any action
>>> that would not be correctly backed up by a chinese law firm
>>> explaining us what we can do, and what we cannot do. As much from a
>>> legal point of view, than from a PR or a political one.
>>>
>>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
>>>
>>>
>> Something at least needs to be done, turning a blind eye to it will only
>> make things worse.
>>
>> -Selina
>>
>
> There are thousands of people whose copyrights are allegedly being
> infringed.  Any one of you is free to hire a lawyer and start a
> lawsuit.  In fact, you're perfectly free to get together and talk
> about how you can effectively combine resources to do so.  It'd be
> fine with me if someone sets up a mailing list or website and then
> sends a message here redirecting anyone interested to it.
>
> But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> over this.  The only thing I see them doing *really* harmful is that
> they're censoring content, and this is perfectly legal under the terms
> of the GFDL anyway (I suppose Wikipedia could add an invariant section
> ranting about Chinese censorship, but it's not going to happen).
>
> Anthony
Hoi,
Please tell me how you arrive at your conclusion. What do you consider
the costs, how did you quantify them. What are the expected benefits,
are they economical, political or of another nature, how did you
quantify them. How did you compare the one with the other and again how
did you come to this conclusion..

PS Did you consider the long term costs of doing nothing ?
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> > > imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> > > created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> > > is it a peek into a work in progress?
> > >
> >
> > The principle of the Wikipedia is that it's a work in progress, surely?
>
> A perpetual work in progress? Do we never want to deliver a "complete"
> first version?
>
> Steve

In my mind it should always be possible to take everything from the
article namespace (substituting in all the images and templates),
throw away everything from all the other namespaces, and be left with
what could legitimately be called "an encyclopedia".  I think that's a
good compromise between immediatism and eventualism, though I suppose
it leans fairly heavily toward immediatism (I favor immediately
removing unsourced assertions from the article namespace).

Everything else (i.e., everything in all the other namespaces)
*should* be reasonably related to the goal of improving "the
encyclopedia" as I just defined, but I tend to take a view that this
rule need not be very strictly enforced.  I think it's especially
important when removing content that might be useful to some other
project to first give others a chance to export/import it.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/3/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Also, there is one exception to the taxonomy rule (mainly just because
> it's so commonplace): the article about the taxonomy itself can be
> within the taxonomy, but it must be specially tagged so that it is
> listed at the very beginning of the category.

This personally really, really bugs me.  I remove such cases when
editing articles.

The article about the category should link to the category (often
within 'See also').  The category description should link the the
article.

-Matt


from_name: Sam Spade

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Sam.  You want straight answers?  You want plain speaking?  OK.

Do you hurt the encyclopedia?  Yes.  Do you also do good things?  Yes,
probably; it's pretty hard to make 30,000 edits from the same account
without some of them being good.  Do you do more damage to the
encyclopedia than the good that you do?  With the behavior that got the
restrictions put on you by the ArbCom, yes, you do more damage.

Then I should have been banned along time ago. I think your wrong (or
else I wouldn't have wasted so much time). How did you come to your
conclusion, might I ask?

SS


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Sam, I find it especially rich (but, alas, wholly typical) that you
are trying to turn this into your being the injured party.

It is this behaviour, among others, that has you brought before arbitration.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] squeaky wheels (was:To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven
	death of Wikipedia)

body:
On 6/3/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> I suggest that we should also keep in mind the effects of combatitive users on
> mainspace-only editors and newbies.

Exactly.  This is why too much tolerance and too many second chances
hurt the project.

-Matt


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm probably not the only one who envisages all the wonderful things
> that could be done with this massive collection of information that is
> Wikipedia, *if only* we could do something clever with the categories.
> And then you realise that you can't really do anything clever because
> "category" has all sorts of different meanings to different people.
........
> So my questions are these:
> *Can anyone think of other types of categories I might have missed?
> *How could Wikipedia be better if this general problem was addressed?
> *How could this problem be addressed?
>
> Steve

I'd say you can't, and possibly shouldn't try to address this. Any
more rigorous and useful system would entail vast, vast amounts of
work which no one wants to do (compare with the remarkable, even
blockbuster sucess of en's Persondata - and Persondata is much easier
than devising and implementing a rigorous category system, since such
systems are domain-specific and simply *hard* to do well), especially
when there are much more pressing issues, like simple accuracy or
decent writing to worry about.

~maru


from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [Commons-l] Deleting the old WeatherBot images

body:
Recently I was asked [1] to delete the obsolete WeatherBot images.
(Background: Over most of 2005, User:WeatherBot uploaded about 25000
images depicting current temperature worldwide.  WeatherBot is now
defunct, and the old temperature maps are no longer used.  Deletion
was discussed in a bunch of places on the Commons over many months.)

Today, I started deleting the old maps, with a bot.  My bot archives
each image before deleting, so if it makes a mistake, any image can
easily be restored.  I deleted 2284 images (in 88 minutes, or 2.3
seconds per).  Then Duesentrieb pointed out [2] that by flooding the
deletion log, I was breaking his CommonsTicker tool.

Duesentrieb suggested I should post to the mailing list before
continuing.  (My bot stopped running automatically as soon as he
posted his comment to my talk page.)

At full speed, the remaining 23000 images will take about 15 hours to delete.

