subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On 8/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Garion96 wrote:
>
> >I think, but I might be wrong, that something coming from the foundation
> >would lead to better results.
> >
> Please define the demarcation between what should be foundation policy,
> and what policy should be in the hands of any given project.  Except for
> absolutely essential policies, most of it should be in the hands of the
> projects, and one needs to accept that any two projects can have
> different policies, including ones relating to fair use.

I agree with that. Fair use is something each language wikipedia decides for
themselves. But since this would (positive thinking, if it succeeds) benefit
all wikipedia's, commons and the like, I thought it was fitting for the
foundation.

The fact is that when you are determining whether an image is free there
> is a huge grey area.  The grey area includes a lot of images that would
> be free if people ever bothered to put in a little effort to make them
> free.

I know, I try do to it myself all the time (well...now and then anyway).
Sometimes with success, sometimes not.

>I just now and then get discouraged when I see the fair use images mess on
> >en.wikipedia. I do like it that we can use fair use though but it seem to
> >be used too easily. If some good responses come from this, it would
> diminish
> >a bit the excessive fair use there.
> >
> So what's wrong with having fair use images, as long as they really are
> fair use images.  Excessiveness has nothing to do with it; establishing
> quotas for the number of fair use images would open up the question of
> whose fair use to use.  It's good that you accept some fair use images
> but what makes the use excessive?

As long as they are really fair use images, nothing wrong of course. Like
the stereotypical examples of the flag of Iwo Jima, the Kim Phuc Phan Thi
image, album covers and many others. I just seems to me that fair use is
used too easily. Grab a picture from the web, upload it, add a fair use tag
and you're done. I just prefer if more was free as in free content. Which is
just my opinion btw.

Garion


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
Add to it category redirections. If you tried to save with a category which
is a redirect, you shouldn't be able to, or automagically change to the
redirected one though it may be confusing seeing the wiki don't obeying you
;-)
As a plus, the job queue could handle when redirects are *being made*.
However not all kinds of category addings may be detected by an automated
process.


from_name: Buttay cyril

subject: [Wikitech-l] flexbisonparse

body:
Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a (python) wiki to pdf converter, based on
wiki2pdf, which is no longer actively maintained.

One of the -big- modifications to this script is to replace the
all-python parser by a combination of wiki->xml, using flexbisonparse,
and xml-> pdf, using parts of wiki2pdf. This was proposed by one of the
developers of wiki2pdf to make it a bit... more maintainable.

At the moment, things work fine, except for 2 things with flexbisonparse:
1- the external urls are not handled, and are included verbatim in the
output.
2- some people use <ref name="XX"> </ref> and <ref name="XX"/> to make
references, but these are modified by flexbisonparse, into >ref
name="XX"<, which is not very convenient.

I understand that the first problem is somehow difficult to manage, as
many cases are to be analysed, but I have the impression that the second
is simpler. However, I'm not (at all) an expert in flex and bison, and
have the biggest difficulties understanding the code of flexbisonparse.

Is there a developer of this parser around? Do you think the
modifications are feasible?

Also, I proposed a patch for minor modifications of the code on
bugzilla, but I don't know if it is the right place to do that.
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7001

Regards

Cyril
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

body:
"Tim Starling" wrote;
> It allows things like {{#time:F|+2 hours}} to get the month name in CEST.

Please also add support for the Summer time change, as i didn't find on the
doc :P


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
On 27/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 12:00:26AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > On 8/27/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Add to it category redirections. If you tried to save with a category which
> > > is a redirect, you shouldn't be able to, or automagically change to the
> > > redirected one though it may be confusing seeing the wiki don't obeying you
> > > ;-)
> >
> > I think the behaviour where the saved text is not what you actually
> > typed ought to be kept to a minimum. At current I know of that
> > happening in two instances: ~~~~ (and variants) and [[Foo (blah)|]],
> > which is replaced by [[Foo (blah)|Foo]]. It's kind of surprising to
> > the user...
>
> I concur, but both examples are miswarts: on inspection, it's pretty
> clear why those choices were made...

You wouldn't need to change the saved text; the magical redirection
could occur during the links update process.

Rob Church


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] African Languages Wikipedia Bashing on Slashdot

body:
If someone can identify one or two native speakers for each African
Language who are willing to spend a couple of weeks
putting together lexicons for Wikitrans for each target language, along
with language synthesis rules, I can start performing
runs for the target laguages.  I will need the following:

rogets thesaurus (open version on my website) lexicon
transposition of english words and phrases for the Cherokee lexicons
into these languages.

I already have the ability to synthesize new words for advanced latin
derived scientific language which will speed the creation
of a full African Language Wikipedia with the various languages.  After
the translation runs, then there should be a large enough
body of matrerials to start getting a community around it.  Starting at
ground zero with groups of people who need food more than
computers will certainly relegate the project to failure from the very
start.

Most of these African languages are going to have similiar challenges to
Native languages in American in that they will not
have evolved modern words for modern concepts.

Also, while folks I notice talk a lot about solutions, which is a good
thing, we will need someone here to take some action and get
these speakers to contact me and get these lexicons put together.  I
will also need to construct a rules database with the AI engine
and about 20 or so articles from the runs taken and retensed and
corrected to teach the AI engine how to reorder text and phrasing
for these languages into a readable form.

If the Foundation wants a good test run of WikiTrans on these languages,
this would be an excellent project to get Wikipedia
converted to these languages rather than waiting years (or maybe never)
to get it done.  I just read the Slashdot article and they
are bashing the heck out of us over this program announcement.

We have rosetta's stone to use, let's use it.   I need the folks doing
the African langauges program to shoot me an email, and I will
give them instructions and we can get them at least a good starting
point of content that will require 8,000,000+ articles on wikibooks
and wikipedia to be proofread, but its better than starting from 0.

I am not open sourcing the translator at this time, but I will assist in
creation of lexicons, rules, syntax, and grammar databases and parsers
and perform and post translation runs into any of these languages to
provide a starting point for wikipedia.  I am about 5 years ahead of the
game
with solid written tools moulded around MediaWiki that already does all
of this.  Let's apply them to this program and just get the thing done and
shutup these nay saying folks claiming we cannot pull it off -- we can.

Jeff


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:NPOV and images (possible policy update)

body:
On 27/08/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:

> I agree the main NPOV article is the best place to start (though I
> couldn't resist the temptation to fix a couple of things anyway).
> Otherwise we'll need separate sections for NPOV in animations,
> diagrams, photographs, videos, B/W film, ...

And it'll need regular pruning per [[m:instruction creep]] - it's a
very bad place to blur the distinction between the policy and the
guidelines on implementing that policy. The policy is simple and hard
to argue, but some people unfortunately appear to consider they can
weasel past it if they add enough rubbish to the guidelines. Not that
I've seen it repeatedly.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

references:
<ecrho0$vvl$1@sea.gmane.org> <ect2h9$t8g$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20608271435l11ae2ae2l6e9f0cace2405466@mail.gmail.com>

body:
"Simetrical" wrote:
>> Please also add support for the Summer time change, as i didn't find on
>> the
>> doc :P
>
> What sort of support do you want?

Depending on the month of the year, you may be +1 or +2 from the UTC...
(it's the difference between CET & CEST)


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/27/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 10:07:20PM +0200, Ligulem wrote:
> > Rob Church wrote:
> > > Christ, in future, remind me not to post tentative previews of
> > > possible things to come. It's not worth the bloody hassle of having
> > > fifty thousand trivial little questions.
> >
> > Assume good faith. I've learned that from you ;-)
> >
> > Don't be so sensitive.
>
> I hate to agree with him Rob, but relax.  This is the price of
> open-source *design*; people will kibitz.  Don't take it so seriously.
>
> If you haven't made those decisions, then clearly no one's taking issue
> with yours... :-)

Ok, so fwiw, I was just trying to contribute to the pre-implementation
requirements gathering phase. Sorry if it was more noise than signal.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
On 8/27/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Add to it category redirections. If you tried to save with a category which
> is a redirect, you shouldn't be able to, or automagically change to the
> redirected one though it may be confusing seeing the wiki don't obeying you
> ;-)

I think the behaviour where the saved text is not what you actually
typed ought to be kept to a minimum. At current I know of that
happening in two instances: ~~~~ (and variants) and [[Foo (blah)|]],
which is replaced by [[Foo (blah)|Foo]]. It's kind of surprising to
the user...

