from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Making it easier for the public to help out

body:
We could put a link like this up in the Sitenotice/Anonnotice so it'll
easily be available on every article.

On 11/19/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 1) Put a big "Does this article need fixing?" link in a prominent
> > place on each article (perhaps only for logged-out users or newbies?)
> > 2) Upon clicking it, present a list of common problems: Plagiarism,
> > factual error, duplicate article, incorrect name for article, missing
> > information...
> > 3) Explain that the user can edit it themselves *if they're
> > interested*, or make it *very* easy for them to report the problem so
> > more experienced Wikipedians can fix it.  "So fix it" is a fine
> > response from one oldbie to another - but not to a newbie.
>
> I've toyed in the past with the idea of a big red "there is a problem"
> button, which would spawn a window where they could leave a comment
> (if desired) and cause the page to be be flagged somewhere or other
> for attention - possibly via an OTRS-like system.
>
> This is a similar idea, and I think it's worth trying out.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

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

Michael Hopcroft stated for the record:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> geni stated for the record:
>>
>>> On 11/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> You are not "free to try and claim" so much as "it is very rare that
>>>> people ever get taken to court for false copyright claims over PD
>>>> material, even though it is illegal."
>>>>
>>>>
>>> How is it illegal?
>>>
>> Fraud.
>>
> Indeed, plagiarism (claiming someone else's work as your own) is an
> extreme problem in academic and creative circles. It is even bigger than
> cheating on exams as a form of academic fraud, and indeed strikes at the
> very soul of the academic and scientific processes.
>
> Additionally, Hollywood is plagued with plagiarism and even more so with
> accusations of plagiarism. Given the amount of money and energy that
> goes into every media production, the stakes in such battles are
> enormous. Literature has similar problems, with similarly high stakes:
> the novel "The Bear went Over the Mountain"  is a wonderful satire on a
> subject that most writers quake in their boots addressing.

All true, but what does plagiarism have to do with copyright?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | You've got to be careful if you don't
 sean at epoptic.com | know where you're going because
                  | you might not get there. --Yogi Berra
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body:
Or something very visible in the sitenotice?

Anyways, if we want to churn this out as quickly as possible, what we'd need
to do is have a page set up that features a table listing common problems
and their remedies. At the right edge of the table would be a link to report
the problem (akin to addnewsection) where there would be a boilerplate
message and the person merely has to fill in the blanks.

This page would have to be designed with the assumption that people will
report things once and not come back onto that page (unless they're
reporting more stuff).

On 11/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > How about a tab? I'm not sure how we'd reduce "Is there a problem?" to
> > > one word though.
> >
> > Tabs are IMHO kind of invisible. People I've spoken to have never
> > noticed them before. Everyone's used Wikipedia. Not many realise there
> > is a "History" tab, for instance. I'm thinking a big green friendly
> > bubble.
>
> Would dissrupt reading experence. A red outlined tab perhaps?
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Community sanctions"

references:
<cbffa3750611170858v2fef5ea0i607193d80a537dab@mail.gmail.com>
	<9brrl29veehqk02on04e0eligiu1vu407m@4ax.com>
	<cbffa3750611171351l4b9ebee8j4b23e8fcb8bfc7c5@mail.gmail.com>
	<0bhsl256hej8v3t9sje7a7umfceurd53tk@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611171600u5078f4ack4ee4f2965613ad44@mail.gmail.com>
	<0chul2ljp2fphlfi0lt60h5ajb6tukjeqd@4ax.com>
	<455FBA2E.8050908@gmail.com>

body:
On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:28:06 +1030, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

>Work shall set them free.

Ooh, careful there, I can translate that into German, y'know.

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


list: commons-l

from_name: Robert Leverington

subject: [Commons-l] Swedish Wikipedia disabling uploads

body:
The Swedish Wikipedia have requested that uploads be disabled, if
anyone here speaks Swedish please make sure that all pages are up to
date in Swedish to reduce the impact. Thank you.

MediaZilla request - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
Discussion on Swedish Wikipedia
-http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bybrunnen#Bilder

--
Robert (aka Lcarsdata),

Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm


body:
My bad.

On 19/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> NB. This request is clearly for Swedish WIKTIONARY, which I imagine is
> a much smaller uploading community than Wikipedia.
>
> Brianna
>
> On 19/11/06, Robert Leverington <lcarsdata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > The Swedish Wikipedia have requested that uploads be disabled, if
> > anyone here speaks Swedish please make sure that all pages are up to
> > date in Swedish to reduce the impact. Thank you.
> >
> > MediaZilla request - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
> > Discussion on Swedish Wikipedia
> > -http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bybrunnen#Bilder
> >
> > --
> > Robert (aka Lcarsdata),
> >
> > Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
> > Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
> > http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
Robert (aka Lcarsdata),

Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 19/11/06, Robert Leverington <lcarsdata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The Swedish Wikipedia have requested that uploads be disabled, if
> anyone here speaks Swedish please make sure that all pages are up to
> date in Swedish to reduce the impact. Thank you.
>
> MediaZilla request - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
> Discussion on Swedish Wikipedia
> -http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bybrunnen#Bilder

Do we have enough Swedish admins to cope?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Marco Schuster

subject: [Commons-l] Commons delinker bot

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) schrieb:
> Marco Schuster wrote:
>> Hello.
>>
>> Good news: the bot is working.
>
> Great! How do we use it? Or does it run automatically?
The software requires authorization (if I would run it for everyone I am
sure vandals would abuse it). So, if you want to use it, emial me.

>
>> Bad news: It seems as if I need to have a flagged account on all wikis
>> according to bot rules :-(.
>
> What about the discussions we had on Meta?
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions/CommonsDelinker
Tons of supporters, but no one made a decision. It would be time for
doing one.

Regards,
Marco


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if anyone could either write user Javascript to do
> this, or tell me if it's possible.
>
> Have it so that every Category: page inserts __NOGALLERY__ for that
> user, ie. they see text links instead of images, when they look at
> categories.
>
> It would probably be a lot more useful if there was a way to turn it
> off again at specific times for specific categories, eg. if there was
> a link somewhere like 'view this category' (what everyone else is
> doing by default)
>
> Any thoughts?
>

__NOGALLERY__ is server-side. File a bug.

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

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subject: [Commons-l] Commons delinker bot

body:
Marco Schuster wrote:
> Hello.
>
> Good news: the bot is working.

Great! How do we use it? Or does it run automatically?

> Bad news: It seems as if I need to have a flagged account on all wikis
> according to bot rules :-(.

What about the discussions we had on Meta?
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_permissions/CommonsDelinker

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] "Community sanctions"

references:
<cbffa3750611170858v2fef5ea0i607193d80a537dab@mail.gmail.com>
	<9brrl29veehqk02on04e0eligiu1vu407m@4ax.com>
	<cbffa3750611171351l4b9ebee8j4b23e8fcb8bfc7c5@mail.gmail.com>
	<0bhsl256hej8v3t9sje7a7umfceurd53tk@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611171600u5078f4ack4ee4f2965613ad44@mail.gmail.com>
	<0chul2ljp2fphlfi0lt60h5ajb6tukjeqd@4ax.com>

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Nov 2006 00:00:29 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> The Community(tm) is far too often collectively an idiot
>
> And yet we trust it to edit the world's biggest encyclopaedia...
>

Trust them? No. We extract every valuable resource from them before they
perish. Work shall set them free.

