from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

body:
On 12/28/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> It is always dispiriting when an article that reduces the average
> quality of the project is kept in this way...

Popularity trumps policy, it seems.  The flaw of DRV in both
directions; things people want deleted get deleted regardless of
worth, things people want kept get kept even if they should be gone.

On the other hand, there's crap on Wikipedia that far exceeds this.

-Matt


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Virgin United creates article for Virgin Unite

body:
On 12/28/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not to fan the flames, but I see [[en:Virgin Unite]] is up at AfD...

And speedy kept.  Conflict of interest considerations should guide
user behavior, but it is not cause to delete (or keep) an article; it
should stand or fall on its own merits.

-Matt


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] pda extension ?

body:
On 12/28/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is there a project for a pda extension of mediawiki? or for small sized screens?

There's a few out there:

http://palmtops.about.com/od/palmtoppicks/tp/wikipedia_pda.htm

This seems fairly well developed, it's for iPods:

http://encyclopodia.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

body:
On 12/27/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgin_Unite&diff=prev&oldid=96734143
>
> I guess if you donate enough money on December 27th to the Wikimedia
> Foundation, you're allowed to create whatever you want about yourself on
> Wikipedia.  When I suggested that MyWikiBiz could make per-article donations
> to Wikimedia, I was hissed out of the room.
>
> Let the OFFICE spin begin.
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs

I was under the impression that we'd already had this article for a
while.  I never thought to check.  :)

--Ryan


list: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

body:
--- Tom Holden <thomas.holden at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> I do not want to get into whether having advertising
> on the site would be a
> good or bad thing, but it is evident that there are
> many who think it is a
> bad thing, and thus are justifiably annoyed by this.
> I also think that if we
> are going to start having advertising on the site,
> we would do rather better
> out of it if we let companies compete for it, rather
> than relying on the
> inherently random factor of donations on a
> particular day. Do we have any
> figures on how much an advert the size of the third
> line of the donation box
> would go for across all Foundation sites? I have a
> hunch it would be in the
> millions of dollars for 24 hours of exposure.
>
> Tom Holden (cfp)
>

I don't understand why we are comparing this to
advertising.  This is nothing like any sort of of
internet advertising I have seen.  Besides the fact
that the site notice is not developed by the companies
marketing team, the company doesn't even get to chose
when their name is mentioned on WP.  They are noticed
whenever we happen to decide to have a fundraiser.
Advertising is much more coordinated than this and is
not just a mention on one group of websites.  If you
believe we should not have matching donors (or only
silent ones) this is another issue.  But we need to be
on the same page as to what qualifies as an
advertisement.  I do not believe this does.

Birgitte SB

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


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
IMO, the RFC process as it is now is utterly broken.  I've heard it
said before that what RFC really was intended for was preparing a case
for arbitration and seeing if it had support before sending it to the
arbcom; right now it just appears to be a pointless exercise.

-Matt


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's not call imperfections "broken"

body:
> From: Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net>
>
> We deleted
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_big-bust_models_and_performers
> due to sourcing issues.  It was overturned at DRV without the sourcing
> issues ever being addressed.  It was relisted and speedy kept.  It
> still has sourcing issues.
>
> What is "big"?  Where is the external source that defines "big"?  What
> sources are used to include the individuals concerned?  No sources are
> cited.  The lead of the article is original research and the contents
> is "phwooooar! look at the tits on that!"
>
> It is always dispiriting when an article that reduces the average
> quality of the project is kept in this way...

I voted to delete this article. I think it's a steaming pile... or at
least a wobbly mound.

But please, I really, really, REALLY wish that people would ease up
on the hyperbole. A case where one specific article or edit is
handled inappropriately does not mean that the process is broken.

"List of big-bust models and performers" is somewhere reasonably near
the borderline. _I_ happen to think it's well outside, but, you know,
pressure from groups of people can and does shift the borderline for
articles where there are "special interests." There is also a
consistent tendency to apply lower standards for articles that are
"fun" and that invite casual participation by non-expert users.

In Wikipedia, as in life, it's not reasonable to expect that the best-
functioning processes will work perfectly and discriminate flawlessly
on razor sharp bright-line boundaries.


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
On 12/28/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Is Requests for comments broken?  I'm curious as to how many people on
> the list have followed one and given comment recently, as I've had one
> up a while now and had no outside input.

I stopped commenting on RfCs when the page layout got changed and we
added different subject sections. It made it awkward to find things,
and after a while, I just stopped looking.

Sarah


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
First of all, I want to say that I agree with most everything Erik has
written so far, and can't really add to his eloquent explanations. Nevertheless,
as someone who was involved from the beginning in these discussions, I want to
raise a few points here.

1. The Wikimedia Foundation has grown beyond anyone's wildest  expectations
in terms of traffic, hits, articles, and projects. We are a top ten  website.
2. We are doing this on a shoestring budget, with minimal staff and minimal
expenses.
3. We are able to do this because of dedicated volunteers, like everyone
writing on this list.

But --

4. The Foundation, which hosts all these projects does not want to be
gobbled up by some big corporation, like Youtube was, like Myspace was, or like  any
other successful website was. We want to maintain our independence.
5. Independence comes at a cost. We have to buy servers, and we have to  find
the right people to manage all of the other things involved with running a
huge foundation.
6. Considering our growth, the base of volunteers does not scale. All the
good will in the world does not mean that people can take off exams or their
jobs or their families to work 24/7 to keep this thing running.
7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
ads so that we can maintain our independence.

So where do we get the money to keep this thing afloat?

8. Donations from devoted users. We are grateful for each and every
donation, and each and every donation is valuable, whether it is $1 or $100.
9. Unfortunately, however, given our size, this is not enough. Read the
financial statements, follow the projections about growth. Compare our budget to
the budgets of other comparably-sized websites, or even to websites smaller
than  us.

Fortunately--

10. There are people out there who want to help us. Some have selfish
motives, no doubt, and others have purely altruistic motives. Deal with it. Such  is
life.
11. When the selfish overwhelms the altruistic, we can say no. The  Board has
said no--to some very big potential sponsors.
12. When people do help us on our terms, it is only right that we  express
our gratitude to them. We thank them. The site notice is a means of  thanking
them.
13. From this perspective, this whole debate is about what is "too much
gratitude." That is, in my opinion, unfortunate.

A final statement--

14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
 comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.

Danny


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Are we certain that their site can handle being slammbed by all the
>>>
>>>
>>incomming hits?
>>
>>Their site went down within 12 minutes of the site notice being updated
>>to include the link.
>>
>>
>
>The direct link has been replaced with an intermediate page on
>wikimediafoundation.org. Hopefully their servers will recover. :)
>
>
ROFL

Waerth


body:
In a message dated 12/28/2006 7:46:15 AM Eastern Standard Time,
gattonero at gmail.com writes:

But  I'll be happy to understand better which have been the reasons why
a  company has been choosen, and another not.

Simple--Are they doing it to get their name up in Wikipedia? Just given the
amount of spam we face, there are plenty of companies out there who see that
as  their sole objective.


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 12/28/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is a huge difference between "thank a donor for what it did" and
> > "put a commercial logo in Wikipedia home-page".
>
> 1) Virgin Unite is the non-profit arm of Virgin. It's a charitable
> organization listed in directories such as GuideStar.

I searched Guidestar yesterday, and couldn't find it.  I figured this
was because it was a UK organization.  Is it really in there?

Anthony


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
>projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
>their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
>target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
> comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
>traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
>editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
>we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
>grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
>
>Danny
>
I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam
editor/contributors this hard.

I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that
there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community
that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but
at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the
active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would
have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.

Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the
content will only drive away current and future contributors.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/28/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?

You would think that they would know how to spell the name of their
own organization correctly.

I think it's far more likely that some troll created this account just
to justify exactly this sort of complaint.


body:
On 12/28/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgin_Unite&diff=prev&oldid=96734143
>
Here's a possibility: maybe [[User:Virgin United]] has nothing to do
with [[Virgin Unite]].  Seems unlikely to me that Virgin Unite would
create a username spelling its own name wrong.

> I guess if you donate enough money on December 27th to the Wikimedia
> Foundation, you're allowed to create whatever you want about yourself on
> Wikipedia.

Unless they're blocked from creating new articles, anyone can create
whatever they want about themselves on Wikipedia.

> When I suggested that MyWikiBiz could make per-article donations
> to Wikimedia, I was hissed out of the room.

So...have you decided that you were wrong before, or are you just
being hypocritical?

Anthony


body:
On 12/28/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/28/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?
>
> You would think that they would know how to spell the name of their
> own organization correctly.
>
> I think it's far more likely that some troll created this account just
> to justify exactly this sort of complaint.

Or maybe there's no valid conspiracy theory at all.  Maybe someone
created this account because they couldn't create a new article
without creating an account.  Why is there so much of a tendency to
assume bad faith?

