body:
Happens in IE6 too.
Try making the logo smaller. It may be forcing the resize.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
George Herbert wrote:

> Random idea to throw into pot:
>
> We use AFD right now to cover a whole lot of different reasons by
> which one might want to delete an article.
>
> Possible improvement: Develop separate processes for each reason one
> might have for deleting an article.
>
> Some ideas along these lines:
>
> Unreferenced and thought to be unreliable - something like Prod, with
> a longer timeout, see if anyone will come along and provide suitable
> refs, else it goes.  Soft deletion (can be restored if someone comes
> along with good refs)
>
> Notability - still a sticking point.
>
> (and so on)

I've favored something like this for a long time, even when it was still
called Votes for deletion. I figured it would be the most sensible way
to keep the process organized when the date pages became unmanageable.
Categories could have been a helpful tool in this regard, but instead
people have used them to group the deletion nominations by the subject
matter of the article. We could do both, I suppose.

This approach has several benefits. It requires people seeking deletion
of an article to figure out and articulate why they want it deleted,
which is sometimes done poorly or not at all. It also would allow those
who want to salvage worthwhile material to focus their efforts on the
justifications they find most problematic. Experience would further help
us better shape the acceptable grounds for deletion.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
T P wrote:
> Nevertheless, my point was that whether something is "significant enough" to
> be included in Wikipedia may not be apparent for some time.

I've always been a proponent of the view that Wikipedia is not and never
should be a "finished" encyclopedia, but rather is a massive
freely-licensed resource from which one can _create_ a "finished"
encyclopedia. IMO our main product is database dumps, and our main
target user is entities like Answers.com who take those dumps and
republish them in some way. In an ideal world people who just wanted to
find information and weren't going to do any sort of editing would go to
them rather than coming to wikipedia.org, it'd save us bandwidth and
server resources.

This is why I'm often mentioning and hoping for some form of the
long-promised "article validation" feature in these contexts. Something
like that could make it much easier for users to cull out the material
they want while at the same time not hindering the continuing work we're
doing on the "unfinished" stuff back here at the sausage factory.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
On 2/28/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> To summarise: If anyone can delete, we can't justifiably stop anyone
> from undeleting.

If anyone can edit, we can't justifiably stop anyone from vandalizing
articles? ;-)

Remember, we still have admins. We can semi-protect the redirects,
block revert warriors, and so on, if it becomes a problem.

If the policy on notability is clear -- which it should be -- then
there shouldn't be much edit warring. If it isn't clear, then
obviously people will start to wiki-lawyer that article so-and-so
meets the policy. But that is going to happen one way or another.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] article get section count?

body:
Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Is there a function that already exists in the codebase that returns
> the # of sections in an article? I can't seem to find it.
> article::getSection takes a parameter for the ith section, but if you
> want to iterate over an article searching for a particular section,
> it's not clear how many sections there are. Similarily, it'd be great
> to have a function that return the section based on the section name,
> like getSectionByName or similar.
>
> Travis

Hello Travis,

The parser does not report it. As sections are based on header, you can
count the headers, this is done somewhere in the huge
Parser::braceSubstitution method.

  $m = preg_split(
     '/(^={1,6}.*?={1,6}\s*?$)/m',
     $text,
     -1,
     PREG_SPLIT_DELIM_CAPTURE
   );

Fromm there, count($m) gives you the number of heading and thus the
number of section. You will have to play with that code a bit :)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tim Noah addresses the notion of notability in
	another Slate article

body:
On 2/28/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia would do well to be less paranoid about external perception.

Yeah, a lot of our meta-comments like "Please expand this section"
seem to be getting stripped out, and tags are being pushed onto the
talk page, for fear of readers realising that our encyclopaedia is
still a work in progress.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
On 2/28/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Vandalism is, by definition, done in bad faith. We can justify
> stopping bad faith acts. Reverting a soft deletion by someone with no
> more authority than yourself is not necessarily a bad faith act.

Not necessarily, indeed -- in the cases where it is not, debate ensues
and consensus builds. Just like any other edit.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
2007/2/28, sigmaman <sigmaman at gmail.com>:
>
> Just curious, what makes the GFDL different from CC's Sharealike license,
> in
> general terms? Is the GDFL more restrictive? If you could point me to some
> sort of resource, I'd be happy to research myself, but I haven't been able
> to locate a lof about the GFDL, except for some elements relating to
> printing manuals, and, of course, Wikipedia.
>

If you copy something under CC-SA, you need to include a statement that it
is under that license. If you copy something under the GFDL you need to
include the full text of the license.

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


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 28/02/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> Aside from the opposing camps, isn't there also some inherent mismatch
> between universal notability and context-specific notability?
[...]
> So wouldn't every new subject-specific guideline be inevitably seen by
> one-size-fits-all types as another lowering of the standard, a breach
> through which ten thousand non-notable items will flow?

You've got it in one. The history of Wikipedia's notability guidelines
is that some people were appalled that articles were allowed to exist
that they couldn't see a need for, so they claimed the subjects were
"not notable." When this was questioned by others, they started coming
up with arbitrary numerical cutoff points. Since these didn't follow
in any obvious way from NPOV, NOR or verifiability, they remain a
source of endless controversy.

I suggest: throw out notability and stick to verifiability. (And not a
universal WP:RS, which clearly suffers the same problem in practice.)

(If anyone here does think notability follows from NPOV, NOR and
verifiability, please do explain precisely how it does, step by step.
Else there's no reason not to throw it out.)

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Presentation to readers

body:
On 27/02/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is, of course, an even better idea. The only quibble I have is that I
> dislike the use of "the Wikipedia community," which seems to me to go too
> far in the other direction in establishing a split between reader and
> editor.
>
> Perhaps "It has come to our attention that this article may not be as good
> as we'd like it to be. [click here] to see more specific details..." and so
> on.

Yeah, something like that would work well.. I'm trying to get across a
tone not of "This article is bad, beware", but rather "Someone's
flagged an issue with this article, we're working on it".

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Presentation to readers

body:
On 28/02/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, something like that would work well.. I'm trying to get across a
> tone not of "This article is bad, beware", but rather "Someone's
> flagged an issue with this article, we're working on it".

I think the present pile of tags send the second message, and sending
the first is often appropriate ;-)

- d.


from_name: Jake Nelson

body:
On 2/28/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not
> exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we
> keep it, no need to re-debate it.  They should be speedy-keep
> guidelines.

Well said... it might be good to add a {{propose}}d [[WP:Criteria for
speedy retention]] that is to [[WP:Speedy keep]] as [[WP:CSD]] is to
[[WP:Speedy deletions]].

Something like:
"
Articles to be "speedy kept" include:
#[[Wikipedia:Featured articles]]
#Articles which have had an [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion]]
discussion closed as "keep" within the last three months
#Articles which are considered "notable", under standards for notability

Note that absence of any or all of these criteria do not constitute
grounds for deletion.
"

Plus the stuff already in the "applicability" section of [[WP:SK]].


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Possible improvement: Develop separate processes for each reason one
> might have for deleting an article.

We had that a couple years ago... copyright issues, unverified/hoax,
(I forget what all the groups were), were separated into separate VFD
subpages. Did that go away at some point?

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


body:
On 28/02/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > I suggest: throw out notability and stick to verifiability. (And not a
> > universal WP:RS, which clearly suffers the same problem in practice.)

> We've had this discussion before, actually. Things like traffic
> violatim, ons, locations of stop signs, and owners of real estate are
> verifiable, because they're (usually) part of the public record. But
> very few people would argue that those should be part of WP; I would say
> that it goes against our intuition of what is a summary of human
> knowledge, vs the entirety, which we might be more inclined to call a
> "library".

Hm, true. But our present notability guidelines suffer from (a) their
original purpose (as an excuse) (b) arbitrary numerical cutoffs.
There's something important being missed: what precisely are we
talking about?

- d.


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Looks "Fat" in IE 6/7!! HELP

body:
Simetrical escribi?:
>> Try making the logo smaller. It may be forcing the resize.
>
> Not possible due to the way the layout is written.
*Shouldn't be* doing that, but with IE you never know.


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/28/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> (If anyone here does think notability follows from NPOV, NOR and
> verifiability, please do explain precisely how it does, step by step.
> Else there's no reason not to throw it out.)
>

Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material
about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a
NPOV manner without resorting to original research.

Yes to an extent it is a short cut. But it is less effort to declare
every town in the US inherently notable rather than dig through every
case.