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

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Community sanctions"

references:
<cbffa3750611170858v2fef5ea0i607193d80a537dab@mail.gmail.com>
	<9brrl29veehqk02on04e0eligiu1vu407m@4ax.com>
	<cbffa3750611171351l4b9ebee8j4b23e8fcb8bfc7c5@mail.gmail.com>
	<0bhsl256hej8v3t9sje7a7umfceurd53tk@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611171600u5078f4ack4ee4f2965613ad44@mail.gmail.com>
	<0chul2ljp2fphlfi0lt60h5ajb6tukjeqd@4ax.com>
	<455FBA2E.8050908@gmail.com>
	<vpb0m21mp317emtnkuvgf73lrpudkba19l@4ax.com>

body:
On 19/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:28:06 +1030, "Alphax \(Wikipedia email\)"
> <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> >Work shall set them free.

> Ooh, careful there, I can translate that into German, y'know.

"Vorsprung durch Technik"? "Fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn"?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Students conducting a Wikipedia usage survey

body:
NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> Have done it. I think most of us would be interested in the results.
>

Having done it, I know I would be :)

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

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
On Nov 19, 2006, at 9:05 AM, Anthere wrote:

> I write this email with much hesitation.
> The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult,
> due to
> the following issues to discuss and decide
> * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> board members ?
> * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> * how would people be added to this council (and along with which
> rules,
> depending on project size, languages etc...)
> * ...
>
> In short, a nest of questions.
>
>
> The issue has been raised many times already.
> If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of
> "writing
> down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> community could comment and then vote.
>
> Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)

I' m doubtful as to value of a group meeting somewhere in the World.
I know I would not be able to come. I would welcome creation of a
series of talk pages.

Fred


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Would #mw-category-media .thumb { display: none; } in monobook.css do the trick?

Bryan

On 11/19/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > > On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > >>> Hello,
> > >>>
> > >>> I was wondering if anyone could either write user Javascript to do
> > >>> this, or tell me if it's possible.
> > >>>
> > >>> Have it so that every Category: page inserts __NOGALLERY__ for that
> > >>> user, ie. they see text links instead of images, when they look at
> > >>> categories.
> > >>>
> > >>> It would probably be a lot more useful if there was a way to turn it
> > >>> off again at specific times for specific categories, eg. if there was
> > >>> a link somewhere like 'view this category' (what everyone else is
> > >>> doing by default)
> > >>>
> > >>> Any thoughts?
> > >>>
> > >> __NOGALLERY__ is server-side. File a bug.
> > >>
> > >
> > > File a bug?? How is it a MediaWiki bug? I'm pretty sure the reply will
> > > come back 'just set your browser preference to stop loading images'.
> > >
> >
> > It's an RFE... ideally, you want the images in the gallery to not be
> > loaded. If you don't care about actually loading the images (you just
> > want them to disappear):
> >
> > addOnloadHook( function () {
> >   if(wgCanonicalNamespace == "Category") // or wgNamespaceNumber == 14
> >   {
> >     for(var id in document.getElementsByTagName("div"))
> >     {
> >       if(document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].className == "thumb")
> >       {
> >         document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].style.display = "none";
> >       }
> >     }
> >     // refresh the footer
> >     document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "none";
> >     document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "";
> >   }
> > }
> >
> > Tested via a javascript console in Firefox 2.0, using Monobook. Should
> > work if you put it in monobook.js but I haven't actually tested it.
>
> Needs another closing ")" .
>
> It stops the images in categories from loading, but it doesn't
> actually display them as if you had put __NOGALLERY__ there. The
> difference being that with NOGALLERY you can see the full filename.
> Here they are still truncated: "20030702 2 July 2003..."
>
> But anyway, nice. I put it here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Nocategoryimages.js
>
> I also created a category:User scripts. If anyone else has some nifty
> Javscript for Commons feel free to add it to this category.
>
> I must say I really like the method of creating extra MediaWiki pages
> and then getting users to 'include' them in their own Javascript
> files. It is possibly not the best-scaling solution ever, but it is so
> much neater than copying a trillion different versions of code around.
>
> Brianna
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Cool Cat

body:
As if Spanish problem wasn't enough... The uploads to Swedish wiki should
not be disabled until there is a workable solution to the existing problem.
    - Cool Cat

On 11/19/06, Robert Leverington <lcarsdata at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> The Swedish Wikipedia have requested that uploads be disabled, if
> anyone here speaks Swedish please make sure that all pages are up to
> date in Swedish to reduce the impact. Thank you.
>
> MediaZilla request - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
> Discussion on Swedish Wikipedia
> -http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bybrunnen#Bilder
>
> --
> Robert (aka Lcarsdata),
>
> Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
> Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
> http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that of
outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.

On 11/19/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I write this email with much hesitation.
> The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
> the following issues to discuss and decide
> * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> board members ?
> * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> * how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
> depending on project size, languages etc...)
> * ...
>
> In short, a nest of questions.
>
>
> The issue has been raised many times already.
> If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
> down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> community could comment and then vote.
>
> Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
James Hare wrote:

>I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that of
>outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.
>
I think your mixing this proposal up with the idea of an advisory
council which could still be an entirely different body.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
>
>
>>James, this is not about the Advisory Board, where external participation is
>>welcomed.
>>This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
>>
>>
>Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
>and well away from anything important.
>
Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> The complexity is due to the US's historic requirment of registration
> of copyright. So you get images that were never registered in the US
> (and were created before the chnage in the  law) and were not covered
> by copyright in sweden at the time.

Are the images considered protected by copyright in Sweden now?

-Matt


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think if I brush up a bit on my bork bork a bit we'll be fine:
> http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:Log
>
> :)

Swedish copyright law is a little odd though. There was a chanage in
what the early 90s I think but before that it was very very liberal.

--
geni


body:
On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1) Put a big "Does this article need fixing?" link in a prominent
> place on each article (perhaps only for logged-out users or newbies?)

I like that. I like that a lot.

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] I18N / L10 / Language Wishlist

references:
<ejm49d$dga$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejnbj8$7er$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejnfkb$igf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Comments on message input would be very valuable, not necessarily from
> the wiki side, but from the PHP file for translators side.
> Specifically, now that your switch has been made, are you happy with the
> new implementation of the translator?  Also, what you think of the
> method that extensions add localizable strings to the MessageCache?
> Would decentralizing the messages be a better policy for even the core
> parts of MediaWiki?

The performance of our extension system is poor, currently about 20% of CPU
time on the cluster is used by extension registration of various kinds.
Extensions in PHP need to be arranged so that on a normal startup, no code
needs to be executed from any of the extensions. It should be a matter of
checking the file modification times, and loading a pre-merged message array
from a cache.

The input text could indeed be decentralized while maintaining good
performance, with careful design. Whether or not to do this in any given
application should probably be at the discretion of the application designer.

> How about just decentralizing English messages, so
> they're never out of-sync with the code?

They're very rarely out of sync. I think most of us have found that it's
convenient to have all the English messages in the same place. Revising the
English text can be done without reference to the code, just like
translation can. Programmers sometimes make very poor choices for the
default text.

> Policy on how you reuse messages would be interesting too: how much
> would a message have to change before you just say, "Okay, we need to
> give it a new name so old customizations don't clobber it."?  As well as
> naming conventions for the messages: what would you imagine a good
> policy would be?

The translators encourage us to avoid reuse. Just because two concepts can
be expressed with the same word in English doesn't mean they can be
expressed with the same word in every language. "OK" is a good example: we
use it for a generic button label, but in some languages, they prefer to use
a button label related to the operation which will be performed by the button.

An easy way to duplicate messages across all languages would reduce the
programmer's need to reuse messages. Preferably you would have a reference
rather than a full copy, to reduce maintenance.

> Architecture is hard to figure out from just looking at code, so a
> real-quick, high level lowdown would be appreciated (doesn't have to be
> very long). Caching, I understand, is just lots of unserialize and
> filemtime calls.
>
> Parameter substitution (from what I see) seems at first to be a very
> easy thing to do, but quickly gets very complicated. I'd like to know
> the major pitfalls with substitution in obscure languages are (so I can
> determine whether or not, for my needs, I have to work around them, or I
> can blithely ignore them).