Anthony


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> We deleted
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_big-bust_models_and_performers
> due to sourcing issues.  It was overturned at DRV without the sourcing
> issues ever being addressed.  It was relisted and speedy kept.  It
> still has sourcing issues.

Considering how many articles who's deletions are endorsed at DRV that
obviously meet our standards, I'm having an awfully hard time shedding a
tear over this one, especially when you and I both know that it can be
sourced well with some effort.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Is Requests for comments broken?  I'm curious as to how many people on
> the list have followed one and given comment recently, as I've had one
> up a while now and had no outside input.

I'll never bother with it.  It's completely worthless.  I've never once
had a positive experience with it.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
I just don't like the ad.

On 12/28/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/27/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?
> >
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgin_Unite&diff=prev&oldid=96734143
> >
> > I guess if you donate enough money on December 27th to the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, you're allowed to create whatever you want about yourself on
> > Wikipedia.  When I suggested that MyWikiBiz could make per-article
> donations
> > to Wikimedia, I was hissed out of the room.
> >
> > Let the OFFICE spin begin.
> >
> > --
> > Gregory Kohs
>
> I was under the impression that we'd already had this article for a
> while.  I never thought to check.  :)
>
> --Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Oleg Alexandrov

body:
On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 08:10:22AM -0700,  Robert Scott Horning  wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> >14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
> >projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
> >their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
> >target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
> > comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
> >traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
> >editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
> >we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
> >grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
> >
> >Danny
> >
> I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam
> editor/contributors this hard.
>
> I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that
> there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community
> that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but
> at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the
> active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would
> have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.
>
> Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the
> content will only drive away current and future contributors.
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

That is well said.

Oleg Alexandrov


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Editing time statistics

body:
Hello everybody,

First of all, I wish all of you a very happy new year.

Now, my question:
Are there statistics on how much time users spend
editing wikipedia? For instance, when a user edits at
least once every 15-25 minutes for 10 hours, I would
say he/she spent 10 hours editing, which is cool.

I saw people doing better, and regularly. These people
are the true pillars of wikipedia.

Yours,
Dpotop

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


from_name: Ken Arromdee

body:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > 4) Virgin Unite gets blocked
> Until a checkuser is run which shows that it *was* Virgin behind the
> account, they were blocked under the all-reaching username policy.
>
> (Welcome to Wikipedia, the Encyclopedia whose silliness rivals
> Nationstates.)

Seems legitimate to me.  Either the user isn't Virgin United, and needs to
be blocked, or the user is, and the article is a conflict of interest.

The user shouldn't be able to avoid this just by keeping it unclear which
one he is.


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] How do "deletionists" find articles to delete?

body:
On 12/28/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Don't forget the various cleanup categories -- tags like {{wikify}} and
> {{notability}} don't lead to immediate deletion, but will eventually draw
> the attention of experienced editors who may decide to nominate a given
> article for deletion.

Still, it must take a lot of time to do the research necessary to
determine "deletability". Therefore, with the exception of obvious BS,
you would still have to see something in the article that prompts you
to stop and do such research. The "prod" tag probably saves time in
this respect. The only disadvantage with this is that it may cause
good but inactive articles to get deleted simply because nobody
removes an improperly added prod. That's why a "prod patrol" would be
a good idea if there already isn't one.

> And there is always [[Special:Random]], but I try to stay away from using
> that too often.

I,m sure that a common vision of "antideletionists" is of this geek
with no life sitting around all day pressing the random button looking
for deletable articles similar to the image of the antispammer sitting
in front of his PC waiting for spam to come in so he can complain
about it. (now of days he doesn't have to wait long :(


from_name: Marc Riddell

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

body:
> From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 22:07:21 -0800
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)
>
> Marc Riddell wrote:
>> Stan,
>>
>> Every single thing you've said here is a reason not to act. Are you content
>> with the way things are now as pertains to User Pages?
>>
> Well sure. You were the one that was complaining. :-) To be less flip
> and deftly tie back to original topic, our basic structure is built
> around the idea that the identity of editors doesn't matter, because all
> we're doing is copying facts and theories from authoritative sources. A
> team of high-schoolers working together should eventually produce the
> same featured article that a Nobelist could. We still like to have
> experts, because the expert could likely write the FA in one sitting
> before breakfast, where for the high-schoolers it would be months of
> hard work to get to the same place, but that's just a matter of efficiency.
>
> I learn what I really need to know about an editor by reviewing
> contribution history and a sampling of diffs. A fertile field for
> psychologists in fact, I hypothesize that much about an editor's
> personality could be learned from analysis of the edit pattern.
>
> Stan

As from their posts! :-)

Since starting this free for all, I have learned a great deal about the
concerns people have regarding, most especially, confidentiality in creating
User Pages - and much more.

This is the first 'conversation page' (or whatever its called) I have
participated in online, so I'm not familiar with the protocols involved. I
would really like to bring it back to my original concerns, review all
that's been said, collect my thoughts and start a new conversation focusing
on a proposal I have. Is that the right way to go, or do I merely add my
thoughts to this stream?

Need your input.

Marc
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: David Gerard

body:
On 28/12/06, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu> wrote:

> It is of course very nice of Virgin Unite to match the donations
> received today. I would argue however that having a logo in the
> site notice is basically an advertisement for Virgin.

Virgin Unite, under its corporate name the Virgin Foundation, is a
proper tax-deductible registered charity in the UK. I assume its
operations in other countries are similarly registered.

- d.


body:
On 28/12/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> We are not announcing or praising a product or service; we are not
> selling a message. We are thanking a large corporate donor.

Correction: A large philanthropic donor.

- d.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] pda extension ?

body:
On 12/28/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
>
> thanks, I've seen these websites (some of them doesn't work anymore)
>
> is there a reason why there is no small implementation directly in
> mediawiki to make a wiki accessible since the same adress?
>
> I mean, we have a different page for printing pages, couldn't this be
> done also for pda?

If your PDA has internet access then you can change the look of the
regular Wikimedia sites by changing your skin. Most people use
Monobook because it's the default, but there are others out there, and
you can create your own. You can set the skin in your preferences.

Nostalgia should work fairly well on a small screen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_digital_assistant?useskin=nostalgia

It would be possible to develop a skin especially for small screens.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Lane, Ryan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding custom CSS and Javascript for extensions

body:
> This is what the SelectCategory extension does:
>
> <code>
> $wgHooks['OutputPageParserOutput'][] = 'fnSelectCategoryOutputHook';
>
> ## Entry point for the hook for printing the CSS:
> function fnSelectCategoryOutputHook( &$m_pageObj, &$m_parserOutput ) {
>         global $wgScriptPath;
>
>         # Register CSS file for our select box:
>         $m_pageObj->addLink(
>                 array(
>                         'rel'   => 'stylesheet',
>                         'type'  => 'text/css',
>                         'href'  =>
> $wgScriptPath . '/extensions/SelectCategory/SelectCategory.css'
>                 )
>         );
>
>         # Be nice:
>         return true;
> }
> </code>
>
> Not sure if that's the best way, though, since that would
> cause another http request per unique user.
>
> -- Leon

Hey, looks like that works. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately the hook
is only available in mediawiki 1.8+, but I'll take what I can get ;).

V/r.

Ryan Lane


body:
On 12/28/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just don't like the ad.
>
I don't mind the ad now any more than the ad two days ago, or the ad
two months ago.  It does seem to be a slippery slope, though.

Anthony


body:
> > This is what the SelectCategory extension does:
> >
> > <code>
> > $wgHooks['OutputPageParserOutput'][] = 'fnSelectCategoryOutputHook';
> >
> > ## Entry point for the hook for printing the CSS:
> > function fnSelectCategoryOutputHook( &$m_pageObj,
> &$m_parserOutput ) {
> >         global $wgScriptPath;
> >
> >         # Register CSS file for our select box:
> >         $m_pageObj->addLink(
> >                 array(
> >                         'rel'   => 'stylesheet',
> >                         'type'  => 'text/css',
> >                         'href'  =>
> > $wgScriptPath . '/extensions/SelectCategory/SelectCategory.css'
> >                 )
> >         );
> >
> >         # Be nice:
> >         return true;
> > }
> > </code>
> >
> > Not sure if that's the best way, though, since that would cause
> > another http request per unique user.
> >
> > -- Leon
>
> Hey, looks like that works. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately
> the hook is only available in mediawiki 1.8+, but I'll take
> what I can get ;).
>
> V/r.
>
> Ryan Lane

Argh, I spoke too soon. This only seems to work when the parser cache is
purged. The "OutputPageBeforeHTML" does work though. Unfortunately, this
hook looks like it is broken in a number of ways.

