from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 12/19/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I located a reference to a "partnership" on hosting the
>>sep11.wikipedia.org website on one of my personal websites which
>>referred to this project where
>>WMG took over the hosting and server costs for the sep11.wikipedia.org
>>domain for the Foundation.   This appears to be the source of the
>>confusion on the part of folks about this topic.
>>
>>
>
>Perhaps it's just a matter of phrasing things correctly. Could you
>send me, off-list, a copy of the text that you used? We'll then
>discuss on the Board level what exactly should be done.
>
>

I removed the offending text, so Erik, I think its ok, provided Jimbo is
comfortable. At present,
there is no text or description of any kind discussing the hosting of
the site. You can simply leave it up
and just check with Jimbo if he is comfortable. I can email him
directly, but since this came through you
you should probably handle it.

Jeff


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[Foundation-l] Sep11 Wiki/Partnership Message Removal/Mr. Wales
 Concerns


list: foundation-l

body:
Anthony wrote:

>When I initially heard of the plan I didn't realize that the
>sep11.wikipedia.org domain name was going to be redirected to
>sep11memories.org.  That's the only part that I'd criticise.
>
>sep11.wikipedia.org should be a simple page that says that the project
>is no longer a Wikimedia project.  A link from there to
>sep11memories.org (and/or any other appropriate sites) saying that the
>content is still available there would be appropriate too, IMO.  But
>this should be a click-through link, not an automatic redirect.
>
>Anthony
>
>
>
I think this may be a source of confusion. Let Erik make the call. I am
happy to host the site,
but lets get Wales confortable with it.

Jeff


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rotem Liss

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

body:
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Magnus Manske wrote:
> OK. So, how do we handle the user ids from the other project? Do we
> assume single login is in place? Or do we create dummy users like
> "en:someguy", user_id=0? (I didn't bother to look how it's handled in
> Special:Import right now, easier to ask here;-)
>

As far as I remember, dummy users (user_id=0) are created if the users are not
exist.
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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikitech-l] little OTRS bug

body:
Michael Bimmler wrote:
> In the OTRS, there is this nice box, where you can see the agents,
> that are online. Well, and in the Wikimedia OTRS we may welcome a
> famous new editor, called ":  $Text{"Online Agent: %s", ", who ranks
> prominently at first rank of the displayed online agents. Is this an
> OTRS bug or is it rather Wikimedia-side?
>

I believe it's a bug in OTRS not being able to correctly handle UTF-8...

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

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Sam Korn

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

body:
On 12/19/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
> library. Similarly, they can order any material that's in a legal
> database.

While this may be true in the Western world, elsewhere it is unlikely
to be.  I agree with your point and position with regard to what are
valid sources, but it's worthwhile to remember that many, many people
in the world will not be able to access these kinds of documents.

--
Sam


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 19/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> OK. So, how do we handle the user ids from the other project? Do we
> assume single login is in place? Or do we create dummy users like
> "en:someguy", user_id=0? (I didn't bother to look how it's handled in
> Special:Import right now, easier to ask here;-)

Put the username in image.img_user_text and set image.img_user to 0.

> Also, if we plan to do mass-moving, of images, should we add this
> function to the api? What about handling the deletion of the images on
> the "source wiki"? If these functions were available using
> "name=xxx&password=yyy" on the api, it would save a lot of clicks with
> a decent front-end (which I then would volunteer to develop;-)

The API is none of my business; I gather a separate group has taken
the responsibility for designing and implementing it.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
On 19/12/06, henna <henna at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> there was a huge fuss when the feature was introduced on nl: :)

Perhaps if Patroller ever makes it live, you'll have something else to
fuss over...

Rob Church


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> ...  I've
> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?

If you want have a rock stable unvandalizeable article page, you could
copy/paste the complete wiki-source content of the article into
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ExpandTemplates and copy/paste the
expanded result back to the article and protect it (don't forget to
specify the article title on Special:ExpandTemplates).

The resulting "transclusion free" article then depends on nothing else
but the images.

At least this would correctly "subst" every template, also those using
parser functions (#if & Co).

Just note though that the resulting version can only serve as temporary
throw-away "viewing only" page, as that should be reverted back to the
non-expanded version before further development (I mean further editing).

--Ligulem


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Main site live again

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

After some database schema changes, we have started updating the live
software on the site again. Visibly, this introduces a field on
Special:Recentchanges showing the number of characters added or removed
by each edit, giving an impression of the magnitude of changes.