We didn't have plural support for a long time, I tend to think of it as eye
candy. English needs plurals just like any other language, but programmers
routinely abuse the language for our convenience. We now do have plurals,
which I suppose makes for a nicer-looking product. For example:

'undelete_short' => 'Undelete {{PLURAL:$1|one edit|$1 edits}}',

Grammatical transformations for agglutinative languages came a bit earlier.
I implemented them for Finnish, when I was told that it was absolutely
necessary if we wished to make our language files site-independent, i.e. to
remove the Wikipedia references. In Finnish, "about Wikipedia" becomes
"Tietoja Wikipediasta" and "you can upload it to Wikipedia" becomes "Voit
tallentaa tiedoston Wikipediaan". Suffixes are added depending on how the
word is used, plus minor modifications to the base. There is a long list of
exceptions, but since we only needed to translate a few words, such as the
site name, we didn't need to include it.

We now have grammatical transformation functions for 18 languages. Some of
these are just dictionaries for Wikimedia site names, but many have proper
algorithms.

Even before we had arbitrary grammatical transformation, we had a
nominative/genitive distinction for month names. This distinction is
absolutely necessary if you wish to substitute month names into sentences.

The other (much simpler) issue with parameter substitution is HTML escaping.
Despite being much simpler, MediaWiki does a pretty poor job of it. We have
a plethora of poorly-named wfMsg*() functions, including the multitasking
wfMsgExt(), with lots of ways to slip up and let through unescaped user
input. I'd like to do some work in that area at some stage.

In another other post:
> First, you have a Language object. This object contains all the
> localisable message strings, as well as other important
> language-specific settings and custom behavior (uppercasing,
> lowercasing, printing dates, formatting numbers, etc.)

There's also the MessageCache class, which handles input of text via the
MediaWiki namespace. And there's the wfMsg*() functions in
GlobalFunctions.php. When I wrote MessageCache.php, I intended the wfMsg*()
functions to remain as simple shortcuts to functions in the MessageCache
class. That was not how it turned out; I wasn't paying enough attention. Now
we have large amounts of message retrieval code in GlobalFunctions.php.

> Expiration checking consists of by ensuring all dependencies have
> filemtime that match the ones bundled with the cached copy. Similar
> checking could be implemented for serialized versions, as it seems that
> they are not updated until manually recompiled.

The manual recompilation model was a mistake, and I intend to remove it at
the earliest opportunity. It's inconvenient for site administrators. Caching
is much more versatile, especially when you add dependency checking. The
only problem is that you need to have a data store which is both fast to
read and writable by the webserver. Such a store is not always available.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1) Put a big "Does this article need fixing?" link in a prominent
> place on each article (perhaps only for logged-out users or newbies?)
> 2) Upon clicking it, present a list of common problems: Plagiarism,
> factual error, duplicate article, incorrect name for article, missing
> information...
> 3) Explain that the user can edit it themselves *if they're
> interested*, or make it *very* easy for them to report the problem so
> more experienced Wikipedians can fix it.  "So fix it" is a fine
> response from one oldbie to another - but not to a newbie.

I've toyed in the past with the idea of a big red "there is a problem"
button, which would spawn a window where they could leave a comment
(if desired) and cause the page to be be flagged somewhere or other
for attention - possibly via an OTRS-like system.

This is a similar idea, and I think it's worth trying out.

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


body:
On 19/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Swedish copyright law is a little odd though. There was a chanage in
> what the early 90s I think but before that it was very very liberal.

But it is US copyright law that matters, or has Foundation policy
changed during my slumber?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 19/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> We could put a link like this up in the Sitenotice/Anonnotice so it'll
> easily be available on every article.

How about a tab? I'm not sure how we'd reduce "Is there a problem?" to
one word though.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

body:
On 11/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> You are not "free to try and claim" so much as "it is very rare that
> people ever get taken to court for false copyright claims over PD
> material, even though it is illegal."
>

How is it illegal?

> CORBIS does the same thing, by the way -- they have a huge number of
> PD images in their photo collections which are labeled as (c) CORBIS.
> I think it is ethically indefensible -- one can want to protect ones
> labors how one wants but copyright is supposed to protect creativity,
> and scanning something -- no matter how hard it was to find or track
> down -- requires no creativity.

That would be the result of  Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

However there are complications. Take this for example:

[[Image:Bridgewater map 1946.jpg]]

First the scan was made in the UK so slightly different laws apply.
Secondly the scan is not perfect you will note that some lines that
should be striaght were bent. Still up to this stage your no
creativity holds since the only changes were due to my being in a
hurry and doing a rather poor job. However it doesn't stop there. The
image was cropped. Is that non creative? Then User:Steinsky takes the
scan and cleans it up and shapens it a bit. is that non creative?
remeber it is likely that User:Steinsky has never seen the original so
they are probably not trying to recreate it.

> There are other ways to protect
> content and labors other than false claims of copyright (esp. in a
> culture which is hypersensitive about copyright in days of late). It
> is a gross abuse of the ignorance of most people about copyright law.
>
> FF

"ignorance of the law is no excuse" There are many problems caused by
poor understanding of IP law this is just one of them.

--
geni


body:
On 11/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Swedish copyright law is a little odd though. There was a chanage in
> > what the early 90s I think but before that it was very very liberal.
>
> But it is US copyright law that matters, or has Foundation policy
> changed during my slumber?

The complexity is due to the US's historic requirment of registration
of copyright. So you get images that were never registered in the US
(and were created before the chnage in the  law) and were not covered
by copyright in sweden at the time.

--
geni


body:
On 11/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How about a tab? I'm not sure how we'd reduce "Is there a problem?" to
> > one word though.
>
> Tabs are IMHO kind of invisible. People I've spoken to have never
> noticed them before. Everyone's used Wikipedia. Not many realise there
> is a "History" tab, for instance. I'm thinking a big green friendly
> bubble.

Would dissrupt reading experence. A red outlined tab perhaps?

--
geni


body:
On 19/11/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/11/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:

> > We could put a link like this up in the Sitenotice/Anonnotice so it'll
> > easily be available on every article.

> How about a tab? I'm not sure how we'd reduce "Is there a problem?" to
> one word though.

So make it multiple words. "Edit this page" is multiple words. Perhaps
we could change "Edit this page" to "Improve this article".

- d.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I was wondering if anyone could either write user Javascript to do
> > this, or tell me if it's possible.
> >
> > Have it so that every Category: page inserts __NOGALLERY__ for that
> > user, ie. they see text links instead of images, when they look at
> > categories.
> >
> > It would probably be a lot more useful if there was a way to turn it
> > off again at specific times for specific categories, eg. if there was
> > a link somewhere like 'view this category' (what everyone else is
> > doing by default)
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
>
> __NOGALLERY__ is server-side. File a bug.
>

File a bug?? How is it a MediaWiki bug? I'm pretty sure the reply will
come back 'just set your browser preference to stop loading images'.

Brianna


subject: [Commons-l] Commons delinker bot

body:
Single user login (SUL) is in the works... no really... and us making
more or less noise at this stage will not be helpful. All we can do is
sit tight and wait. YA RLY.

Brianna

On 19/11/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/11/06, Gizmo II <nahuel.gizmo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What about starting to make some noise to the foundation about the
> > "unique account" they have been talking about since february?
>
> Well, or noise to the developers since we're more a bottom-up
> organisation. Perhaps we should incentivise the implementation of
> single-login by building up a fund to go to the developers or the
> Foundation on completion? How would we organise such a fund? How would
> it be divided?
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


body:
On 19/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So make it multiple words. "Edit this page" is multiple words. Perhaps
> we could change "Edit this page" to "Improve this article".