Is there a good place to add a hook for this specific type of
functionality? I've put one in OutputPage.php in the output() function
above the section where the ajax javascript is added to the headers, and
it seems to work for regular page views, and during previews.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure exactly how this could affect other things.

Any ideas?

V/r,

Ryan Lane


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Meta Chr2syl Cherokee Unicode Extensions

body:
I need this extension:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chr2syl

installed on the Cherokee Wikipedia.  Is there a page somewhere on meta
for this purpose to request Brion to install the
extension for editing in Sequoyah Syllabary?   I did not see a page for
requesting extensions installed.  I know when I install
extensions, I have to do it from the unix login and its not normally
possible to install them from the web interface.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jeff


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV on Israel

body:
On 12/27/06, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Um... what's the issue at hand again?
> <snip>

Someone came on here, and after editors were stopping them from doing it on
Wikipedia, trolled the list trying to make a section on [[Israel]] that's
already troublesome into an even bigger violation of NPOV.

Parker


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 12/28/06, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu> wrote:
> It is of course very nice of Virgin Unite to match the donations
> received today. I would argue however that having a logo in the
> site notice is basically an advertisement for Virgin.

The common usage of advertising is "to announce or praise (a product,
service, etc.) in some public medium of communication in order to
induce people to buy or use it: to advertise a new brand of
toothpaste."

We are not announcing or praising a product or service; we are not
selling a message. We are thanking a large corporate donor.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
Nobody gave Virgin permission to create an article about Virgin Unite.
If the community deems such an article inappropriate, deletion or
change are entirely permissible.

I note that the user was blocked, and the article expanded by the community.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

body:
We deleted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_big-bust_models_and_performers
due to sourcing issues.  It was overturned at DRV without the sourcing
issues ever being addressed.  It was relisted and speedy kept.  It
still has sourcing issues.

What is "big"?  Where is the external source that defines "big"?  What
sources are used to include the individuals concerned?  No sources are
cited.  The lead of the article is original research and the contents
is "phwooooar! look at the tits on that!"

It is always dispiriting when an article that reduces the average
quality of the project is kept in this way...

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


from_name: Gatto Nero

body:
2006/12/28, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
> Danny gave a very good speech about this in the Wikimedia IRC channel. He
> said that since we don't do advertising, we are giving up on tens of
> millions of dollars a year. Now that we need money, we have Virgin Unite
> kind enough to offer some really cool matching. Mentioning them in the
> Sitenotice is our way of saying "thank you for being so awesome."

Danny gave a very rethorical speech about this in the Wikimedia IRC
channel. That was the impression of a lot of chatters who don't agree
with the use of a commercial logo.

There is a huge difference between "thank a donor for what it did" and
"put a commercial logo in Wikipedia home-page".
Writing a phrase with "The donations made in this day will be doubled
by Virgin. Thanks to Virgin!" is quite acceptable. Putting a logo
that's linked to a very, very big and spread commercial reality is not
acceptable.

By the way, the way some members of the Board described this deal made
it result as a "ad selling": "you double our donations, we will put a
logo on our projects".
At first, they said there was no deal about the use of the logo; then,
they said WMF and Virgin ther has been a "gentleman agreement".

Boh.


from_name: David Ashby

body:
> Anyone who thinks they're an "inclusionist" should do Special:Newpages
> patrol some time. OH MY GOODNESS THE FIREHOSE OF CRAP!

Tangent: so the banning of IP article creation has totally failed in
its stated goal, namely to cut back on the "FIREHOSE OF CRAP"?

Interesting.  Perhaps it's time for a re-examination of that policy.

-David


subject: [Wikitech-l] Meta Chr2syl Cherokee Unicode Extensions


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Ron Ritzman" wrote

> The same could be asked about notability. Just what makes one suspect
> that a particular person/band/school/company/webcomic etc. is not
> notable?

There are fairly clearly several paths. For example, click 'Random Article' until you find something that annoys you, and then tag it. Searchinge the whole site for some less-usual word or phrase will turn up 'neglected' pages at the far end of the search. There is probably too much personal animus in PROD and CSD A7 now, in some cases.

Charles

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 28/12/06, Jeroenvrp <wikipedia at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>
>>The road to daily advertisement has
>>been opened by a weak Foundation. Yes we need the money, but there are other
>>ways. Rather no money than sell the basis principles of Wikipedia/-media to
>>whoever has the money.
>>
>>
>
>Would you be less upset if the Foundation had consulted the community
>before agreeing to Virgin Unite's terms? I know this may not be a
>practical scenario, but I'm curious.
>
>
>
If they are matching contributions and supporting Wikimedia websites,
its the call of our elected officials (who we voted to represent
our views and act on our behalf).

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


body:
On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is a huge difference between "thank a donor for what it did" and
> "put a commercial logo in Wikipedia home-page".

1) Virgin Unite is the non-profit arm of Virgin. It's a charitable
organization listed in directories such as GuideStar.
2) Please explain what exactly the difference between visual and
textual identification of a donor is, in your opinion.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 28/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>If they are matching contributions and supporting Wikimedia websites,
>>its the call of our elected officials (who we voted to represent
>>our views and act on our behalf).
>>
>>
>
>But even within a representative democracy there must be a certain
>level of public consultation. Unlike a representative democracy, a
>manifesto was not put forth to be carried out by the candidates -- one
>would expect more consultation.
>
>
>
Donations and management of funds are totally a foundation issue. The
community has a voice through our elected
officials. Write a letter to your congressman and express your views.

:-)

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: SJ Klein

body:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> 14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
>> projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place to play in
>> their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free culture. Our
>> target audience is not the editor per se, but the user-without-a-user-name who
>> comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
>> traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for learning. As
>> editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served. That is why
>> we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
>> grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these costs.
>>
>> Danny
>>
> I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam
> editor/contributors this hard.
>
> I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that
> there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community
> that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but
> at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the
> active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would
> have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.
>
> Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the
> content will only drive away current and future contributors.
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

Robert, I couldn't agree more.  I'm amazed to hear people saying "we're
GROWING so fast... it NO LONGER SCALES to support our efforts through our
community".  To the contrary, that seems like the only long-term scalable
solution, and one that the foundation could do more to acknowledge.

It is unintentionally patronizing to say "every donation is appreciated...
thank you... but we need more than your small donations can manage", and
it is also misguided.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are regularly
raised for charities and political campaigns through small donations.
We have even discussed some of these efforts on this list in recent months.

As to the repeated asides that there are key things that need to be done
'for the good of the project' that the Wikipedia community isn't doing, I
would like to see some specifics; a lack of organized priorities among the
community is different from a lack of interest, time, or expertise.

SJ


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

references:
<7267p2php71rri38m6etjr7sbhsd7fk1av@4ax.com>
	<4593C6BA.6030102@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<j4q7p2huovhq4jft1p1insbnvflft1q2uc@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:29:30 -0500, Jeff Raymond
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>> Considering how many articles who's deletions are endorsed at DRV that
>> obviously meet our standards, I'm having an awfully hard time shedding a
>> tear over this one, especially when you and I both know that it can be
>> sourced well with some effort.
>
> A pity the effort has been devoted instead to arguing for its
> retention despite its not meeting our standards, then.  I await with
> baited breath the reliable external source for "big" in this context.

I do strongly suggest being militant about it.  AnonEMouse knows a lot
about the porn articles, he might have some input as to sourcing it.

-Jeff
--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


body:
2006/12/28, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There is a huge difference between "thank a donor for what it did" and
> > "put a commercial logo in Wikipedia home-page".
>
> 1) Virgin Unite is the non-profit arm of Virgin. It's a charitable
> organization listed in directories such as GuideStar.

The logo is a big dot with Virgin Inside: no matter if there is a big
"Unite" under it, it publicize Virgin.

> 2) Please explain what exactly the difference between visual and
> textual identification of a donor is, in your opinion.

First of all, textual identification is less intrusive.
Second of all: marketing works with logos. There's a reason why a logo
is so important for the life of a company.
Try to think to the Apple of Apple. Or the stilized Windows of
Microsoft Windows. Think about how important is the Brand of
Coca-Cola, used everywhere.
"Visual" is more influent than text. If you take a look to recent
music videos, you'll see a lot of "not-so-hidden" spot of mobile
phones with logo really visible.
It's not that difficult to understand.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 28/12/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is this not a violation of the WP:COI guideline?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Virgin_Unite&diff=prev&oldid=96734143
>
> I guess if you donate enough money on December 27th to the Wikimedia
> Foundation, you're allowed to create whatever you want about yourself on
> Wikipedia.  When I suggested that MyWikiBiz could make per-article donations
> to Wikimedia, I was hissed out of the room.