We decide if a poplar music band has two albums published by a
mainstream label there is no need to investigate further. If not we
have to consider the particular case.

An effect of this is that standards are only going to turn up when
needed. We don't have any for chemicals at the moment because we don't
have issues with people writing unverifiable articles about chemicals
on any real scale and NPOV should not be too much of an issue (OK not
quite true but not been an issue yet).

--
geni


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 2/28/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> IE is rendering your page in quirks mode for some reason.  This is
> almost certainly the cause of the problem.

And checking it with the XHTML validator
<http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fkaoshi.wobuxihuan.org%2F>,
I see the reason: you've added a BOM to some file, probably
LocalSettings.php but possibly any PHP file you've edited.  This is
likely the result of using a sucky editor like Notepad.  Look at the
beginning of LocalSettings.php and other files you've edited with a
hex editor (Google for a selection); you should see three gibberish
bytes at the beginning of one or more of them, 	EF BB BF.  Delete
those and save and things should clear up.


from_name: James Forrester

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 28/02/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with
> > > the English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to
> > > rely on the mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated
> > > from the things that go on in WP on a daily basis.
> >
> > I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
>
> Well, a small committee would surely be more effective than total anarchy -
> which is sort of what we have now. Criticisms of group leadership would be
> applicable if we asked the admins to lead - that's simply ridiculous - but a
> small committee, perhaps akin to the arbcom, would be better, IMO. Every CEO
> needs a COO, CTO, etc. after all.

I look forward to you convincing the community to accept a Privy
Council, then. :-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester at wikimedia.org | james at jdforrester.org | jdforrester at gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]


body:
On 28/02/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> > geni wrote:

> > > Notability means there is likely to be enough verifiable material
> > > about a subject from enough different sources to write about it in a
> > > NPOV manner without resorting to original research.

> > No it doesn't.  At least that's not what's being pushed, and it's
> > CERTAINLY not what's occurring in practice.

> It is the only way that notability guidelines SHOULD work, however.
> Notability guidelines, IMO, should be guidelines for inclusion, not
> exclusion; in other words, if it passes this test, then of course we
> keep it, no need to re-debate it.  They should be speedy-keep
> guidelines.
> They cannot be authoritative, and thus an article's failure to meet
> their standards should simply mean that more discussion is required.

I suggest you read AFD for a bit, then. This is all a nice idea, but
is the precise opposite of how they are used in practice and the use
they were in fact created on Wikipedia for.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] article get section count?

body:
On 2/28/07, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually both headings and blocks (the parts of sections between the
> headings) are also regexed in a couple of places in Parser.php/formatHeadings
>
> I'm not sure if it should be centralized into a function.

Why not supersede getSection and replaceSection with getSections and
replaceSections functions that return/accept arrays of section number
=> array(section title, section level, section text) or something
(could just be section number => text-including-section
title/level/text)?  That's more flexible, and in many cases it will be
a good deal faster as well (if you want to deal with multiple sections
on the page).


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 17:28:21 +1100, "Keith Old" <keithold at gmail.com>
wrote:

>*Wow. That's just shameful. A run of the mill columnist intimidated you into
>keeping his article by bitching in a public forum. If that's all it takes,
>Wiki has a long way to go before it can be considered at all legitimate.*

Painfully accurate.

Also, anyone who agitates for their own article should automatically
be deleted :-)

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


body:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:50:19 +1100, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>Well, yes. We have to do something. Our current approach to notability
>is pretty much what you would get if you asked a committee to come up
>with 5 suggestions and chose the worst one.

I strongly disagree.  The primary notability criterion is mainly the
work of Uncle G, and is in my view an excellent and well-reasoned
test.

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


body:
On Tue, 27 Feb 2007 22:29:44 -0800, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I think that Tim Noah misunderstands what's going on there.  A lot of
>our notability guidelines appear to have been created out of a fear of
>not looking legitimate and acceptable - "How can we be accepted as a
>serious encyclopedia when we have articles about <xxx>?"

Up to a point.  A lot of subject-specific guidelines were written by
very small groups of dedicated fans.  The primary notability criterion
- being the subject of multiple non-trivial references in reliable
secondary sources - is a pretty good starting point if you want to
build a reference that is verifiable, neutral and neither a directory
nor a publisher of first instance.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tim Noah addresses the notion of notability
	in	another Slate article

body:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 10:44:00 -0500, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>There is a strong group who would prefer a one-size-fits-all
>"notability" guideline with lots of exceptions, instead of clear,
>subject-specific ones.

No, there is a group who favour a single objective notability
guidelines with subject-specific definitions of what constitutes a
reliable source.  Having subject specific notability guidelines which
aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good
idea.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/28/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I'm trying to say is an encyclopedia article should not be written like
> a magazine article. A lot of what could be included to "relate something to
> people's lives" is, frankly, trivia.

Yeah that "relate something to people's lives" could mean "include
mindless trivia", or it could mean "express something in layman's
terms" or it could mean "explain the broader context"...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/27/07, T P <t0m0p0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> and video games come to mind.  Do we need an article on Michael Richards'
> racist tirade?

Sure. I, for one, am not ashamed of Wikipedia's extensive depth on
current events. I would also have no qualms about deleting such an
article 5 years from now.

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia timesearch

body:
Very useful, too had the event list for a year can get too unwieldy to ready
easily after typing in a year

On 2/28/07, Puppy <puppy at killerchihuahua.com> wrote:
>
> Nifty! Thanks for sharing.
>
> Angela wrote:
> > http://www.timesearch.info/wikipedia
> >
> > HistoryWorld have just launched an interactive timeline of world
> > history with each event linking to the appropriate article in
> > Wikipedia.
> >
> > It was suggested to me that many Wikipedians would find it useful, so
> > I'm passing it on in case you do. :)
> >
> > Angela
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] RTL-lang messages in a multilingual wiki

body:
On 28/02/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/27/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Please compare
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&uselang=he&type=signup
> > to
> > http://he.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin&uselang=he&type=signup
> >
> > On Commons, the messages appear RTL text direction which is correct,
> > but on the left, which I imagine is as unnatural as right-aligning for
> > English.
>
> Monobook appears to use the content language to decide whether to make
> the site as a whole right-to-left.  I'm not sure if this is correct
> behavior.  Certainly the content direction should depend on the
> content language, but I would think the overall page (and all
> interface messages) should depend on the interface language.  Can
> anyone think of why the whole page should be the same direction as the
> content language and not the interface language?

..... shall I open a bug report, then? any other dev comments about this?

thanks,
Brianna


body:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:34:50 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Hm, true. But our present notability guidelines suffer from (a) their
>original purpose (as an excuse) (b) arbitrary numerical cutoffs.
>There's something important being missed: what precisely are we
>talking about?

Not, as far as I can tell, the primary notability criterion, which is
what some of us believe should supplant all the tortuous
subject-specific guidelines.

  "A topic is notable if it has been the subject of at least one
   substantial or multiple, non-trivial published works from sources
   that are reliable and independent of the subject and of each other.

All we need to do now is define what constitutes a reliable source for
different content areas.  That genuinely will be context-specific,
whereas the existence of sources from which to write a verifiable -
and verifiably neutral - article which is not simply a directory entry
is pretty much a universal requirement if we aim to stick to the
policies of neutrality, verifiability, not publishing original
thought,  and being an encyclopaedia rather than a directory.

The subject-specific guidelines often boil down to "this is an area
where impassioned fans of the subject think Wikipedia should be a
directory, and where it is therefore acceptable to draw the entire
content of the article from primary sources".

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moderation on this mailing list

body:
On 2/23/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The kind of piling on that I've seen in this thread against Parker is an
> obscenity that makes his faults mild by comparison.  His ways of
> expressing himself leave much to be desired, but the reaction of some
> admins, the accusations of lying, the ridicule, the belittling, the
> lynch-mob mentality go far beyond anything that he could single-handedly
> do are absolutely sickening.

For what it's worth, a person doesn't actually have to *do* anything
for them to be a nuisance on a mailing list. If someone's continued
presence is an ongoing distraction and interruption, with little in
return, eventually you have to admit that we're better off without
them.

Steve


references:
<mailman.48635.1172656406.11809.wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
	<74EB3510-400F-44B2-8B89-138D5B16A195@prwatch.org>
	<45E5A340.9010407@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<ddrbu257gehhi01m47k666pave2ql5ink5@4ax.com>
	<1968.69.21.252.114.1172696808.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007 16:06:48 -0500 (EST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>> Having subject specific notability guidelines which
>> aim to act as exceptions to canonical policy was never a terribly good
>> idea.