Does anyone else have a tool that watches the delete log?  If you'll
be affected by me deleting 23000 images, please let me know.  I'm open
to suggestions.  Two possible ideas: I could run the bot in 3-hour
chunks at a particular time each day.  I could also throttle the bot
slightly.  As slow as 1 image every 10 seconds would still get the job
done in 3 days.

If no one says otherwise, I'll plan to restart the bot next Saturday,
June 7, and allow it to run at full speed until it's done.

-- Commons:User:Dbenbenn

Links:

[1]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dbenbenn#Deleting_WeatherBot_images
[2]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Dbenbenn#Weather_Images
[*]: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:WeatherBot


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
It is nice to see impressive terms used like "cost benefit analysis"
only to find that there has been no such thing. It is also nice to
know that we all can individually sue them bastards.

It is also nice to know that the WMF does not need to care when the
Freedom is taken away from what used to be Free content. If anything
it is easy to argue that the WMF in order to achieve its goals has to
protect the Freedoms that are clearly written as being part of the
aims of the Foundation. You might consider it "only" a test case. But
you forget that by establishing jurisprudence it prevents people
taking increasingly more liberties from the Freedom that the GFDL aims
to protect. When this jurisprudence becomes anchored in the Chinese
legal system it is only the country with the highest number of
people.. apparantly that is not really relevant.

Please do not use big terms that have meaning next time.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 6/3/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > > But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> > > time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> > > questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> > > over this.  The only thing I see them doing *really* harmful is that
> > > they're censoring content, and this is perfectly legal under the terms
> > > of the GFDL anyway (I suppose Wikipedia could add an invariant section
> > > ranting about Chinese censorship, but it's not going to happen).
> > >
> > > Anthony
> > Hoi,
> > Please tell me how you arrive at your conclusion. What do you consider
> > the costs, how did you quantify them.
>
> The costs are mostly legal fees or the time spent by volunteers giving
> legal advice (which could be used elsewhere).  Just to quantify them
> more exactly would require enough cost to me that it isn't worth it.
>
> If you've know a lawyer willing to give an estimate as to how much
> it'd cost to successfully win a copyright infringement lawsuit against
> Baidu, I for one would love to hear it.
>
> Hell, if you're one of those thousands of people whose copyright is
> being infringed, you're free to enter into a lawsuit yourself.
>
> > What are the expected benefits,
> > are they economical, political or of another nature, how did you
> > quantify them.
>
> As I've said, I don't really see much of any benefit in suing Baidu.
> I suppose it'd be a test case for the GFDL.  But if that's all you
> want there are plenty of other companies which would be a lot easier
> to sue.
>
> The purpose of the Wikimedia Foundation is to write and distribute
> free content, not to stop other people from distributing mostly free
> content with a copyright notice attached to it.
>
> > How did you compare the one with the other and again how
> > did you come to this conclusion..
> >
> Something > 0.
>
> > PS Did you consider the long term costs of doing nothing ?
>
> I can't think of any.
>
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
>
> You're welcome,
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Site notices, bots, fundraising, etc.

body:
The Communications committee is working on coordinating the use of
sitewide notices for Wikimedia projects. This is needed for the upcoming
fundraiser, as well as other potential announcements relevant to all
projects, such as Wikimania or technical issues like single login.

It's anticipated that we will use a bot to help update these messages,
which due to the nature of the pages being edited will need to have
universal sysop privileges. Rest assured that we won't be using it for
other sysop functions. Naturally, with all of these messages we will
need help with translation, ideally before they are distributed but also
after if necessary. Please let your projects know in case they have any
questions.

--Michael Snow
Chair, Wikimedia Communications Committee


subject: [Foundation-l] Site notices, bots, fundraising, etc.

body:
The Communications committee is working on coordinating the use of
sitewide notices for Wikimedia projects. This is needed for the upcoming
fundraiser, as well as other potential announcements relevant to all
projects, such as Wikimania or technical issues like single login.

It's anticipated that we will use a bot to help update these messages,
which due to the nature of the pages being edited will need to have
universal sysop privileges. Rest assured that we won't be using it for
other sysop functions. Naturally, with all of these messages we will
need help with translation, ideally before they are distributed but also
after if necessary. Please let your projects know in case they have any
questions.

Incidentally, I know the idea of a Fundraising committee is still just
getting off the ground, but could we get an idea of when we would have a
fundraiser, and for how long? In order for the site notices to be
effective, we have to maintain some downtime between uses, and we need
to be able to plan the other uses as much as possible.

--Michael Snow
Chair, Wikimedia Communications Committee


from_name: Lord Voldemort

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> The majority of Americans are fundamentalist christians.

Wondering if you have any stats for this. I'm skeptical.
--LV


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Voldemort wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The majority of Americans are fundamentalist christians.
>
> Wondering if you have any stats for this. I'm skeptical.

Me, too.  (In particular, just because the Republican party
panders to fundamentalist Christians doesn't mean everyone who
votes Republican is a fundamentalist Christian.)


body:
On 6/3/06, David Benbennick <dbenbenn at gmail.com> wrote:
> If no one says otherwise, I'll plan to restart the bot next Saturday,
> June 7, and allow it to run at full speed until it's done.