Huh, interesting; I thought that article had been created by the
Anome. (I remember looking into creating it myself the previous night,
but the paucity of information on the org in question meant it'd have
been a dismal substub; it was already redlinked from [[Virgin Group]])

If we'd blocked the user and speedy-deleted the article when it was
created, I can guarantee you it'd have been recreated in good faith by
a community member later that day. Sometimes, kneejerk deletion
reactions are somewhat futile.

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


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Savanna Matthews

subject: [Wiktionary-l] (no subject)

body:
_________________________________________________________________
Off to school, going on a trip, or moving? Windows Live (MSN) Messenger lets
you stay in touch with friends and family wherever you go. Click here to
find out how to sign up!  http://www.telusmobility.com/msnxbox/


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

body:
Marc Riddell wrote

> Quite seriously, though, I believe one of the persistent flaws in Wikipedia
> that is preventing it from having a wider, more professional acceptance is
> its policy 'anyone can edit'.

Well, it is the wiki-pedia, and wiki implies anyone can edit. There are any number of other ways of setting up websites. It happens that Wikipedia is massively productive, and successful in comparison with other approaches. Concentrating on expertise would, for example, mean discouraging editors from straying outside their specialisms. The whole dynamic of building up the community of Wikipedians has gone quite the other way, with broad-based generalist editors doing sterling work.

Charles

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


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] This is not an Advertisement

body:
--- Dedalus <dedalus at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Somebody else mentioned the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It's in the
> press they would like to raise the level of primary and secondary education
> in the US. Wikiversity and or Wikibooks might be helpful in raising the
> level of education there and elsewhere. Suppose the Bill and Melinda Gates
> Foundation would like to grant some money to WMF on the condition that it
> would be for specific projects, e.g. Wikibooks or Wikiversity, would that
> raise any objections by anyone?

Not by me. Also, the charge that the current message is an advertisement sounds bizarre to me
since no product or service is even mentioned, let alone pushed.

The message is simply an acknowledgement of a very generous donation that is linked to the amount
of money our readers can give in a day; this is an inducement to donate. It is NOT an inducement
to buy any product or service of Virgin Unite or the Virgin group of companies.

This is no different than the sponsorship messages seen or heard on the non-profits NPR and PBS.

> In short, I believe Brad Patrick and his team are doing a perfect job to
> keep the WMF and the websites up and running.

Ditto.

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

body:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:35:10 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>It was one of our top few most popular pages by page views.

Largely due to being linked from many tens of porn bios.

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


subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Nation Freedmen Ruling in Federal Court in
	DC

body:
This may be an interesting read for Brad and others at the Foundation.
The Cherokee Nation was eviscerated in Federal Court
today over the Cherokee Freedmen issue and found to have violated the
13th Ammendment of the Constitution and the ruling
aborragated our sovereignty over the issue of Freedmen membership.  It's
hitting the front page of a lot of publications.

The Cherokee related articles on the English Wikipedia may get a lot of
hits over this topic, and potentially a lot of vandalism.
The Freedmen are African slaves who are for the most part Cherokee by
blood.   They have their own dialect of the
Cherokee Language which has been spoken for several hundred years that
combines some Kaswahili with our language
(only about 10 fluent speakers of this dialect are still living, most of
them over 80 years old).    This language variant is very
beautiful and musical to hear with very interesting glottal stops and
interspersed African inflections.
Most of these Freedmen speakers speak only Cherokee and did not speak
English in ancient times.

The ruling is at:

http://indianz.com/docs/court/freedmen/order121906.pdf

I have been in contact with this group in Oklahoma and we are working to
document this dialect.    Marilyn Vann, the person
who is behind this lawsuit is one of the speakers of this Cherokee
dialect, but she is not as totally fluent in it.  I personally feel
that those freedmen who married into our culture should be allowed
membership in the Nation, since anyone who speaks
Cherokee as a first language is certainly a Cherokee Indian.  I am
neutral on the blood issue.  It's a tough one.  At any rate,
some interesting reading on the legal sissues dealing with tribal
sovereignty.  This ruling potentially has redefined its boundaries
and will have far reaching impacts on all tribes.

Jeff


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
--- Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

> > 5) Could the board please communicate all
> decisions which are sensitive
> > among the wikipedians, timely to all relevent
> mailinglists?
>
> I second this request.
>
> > 6) Has there ever been an open call to all
> wikipedians to provide
> > suggestions to the foundationboard of ways to
> receive money?
>
> Not formally, I think.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>

5)No, just follow this list.

6)Yes

This is the mailing list you subscribe to to be aware
of things that affect all Wikimedia communities.  If
you are part of another mailing list that you think
would be sensitive to an issue here, you should
forward the message along to that list.  There is also
now a summary service on meta which you could point
people towards.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives

At the beginning of the drive there was an
announcement on this list of the fund raising drive
which included many details you seem to have been
unaware of.  But the general idea of matching donors
had been discussed here much earlier.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_12_10-16
"Brad Patrick announced the opening of the latest
fundraising"

There have been many messages asking for people to
help with fundraising.  Announcing the creation of the
Fundraising Committee and asking interested people to
sign up (Certainly an open call).  Even more general
questions asking for fundraising ideas both before and
after the Committee was started.  Any fundraising
discussions seemed to be met with questions about the
audit and budget.  It seems to me that the current
drive began as soon as the audit was released because
of a real need of money that has probably been put off
because the community requested the WMF not take part
in any overt fundraising until the audit documents
were released.

Anyone has been subscribed to this list should be
aware of all this.  Anyone who wishes to be aware of
these sorts of things should subscribe or read the LSS
including links.  I think most people who have
subscribed to list did so because they were blindsided
by some decision in the past and wanted to make sure
they stayed informed in the future.  I know I did.  I
sympathize that you feel blindsided, but it can only
be up to you to ensure that you are informed of these
things.

Birgitte SB

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

subject: [WikiEN-l] A question about a living person article.

body:
Would a few people who have a better feel for libel of living persons
please take a look at [[Michael Somare]] and the edits made by
[[User:Masalai]]. Take a look at the discussion at [[User talk:Masalai]]
with one comment also on my talk page. When these were added earlier I
reverted them, but they now have sources and a claim that Somare has not
taken legal action in PNG. They seem to me to be making a claim that Somare
has behaved in an inproper way. Is this acceptable with the sources.

This article is missing sources but the main new claim is sourced so
that it a separate issue.

--
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
           Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity


subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

references:
<7267p2php71rri38m6etjr7sbhsd7fk1av@4ax.com>
	<b8ceeef70612280235u6b45583fhc8c6a78ad1606f7c@mail.gmail.com>
	<k1a7p21016c8tc9ksgiisd2949epdjt19a@4ax.com>

body:
On 28/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 21:35:10 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
> <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >It was one of our top few most popular pages by page views.
>
> Largely due to being linked from many tens of porn bios.

My theory was that the sheer number of names made it a very popular
search result, and the inbound links made it a desirable target... but
I dunno. (It's a pity we can't see where those readers were coming
from or if they stayed around)

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


body:
Simetrical wrote:

>On 12/28/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I need this extension:
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chr2syl
>>
>>installed on the Cherokee Wikipedia.  Is there a page somewhere on meta
>>for this purpose to request Brion to install the
>>extension for editing in Sequoyah Syllabary?   I did not see a page for
>>requesting extensions installed.  I know when I install
>>extensions, I have to do it from the unix login and its not normally
>>possible to install them from the web interface.
>>
>>Any assistance would be appreciated.
>>
>>
>
>As Rob said, file them in our Bugzilla, but be prepared to explain why
>you need a separate C utility for efficient conversion.  Wouldn't
>script variants be ideal for this, if there's an algorithmic way to
>convert from Latin to Sequoyah and back?  We already do that for
>Chinese and Serbian, and it allows people to view things in Latin if
>they prefer.
>
>

In would agree that a php based version would be preferable. Let's hold
off on integrating it
until I can get one written, or someone on MediaWiki development can
volunteer to convert the
C program to php. Either way, you guys let me know.

Jeff

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
jayjg wrote:

>On 12/26/06, Ryan Wetherell <renardius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 12/26/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>No, a source is only required for anything that is disputed. That's
>>>pretty fundamental, WP:V. Quite workable and highly desirable.
>>>
>>>
>>And it goes above and beyond just WP.  Citations of claims,
>>inferences/conclusions/derived statements, and non-obvious factual
>>statements (that is, not common knowledge [taking the arbitrary nature
>>of "common knowledge" into consideration, of course]) are simply an
>>academic "must" if you aim to be taken seriously.  That's how I
>>interpret relevant Wikipedia policies, and how I apply them.
>>
>>
>That's the point; if Wikipedia is going to become a source of
>knowledge that is taken seriously, instead of being continually
>derided, its standards are going to be have to be high, rather than
>"it's ridiculous that I should have to cite all of my claims".
>
I have no argument with high standards, or relaxing those standards when
something is undisputed.  Maybe what we should strive for is the
standard that would be required in a good academic paper.  We can easily
agree that going too much below that standard will have a serious effect
on credibility, but we also have to recognize that there can be
consequences to going too far over.