>Not that they ever did that.  Ever.

A school is notable if it is a school.  Oh, right.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] What makes a good article?

body:
On 2/28/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> We need to work on readability, especially in the first sections of articles.

Definitely. The first section of every article ought to summarise the
whole topic for a lay person. The rest of the article can descend into
geekdom.

That said, I frequently have difficult with maths-ish articles. I
don't know whether to call it a problem, but there often seems to be
more maths than is justified. Look at the mathematical derivations on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poker_probability for example. But it
would be harsh to criticise this: the mathematications who wrote that
have done a lot of good work for Wikipedia, and obviously they find
the derivations and proofs very interesting.

Maybe we need a little hideable "Warning: This section contains
extreme, possibly offensive use of mathematical formulae." template.
:)

Steve


from_name: Liang Chen

body:
HI,
   I don't know why my Mediawiki 1.9.3 looks "fat" in IE 6/7, but in
Firefox is just all right.
  All the tables separated. Attached picture, please help.

Thanks!

--
                     ---BiGreat---
               www.Liang-Chen.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
On 28/02/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> "I haven't heard about it" or "I don't like it" are bad arguments and have
> nothing to do with notability.
> Notability is not hard and fast, but not as flimsy as you make it out to be.

In AFD usage it appears to be.

> We have have plenty of notability criteria around and someone should be able
> to show why an article doesn't meet any of those before they have any chance
> of successfully deleting or nominating something.

There is no qualification for nominating something.

And I thought someone just claimed notability was reasons for
instant-keep, not reasons to delete.

- d.


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/26/07 10:14 PM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > At least we can reduce the possible points of failure,
> > without resorting to Jimbo.
>
> As far as the overall culture of the Wikipedia Community is concerned,
> nothing is going to change until a recognition that it needs to change -
> and
> a mandate to fix it - comes from the top. Without that it is all merely
> theory to be debated.
>
> Marc Riddell

Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with the
English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the
mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the things
that go on in WP on a daily basis.

Johnleemk


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

body:
Hoi,
According to what Erik wrote the other day, the pillars are, at this
moment, not part of a "must have" doctrine for Wikipedia projects. Given
that the WMF it self is not on firm grounds, how can you expect that the
language committee is more firm. Having said that, you will fully
misunderstand B?rto's position. Your verbiage  is just to cover that you
do not want to address what is in front of you.

Your whole argument is yet another political inspired tirade why things
are as you see them. Again, political arguments do not wash.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Liviu Andronic schreef:
> On 2/18/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
>
>> Unless you do THIS, it's no point for the both of you to come back here
>> with
>> this issue.
>>
>> Wait a second, B?rto.
>>
>
> What you tell me is that you, as a Language
> Committee<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Langcom>member and on its
> behalf, waive the Committee's competence in initiating a
> solution to a problem concerning one of the Wikimedia Foundation fundamental
> principles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars>, Neutral
> Point of View <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view>?
> Basically, what you want is that a certain wikipedian X sensitise an entire
> admin structure (ro.wiki ) so that they ask you (the LC) to allow them to
> regulate themselves in a way that the LC might deem correct. And all this
> over a domain that falls directly under the competence of the Board of
> Trustees - Wikipedia's pillar, Neutral Point of View. That's an interesting
> stance.
>
> Now, let us go back to context <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context>.
>
> The circumstances surrounding the Moldovan
> Wikipedia<http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B0%D3%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%87%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8D>are
> more interesting than they look like: again,
> mo.wiki does *not* contain a distinct linguistic entity (no matter what ISO
> says). Instead it has content that represents a transliteration of the
> Romanian <http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagina_principal%C4%83> linguistic
> entity.
>
> At this point, by the mere hosting of *this content* on *this domain* the
> Wikimedia Foundation makes a political statement, and specifically (the
> following is a quotation): "the Moldovian people were somehow a distinctly
> different people from Romanians before WWII and were liberated from Romania
> by the USSR."
>
> The Foundation also states that Moldovan is a linguistic entity distinct
> from the Romanian linguistic entity. This is equivalent to stating that
> Moldovans and Romanians represent two distinct nations. In this specific
> case, the confusion between language and nationality is inevitable: all this
> Moldovan language/linguistic entity stuff is pure politics taken directly
> from the Central
> Committee's<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Committee_of_the_CPSU>office.
> But that's nothing.
>
> By hosting mo.wiki, the Wikimedia Foundation keeps perfectly in line with
> the ideology promoted by the Soviet authorities of the
> MASSR<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavian_Autonomous_Soviet_Socialist_Republic>beginning
> with 1924. At that moment a
> script <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_alphabet> - not even a
> language as such - was invented and a new name was conferred to the Romanian
> language. The Foundation also holds for linguistic reality (if it might be
> called so and as opposed to a political reality) what happened in 1938 in
> MASSR and beginning with 1944 in
> MSSR<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavian_SSR>,
> when - at the latter date - all of a sudden the entire population of the
> re-annexed Bessarabia started to speak Moldovan (please consider
> this<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Moldovan_language#Beginnings_of_the_Moldovan_language>article).
> But that's history.
>
> More interesting is the position of the Wikimedia Foundation towards
> nowadays politics. Actually, the Foundation keeps perfectly in line with the
> ideology promoted by the Party of
> Communists<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Communists_of_the_Republic_of_Moldova>governing
> Moldova and the Transnistrian
> authorities <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Transnistria>, and -
> specifically - with their efforts to affirm and prove the existence of
> a Moldovan
> language <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language> and of a Moldovan
> nation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovenism> (no linguistic entity
> notion exists at that level). However, the funniest thing about all this is
> the Moldovan Wiktionary <http://mo.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page>: in case
> the project un-freezes, the Foundation will de facto support the linguist
> and politician Vasile Stati <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasile_Stati> in
> his efforts to create/develop a Moldovan-Romanian
> dictionary<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan-Romanian_dictionary>.
> The circumstances are as follows: both dictionaries - Wikimedia's and
> Stati's - have appeared after a ten-fifteen years of vacuum in the field -
> Moldovan--any-other-language dictionaries. And this is to stress one point:
> it is absurd to translate Moldovan; you can do this only with the help of a
> Romanian--any-other-language dictionary.
>
> If this is what the Wikimedia Foundation wants to promote.. Well, this is a
> choice of the Board. However, know that this is exactly what the Foundation
> is promoting at the moment.
>
> If this clear case of biased Point Of View of an entire Wikipedia is not
> enough an incentive for the LC/WMF to do something about the situation, I
> don't know what else could be. And here I am not talking about the feelings
> of the Romanians or Moldovans, nor about the position of the Moldovan
> Community, nor about the feelings of the Moldovan community, nor about _my_
> reasons for wanting a change. I am talking about something supposed to be
> sacred for the Foundation: Neutral Point of
> View<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view>.
>
>
> At this moment - even though frozen - the Board of Trustees tolerates a
> Wikipedia that is openly against one of its fundamental pillars. You "want
> to deliver a service [..] in all possible linguistic entities". I am most
> definitely for this. Still, taking into consideration the context, you can
> readily stop promoting a Neutral Point of View on the Moldovan Wikipedia. If
> the Board, now through its Language Committee, decides to continue to ignore
> the existence of a politically biased Wikipedia, again, it's a choice. But
> then, the NPOV principle is of no use around there.
>
> [On a side note: considering a Romanian linguistic entity with three
> different writing systems may be my point of view, but it has one advantage:
> it is apolitical. And it considers the situation from a
> linguistic/historical perspective, and not a political one].
>
>
> ....
> Now I'll pass to petty arguments that don't deserve much of your or my
> attention, but just for their sake..
>
>
>> tired of bogus voting made by calling up on meta
>> everyone's cousins, sisters and pet dogs.
>>
> For the pet dogs I most definitely agree. But then, why didn't you, on meta,
> impose conditions for voting (like 400 edits somewhere)? I recall that it
> was on meta simply because you asked for legitimacy.
>
>
>> It's all people that NEVER ever
>> edited a single line on a wiki and simply enjoy wasting our time.
>>
> Have you personally verified the "never" part? Even the lines that I've
> never contributed? And the books that Roberth has not contributed? And many
> other's non-existent contributions? Again, what makes you think that I
> _enjoy_ doing all this?
>
>
>> and never even cared to tell the
>> Romanians about your will to turn their edition upside down, right??????
>>
> Wrong. On two points: this ain't the first time this is discussed and I do
> not want to turn the Romanian Wikipedia upside down.
>
> First of all, I am not suggesting anything radically new. This ain't the
> first time this alternative is proposed. It was under discussion on this
> list back in 2005 (please consider the Re: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan
> Wikipedia<http://www.nabble.com/Re%253A-Moldovan-Wikipedia-tf1266140.html>thread
> and especially the
> contribution<http://www.nabble.com/Re%253A-Moldovan-Wikipedia-tf1266140.html#a3362441>of
> Matt Brown). Ronline - on behalf of the Romanian Wikipedia - wasn't
> too
> enthusiastic about this (consider the above thread for his arguments). It
> would be up to the LC to decide whether the WMF wants a politically biased
> Wikipedia or a compromise solution (that, by definition, should not please
> entirely each and every one).
>
> Secondly, I do not want to turn the Romanian Wikipedia upside down. I want
> the issue around the Moldovan Wikipedia to be solved. You refuse deletion. I
> suggested, better said repeated an alternative solution. I see not one
> reason why I should have contacted the Romanian structure before repeating
> to the LC an already existing alternative solution proposal.
>
>
>> 1) You don't have time to ask ISO why there's a MO code
>>
> I don't. You are not the only one having important issues to attend to in
> real life. Mine are getting less time than they deserve. And I have no
> intent what-so-ever to get into a parallel most-of-the-time fruitless debate
> over the same tiring issue. If ISO cares about the position of Moldovans and
> Romanians - natives - on this issue, they can simply browse the wikipedia-l
> archives.
>
>
>> "good patriots" in your perception
>>
> Please explain me what does this mean in my perception, and maybe I'll get
> the point.
>
>
>> 2) You do not have the time to ask the Romanians whether they want you in
>>
> or not,
> It's useless to ask the Romanian structure anything on this matter unless
> there is a decision from the Board. They'd be an infinite times more
> reticent than you are. And such a change is made at a Board of Trustees
> level, not at an Admin structure one.
>
>
>> 3) You gracefully DO have the time to flood this list in order to impose
>> your will over the Romanian community.
>>
> Romanian admins have not stepped down into this current discussion. I am not
> imposing anything over them. You may call this flooding. I would call this
> having a *discussion*, a normal and *somewhat constructive* discussion.
>
>
>> your open arrogance about it.
>>
> Where do you find "aggressively assertive" my _reasoning_ and arguments?
>
>
>> YOU have all those online forms and international campaigns.
>>
> I don't give a damn about them. I care that Wikipedia represent correctly my
> country.
>
>
>> let us know how many Romanian F* OFFs you get as an answer.
>>
> Is this an official statement issued on behalf of the Language Committee?
>
>
>> I am serious and deadly upset, take my word on it.
>>
> Now, B?rto. I ain't sure who should be upset. You over my presenting the
> LC/Board with an alternative solution to a problem. Me over your
> hardly-constructive attitude and arrogance (this ain't no attack; simply
> take a look at the number of aggressive assertions - Oxford American
> dictionary - you have made during this last discussion). Or the Moldovan and
> Romanian communities over the open rigidity from the part of the Board and
> over a decent period on an issue concerning Wikipedia's principles.
>
> And to finish, a citation: "Support - Mainly on the basis that Wikimedia
> projects should always have NPOV standards, and merely having a language
> that by itself is expressing a POV should not be allowed to exist. I get the
> arguments about the Russian occupation of Romania, together with the Russian
> occupation of East Prussia (still under Russian control). It surprises me
> that anybody takes seriously political disinformation arguments from a
> government that no longer exists. Keeping this project expresses support for
> a clear POV for what scholarly research suggests is merely a variant of an
> established language. My support for this is similar to opposition of the
> pt-br.wikipedia --Roberth 18:16, 17 July 2006 (UTC)."
>
> Regards,
> Liviu
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On 2/28/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/28/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Weird, WP:OR (No original research) and WP:V (Verifiability) have been
> > merged into WP:ATT (Attribution). When exactly did this happen? I'm
> > surprised there wasn't any discussion on this list.
> >
> Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
> simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
> to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
> get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
> new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
> material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
> simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>
> Sarah