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] flexbisonparse

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 11:14:51PM +0100, Buttay cyril wrote:
>
>> I'm currently working on a (python) wiki to pdf converter, based on
>> wiki2pdf, which is no longer actively maintained.
>>
>
> My hobby horse is "Get The Glue Right", which leans me to ask:
>
> would it not be {easier,more useful} to direct effort towards
> wikitext2docbook?  Doesn't docbook already know how to get to PDF?
>
Well, I picked one of the existing project (wiki2pdf) for the following
reasons:
1- it uses python, which is one of the only languages I am nearly
comfortable with (I'm not a programmer)
2- the objective for me is to create a wikibook-to-Latex converter. I
plan to keep this piece of code client-side, because I know that even a
really good parser will need some tweaking of the LaTeX source to
produce a good pdf on something as long as a wikibook. Among the
features of the program is the automatic download of images and wiki
pages, something I can easily do with python
3- the list of alternative parsers (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers ) does not mention
wikitext2docbook, and says that flexbisonparse is "Intended as an
eventual replacement to the parsing code inside MediaWiki itself", which
is rather promising!

In an other hand, the tests I made with docbook were not very good from
a typographic point of view (I think the docbook to pdf conversion uses
LaTeX, but the stylesheets are oriented towards automation rather than
quality). I will have a look at wikitext2docbook, though.

Regards

Cyril
> /derail
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: NYTimes.com: African Languages Grow as a
 Wikipedia Pr...

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
> speakers of Swahili.
>
> Danny
Hoi,
For your information, I am on record that I need MediaWiki developers
who speak a mothertongue that is part of different language families. I
need this because http://wiktionaryz.org , intends to have all words of
all languages and support all languages with a localised User Interface.
As you may remember, the original goal of WZ is to be able to include
all the information that is contained in the existing Wiktionary
projects but have all the data in one database.

As you may know, and Danny certainly does, I am actively looking for
partners to make this happen. Africa is different in many ways from
Asia. It has problems of its own and one of the problems from an
Internet pov is the isolation of the individual countries. Traffic from
many African countries to other African countries go via Europe or
America. The ISP's have to pay for receiving content from abroad the
result is an abysmal price structure and poor service.

I have contacts both in Asia and in Africa and I am looking for the
localisation of MediaWiki. It helps WiktionaryZ as it helps all the
MediaWiki projects. There is nothing paternalistic in it; I do it for my
own reasons. I hope to create a win-win situation by making sure that
the benefits are evenly divided. When at this moment more attention is
given to the unique problems of the African wiki, it has more to do that
at this moment the focus is on African languages rather than on Asian
languages. The Asian languages as a whole do much better than the
African languages anyway.

My ambition is to localise MediaWiki for ALL languages from Ghana,
Nigeria, India, Australia.. I know it is likely I will only achieve this
for the major languages as a start, but it is good to be clear about
ambitions. My ambition is to have all the languages of Australia and all
the other languages as well. We already have portals for the Australian
languages, it is unlikely that they will do well, then again most of the
people who spoke many of these languages are gone. Australia is not a
developing region without Internet infrastructure. Australians just seem
not to have an interest for their indigenous languages.

It is imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
that simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
settings.

PS At WiktionaryZ we now support Serbian, Thai and Ido, all in all some
40 languages and we have almost 500 people who signed on to the project.
I do not know how many Expressions or DefinedMeanings we have. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
>>think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic.
>>
>>
>
>Who is?  I have not seen this.
>
>
>
>>The same problems exist for
>>languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>> "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
>>make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
>>articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
>>just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
>>million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>>
>>
>
>I think we absolutely ARE taking efforts in ALL parts of the world,
>simultaneously.  I had a meeting in Delhi with someone who is interested
>in pursuing a joint project to develop African languages.
>
>I have no idea who you have in mind who thinks anything racist or
>paternalistic about African languages, but if they do, then they do not
>represent the attitudes of the broad community or me.
>
>--Jimbo
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Jimbo,

If I can help here, let me know. I could generate a machine assisted
translation for them to start with to get them bootstrapped. I posted
what I would
need to get started with it. I know you would prefer people speak with
their own voices, but that me be very hard in the case of some of these
obscure languages where literacy is a big problem or language drift or
small pockets of native speakers who are isolated like small islands in
an ocean of english speakers. I suspect what has been happening to us
with Native Languages is also occurring over their, and many of these
groups may be in danger of loosing their languages already or
experiencing language drift between communities.

I am available to assist here.

Jeff


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-28

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Ok, so fwiw, I was just trying to contribute to the pre-implementation
> requirements gathering phase. Sorry if it was more noise than signal.

No problem. Just the "years" was possibly a little bit too inflammatory ;-)

But I think we are all grown up here and can stand it. Long live
MediaWiki! You guys are doing an awesome job here.

Now let's get back to business everybody. I love reading about new
stuff. Thanks to all of you!

--Ligulem


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 28/08/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:03:29AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > Allow me, ladies, gentlemen and those in between, to shove a
> > screenshot under your noses.
> >
> > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png
>
> I'm getting a 404 for that URL, but I would like to check it out; Has the image maybe been moved somewhere else?

Whee, I love the whole Alt-D = delete thing. :(
>
> > Better having them with a preview than having them saying "I don't like
> > multiple drafts" after several weeks of working to implement them
> > effectively. :-)
>
> Exactly - better to get any feedback (good and bad) before doing something, if you possibly can. Even if the implementation phase is
> ages away or just a maybe, it's still a very inexpensive and quick way to improve the idea or discover whether it should even be
> done at all - so I for one have no problem at all with people sticking something out there and saying: "this is just a mock-up, it
> may never happen, but nevertheless I'd welcome any thoughts you may have".

Unfortunately, many people can't accept that "maybe" is a perfectly
viable conditional.

Rob Church


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 8/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/27/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > jayjg wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > Is there any way you can be convinced to stop using this list for
> > > making false and pejorative statements about other editors?
> > >
> >
> > 1800-LISTMOD?
>
> Don't make me attempt to understand anything of the bizarre last 100
> messages or so. You're all crazy.
>
> Steve

Amen to that.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 27/08/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>> http://news.com.com/Can+German+engineering+fix+Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-6108495.html
>> A related source.... not the BBC.
>> "We want to let anybody edit," Wales said, "but we don't want to show
>> vandalized versions."
>>
>
>
> Yeah. When did Jimbo first ask for this, early 2005? People pretty
> much concurred it was a fantastic idea (logged-in editors get the live
> version, anon readers get the last-non-vandal-edit version), but it
> was considered technically rather painful indeed in the then-current
> structure of Mediawiki.
>
> If it looks workable now, that's fantastic, and should help make it a
> better no. 17 website in the world *and* a good perpetual working
> draft.
>

I have the same opinion.  Most of the improvements to Wikipedia that
have been ongoing, like requiring citations, improve the average quality
of articles.  At any given second, though, the quality can always be
quite abysmal.  A system like this one essentially smooths out the
presented version, so the average reader sees something more like the
average recent state of the article, rather than its instantaneous
state.  That doesn't magically make articles good, but it reduces the
number of times people see really bad articles.

-Mark


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
jayjg wrote:
<snip>
> Is there any way you can be convinced to stop using this list for
> making false and pejorative statements about other editors?
>

1800-LISTMOD?

--
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] Teaser trailer

body:
On 28/08/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some random thoughts on the idea:
> * Could it maybe discard the current auto-saved draft if the user clicks the "Cancel" link under the edit textarea? Generally if I
> click this, I've decided what I was about to say wasn't worth saying, in which case the draft probably isn't worth keeping either.