Make that June 10, not 7.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
I've thought a lot about categories and differing (and incompatible)
uses from about a week after the categories were first introduced.  I
agree that categories could be very useful if used carefully.

To my mind there are only two main types of categories:
taxonomies/attributes, and themes.  I don't think the strict taxonomy
category really exists (for instance, using your "bridges" example,
the Golden Gate Bridge is in both [[Category:Bridges in California]]
and [[Category:Bridges completed in 1937]]).  The third type of
category, which you label meta-attributes, is another type, I suppose,
but I kind of ignore these types of categories.

I think the way to make these two main types of categories compatible
is to enforce two rules: 1) taxonomies/attributes are always plural
(and themes are never plural) 2) themes are never subcategories of
taxonomies/attributes (but the reverse is allowed).

Also, there is one exception to the taxonomy rule (mainly just because
it's so commonplace): the article about the taxonomy itself can be
within the taxonomy, but it must be specially tagged so that it is
listed at the very beginning of the category.  (for instance,
[[Woman]] must be tagged [[Category:Women| ]] or
[[Category:Women|*]]).

Also, I think all the taxonomy/attribute categories should be under a
single parent category.  So if you started at the top and only went
down, you'd get all the attributes categories, and none of the themes
categories.  If I remember correctly, this even used to be the case.

Meta-attributes should eventually be replaced by a better meta-tagging
system (or moved to the talk page).  Someone was working on a sort of
to-do management system a while ago.  I'm not sure what became of it.
In the mean time, keeping the meta tags under some
[[Category:Meta-Wiki]] should be sufficient to keep them separate.

Anthony

On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm probably not the only one who envisages all the wonderful things
> that could be done with this massive collection of information that is
> Wikipedia, *if only* we could do something clever with the categories.
> And then you realise that you can't really do anything clever because
> "category" has all sorts of different meanings to different people.
>
> So far I have identified four rough types of categories. I'll invent
> the notion a(X) to mean that article X is in category a. a(b(X)) means
> that a is a subcategory of b, and X is in b.
>
> Taxonomies: Tend to end in "s" and satisfy the rule that "If a(X) then
> X is an a") is a logical sentence. Tend to form strict hierarchies,
> where if a(X) and b(a), then it's perfectly natural and normal that
> b(a(X)). Eg, Bridges in France is a subcat of Bridges, and every entry
> in "bridges in France" is definitely a Bridge.  It's rare for an
> article to be in more than two taxonomic categories at once.
>
> Themes: Tend not to be plurals, and tend not to form strict
> hierarchies. Often it is the case that b looks like it belongs in a,
> but then a(b(X)) is nonsense for certain X. Eg, Paris might be in
> European cities, and the film Amelie might be in Paris, but it's silly
> to say that Amelie is in European cities. (or many worse examples)
>
> Attributes: The category exists to denote some very specific small
> detail of a subject, such that it would be conceivable to have dozens
> or more such categories on an article. Examples: 1943 deaths, Living
> persons, Winners of Nobel Peace Prize, etc. These tend to hierarchies
> that start strict then end up fuzzy. Eg, 1943 deaths is only in 1943
> and "1940s deaths", and these have parent categories of
> "1940s","Years" and so forth, eventually ending up in "History",
> whereupon things become chaos.
>
> Meta-attributes: These are categories about *articles* rather than
> article subjects. The most common examples are stubs ("France
> geography stubs"), sources ("1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica") and
> disputes of various kinds ("Articles lacking sources").
>
> To me, these types of categories are all fairly incompatible, and
> really get in the way of using categories to do anything useful. It's
> pointless trying to draw tree structures when you have attributes and
> meta-attributes involved, for example.
>
> So my questions are these:
> *Can anyone think of other types of categories I might have missed?
> *How could Wikipedia be better if this general problem was addressed?
> *How could this problem be addressed?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Gavin Chait

subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
In response to Anthony and other related posts:

> Someone is needed to bootstrap the
> organization ... I think it's important to make it
> clear that this isn't a permanent position, though.  In part, because
> it's dangerous to assign such a position when you really have no clue
> what the position is

> One thing I think is important though is the interim CEO should be
> made aware that a big part of eir job is going to be explaining eir
> actions to the entire membership

So far the CEO / COO / Director *interim* position can be summarised as
follows:

"We need help real fast.  We don't know what help we need and would like you
to tell us.  Please don't ruffle any feathers.  Don't do anything without
telling everyone in the community.  We'll get back to you about what we
decide."

So, appointing an *interim* CEO / COO / Director will have a result
equivalent to not appointing an *interim* CEO / COO / Director.  The core
problem: "We don't know what to do next and we need help deciding what to
do," won't have been solved and can't be solved until the board and
community decide.

> You've given your own suggestions above, but what is the board going
> to do, say "hey, Gavin Chait said this is how we should do it, so lets
> go with it"?  I don't think it's going to happen.

Why not?  I have 15 years experience in South Africa developing and running
non-profit organisations in fields as diverse as HIV / AIDS, education and
small business development.  I've worked with student-run, university-based
organisations, corporate funded ones, and institutional versions.  I have
fund-raised, written proposals, developed ideas and implemented them.  Some
of my ideas even work.

I'm probably not the only person with this sort of experience on this list
but I do have some idea of what it takes to run a self-sustaining non-profit
social benefit organisation.