This is good news; and it's nice to see something in there about obsolete
and deprecated sources, finally.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Yonatan Horan

subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
This reminds me of an idea I had that might not be feasible. Make a
commons-like project for fair use pictures that all wikipedias can use and
disable local uploads at all wikipedias. That way, only absolutely must fair
use pictures will be accepted (logos, stamps, pictures of historical events
that are unreplaceable, etc.) and there won't be fair use pictures of living
people and of other things for which fair use isn't a must. That way you
won't have all the inconsistencies with, for example, Spanish Wikipedia
users asking why en can use fair use pictures of, say, music albums while
they can't because they have local uploading disabled and only upload to
commons. This way you'd also get people who are knowledgeable in the area of
fair use and policies regarding fair use on wikipedia taking care of
pictures rather than different people having different views on different
projects. This way you'd also have one central fair use policy that is
consistent amongst all the projects which will take care of the whining as I
mentioned above and will also make sure that fair use that isn't really a
must isn't in use on other projects (from my personal experience, this is
what is going on on the Hebrew Wikipedia which currently has, IMHO, the most
lax fair use policies out of any other project). Of course the problem is
that you'd have to find people willing to monitor such a project, which you
might not find as readily available as people for a project such as commons
that deals with free content and there's also the hassle of starting up a
new project (which some may deem unnecessary).

-Yonatan

On 2/28/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> teun spaans wrote:
> > I still havent read any good argument for allowing fair use, except that
> the
> > english wiki is using it en masse. Which sounds like a very strange
> > argument, it is like saying: it is forbidden to spit, but as everyone
> spits,
> > we allow it. If everyone would be indulging in PAs on the english wiki,
> > would we allow them too
> I fail to see what the problem is with very narrow categories of image
> types that may not be strictly available under a FLOSS license.  I would
> count among those types of images that are reasonable applications of
> fair use would include:
>
> * Official government seals and symbols, including flags
> * Official government documents such as passports, stamps, currency,
> banknotes, etc.
> * Corporate Logos and trademarks, where their usage is directly tied to
> content specifically about that organization
>
> All of these sorts of images are routinely used by major publishers
> under fair-use provisions, where formal permission is not usually
> granted by the various corporations and government entities.  All of
> these sorts of images, however, have been banned on Commons.  I'm not
> here to change commons policies, but these sorts of images can make or
> break some Wikibooks or Wikipedia articles, and I have seen all of these
> used in commercial encyclopedias as well.  Imagine what a book about
> stamps would be like if you couldn't show the actual stamp.
>
> It should be noted that all of these kind of images do fall under some
> sort of perpetual protections where copyright as it is usually defined
> doesn't normally apply.  And unless the company goes bankrupt or the
> government of the country whose symbols you are showing ceases to exist
> due to warfare or cataclismic disaster, they will never ever be free in
> the FLOSS sense of the term.  Perhaps a *very* enlightened group might
> grant logos under the GFDL or something similar, but look even to the
> WMF to see how likely that would be.  The only "free" logo I know of is
> the GNU Gnu of the FSF and I'm not even sure about that.
>
> Another very legitimate application of fair use is to quote text
> verbatium, provided you distinguish it somehow (such as put it in block
> quote area or use quotation marks) and cite the source as a
> bibliographic reference.  This is indeed fair use rationale in nearly
> every case where it is used, and one of the reasons explicitly why the
> fair-use doctrine was codified into the United States Code.  There are
> extreme cases of textual quotation that does go over the top as well,
> but generally it is obvious enough when that happens that most people
> can come to a concensus and say "let's chop this quote down" or rework
> the lengthy quotation.
>
> The problem is that happens with photographs and rendered graphical
> images is that the rationale for fair use is very, very weak, and
> unfortunately the current internet user culture is such that most people
> think that once you have "obtained" an image, that you own it and have
> unlimited reproduction privileges on it.  We all know this (at least on
> this list) to be a completely incorrect viewpoint, but the academic
> standards for including images just havn't been pushed into our heads to
> the same degree that similar duplication of textual material would have,
> even if we have a strong respect of copyright as a general philosophy.
> Modern textbooks, magazines, and newspapers hardly help either when it
> seems as though large portions of the content are displayed in photo,
> charts, and other graphical images.  Some children's textbooks in
> America have so many photos that you start to wonder where the actual
> content of the textbook itself might be found.  It is no wonder that a
> Wikipedian upon looking at a well developed article that would otherwise
> be a feature article candidate looks empty and missing something when
> there are no images to be used with the text.  Most of the project users
> have grown up with the multi-media barrage in daily life and simply
> expect it to be there.
>
> I support severe limitation on the use of fair-use material within
> Wikimedia projects, but I think that a complete and total ban is simply
> too much.  There are legitimate applications of fair use, and the
> question that really confronts us is to define just how tight we want to
> draw that line.  Unfortunately, with the diversity of people
> participating in these projects (especially Wikipedia), it seems very
> unlikely that you are going to come to a general agreement about where
> that line ought to be drawn even by those who might want to put some
> strong limitations on fair use content.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
"I haven't heard about it" or "I don't like it" are bad arguments and have
nothing to do with notability.
Notability is not hard and fast, but not as flimsy as you make it out to be.
We have have plenty of notability criteria around and someone should be able
to show why an article doesn't meet any of those before they have any chance
of successfully deleting or nominating something.