Yes, that makes sense...** grabs a piece of paper and begins scribbling **

> * Is it worth storing a diff, rather than the whole page? Say you're on a busy page, your browser crashes or there's a power cut,
> you reconnect, and reload the saved draft - however other people have modified the page, and now you have to merge your changes with
> their changes. However, maybe this is taking a decent idea and making it just too damn complicated - in which case please disregard
> this - I'd rather see a slightly simpler version that might happen, than an over-complex version which won't happen ;-)

I won't store diffs, but it might be nice to see if, when loading a
draft, the changes from the draft could be merged into the current
edit window, rather than replacing it.

Rob Church


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] How I should consider GFDL in shared content?

body:
Don't worry about it -- articles as transwikied from Wikipedia to Wiktionary
all the time.

To successfuly transwiki an article, you copy and paste the article to
Wiktionary, then copy the edit history from Wikipedia to the talk page of
the new page you made at Wiktionary. Then you list the transwiki at the
Transwiki Log on Wikipedia, then the fate of the Wikipedia version will be
decided.

Excuse me if I made it sound confusing -- feel free to ask for
clarification.

On 8/28/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
>
> I have a doubt. GFDL used by Wikipedia said that the content is free
> but "providing that its authors are attributed".
>
> In this case the history is strictly connected to the content. I
> could use content but I should have the related history.
>
> If I transfer an article from a project to another (i.e. from
> Wikipedia to Wikitionary) how I could respect this rule? The history
> is in the old article, I don't know a way to transfer also the
> history. The presence of a link in the new article linked to the old
> could be a good choice?
>
> If I transfer the content and I delete the article in the old
> position, what I could do in this case?
>
> Regards
>
> Ilario
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Yes, but that won't work out if the Wikipedia version gets deleted, as
dicdefs tend to do.

On 8/28/06, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/8/28, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
> > Don't worry about it -- articles as transwikied from Wikipedia to
> Wiktionary
> > all the time.
> >
> > To successfuly transwiki an article, you copy and paste the article to
> > Wiktionary, then copy the edit history from Wikipedia to the talk page
> of
> > the new page you made at Wiktionary. Then you list the transwiki at the
> > Transwiki Log on Wikipedia, then the fate of the Wikipedia version will
> be
> > decided.
> >
> > Excuse me if I made it sound confusing -- feel free to ask for
> > clarification.
> >
> > On 8/28/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
> > >
> > > I have a doubt. GFDL used by Wikipedia said that the content is free
> > > but "providing that its authors are attributed".
> > >
> > > In this case the history is strictly connected to the content. I
> > > could use content but I should have the related history.
> > >
> > > If I transfer an article from a project to another (i.e. from
> > > Wikipedia to Wikitionary) how I could respect this rule? The history
> > > is in the old article, I don't know a way to transfer also the
> > > history. The presence of a link in the new article linked to the old
> > > could be a good choice?
> > >
> > > If I transfer the content and I delete the article in the old
> > > position, what I could do in this case?
> > >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Ilario
>
> Or you can just add info at the bottom of the article about its source
> and link to the source artilce's history.
>
> --
> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject:
[Foundation-l] Idea for New Wikimedia Project,
	possible adjunct to Wikiversity

body:
Putting this idea through the mailing list before proposing on Meta. It
takes a bit of explaining, but don't worry it doesn't require any software
changes like most proposals with lots of explanation. I hope I've explained
it properly below because I think this idea has a lot of potential.

This idea is aimed entirely at students, primarily ones at university, but
there is no reason why it can't be for students at all levels. Because of
this, I was thinking this has potential either as an independent project, or
as a (rather large) subsection of the new Wikiversity.

The project is called Wikinotes. In short, the wiki is split into a category
for every academic course (or every classroom) at every educational
institution on the planet.

In each category, i.e. for each study course, students of that class can
write/upload/type up notes for lessons taken in that class. This helps them
share what they've learnt, fill in each other's gaps and ultimately builds
an organised set of personal revision material for use when the class is
complete (and exams loom).

The ultimate product would be a wiki where a user can browse to the category
corresponding to a certain course (maybe his/her own) and find notes or
material pertaining to it. But (and here's the crunch), the wiki is 99%
focussed on the actual typing up of/working on notes, as this is what aids
the actual students working on a course (the target userbase) - and 1% about
anyone beyond those students reading them afterwards. Rather than every page
in the wiki being useful to every person in the world (as Wikimedia is used
to), every 100 pages or so fits into a course-specific category that is
useful just for people taking that course. And the main "use" comes in the
benefits of typing up one's notes, and the benefits of a whole class doing
this in one space across a year of study, culminating effectively in a
thorough set of notes for their course.

I already have a live version of this in use, at Cambridge University, so
I've already very thoroughly thought about the problems it could face, and
worked out (I believe) viable ways around them. For now I'd like to just
discuss the basic idea. The idea is clearer with a university example:

University students go to lectures/seminars/discussion groups/classes where
the standard practise is to listen and take notes. These notes end up being
scruffy scrawlings on bits of paper - this may be the 21st Century but no
one seriously uses a laptop in a lecture hall, and even if they do they
wouldn't have the time to organise their notes as they type them. A lot of
students are thus already in the habit of typing up their notes, or in some
way reorganising them when they get back home.
It hit me that hundreds of students within one class thus go home with 100
copies of roughly the same note. Some type up their notes, meaning there are
100 copies of the same note across 100 computers. What if they could all be
brought together, to make a singular fantastic note? Seen as many are
electronic anyway, uploading to a wiki would be very easy. And seen as it's
a wiki, everyone could contribute to this note, until it has all the
relevent information from that class/lecture. The wiki is thus an "online,
shared desk".

The wiki would have to embrace and promote this work ethic of a) typing up
your notes and b) sharing them. But isn't this Wikimedia's ethic anyway? a)
Making information electronic and b) sharing it? Typing up notes is a vastly
beneficial practise for several reasons (discuss later), all of which the
project and by proxy Wikimedia would have to swear by - hopefully this
embracing of an ethic won't be a problem, if the board agree, with me, that
it is one that could be of epistemic benefit to millions of students.

Crucial to the mechanics of any wiki are its policies, and a major policy of
Wikinotes must be that there is absolutely no style guide or standard or
goal, indeed that there are absolutely no restraints on the content added to
the Main namespace (apart from legal ones, and that content be on-topic),
because it is not intended for readership beyond each classroom. The
students who type up their notes on the wiki do so for their own good, and
it's directly for them and their classmates. What they put in is what they
take out. This is a kind of sharing that Wikimedia isn't accustomed to,
because it is possible (and okay) that pages in the Main namespace won't
even be intelligible to anyone who isn't a contributor towards the category
that the pages are in (i.e. to the course they apply to).

But as a Wikimedia project, these basic ideas could be expanded so that the
site does reach out in the way we're used to. The site could have two main
aims, and this is where Wikiversity comes in. The first aim is the
"internal" one, i.e. within individual classes, as described above. The
second aim is the "external" type which is to use the class notes in each
category as base material for the formation of proper revision guides (or
learning guides) for people taking those courses (or people who want to),
where these guides do have style standards. The ultimate aim of this second
part of the site would be for each category to contain both raw notes for a
specific course, and then also a set of refined guides based on those notes.

This effectively splits the wiki into two types of users, those working on
the internal aim ("students") and those working on the external
("collators"? "copyeditors"?), but each type of user could do both. Which is
why it works neatly in the following ways:
* As a seperate wiki primarily for intra-classroom sharing of knowledge, and
secondarily for the creation and leaving-behind of up-to-date,
course-focussed revision guides and notes, which new generations of students
in the same course can make use of.
* As a seperate wiki not intended for outside viewers, just for the
students, used as base source material for copyediting, expansion and
fitting-into-guidelines, then the transfering of these revision guides to
Wikiversity. i.e. as a Wikiversity raw material resource.
* As a subsection of Wikiversity.