I'm not sure "Improve this article" is precise enough to convey the
function of the tab. Everytime I edit an article, I aim to improve the
article. I would prefer a wording closer to "Is there something wrong
with this article?"

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Gizmo II

body:
They only have 15 images in the wiktionary, so I think it wouldnt make
such a great impact =P
--
Gizmo


from_name: Cheney Shill

body:
--- Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
> tonight that she had found two different articles on the
> same topic,
> and was annoyed by it. I felt like saying, "why didn't
> you suggest a
> merge?" But then realised that the steps involved are
> totally
> unrealistic for the average passer by: edit the article,
> add
> "{{mergefrom|...}}" to that article, then do the same for
<snip>

> More concretely:
>
> 1) Put a big "Does this article need fixing?" link in a
> prominent
> place on each article (perhaps only for logged-out users
> or newbies?)
> 2) Upon clicking it, present a list of common problems:
> Plagiarism,
> factual error, duplicate article, incorrect name for
> article, missing
> information...
> 3) Explain that the user can edit it themselves *if
> they're
> interested*, or make it *very* easy for them to report
> the problem so
> more experienced Wikipedians can fix it.  "So fix it" is
<snip>

I agree with Steve's idea to make it easy for readers to
tag duplicate articles.

I'm not sure if it would be useful for anything beyond tags
that apply to articles as a whole, but it seems like a
useful way for identifying common problems like spin-offs
(or whatever you call the problem when someone
intentionally creates a new article to support their
personal agenda).

In terms of easy/automation, it would/should allow for the
person to:
1) auto-tag one of the duplicate articles
2) simply type in the name of the other article instead of
having to deal with wiki-tags and link formatting like
[[blah]].
3) automatically keep a count of how many users (e.g., 5)
think the articles should be combined before official
merger nomination thingees are inserted into the articles.

It might also reduce admin annoyances/work where more
active readers not familiar with all the wiki bureaucracy
simply de-duplicate the articles themselves, blanking 1
duplicate and adjusting the other, only to have an admin
auto-revert all the potentially helpful work.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
Sponsored Link

$420k for $1,399/mo.
Think You Pay Too Much For Your Mortgage?
Find Out! www.LowerMyBills.com/lre


body:
--- Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

> On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > anything. How about "Spot a mistake?" Something
> engaging, in
> > colloquial English is probably the way to go.
>
> "Something wrong?"

Simply WRONG! would do.  Or OOPS!  There are a few other
monosyllabic words that word draw attention, but probably
wouldn't be acceptable despite all the uncensored claims.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
The all-new Yahoo! Mail beta
Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
This could probably be an advisory committee to the Board, someone through
which the Board could run ideas and ask questions that would affect
Wikimedia as a whole. Also, it would be similar to UninvitedCompany's idea
of "Wikipedia ambassadors", or users who are responsible for spreading
Wikimedia-wide messages to their local wikis.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:39 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

On 19/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:

> >>This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
> >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil

> >Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
> >and well away from anything important.

> Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?

No, I'm just not entirely sure what it's for, or what scaling problems
it helps solve ... it seems like something to make people feel more
involved, which is good; but its useful function isn't elegantly
obvious.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Brianna Laugher wrote:
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was wondering if anyone could either write user Javascript to do
>>> this, or tell me if it's possible.
>>>
>>> Have it so that every Category: page inserts __NOGALLERY__ for that
>>> user, ie. they see text links instead of images, when they look at
>>> categories.
>>>
>>> It would probably be a lot more useful if there was a way to turn it
>>> off again at specific times for specific categories, eg. if there was
>>> a link somewhere like 'view this category' (what everyone else is
>>> doing by default)
>>>
>>> Any thoughts?
>>>
>> __NOGALLERY__ is server-side. File a bug.
>>
>
> File a bug?? How is it a MediaWiki bug? I'm pretty sure the reply will
> come back 'just set your browser preference to stop loading images'.
>

It's an RFE... ideally, you want the images in the gallery to not be
loaded. If you don't care about actually loading the images (you just
want them to disappear):

addOnloadHook( function () {
  if(wgCanonicalNamespace == "Category") // or wgNamespaceNumber == 14
  {
    for(var id in document.getElementsByTagName("div"))
    {
      if(document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].className == "thumb")
      {
        document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].style.display = "none";
      }
    }
    // refresh the footer
    document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "none";
    document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "";
  }
}

Tested via a javascript console in Firefox 2.0, using Monobook. Should
work if you put it in monobook.js but I haven't actually tested it.

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

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from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:

> > Would #mw-category-media .thumb { display: none; } in monobook.css do
> > the trick?
> >
>
> Probably, but she asked for a JS solution, not a CSS one ;) However, it
> still doesn't fix the filenames problem; to /properly/ fix it would
> require either a server-side change (via preferences) or some sort of
> custom rendering pulling the raw data from query.php via AJAX and then
> parsing and displaying it.

What about using CatScan for this task?

http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&basecat=Unknown+-+September+2006&basedeep=1&templates=&mode=al&go=Scan&userlang=en

Best regards,

Flo


subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
bawolff wrote:
> I think what s/he meant is that __NOGALLERY__ is something implemented
> by mediawiki. not your browser, so it'd have to be implemented
> server-side. (proablly in [[special:preferences]] I would assume).
>

Precisely.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

body:
On 11/19/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> Fraud.

Interesting approach but I'm not aware of any case law (not that I
have really looked). Remeber it requires more than just false claims
to equal fraud.

--
geni


from_name: Larry Pieniazek

subject: [Commons-l] Category:User scripts

body:
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2006 22:44:45 +1100
From: "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Javascript magic
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
	<d20d84ea0611190344l45fd8c7bme632240dfc55417f at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

But anyway, nice. I put it here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Nocategoryimages.js

I also created a category:User scripts. If anyone else has some nifty
Javscript for Commons feel free to add it to this category.

I must say I really like the method of creating extra MediaWiki pages and
then getting users to 'include' them in their own Javascript files. It is
possibly not the best-scaling solution ever, but it is so much neater than
copying a trillion different versions of code around.

Brianna

- - -
Question on the above

Should we maybe move the popups and edit counter stuff to there???

Larry Pieniazek
Hobby mail:  lar at miltontrainworks.com


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
I write this email with much hesitation.
The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
the following issues to discuss and decide
* what would be the roles of such a council ?
* would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
board members ?
* would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
* how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
depending on project size, languages etc...)
* ...

In short, a nest of questions.

The issue has been raised many times already.
If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
community could comment and then vote.

Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
James Hare wrote:

>Anyways, in that case we would have the Board of Trustees, the Advisory
>Council, and the Wiki Council. Three councils. Why should we have three? Why
>couldn't we compress it down to, oh, 2?
>
They would serve different purposes.  As I understand it

The Trustees would pretty well do what they do now.  This is essentially
deal with the business, legal and financial interests of the organization.

The Council would be made up of active Wikimedians, and could be
involved in the detailed co-ordination of projects in a way that best
assures and balances with the autonomy of each project.  It would have
limited decision making power within pre-defined parameters.

The Advisors would mostly not be active Wikimedians.  They would help to
keep us abreast of developments in the broader community, help in
co-ordinating with outside projects, or even with lobbying.  They would
have no decision making powers.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Couldn't you just use information in the title attribute of the link,
to the image to find its name, then alphabetize it? (Note I can't
really do anything beyond hello world in js, so anything I say may be
impossible/etc)

-bawolff

On 11/19/06, Florian Straub <flominator at gmx.net> wrote:
> Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
>
> > > Would #mw-category-media .thumb { display: none; } in monobook.css do
> > > the trick?
> > >
> >
> > Probably, but she asked for a JS solution, not a CSS one ;) However, it
> > still doesn't fix the filenames problem; to /properly/ fix it would
> > require either a server-side change (via preferences) or some sort of
> > custom rendering pulling the raw data from query.php via AJAX and then
> > parsing and displaying it.
>
> What about using CatScan for this task?
>
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/CategoryIntersect.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org&basecat=Unknown+-+September+2006&basedeep=1&templates=&mode=al&go=Scan&userlang=en
>
> Best regards,
>
> Flo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Yes, I had heard that earlier.