Mgm

On 2/28/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've always been particularly uncomfortable with using "notability" as
> a justification for deletion. It's such a flimsy, changeable notion:
> an editor declares an article "non-notable" if they have either not
> heard of it, or have little interested in the subject. When you take a
> Wikipedia with largely English-speaking editors based in the US and
> Europe, notability ends up skewing our coverage. For example, a
> relatively obscure cable network show airing in the US will be
> "notable" to his group of people, but wouldn't be notable to a group
> of Chinese-speaking editors from the PRC. It doesn't really seem to
> matter if the article is of potential interest to a particular culture
> or that it will be of interest to future readers. It also doesn't seem
> to matter that disk space is cheap and that it would be better to side
> with caution and keep the article rather than dump it.
>
> Since Wikipedia is a global, multilingual project we should set our
> threshold for notability low. A subject that generally isn't notable
> to editors in our main demographics should still get an article. I'm
> not sure how we should prevent notability having too much influence in
> the future.
>
> Your solution makes for a good compromise (and perhaps makes
> "notability" workable). It honours the notion enough to remove article
> status from some subjects which may not deserve an article, but not
> enough to get rid of articles which are of potential interest to some.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On 2/28/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  The aim was
> to get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
> new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
> material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
> simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>
> Sarah

Hmm. The Latin root of verify means "true"; amazing the policy read
"verifiable, not true".  Like in the English language, just what the hell
did that ever mean, anyway?


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
On 2/28/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> This reminds me of an idea I had that might not be feasible. Make a
> commons-like project for fair use pictures that all wikipedias can use and
> disable local uploads at all wikipedias. That way, only absolutely must fair
> use pictures will be accepted (logos, stamps, pictures of historical events
> that are unreplaceable, etc.) and there won't be fair use pictures of living
> people and of other things for which fair use isn't a must. That way you
> won't have all the inconsistencies with, for example, Spanish Wikipedia
> users asking why en can use fair use pictures of, say, music albums while
> they can't because they have local uploading disabled and only upload to
> commons. This way you'd also get people who are knowledgeable in the area of
> fair use and policies regarding fair use on wikipedia taking care of
> pictures rather than different people having different views on different
> projects. This way you'd also have one central fair use policy that is
> consistent amongst all the projects which will take care of the whining as I
> mentioned above and will also make sure that fair use that isn't really a
> must isn't in use on other projects (from my personal experience, this is
> what is going on on the Hebrew Wikipedia which currently has, IMHO, the most
> lax fair use policies out of any other project). Of course the problem is
> that you'd have to find people willing to monitor such a project, which you
> might not find as readily available as people for a project such as commons
> that deals with free content and there's also the hassle of starting up a
> new project (which some may deem unnecessary).
>
> -Yonatan
>
The much bigger problem is getting the key members of the various
projects to agree on a standard definition of what is and what isn't
acceptable.  I don't see that happening any time soon, unless some
decision is made at the board level forcing the various projects to
adopt a certain standard.

IIRC, the board was opposed to making such a decision the last time it
was polled on such an idea.  But I could be mistaken there.

An argument against even having a standard definition is that the
different language encyclopedias have very different communities of
users when it comes to what is legal and what isn't legal for them to
distribute without permission (in some cases there is an argument that
certain users wouldn't even be able to legally *contribute* to certain
articles).  Once you've entered the realm of using unlicensed images
created in the last century or so you've taken the position that it's
OK to create an encyclopedia which some portion of your user-base
cannot legally distribute (and possibly contribute to).  This is
acceptable, I think, but it relies on balancing the benefits and
drawbacks., and these benefits and drawbacks vary from community to
community.  The English Wikipedia for example has a much greater
proportion of users who are able to use certain images than the French
Wikipedia, for example.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


from_name: Slim Virgin

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On 2/28/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Weird, WP:OR (No original research) and WP:V (Verifiability) have been
> merged into WP:ATT (Attribution). When exactly did this happen? I'm
> surprised there wasn't any discussion on this list.
>
Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.

Sarah


body:
HI,
   Here is the picture: http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Image:IE_Fat.JPG

I don't change the orignal IE related CSS.

Thanks!!

On 2/28/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Liang Chen wrote:
> > HI,
> >   I don't know why my Mediawiki 1.9.3 looks "fat" in IE 6/7, but in
> > Firefox is just all right.
> >  All the tables separated. Attached picture, please help.
>
> Mailman removed the image. Post in the web and send the link instead.
>
> Can you provide the site page? Have you removed any IE related CSS files?
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
                     ---BiGreat---
               www.Liang-Chen.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 2/28/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> on 2/28/07 8:39 AM, John Lee at johnleemk at gmail.com wrote:
>
> > Well, kind of the idea of creating a new class of users involved with
> the
> > English WP was to create a new "top" so we wouldn't need to rely on the
> > mandate coming from Jimbo who, I think, is a bit isolated from the
> things
> > that go on in WP on a daily basis.
>
> John,
>
> I just don't see how a group can lead - without a group leader.
>
> Marc

Well, a small committee would surely be more effective than total anarchy -
which is sort of what we have now. Criticisms of group leadership would be
applicable if we asked the admins to lead - that's simply ridiculous - but a
small committee, perhaps akin to the arbcom, would be better, IMO. Every CEO
needs a COO, CTO, etc. after all.

Johnleemk


body:
HI,
   The normal look in Firefox:
http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Image:IE_Normal.JPG

Thanks

On 2/28/07, Liang Chen <bigreat at gmail.com> wrote:
> HI,
>    Here is the picture: http://kaoshi.wobuxihuan.org/Image:IE_Fat.JPG
>
> I don't change the orignal IE related CSS.
>
> Thanks!!
>
> On 2/28/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Liang Chen wrote:
> > > HI,
> > >   I don't know why my Mediawiki 1.9.3 looks "fat" in IE 6/7, but in
> > > Firefox is just all right.
> > >  All the tables separated. Attached picture, please help.
> >
> > Mailman removed the image. Post in the web and send the link instead.
> >
> > Can you provide the site page? Have you removed any IE related CSS files?
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
>
> --
>                      ---BiGreat---
>                www.Liang-Chen.com
>

--
                     ---BiGreat---
               www.Liang-Chen.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On 2/28/07, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> There wasn't a lot of publicity, even on-wiki, though.

There was quite a bit of publicity in the usual places, with 1,003
edits made by 115 editors to the new page, and 3,506 posts from 207
editors on the talk page.

Sarah


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Job: Volunteer Coordinator

body:
If you've devoted much of your life to the Wikimedia Foundation and
its projects, and you enjoy interacting with our international
community, this is an opportunity for you to turn your hobby into a
profession. Effective immediately, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking
for a Volunteer Coordinator who will lead in opening up new
opportunities for volunteers to contribute to the mission and
day-to-day work of the Foundation.

Ideally, you will work in the Wikimedia Office in St. Petersburg,
Florida. Please also specify whether you would prefer part-time or
full-time work.

Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
<jobs at wikimedia dot org>.

== Responsibilities ==

As Volunteer Coordinator, your responsibilities will include:
* maintaining a global, public list of tasks across different work
areas, through communicating with committees/officers, which would
indicate which areas need volunteer work the most critically at any
given time.
* advising the Board and ED during the setup of new volunteer groups
and committees
* ensuring that all volunteer groups in the WMF are operational and
reporting their activities on a regular basis; evaluating performance
(cat herding experience and international diplomacy skills will help ;-)
* being a first personal point of contact for people who wish to do
volunteer work for the organization, but don't know where to start
* organizing and advertising regular online events and tutorials to
educate people about different areas of volunteering
* reporting when existing volunteer groups such as committees or
workgroups are apparently dysfunctional, and recommending structural
changes where needed
* collecting and documenting best practices for volunteer management,
partially based on communicating with other non-profits and studying
research on the topic
* representing Wikimedia at events where we might find useful
volunteers from a specific background.