So why not listen to my suggestions?  They are my opinions, based on my
experiences.  They are freely and honestly given.  I don't have all the
answers but I may be able to save you some bother.


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [Wikitech-l] Case inconsistency

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> ...I noticed today that someone had linked to
> [[foreland]], whereas [[Foreland]] came up. There is currently no way
> to force [[foreland]] to give a redlink. You either have to unlink it
> entirely, link it and hope that someone will realise that they're not
> at the right article, or go to [[Foreland]] and add a red dablink (a
> very weird concept). All bad solutions.

Actually, for what it's worth, I just thought of another way:
[[The weather in London|foreland]].  (No, this isn't perfect, either.)


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Raphael Wegmann wrote:
> Rob wrote:
>>On 6/1/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
>>
>>>The burning embassies and other violant protests started after
>>>the cartoons have been *published*, not after some caricaturists
>>>have been drawing a picture of Mohammed at home.
>>>It is the publication and the many republications (incl. WP)
>>>which insulted resp. insults so many people, not some caricaturist
>>>drawing a picture at home.
>>
>>You enjoy hairsplitting, apparently.
>>Perhaps the cartoonist is drawing Mohammed for a second time.
>
> Even if the cartoonist would draw Mohammed a third time,
> he wouldn't need be afraid as long as his drawings wouldn't
> have been published before.

Cartoonists generally do draw things with the expectation that they will
be published.

In any case, given your involvement with the J-P Muhammed cartoons
article, I'm sure you can recall what prompted Jyllands-Posten to
solicit those cartoons in the first place.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 03/06/06, Adrian Buehlmann <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> Tels wrote:
> > .... Can we please kill HTML
> > tables? Now? :)
>
> Certainly not. We need them because the "|" of wiki
> table interferes with template "|" and ParserFunctions "|".

I would support the opposite. Kill wikitext tables.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 6/3/06, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The wikipedia is the injured party, I am meerly insulted.

I'd agree with the former, but with a different slant.  Your absolute
conviction of being Right and your unwillingness to discuss or
compromise when you've made up your mind hurts Wikipedia.  Your use of
simple stubbornness to get your way injures Wikipedia.  Your tendency
to see your personal biases as neutral impairs Wikipedia.  Your
willingness to engage in interminable revert wars does not help
Wikipedia improve.

> The question is, are you able to move beyond the soap opera of
> personalities to address the substantive issues?

When your opponent tries to address the issues, you address
personalities.  When someone tries to address your personality and
behaviour, you dismiss this and insist on the issues.

And now you feel insulted that the arbcom is minded to hold you to a
standard of non-disruptiveness.  Please.

-Matt


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> over this.
I think some things less drastic and cheaper than suing can be done:

1. Officially but politely request that they take some simple, concrete
steps that we outline.  Perhaps they're simply confused by the GFDL
(understandable), and would comply if we told them exactly what we'd
like them to do.  Having a Chinese speaker to help with this might be
useful.

2. Failing that, somewhat more insistently note that this isn't an
optional set of steps, and mildly threaten to embarrass them publicly if
they don't comply.

3. Failing that, issue a short press release or open letter publicly
noting that they're violating the GFDL, to both produce some public
pressure on them to comply, and at the very least to warn people about
the nature of the project.

The only things needed for this are someone who can write Chinese and
Wikimedia Foundation approval to send an official letter.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>>> It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
>>> imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
>>> created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
>>> is it a peek into a work in progress?
>>>
>>>
>> The principle of the Wikipedia is that it's a work in progress, surely?
>>
>
> A perpetual work in progress? Do we never want to deliver a "complete"
> first version?
>

Well, IMO we should certainly keep the main working copy a perpetual
work in progress, unless we expect that there will come a time when
we've finished producing the perfect encyclopedia to which no
improvements can be made.  That doesn't preclude, of course,
occasionally forking off "release" versions that get polished up and
sent out into the world, much like is done in the free-software world.

-Mark


body:
On 6/3/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > But I don't think it's worth the Wikimedia Foundation spending its
> > time or money on, from a cost/benefit analysis.  In fact, I think it's
> > questionable whether or not it would be beneficial at all to sue Baidu
> > over this.
> I think some things less drastic and cheaper than suing can be done:
>
> 1. Officially but politely request that they take some simple, concrete
> steps that we outline.  Perhaps they're simply confused by the GFDL
> (understandable), and would comply if we told them exactly what we'd
> like them to do.  Having a Chinese speaker to help with this might be
> useful.
>
> 2. Failing that, somewhat more insistently note that this isn't an
> optional set of steps, and mildly threaten to embarrass them publicly if
> they don't comply.
>
> 3. Failing that, issue a short press release or open letter publicly
> noting that they're violating the GFDL, to both produce some public
> pressure on them to comply, and at the very least to warn people about
> the nature of the project.
>
> The only things needed for this are someone who can write Chinese and
> Wikimedia Foundation approval to send an official letter.
>
> -Mark
>
I think that's reasonable (at least, other than the "threaten to
embarrass them" part).

You are missing one necessary bit, though.  Someone needs to decide
what "simple, concrete steps" they need to take.  Adding a notice that
the work is released under the GFDL is certainly one, and arguably the
only important one.  In any case, the letter probably shouldn't state
"you're OK if you do *this*" but rather "you're not OK if you don't do
*this*".