Running as an adjunct to Wikiversity would, I believe, heavily expand the
growth of Wikiversity. In essence Wikiversity needs to be written by
students of classes, and the Wikinotes idea is much more useful to them, as
well as easier and not requiring a user to be dedicated to the goal of a
wiki. So as well as being useful on its own, it would serve as an entry
point into Wikiversity, and would also allow any user to aid Wikiversity by
creating course-materials from the raw course-material stored at Wikinotes.

If you read this far, what do you all think?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO

body:
Thanks for all your great work, Daniel.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Resignation as CFO


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 8/28/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> I have another reason to speak against this. As an editor, I
> sometimes create an article that is very small, a few words. At the
> point, I discover a few pages that link to this article and so I know
> that article has some importance.
>
> Also, stubs are great for attracting attention(!). Sometimes, stubs
> attract a request for deletion, but in fact the article will grow a
> reasonable state (see reference below). If deleted, nobody will see
> it. If hidden from general view, then it will only be seen by the
> upper class of editors, who may not be aware of the (potential)
> significance of the article.

This seems to be entirely a question of implementation.  Consider, for
example, this approach:

When a non-logged-in reader requests a page:

A. If a revision in the article's history has a "not-vandalism" flag
set, show that revision as the default (with an option to see the
current revision)

B. Otherwise, show the current revision.

In this variation, stubs/new articles/obscure articles that a few
people read each year all get shown at the latest version, because
nobody will have bothered to mark a particular revision with the flag;
it's only on higher-traffic pages -- which, for the most part, would
be the ones where vandalism is more prevalent -- that the use of the
flag would come into play.

(This quite aside from the fact that de: hasn't yet decided how the
ability to set this flag would be assigned; but one of the options
Kurt mentioned at Wikimania would be something like the current
semi-protection limit on the account's age.  The vast majority of
active contributors would, in such a scenario, be able to simply set
the flag -- perhaps automatically -- on any article they work on.)

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories problem

body:
Hi Nick,

Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi Julien,
>
>
>> I was wondering if there is projects to help *detect* categories and
>> then to help editors by *suggesting* categories ?
>>
>
> I think it's a good idea.
>
> The closest thing I can see is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Auto-categorization  (although I'm not 100% clear on what
> that project was doing with categories, so maybe it's not as related as it sounds, but I thought it best to mention it).
>
Thank you for the link, it is very interesting. I will try to contact
the author of this page.
>
>> Once you have the clusters, you
>> need to try labelling them with a category :
>>  - give to the user the role of identifying the category name
>>  - use the words space to find the better words that describe this set
>> of articles
>>  - ...
>> Then you can run this algorithm on a category to try to split it in sub
>> categories.
>>
>
> How are you going to apply the categories? E.g. leave a message on the talk page / automatically apply them with a bot / an external
> web page where people can see possible categories / or something integrated into MediaWiki?
>
I think a proof of concept on a external page is better to see if
results are good enough to be integrated in MediaWiki.

> If it's something interactive, you can maybe produce a checkbox list of the top 10 possible categories, have the user tick all the
> categories that apply. Then for the categories that apply, you could maybe expand those and show the subcategories, and have the
> user tick the ones that apply, and keep on expanding the subcategories that apply until the user has gotten as specific as they can.
>
Clustering is really an interactive process, but needs quite a lot of
cpu time. I don't think I will produce a interactive result, a least
at the beginning.
>> The second idea is really more simple and easier to implement : When you
>> edit an article, you can suggest categories of linked articles (can be
>> replaced by an other graph-exploration algorithm).
>>
>
> Can it maybe also suggest which stubs to use? I can never remember what the right stub to use is (so I just use the standard
> "{{stub}}"), but there has got to be a better way than having to remember the full list of stub types.
>
Yes, you can extend it to stubs with the same kind of processing.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
On 8/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Garion96 wrote:
>
> >I think, but I might be wrong, that something coming from the foundation
> >would lead to better results.
> >
> Please define the demarcation between what should be foundation policy,
> and what policy should be in the hands of any given project.  Except for
> absolutely essential policies, most of it should be in the hands of the
> projects, and one needs to accept that any two projects can have
> different policies, including ones relating to fair use.
>
Unless and until the individual projects have an organized legal
structure, face to face dealings really have no other choice but to be
handled by the foundation.

You asked about policies, which isn't really what I thought this
thread was about, but I'd consider the freeness of the content to be
one of the "absolutely essential policies".

> >To quote from anthony's mail. "Wikimedia is "powerful enough now that we can
> >insist on [free images], and get it, from just about any celebrity".  Joe
> >Schmoe Wikipedian is not, and if a dozen people contact someone claiming to
> >be acting on behalf of the foundation, even that power is quickly going to
> >dissipate."
> >
> The fact is that when you are determining whether an image is free there
> is a huge grey area.  The grey area includes a lot of images that would
> be free if people ever bothered to put in a little effort to make them free.
>
> >I just now and then get discouraged when I see the fair use images mess on
> >en.wikipedia. I do like it that we can use fair use though but it seem to
> >be used too easily. If some good responses come from this, it would diminish
> >a bit the excessive fair use there.
> >
> So what's wrong with having fair use images, as long as they really are
> fair use images.

"Fair use images" which aren't free can't be reused by everyone.
That's what's wrong with them.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
I have a doubt. GFDL used by Wikipedia said that the content is free
but "providing that its authors are attributed".

In this case the history is strictly connected to the content. I
could use content but I should have the related history.

If I transfer an article from a project to another (i.e. from
Wikipedia to Wikitionary) how I could respect this rule? The history
is in the old article, I don't know a way to transfer also the
history. The presence of a link in the new article linked to the old
could be a good choice?

If I transfer the content and I delete the article in the old
position, what I could do in this case?

Regards

Ilario


body:
It's worth pointing out that the Austrian "Wikiversity" (nothing to do
with Wikimedia) seems to be intended to function this way:

http://wikiversity.at/

I'd prefer to see interaction with real world institutions of learning
as part of wikiversity.org itself.

Erik


from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject:
[Foundation-l] Idea for New Wikimedia Project,
	possible adjunct to wikiversity

body:
>The project is called Wikinotes. In short, the wiki is split into a
>category
>for every academic course (or every classroom) at every educational
>institution on the planet.

The amount of boiler-plate code you would need to institute this would be
phenominal. Course names and numbers might be similar between different
institutions. For instance, Math 21 at one university could be completely
different from Math 21 at a different university. You would need to force
contributors to create pages with some kind of hierarchical structure: "My
Universty/My Class", or more specifically "My University/My Department/My
Class/My Section". Keep in mind that even in a single university, a single
course can have very different requirements and learning goals between
individual sections.

>In each category, i.e. for each study course, students of that class can
>write/upload/type up notes for lessons taken in that class. This helps them
>share what they've learnt, fill in each other's gaps and ultimately builds
>an organised set of personal revision material for use when the class is
>complete (and exams loom).

It does help people share what they've learned, but verbatim "sharing" can
also be construed as "plagiarism". A much more helpful resource would be one
where people don't simply share notes verbatim, but are also forced to
paraphrase them, rewrite them, reformat them, etc. Instead of creating a
place to store online notes, we could create a list of existing wikimedia
projects and resources that are working on subjects similar to those used in
the particular class. For instance, If we say "Harvard University/Math 21
(Calculus)", that page would create links to the various wikipedia,
wikibooks, and wikiversity courses that mirror the material, without having
to recreate it. Of course, simply having a list of links is generally
against wikimedia policy anyway.

--Andrew Whitworth


from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Election] For possible candidate: please follow
	this procedure to be accepted as candidate

body:
Hello all,
I need to go now, not sure if I am back before the end of acceptance,
and I am not sure if the additional official help hasn't been
appointed yet, so I hereby put this notice for the candidates who will
come from now till the end of acceptance. To candidates, sorry for
your inconvinience and thank you for your understanding.