In short, you will be responsible for achieving what is absolutely
critical for the long term sustainability of the Foundation: involving
volunteers in every part of our mission.

== Prior experience ==

You should have some familiarity with the Wikimedia Foundation, its
processes, and its projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
Wikimedia Commons, and so on). Prior experience in online and real
world volunteer organizing is a definite advantage, as is work
experience in project management, scheduling, and communications.

Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
<jobs at wikimedia dot org>.

If you have questions about this job description, please respond on
the list or to me privately. Feel free to forward this message to other
lists.

Erik M?ller
Executive Secretary, Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Correction to New Yorker Article

body:
>     He was
>     described in the piece as "a tenured professor of religion at a
>     private university" with "a Ph.D. in theology and a degree in canon
>     law."

Where did those claims come from? I haven't seem them anywhere before.


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Soft deletion

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 28/02/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "I haven't heard about it" or "I don't like it" are bad arguments and have
> > nothing to do with notability.
> > Notability is not hard and fast, but not as flimsy as you make it out to be.
>
> In AFD usage it appears to be.

The claim that "I haven't heard about it" is common usage on AfD has
been put forward on this list twice in the last two months; the two
previous times, I checked the current AfD nominations, and this argument
was used (by the nominator) in 0 of about 250 nominations.

I'd like to see an example; bonus points if the article shouldn't have
been deleted anyway; double bonus points if the article was deleted
anyway.

(I haven't checked AfD this time, so there is a possibility you could
prove me wrong here.)

Eugene


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On Feb 28, 2007, at 11:19 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> Weird, WP:OR (No original research) and WP:V (Verifiability) have been
> merged into WP:ATT (Attribution). When exactly did this happen? I'm
> surprised there wasn't any discussion on this list.
>
> Steve

I'm glad to see this merge finally happen, though more than a bit
bummed that it didn't manage the key step of superceding [[WP:RS]].

-Phil


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> T P wrote:
>
>> Nevertheless, my point was that whether something is "significant enough" to
>> be included in Wikipedia may not be apparent for some time.
>>
>
> I've always been a proponent of the view that Wikipedia is not and never
> should be a "finished" encyclopedia, but rather is a massive
> freely-licensed resource from which one can _create_ a "finished"
> encyclopedia. IMO our main product is database dumps...
Yeah, I think this is one of the more exciting features of Wikipedia.
If the goal was just to produce a really good encyclopedia at
wikipedia.org, Free licensing would be unnecessary... but if the goal is
to put out into the open a huge body of information that opens up
thousands of possible uses, then it's of course indispensible.

-Mark


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-01

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20096).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
Slim Virgin wrote:

>On 2/28/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Weird, WP:OR (No original research) and WP:V (Verifiability) have been
>>merged into WP:ATT (Attribution). When exactly did this happen? I'm
>>surprised there wasn't any discussion on this list.
>>
>>
>Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
>simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
>to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
>get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
>new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
>material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
>simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>
I don't see why they should get so confused about that.  "Verified" and
"verifiable" are clearly distinct concepts.  The latter only means
"capable of being verified".  It does not imply that anyone has in fact
gone there to make that verification.

Ec


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On 2/28/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
> simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
> to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
> get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
> new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
> material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
> simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>

The fewer pages new users need to read to get involved, the better, I think.
Spreading it out over so many pages allows for an unfortunate amount of
confusion and ambiguity (which isn't to say we can't leave room for
judgement calls, but keeping the general guidelines and rationales of those
judgement calls in one place seems like a net plus).

If there's one change I might bring up, has anybody discussed changing the
page name? Possibly something a bit more intuitively descriptive, like
[[Wikipedia:Attribute your sources]]? "Attribution" doesn't, in and of
itself, imply what the page is about. Dunno. Minor thing, hopefully new
users will figure it out quickly enough. Quick look didn't show if this had
been discussed, but I didn't look everywhere.

Interesting to see a change in policy, regardless. Kudos to those who
effected the revolution. I hope this works out well.

-Luna


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/1/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
>>simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
>>to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
>>get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
>>new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
>>material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
>>simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>>
>>
>
>Don't get me wrong, I wasn't complaining about not being notified :)
>
>I do like the change. "Verifiability" was always terribly ambiguous
>and misleading. It never meant you had to verify the facts. It meant
>that if someone else wanted to verify them, they had a starting point.
>
Exactly.  Nothing more, nothing less.

>But it didn't really mean that either.
>
Why not?

> "Attributability" is much cleaner.
>
It looks like some kind of semantic game.  Capable of being attributed?
It suggests that we don't need to make an attribution, only assert that
it is possible.  Actually attributed statements (or attributions) are
then verifiable.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
Rob Smith wrote:

>On 2/28/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> The aim was
>>to get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
>>new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
>>material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
>>simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.
>>
>>
>Hmm. The Latin root of verify means "true"; amazing the policy read
>"verifiable, not true".  Like in the English language, just what the hell
>did that ever mean, anyway?
>
What is verifiable is what was actually said;  that implies nothing
about the substantive truth of the statement.  It allows us to maintain
NPOV by including verifiable but contradictory statements on both sides
of an issue.  Only rarely are they both true.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
Barcex wrote:

>Besides this proposal is not viable because having a "fair use" repository
>does not seem to be "fair use" I have to note that the Spanish-language
>Wikipedia been enforcing the "only free material" policy for at least two
>years, and closed its local upload recently (about 7 months ago). So the
>eswiki users asked "why en can use fair use pictures of, say, music albums
>while they can't" before closing local upload.
>
Disabling local upload was entirely their choice, and they could reverse
that policy whenever they want.  Why should they complain about en:wp
allowing fair use when they are responsible for their own problem.  I
can understand why Commons does not want fair use images there.  They
don't provide any context for their pictures.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


body:
HI, the size is 158x89, I wonder whether it is caused the problem.

On 3/1/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Happens in IE6 too.
> Try making the logo smaller. It may be forcing the resize.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
                     ---BiGreat---
               www.Liang-Chen.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Scott McCloud on Wikipedia

body:
On 3/1/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Possible improvement: Develop separate processes for each reason one
> > might have for deleting an article.
>
> We had that a couple years ago... copyright issues, unverified/hoax,
> (I forget what all the groups were), were separated into separate VFD
> subpages. Did that go away at some point?
>

[[WP:CP]] and speedy for copyvios.

--
geni


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikix Image Detection in enwiki dumps

body:
I have integrated the wikix program that extracts image files and
analyzes image template usage in the enwiki dumps into the AI engine I
use for machine translation projects.   I use wikix to sync up with the
Wikipedia Image repository.  It has yielded some useful results as a
side affect which may be useful for the Wikipedia community on the
English Wikipedia.

During analysis of the last dumps posted as enwiki-20070206, the program
identified all tag usages in templates for image tagging in use on the
English
Wikipedia as well as all suspect image files which may be trojans,
viruses, and other types of content which has been uploaded as images to
the site.

The image files and data are grouped into the following output logs from
the English Wikipedia.  Not all the files are trojans and some of them
are probably ok , but a some may not be, particularly files named
"spoof" and MS word files which can contain VB5 virus code if downloaded
from Wikipedia.  At any rate, the list of files and the articles which
they link to are provided and it may be useful for someone to review
these files since they appear to be file types which can harbor viruses
and trojans.  They are files I will not be hosting or pulling into
Wikigadugi since they may contain malicious code.

images.log - all image files referenced in the last enwiki dumps
reject.log - all suspect files which may be viruses or trojans listed by
article title which link to the image files
fragment.log - all templates and image tags used in templates which
alias to the Image: directive as some point through the website logic
and the first article title in which they appear. (this is interesting
to see how many tags people create in templates to map to Image:)

These logs can be downloaded from:

ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/xml/wikix-logs.tar.gz

Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikix Image Detection in enwiki dumps


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
Of course they'd have to immediately have to be added into some article and
of course galleries won't be allowed. As it is right now the images, in
addition to being in the article itself, are in the image page as well - the
only thing that would be done here is pretty much moving the location of the
image page.

On 2/28/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/28/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This reminds me of an idea I had that might not be feasible. Make a
> > commons-like project for fair use pictures that all wikipedias can use
> and
> > disable local uploads at all wikipedias. That way, only absolutely must
> fair
> > use pictures will be accepted (logos, stamps, pictures of historical
> events
> > that are unreplaceable, etc.) and there won't be fair use pictures of
> living
> > people and of other things for which fair use isn't a must. That way you
> > won't have all the inconsistencies with, for example, Spanish Wikipedia
> > users asking why en can use fair use pictures of, say, music albums
> while
> > they can't because they have local uploading disabled and only upload to
> > commons. This way you'd also get people who are knowledgeable in the
> area of
> > fair use and policies regarding fair use on wikipedia taking care of
> > pictures rather than different people having different views on
> different
> > projects. This way you'd also have one central fair use policy that is
> > consistent amongst all the projects which will take care of the whining
> as I
> > mentioned above and will also make sure that fair use that isn't really
> a
> > must isn't in use on other projects (from my personal experience, this
> is
> > what is going on on the Hebrew Wikipedia which currently has, IMHO, the
> most
> > lax fair use policies out of any other project). Of course the problem
> is
> > that you'd have to find people willing to monitor such a project, which
> you
> > might not find as readily available as people for a project such as
> commons
> > that deals with free content and there's also the hassle of starting up
> a
> > new project (which some may deem unnecessary).
> >
> > -Yonatan
> >
> > On 2/28/07, Robert Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > teun spaans wrote:
> > > > I still havent read any good argument for allowing fair use, except
> that
> > > the
> > > > english wiki is using it en masse. Which sounds like a very strange
> > > > argument, it is like saying: it is forbidden to spit, but as
> everyone
> > > spits,
> > > > we allow it. If everyone would be indulging in PAs on the english
> wiki,
> > > > would we allow them too
> > > I fail to see what the problem is with very narrow categories of image
> > > types that may not be strictly available under a FLOSS license.  I
> would
> > > count among those types of images that are reasonable applications of
> > > fair use would include:
> > >
> > > * Official government seals and symbols, including flags
> > > * Official government documents such as passports, stamps, currency,
> > > banknotes, etc.
> > > * Corporate Logos and trademarks, where their usage is directly tied
> to
> > > content specifically about that organization
> > >
> > > All of these sorts of images are routinely used by major publishers
> > > under fair-use provisions, where formal permission is not usually
> > > granted by the various corporations and government entities.  All of
> > > these sorts of images, however, have been banned on Commons.  I'm not
> > > here to change commons policies, but these sorts of images can make or
> > > break some Wikibooks or Wikipedia articles, and I have seen all of
> these
> > > used in commercial encyclopedias as well.  Imagine what a book about
> > > stamps would be like if you couldn't show the actual stamp.
> > >
> > > It should be noted that all of these kind of images do fall under some
> > > sort of perpetual protections where copyright as it is usually defined
> > > doesn't normally apply.  And unless the company goes bankrupt or the
> > > government of the country whose symbols you are showing ceases to
> exist
> > > due to warfare or cataclismic disaster, they will never ever be free
> in
> > > the FLOSS sense of the term.  Perhaps a *very* enlightened group might
> > > grant logos under the GFDL or something similar, but look even to the
> > > WMF to see how likely that would be.  The only "free" logo I know of
> is
> > > the GNU Gnu of the FSF and I'm not even sure about that.
> > >
> > > Another very legitimate application of fair use is to quote text
> > > verbatium, provided you distinguish it somehow (such as put it in
> block
> > > quote area or use quotation marks) and cite the source as a
> > > bibliographic reference.  This is indeed fair use rationale in nearly
> > > every case where it is used, and one of the reasons explicitly why the
> > > fair-use doctrine was codified into the United States Code.  There are
> > > extreme cases of textual quotation that does go over the top as well,
> > > but generally it is obvious enough when that happens that most people
> > > can come to a concensus and say "let's chop this quote down" or rework
> > > the lengthy quotation.
> > >
> > > The problem is that happens with photographs and rendered graphical
> > > images is that the rationale for fair use is very, very weak, and
> > > unfortunately the current internet user culture is such that most
> people
> > > think that once you have "obtained" an image, that you own it and have
> > > unlimited reproduction privileges on it.  We all know this (at least
> on
> > > this list) to be a completely incorrect viewpoint, but the academic
> > > standards for including images just havn't been pushed into our heads
> to
> > > the same degree that similar duplication of textual material would
> have,
> > > even if we have a strong respect of copyright as a general philosophy.
> > > Modern textbooks, magazines, and newspapers hardly help either when it
> > > seems as though large portions of the content are displayed in photo,
> > > charts, and other graphical images.  Some children's textbooks in
> > > America have so many photos that you start to wonder where the actual
> > > content of the textbook itself might be found.  It is no wonder that a
> > > Wikipedian upon looking at a well developed article that would
> otherwise
> > > be a feature article candidate looks empty and missing something when
> > > there are no images to be used with the text.  Most of the project
> users
> > > have grown up with the multi-media barrage in daily life and simply
> > > expect it to be there.
> > >
> > > I support severe limitation on the use of fair-use material within
> > > Wikimedia projects, but I think that a complete and total ban is
> simply
> > > too much.  There are legitimate applications of fair use, and the
> > > question that really confronts us is to define just how tight we want
> to
> > > draw that line.  Unfortunately, with the diversity of people
> > > participating in these projects (especially Wikipedia), it seems very
> > > unlikely that you are going to come to a general agreement about where
> > > that line ought to be drawn even by those who might want to put some
> > > strong limitations on fair use content.
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
> Except that it can't be done for the same reason fair use can't be
> applied to commons files and thus not allowed.
> Fair use doesn't allow hosting an image as part of a larger collection
> itself, only within the context. So english wikipedia has them as part
> of the encyclopedia. Commons not, since commons by itself has no
> context to sustain the fair use defense
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Hm. Methinks it is rather odd that an international organization does not have its head office in
or near a world city. I mean, other than the cool wikijob and the nice weather what does St Pete /
Tampa have in terms of services (including connections to like-minded organizations; not to
mention easy access to consulates)?

You need to sell the location along with the job if you want people to move their families there.
Wikia has already moved from St Pete to the San Francisco Bay Area. Might we want to explore why
that move was made?

-- mav

--- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> If you've devoted much of your life to the Wikimedia Foundation and
> its projects, and you enjoy interacting with our international
> community, this is an opportunity for you to turn your hobby into a
> profession. Effective immediately, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking
> for a Volunteer Coordinator who will lead in opening up new
> opportunities for volunteers to contribute to the mission and
> day-to-day work of the Foundation.
>
> Ideally, you will work in the Wikimedia Office in St. Petersburg,
> Florida. Please also specify whether you would prefer part-time or
> full-time work.
>
> Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
> <jobs at wikimedia dot org>.
>
> == Responsibilities ==
>
> As Volunteer Coordinator, your responsibilities will include:
> * maintaining a global, public list of tasks across different work
> areas, through communicating with committees/officers, which would
> indicate which areas need volunteer work the most critically at any
> given time.
> * advising the Board and ED during the setup of new volunteer groups
> and committees
> * ensuring that all volunteer groups in the WMF are operational and
> reporting their activities on a regular basis; evaluating performance
> (cat herding experience and international diplomacy skills will help ;-)
> * being a first personal point of contact for people who wish to do
> volunteer work for the organization, but don't know where to start
> * organizing and advertising regular online events and tutorials to
> educate people about different areas of volunteering
> * reporting when existing volunteer groups such as committees or
> workgroups are apparently dysfunctional, and recommending structural
> changes where needed
> * collecting and documenting best practices for volunteer management,
> partially based on communicating with other non-profits and studying
> research on the topic
> * representing Wikimedia at events where we might find useful
> volunteers from a specific background.
>
> In short, you will be responsible for achieving what is absolutely
> critical for the long term sustainability of the Foundation: involving
> volunteers in every part of our mission.
>
> == Prior experience ==
>
> You should have some familiarity with the Wikimedia Foundation, its
> processes, and its projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
> Wikimedia Commons, and so on). Prior experience in online and real
> world volunteer organizing is a definite advantage, as is work
> experience in project management, scheduling, and communications.
>
> Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
> <jobs at wikimedia dot org>.
>
> If you have questions about this job description, please respond on
> the list or to me privately. Feel free to forward this message to other
> lists.
>
> Erik M?ller
> Executive Secretary, Wikimedia Foundation
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

____________________________________________________________________________________
Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather


body:
--- Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Lack of income taxes is a nice feature.  The cost of living is much
> more reasonable than say San Francisco or New York City, and you get
> much more living space for that money.  There are quite a few beaches
> and parks, which I suppose goes along with the relatively nice
> weather.  Unemployment is very low here right now.  Internet access is
> fairly good - we have Fios available in lots of places and EVDO is
> available throughout the Tampa Bay area.