Anthony


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Where and how are we going to find anonymous experts?

Fred

On Jun 3, 2006, at 3:06 PM, Sam Spade wrote:

> On 6/3/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 3, 2006, at 12:32 PM, Sam Spade wrote:
>>
>>
>>> process of
>>> competant peer review
>>>
>>
>> Do you have a link to that?
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
> If your asking where I asked for one, you'd have to scroll up in this
> thread. If your asking for  a link about one, see
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review
>
> If your trying to understand what I'm talking about, I'm asking for a
> competent process of peer review to resolve the myriad disputes that
> brought me before you. That way we could have quality, peer reviewed
> articles instead of personality driven conflicts.
>
> If you haven't noticed, I care about article quality, and am in no way
> "rogue". The idea that I should be put on "probation" due to having
> had annoyed a popular wiki-personality, rather than that the article
> disputes in question could use a thorough review astounds me.
>
> Bottom line, is the wikipedia a web-community or an encyclopedia?
>
> If it is an encyclopedia, can we please stop with all these games, and
> find a way to resolve content disputes?
>
> If it is a web-community, I have no interest in it, and intend to
> leave.
>
> Your no judge, I'm no criminal, and the only thing on "probation"
> around here is the wikipedia, which I will abstain from editing until
> this is resolved to my satisfaction. Either way I sternly recommend
> you find a better way to encourage your contributors.
>
> SS
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] cancelation of the deletion review of the satanism
 userbox

body:
Lord Voldemort wrote:
> On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The majority of Americans are fundamentalist christians.
>>
>
> Wondering if you have any stats for this. I'm skeptical.
>

I'm not too sure what this has to do with Wikipedia, but no, the
majority of Americans are not fundamentlist Christians.  While 77% of
Americans do identify as Christian, most are not particularly ardent
Christians.  When asked whether they would consider themselves
"religious", "somewhat religious", "somewhat secular", or "secular",
only 37% of Americans said "religious".  Had there been a further
category of "extremely religious", presumably even fewer would've chosen it.

Source: 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, Columbia
University
[http://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/research_briefs/aris/key_findings.htm]

-Mark


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Psychology of problem Wikipedians: excessive "need
	for cognition"

body:
On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 12:49:09PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> Discussion on the LJ of a psychologist friend.
> http://sushidog.livejournal.com/541492.html?thread=9649716
> Discuss.

When people attempt to explain other people's actions in terms of
psychological disorders or oddities, it seems to me that it often
reflects a lack of respect or human sympathy for the people thus
diagnosed.  Even when the explainer does not explicitly say that
something is "wrong" with the person under diagnosis, the implication is
usually that the explainer and his audience are superior to and more
objective than the person being diagnosed.

The "explained" actions are made out to be mechanical rather than
sentient:  the result of a neurological curiosity rather than of
authentic motives or intentions.  Any intentional reasons or practical
purposes for the actions are ignored in favor of neurological claims
about the actor's problems or eccentricities.

Consider the difference between the following two claims:

A:  "Joe organizes his tools carefully because he has mild Asperger's
syndrome, and people with Asperger's syndrome organize things."

B:  "Joe organizes his tools carefully because it helps him to find them
quickly, and he prefers the look of an organized toolshed to that of a
disorganized one."

Claim B is more likely to be the way that Joe would explain his own
actions.  It conveys that Joe's actions have meaning and intentionality
behind them; they are not _merely_ the result of neurological oddity,
but serve specific and describable purposes.  An objective, practical
purpose (finding tools quickly) and a subjective, aesthetic one
(preferring neatness over clutter) can be described this way.

Claim A, on the other hand, fails to ascribe motives or intentions to
Joe.  It conveys that Joe's actions are the product of an abnormal
brain, and that there is no _need_ for further explanation.  In the end,
it merely ascribes a label to Joe -- files him in a box labeled "mild
Asperger's syndrome" -- and attributes his actions to this label rather
than to any goals or purposes that Joe himself may experience.

The implication of claim A is that Joe is weird, and that's all you need
to know about him:  he's weird.  By exclusion, we (the explainer and
audience) are not weird.  We are explaining him; he's not explaining us;
so we are more objective and superior.

The implication of claim B is that Joe has goals and ideas; and that
while those goals and ideas may be different from other people's, they
are not lesser.  Not only can we live with Joe as equals, but we can
make note of what he's good at (organizing things) and can participate
in mutually beneficial relations with him.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] GFDL compliance is hard [was Re: blatant
	state-sponsored copyright violations (by Baide Baiku of the PRC)]

body:
On 6/3/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> In any case, the letter probably shouldn't state
> "you're OK if you do *this*" but rather "you're not OK if you don't do
> *this*".
>
Actually, I sort of misspoke.  It'd be *better* if the Wikimedia
Foundation came up with a set of simple, concrete steps which would
allow for GFDL compliance.

But this is unlikely to happen for two reasons - the GFDL is not easy
to comply with, and Wikipedia is set up in a way which makes GFDL
compliance even more difficult.

So, in the case of Baidu, settling for a GFDL notice is probably the
most that can be hoped for.  A link back to the original article would
be nice, though it might be hard to convince them to do, and it isn't
required by the GFDL anyway.