Then too standards can vary according to the subject matter.  They
absolutely need to be more severe in political areas where disputes are
commonplace, or biograohies where there is a risk of libel.  We also
need to acknowledge that the broad ideas that are true for the wider
article that includes our subject is also true for our target article,
unless it is concerned with a specified variation from that generality.

Your example quote suggests a certain defensiveness on the part of that
editor.  Its general nature would leave me suspicious.  Success in
dealing with him may not be is having '''all''' his claims referenced,
but in getting him to understand that some important ones need to be
substantiated.  Being willing to show some spirit of compromise with
them will do a great deal more for turning them into good future editors
than punitive processes when they don't follow our "rules" to the letter.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Gatto Nero schreef:
> 2006/12/28, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
>
>> On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> There is a huge difference between "thank a donor for what it did" and
>>> "put a commercial logo in Wikipedia home-page".
>>>
>> 1) Virgin Unite is the non-profit arm of Virgin. It's a charitable
>> organization listed in directories such as GuideStar.
>>
>
> The logo is a big dot with Virgin Inside: no matter if there is a big
> "Unite" under it, it publicize Virgin.
>
>
>> 2) Please explain what exactly the difference between visual and
>> textual identification of a donor is, in your opinion.
>>
>
> First of all, textual identification is less intrusive.
> Second of all: marketing works with logos. There's a reason why a logo
> is so important for the life of a company.
> Try to think to the Apple of Apple. Or the stilized Windows of
> Microsoft Windows. Think about how important is the Brand of
> Coca-Cola, used everywhere.
> "Visual" is more influent than text. If you take a look to recent
> music videos, you'll see a lot of "not-so-hidden" spot of mobile
> phones with logo really visible.
> It's not that difficult to understand.
>
Hoi,
It is also not so difficult to understand that we could do so much more
if we had more money. The philosophical question is what does hurt us
more in achieving our aims. I do know of so many things we could do and
do not because of a lack of funding that is partly the result of this
aversion to collaborating with other organisations.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] OK, so DRV *is* broken

references:
<7267p2php71rri38m6etjr7sbhsd7fk1av@4ax.com>
	<b8ceeef70612280235u6b45583fhc8c6a78ad1606f7c@mail.gmail.com>
	<k1a7p21016c8tc9ksgiisd2949epdjt19a@4ax.com>
	<f3fedb0d0612280333q1a12a26dqa26bff8c53d2a006@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 11:33:44 +0000, "Andrew Gray" <shimgray at gmail.com>
wrote:

>It's a pity we can't see where those readers were coming
>from or if they stayed around

I expect that when recess was over they went back to class...

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


from_name: Gianluigi Gamba

body:
The agreements have been signed and the Wikimedia Foundation must oblige
to their terms.

Should a similar operation be carried out in a future, I'd seriously
reconsider the presence of the logo (certainly the feature the
donor/advertiser most wants).

The logo is more visual and intrusive - that's what it's designed for -
and conveys the idea of a partnership with Wikimedia that can seriously
influence the neutrality of the content. The risk of such an influence
is what is setting up many users - no matter how loud we scream that
Wikimedia projects won't be affected. They will anyway be, either by the
self-censorship or by the over-criticism of the editors.

Finally a personal bitter note: as a steward I feel like an
"apparatchik" who is bringing down the directives from the top.
It's not a role I like. I already do that somewhere else for living, but
it's something I'm regularly paid for.

Bye all,
G. (aka Paginazero)


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] More drama

references:
<jm18p2t8hfm63hc8puptblt559716ebsc2@4ax.com>
	<54f6f2050612281016i390ee0cbg446e55bf4989eeaf@mail.gmail.com>
	<uf48p25ofhvqa2r1mtf7s0tdpv6opctklu@4ax.com>

body:
On 12/28/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:16:25 +0000, "Oldak Quill"
> <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >The map (which overlays a satellite photo) is pretty unambiguous. From
> >the map one can see the ghost ramp, and can determine its coordinates.
> >I could accept your point if we were talking about satellite photos
> >only. But maps are symbolic representations of space; they are
> >designed to be unambiguous and easily read.
>
> What's the map symbol for a ghost ramp?  What's the USDOT definition?
>

I think this is a bit overly deletionist of you.

There are two questions: One, is this article referenced to proper academic
standards, including a source for where the name comes from, and two, is it
correct in the "accurate usage of the term" sense.

The first question, you're correct on.  A couple of online dictionaries
aren't "reliable sources" by normal standards.

The second question... I think there's enough evidence out there that it's
in common usage that it's also clear that it IS correct and accurate,
whether we can provide verifyable references to that effect or not.

I am against deleting articles which are accurate but not (yet) well
referenced.  Fixing the references problem is a valid ongoing concern, but I
don't see any reason to delete this article.

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


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l]  Listspace

body:
I was looking at the guidance currently offered on overcategorisation,
which I feel is too prescriptive, and it occurred to me that maybe  a
list namespace would now be an idea. After all it does have a featured
process, and it does lend itself to possibilities; lists could be
transcluded into articles in a similar manner to templates where
appropriate.  This could perhaps see navigational templates hived out of
template namespace and allow us to better lockdown template namespace.
Just some thoughts to toss out for wider discussion.  First problem I
can see is conflict with Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate
lists, or whatever it is worded now.  What sparked it is the discussion
which saw the muppet show guest stars category deleted, when everyone
agreed it should be listified.  There doesn't seem to be a process for
listifying a category, and the best time to do it is whern the category
still exists.  Since that muppet show category was deleted in August, it
would be very hard to now recreate the information, which to me seems to
be missing the point of Wikipedia.  We shouldn't delete valuable content
because the form it is in is wrong, we should rather correct the form it
is in.  But I suppose that is the problem with process, sometimes it
overrides the ideas it was built to support.

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.15.28/606 - Release Date: 28/12/06


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

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:

>jayjg wrote:
>
>
>>No, a source is only required for anything that is disputed. That's
>>pretty fundamental, WP:V. Quite workable and highly desirable.
>>
>>
>The problem with that, of course, is that, given sufficient time and
>sufficiently many people, _anything_ can and will be disputed, including
>the color of the sky on a clear day.
>
>Or, let me quote the start of an actual argument from [[Talk:Elision]]:
>
>"Oh, I deliberately used my version of showing speech because I dispute
>the IPA's. I deny the existence of the schwa, I object to r/R sounds as
>being difthongs, I refute its status of r and R as consonants but as
>vowels, I object to its fictive prescription of whether whichever words
>are aspirated or unaspirated, I object to its using lone or blended
>glyfs for clusters as careless overlooking of the intention of the key
>as showing a one-to-one relationship between sound and glyf, and as no
>part of speech was given to the words in my list. Do you wish to obscure
>my work from accuracy?"
>
My first observations are the ten uses in one short paragraph of the
words "I" or "my", and the eccentric spellings "difthongs" and "glyf".
If I were to read nothing else about the subject, I would at least be
prepared for an idiosyncratic and personal treatment.  These are far
stronger indicators of original research than a complete lack of references.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> The logo is a big dot with Virgin Inside: no matter if there is a big
> "Unite" under it, it publicize Virgin.

A "big" dot? Are we looking at the same image? The dot of the logo is
barely large enough to cover the "Uni" of "Unite".

> First of all, textual identification is less intrusive.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

> Second of all: marketing works with logos. There's a reason why a logo
> is so important for the life of a company.

I agree, but we're hardly strengthening the Virgin logo. The Virgin
Unite logo is barely known. In any case, we'll see what we can do with
regard to logo exposure in future agreements.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Teun Spaans wrote:
> On 12/28/06, Dedalus wrote:
>> Tomorrow the Virgin Unite will not longer be present as a sitenotice.
>> Today
>> jeroen and others complained about that sitenotice. In his words the
>> community would have been split. The current fundraiser raises today an
>> additional several 100k US dollar, so that is gain one. Concerning the
>> Dutch
>> Wikipedia, today over 250 persons registered a username. So the Dutch
>> Wikipedia today gains that many new users and maybe loose temporarily (I
>> doubt definitely) one or two well known users.
>
>
> For both numbers one can doubt if they are permanent. But the one swho have
> gone are mainly old hands, experienced contributors who have the core values
> of wikipedia at heart.

To be frank, we have to ask ourselves if that's true.

JeroenVP for instance has made clear that he does not care about the
core values of Wikipedia at all (making knowledge available to the
public as free content) but only cares about not ever seeing anything he
perceives as an "advertisement".

That saddens me.

If we'd just sold out to $BIGCO years ago we wouldn't need to run
fundraisers. But of course let's be honest, there would be big stankin'
blinking ad banners on every page all day every day forever if we had
done that, like every other 'web 2.0' site with no business model.