Anyways, in that case we would have the Board of Trustees, the Advisory
Council, and the Wiki Council. Three councils. Why should we have three? Why
couldn't we compress it down to, oh, 2?

On 11/19/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
>
> >I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that
> of
> >outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.
> >
> I think your mixing this proposal up with the idea of an advisory
> council which could still be an entirely different body.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] On style sheets

body:
On 11/19/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just restarted the Wikipedia Signpost's Technical Report last week,
> so if you read that it will tell you about all the changes made over
> the previous week.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost>  Of
> course, it's not aligned with code synchronization, which happen on an
> ad-hoc basis, so you might get the news when the feature's already
> been live for a few days.  For more up-to-date updates you can

Cool, very nice - how do I RSS that?

Steve


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] On style sheets

body:
On 11/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost>  Of
>
> Cool, very nice - how do I RSS that?

The RSS feeds for it are usually broken. You can sign up for
notifications via wiki or email as an alternative though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Tools/Spamlist

Angela


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
This could also be used to raise awareness and understanding of other
projects, their needs, and how they run things so that other projects can
develop their own processes based on the successful ones of an existing
wiki. Unification under the Wikimedia medallion.

On 11/19/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This could probably be an advisory committee to the Board, someone through
> which the Board could run ideas and ask questions that would affect
> Wikimedia as a whole. Also, it would be similar to UninvitedCompany's idea
> of "Wikipedia ambassadors", or users who are responsible for spreading
> Wikimedia-wide messages to their local wikis.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
> Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:39 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil
>
> On 19/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > David Gerard wrote:
> > >On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
>
> > >>This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
> > >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
>
> > >Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
> > >and well away from anything important.
>
> > Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?
>
>
> No, I'm just not entirely sure what it's for, or what scaling problems
> it helps solve ... it seems like something to make people feel more
> involved, which is good; but its useful function isn't elegantly
> obvious.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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] wikicouncil


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:

> James, this is not about the Advisory Board, where external participation is
> welcomed.
> This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil

Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
and well away from anything important.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Or when I tell people that almost every single mainspace article on Wikinews
is permanently locked from editing and they're used to the Wikipedia idea of
continual development so they think it's insanity.

On 11/19/06, Damian Finol <damian at igluve.org> wrote:
>
> Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:
> > This could probably be an advisory committee to the Board, someone
> through
> > which the Board could run ideas and ask questions that would affect
> > Wikimedia as a whole. Also, it would be similar to UninvitedCompany's
> idea
> > of "Wikipedia ambassadors", or users who are responsible for spreading
> > Wikimedia-wide messages to their local wikis.
> >
> > Titoxd.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> > [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
> > Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:39 PM
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil
> >
> > On 19/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >> David Gerard wrote:
> >>> On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
> >
> >>>> This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
> >>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
> >
> >>> Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
> >>> and well away from anything important.
> >
> >> Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?
> >
> >
> > No, I'm just not entirely sure what it's for, or what scaling problems
> > it helps solve ... it seems like something to make people feel more
> > involved, which is good; but its useful function isn't elegantly
> > obvious.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
> >
> You have no idea how many times I've tried to explain something to
> editors (and admins) of Spanish Wikipedia and read "What's the Wikimedia
> foundation?" "Who's Jimmy Wales, Florence... xxx?", "What's this whole
> board thing about?".
>
> Raising awareness of what the whole thing is, by inviting them to join a
> Wiki Council from people of different projects is a great start, and
> will improve our wikiocracy.
>
>
> Regards,
> Damian
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Statistics

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Parker Conrad wrote:
>> Hi -- there used to be (as of a month or two ago) a very useful website at
>> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm that included historical
>> Wikipedia growth statistics -- very helpful for those of us who are trying
>> to study the phenomenal growth of this community. Unfortunately, it appears
>> to have been taken down, or perhaps moved. Does anyone know where I can
>> access it?
>
> These pages are down pending removal of some accidentally added private
> info.

I'll go ahead and try to fix these tonight; hopefully it won't be that
hard...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Statistics

body:
I'm working on the cleanup right now.
I wrote a script for it.

csv files are cleaned up now.
html files still contain private wiki data.

This week new counts have been generated from recent dumps (as often wp:en:
is lagging behind).
Hope to start reports job today to produce clean and up to date html files.
I'll post on wikitech when all if finished.

Some background on what had happened:
Someone created a new wiki and forgot to mark it as confidential.
Wikistats job process all wikis listed in several *.dblist files in
/home/wikipedia/commons
So the new wiki was included automatically.
Hence confidential article titles were browsable through the ZeitGeist
feature.

(Brion, wikimania2007 is in wikipedia dblist, I'd expect it in
special.dblist, anyway all mania dumps are now excluded)

I'll rather not do this cleaning up job a second time, from now on I'll use
copies of dblists and sync updates on those manually every now and then.

Erik Zachte

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brion Vibber [mailto:brion at pobox.com]
> Sent: Sunday, 19 November 2006 18:43
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Statistics
>
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > Parker Conrad wrote:
> >> Hi -- there used to be (as of a month or two ago) a very
> useful website at
> >> http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm that
> included historical
> >> Wikipedia growth statistics -- very helpful for those of us
> who are trying
> >> to study the phenomenal growth of this community.
> Unfortunately, it appears
> >> to have been taken down, or perhaps moved. Does anyone know where I can
> >> access it?
> >
> > These pages are down pending removal of some accidentally added private
> > info.
>
> I'll go ahead and try to fix these tonight; hopefully it won't be that
> hard...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


body:
I'll be working on a page where people can see a list of common article
issues, then it'll tell them how to fix it themselves, or if they're afraid
to do that, they can click a link and they basically fill out a boilerplate
reporting the issue.

On 11/19/06, David Boothroyd <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Earle Martin writes:
> >On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  > it's your average passer-by who is not expecting to contribute
> >  > anything. How about "Spot a mistake?" Something engaging, in
> >  > colloquial English is probably the way to go.
> >
> >"Something wrong?"
>
> Yes, I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.
>
> You mean with the article?
>
> --
> David Boothroyd
> 3RR must die
> --
> David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
> david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
> dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
On 11/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/20/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We could put a link like this up in the Sitenotice/Anonnotice so it'll
> > easily be available on every article.

<snip>
if you find a problem at the bottom of the article, you may

> not scroll back to the top looking for a way to report it.
> <snip>

That's true, but it's still a good idea. How about having different things
in different places?  A tab up on top would be useful for obvious problems
with the article that people see before they read it. A big box on the
bottom saying "[[Wikipedia:Notifying us of problems|Was there anything wrong
with this article?]]" or whatever would allow people to report problems
after they read the page, but it wouldn't disrupt reading experience because
it's over. We could also change section editing's "[edit]" to something more
specific, or add another link right next to it to link to the same page that
the bottom box links to.


from_name: effe iets anders

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
the first doesn't exclude the second :)

2006/11/19, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
>
> I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that of
> outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.
>
> On 11/19/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > I write this email with much hesitation.
> > The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> > Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
> > the following issues to discuss and decide
> > * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> > * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> > board members ?
> > * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> > * how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
> > depending on project size, languages etc...)
> > * ...
> >
> > In short, a nest of questions.
> >
> >
> > The issue has been raised many times already.
> > If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> > tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
> > down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> > community could comment and then vote.
> >
> > Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> > and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
> >
> > Ant
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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] wikicouncil


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Q: Why don't we give more great functionality to our users?
> A: Because there are evil people out there.
>
> I don't like this reasoning.