Anthony


from_name: Adrian Buehlmann

body:
Tels wrote:
> .... Can we please kill HTML
> tables? Now? :)

Certainly not. We need them because the "|" of wiki
table interferes with template "|" and ParserFunctions "|".

--Adrian Buehlmann


subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/3/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
> On Sat, 03 Jun 2006 19:54:27 +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > I'm probably not the only one who envisages all the wonderful things
> > that could be done with this massive collection of information that is
> > Wikipedia, *if only* we could do something clever with the categories.
> > And then you realise that you can't really do anything clever because
> > "category" has all sorts of different meanings to different people.
>
> Agreed. Still: can you give some specific examples of wonderful things that
> could be done but are not possible now? That would tell us what problem you
> are trying to solve.
>
I've personally run into this when trying to automatically create, for
example, a list of all Wikipedia articles on people.  You can't just
start at [[category:people]] and work your way down, because you wind
up going to [[Category:Women]] (fine, all women are people) then
[[Category:Feminine hygene]] (bad).

> Categories based on such intersections of attributes are conceptually bad.
> Look at the categories for an article like [[Marie Curie]]: She's French
> three times, female four times, Polish four times (not counting "Natives of
> Warsaw"), etc. Why not create [[Category:Polish women who were born in
> 1867 and died in 1934 and won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and in Physics]]?
>
Because there would only be one person in that category.

> If we don't have a term for (or an article about) it, there probably
> shouldn't be a category for it, either (I'm sure a determined mind could
> come up with an exception).
>
If the category system could effectively build these intersection
categories on the fly, I'd agree.  But the category system can't
currently do that.  (And it's been around a reasonably long time, with
that as an obvious flaw, and no one has fixed it.)

> > Attributes: The category exists to denote some very specific small
> > detail of a subject, such that it would be conceivable to have dozens
> > or more such categories on an article. Examples: 1943 deaths, Living
> > persons, Winners of Nobel Peace Prize, etc. These tend to hierarchies
> > that start strict then end up fuzzy. Eg, 1943 deaths is only in 1943
> > and "1940s deaths", and these have parent categories of
> > "1940s","Years" and so forth, eventually ending up in "History",
> > whereupon things become chaos.
>
> There is no way to make hierarchies not suck, especially if you have to
> maintain them manually (as we do now). Don't try to impose hierarchies
> unless they emerge quite naturally from the subject.
>
I made a proposal.  All subcategories of attributes must be a subset
of the parent attribute.  Seems like a perfectly reasonable way to
make hierarchies not suck.

Anthony


body:
On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 07:34:48PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> The majority of Americans are fundamentalist christians. The greater
> majority are christians of any denomination.

Hmm.  I'm curious what you mean by "fundamentalist Christians" in that
claim.  Do you mean people who answer "Yes" when asked, "Are you a
fundamentalist Christian"?  Do you mean people who claim to have certain
beliefs which you label "fundamentalist Christian"?  Do you mean anyone
whose beliefs are more "fundamentalist Christian" than yours?  Do you
mean people who engage in religious practices which you regard as
"fundamentalist Christian"?  Or, perhaps, people who are formal members
of organizations (such as churches) which label themselves such?

> It would be interesting to know why christians are underrepresented at
> Wikipedia, if indeed that is the case.

The explanation could be as simple as this:  Statistically, people who
are more highly educated are less likely than the population average to
describe themselves as Christians.  Among Christians, they are more
likely to be adherents to more liturgical or "high church" groups than
to fundamentalist groups.

Many non-Christians in the U.S. (and other English-speaking countries)
are immigrants from Asian nations where Christianity is not the dominant
religion.  In order to be a legal immigrant you more or less have to be
seeking a job abroad; this usually requires a certain degree of higher
education.

People who are more highly educated are more likely to have Internet
access; to find the idea of encyclopedias interesting; to have the free
time to participate in a volunteer project; to think positively of
free-content enterprises; and to prefer Wikipedia's universalist notion
of neutrality rather than preferring explicit recognition of a shared
(nationalist or religious, e.g.) point of view.


subject: [Foundation-l] H.R. 5252 and H.R. 5417

body:
Lord Voldemort wrote:

> On 6/3/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> I agree that the Wikimedia Foundation can have no position on such an
>> issue.  We are neutral, politically.
>
> Well, the more recent of the bills, H.R.5417, is a bi-partisan bill.
> So it's not 'really' that huge of a "political" issue.

What's relevant, from a nonprofit organization's point of view, is not
whether the bill is "bipartisan". Merely the fact that it's a bill
proposed in a legislature makes it political, in the sense that it would
potentially involve the Foundation in political lobbying. Any such
involvement would have to be done carefully and in a limited fashion to
preserve nonprofit status. Probably not based on generalized
philosophical sympathies, but focused on issues that are specifically
relevant to our mission.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] H.R. 5252 and H.R. 5417


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
I think there is no easy answer.  It would be best to contact the exact
office or institution which commissioned them and ask for a letter
clarifying the copyright status.

It is possible that the government purchased both the copyright and the
physical object, but also possible that the government merely purchased
the physical object.