If perfectly normal, everyday non-profit fundraising techniques that
would not lift an eyebrow elsewhere are so offensive to a handful of
people that they would happily throw away everything this project stands
for... I have to ask...

*Should* we actually miss them?

As I said the other day, we have as a community an anger management
problem. People fly off the handle, get into flame wars, hold grudges.

The first step in combatting that is to step back and calm down when we
have a knee-jerk emotional reaction; think about what the other person's
saying and what we're about to say.

In the longer term, we also have to think about what the project is
actually about and how what we do and say actually helps or hinders that.

When we have a reaction to something, is it because we really think it
harms the principles behind the project? Or are we having a selfish
reaction?

Certainly as an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. I benefit
from its continued solvency. Money coming in means the project I work on
 stays up, I keep my job, I can pay my rent. That's good for me, of
course. ;)

More importantly, it keeps Wikipedia and friends up and online.

As the highest-profile free/open content website out there, I think
that's pretty valuable just in terms of visibility.

It also provides a useful resource for many people, as a first step on
researching or quickly looking up various topics.

It also provides a source of encyclopedia content which can be, and is,
reused and republished.

By running fundraising events to boost donation income, this keeps the
site free of both:
* the control of a single benefactor who could threaten to drop support
* the constant 24/7 barrage of annoying banner ads that makes the
typical web experience a little less pleasant

Good? Probably!

But let's think about those two things again:

* the control of a single benefactor who could threaten to drop support

vs

* the constant 24/7 barrange of annoying banner ads that makes the
typical web experience a little less pleasant

The first one is about *control*; maintaining our independence and our
credibility, and our future. We have multiple donors, no single majority
we have to rely on or have to please.

The second is about *comfort*. We don't want ads because they're *ugly*
and *annoying*. If one of a hundred advertisers gets in a tizzy over
something and pulls out, well... who cares? There'd be thousands to take
their place.

In all honesty, running ads wouldn't do a damn thing to affect our
*neutrality*. Can we really say different, knowing that we can easily
tell any advertiser to fuck off if they wanted to pressure us?

No, they're just annoying.

Really, really annoying.

So if we're going to call a brief fundraising notice an "advertisement",
fine for the sake of argument let's call it that.

It's small.

It doesn't blink.

It has a tiny, tiny 50x24 logo... not a giant 480x80 banner.

It doesn't push any particular product or service.

You can make it go away by clicking a button once.

It'll be gone in a few hours, and things like it will only run a few
times a year.

If it's an advertisement, it's about as minimal as we could possibly get.

And it *still* gave enough traffic to kill Virgin Unite's web server in
under 12 minutes.

That's *killer* ad revenue potential.

We could make *lots* by actually running ads.

But we throw it away.

Why?

Because banner ads are annoying. *Damn* annoying. And somehow as a
community the hate of advertisements has grown so ingrained that even
*non-advertisements* that *kinda resemble advertisements* send some
people into such a tizzy that they'll edit-war and threaten to leave
forever and ever.

Well.

People get in tizzies, edit-war, and threaten to leave forever and ever
*every day* on Wikipedia.

Why should our fundraising technique be any different from any other topic?

Let's all calm down, pass the kool-aid around, and think to ourselves
what we actually like and don't like about Wikipedia and Wikimedia. What
we want to see the project accomplish. What we think it's really *about*.

Is it about non-commercialism?

Is it about "fuck Microsoft"?

Well... no.

It never was.

Neither is, say, Linux and free/open-source software. But those
communities have a lot of people with the same confusion (and there's
some overlap to be sure).

It's about free/open educational content. It's about making materials
open and available for use by the public, including the creation of
derivative works and redistribution.

That's not non-commercial in the sense of being anti-commercial; it's
just *un-commercial* in that it follows a different path.

In fact it's fully compatible with commercial enterprises, and a healthy
ecosystem with the commercial world is to be encouraged.

Free software involves a lot of companies which distribute, support, and
develop it.

Free content involves companies which distribute, support, and republish
it, and they give back too.

It's fine to think advertisements are ugly and to prefer that we avoid
going to banner ads because we think it's a nicer, purer web without them.

But to go to the extreme of demanding that companies who donate to help
keep free content available should remain anonymous is to adopt an
*anti-commercial* attitude that is, IMHO, damaging.

In my experience with conversations of this type over the last few
years, there is an unfortunate tendency of some people to assume that
free content means that no money should ever change hands, and this
belief is often tied up with such anti-commercial sentiment.

But that's not true. It was never true.

Free content IS NOT ANTI-COMMERCIAL.

FREE CONTENT DOES NOT FORBID MONEY FROM CHANGING HANDS.

FREE-CONTENT LICENSES *FORBID YOU FROM FORBIDDING* THAT MONEY CAN CHANGE
HANDS!

FREE CONTENT *ENCOURAGES* A COMMERCIAL ECOSYSTEM TO DEVELOP TO SUPPORT IT.

Maybe it's time for the community to "clean house" as it were. Take
stock of your beliefs about free content and what this project is about.

I do expect some people to leave; that's not because they're bad people.
But some people are going to discover, sooner or later, that they've
been chasing something *other* than free content, and that Wikipedia
isn't really the project for them after all.

Other people are going to leave because they're angry even though they
don't actually understand the difference. That's nothing new. People get
in tizzies, edit war, and threaten to leave Wikipedia forever and ever
all the time over every little thing.

That's why we need to stop, to think.

It's better to leave calmly over a reasoned belief, for instance a
belief in anti-commercialism which is incompatible with free content,
than to storm out in a huff -- and probably just wind up coming back to
fight again.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/28/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> George Herbert wrote:
>
> >Is there any agreement for there being a manner in which to demonstrate
> to
> >the community's consensus satisfaction that a claimed source has been
> added
> >fraudulently and either does not really exist or does not really say what
> >the citation claims it does?
> >
> No.  The burden of proving that a source has been fraudulently added is
> on the person making the claim of fraud.  Whether a source that is not
> directly quoted says what is claimed is often a matter of interpretation.
>
> >What I seem to have been seeing here is that there's an unreasonable
> >tendency to assume that a citation is legitimate.
> >
> Why is that unreasonable?  Such a presumption (rather than assumption)
> is consistent with assuming good faith on the part of the writer.

We consistently see situations where obviously, someone involved in a
dispute is not acting in good faith.

The ability of subtle vandals to, for example, edit "apparently reasonably"
includes putting fake sources in, or making claims regarding sources which
are difficult to verify (find a book in Library of Congress or Amazon, but
which you can't locate in any convenient normal library catalogs, and then
claim that it says so-and-so; simply fabricate a book name/ISBN).

It's easy to defend the first - someone can find a reference to the
existence of the book with a little effort, but is unlikely to be able to
find any copies to see what's really in it.

It's a little harder to defend the second if we have reasonable standards,
such as "A reliable book source has to have some sort of verifyable
bibliographic entry SOMEWHERE".  If the burden of proof is on the disprover,
however, it's nearly impossible to ever meet that burden.

>I would prefer if there
> >were a healthy degree of skepticism associated with citations - any
> citation
> >that does not contain enough information for a reasonable researcher to
> >locate the original source, or at least verify the existence of the
> original
> >source, should be challengable in a reasonable manner.
> >
> If you doubt the citation you can always check it out.  There should
> undoubtedly be standards for what a citation includes.  In the unusual
> circumstances where you think you have a bogus citation you should start
> by asking the contributor about it.
>

Right, so I see citation X, saying so-and-so, and the contributor says "Oh,
well, that's what it says."  I can't find any evidence that the reference
book actually even exists.  "Please tell me where to find a copy of the
book", I ask the contributor, who then either says nothing in return, or
claims it's in the University of So-and-So library, where the University of
So-and-So has plans to put its catalog online sometime in 2011 due to budget
shortages.

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


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Listspace

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> I was looking at the guidance currently offered on overcategorisation,
> which I feel is too prescriptive, and it occurred to me that maybe  a
> list namespace would now be an idea. After all it does have a featured
> process, and it does lend itself to possibilities; lists could be
> transcluded into articles in a similar manner to templates where
> appropriate.  This could perhaps see navigational templates hived out of
> template namespace and allow us to better lockdown template namespace.
> Just some thoughts to toss out for wider discussion.  First problem I
> can see is conflict with Wikipedia is not a collection of indiscriminate
> lists, or whatever it is worded now.  What sparked it is the discussion
> which saw the muppet show guest stars category deleted, when everyone
> agreed it should be listified.  There doesn't seem to be a process for
> listifying a category, and the best time to do it is whern the category
> still exists.  Since that muppet show category was deleted in August, it
> would be very hard to now recreate the information, which to me seems to
> be missing the point of Wikipedia.  We shouldn't delete valuable content
> because the form it is in is wrong, we should rather correct the form it
> is in.  But I suppose that is the problem with process, sometimes it
> overrides the ideas it was built to support.
>
> Steve block

You may find this previous discussion on the subject helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Shyam_Bihari/List_Namespace

-Gurch


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

> 3) Virgin Unite creates an article on itself, totally above board,
> using its own name

Above board or not, this has always been discouraged and generally
recognized as a bad idea; see [[Wikipedia:Conflict of interest]].