That is exactly the type of list I was looking for. My point, was that, since few people have ever
heard of St Pete, that any job offer that required/would prefer a move to the area, would include
a list of what the area has to offer.

-- mav

____________________________________________________________________________________
8:00? 8:25? 8:40? Find a flick in no time
with the Yahoo! Search movie showtime shortcut.
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body:
--- Carolyn Doran <cdoran at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Might it be that we are incorporated as a 5013C non-profit HERE in the
> state of Florida ~ there is much to offer here in St. Pete INCLUDING the
> nice weather and many like minded non-profit organizations locally. What
> reason would we have to be near a consulate?
> ~ C

Place of incorporation did not stop Wikia from moving. IIRC, part of the reason for the move was
to be in a place where there was a higher concentration of like-minded organizations and also a
place where there was a higher concentration of relevant talent.

As for St Pete/Tampa, I would be very interested in seeing a list of like-minded organizations in
the Tampa Bay area. Anthony already listed some great reasons why St Pete would be a good place to
live. I would like to hear more. I?m sure potential employees would also like to hear more.

-- mav

____________________________________________________________________________________
Bored stiff? Loosen up...
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http://games.yahoo.com/games/front


body:
--- Carolyn Doran <cdoran at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> What reason would we have to be near a consulate?
> ~ C

Any organization that claims to be international in scope, would ideally be based in close
proximity to representatives from many national governments. Of course, that is not the only thing
to consider.

-- mav

____________________________________________________________________________________
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Let Yahoo! FareChase search your favorite travel sites to find flight and hotel bargains.
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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
William Pietri wrote:
> The New Yorker recently added an editor's note to an article they
> published in July:
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact
>
>
Note to self: resist the temptation to fabricate an online identity with
the idea of leading potential stalkers astray, it will make real-life
trouble sooner or later.

Postscript: Unless I'm working for the CIA, in which case I will also
have been trained in, shall we say, *messier* ways to deal with stalkers.

:-)

Stan


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
On 3/1/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> You must have been living under a rock to have missed the concept of a
> doctrine by the board that will disallow many licenses and practices.

Guilty as charged, though that rock is actually a mound of income tax
forms.  February through April are busy months for me.

> Images without information about copyright or license (Public Domain does
> not have a license) will be disallowed.
>
Interesting.  Will anonymous authors be allowed?

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:ATT

body:
On Wed, 28 Feb 2007, Slim Virgin wrote:
> Hi Steve, the merge process started about four months ago. It was a
> simple merge with no changes, and the list was informed. The aim was
> to get the two policies on one page, tighten the writing a little, and
> get rid of the word "verifiability." This was causing confusion for
> new editors because they thought it meant they had to check that
> material was true, which is what "verify" usually means, rather than
> simply checking that it had been published elsewhere.

This is wrong.

For much of the time the policy was being written the point was not only to
merge the two policies, but to do cleanup and to add defacto policies which
were currently not codified.

That's why there's a whole subdiscussion about popular culture sources.

It later got changed, much more recently, to be an attempt to simply merge
the policies.  This was *not* the intent for most of the time.


from_name: Carolyn Doran

body:
Might it be that we are incorporated as a 5013C non-profit HERE in the
state of Florida ~ there is much to offer here in St. Pete INCLUDING the
nice weather and many like minded non-profit organizations locally. What
reason would we have to be near a consulate?
~ C

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Hm. Methinks it is rather odd that an international organization does not have its head office in
> or near a world city. I mean, other than the cool wikijob and the nice weather what does St Pete /
> Tampa have in terms of services (including connections to like-minded organizations; not to
> mention easy access to consulates)?
>
> You need to sell the location along with the job if you want people to move their families there.
> Wikia has already moved from St Pete to the San Francisco Bay Area. Might we want to explore why
> that move was made?
>
> -- mav
>
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> If you've devoted much of your life to the Wikimedia Foundation and
>> its projects, and you enjoy interacting with our international
>> community, this is an opportunity for you to turn your hobby into a
>> profession. Effective immediately, the Wikimedia Foundation is looking
>> for a Volunteer Coordinator who will lead in opening up new
>> opportunities for volunteers to contribute to the mission and
>> day-to-day work of the Foundation.
>>
>> Ideally, you will work in the Wikimedia Office in St. Petersburg,
>> Florida. Please also specify whether you would prefer part-time or
>> full-time work.
>>
>> Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
>> <jobs at wikimedia dot org>.
>>
>> == Responsibilities ==
>>
>> As Volunteer Coordinator, your responsibilities will include:
>> * maintaining a global, public list of tasks across different work
>> areas, through communicating with committees/officers, which would
>> indicate which areas need volunteer work the most critically at any
>> given time.
>> * advising the Board and ED during the setup of new volunteer groups
>> and committees
>> * ensuring that all volunteer groups in the WMF are operational and
>> reporting their activities on a regular basis; evaluating performance
>> (cat herding experience and international diplomacy skills will help ;-)
>> * being a first personal point of contact for people who wish to do
>> volunteer work for the organization, but don't know where to start
>> * organizing and advertising regular online events and tutorials to
>> educate people about different areas of volunteering
>> * reporting when existing volunteer groups such as committees or
>> workgroups are apparently dysfunctional, and recommending structural
>> changes where needed
>> * collecting and documenting best practices for volunteer management,
>> partially based on communicating with other non-profits and studying
>> research on the topic
>> * representing Wikimedia at events where we might find useful
>> volunteers from a specific background.
>>
>> In short, you will be responsible for achieving what is absolutely
>> critical for the long term sustainability of the Foundation: involving
>> volunteers in every part of our mission.
>>
>> == Prior experience ==
>>
>> You should have some familiarity with the Wikimedia Foundation, its
>> processes, and its projects (Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikisource,
>> Wikimedia Commons, and so on). Prior experience in online and real
>> world volunteer organizing is a definite advantage, as is work
>> experience in project management, scheduling, and communications.
>>
>> Please send applications, including a Curriculum Vitae, to:
>> <jobs at wikimedia dot org>.
>>
>> If you have questions about this job description, please respond on
>> the list or to me privately. Feel free to forward this message to other
>> lists.
>>
>> Erik M?ller
>> Executive Secretary, Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peak at the forecast
> with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
> http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
On 3/1/07, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hm. Methinks it is rather odd that an international organization does not have its head office in
> or near a world city. I mean, other than the cool wikijob and the nice weather what does St Pete /
> Tampa have in terms of services (including connections to like-minded organizations; not to
> mention easy access to consulates)?
>
Lack of income taxes is a nice feature.  The cost of living is much
more reasonable than say San Francisco or New York City, and you get
much more living space for that money.  There are quite a few beaches
and parks, which I suppose goes along with the relatively nice
weather.  Unemployment is very low here right now.  Internet access is
fairly good - we have Fios available in lots of places and EVDO is
available throughout the Tampa Bay area.

Just a quick list off the top of my head.  Personally it doesn't
matter to me all that much where I live, so what I can offer in this
category is pretty limited.

If money were no object I'd probably live in New York City.  Actually,
if I really had the money to live anywhere I'd probably go snowbird
and spend some time in NYC, some in Florida, some in Arizona, etc.

Oh well, hope I was able to help a bit.

Anthony


body:
On 3/1/07, Carolyn Doran <cdoran at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Might it be that we are incorporated as a 5013C non-profit HERE in the
> state of Florida

That can be changed relatively easily, and really doesn't matter all
that much anyway.  As long as the WMF maintains a registered agent
here in Florida they can have their head offices anywhere.

> there is much to offer here in St. Pete INCLUDING the
> nice weather and many like minded non-profit organizations locally.

Could you offer us with some details as to those like-minded
non-profits?  The only one I can think of is the Poynter Institute/St.
Pete Times, and I'm not even aware of whether or not any sort of
relationship has been established with them yet.  Then again,
non-profit media companies seem to me to be fairly rare.

To be clear, I'm not challenging your statement, I just think we'd all
benefit from some details.

Anthony