Fredrik Josefsson wrote:
> This issue has been discussed for a while now. First
> on English Wikipedia, now on Commons.
>
> The discussion on Commons can be found at:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#Official_paintings_held_by_the_U.S._Government
>
> A lengthy debate on English Wikipedia is at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_images/US_government_portraits
>
> The debate in short: The paintings are not Work of the
> United States Government, they were made by artists on
> commission. Can they be used as public domain?
>
> / Fred
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: jwales.vcf
Type: text/x-vcard
Size: 211 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060603/cdaaaf37/attachment.vcf


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Types of categories

body:
On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> What you're saying makes sense, but does not currently have consensus.
> Implementing it therefore sounds like a bad idea bound to cause upset.

I suspect that simply no real discussion of this has taken place yet.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked for disruption and trolling?

body:
On Wed, 31 May 2006 05:50:03 -0700, you wrote:

>Anittas was trying to justify the inclusion of some disputed text with
>some questionable sources.

How unusual.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
On 6/3/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Well, I'm personally a big believer that there needs to be a competent
> > central figure during this process.  Maybe you agree with me, and
> > maybe you don't.  I'm also a big believer that Jimbo, the only current
> > candidate, is *not* competent at such a task.
> >
> > So hey, if you could convince the board that you have what it takes,
> > I'd say hire *you* [referring to Gavin] as interim CEO.  Unlike some others I don't think
> > the interim CEO has to have a tremendous resume as a top leader of
> > huge organizations - someone with the experience you describe would
> > probably be good enough, and probably a *lot* cheaper.
>
> I'd say that right now, we need a CEO who understands plainly what our
> troubles are. It is not the case of Gavin right at the moment. I can't
> speak of the future :-)
>
I don't think it would be hard to explain to Gavin what Wikimedia's
troubles are.  Now that I look back on what he said of them: "We don't
know what to do next and we need help deciding what to do", I see how
that could be taken one of two ways.  One way, that the Wikimedia
board is unclear on its mission, is quite plainly false.  The other
interpretation, that the Wikimedia board has no clue how best to
organize itself so as to accomplish that mission, seems to hit the
nail right on the head.

If you have a different opinion as to what the main trouble is, I for
one would like to hear it.  Maybe you've already said it though, and I
missed it.  I know you were complaining before about lack of help, but
I don't think there actually is a lack of help, just a lack of the
organization needed to match the help up with the work that needs to
be done.

> > Maybe you'd even be willing to take on such a role for free.  If so,
> > even better.
> >
> > As an alternative it'd be nice to get someone with your type of
> > experience on the board.  Preferably as an additional member, but if
> > Jimbo's control issues won't allow the board to expand then maybe Ant
> > or Angela would be willing to step down (we could give her some sort
> > of new title like "Volunteer advocate" and an advisory position).
>
> It is nice to see how quickly you would like to get rid of the community
> representatives :-) Don't worry, there is a chance that happen.
>
Umm, no, I wasn't suggesting getting rid of the community
representatives, I was suggesting that Gavin *be* one of the community
representatives.  Of course I was basing this on the fact that the
board seems to be admitting that it doesn't know what its doing.
Maybe this isn't the case, in which case I wonder what's the need to
hire a CEO.

> Perhaps... I must clarify something here. I think that legally speaking,
> the decision to expand the board is not in the sole hands of Jimbo. It
> is a decision which should be made by the board. In short, if 4 members
> vote expanding the board and Jimbo votes against, expansion will occur.
>
Sure, but it is my understanding that it's unlikely to convince
Michael Davis and Tim Shell to vote for expansion of the board unless
Jimbo agrees to it.  Maybe I'm wrong.  Hopefully I'm wrong.

> Current problem is to define whether board members should be appointed
> and/or elected, as well as the proportionality of community members
> versus external members. External should be appointed, but the question
> was whether community members should be appointed only, elected only or
> a mix of the two. Note that in case of election only, Gavin probably has
> no chance to be on the board as a community representative. We could
> possibly imagine a solution such as 2 community members elected every
> year for 2 years. Plus 5 appointed.
>
"Should a Trustee resign, become incapacitated or otherwise be unable
to serve the remaining Trustees shall appoint an interim
representative if such Trustee was a Member Representative until such
time as a new election can be held to fill such office at the next
annual election."  So if the board agreed, I guess it depends whether
or not Gavin could manage to do his magic before the next annual
election.  Of course, I see no reason why Gavin would have no chance
to be elected as a community representative, especially if he had
already performed well as an interim community representative.

> > Of course, all of this is dependent on you being 1) willing, and 2)
> > able to demonstrate your ability to handle the task.  And it goes
> > equally well for anyone on this list who can convince Jimbo that ey
> > can do it.
>
> If Jimbo is the only one to decide who to appoint, yes.
>
Is there an archive somewhere of all the historical board votes?  I'd
be interested in seeing it.

Overall, it's really hard to find information about what it is the
board and its members have been doing.


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


from_name: Tony Bowden

subject: [Wikitech-l] Geo meta tags on wiki pages

body:
On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 07:17:50PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Can you explain the goals of "semantic markup" a bit further, so I can
> give a meaningful reply?