-Gurch


body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote

> Uncyclopaedia or the Wikipedia Review are going to love this one.
>
> 1) We ask for donations
> 2) Virgin Unite offers donations
> 3) Virgin Unite creates an article on itself, totally above board,
> using its own name
> 4) Virgin Unite gets blocked
> 5) The article about Virgin Unite gets expanded, then nominated for
> deletion. (and, as noted, kept)

There was no real hint of 'conflict of interest' about [[Virgin Unite]]. Someone seems to have assumed that User:Virgin Unite was editing for the organisation; and that the few words posted were detrimental. Why? The nomination for AfD had no merit.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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from_name: Gatto Nero

body:
2006/12/28, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> A "big" dot? Are we looking at the same image? The dot of the logo is
> barely large enough to cover the "Uni" of "Unite".

Iperbole.

> > Second of all: marketing works with logos. There's a reason why a logo
> > is so important for the life of a company.
>
> I agree, but we're hardly strengthening the Virgin logo. The Virgin
> Unite logo is barely known. In any case, we'll see what we can do with
> regard to logo exposure in future agreements.

The Virgin logo is widely kwnon, though.

The problem is how the Foundation is working, honestly.
Yesterday, some people told me to talk with my Local Chapter: "they
knew it", "we've talked about it for months", etc etc. I'm not happy
to understand that what has been told me was false.
This deal was presented on the first day of december, on internal-l.
And - as far as i understood - it has been told not to reveal anything
about it.
Foundation presented it in a kind of way as "We've decided, and you
have to shut up", and this is not pretty fair too.
What about Local Chapter? They're totally not representive. They're
not even informed about what' happening and what are the decision to
be made. No voice is given to local communities.

But... Do I remember wrong? Are not the local communities the real
strenght of wiki?


subject: [WikiEN-l]  RFC

body:
Is Requests for comments broken?  I'm curious as to how many people on
the list have followed one and given comment recently, as I've had one
up a while now and had no outside input.  It's frustrating because I
think I'm in a subtle POV and OR instance and the person I'm engaged
with has managed to find an advocate and I'm confused as to the whole
prrocess.  Since I've got dragged into a debate I've lost my admin hat
and I can't seem to attract outsiders to the page to build a consensus.
  It's gotten damn longwinded now, and my patience is becoming
exhausted.  I've tried the civil debate and it's getting nowhere.  All I
really want now is simply lots of damn voices to build a consensus.  I
don't care if I am right or wrong so long as a consensus is built and
the policies are respected.  So please, follow this link, read the whole
damn talk page and build the encyclopedia, a word at a time in this
instance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Taylor_Allderdice_High_School#Need_outside_input

Steve block

--
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from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
This sentence, "Sir Michael and his family have have not discouraged
this misapprehension." does not appear to be sourced, and as such,
could be libelous. Without actually finding a copy of the newspapers
and verifying exactly what they say, I can't really judge if the rest
is libel - if the sources are valid, then it probably isn't.


subject: [Foundation-l] Beyond "ad" or "not ad"

body:
Ok, so there are several issues in this thread that need to be considered:

1) The Wikimedia Foundation needs cash. We all know that. So, we, as a
community, should think of ways to get more donations coming in. "Matching
funds" are tools frequently used in the United States because they have
proven that they are effective.

2) There was a need to say that Virgin Unite was matching donations over the
day. The potential donor stumbling onto one of our pages from a Google
search needs to know that if he donated today, the effects of his dollar
would "go farther" in a way. Besides, the name also influences the portion
of the population that wants to "stick it" to a business to donate, at least
to cause some perceived monetary damage to Virgin.

3) It can be considered common courtesy to indicate that Virgin was donating
funds. That said, having a logo prominently displayed is a question that has
its merits, and it should be discussed for future fundraisers.

4) This shows a need for greater community consultation by the Board;
however, the Board cannot be all places at all times, so it would be nice to
think of ways of getting more "rank and file" users to participate in
foundation-level decisions. How can Wikimedia accomplish that?

Titoxd.


subject: [Foundation-l] Beyond "ad" or "not ad"


from_name: Tom Holden

body:
To be honest, I don't think the logo is the issue. The word "Virgin" is a
sufficiently strong international brand that very little is added to it by
the addition of the logo. I also don't think the fact that it was their
charitable arm is relevant. The notice creates a clear coupling of the
"Virgin" brand and charitable giving, a coupling obviously designed to cast
the brand in a favourable light and so to persuade people to choose "Virgin"
products over the alternatives. Like it or not this is advertising.

The only way a gift from "Virgin" could have escaped this is if they had
agreed for their donation to be anonymous. If an organization refuses this
then it is merely further proof that they wanted advertising all along.

I do not want to get into whether having advertising on the site would be a
good or bad thing, but it is evident that there are many who think it is a
bad thing, and thus are justifiably annoyed by this. I also think that if we
are going to start having advertising on the site, we would do rather better
out of it if we let companies compete for it, rather than relying on the
inherently random factor of donations on a particular day. Do we have any
figures on how much an advert the size of the third line of the donation box
would go for across all Foundation sites? I have a hunch it would be in the
millions of dollars for 24 hours of exposure.

Tom Holden (cfp)


body:
On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yesterday, some people told me to talk with my Local Chapter: "they
> knew it", "we've talked about it for months", etc etc. I'm not happy
> to understand that what has been told me was false.

Huh?

> What about Local Chapter?

Local chapters pursue their own fundraising strategies. They are
independent organizations which collaborate with the Wikimedia
Foundation.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
2006/12/28, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
> On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yesterday, some people told me to talk with my Local Chapter: "they
> > knew it", "we've talked about it for months", etc etc. I'm not happy
> > to understand that what has been told me was false.
>
> Huh?

Do I have to explain it again? What is not clear?
WMI Board didn't know anything about this deal before the begin of
december, and it has been told to "not tell anyone", and they didn't
agree to anything.
But this is not what has been told to me yesterday on #wikimedia.

> > What about Local Chapter?
>
> Local chapters pursue their own fundraising strategies. They are
> independent organizations which collaborate with the Wikimedia
> Foundation.

They are independent organizations. This means "They have no voice".
Then: what about this top-down decision strategy?
How communities can express their opinions about Foundation choose?
Directly? (Oh My God, don't answer "Yes")

And if they have no possibility to partecipate collectively to the
decision about wiki-verse, what is this? "Working without being
allowed to talk" is slavery, as far as I know.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
On 12/28/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/12/06, Jeroenvrp <wikipedia at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> > Their ?250.000 is nothing compared to that.
> > Virgin Unite is just a PR-department. Almost every multi-national has these
> > kind off charity organisations. What if the Gates Foundation will offer these
> > kind of money? A lot of us will see that it is just a PR-stunt from
> > Microsoft.
>
> You know, we are perfectly capable of saying "no, that's a PR stunt,
> we're not interested in helping you, go away". For all I know, we've
> turned them down already; Danny is very insistent at ensuring we don't
> become puppets for something like this. We make these things on our
> terms. It may not be the best of terms, but we set them. We're not
> stupid, and we have no intention of becoming shills.
>
FWIW, I would see a donation from the Gates Foundation to be less of a
PR stunt than a donation from Virgin Unite.  The Gates Foundation has
pretty much nothing to do with Microsoft other than having the same
founder.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Brad Patrick

body:
Please, no one is dissing editors, especially of non-WP projects.  We are,
however, talking about the large numbers which must be of concern to WMF.
That means traffic, and that means money.

Based on the financial reality of needing to raise more money, for hardware,
software, bandwidth and staffing (in broad strokes), what is the solution to
question of financial support?  Dig deeper?  Blame the community of editors
(as opposed to readers) for not donating enough?  Get the starving college
kid to give $3 instead of $2?

We are a top 10 website running as a non-profit.  That itself is
extraordinary.  Everyone else is for profit.  We are unique.