Candidates are accepted till 23:59, August 28, 2006 (UTC) on meta.
Further information is available at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Election

===
Dear candidates,
We the Election Officials are now completing the confirmation process
for candidates for the Board of Trustees election. In order to do
this, please fax a copy of the first page of your passport or any
other legal identification to the Foundation Office at +1-727-258-0207
by Monday, August 28. (UTC) Your documentation must contain the
following information:
1. Your legal name
2. Your age or date of birth
3. Your picture (i.e. photo ID only)

In addition, please also provide the following information along with
your identification so that we may contact you further if necessary:

1. Your mailing address
2. Your phone number where you can receive an international call

Please let us know what the best times are to contact you by phone, in
UTC (example: 23-2, 5-11 UTC).

Thank you for your cooperation, and good luck!
--
Kizu Naoko
Wikimedia Election Committee, 2006
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
On 8/28/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
....
> > Simply having the means to verify that this "experiment" _is_ in fact an
> > experiment, and not just something that had been called an experiment to
> > brush off any complaints that may have been raised over its
> > implementation, goes a long way toward easing my concerns.
>
> If you mean he always intended for this to be a permanent change with
> no chance of being repealed, and only called it an "experiment" to
> make it easier to swallow, I think you're being unnecessarily harsh
> and cynical.
>
> Steve

Judge by what people do, and not what they say. Perhaps that was not
his intention in the beginning, but thus far that has been the
practical effect.

~maru


from_name: Joe Anderson

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Who are these 'trusted users'?

On 8/27/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/27/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> >
> > So what exactly is being proposed?
>
> Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
> revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
> being free of vandalism.  There may be more recent revisions, but
> those will not be displayed by default; readers will have to
> specifically request to see them.  A consequence of this is that edits
> made by anonymous readers will not be immediately displayed as the
> "primary" revision of an article.  This is being misrepresented by
> some as imposing an approval requirement on such edits before they
> become visible, but that's not what it is; such edits are immediately
> visible as they are now, just not as the primary version which is
> displayed by default to anonymous readers.
>
> I, personally, see this as a great benefit to the vast bulk of our
> customers: the chances that Joe Q. Public will go to an article he
> found by a Google search and be confronted by unexpected penis go WAY
> down with this approach.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

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


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On 8/28/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some random thoughts on the idea:
> * Could it maybe discard the current auto-saved draft if the user clicks the "Cancel" link under the edit textarea? Generally if I
> click this, I've decided what I was about to say wasn't worth saying, in which case the draft probably isn't worth keeping either.

Come to think of it, if it behaved exactly like Gmail, that wouldn't
be a bad thing. Rough summary:

* Every few seconds while typing an email, it's saved as a draft
* When clicking reply to a message for which you have started a draft,
the edit box is automatically populated with the draft.
* You can see all drafts that you have for all messages by clicking
the "Drafts" link.

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
geni wrote:

>On 8/28/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Seriously, though, I'm still looking for a response on my request for
>>>details when you said "analysis has been done, results will be
>>>published" regarding the initial disabling of anon page creation. Who
>>>did the analysis? Or did you answer in a different thread that I haven't
>>>been reading? I know I'm being a hardass about this, but so far this has
>>>been the only lead I'm aware of indicating that any such analysis might
>>>actually be taking place.
>>>
>>>
>>I second the request if there has been a serious analysis.  Anecdotally,
>>I can say that I think that the experiment with disabling page creation
>>for anons has not been particularly useful and that we should turn page
>>creation back on for anons at some point fairly soon.
>>
>Should be noting that are avtive admin to article ratio is geting
>worse which means things may not go back to the way they were before.
>
All the more reason to begin to put flags on articles so that when they
exist the general public only gets those stable versions that have been
checked for overt vandalism.

The admin to edit ratio is probably more important than the admin to
article ratio.  We can expect that the total number of articles will
keep going up, but many of those articles are very stable.  The only
time that the average vandal would even think of looking at them is when
they came up through the random page function.  A vandal who has an
obsession about doing nasty things to articles related to citrus fruit
will soon make himself obvious.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] WikiCharts

body:
On 8/28/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe wikicharts already has this (if it does, I apologize), and maybe it doesn't, but I occasionally enjoy glancing at Google's
> Zeitgeist page ( http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html ) to get a sense of what other people are clicking (i.e. rather than an
> absolute number of views, it shows what's topical, presumably based on a formula that combines of number of page views together with
> a percentage increase, to see filter for things that are both topical and of general interest). Would something like this maybe be
> possible for wikicharts, so as to get a weekly "Wikipedia Zeitgeist" to see what's hot?

I was thinking that too. Probably easy to do, simply by analysing the
logs for the last week rather than all time, or whatever.

(notices that United States has finally made it into the top ten,
overtaking List of gay porn stars...)

Steve


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using dvipng in texvc

body:
Jan-?ke Larsson wrote:
> Domas Mituzas wrote:
>> How much faster is the dvipng approach?
>
> My tests indicate a factor 3.

What, no cheers?  :-)   Are there comments, opinions?

/J?

--
Dyslectics have more fnu


subject:
[Foundation-l] Idea for New Wikimedia Project,
 possible adjunct to Wikiversity

body:
No Spam wrote:

><Virgil Ierubino Wrote:>
>
>
>>I already have a live version of this in use, at Cambridge University, so
>>I've already very thoroughly thought about the problems it could face, and
>>worked out (I believe) viable ways around them. For now I'd like to just
>>discuss the basic idea. The idea is clearer with a university example:
>>
>>
>Virgil,
>In your current implementation, at Cambridge, are you witnessing any change
>in behavior from note takers?
>I envision a moral hazard, or a kind-of prisoner's dilemma, manifested in
>lazy students waiting for others to post notes.
>Then, eventually, note-takers catch on and stop posting...
>How's that playing out in your prototype setting?
>
It also needs to be remembered that in many instances the act of
note-taking is a part of the learning process.  Reading notes does not
have the same effect on the mind as actually writing them down where
students will benefit from the notes even if they never review them
again in the future.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>> Seriously, though, I'm still looking for a response on my request for
>> details when you said "analysis has been done, results will be
>> published" regarding the initial disabling of anon page creation. Who
>> did the analysis? Or did you answer in a different thread that I haven't
>> been reading? I know I'm being a hardass about this, but so far this has
>> been the only lead I'm aware of indicating that any such analysis might
>> actually be taking place.
>
> I second the request if there has been a serious analysis.  Anecdotally,
> I can say that I think that the experiment with disabling page creation
> for anons has not been particularly useful and that we should turn page
> creation back on for anons at some point fairly soon.

My gnawing, niggling concerns about this situation were just about
completely allayed there, thanks. :)

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some light entertainment for you...

body:
On 8/26/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Speedy death.  May as well become a birth, obituary, and highschool
> yearbook archive.  If you want to be nice, message the writer to consider a
> blog or myspace type site.

I couldn't agree more. Just being alive doesn't give one the right to an
article. [[WP:BIO]] and vanity guidelines are VERY clear on that.

Mgm


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Francis Tyers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language proposal: Wikipedia...

body:
If there are only small dialect differences, it might be worth looking
at Apertium (http://apertium.sourceforge.net). Free software machine
translation for closely related languages. I think having just different
scripts is about as closely related as you get :)

Fran

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 15:06 +0530, Frederick "FN" Noronha wrote:
> That doesn't seem possible at this point of time. Each script tends to
> have some small but significant dialectal variations. So, simply using
> some form of mechanical transalation/transiteration might render the
> output quite unreadable.
>
> It would be preferable to have human-created pages.
>
> Even if done in different scripts, I don't think this would cause any
> problems as such. Teams would work at differing paces, as per their
> own abilities and convenience. And work by one team might spur on
> others to catch up too.
>
> The issue we're shifting to is a much wider question, which has been
> causing worry for those keen about the Konkani language. As far as
> Wikipedia goes, what do you see as the suitable solution?
>
> We have two options -- a common Konkani Wikipedia, or separate ones
> (set up according to interest shown and activity levels initiated). FN
>
> PS: Have just been working on a portal for Goa at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Goa  You can see some Konkani
> descriptions (in English there). Since I'm not a techie, have been
> struggling a bit to control the templates and code!
>
> On 27/08/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > >a script-neutral Wikipedia, or multi Wikipedias to deal
> > > with the diverse scripts of Konkani (even if with differening levels
> > > of activity).
> >
> > Is there any way to make an automatic coverter among the 5 scripts? It would
> > save you a lot of trouble.
> >
> > B?rto
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/28/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Judge by what people do, and not what they say. Perhaps that was not
>> his intention in the beginning, but thus far that has been the
>> practical effect.
>
> Ironically today he has just posted that he's strongly considering
> undoing it, due to lack of perceived benefits.

Yeah, but until he posted that I also shared Maru's feeling - I had no
way of knowing his motives at the time but even if they were perfectly
sincere the _result_ was still a haphazard change to policy with vague
promise that it would eventually be evaluated but no actual indication
anything more would ever be done.

Trust, but verify.

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
> speakers of Swahili.
>

This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
> speakers of Swahili.
>

This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
> speakers of Swahili.
>

This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I have a lot of sympathy and fondness for African languages. However, I
> think the attitude we are taking is paternalistic. The same problems exist for
> languages in many other corners of the world. Identifying this issue as uniquely
>  "African" is paternalistic and, quite frankly, a tad racist. Why do we not
> make the same efforts for Khmer (the official language of Cambodia, 66
> articles), Burmese (the official language of Myanmar, with 32 million speakers,  and
> just 66 articles), or Assamese (an official language of India with 20
> million speakers and only 6 articles)?
>
> So, for starters, I would like to suggest that we replace  the term "African
> languages" with "languages in developing regions."  Speakers of Pashto, Tajik,
> and Malayalam stand to benefit from a strong  Wikipedia just as much as the
> speakers of Swahili.
>

This is also another area where the Simple English projects will be
incredibly useful.

--
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] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> I second the request if there has been a serious analysis.  Anecdotally,
>> I can say that I think that the experiment with disabling page creation
>> for anons has not been particularly useful and that we should turn page
>> creation back on for anons at some point fairly soon.
>
> My gnawing, niggling concerns about this situation were just about
> completely allayed there, thanks. :)

Oh, and I should mention that this was meant in all seriousness. It only
occurred moments after I posted that some people use smilies solely to
indicate irony or wryness, whereas I often use them simply to indicate
good cheer.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Gordon Joly wrote:
> At 13:45 -0400 27/8/06, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> On 8/27/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>>  Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
>>>  revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
>>  > being free of vandalism.
>> [snip]
>>
>> Of course, 'Trusted user' is a complicated issue in and of itself.
>>
>
>
> Web of trust is the basis of PGP, surely?
>
>
> http://www.rubin.ch/pgp/weboftrust.en.html
>
> http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/F.AbdulRahman/docs/pgptrust.html
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
>
> Good enough then?
>

Someone will shoot me for suggesting it, but there's an
"attack-resistant" trust metric available (primarily used by Advogato).
We have an article at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_resistant_trust_metric>.

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

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body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
>>>unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
>>>it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...
>>>
>>>
>>It would be wrong to impute motives to any of the speakers whose
>>language is not represented by a strong Wikipedia community.
>>
>>
>Ok, perhaps I should clarify something here. I'm not talking about
>native speakers, I'm talking about people who have some knowledge and
>have access to native speakers when they go back to wherever they're
>taking a break from...
>
Nevertheless, it is the native speakers who will make or break the
Wikipedia in any given language.  The outsiders should be primarily
there in a supporting role.

>>Many of these languages were pre-literate until waves of Christian
>>missionaries went in and translated the Bible for them.  Talk about
>>paternalistic!
>>
>>
>... and they're Christian missionaries from various aid organisations.
>
>NOW do you see why people have no desire to contribute? Attitudes like
>yours, buddy.
>
Christian aid organizations come with strings attached, like using help
as a vehicle for spreading Christian propaganda.  So if my attitude
results in preventing Christian POV pushing it's well placed.

A native language is more than just a language.  There is also an entire
culture wrapped up in the language.

Ec


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Many of these languages were pre-literate until waves of Christian
>missionaries went in and translated the Bible for them.  Talk about
>paternalistic!  That was not limited to Africa; it also prevailed over
>the first nations languages of the Americas.
>
<*snip*>

>
>Ec
>
>
This is a little over the top in this observation.  Ever since the Bible
was translated into Latin, there has been a consistant attitude of
trying to teach the concepts of Christian thought in the native language
of the people who were recieving the message.  In fact, none other than
the words of Jesus himself, to "preach the gospel to every nation,
kindred, tounge, and people" gives quite the justification to translate
these words into as many languages as possible.

While I will openly admit that this was not as widespread of a practice
during most of the 1st Christian millenium, it certainly was a part of
the Reformation and Protistant movement in terms of translating tracts
and literature into as many languages as possible.  When 19th Century
(and even substantial 20th Century) missionary work came across cultures
who had no written language of any kind, it became quite difficult to
have these new cultures to have the opportunity to read the Holy Word.
 An interesting development occured when in some areas Christian worship
services occured in an European language but everyday life occured in
another.  From a missionary point of view, these people who were
professing to be converts to Chritianity were in fact living one life
during the week and something completely different on Sunday.  In an
attempt to "democratize" the access to the teachings of Jesus, the Bible
simply had to be translated into these languages that otherwise had no
written form.

This is hardly paternalistic, but rather the very purpose and being of
the missionary work, and a desire to fulfill the direct command of
Christ himself.  If the language didn't have a written form, it became
necessary to perform this missionary effort to create the written form
in the first place.  Jointly with this effort was also an attempt to
preserve the history and cultures of these people with this newly
created written language.

In fact, I would dare say that this same missionary zeal that pushed
these Christian missionaries into translating the Bible into as many
languages as possible is largely continued through the efforts of
Wikimedia projects and in particular Wikipedia.  I know that it isn't
necessarily a Christian POV that is being translated for Wikipedia, but
you absolutely must acknowledge the roots of similar efforts coming from
these Christians rather than demeaning and belittling honest positive
conributions of well meaning people.  That you may or may not agree with
Christian thought is irrelevant in this situation, and if it wasn't for
the substantial efforts to create a written form of many of these
languages, there simply wouldn't be a written form at all.

Since you bring up native American peoples, I would like to point out
that the Cherokee nation in particular has had their language now for
close to 200 years, was originally written to translate the Bible and
admittedly to "Christianize" the Cherokee people.  Still, this written
form as acted as a cultural shield and has helped preserve the language
in spite of enormous pressures to abandon the language.  Indeed as with
many other written language efforts, this has acted as a unifying force
to draw the Cherokee people together.  Unlike many of the other
languages that I guess you are refering to here, Cherokee as a language
has also developed independent of religious literature with rich
traditions of secular literature.

I would agree that a paternalistic attitude of condescension toward
calling these effort (perhaps even viewed by some of the 19th Century
missionary efforts you are refering to) of "helping primitive native
peoples", but there were reasons to translate the Bible into these
languages.

BTW, for current efforts to translate the Bible into additional
languages (and some efforts are being done even now), it costs in the
neighborhood of roughly $2 million USD for each edition of the Bible.
 The groups that do these efforts (see
http://www.ubs-translations.org/cms/index.php?about ) try to be very
senstive to native cultures when these translations are done.  Frankly,
these individuals who go into a society and even attempt to create a
syllabary for a language that otherwise has none are doing incredible
and often thankless work.  Rather than being critical of these efforts,
they are indeed preserving these languages even if it is in POV
religious context.  These individuals are on the bleeding edge of
linguistics studies, to be honest.

--
Robert Scott Horning


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>
> It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
> that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
> settings.
>
>
>
> Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
> of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
>  nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
>  vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
> need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
>

Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>
> It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
> that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
> settings.
>
>
>
> Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
> of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
>  nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
>  vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
> need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
>

Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>
> It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
> that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
> settings.
>
>
>
> Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
> of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
>  nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
>  vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
> need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
>

Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...

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

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body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 8/27/2006 6:17:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> gerard.meijssen at gmail.com writes:
>
> It is  imho wrong to call it languages in developing regions, it is not
> that  simple and the article cited is about Wikipedia in its African
> settings.
>
>
>
> Actually, the article cited doesnt mention WiktionaryZ, which was the bulk
> of your email. I am talking in principle, when we refer to projects that need a
>  nudge, let's not just focus on African languages because it happens to be in
>  vogue. There are plenty of other important languages out there that also
> need a  gentle push so that they can reach their full potential.
>

Unfortunately the people who are likely to know these languages are
unlikely to want to contribute to Wikipedia, because they'd probably see
it as a waste of time/doomed to fail/whatever. Still, I can ask people...

--
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: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
On 8/28/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
> > Will this fragment Wikipedia? Will there be different rules for
> > Japanese, French, Polish, Dutch.... and the rest?
>
> It seems to me there already are. I don't believe fr.wp restricts anon page
> creation, for instance.

Each Wikipedia makes its own rules.  Es, for example, prohibits image
uploads entirely.  While certain policies are non-negotiable (NPOV,
mainly), each project is free, as it must be, to come up with the
policies and procedures that work for it.

The German experiment is very interesting and I hope it works for
them.  I'm sure the results of their experimentation will lead to much
discussion within the English community as to whether English should
use this feature once the devs make it available to us.  But I think
that discussion should mainly wait until (a) an implementation exists
(right now, it's not ready for prime time; Brion has some more work to
do on it) and (b) we have some data from the Germans on what does and
doesn't work in their community, so we can not waste time discussing
in a vacuum.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Bryan,
>
>> Seriously, though, I'm still looking for a response on my request for
>>  details when you said "analysis has been done, results will be
>> published" regarding the initial disabling of anon page creation. Who
>>  did the analysis? Or did you answer in a different thread that I
>> haven't been reading? I know I'm being a hardass about this, but so
>> far this has been the only lead I'm aware of indicating that any such
>> analysis might actually be taking place.
>
> While there are aspects of dear old Gregory I would undoubtedly like to
> reflect (being able to take a decent fscking photograph for a start), we
> are, in fact, different people, and would both prefer not to be confused!

Gah! I actually went and looked up Gregory's post where he said that to
compare author names before I responded, I don't know how I could have
_still_ crossed wires with "Gregory" and "Gallagher" with them right in
front of me like that. I'd blame Thunderbird's refusal to open two
different emails at the same time, but that would just be lame. :)

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from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:03:29AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> Allow me, ladies, gentlemen and those in between, to shove a
> screenshot under your noses.
>
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png

I'm getting a 404 for that URL, but I would like to check it out; Has the image maybe been moved somewhere else?

> Better having them with a preview than having them saying "I don't like
> multiple drafts" after several weeks of working to implement them
> effectively. :-)

Exactly - better to get any feedback (good and bad) before doing something, if you possibly can. Even if the implementation phase is
ages away or just a maybe, it's still a very inexpensive and quick way to improve the idea or discover whether it should even be
done at all - so I for one have no problem at all with people sticking something out there and saying: "this is just a mock-up, it
may never happen, but nevertheless I'd welcome any thoughts you may have".

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
>
> As I recall, we were happy when the proposed mechanism had a
> ten-minute or so time out mechanism, so it didn't turn into a ''de
> facto'' anon-edits-must-be-approved rather than an anti-vandalism
> mechanism, and to assure the anon that yes, the edit would show up
> soon. The de system seems to differ from the one we discussed.
>

Before I saw this post, I was about to counter-propose just that: a simple
delay-to-live timer. Something similar could apply to page creation.

This happens in live TV broadcasting sometimes (I'm thinking of Don Cherry):
there's actually a few seconds delay to allow the control room to step in.

This, rather than some trust mechanism which, technical issues and objections to
unnecessary complexity and hierarchy aside, our experience suggests would very
quickly develop a long backlog for approval. AfC did, and it was only for page
creation, and there was no special trust class required to clear the backlog.

Daniel Mehkeri


from_name: No Spam

body:
<Virgil Ierubino Wrote:>
> I already have a live version of this in use, at Cambridge University, so
> I've already very thoroughly thought about the problems it could face, and
> worked out (I believe) viable ways around them. For now I'd like to just
> discuss the basic idea. The idea is clearer with a university example:

Virgil,
In your current implementation, at Cambridge, are you witnessing any change
in behavior from note takers?
I envision a moral hazard, or a kind-of prisoner's dilemma, manifested in
lazy students waiting for others to post notes.
Then, eventually, note-takers catch on and stop posting...
How's that playing out in your prototype setting?

Al


from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

body:
2006/8/28, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com>:
> Don't worry about it -- articles as transwikied from Wikipedia to Wiktionary
> all the time.
>
> To successfuly transwiki an article, you copy and paste the article to
> Wiktionary, then copy the edit history from Wikipedia to the talk page of
> the new page you made at Wiktionary. Then you list the transwiki at the
> Transwiki Log on Wikipedia, then the fate of the Wikipedia version will be
> decided.
>
> Excuse me if I made it sound confusing -- feel free to ask for
> clarification.
>
> On 8/28/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
> >
> > I have a doubt. GFDL used by Wikipedia said that the content is free
> > but "providing that its authors are attributed".
> >
> > In this case the history is strictly connected to the content. I
> > could use content but I should have the related history.
> >
> > If I transfer an article from a project to another (i.e. from
> > Wikipedia to Wikitionary) how I could respect this rule? The history
> > is in the old article, I don't know a way to transfer also the
> > history. The presence of a link in the new article linked to the old
> > could be a good choice?
> >
> > If I transfer the content and I delete the article in the old
> > position, what I could do in this case?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Ilario

Or you can just add info at the bottom of the article about its source
and link to the source artilce's history.

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

body:
Brion wrote:
> James D. Forrester wrote:
>> Oh, goody, more things for you devs to keep in sync when a country
>> arbitrarilty decides to massively redefine the period over which Summer
>> Time is set.
>
> Ah see, but we can ignore it and leave that to the distro vendors. ;)

This is worth highlighting.  Anyone writing code which has to
handle summer time changes (or indeed anything timezone-related),
and who implements this by re-coding the algorithms and having a
private database of the various locale-specific rules, is making
a Big Mistake.  This is a hard problem that cries out to be solved
in one central place, and in fact it has been for years now.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
> In this variation, stubs/new articles/obscure articles that a few
> people read each year all get shown at the latest version, because
> nobody will have bothered to mark a particular revision with the flag;
> it's only on higher-traffic pages -- which, for the most part, would
> be the ones where vandalism is more prevalent -- that the use of the
> flag would come into play.

Vandalism may occur more often on higher-traffic pages, but then again, I doubt
it is anything near to the majority of defacement. I think "Bob si a fag0rt"
actually gets fairly widely distributed, and most of that crap would still go
live immediately under this proposal. Perhaps that is not a problem, if we are
mostly concerned with higher-traffic pages.

> Will this fragment Wikipedia? Will there be different rules for
> Japanese, French, Polish, Dutch.... and the rest?

It seems to me there already are. I don't believe fr.wp restricts anon page
creation, for instance.


body:
effe iets anders wrote:

>Ask the community to request the import-function. That function allows
>you to import an article from another wiki with keeping the history
>intact.
>
>Lodewijk
>
>
I've been using the page import feature with Wikiversity, and it makes
the transwiki process work out so successfully that I really wonder why
this isn't allowed with other projects?  Is this mainly a CPU bandwidth
issue, or is this still just an experimental feature?

There are a few bugs with the page import, but those few bugs can be
usually compensated for by compitent administrators.  And this also
preserves the page edit history including previous versions of the page,
which are quite often left out of a traditional manual transwiki.

I will have to agree with the parent poster that this is one aspect of
the GFDL that is often strongly ignored, and that citation of
authors/contributors needs to significantly improve over what is
currently being done on most Wikimedia projects.

I'll refrain from rehashing further points on this issue I've made in
the past, but it is a problem.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 8/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Garion96 wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think, but I might be wrong, that something coming from the foundation
>>>would lead to better results.
>>>
>>>
>>Please define the demarcation between what should be foundation policy,
>>and what policy should be in the hands of any given project.  Except for
>>absolutely essential policies, most of it should be in the hands of the
>>projects, and one needs to accept that any two projects can have
>>different policies, including ones relating to fair use.
>>
>>
>Unless and until the individual projects have an organized legal
>structure, face to face dealings really have no other choice but to be
>handled by the foundation.
>
>You asked about policies, which isn't really what I thought this
>thread was about, but I'd consider the freeness of the content to be
>one of the "absolutely essential policies".
>
Celebrity pictures are really only a subset of the broader issue of
images, and that has let to the even broader question of the division
between Board and project policy.  That being said your points make
perfect sense despite the fact that we may still have differences about
what "freeness" means.

>>>I just now and then get discouraged when I see the fair use images mess on
>>>en.wikipedia. I do like it that we can use fair use though but it seem to
>>>be used too easily. If some good responses come from this, it would diminish
>>>a bit the excessive fair use there.
>>>
>>>
>>So what's wrong with having fair use images, as long as they really are
>>fair use images.
>>
>>
>"Fair use images" which aren't free can't be reused by everyone.
>That's what's wrong with them.
>
Has anybody so much as investigated industry standards about the use of
album covers or the publicity shots of celebrities?  The entertainment
industry if infamous for protecting what it believes to be its
copyrights.  Have there been any cases regarding this kind of material?
What can we do to free this borderline material?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] OTRS for wikien

body:
On 27/08/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anyway its neat that G-mail can do all of that sorting from just plain email,
> and I certainly will try it out (again). :)

You can also send mail using your other email addresses (like Yahoo!)
from within Gmail, so you wouldn't have to change your email address.

~Mark Ryan


body:
effe iets anders wrote:

>Ask the community to request the import-function. That function allows
>you to import an article from another wiki with keeping the history
>intact.
>
The problem with that and transwikied articles in general is that it is
only a raw history.  One cannot go to the edits on the history list to
see what was changed.  This may be fine for fulfilling the technical
requirements of GFDL, but many of the people in the history list may
have contributed material that would be rejected on Wiktionary because
it is encyclopedic.

I view the Transwiki section of Wiktionary as a temporary hold, and
encourage rewriting an article from scratch, after which the Transwiki
article can simply be deleted.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures

body:
Garion96 wrote:

>As long as they are really fair use images, nothing wrong of course. Like
>the stereotypical examples of the flag of Iwo Jima, the Kim Phuc Phan Thi
>image, album covers and many others. I just seems to me that fair use is
>used too easily. Grab a picture from the web, upload it, add a fair use tag
>and you're done. I just prefer if more was free as in free content. Which is
>just my opinion btw.
>
We really do have a basic agreement here.  I have read and re-read the
fair use criteria many times, and have yet to discover that a
contributor's wishful thinking is a valid criterion.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Celebrity pictures


subject: [WikiEN-l] on new article creation

body:
On 8/28/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I try to assume good faith, but the long lack of information about this
> started to make me strongly suspicious that no experiment was intended,
> Jimbo wasn't interested in the actual impact on editing and just wanted
> to make an appearance of "doing something" so press releases could be
> issued to counter the bad PR of the Siegenthaler matter. While
> countering bad PR is certainly a good and worthy goal, I would rather
> not have random tempests-in-teapots spawn restrictions on Wikipedia
> editing with no plan or options for ever repealing them if they turn out
> to be counterproductive.

Well, Jimbo could be evil. Alternatively, he thought "here's an idea
for how to fix the problems we've been having, let's see how it goes".
6 months or whatever later, it seems to have been going fairly well,
and the only outcry is over the lack of formal experimentation, rather
than the result itself.

> Simply having the means to verify that this "experiment" _is_ in fact an
> experiment, and not just something that had been called an experiment to
> brush off any complaints that may have been raised over its
> implementation, goes a long way toward easing my concerns.

If you mean he always intended for this to be a permanent change with
no chance of being repealed, and only called it an "experiment" to
make it easier to swallow, I think you're being unnecessarily harsh
and cynical.

Steve


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] #time

references:
<ecrho0$vvl$1@sea.gmane.org> <ect2h9$t8g$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<7c2a12e20608271435l11ae2ae2l6e9f0cace2405466@mail.gmail.com>
	<ect46r$20t$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
>
> Depending on the month of the year, you may be +1 or +2 from the
> UTC...
> (it's the difference between CET & CEST)

Just professional curiosity, how would you define when daylight
saving time is enabled/disabled? There're different rules for
different countries. And some countries don't have it at all :-(

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
At 23:08 +0100 27/8/06, David Gerard wrote:
>On 27/08/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>http://news.com.com/Can+German+engineering+fix+Wikipedia/2100-1038_3-6108495.html
>>  A related source.... not the BBC.
>>  "We want to let anybody edit," Wales said, "but we don't want to show
>>  vandalized versions."
>
>
>Yeah. When did Jimbo first ask for this, early 2005? People pretty
>much concurred it was a fantastic idea (logged-in editors get the live
>version, anon readers get the last-non-vandal-edit version), but it
>was considered technically rather painful indeed in the then-current
>structure of Mediawiki.

I think that point Bill Thompson is make is not technical. It is that
a wiki is open, and by allowing two classes of user in the way you
describe, that it stops being open. The GFDL licence allows changes,
but this model allows changes, but only by the upper class of users.

Are we heading backwards to Nupedia?

>>Nupedia was a public peer-reviewed general
>>encyclopedia created by volunteer scholars...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia

>
>If it looks workable now, that's fantastic, and should help make it a
>better no. 17 website in the world *and* a good perpetual working
>draft.
>
>
>- d.

David, I disagree. If you close the system down and away from open
edits, then somebody will take a copy of the English Wikipedia, open
the system to edits, and issue a press release. What happens next?
History repeating?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [Wikitech-l] Teaser trailer

body:
> > On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 04:03:29AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > > Allow me, ladies, gentlemen and those in between, to shove a
> > > screenshot under your noses.
> > >
> > > http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/0/09/Drafts_%28mockup%29.png
> >
> > I'm getting a 404 for that URL, but I would like to check it out; Has the image maybe been
> > moved somewhere else?
>
> Still works for me.
> Regards,
>   - Dan Li

Yep, I can see it too now, but that's because it was deleted and then restored: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:Log/delete

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [WikiEN-l] WTF Have I Missed?

body:
At 10:01 +0930 28/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256;
>	protocol="application/pgp-signature";
>	boundary="------------enig9154D8908F4E4A5B0799924A"
>
>Gordon Joly wrote:
>>  At 13:45 -0400 27/8/06, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>>  On 8/27/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  [snip]
>>>>   Anonymous readers of an article will be displayed the most recent
>>>>   revision of that article which has been marked by a trusted user as
>>>   > being free of vandalism.
>>>  [snip]
>>>
>>>  Of course, 'Trusted user' is a complicated issue in and of itself.
>>>
>>
>>
>>  Web of trust is the basis of PGP, surely?
>>
>>
>>  http://www.rubin.ch/pgp/weboftrust.en.html
>>
>>  http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/F.AbdulRahman/docs/pgptrust.html
>>
>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
>>
>>  Good enough then?
>>
>
>Someone will shoot me for suggesting it, but there's an
>"attack-resistant" trust metric available (primarily used by Advogato).
>We have an article at
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_resistant_trust_metric>.
>
>--
>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
>

"Advogato performs certification to three different levels:
Apprentice, Journeyer, and Master."

So, this system is classfull rather than classless.

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///