Whether or not you like it has little bearing on the issue.


from_name: Damian Finol

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
James Hare wrote:
> Yes, I had heard that earlier.
>
> Anyways, in that case we would have the Board of Trustees, the Advisory
> Council, and the Wiki Council. Three councils. Why should we have three? Why
> couldn't we compress it down to, oh, 2?
>
> On 11/19/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> James Hare wrote:
>>
>>> I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that
>> of
>>> outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.
>>>
>> I think your mixing this proposal up with the idea of an advisory
>> council which could still be an entirely different body.
>>
>> Ec
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> 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
>
It's a form of Wikiocracy, each one has it's tasks and serves for a
specific purpose.

In the case of the Wiki Council, I've seen some previous drafts and it's
more of a representation of several projects in some sort of House of
Representatives, the objective of which is, that every project and
subproject has a voice with a fixed ammount of people, for example 3
from major projects, 2 for sub projects and other numbers I've seen.

It's our form of Wikiocracy, and I think it's a good idea.

Anthere, I would love to discuss this and participate in anyway possible.

Regards,

Damian Finol


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
James, this is not about the Advisory Board, where external participation is
welcomed.
This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil

Erik Zachte

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Hare [mailto:messedrocker at gmail.com]
> Sent: Sunday, 19 November 2006 19:10
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil
>
>
> I feel that if we were to set up a secondary council, it should be that of
> outside people with talents that would be beneficial to the Foundation.
>
> On 11/19/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > I write this email with much hesitation.
> > The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> > Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
> > the following issues to discuss and decide
> > * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> > * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> > board members ?
> > * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> > * how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
> > depending on project size, languages etc...)
> > * ...
> >
> > In short, a nest of questions.
> >
> >
> > The issue has been raised many times already.
> > If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> > tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
> > down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> > community could comment and then vote.
> >
> > Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> > and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
> >
> > Ant
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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] wikicouncil


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Anthere wrote:

>I write this email with much hesitation.
>
Understandably!

>The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
>
I first raised such an idea before the first by-laws were adopted.

>Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
>the following issues to discuss and decide
>* what would be the roles of such a council ?
>
It's the most important issue.  Unless a vision can be developed of what
such a group would do, figuring out its membership or operating
procedures would be pointless

>* would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
>board members ?
>
An interesting concept.  It may want to propose such a thing, but it
could not decide by itself to do this.  Before such a voting process
could be adopted a by-law amendment would be needed, AND there should be
more general consent by Wikimedians in general.

>* would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
>
Perhaps, iff there is broad support for this.

>* how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
>depending on project size, languages etc...)
>
I would not be prepared to prejudge this.

>The issue has been raised many times already.
>If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
>tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
>down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
>community could comment and then vote.
>
I agree.  Unless such a pilot group is set up nothing will ever happen.
I know only too well what happens to inovative proposals that are made
on the mailing lista.  You have commented yourself that some of your
best and most thoughtful ideas get no response.

>Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
>and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
>
Count me as interested.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:
> This could probably be an advisory committee to the Board, someone through
> which the Board could run ideas and ask questions that would affect
> Wikimedia as a whole. Also, it would be similar to UninvitedCompany's idea
> of "Wikipedia ambassadors", or users who are responsible for spreading
> Wikimedia-wide messages to their local wikis.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of David Gerard
> Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:39 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil
>
> On 19/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>> On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:
>
>>>> This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
>>>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil
>
>>> Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
>>> and well away from anything important.
>
>> Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?
>
>
> No, I'm just not entirely sure what it's for, or what scaling problems
> it helps solve ... it seems like something to make people feel more
> involved, which is good; but its useful function isn't elegantly
> obvious.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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
>
You have no idea how many times I've tried to explain something to
editors (and admins) of Spanish Wikipedia and read "What's the Wikimedia
foundation?" "Who's Jimmy Wales, Florence... xxx?", "What's this whole
board thing about?".

Raising awareness of what the whole thing is, by inviting them to join a
Wiki Council from people of different projects is a great start, and
will improve our wikiocracy.

Regards,
Damian


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Actually I think earlier attemps to discuss WikiCouncil failed partially
because too few people knew about it.
There was hardly any mentioning of
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil on mailing lists when the initial
proposal was produced, if I remember correctly.

I'm not sure if the proverbial 'design by committee' does not lead to
watered down compromises.
Maybe after some initial brainstorming we could solicit individual
proposals, in a more or less uniform format.
A similar method is used often at Wikimedia, from logo design to main page
designs.
Then the community can provide feedback and the most appealing proposal(s)
be further explored.

Erik Zachte

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Anthere [mailto:Anthere9 at yahoo.com]
> Sent: Sunday, 19 November 2006 17:06
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil
>
>
> I write this email with much hesitation.
> The issue has been raised often, the possible creation of a council.
> Naturally, setting up such a structure is bound to be difficult, due to
> the following issues to discuss and decide
> * what would be the roles of such a council ?
> * would that council vote the people to become Wikimedia Foundation
> board members ?
> * would this council become a sort of goverment of the project ?
> * how would people be added to this council (and along with which rules,
> depending on project size, languages etc...)
> * ...
>
> In short, a nest of questions.
>
>
> The issue has been raised many times already.
> If there are people interested in setting up a proposal, please just
> tell me. I am not talking of "discussion" here, I am talking of "writing
> down a proposal". On which the board could have a look. On which the
> community could comment and then vote.
>
> Anyway, if interested, jsut tell me and we can organise a little chat
> and a page about that. If noone interested, time will see :-)
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Block message info idea

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> Spilling out of my unblock-en-l experience...
>
> It would be useful for block messages that blocked users receive to
> display some sort of block-unique ID number to the user (say, the
> ipb_id value), so that if they report it to admins (say, via
> unblock-en-l) we can go search on that key and not have to wallow
> around for a while figuring out what IP block or autoblock bit the
> person.

Aye, that's a good idea.

The good news is, blocks already have a unique id number! (ipb_id)
Currently it's only displayed for autoblocks, I think. But it should not
be too hard to stick it in elsewhere.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Would it be better if I phrased this is "this is bad reasoning, please
> don't do this"?

Yes. :-) (sorry about being a little pedantic)

> Yes, there are vandals. Yes, we have ways of dealing
> with them. No, we should not avoid implementing something on the
> faulty assumption that its use by vandals will outweigh its benefits?

Well, there's really no way to know whether or not the problems that it
could pose by vandals would outweight the benefits.  There's quite a bit
of prior art on sleeper accounts, see:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Long_term_abuse>

> Has rollback-for-everyone even been trialled?

I don't think so.


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] copyright on scanned copy?

body:
On 11/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are not "free to try and claim" so much as "it is very rare that
> > people ever get taken to court for false copyright claims over PD
> > material, even though it is illegal."
>
> How is it illegal?

It is illegal (in the US) to make claim that you own the copyright to
something that is in the public domain.

(Obviously I'm aware of the fact that this would, in the end, rest on
the decision that scanning a PD work does not create a new copyright,
but I find it very hard to believe that anyone with half an
understanding of copyright law and its intentions would think that
merely putting a photo on a scanner and hitting "scan" counts as
"creativity" sufficient to take something out of the public domain).

> That would be the result of  Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.

Technically it is the result of (the much more important) Feist v.
Rural (1990) and its implications for what it means to be "creative",
and technically you are mixing up the reasoning with the enforcement
(the case is the enforcement, the reasoning about creativity and rote
copying existed before that case), but yeah, obviously I was referring
to that.

> First the scan was made in the UK so slightly different laws apply.
> Secondly the scan is not perfect you will note that some lines that
> should be striaght were bent. Still up to this stage your no
> creativity holds since the only changes were due to my being in a
> hurry and doing a rather poor job. However it doesn't stop there. The
> image was cropped. Is that non creative? Then User:Steinsky takes the
> scan and cleans it up and shapens it a bit. is that non creative?
> remeber it is likely that User:Steinsky has never seen the original so
> they are probably not trying to recreate it.

It's a derivative work even at best, and courts have long established
(in fair use cases) that making small modifications does not always
count as "creativity". I don't think that's a very tough case, in the
end -- does cropping a public domain image suddenly give you the right
to claim that no one else is allowed to crop the same public domain
image in the same way? A judge would either have to be an idiot or
drunk to think that made sense. Of course I don't put it past a judge
to be either of those things! ;-)

> "ignorance of the law is no excuse" There are many problems caused by
> poor understanding of IP law this is just one of them.

Well, of course.

FF


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
Added Gregory Szorc (gszorc), working on some extensions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

references:
<43348cda0611191009u61ba24e6p9397f88524bc1f08@mail.gmail.com>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNEEDHDFAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<fbad4e140611191032p6661033ap5ec24714ee1dc8c9@mail.gmail.com>
	<4560CE08.6090601@telus.net>

body:
On 19/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >On 19/11/06, Erik Zachte <erikzachte at infodisiac.com> wrote:

> >>This is about the Wikicouncil, as discussed on
> >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikicouncil

> >Sounds like a useful tool to deal with people who need to be kept busy
> >and well away from anything important.

> Do I detect yet another note of pessimism?

No, I'm just not entirely sure what it's for, or what scaling problems
it helps solve ... it seems like something to make people feel more
involved, which is good; but its useful function isn't elegantly
obvious.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
NB. This request is clearly for Swedish WIKTIONARY, which I imagine is
a much smaller uploading community than Wikipedia.

Brianna

On 19/11/06, Robert Leverington <lcarsdata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> The Swedish Wikipedia have requested that uploads be disabled, if
> anyone here speaks Swedish please make sure that all pages are up to
> date in Swedish to reduce the impact. Thank you.
>
> MediaZilla request - http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7977
> Discussion on Swedish Wikipedia
> -http://sv.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Bybrunnen#Bilder
>
> --
> Robert (aka Lcarsdata),
>
> Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
> Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
> http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > On 19/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> I was wondering if anyone could either write user Javascript to do
> >>> this, or tell me if it's possible.
> >>>
> >>> Have it so that every Category: page inserts __NOGALLERY__ for that
> >>> user, ie. they see text links instead of images, when they look at
> >>> categories.
> >>>
> >>> It would probably be a lot more useful if there was a way to turn it
> >>> off again at specific times for specific categories, eg. if there was
> >>> a link somewhere like 'view this category' (what everyone else is
> >>> doing by default)
> >>>
> >>> Any thoughts?
> >>>
> >> __NOGALLERY__ is server-side. File a bug.
> >>
> >
> > File a bug?? How is it a MediaWiki bug? I'm pretty sure the reply will
> > come back 'just set your browser preference to stop loading images'.
> >
>
> It's an RFE... ideally, you want the images in the gallery to not be
> loaded. If you don't care about actually loading the images (you just
> want them to disappear):
>
> addOnloadHook( function () {
>   if(wgCanonicalNamespace == "Category") // or wgNamespaceNumber == 14
>   {
>     for(var id in document.getElementsByTagName("div"))
>     {
>       if(document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].className == "thumb")
>       {
>         document.getElementsByTagName("div")[id].style.display = "none";
>       }
>     }
>     // refresh the footer
>     document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "none";
>     document.getElementById("footer").style.display = "";
>   }
> }
>
> Tested via a javascript console in Firefox 2.0, using Monobook. Should
> work if you put it in monobook.js but I haven't actually tested it.

Needs another closing ")" .

It stops the images in categories from loading, but it doesn't
actually display them as if you had put __NOGALLERY__ there. The
difference being that with NOGALLERY you can see the full filename.
Here they are still truncated: "20030702 2 July 2003..."

But anyway, nice. I put it here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Nocategoryimages.js

I also created a category:User scripts. If anyone else has some nifty
Javscript for Commons feel free to add it to this category.

I must say I really like the method of creating extra MediaWiki pages
and then getting users to 'include' them in their own Javascript
files. It is possibly not the best-scaling solution ever, but it is so
much neater than copying a trillion different versions of code around.

Brianna


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The complexity is due to the US's historic requirment of registration
> > of copyright. So you get images that were never registered in the US
> > (and were created before the chnage in the  law) and were not covered
> > by copyright in sweden at the time.
>
> Are the images considered protected by copyright in Sweden now?
>

As far as I understand (the relivant law is here:
http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Upphovsr%C3%A4ttslagen#.C3.96verg.C3.A5ngsbest.C3.A4mmelser
) that would depend on the artistic value of the work. No I don'tknow
what that means either and since the law is in swedish I have no real
way of finding out.

--
geni


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Community sanctions"

references:
<cbffa3750611170858v2fef5ea0i607193d80a537dab@mail.gmail.com>
	<9brrl29veehqk02on04e0eligiu1vu407m@4ax.com>
	<cbffa3750611171351l4b9ebee8j4b23e8fcb8bfc7c5@mail.gmail.com>
	<0bhsl256hej8v3t9sje7a7umfceurd53tk@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611171600u5078f4ack4ee4f2965613ad44@mail.gmail.com>
	<0chul2ljp2fphlfi0lt60h5ajb6tukjeqd@4ax.com>
	<455FBA2E.8050908@gmail.com>
	<vpb0m21mp317emtnkuvgf73lrpudkba19l@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611190433h10f8b78cob4a9f47a25de6961@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:33:30 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>> >Work shall set them free.
>> Ooh, careful there, I can translate that into German, y'know.
>"Vorsprung durch Technik"? "Fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn"?

Arbeit Macht Frei, inscibed ofer the gates of the concentraiton camps.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Community sanctions"

references:
<cbffa3750611170858v2fef5ea0i607193d80a537dab@mail.gmail.com>
	<9brrl29veehqk02on04e0eligiu1vu407m@4ax.com>
	<cbffa3750611171351l4b9ebee8j4b23e8fcb8bfc7c5@mail.gmail.com>
	<0bhsl256hej8v3t9sje7a7umfceurd53tk@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611171600u5078f4ack4ee4f2965613ad44@mail.gmail.com>
	<0chul2ljp2fphlfi0lt60h5ajb6tukjeqd@4ax.com>
	<455FBA2E.8050908@gmail.com>
	<vpb0m21mp317emtnkuvgf73lrpudkba19l@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140611190433h10f8b78cob4a9f47a25de6961@mail.gmail.com>
	<45r1m2t2adfri6cpfpa3vkftu2hbjbir6m@4ax.com>

body:
On 19/11/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:33:30 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:

> >> >Work shall set them free.
> >> Ooh, careful there, I can translate that into German, y'know.
> >"Vorsprung durch Technik"? "Fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn"?
> Arbeit Macht Frei, inscibed ofer the gates of the concentraiton camps.

Ya know, it's just possible Alphax and I both knew exactly what you
meant, him before you said it.

- d.


from_name: Earle Martin

body:
On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> it's your average passer-by who is not expecting to contribute
> anything. How about "Spot a mistake?" Something engaging, in
> colloquial English is probably the way to go.

"Something wrong?"

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>The Council would be made up of active Wikimedians, and could be
>>involved in the detailed co-ordination of projects in a way that best
>>assures and balances with the autonomy of each project.  It would have
>>limited decision making power within pre-defined parameters.
>>
>>
>Nod.
>And *if* we decide so (and *this* of course is controversial), they
>could be a body elected board members.
>Or, if the board appoints some of its members, it could be the body
>suggesting a list of names (of wikipedians or of external people) to the
>board to pick up some future board members from it.
>
I think that it's important for the members of the proposed working
group to be open-minded about this.  I have never given that idea much
thought, but it's easy to see both good and bad in it.  The general
Wikimedia community needs to feel confident that the council is going to
protect the broad influence of the community rather than act like a
bunch of oligarchs.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: David Boothroyd

body:
Earle Martin writes:
>On 19/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > it's your average passer-by who is not expecting to contribute
>  > anything. How about "Spot a mistake?" Something engaging, in
>  > colloquial English is probably the way to go.
>
>"Something wrong?"

Yes, I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

You mean with the article?

--
David Boothroyd
3RR must die
--
David Boothroyd - http://www.election.demon.co.uk
david at election.demon.co.uk (home)
dboothroyd at westminster.gov.uk (council)


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-20

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Implementing a licensing quiz on Commons

body:
On 11/20/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't want to force (or even suggest for) everyone to go through the
> quiz every single time they want to upload. I want to force all new
> users [or all users... I don't really care] to go through the quiz
> once before they start (or continue) uploading.
> Is it possible to do this without modifying MediaWiki?

Well, you could use a large amount of JavaScript (which would of
course only stop those with JS enabled) . . . other than that, not
that I can think of.


from_name: Ilario Valdelli

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
It could be because they are councils with different aims and are based
on different skills. Isn't it?

Ilario^_^

James Hare wrote:
> Yes, I had heard that earlier.
>
> Anyways, in that case we would have the Board of Trustees, the Advisory
> Council, and the Wiki Council. Three councils. Why should we have three? Why
> couldn't we compress it down to, oh, 2?
>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
Luna wrote:
> Auto-expiring protection sounds like a very interesting idea -- has anybody
> submitted this to  Bugzilla?
>
> On 11/12/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 11/13/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I believe it's been brought up to use an edit-approval program where new
>>> accounts would have to get their edits approved if they're new -- this
>> would
>>> be in place of semiprotection.
>> I oppose this. It undermines the assumption of good faith, whereas S-P
>> is specifically used on pages that have a record of vandalism.
>>
>> It makes more sense to expand the protection model to allow for
>> auto-expiry (as well as automatic labeling of protected pages).
>> --
>> Peace & Love,
>> Erik
>>
>> Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

This should be possible using a couple templates and a bot.
Automatically-expiring templates like [[Template:Prod]] can place an
article in an "expired" category after awhile, and a bot (or human) can
go through and unprotect them. The subst:'d semi-protection template
could take a parameter that determines how quickly the article is placed
into this category, and I'd imagine that you could use the #time:
function to give this parameter the same flexibility as the length field
in [[Special:Blockip]].

I guess it'd be possible for a user to come in later and modify the
expiration date in the article's source code, but since that would
require the user to be unaffected by the semi-protection, they shouldn't
have an incentive to do so. Maybe sysops could compare the original
semiprotect parameter to the current one when unprotecting the page, in
case that parameter gets tampered with.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Hi all,
  Wikipedia started out with the idea that the person reading the
article should be helping to fix it. But we're really moving further
and further away from that, and defining a "Wikipedia community" that
works on the articles, and end users who just read them. For example,
we now tend to put many templates on the talk page (like "image
requested") rather than on the article itself. Similarly, metacomments
like "This section is not complete" are often put in HTML comments, or
just on the talk page, rather than being more visible.

Would anyone like to see this trend reversed? My girlfriend remarked
tonight that she had found two different articles on the same topic,
and was annoyed by it. I felt like saying, "why didn't you suggest a
merge?" But then realised that the steps involved are totally
unrealistic for the average passer by: edit the article, add
"{{mergefrom|...}}" to that article, then do the same for the other
article (but with "mergeto", then go and add your reasoning to the
talk page!

My suggestion: Get past the simplistic idea that since anyone can
"edit" any page, anyone can "fix" any article. They're not the same.
More concretely:

1) Put a big "Does this article need fixing?" link in a prominent
place on each article (perhaps only for logged-out users or newbies?)
2) Upon clicking it, present a list of common problems: Plagiarism,
factual error, duplicate article, incorrect name for article, missing
information...
3) Explain that the user can edit it themselves *if they're
interested*, or make it *very* easy for them to report the problem so
more experienced Wikipedians can fix it.  "So fix it" is a fine
response from one oldbie to another - but not to a newbie.

Anyone agree with me here? Or have we passed the point where we
actively attempt to engage passers by to help us improve quality?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] idea: edit summary preview

body:
Incidentally, kudos to whoever added the "(Briefly describe the
changes you have made):" text. Something so obvious that I guess no
one thought of it. :)

Steve


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Javascript magic

body:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
> Would #mw-category-media .thumb { display: none; } in monobook.css do the trick?
>

Probably, but she asked for a JS solution, not a CSS one ;) However, it
still doesn't fix the filenames problem; to /properly/ fix it would
require either a server-side change (via preferences) or some sort of
custom rendering pulling the raw data from query.php via AJAX and then
parsing and displaying it.

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

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
On 11/17/06, Marco Schuster <CDL-Klever at gmx.net> wrote:
> because vandals will register with a "normal" nick, wait the few days
> and then they can easily do revert wars, mass vandalizing (afaik the
> rollback doesnt have a captcha so you could easily use a bot), etc, etc.

Q: Why don't we give more great functionality to our users?
A: Because there are evil people out there.

I don't like this reasoning.

Steve


body:
On 11/20/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> We could put a link like this up in the Sitenotice/Anonnotice so it'll
> easily be available on every article.

Where would that appear exactly? I actually should have said "It will
appear when viewing any article", rather than looking like part of the
article itself. Hell, a floating bubble would probably be the most
correct - if you find a problem at the bottom of the article, you may
not scroll back to the top looking for a way to report it.

Now, to implement this "The simplest way that could possibly work",
what should happen? Perhaps it should just generate a bunch of text
(substing a template?) and dump it on the bottom of the talk page? It
could even include a {{Flagged problem to be resolved}} template or
something to get people's attention. Add the talk page to a special
category, even...

What sorts of problems and resolutions should we offer?
1) Plagiarism: Describe the offending text and its originating URL if
possible. Give contact details? (a problem if leaving an email address
on the talk page...)
2) Factually incorrect: Give details
3) Duplicate article: Name the other article(s), with comments
4) Incorrect name: Suggest a new name
5) Missing info: Provide URLs or deadtree references for further
information? That could be really handy if academics are wandering
past...

Now, I'm presuming the basic workflow is going to go like this:
1) User clicks a general purpose "I want to help with this article" button
2) User is taken to new page (or expanding window?) with options
3) User selects an option, taken to another new page?
4) User is shown informaiton on the option they've chosen, enters more
information about the problem...
5) The problem is now reported on the talk page - obviously some state
needs to be maintained here.

Anyone know how to implement this?

Steve


body:
On 11/20/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about a tab? I'm not sure how we'd reduce "Is there a problem?" to
> one word though.

Tabs are IMHO kind of invisible. People I've spoken to have never
noticed them before. Everyone's used Wikipedia. Not many realise there
is a "History" tab, for instance. I'm thinking a big green friendly
bubble.

Steve


body:
On 11/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So make it multiple words. "Edit this page" is multiple words. Perhaps
> we could change "Edit this page" to "Improve this article".

I'm really hoping for something higher visibility, but how's this for
easy-to-implement:

Replace this text: "You are not currently logged in. While you are
free to edit without logging in, your IP address will be recorded in
this page's edit history. Creating an account will conceal your IP
address and provide you with many other benefits. "

With:
How can we improve this article?
Is there plagiarism? (link)
Is there a factual inaccuracy? (link)... etc
...
If you're comfortable editing Wikicode directly, feel free to dive in
below. (links to resources, help text, etc...) (some spiel about being
anonymous, getting an account...)

Steve