The independence Danny spoke of is real - we are not beholden to any vendor
or company.  We easily could be, if we chose.  To the contrary of the
"patronizing" comment, the data show - unequivocally - that the area for WMF
to focus to leverage amount per donor and total revenue is on donations
greater than $50 USD and up.  We will have a full breakdown of the
statistics later, but for now, some figures clumped by rough levels of
donation:

Donations to WMF from 12/15/06 to 12/28/06:

2 people have given very large gifts ($25,000 and our anonymous matching
donor)
49 people have given 500-10,000 USD ($67,594)
739 people have given 100 - 499 USD ($96,222)
1184 people have given 50-99 USD ($68,728)
2346 people have given 25-49 USD ($70,106)
5340 people have given 10-24 USD ($77,189)
4204 people have given 1-9 USD ($19,059)
891 people have given less than 1 USD ($481)

If one day of corporate matching brings us on the order of $60,000 per
company, that is an enormous advantage over asking the community for more.
Don't you think?  If we have a $100,000 per month bandwidth bill later in
2007, it will still need to be paid.  I will assume you would rather the
projects stay online than die.  If we buy another 300 servers, where should
the money come from?  It seems clear that the reality here is beyond some
level of understanding with at least a portion of the  people who read this
list.

In short - we need the money.  The community is who benefits.

On 12/28/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
> > daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> >
> >> 14. To the editors and other contributors--Wikipedia and all the other
> >> projects do NOT exist so that a bunch of bored people have some place
> to play in
> >> their leisure time. They exist to spread free knowledge and free
> culture. Our
> >> target audience is not the editor per se, but the
> user-without-a-user-name who
> >> comes to rely on our projects for information, whether its a student, a
> >> traveller, or someone with an obscure interest and a passion for
> learning. As
> >> editors and contributors we are serving them, and not being served.
> That is why
> >> we keep all the sites going, no matter how costly it is. And let's be
> >> grateful  to the groups and organizations that help us meet these
> costs.
> >>
> >> Danny
> >>
> > I hope this isn't a prevalent attitude among all board members to slam
> > editor/contributors this hard.
> >
> > I do agree with the general sentiment that we need to be mindful that
> > there are individuals beyond the active editor/commentator community
> > that typically participates with the creation of Wikimedia content, but
> > at the same time an acknowledgement needs to be made that without the
> > active and contientious maintainance of Wikimedia content the WMF would
> > have nothing to host.  Or it would age and "bit rot" away.
> >
> > Forgetting or trivializing the work of the people who have developed the
> > content will only drive away current and future contributors.
> > --
> > Robert Scott Horning
>
>
> Robert, I couldn't agree more.  I'm amazed to hear people saying "we're
> GROWING so fast... it NO LONGER SCALES to support our efforts through our
> community".  To the contrary, that seems like the only long-term scalable
> solution, and one that the foundation could do more to acknowledge.
>
> It is unintentionally patronizing to say "every donation is appreciated...
> thank you... but we need more than your small donations can manage", and
> it is also misguided.  Hundreds of millions of dollars are regularly
> raised for charities and political campaigns through small donations.
> We have even discussed some of these efforts on this list in recent
> months.
>
>
> As to the repeated asides that there are key things that need to be done
> 'for the good of the project' that the Wikipedia community isn't doing, I
> would like to see some specifics; a lack of organized priorities among the
> community is different from a lack of interest, time, or expertise.
>
>
> SJ
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: Kurt Maxwell Weber

subject: [WikiEN-l] More drama

body:
On Thursday 28 December 2006 12:06, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>  Am I really
> completely off-base in thinking that direct interpretation of maps and
> satellite photos is original research?

Yes.

If I went out to a site, took photographs, made drawings, and measured
dimensions, used that information to make my own map, and used THAT map as a
source, then yes, that would be OR.

That's not the case here.

--
Kurt Weber
<kmw at armory.com>


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
On 12/28/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi.
> Wikipedia is only one of the Wikimedia Foundation projects.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
Yeah, just the one with the vast majority of the traffic, and likely
generating the vast majority of the donations.

> On 12/28/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 28/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> > > Donations and management of funds are totally a foundation issue. The
> > > community has a voice through our elected
> > > officials. Write a letter to your congressman and express your views.
> >
> > Wikipedia doesn't have to be like this: we do not need to be distant
> > from our elected representatives. We can, and should, take part in
> > day-to-day decisions made by the Foundation.
> >
> > --
> > Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


body:
On 12/28/06, Gatto Nero <gattonero at gmail.com> wrote:
> But this is not what has been told to me yesterday on #wikimedia.

I don't know and cannot comment on what other people have said on IRC.

> They are independent organizations. This means "They have no voice".

We share the same communication channels. The possibility of a chapter
representative on the Board level has been discussed, but is not
currently implemented.

Mind you, chapters have a geographic focus, and generally do not have
any moral authority to represent a particular language community.

> How communities can express their opinions about Foundation choose?
> Directly? (Oh My God, don't answer "Yes")

By electing Board members, and by participating in community decision
processes (demanding more of those from time to time helps).

> "Working without being
> allowed to talk" is slavery, as far as I know.

No. This is slavery:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cicatrices_de_flagellation_sur_un_esclave.jpg
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> This sentence, "Sir Michael and his family have have not discouraged
> this misapprehension." does not appear to be sourced, and as such,
> could be libelous. Without actually finding a copy of the newspapers
> and verifying exactly what they say, I can't really judge if the rest
> is libel - if the sources are valid, then it probably isn't.

You'll want to remove the duplicate "have", either way :)

-Gurch


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Where did you arrive at the figure 250,000 EU?  Since it is flatly
incorrect, I would like the source of your incorrect information.

-Brad

On 12/28/06, Jeroenvrp <wikipedia at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> There is much going on today. The community is split about the actions the
> Foundation took. Let me clarify something about Virgin Unite:
>
> Virgin Unite is a charity organisation of one of the largest
> multi-nationals
> in the world. If I can think about one company that will really do
> everything
> to own Wikipedia, it's Virgin. Their ?250.000 is nothing compared to that.
> Virgin Unite is just a PR-department. Almost every multi-national has
> these
> kind off charity organisations. What if the Gates Foundation will offer
> these
> kind of money? A lot of us will see that it is just a PR-stunt from
> Microsoft. That's why Virgin Unite is just pure advertisement for Virgin.
>
> It also creates a precedent to the future. The road to daily advertisement
> has
> been opened by a weak Foundation. Yes we need the money, but there are
> other
> ways. Rather no money than sell the basis principles of Wikipedia/-media
> to
> whoever has the money.
>
> Meanwhile the Foundation has tear apart a lot of local communities. Partly
> this could be avoided by informing the communities, at least a few days in
> advance. Every community had a local mailinglist, a sysop list and a
> village
> pump.
>
> Anyhow; a lot of people are angry. A lot of people are talking about
> forks. A
> lot of people, including a lot off the hardcore contributors, are leaving
> the
> project. Only because of these unintelligent actions from the Foundation,
> backed by a lot of misinformed people and people who don't understand or
> don't want to understand the rules of free content.
>
> These actions will have very negative consequences and I'm ashamed about
> that.
> Especially on the day the Dutch and Flemish media are reporting about the
> quarter of million articles on the Dutch language Wikipedia. This evening
> the
> Dutch Wikipedia will peak with a lot of new visitors and new users. They
> will
> see the advertisement and gone is the neutrality of the project. Thank you
> Foundation; for selling us out!
>
> Jeroenvrp
> Moderator on the Dutch language Wikipedia since oct 2003
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Savanna Matthews

subject: [Wiktionary-l] (no subject)

body:
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Mobility is giving away an Microsoft Xbox? 360 every day from November 20 to
December 31, 2006! Just download Windows Live (MSN) Messenger to your
IM-capable TELUS mobile phone, and you could be a winner!
http://www.telusmobility.com/msnxbox/


body:
2006/12/28, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:

> We share the same communication channels. The possibility of a chapter
> representative on the Board level has been discussed, but is not
> currently implemented.

I think a lot of community members think that this should be
implemented. As soon as possible.

> Mind you, chapters have a geographic focus, and generally do not have
> any moral authority to represent a particular language community.

Yes, but they could represent a community, too.
Or should we elect a wikiparliament made of members elected *locally*?

> > How communities can express their opinions about Foundation choose?
> > Directly? (Oh My God, don't answer "Yes")
>
> By electing Board members, and by participating in community decision
> processes (demanding more of those from time to time helps).

By electing some of the Board members, who are really few. Really: how
much member there are? Seven? I don't think they're representive at
all, especially cause there are no regular elections (zum beispiel,
once a year).

Participating in community decision? And how, if decision are made and
noone can complain about it? Persons are not even informed.

> > "Working without being
> > allowed to talk" is slavery, as far as I know.
>
> No. This is slavery:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cicatrices_de_flagellation_sur_un_esclave.jpg

Opinions.
Let's call it "Modern slavery"?


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
On 12/28/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 28/12/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > FWIW, I would see a donation from the Gates Foundation to be less of a
> > PR stunt than a donation from Virgin Unite.  The Gates Foundation has
> > pretty much nothing to do with Microsoft other than having the same
> > founder.
>
>
> And that they tend to donate, uh, Windows licenses.
>
They do?  {{citation_needed}}


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement