from_name: James Hare

body:
Brion, I will redirect my $100 donation to Wikimedia straight to you if you
get SUL up by January.

On 12/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> George Herbert schreef:
> > On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >> The Cunctator wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> >>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> >>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> >>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
> >>>>
> >>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> >>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> >>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> >>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> >>>> request page.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture,
> I
> >>> believe you are off the mark.
> >>>
> >>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
> >>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
> >> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
> >> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
> >> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
> >> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
> >> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
> >> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
> >> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
> >> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
> >> refuse to learn others.,
> >>
> >> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
> >>
> >>
> >
> > It is also unacceptable for dedicated vandals to show up, register an
> > account whose visual depiction is not at all distinguishable from the
> > accountname of an existing administrator or long-time editor due to the
> use
> > of similar ISO characters, and then go on a vandalism rampage which gets
> > blamed on the normal admin.
> >
> > We had this happen a week ago with an omega character substituted for an
> O.
> >
> > I've seen it done with 1/L and 0/o.  Someone tried to impersonate me
> with
> > one letter dropped; I'm suprised they didn't do the 1/L thing instead.
> >
> > There are some very nasty, creative people out there.  If you start
> enabling
> > them to cause more trouble, you are a problem.
> >
> > I'm all for multiculturalism, but this issue HAS to get looked at and
> > thought about.  That does not mean that en.wikipedia may not end up just
> > having to abandon that policy in the end, but if we do that there's
> going to
> > be an opening for vandals to impersonate us.
> >
> > We might have to do something like go from (username) to (username, ID#)
> > tuples to ultimately get around this, which is terribly ugly.
> Hoi,
> With Single User Login, this scheme will not be possible anymore .. a
> user is THAT user and no one else can impersonate him by having the same
> user. So the basic argument here is incorrect. It will no longer be
> possible and, this whole ugly affair demonstrates admirably that we need
> SUL as soon as possible ..
>
> PLEASE BRION .. get this over and done with.
>
> Thanks,
>     Gerard
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
	other communities


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
 other communities

body:
Neil Harris schreef:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Neil Harris schreef:
>>
>>
>>> Gerard,
>>>
>>> The problem does indeed occur symmetrically, and while I phrased my
>>> reply in terms of making non-Latin names unambiguous on
>>> native-Latin-script Wikipedia editions, you might want to re-read my
>>> comment, and notice the bit that said:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Of course, to avoid any appearance of linguistic imperialism, the same
>>>> facility should be available for users with Latin-script names to add
>>>> transliterations in other scripts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> -- Neil
>>>
>>>
>> I can only say that I disagree.
>> Thanks,
>>
>>       *?????????*
>>
>>
>>
>
> Gerard,
>
> Given that you disagree with both of my suggestions of possible
> solutions for the script-incomprehensibility problem, perhaps you could
> suggest a better solution to the problem, preferably one that does not
> involve the users of every Wikipedia learning to be literate in every
> writing system supported by Wikipedia?
>
> -- ?? ???
Hoi,
There is no solution that suits both of us. I disagree with the stance
that people have to change their name in order to accommodate. When
people are happy to do that it is ok. When they are forced to do this it
is not ok. The key is that the user uses ONE script and is allowed to be
him or herself. Given the amount of people around there is no chance for
you to know if someone is ok even in Latin. You will have to check their
talk page and/or edits. This applies here as much.

I did not react to the number game because I utterly dislike it.
Remember, this is the Wikimedia Foundation where people are allowed to
edit anonymously, and you propose to reduce people to numbers.. :( We
are talking here about people from other projects. These people that
also go to the English language wikipedia should be treated with respect
and not with suspicion.

When you need a signalling system that someone is probably ok, then you
can think of all kinds of metrics that could be applied. Reducing people
to a number is ugly, requiring people to change their name is ugly.
Creating a system with metrics is ugly. To me it is the best of a bad
bunch. The saving grace of metrics is that it can be applied to everyone
with equal justification.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 12/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> There is no such thing as a "primary character set of the Wikipedia" all

You misinterpreted what wrote. It may have been clearer if I had written
"primary character set for each Wikipedia".

Wikipedia projects are equal. I do not think that Walter's phraseology
> is helpful but it does demonstrate quite eloquently how strong the
> sentiments are against this policy.

Unless I'm mistaken, you are misinterpreting the policy. Those claiming that
SUL means that non-Latin-alphabet usernames will be somehow
eliminated/discriminated against/banned are incorrect.

Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
> The Cunctator schreef:
> > Um. I think a policy of expecting people to have usernames readable in
> the
> > primary character set of the Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable, whatever
> the
> > language, and nothing to flip out about.
> >
> > Maybe you should reconsider your outrage.
> >
> > On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >> The Cunctator wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Hello,
> >>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> >>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> >>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> >>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
> >>>>
> >>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> >>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> >>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> >>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> >>>> request page.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture,
> I
> >>> believe you are off the mark.
> >>>
> >>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
> >>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
> >>>
> >>>
> >> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
> >> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
> >> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
> >> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
> >> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
> >> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
> >> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
> >> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
> >> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
> >>
> >> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
> >> refuse to learn others.,
> >>
> >> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Voice of All

subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
Indeed both are extemely important, and in some ways irreversible. Revealing
checkuser data cannot be undone, and while someone with root could reverse
the oversight revision moving, leaking this information could result in
serious personal information being "out there", which cannot be reversed.
Checkuser and Oversight are more or less on the same "level".

Though oversuse of ovesight is more annoying than seriously damaging, its
still is a good way to waste developer time and should strongly be avoided,
as abuse can raise questions about the judgement of someone who has that
priviledge. I've already wrote a patch (bug 8131) to add diffs to Oversight
to help make watching over its use easier.

David Gerard-2 wrote:
>
> Possibly. [[:en:Wikipedia:Oversight]] is the page that explains how to
> request oversighting.
>
> Note that oversighting is only for material so sensitive that not even
> admins on the wiki should be allowed to see it. We have over a
> thousand admins on en:, so are at a stage where we need this. It's not
> for vandalism, copyright violations, etc. - only for material that
> could be personally dangerous to someone.
>
> The en: oversighters already say "no" to a lot of requests from people
> who want to remove their own silly past edits from the record, admins
> who don't want to hand-check lots of boxes to delete one bad revision,
> etc.
>
> I suspect most wikis won't actually *need* oversight as yet - en:wp
> gets maybe one or two actionable requests a day.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>

--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Oversight-rights-tf2859058.html#a8001431
Sent from the WikiMedia Foundation mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


body:
For the record, the relevant policy is tagged as disputed, as I've done so
now. See [[:w:en:Wikipedia:Username]].

It would be really nice if the users who have participated in the discussion
here could do so in the project talk page.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 5:04 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
other communities

Brion Vibber schreef:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>> Different-script blocking on en: must therefore stop as soon as SUL is
>> implemented.
>>
>> But, since human-readable usernames are essential to managing the wiki
>> system, and for many people names not in their native script are not
>> human-readable, there must necessarily be some sort of solution to the
>> name-incomprehensibility problem before SUL goes live.
>>
>
> I should just point out that SUL *changes nothing* with regard to this
> situation.
>
> It has always been preferable for the same username to mean the same
> person on all wikis, but it isn't enforced until the system is ready to
> do that. That's all SUL does.
>
> A person may have different usernames on each wiki; they've always been
> and always will be free to do that. SUL does not change that.
>
> A person may also use a nickname for their signatures which is cuter or
> easier to type. Always have been, always will be. SUL does not change
that.
>
> It might be useful to be able to make nicks more pervasive in their
> visibility. SUL does not change that.
>
> That doesn't depend on SUL, nor does SUL depend on it in any way.
Hoi,
With SUL intended to provide Single User Login, the functionality and
use of SUL is frustrated when people are then forced to create a user
when the English language Wikipedia insists that it has to be in a Latin
script.

You can not implement SUL and then say that it is OK to frustrate its
central premiss.

Thanks,
    GerardM

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
> > Make the whole of template space editable by admins only, and loosen the
> > grip on adminship.  Templates are probably an area which should be kept
> > to trusted users, and admins are our trusted users.  Might make the
> > community face up to rewiring RFA.
>
> Or resurrect the middle option, like the idea of giving trusted users the
> rollback function.  Even trusted users wouldn't get the admin bit if it
> were loosened, but would be perfectly trusted to have access to something
> like that.

A middle option sounds good. I'm not sure how it should be handed out
- an automatic system would be good, but would probably be easy to get
around. A manual system would be a lot of work... (there are lots of
trustworthy wikipedians).


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Neil Harris schreef:
>
>> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Neil Harris schreef:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Gerard,
>>>>
>>>> The problem does indeed occur symmetrically, and while I phrased my
>>>> reply in terms of making non-Latin names unambiguous on
>>>> native-Latin-script Wikipedia editions, you might want to re-read my
>>>> comment, and notice the bit that said:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Of course, to avoid any appearance of linguistic imperialism, the same
>>>>> facility should be available for users with Latin-script names to add
>>>>> transliterations in other scripts.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> -- Neil
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I can only say that I disagree.
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>       *?????????*
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Gerard,
>>
>> Given that you disagree with both of my suggestions of possible
>> solutions for the script-incomprehensibility problem, perhaps you could
>> suggest a better solution to the problem, preferably one that does not
>> involve the users of every Wikipedia learning to be literate in every
>> writing system supported by Wikipedia?
>>
>> -- ?? ???
>>
> Hoi,
> There is no solution that suits both of us. I disagree with the stance
> that people have to change their name in order to accommodate. When
> people are happy to do that it is ok. When they are forced to do this it
> is not ok. The key is that the user uses ONE script and is allowed to be
> him or herself. Given the amount of people around there is no chance for
> you to know if someone is ok even in Latin. You will have to check their
> talk page and/or edits. This applies here as much.
>
> I did not react to the number game because I utterly dislike it.
> Remember, this is the Wikimedia Foundation where people are allowed to
> edit anonymously, and you propose to reduce people to numbers.. :( We
> are talking here about people from other projects. These people that
> also go to the English language wikipedia should be treated with respect
> and not with suspicion.
>
> When you need a signalling system that someone is probably ok, then you
> can think of all kinds of metrics that could be applied. Reducing people
> to a number is ugly, requiring people to change their name is ugly.
> Creating a system with metrics is ugly. To me it is the best of a bad
> bunch. The saving grace of metrics is that it can be applied to everyone
> with equal justification.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>

I'd be interested in the opinions of some of the native-language users
of non-Latin scripts on this list about this idea, rather than having
Gerard imagining what they might think.

I'm not asking the (fictional) Takeshi to change his name, just to make
it intelligible for others. If he's participating on en:, he is
presumably able to read/write English. By extension, I'd like to be able
to extend the same courtesy to others were I to participate on ar:, he:,
zh:, ko: or jp:, rather than just assuming they could read English, and
again I would hope that I would bother to learn to read/write
Arabic/Hebrew/Chinese/Korean/Japanese respectively at at least an
elementary level, before trying to make any non-trivial edit to those
Wikipedias.

For example, on ar: or am:, I'd rather that people didn't think of my
own Latin-script name as "bunch of funny Latin letters I can't read and
can't tell apart". Likewise, if my name was ?, I believe I'd much
rather have other, non-Japanese-literate people on en: (ie. nearly all
of them) think of me as "Takeshi", rather than as "yet another
unintelligible squiggle".

And again: nothing I'm proposing involves hiding anybody hiding their
own, preferred spelling of their username in the script of the choice,
just adding an extra tag to let others be able to read, pronounce and
remember it. In effect, my proposal offers each user more personal
choice, not less, since it offers them the ability to choose their
preferred name in each script, without hiding their true, single, chosen
unified username.

Incidentally, a possible third option, instead of numeric tags, would be
offer by default a machine-transliterated version of their name, if they
don't choose their own: but this might be ugly, and providing machine
transliteration code/tables for all script/language combinations will
probably be too much to expect.

It may be that my ideas are completely wrong; but not having a solution
to the name-confusability problem is not an option because of the
vandalism problem. Can anyone come up with a better solution?

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
> Yeah, but if it was on a voluntary basis, it wouldn't be that much work
> after the initial rush.  Not every trusted user would want/need access to
> templates, for instance.

A lot of them would want it despite not needing it - everyone wants to
be trusted. Maybe a specific "template" group, rather than a more
general "trusted" group would be good, it would make it easier to
convince people that it's "no big deal".


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

body:
Dictionary translations are infamously bad, as anyone who has worked in
translation or even travelled overseas can tell you. In Israel, my friends and I
used to love checking out the menus of cheap restaurants for the bad
translations. Two favorites come to mind:

1. Difficult egg -- hard boiled egg
2. Grenade juice -- pomegranate juice

>From film subtitles (which I got a lot of money to correct) -- You sun of
the beach -- You son of a bitch ( I remember this especially because the
original translator argued furiously that I did not know popular idioms in  English
because I had lived overseas for too long, while he had an MA in English
Lit.).

I could go on and on. To translate adequately, you need to speak  both
languages. To translate well, you have to be immersed in both  cultures.

Danny
(10+ years translating professionally)

In a message dated 12/20/2006 5:32:27 PM Eastern Standard Time,
gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:

habj  schreef:
> 2006/12/18, Brad Patrick  <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:
>
>> Most of  it
>> should be possible to translate with merely a  dictionary.
>>
>
> I must warn  against this attitude. Hardly anything can be translated
> with merely a  dictionary, lacking context. If one tries, one ends up
> with a certain  percentage of errors which sometimes just look a little
> funny and  sometimes look very bad.
>
> /habj
Hoi,
Translation with the  knowledge of only a dictionary gets you a
translation that is probably not  as good as a machine translation. For
material that needs to be just so  and this is true for the whole of
marketing / advertisement it PAYS to  have proper translations. It even
PAYS to have it done by a professional  translator because it is pennies
to the pound. When you have the  connections with translators you can
even get these translations for a  very reduced rate. It needs however a
proper understanding and approach. I  am sure you do not want to have a
translation into English for a message  like this on the English language
projects !!

I have been told that  a quality translation improves the reach of your
communication by at least  15%.

Thanks,
GerardM


from_name: Matt R

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric
	policy affects other communities

body:
--- Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> There is still the issue of "recognising" names, and a guideline for
> that matter might be helpful. But it is not okay to force people to
> change their user name just to fit one wikipedia rules.

I disagree. I don't think it's OK to allow editors on the English language
Wikipedia to have names that are going to be unmemorable and indistinguishable
for most other editors.

Perhaps the software can be set-up so that users with non-Latin-script names
can specify a transliteration of their username for en?

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Aphaia

body:
Thank you for your comments, all.

Luna, I think we can watch this matter at least from three sides.
A. It is a matter of English Wikipedia, so you should go there.
B. It is a cross project matter so much wider area is needed.
C. It is relevant to single sign-in and its consequences, which will
affect all projects, so foundation-l level width of audience should be
required.

And on my side I take the view of C, so for me it is appropriate to
bring it up here. But if you are interested in discussing it on
wikien-l, I am happy to let you forward my mail.

Cheers,

On 12/20/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> For what it's worth, I'm not entirely sure if the policy is a good idea.
> It's a bit of a moot point, anyway -- as has been mentioned, the whole
> thing'll be pretty redundant, once we get single login.
>
> And all else aside, is this really the sort of issue the foundation needs to
> deal with? Seems this thread might be more appropriate for wikipedia-l or
> wikien-l, personally.
>
> Just my thoughts,
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: Yann Forget

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikimedia Foundation's help to the
 projects

body:
Hello,

Brad Patrick a ?crit :
> "You took the words right out of my mouth."  Exactly.  For those who
> want answers,
> (a) it's complicated
> (b) the answer is "it depends"
> (c) there is no "right" answer
> (d) if there is a "right" answer, it can be challenged
> (e) no, we aren't going to represent you to fight about it.

Erik Moeller a ?crit :
> On 12/14/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I don't believe you understand how useful it would be
>>to just have some one say "That particular case is
>>unknown.  The most similar case to this is Foobar."
>>Even if there were a table of questions that people
>>have asked in the past with yes/no/unknown and no
>>futher advice would be extremely helpful.  I think it
>>a false expectation of yours that we are expecting
>>clearcut answers.  Really we have been mucking through
>>copyright questions as best we can for some time; we
>>are all well aware there are often not answers only
>>arguments.  Just being able to eliminate some
>>arguments as invalid would be very helpful.
>
>
> Aside from the potential issues with the WMF "officially" giving such
> advice to the communities, Brad (our GC and ED) simply doesn't have
> the time to do this.

Obviously I didn't mean that Brad or any professional lawyer paid by the
Foundation has to write all this. The information has to be put down by
the wiki editors as usual, but I think that the coordination is to be
done at the Foundation level, not for each wiki. Then maybe a
professional lawyer in behalf of the Foundation can give a general
agreement about the policy, or just say "this is wrong and has to be
written again". I am not even sure if this last step is necessary or
possible.

> Let's brainstorm about how we can get juriwiki-l
> going, i.e. a functioning, community-driven group of advisors with
> demonstrable legal expertise.
>
> At the moment juriwiki-l is configured so that postings from the
> outside are moderated and replied to by a group of insiders. Is there
> any real issue, from a legal point of view, with making it a public
> mailing list? This is perhaps something Brad can answer.

For what I need, I don't think a mailing list is the answer.
I think that the information should be on the wiki (probably Meta or
Commons).

There is already a lot of information about legal issues on different
wikis [1], so I cannot really buy the idea that legal matters cannot
generally be written down somewhere. Simply what is already there is not
enough, and a bit more detailed information is needed.

Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
> It may not always be easy to establish when the picture was taken, or
> who took it.

All the above implies that this information is known, obviously. The
case when this information is unknown will need rules in itself, and it
may not be the least interesting. Which rules are to be applied when the
author is not known? when the date is not known? when the place is not
known? etc.

So I started a stub here. Please help to complete it.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules

[1] See for example http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_tags

Regards,

Yann


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Removal of Banning Notices/Cherokee Wikipedia

body:
Jeff, you're personal adminship status is not of Foundation-wide importance.
Kindly move this discussion to the proper, long-established forum for such
matters, meta's "Requests for permissions" page.

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

Nick


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Hung Lin

subject: [Wikitech-l] switch back and forth from wiki editor to FCKEditor

body:
Hi,

I'm using Mediawiki-1.8.2 and FCKEditor 2.3.2 and I set FCKEditor as my
default editor.  If I want to switch back to wiki editor just for one
particular page (Main_page), what should I do?  I know how to setup
namespaces and exclude it from FCKEditor, but this is not what I want.
I want to switch back and forth from wiki editor and FCKEditor on some
pages.  Any help is really appreciated.

Regards,

Hung Lin


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 153

body:
On 12/18/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/06, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sarah wrote:
> > > The problem is that material we use as sources must be available to
> > > the general public,...
> >
> > Which I understand to include such things as legal databases. In theory
> > at least, anyone in the general public can do what is necessary to
> > acquire access to such a database. We certainly don't require that
> > sources are immediately available to anyone.
> >
> Any member of the public must be able to access the source and also
> see what the source says. So Zero's search would have to be very
> straightforward, one that no one could argue with or interpret
> differently, and it would have to be a search of a database that a
> member of the public could reasonably be expected to gain access to.
> And arguably his conclusion, that no legal scholar holds a different
> opinion (or whatever words he used), would have to be notable and
> relevant in a way that didn't invoke OR, otherwise it would be like
> saying no mathematician believes 2 plus 2 equals 5.
>
> The NOR policy is clear that "anyone?without specialist knowledge?who
> reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
> passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary
> source material requires a secondary source."
>
> Sarah
>
>
To reiterate, there are two entirely separate issues in this thread:
1) whether you can draw a fair conclusion from the results presented by a
database search, for the purposes of encyclopedic referencing and
verification.
2) whether members of the general public (whoever they might be) should be
able to easily (whatever that means) access any source cited in the
encyclopedia for verification purposes.

My take on these questions:
1) No. Databases, in general, change and update their contents regularly; do
not necessarily cover everything published in a given field (especially not
a field as enormous as law); and cannot be trusted to properly index their
holdings (and if something isn't indexed, you aren't finding it). On top of
that, as has been pointed out the original poster's search may be incomplete
or otherwise faulty. I wouldn't trust myself to do an absolutely
comprehensive database search for these purposes, and I'm what passes for a
trained professional these days; unless Zero's a fabulous legal researcher
of some sort I'm not inclined to take his word for it. It's more than a
barrier of having access to the database -- to recreate the search you also
have to know *how* to search, which is not simple or easy in most legal
databases. For all of these reasons, I wouldn't cite a database search in
any context, except perhaps in a very specific type of academic writing that
was focussed on research technique -- otherwise, it's like saying "because
google said so" (which granted we use to determine lots of things around
here, but hopefully not as an actual fact in an article). The search results
would be a fine note to put on the talk page and should be taken as such.

2) As others have pointed out, expecting the public at large around the
world to have access to all of our sources is pretty silly. There's the
language barrier, for one thing; I am sure there are great sources in most
all of the world's languages that I'll never be able to read, which
shouldn't stop people from citing them in the relevant articles and relevant
Wikipedias. There's also the expense of most major reference works and
journals, the rarity of certain older and academic materials, the
incomprehensiblity of certain academic topics to those who don't know the
field (like Charles' math example, where I'm just going to have to take his
word for it), etc.  This is why libraries exist in the first place: to
collect together things that may be hard to come by otherwise.

Now, if you have a CHOICE between an obscure work and a better known and
better accessible one, and otherwise they're the same, then by all means
cite the better accessible one. Better yet, cite both. Cite the ISO Standard
and the easily-available IEEE paper that summarizes it. In other words:
sure, I've personally handled a 1728 [[Cyclopaedia]] and can happily tell
you that the long subtitle is correct, but it's only because the work is
digitized and discussed in other sources like Britannica that I expect most
people in the world to ever be able to verify that.

-- phoebe (brassratgirl)


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
Some thoughts (copied from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Username#Clarification ):

The facts are:
* for the moment, non latin accounts are blocked on sight.
* in the very future, SUL will merge all accounts from the same person into
one single account.

What bastique and others, including me, ask is:
* blocking accounts in a different alphabet should not be the default
behavior anywhere, neither on the english-language wikipedia nor on the
japanese or russian ones.
* If people use their account to add interwikis sometimes, there should be
no problem with them keeping their non latin username.
* If people are active on the project, we assume they know the language at
least a little. Thus, we can ask them to use an alias (see
[[Special:Preferences]] > signature) readable by the people on this project.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
	affects other communities


body:
I like that idea -- where usernames are automatically transliterated
depending on which wiki you'd go to. If you're on a wiki that uses Latin
alphabet, then the name is in Latin script. If on Hebrew Wikipedia, Hebrew
script, etc... It can work like the Automatic Conversion script on Chinese
Wikipedia.

On 12/20/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For the record, the relevant policy is tagged as disputed, as I've done so
> now. See [[:w:en:Wikipedia:Username]].
>
> It would be really nice if the users who have participated in the
> discussion
> here could do so in the project talk page.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gerard Meijssen
> Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 5:04 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
> other communities
>
> Brion Vibber schreef:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Neil Harris wrote:
> >
> >> Different-script blocking on en: must therefore stop as soon as SUL is
> >> implemented.
> >>
> >> But, since human-readable usernames are essential to managing the wiki
> >> system, and for many people names not in their native script are not
> >> human-readable, there must necessarily be some sort of solution to the
> >> name-incomprehensibility problem before SUL goes live.
> >>
> >
> > I should just point out that SUL *changes nothing* with regard to this
> > situation.
> >
> > It has always been preferable for the same username to mean the same
> > person on all wikis, but it isn't enforced until the system is ready to
> > do that. That's all SUL does.
> >
> > A person may have different usernames on each wiki; they've always been
> > and always will be free to do that. SUL does not change that.
> >
> > A person may also use a nickname for their signatures which is cuter or
> > easier to type. Always have been, always will be. SUL does not change
> that.
> >
> > It might be useful to be able to make nicks more pervasive in their
> > visibility. SUL does not change that.
> >
> > That doesn't depend on SUL, nor does SUL depend on it in any way.
> Hoi,
> With SUL intended to provide Single User Login, the functionality and
> use of SUL is frustrated when people are then forced to create a user
> when the English language Wikipedia insists that it has to be in a Latin
> script.
>
> You can not implement SUL and then say that it is OK to frustrate its
> central premiss.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 12/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Rich Holton wrote:
> > Andrey wrote:
> >
> >>We talk about the English-language Wikipedia here, no? Other Wikimedia
> >>projects allow usernames in non-Latin scripts, as best I know. For
> instance,
> >>in Russian wikipedia, you may get a username in Cyrillic. Most
> complaints
> >>are from those editors who have a non-Latin username in their national
> >>wikipedia and fail to see why they can't keep it in English wikipedia.
> Best,
> >>Andrey
> >>
> >
> > Single User Login (SUL) _is_ coming soon. This means that someone with a
> > login on the Russian Wikipedia will be able to have the same username on
> > the English Wikipedia (just as an example).
> >
> > The question is, are we ready for this?
> >
> > -Rich
> > _______________________________________________
>
> More than "will be able to have". "Will have to have".
> It will be one account for all projects.
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

"BUT, soon, this will not be possible any more. All users will have only
ONE account."

Nothing is keeping users from creating a separate account under another name
if they want to have different identities on different wikis for a
legitimate reason.

Mgm


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
Guy Chapman wrote

> On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:42:05 -0600, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >The NOR policy section Sarah quoted tells those
> >people that their talents are not valued here.
>
> The problem here is that we cannot tell the difference between an
> expert and an "expert", and we don't necessarily know if the editor is
> pushing a personal agenda.

You don't. But starting off with an overly suspicious attitude is fairly useless, also. In the perspective that Wikipedia articles aim to get readers up to speed quickly in an unfamiliar area, rather than be definitive or authoritative, a certain amount should be taken on (provisional) trust.

Charles

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body:
> So ... what would you do about names like "Seabhcan" (or "Sean," for that
> matter) that are pronounced in ways nonintuitive to most Anglophones?

It doesn't really matter if people pronouce it right, as long as they
can pronounce it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
It's surprising how many things can be held under the gun of intellectual
property protection.

Case in point: Captain Jean-Luc Picard(r).

On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
>
> Leaving aside the baseless allegation of trolling,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anti-Star_Trek_Cabal_logo.png is
> possibly going to be deleted for that reason.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
>
> Leaving aside the baseless allegation of trolling,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anti-Star_Trek_Cabal_logo.png is
> possibly going to be deleted for that reason.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

It's quite possible. That could easily be considered a derivative work.


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 12/20/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of
> > reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree
> > with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and
> > interpretations between those sources and our readers.
>
> I'm not saying they should be. I'm saying that the 'populist' view is, if taken to extremes, asking for too much verbatim quoting. If readers raise objections to some basic massaging for readability, they can go elsewhere and see if they really like the original sources that much better. The whole point about writing articles in technical areas is that almost everyone would hate treatments that are really faithful to the initial formulations.
>
Okay, but we don't need to take it to extremes if people are using
common sense.  I also dislike seeing lists of quotes because people
can't string a narrative together. But as I said yesterday, I feel I'm
seeing better editing every day: fewer articles with no sources; fewer
with sources misused; fewer that consist of lists of quotes; fewer
that are full of personal opinions. I believe that adherance to the
content policies is turning the hard core of regular editors into
encyclopedists, and the less regular ones are picking up on the
changing climate and following suit. And I believe the content
policies are strongly supported.

Sarah


body:
Sarah wrote
> Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to
> fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia,
> so that has to be our priority.

No. that's wrong, which is why I'm arguing the point. Our 'priority' is the encyclopedia mission, and this 'anyone' stuff is getting in the way.

>Your argument seems to be that because
> everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to,
> and that we should instead leave the writing and research to
> self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may
> have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by
> other experts in the field.

You should notice that of the three places I selected, two (Kerala in India, and Kampala in Uganda) are substantially anglophone places.

And what is this "we should instead leave the writing and research to self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may  have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by other experts in the field."? I said nothing of the sort.

Einstein writes a paper a century ago. In German, in old-fashioned mathematical notation, using concepts that will only later be tidied up by the mathematical physicists such as Minkowski space. We want to do the thing an actual expert would do fluently: not repeat Einstein verbatim, but to state the import in a style that is going to make sense to the reader, and is compatible with the rest of the physics articles. This is likely to take as read elementary algebraic manipulation (if not calculus), and logical moves - for anyone who really wants to check it against the original. (Of course there will be textbook treatments, but there are other fields which are not served as well). The fact is that Joe Public will not usefully be able to fact-check all, in the typical case. Does this matter? Not really. Some subjects just are hierarchically ordered like that.

> I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of
> reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree
> with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and
> interpretations between those sources and our readers.

I'm not saying they should be. I'm saying that the 'populist' view is, if taken to extremes, asking for too much verbatim quoting. If readers raise objections to some basic massaging for readability, they can go elsewhere and see if they really like the original sources that much better. The whole point about writing articles in technical areas is that almost everyone would hate treatments that are really faithful to the initial formulations.

Charles

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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Automatic username transliteration for SUL

body:
On Wikipedia-l or something similar there has been discussion involving
English Wikipedia's policy of blocking users with usernames that do not use
the Latin alphabet. Reasons for opposition to this practice include
ethnocentricism and messing up SUL. However, a point was raised in that
people unfamiliar with the script will just see it as a bunch of
squiggly-lines. A suggested remedy was having people transliterate their
names depending on the wiki.

I'm interested in combining this with a script similar to the Automatic
Conversion script employed on the Chinese Wikipedia, that would, combined
with SUL, automatically transliterate usernames contingent on the wiki they
are on. For example, on French Wikipedia, your username would be in Latin
script, whereas on the Hebrew Wikipedia your username would be in Hebrew
script and on Arabic Wikipedia your username would be in Arabic script.

I know there are scripts out there that can transliterate -- in addition to
the aforementioned conversion script on the Chinese Wikipedia, there are
quite a few scripts out there that will allow you to input something and
have it output in a different script.

http://vereb.free.fr/transliteration/transliterator.html has a pretty cool
one that allows you to type with Latin alphabet settings and it will output
in a different script. For example,
- MessedRocker becomes ???????????? with the Cyrillic setting
- MessedRocker becomes ????????c??? with the Greek setting
- MessedRocker becomes ??????????? with the Arabic setting.

If something could be created for SUL that would take a username and
transliterate it depending on the language of the wiki, that would be great.
I understand there are technical issues involved, but I would like to
discuss it on a community level.

--James


subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
 affects other communities

body:
Guillaume Paumier wrote:
> Some thoughts (copied from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Username#Clarification ):
>
> The facts are:
> * for the moment, non latin accounts are blocked on sight.
> * in the very future, SUL will merge all accounts from the same person into
> one single account.
>
> What bastique and others, including me, ask is:
> * blocking accounts in a different alphabet should not be the default
> behavior anywhere, neither on the english-language wikipedia nor on the
> japanese or russian ones.
> * If people use their account to add interwikis sometimes, there should be
> no problem with them keeping their non latin username.
> * If people are active on the project, we assume they know the language at
> least a little. Thus, we can ask them to use an alias (see
> [[Special:Preferences]] > signature) readable by the people on this project.
>
>
Great. This is (more or less) my proposal #1. As far as I can see, if
this is a generally acceptable, all we need to do is to:

1 to prevent dodgy spoofing games, make sure that aliases are unique
within the multilingual Wikipedia user namespace (this might, for
example, mean that the fictional Takeshi above might have to adopt the
alias Takeshi2 if there's already a "User:Takeshi",

and

2 make the alias visible in the user interface alongside the real
username wherever it appears -- which should be relatively easy to do,
since all the occurrences in the UI should be greppable, making this
possibly just a search-replace job, something like (pseudocode)

     "[[$USERNAME]]" --> "[[$USERNAME]] ([[$USERNAME|$LOCALALIAS]])"

Or something like that.

-- Neil


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
 affects other communities


from_name: James D. Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
David Gerard wrote:

> (We tend not to have a lot of crossover between the
> AC/checkuser/oversighter pool and the bureaucrat pool; I think only
> Raul654 is both on en:wp.)

To which the obvious point is that "trust" has many flavours - people
trusted legally (say, I dunno, our legal counsel? :-)) might well not
have that much trust with the community - and, sadly, vice versa. :-(

Here endeth the off-topic-ness. Hopefully.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Aphaia wrote:
>
> > Japanese editors around me is worried when they would be forced to
> > change their username and thought SUL as the Coming of such Latin-name
> > age.
>
> That is 100% FALSE.
>
> NO SUCH REQUIREMENT WILL EXIST.
>
> SINGLE LOGIN WILL NOT REQUIRE ANYONE TO CHANGE THEIR USERNAME TO LATIN.
>
> PLEASE REPLY TO SUCH RUMORS THAT IT IS FALSE.

Of course, this is because SUL will never happen... ;-)

(Joking, joking.)

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


from_name: Chris Picone

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
Update on an old thread:
The so-called "bot" has an account (incase the people at BRFA think I
should use a flagged account). I currently run the script to find
copyvios in my spare time; I've found three. The galaxy is at peace.
--Chris is me

On 11/29/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah. Since all edits are manual anyways (and mirrors are usually low
> on Google), the "bot"'s confusion can't hurt.
>
> On 11/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Earle Martin wrote:
> > > On 28/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> There is somewhere a pretty complete list of WP mirrors, official and
> > >> otherwise. It was intended as a data file to a greasemonkey scrpt, to
> > >> filter these results from Google searches. You could probably adapt
> > >> it, using my incredibly helpful and explicit directions to find it.
> > >
> > > Aha, it looks like you're talking about this:
> > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mirror_filter
> > >
> > > Thanks very much, I'll work it in.
> > >
> >
> > The other page, useful for when you find non-compliant mirrors, is
> > [[Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks]] (or similar).
> >
> > --
> > Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> > Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> > "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> > Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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: Christophe Millet

body:
>
>
> * for the moment, non latin accounts are blocked on sight.

True, I've just tried that and been blocked after 1 or 2 minutes
(before having time for a single edit actually),
I don't find it very welcoming...

I got that very friendly message:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%E1%93%82%E1%93%AA%E1%93%9A%E1%93%B1%E1%91%A6%E1%91%8E%E1%90%B9

Kip.

P.S.: My user account means "keep cool" in inuktitut (everybody should
install that font
just because it's fun to read).


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:

>Jeff, you're personal adminship status is not of Foundation-wide importance.
>Kindly move this discussion to the proper, long-established forum for such
>matters, meta's "Requests for permissions" page.
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions
>
>Nick
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Thanks.

Jeff


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 20/12/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> Um. I think a policy of expecting people to have usernames readable in the
> primary character set of the Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable, whatever the
> language, and nothing to flip out about.
> Maybe you should reconsider your outrage.

He was ranting similarly abusively on IRC just now, confessing he was
extremely drunk. Let's assume good faith and assume he posts better
sober.

- d.


from_name: Sean Whitton (Xyrael)

subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers/checkuser reveals five
people who have b'crat and checkuser :)

Just a side note for those who are interested.

On 20/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The effect of an inappropriate release of checkuser data is an
> > irreparable loss of privacy. I wouldn't go so far as saying that a
> > carelessly performed checkuser could be life threatening, since if
> > your life is on the line over any websites ability to protect your
> > privacy thats your mistake.. but it is clear that often the result of
> > a mistake made with checkuser data can not simply be undone.
> > As such I don't think we should get in the practice of considering
> > oversight a more sensitive privilege than checkuser.
>
>
> The way we do it on en:wp is that the arbitration committee says who
> gets either, and those with checkuser and oversight tend to be
> arbitrators and ex-arbitrators.
>
> That is: what Greg points out is true, but in practice if someone's
> considered sufficiently trustworthy then they're likely to have either
> job land on them.
>
> (We tend not to have a lot of crossover between the
> AC/checkuser/oversighter pool and the bureaucrat pool; I think only
> Raul654 is both on en:wp.)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
?Sean Whitton	(Xyrael)	[sean at silentflame dot com]
	Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.


subject: [Foundation-l] Oversight rights


body:
I don't know if IPA would work... I mean for all we know, "Bob" could have
some random pronounciation of "ko-ho-ba-fay-jo-muh". When it comes to
storing it in the database, I agree it should be some uniform script, like a
Federation Standard of sorts...

On 12/20/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > On Wikipedia-l or something similar there has been discussion involving
> > English Wikipedia's policy of blocking users with usernames that do not
> use
> > the Latin alphabet. Reasons for opposition to this practice include
> > ethnocentricism and messing up SUL. However, a point was raised in that
> > people unfamiliar with the script will just see it as a bunch of
> > squiggly-lines. A suggested remedy was having people transliterate their
> > names depending on the wiki.
> >
> > I'm interested in combining this with a script similar to the Automatic
> > Conversion script employed on the Chinese Wikipedia, that would,
> combined
> > with SUL, automatically transliterate usernames contingent on the wiki
> they
> > are on. For example, on French Wikipedia, your username would be in
> Latin
> > script, whereas on the Hebrew Wikipedia your username would be in Hebrew
> > script and on Arabic Wikipedia your username would be in Arabic script.
> >
> > I know there are scripts out there that can transliterate -- in addition
> to
> > the aforementioned conversion script on the Chinese Wikipedia, there are
> > quite a few scripts out there that will allow you to input something and
> > have it output in a different script.
> >
> > http://vereb.free.fr/transliteration/transliterator.html has a pretty
> cool
> > one that allows you to type with Latin alphabet settings and it will
> output
> > in a different script. For example,
> > - MessedRocker becomes ???????????? with the Cyrillic setting
> > - MessedRocker becomes ????????c??? with the Greek setting
> > - MessedRocker becomes ??????????? with the Arabic setting.
> >
> > If something could be created for SUL that would take a username and
> > transliterate it depending on the language of the wiki, that would be
> great.
> > I understand there are technical issues involved, but I would like to
> > discuss it on a community level.
> >
> > --James
> >
>
> If we can make it as simple as that (and acknowledge that the automatic
> transliteration will often be very, very,  bad) we could possibly make
> this work, with the option to change your nick to something else later.
>
> Perhaps language -> IPA -> language might be a good way of helping the m
> x n problem for this, in which case we could use language <-> IPA tables
> to bootstrap this.
>
> Would this be a good idea, or would it be linguistic nonsense?
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
...except admin. Why can't trusted users handle admin? It's not like
admin is a big deal, so we should hand it out more liberally.

On 12/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > The real problem here is that trusted users should be given the sysop
> > bit and are not.  No big deal?  Not these days.
>
> Yes. Put differently, we lack a middle ground. Admin is too powerful
> to give to everyone. But there's nothing to give to our trusted users.
>
> 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: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/20/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...except admin. Why can't trusted users handle admin? It's not like
> > admin is a big deal, so we should hand it out more liberally.
>
> Adminship is a big deal. You may not want this to be the case but it is.

I think that it isn't a big deal the way most admins use it.  It's
reasonable to say that for controversial people, it becomes a bigger
deal for the community.

The definition of controversial has expanded somewhat, and despite it
having bitten me recently, I think I agree with that.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee C.O.R.E. Translation

body:
I noticed that all the other completed translations seem to be working
on the CORE site, so I guess someone figured out how to map them all
in.  Can the Cherokee be posted in at this point?

Jeff


body:
Rory Stolzenberg wrote:

>On 12/20/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I noticed that all the other completed translations seem to be working
>>on the CORE site, so I guess someone figured out how to map them all
>>in.  Can the Cherokee be posted in at this point?
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>There's still no translation of Drupal at
>http://drupal.org/project/Translations . Without that translation, almost
>nothing on the site would actually be translated. The other languages added
>all have language packs, though I can't add Slovenian for the same reason as
>Cherokee.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
I'll log into their site and see if I can whip one out quickly. I do
have the most powerful computer assisted translation engine for Cherokee
on the planet. Piece of cake.

Jeff


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) wrote:

>Another WP:Office related question on which clarification might be in order
>is under what circumstances an administrator or editor should call
>situations to the Office's attention.  A few weeks ago, I came across a
>serious legal threats situation involving threats to sue the Foundation
>unless changes were made in an article immediately.  I suggested on one of
>the noticeboards that this seemed like the sort of thing that the Office
>would want to know about right away.  I was e-mailed by two people who
>indicated that the Office actually prefers that administrators deal with
>these situations on their own without getting the Foundation involved.  Some
>clarification on when the Office should be notified of the various types of
>threats and other situations that arise could be helpful so that admins and
>editors are able to do the best possible job of protecting the Foundation
>and the contributors.
>
I agree with the two e-mails that you received.  To understand this
requires an appreciation of the subtle distinction between the roles of
the Foundation and the various communities that operate under its wing.
If the function of the Foundation is to serve as some kind of ISP it
does not know about most of these suspicious edits.  This is on a more
serious level than just playing dumb.  In a sense sourcing is just as
important for complaints as for claims in an article.  I believe that
for a person to have a valid claim, he must first of all have standing.
This is a matter of either being directly affected, or being officially
authorized to represent such a person.  If the office were to act on
every claim by a third-party do-gooder the situation would be much
worse, and the office would soon grind to a halt.

There are many, many more admins than there are Foundation trustees and
employees.  Why should they not be the ones to clean up the situation
when they are apprised of the situation?  An experienced admin is not
new to legal threats.  Admins as a group have the tools to deal with
such people.  While there may be situations involving threats of
physical violence where the office should be notified, we also should
not presume that the office is manned 24/7.  The threatened person could
be dead before the office even has a chance to open.  Admins based in
Europe, North America and Australia are together in a much better
position to give 24/7 coverage. If someone feels that he has been
treated unjustly, and receives no satisfaction from the admins it's up
to him to notify the Foundation in whatever way he deems appropriate.

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 12/20/06, Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I can understand the rationale for this policy, but it _is_
> ethnocentric, and it counters the problem from the wrong side, if you
> know what I mean. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they try to
> remove it.

I think it's horribly rude for the other admins on en: to be blocking
people for using non-Latin characters in their username. A more polite
approach would be to ask them to add a transliteration to their
signature, that would satisfy many people.

The problem is fairly simple, people who speak only English don't
bother installing language support on their computers, even though
(AFAIK) it is included with all operating systems these days. All they
need to do is get their installation CD out and turn it on.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

body:
You seem at least as ethnic/cultural biased as others. We have a
saying in dutch that the pot blames the kettle for seeing black. That
is exactly what your reaction is.

As for me, I find it perfectly understandable from the community point
of view that en blocks all non latin characters, ru blocks all non
cyrillic characters and ja all kana characters.

I suspect that this is however not a very good solution, for nobody.
So I suggest that Guillaume Paumier's proposal be implemented.

Bryan

On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
> >>Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
> >>chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
> >>had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
> >>
> >>I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
> >>shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
> >>respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
> >>communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
> >>request page.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >Although there are strong relationships between language and culture, I
> >believe you are off the mark.
> >
> >It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
> >Latin-alphabet usernames.
> >
> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
>
> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
> refuse to learn others.,
>
> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Commons-l] Recruit photographers with your blog

body:
On 12/19/06, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Admins at WikiA have full delete rights at WikiB, even if they are
> > non-admins and explicitly blocked at WikiB!
>
>
> As I understand this feature in no way would give deletion rights of WikiA
> at WikiB,  they would still delete the file only at WikiA, regardless of the
> interface they use.

Exactly. You'll need upload rights at WikiB to upload/import there,
and admin rights at WikiA to delete there.

The only potential problem could be from an evil admin who deletes
thousands of images through the api. But they'd all be recoverable
(maybe through the api); also, we could limit the number/speed of
api-based deletions.

Magnus


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8242] subcategories established too fast?

body:
> To do a mass purge, one can update the value of $wgCacheEpoch (this
> would also be accomplished by touching LocalSettings.php where that
> file was generated by a more recent installer, but I suspect your wiki
> was established long before that was the case) in LocalSettings.php.

The 1.7.1 LocalSettings.php has
  # When you make changes to this configuration file, this will make
  # sure that cached pages are cleared.
  $configdate = gmdate( 'YmdHis', @filemtime( __FILE__ ) );
  $wgCacheEpoch = max( $wgCacheEpoch, $configdate );
so touching it should have been enough it seems.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 12/17/06, A <jokestress at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>- Impartial admin(s) assigned to each OFFICEd article at the moment it is
>>protected (preferably someone with no edits to the article prior to
>>WP:OFFICE). Perhaps randomly chosen from an existing pool of volunteers and
>>an a WP:COI clearance for the article in question. That person would be
>>listed on the talk page as the coordinator and would check back in each day
>>and respond to proposed changes.
>>
>>
>Something along these lines would be good...just making sure that
>whenever there is an WP:OFFICE action, *someone* is taking
>responsibility for it, and in particular, managing the inevitable
>friction that arises. The office people (understandably) don't have
>time to manage the article, explain what's going on etc. But a trusted
>admin who could just watch the article for a week or so, liaise with
>the office and keep the article talk page up to date...?
>
Sure.  I think we first need to recognize that an OFFICE action is an
emergency action by a person who is faced with a crisis and must act
immediately.  Powers exercised in an emergency have a greater likelihood
of being wrong than those which have been subject to consultation and
reflection.  The errors do not impugn the good faith of the person
exercising the power.

Extraordinary powers require extraordinary safeguards against both their
intentional or accidental abuse.
    1. OFFICE actions should automatically expire after a week unless
there has been separate positive efforts to extend for a further period
of one week.
    2. Key admins should be notified of the reasons for the action, and
asked to initiate a cleanup.
    3. Disciplinary sanctions for defying the action  should not be the
responsibility of the office.

Ec


body:
On 12/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> These images need to be reviewed by a human.. many of them obtained a
> free tag through license roulette and are obvious violations to even
> the most cursory examination. A move to commons is a good time to
> perform such a check.
>
> This isn't an argument against the API allowing deletion, but just a
> factor pointing out that the dream of fully automated moves should
> never be made real. :)

I'm not aiming for a "move everything" automaton, rather for a tool that can
* list images on a "source wiki" (e.g., all images of a user)
* shows thumbnails and description of each image
* has a checkbox for each image
* and a button "move selected images"

Basically, my "PushForCommons" tool, but pimped ;-)

For example, I remember there's some user (on de, I think) who
uploaded hundreds of images of tractors, which he took during some
exhibition. They all have a similar, complete description. I'd like to
be able to take these and move them all at once, since I know they're
all OK.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
theProject wrote:

>Whoa, whoa, whoa. How would Wiki[m/p]edia, in the United States, be subject
>to a law in the United Kingdom? Just because some country has a law that
>would prevent Wikipedia from stating something about some particular topic
>doesn't mean Wikipedia has to follow it. If we followed North Korean or
>Chinese or Iranian laws on free speech, I have the feeling some of our
>articles would be pretty blank. :-)
>
While the placement of the servers and offices gives primary legal
jurisdiction to the United States, this is not a green light for
ignoring the laws of other countries completely.  People in many
countries become justifiably upset when Americans take this route.

A respect for the legal culture of other countries helps to build mutual
co-operation even if there is no conceivable avenue for enforcing those
laws.  Why shouldn't North Korean, Chinese or Iranian law be respected
when they are relevent?

Ec


from_name: Stephanie Erin Daugherty

body:
> Even "ko-ho-ba-fay-jo-muh" is better than ????????
>
> Of course, we could always take the approach of putting them in IPA,
> thus annoying everyone equally.
>
> -- Neil
>
I think the most important part of the objection to "foreign" character
sets is that many people on en in particular are unaware of what
facilities exist for dealing with them. As people in countries using
Latin character sets rarely see, and almost never have to work with
anything that's in another character set, they are usually unaware of
what tools exists for interoperating with them. This is especially true
when abusive users have deliberately taken advantage of this fact in
order to make the lives of administrators and of other Wikipedians as
difficult as possible, and it's also true for those handful of users
that will mix character sets to "look cool" at the inconvenience of others.

The fact that usernames in foreign character sets pose special technical
challenges for users unfamiliar with them, and that mainstream
multilingual support is especially lacking in applications with a Latin
language family ethnocentricity (in particular large number of Windows
applications and Windows itself, at least for en-US locale), means that
functions for working with usernames need to be looked at carefully.

One of the more obvious ways that this can be made to work is to make
numeric userids more visible and more useful for various operations
where a username may be near impossible to type, and may even be
difficult to see. I'd strongly recommend this for usernames using
characters outside the ranges that a typical user on a given project
will be able to enter with a "normal" input method. Displaying something
like  User:???????? <#2352562> would help considerably for those
situations, but it needs to work consistently for things like accessing
talk pages, accessing contributions, accessing userpages, and accessing
logs.

"Nicknames" or aliases, as proposed by someone else in this thread would
also help - they could be constrained to the characters typically usable
on a given wiki. I'd also suggest that when showing a "non-native"
username, that we indicate clearly what character set or even what
language it's in, this will become even more useful once SUL is
implemented (hopefully it's going to be part of SUL anyway, dealing with
namespace collisions otherwise will be insane.)

Transliterations would be useful in some situations, but I'd suggest we
make this a display option - to be respectful of other cultures means
that we should respect their writing and their culture wherever
possible. IPA could be handled in the same way, and this would probably
be appreciated by at least a few people who would otherwise be confused
on how to pronounce a given name.

Would a format for  usernames with foreign characters like
"User:???????? (Arabic) <#2352562>" really be so bad? (This would apply
equally to projects where latin characters might not be displayable).

-Stephanie


body:
On 12/20/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
> I noticed that all the other completed translations seem to be working
> on the CORE site, so I guess someone figured out how to map them all
> in.  Can the Cherokee be posted in at this point?
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

There's still no translation of Drupal at
http://drupal.org/project/Translations . Without that translation, almost
nothing on the site would actually be translated. The other languages added
all have language packs, though I can't add Slovenian for the same reason as
Cherokee.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
The Cunctator schreef:
> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
>>
>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
>> request page.
>>
>
>
> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture, I
> believe you are off the mark.
>
> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
> Latin-alphabet usernames.
>
Hoi,
Again we disagree here. I could not disagree more strongly. It is
unreasonable and given SUL it will become impossible to maintain that
policy.
Thanks
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Office actions

body:
On 12/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> theProject wrote:
>
> >Whoa, whoa, whoa. How would Wiki[m/p]edia, in the United States, be subject
> >to a law in the United Kingdom? Just because some country has a law that
> >would prevent Wikipedia from stating something about some particular topic
> >doesn't mean Wikipedia has to follow it. If we followed North Korean or
> >Chinese or Iranian laws on free speech, I have the feeling some of our
> >articles would be pretty blank. :-)
> >
> While the placement of the servers and offices gives primary legal
> jurisdiction to the United States, this is not a green light for
> ignoring the laws of other countries completely.  People in many
> countries become justifiably upset when Americans take this route.
>
> A respect for the legal culture of other countries helps to build mutual
> co-operation even if there is no conceivable avenue for enforcing those
> laws.  Why shouldn't North Korean, Chinese or Iranian law be respected
> when they are relevent?
>
> Ec

A lot of what gets written would get people arrested or worse
elsewhere in the world.

This even applies in Europe - see Irving just having gotten out of
jail in Austria.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
Hoi,
There is no such thing as a "primary character set of the Wikipedia" all
Wikipedia projects are equal. I do not think that Walter's phraseology
is helpful but it does demonstrate quite eloquently how strong the
sentiments are against this policy.
Thanks,
     GerardM

The Cunctator schreef:
> Um. I think a policy of expecting people to have usernames readable in the
> primary character set of the Wikipedia is perfectly reasonable, whatever the
> language, and nothing to flip out about.
>
> Maybe you should reconsider your outrage.
>
> On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
>>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
>>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
>>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
>>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
>>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
>>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
>>>> request page.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture, I
>>> believe you are off the mark.
>>>
>>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
>>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
>>>
>>>
>> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
>> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
>> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
>> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
>> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
>> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
>> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
>> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
>> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
>>
>> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
>> refuse to learn others.,
>>
>> Waerth .... extremely pissed off


from_name: habj

body:
2006/12/19, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:

> The existing Swedish translation, made by two anonymous editors,
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E./sv
> has at least two obvious spelling errors (that any spellchecker
> would reveal) and several phrases that just sound stupid.  But
> worse than that, since no context is provided I cannot determine
> if "Count" is supposed to be the verb or the noun, and if "Total"
> is supposed to be the adjective (and what gender) or the noun
> (total sum, grand total), so I cannot tell if the current
> translations are OK or plain wrong.  I have to flip between the
> website and the phrase list, in a very frustrating hunt.

Agreed, this is a very bad environment to translate in.

I have not tried to translate that very page (and actually haven't
done that much on these fundraiser translations), but generally one
needs more context than the English originals in themselves give. My
best solution so far is to spend time in the IRC channels and ask
people who, for various reasons, are somewhat informed about what
various things are and how they are supposed to work.

/habj


body:
George Herbert schreef:
> On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
>>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
>>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
>>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
>>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
>>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
>>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
>>>> request page.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture, I
>>> believe you are off the mark.
>>>
>>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
>>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
>>>
>>>
>> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
>> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
>> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
>> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
>> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
>> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
>> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
>> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
>> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
>>
>> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
>> refuse to learn others.,
>>
>> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
>>
>>
>
> It is also unacceptable for dedicated vandals to show up, register an
> account whose visual depiction is not at all distinguishable from the
> accountname of an existing administrator or long-time editor due to the use
> of similar ISO characters, and then go on a vandalism rampage which gets
> blamed on the normal admin.
>
> We had this happen a week ago with an omega character substituted for an O.
>
> I've seen it done with 1/L and 0/o.  Someone tried to impersonate me with
> one letter dropped; I'm suprised they didn't do the 1/L thing instead.
>
> There are some very nasty, creative people out there.  If you start enabling
> them to cause more trouble, you are a problem.
>
> I'm all for multiculturalism, but this issue HAS to get looked at and
> thought about.  That does not mean that en.wikipedia may not end up just
> having to abandon that policy in the end, but if we do that there's going to
> be an opening for vandals to impersonate us.
>
> We might have to do something like go from (username) to (username, ID#)
> tuples to ultimately get around this, which is terribly ugly.
Hoi,
With Single User Login, this scheme will not be possible anymore .. a
user is THAT user and no one else can impersonate him by having the same
user. So the basic argument here is incorrect. It will no longer be
possible and, this whole ugly affair demonstrates admirably that we need
SUL as soon as possible ..

PLEASE BRION .. get this over and done with.

Thanks,
    Gerard


body:
2006/12/18, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:
> Most of it
> should be possible to translate with merely a dictionary.

I must warn against this attitude. Hardly anything can be translated
with merely a dictionary, lacking context. If one tries, one ends up
with a certain percentage of errors which sometimes just look a little
funny and sometimes look very bad.

/habj


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> Is the December 18, 1857 morning edition of [[The New York Times]] an
> acceptable source?  It's rather hard to find a copy of it these days.

Probably. I would imagine a big library will have a copy on microfiche.

> How about the [[ISO 9000]] standard?  The International Standards
> Organization charges thousands of dollars for access to it.

Having to pay large amounts of money probably makes it unacceptable.
Expensive scientific journals are ok, as those can be found for free
in a library. If memory serves, the ISO doesn't allow libraries, etc.,
to make things like ISO 9000 publicly available.


body:
habj schreef:
> 2006/12/18, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:
>
>> Most of it
>> should be possible to translate with merely a dictionary.
>>
>
> I must warn against this attitude. Hardly anything can be translated
> with merely a dictionary, lacking context. If one tries, one ends up
> with a certain percentage of errors which sometimes just look a little
> funny and sometimes look very bad.
>
> /habj
Hoi,
Translation with the knowledge of only a dictionary gets you a
translation that is probably not as good as a machine translation. For
material that needs to be just so and this is true for the whole of
marketing / advertisement it PAYS to have proper translations. It even
PAYS to have it done by a professional translator because it is pennies
to the pound. When you have the connections with translators you can
even get these translations for a very reduced rate. It needs however a
proper understanding and approach. I am sure you do not want to have a
translation into English for a message like this on the English language
projects !!

I have been told that a quality translation improves the reach of your
communication by at least 15%.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 17:53:32 +0000, "Thomas Dalton"
<thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Yeah, but if it was on a voluntary basis, it wouldn't be that much work
>> after the initial rush.  Not every trusted user would want/need access to
>> templates, for instance.

>A lot of them would want it despite not needing it - everyone wants to
>be trusted. Maybe a specific "template" group, rather than a more
>general "trusted" group would be good, it would make it easier to
>convince people that it's "no big deal".

The real problem here is that trusted users should be given the sysop
bit and are not.  No big deal?  Not these days.

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


body:
George Herbert schreef:
> On 12/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> George Herbert schreef:
>>
>>> On 12/20/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On 12/20/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>> today a user on Japanese Wikipedia whose account is in Kana (a
>>>>>> Japanese script) came to our Admins' noticeboard to request for
>>>>>> chaning his username. He said he would have liked to do so because he
>>>>>> had changed his username on English Wikipedia.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I repeat again the English Wikipedia community should reconsider how
>>>>>> shameful and discriptive policy they has about users' identity and
>>>>>> respect of cultural diversity, and how badly it affects other
>>>>>> communities. I am very sorry to see such a request fullfiled to our
>>>>>> request page.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> Although there are strong relationships between language and culture,
>>>>>
>> I
>>
>>>>> believe you are off the mark.
>>>>>
>>>>> It is not unreasonable for the English Wikipedia to have a policy of
>>>>> Latin-alphabet usernames.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> Then it wouldn't be unreasonable for the Japanese wikipedia to have a
>>>> policy of only Kana usernames. You bloody yanks, limeys and ozzies and
>>>> other anglo saxon idiots are so fucking biased about everybody needs to
>>>> speak your f*******g language and nees to understand your f*****g
>>>> cultures it is disgusting. There are more peopel around speaking non
>>>> english based languages then there are people speaking the lingo. Learn
>>>> to adapt to that. I can only predict the whining of stupid Americans
>>>> about feeling discriminated when they would be requirde to login in
>>>> Chinese on the Chinese wikipedia or Thai on the Thai wikipedia.
>>>>
>>>> Why the f*** should everybody learn your pissant of a language if you
>>>> refuse to learn others.,
>>>>
>>>> Waerth .... extremely pissed off
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> It is also unacceptable for dedicated vandals to show up, register an
>>> account whose visual depiction is not at all distinguishable from the
>>> accountname of an existing administrator or long-time editor due to the
>>>
>> use
>>
>>> of similar ISO characters, and then go on a vandalism rampage which gets
>>> blamed on the normal admin.
>>>
>>> We had this happen a week ago with an omega character substituted for an
>>>
>> O.
>>
>>> I've seen it done with 1/L and 0/o.  Someone tried to impersonate me
>>>
>> with
>>
>>> one letter dropped; I'm suprised they didn't do the 1/L thing instead.
>>>
>>> There are some very nasty, creative people out there.  If you start
>>>
>> enabling
>>
>>> them to cause more trouble, you are a problem.
>>>
>>> I'm all for multiculturalism, but this issue HAS to get looked at and
>>> thought about.  That does not mean that en.wikipedia may not end up just
>>> having to abandon that policy in the end, but if we do that there's
>>>
>> going to
>>
>>> be an opening for vandals to impersonate us.
>>>
>>> We might have to do something like go from (username) to (username, ID#)
>>> tuples to ultimately get around this, which is terribly ugly.
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> With Single User Login, this scheme will not be possible anymore .. a
>> user is THAT user and no one else can impersonate him by having the same
>> user. So the basic argument here is incorrect. It will no longer be
>> possible and, this whole ugly affair demonstrates admirably that we need
>> SUL as soon as possible ..
>>
>> PLEASE BRION .. get this over and done with.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     Gerard
>>
>>
>
> This doesn't address my point.
>
> There is very little difference between "Georgewilliamherbert" and
> "Georgewi11iamherbert" in most character displays.  This is bad enough, but
> we have people aware of it and looking for it.  There are non-latin
> characters which are visually indistinguishable from "o" and others
> available as well.  We *HAVE SEEN* an impersonation of an experienced editor
> where the impersonator used a greek omega that rendered as an "o" character.
>
> Refusing to pay attention to this problem rises to the level of a
> show-stopper for en, in my opinion.  We really really should not stomp all
> over one of the en defensive mechanisms against vandals without at least
> looking at the issues raised and alerting people to the impact.
>
> The ultimate answer may well be that en.wikipedia has to remove that policy
> and deal with it.  Has anyone posted any notice of this to wikien-l or the
> Village Pump on en, or do you think it's reasonable and fair to just do it
> without proper and fair notice and time to allow en to talk about it and
> figure out how to handle it?
Hoi,
There are two things here.

    * The prevention of a combination of characters that are not part of
      one script has been implemented.
    * With SUL one person IS that user on all projects. You will be able
      to easily find who is doing what.

All in all there should be no issue.. There is no issue. We just need to
move on and get SUL implemented.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> en.WP is not the primary Wikipedia for many wikimedia
> editors.  These usernames *are* in the primary
> character set of the users home wiki.  I think it is
> perfectly reasonable to expect to not be blocked just
> because Wikimedia adopts SUL.  Bascially what this
> boils down to is someone who today edits as an IP
> without harrassment will be blocked after SUL as soon
> as an en.WP admin spots them on RC.  This will happen
> without the editor doing anything differently on their
> end.
>
> There is strong support for SUL throughout all
> communtities, but I cannot support going live with it
> if large chunks of the wikimedia community will be
> locally blocked without warning on any particular
> wiki.  If en.WP does not wish to adjust thier policies
> to this mew development perhaps en.WP can be left out
> of SUL.  Is it possible for en.WP to keep their own
> user database while all other wikis use a shared
> database?
>
> Birgitte SB
>
>

Absolutely.

Different-script blocking on en: must therefore stop as soon as SUL is
implemented.

But, since human-readable usernames are essential to managing the wiki
system, and for many people names not in their native script are not
human-readable, there must necessarily be some sort of solution to the
name-incomprehensibility problem before SUL goes live.

The truename + nickname idea looks to me like the favourite at the
moment. I definitely support it, with the provisos that:

* truenames _and_ nicknames need to be made globally unique within the
single SUL namespace, otherwise they will present new opportunities for
misdirection (eg. nick of one user is the same as the truename of
another and vice versa, or that on another different-script wiki...)
* that each truename or nickname have characters only from a single
script system (although they will of course in general have different
script systems from one another, because that's the whole point)
* that the anti-spoofing code be used to filter both (which may need
some overdue improvements in the anti-spoofing algorithm to be put in
place, which I've got on the back burner already anyway)

I would also suggest, at the risk of further controversy, that having an
appropriate nick be made compulsory if you intend to use your account to
edit in a wiki with a default script different from that of your username.

Perhaps we could put in place some sort of human-driven wiki-based
please-translate-my-name-into-your-script service for this, or simply
generate a (also globally unique) machine-generated ID until users
create an appropriate nick, with regular nag messages to remind them to
do so?

-- Neil


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> George Herbert schreef:
>
>>
>> It is also unacceptable for dedicated vandals to show up, register an
>> account whose visual depiction is not at all distinguishable from the
>> accountname of an existing administrator or long-time editor due to the use
>> of similar ISO characters, and then go on a vandalism rampage which gets
>> blamed on the normal admin.
>>
>> We had this happen a week ago with an omega character substituted for an O.
>>
>> I've seen it done with 1/L and 0/o.  Someone tried to impersonate me with
>> one letter dropped; I'm suprised they didn't do the 1/L thing instead.
>>
>> There are some very nasty, creative people out there.  If you start enabling
>> them to cause more trouble, you are a problem.
>>
>> I'm all for multiculturalism, but this issue HAS to get looked at and
>> thought about.  That does not mean that en.wikipedia may not end up just
>> having to abandon that policy in the end, but if we do that there's going to
>> be an opening for vandals to impersonate us.
>>
>> We might have to do something like go from (username) to (username, ID#)
>> tuples to ultimately get around this, which is terribly ugly.
>>
> Hoi,
> With Single User Login, this scheme will not be possible anymore .. a
> user is THAT user and no one else can impersonate him by having the same
> user. So the basic argument here is incorrect. It will no longer be
> possible and, this whole ugly affair demonstrates admirably that we need
> SUL as soon as possible ..
>
> PLEASE BRION .. get this over and done with.
>
> Thanks,
>     Gerard
>

Not entirely impossible. There are plenty of cross-script and
within-script spoofs (consider "caxap" in Cyrillic vs Latin, and spoofs
involving 1/l or I/l etc.) that will still need stopping with the
antispoofing filter rules. I believe that the antispoof filter deals
with these OK, but running SUL on en: will be a serious test of its
capabilities.

I _think_ Brion is taking this into account as part of the SUL merge.

-- Neil