I'm not one of the developers of the Semantic Mediawiki extension, but I
am a user (most notably on the Bible Wiki at http://bible.tmtm.com/)
and for me the two key goals are:

1) Internal queries - being able, for example, to dynamically
display a list of all the rulers of Judah in chronological order
(http://bible.tmtm.com/wiki/King_of_Judah)

2) External queries - the data that is annotated in the text can be
retrieved as RDF (http://bible.tmtm.com/wiki/Special:ExportRDF/Rehoboam)
which can then be fed into an RDF reasoner. As well as being able to
use this data locally, this will become increasingly useful as search
engines start to gain the ability to work with structured data rather
than just raw text. (See announcement just this week for Pingerati)

Tony


subject: [Foundation-l] H.R. 5252 and H.R. 5417

body:
I agree that the Wikimedia Foundation can have no position on such an
issue.  We are neutral, politically.

Individuals, though, can and do have positions of course.  :)

Delirium wrote:
> Lord Voldemort wrote:
>> Recently, legislation in the United States House of Representatives
>> has been introduced that may have an impact on Wikimedia. The bills in
>> question are H.R. 5252 and H.R. 5417, and can be seen in their
>> entirety by searching for them on http://thomas.loc.gov/ .  The
>> aforementioned bills deal with "net neutrality", restricting phone and
>> cable companies' ability to control aspects of the Internet and its
>> distribution.
>>
>> As this may have a direct impact on Wikimedia Foundation, I was
>> wondering if WMF had an official position on the matter.  "Internet"
>> companies such as Yahoo, Google, eBay, and others have made their
>> official positions known, so I was wondering if WMF had discussed this
>> issue.  If I am just way behind the times, would someone mind
>> directing me to the appropriate location?  Thanks.
>
> For those unfamiliar, the issue is that some telecommunications
> companies have considered offering, for a fee, a service where operators
> of internet services (like websites) can receive a guarantee of
> higher-priority traffic.  So if, say, CNN paid a telecomm company a
> bunch of money, CNN's traffic would get a higher priority than other
> traffic over that company's wires, and therefore CNN would appear to
> users to be faster.  There is some legislation proposed that would
> prohibit that.
>
> I personally don't think this is the sort of issue the Wikimedia
> Foundation should be involved in--- It's a political and ethical
> question that Wikimedians ought to be able to disagree on.  The
> competing interests are a desire to keep the internet relatively
> egalitarian versus a desire not to unduly restrict private companies'
> rights to engage in whatever sort of commerce they wish to engage in,
> with the right balance depending partly on how much of a monopoly a
> particular company has in its market.  On the whole I would hope these
> sorts of things don't become commonplace, but whether they ought to be
> prohibited is a tougher issue, and one that I think is mostly depends on
> non-Wikimedia-related political issues (like where you stand on
> government regulation of utilities in general).
>
> I think in the specific case of the Wikimedia Foundation, it'll have
> negligible impact.  We're large enough and have little enough
> competition that the power balance tips more our way than their way---if
> Wikipedia is slower on one ISP than on one of their competitors, that
> will reflect badly on that ISP.  And in any case, latency caused by
> differential IP-traffic priority is likely to be negligible compared to
> latency caused by things like hitting the database.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


subject: [Foundation-l] H.R. 5252 and H.R. 5417


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> I think the idea of an interim CEO is a perfect one (even if "CEO"
> isn't the perfect terminology).

The official title will be "interim executive director".


subject: [Foundation-l] Where we are headed


subject: [Foundation-l] Re :  Where we are headed

body:
Traroth wrote:
> You express my deep thoughts better I could do. Foundation's opaqueness and distance to the community are growing.

I disagree strongly with this.  If anything, we are moving more and more
towards transparency and openness, and I have a strong commitment to
continuing this trend.

One major step in this process was to take a huge set of tasks that had
been done privately by me and other board members individually and as a
group and delegate them into the community.

Another major step in this process was to encourage and push for the
creation of chapters, with Delphine leading the charge in terms of
co-ordinating and encouraging this.

Another major step in this process is to hire people to do professional
business so that the board members, and me especially, can get back to
doing what we do best, which is be community leaders.

There will be other steps, as always guided and controlled by our core
values and roots.

--Jimbo


from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Community vs Encyclopedia

body:
>
> It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> is it a peek into a work in progress?
>

The principle of the Wikipedia is that it's a work in progress, surely?

On 6/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/3/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > However, four different viewpoints of the Wikipedia have emerged
> recently:
> >
> >   - It is an encyclopedia with a community
> >   - It is a community with an encyclopedia
> >   - It is an encyclopedia
> >   - It is a community
>
> Interesting. The dichotomy I most often see, that people have trouble
> deciding on, is :
>
> - Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia
> - Wikipedia is a project to create an encyclopaedia
>
> It's probably more of a naming thing than anything else, but it does
> imply a point of view on whether the encyclopaedia has actually been
> created yet. Is the online version of Wikipedia an encyclopaedia, or
> is it a peek into a work in progress?
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia : protection, death, transubstantiation

body:
On Wed, 31 May 2006 10:27:16 +0200, you wrote:

>I like the idea of letting vandals make changes to any
>page - but simply not publishing them.

H2G2 has a peer-review process prior to publishing in the edited
guide.  The bureaucratic nature of this process, specifically updating
existing content, is what caused me to give up editing H2G2 (I did
have a large number of articles in the edited guide)

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