This figure has been available for some time on the IRC feeds of
changes, but is now stored in the database for display in the recent
changes list.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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=IN/P
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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun project: write and profile a Batik server

body:
On 19/12/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Another engine to keep our eyes on is inkscape, which also can be used
> as a batch rasterizer. While it, like rsvg, lacks the completeness of
> Batik, it has a couple of qualities worth our attention:
> 1) Unlike rsvg it is actively developed and will one day be reasonably
> feature complete. (it will soon have filters for example)
> 2) Unlike both rsvg and batik it's also a full authorship
> environment.. in a perfect world we'd expect all renders to be
> consistent, but they are not.. so if we're going to be wrong it's
> better to be wrong in the same was as a tool people can actually use.

3) Rather a lot of the SVGs on Wikimedia are *created* using Inkscape,
so the rendering will be precisely what the author saved.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Top posting poll; was Re: MONGO and the ArbCom

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:
> On 12/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jim Schuler wrote:
>>> On 12/15/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 12/14/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> M I i N d T- E p R o W s E t A i V n E g - i P s O t S h T e I o N n
>>>> G l F
>>>>>>> y O w R a M y E to go. :-)
>>>>> You just stole at least a minute, probably two, of my life trying to
>>>>> decipher your email, and I want them back.
>>>> !gnitsop evaewretni daer ot drah *taht* lla ton s'tI
>>>>
>>> !ton s'ti oN
>>>
>>>
>> Qm90dG9tLXBvc3RpbmcgeW91ciBtZXNzYWdlcyBhZnRlciBCYXNlNjQ=
>> ZW5jb2RpbmcgdGhlbSBiZWF0cyBldmVyeXRoaW5nLg==
>
> begin 644 -
> M5&AA="=S(&YO="!V86QI9"!B87-E-C0Z('EO=2=R92!O;FQY(&%L;&]W960@
> C=&\@<'5T("<])R!A="!T:&4 at 96YD(&]F('1H92!F:6QE+ at H
> end
>

%49%74%27%73%20%61%20%70%61%64%64%69%6e%67%20%63%68%61%72%61%63%74%65%72%2e

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

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Begging letters on our blogs?

body:
Berto 'd Sera wrote:
> Hi!
>
>> Would people be offended and stop contributing?
> I gather the only serious answer is: nobody knows. That's unless there had
> been previous experiments I'm not aware of.
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enciclopedia_Libre

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

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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 12/19/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On the other hand, even though "Legal experts have stated
> that Y [cite][cite]" is clearly valid, it doesn't properly convey
> what the sources indicate.  There ought to be some way to
> record that a standard legal database did not provide ANY
> contrary opinions.  Given how much lawyers love to argue
> with each other, this is a highly unusual situation.

I think a better way to handle some of these issues is to accept that
straying into the grey area of OR is unavoidable, so let's come up
with good ways to do it. "The consensus of academic opinion in X
database appears to indicate that" is better than "The consensus of
academic opinion in X database is that", for example.

"Appears that", "is probably" etc are key words that indicate to the
reader that the interpreter is us, and therefore not very reliable. We
have a similar situation when we need to indicate that *we* (the
nameless, voiceless writer) don't actually know something: "Whether
there are other species with these characteristics is not known" can
be a bit ambiguous (who doesn't know it - scientists, or us, the
laypeople).

Steve


list: commons-l

from_name: Cool Cat

subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] ImportFreeImages Extension

body:
We need a tool that runs on wikimedia servers, not toolserv. I want to mass
move an entire category (pd-old for instance). Toolserv move method creates
a duplicate of the image, uses too much bandwidth and hence is not
efficient. Images are already on wikipedia servers, no need to involve
toolserv.

The assumption is of course that images are not copyvios. I think we should
worry less about "what ifs". Eventually all images will have to be reviewed,
I prefer that review being done on commons by the 'real' experts.

Of course there is the third question of potential abuse... I think such a
tool should be only used by say stewards whom are trusted everywhere. We
would make bulk moves from time to time only anyways.

Oh and before anyone asks, if a moved image is not free enough for commons
it can always be moved back to the local project
     - Cool Cat

On 12/14/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/14/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 14/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/13/06, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Is there no way you can upload using your own commons login name?
> > >
> > > I already thought about extending commonshelper so it accepts commons
> > > user name and password. The upload bot could then use that for
> > > uploading.
> > >
> > > Of course, any user of the tool then would have to give this
> > > information to my tools, without knowing what else I do with that (I
> > > won't, of course, but short of the toolserver admins, noone can
> > > actually confirm that).
> > >
> > > OTOH, as long as I keep it optional, would such a mechanism be
> acceptable?
> >
> > Is there any other toolserver tool that requests or uses user's
> passwords?
> > I really dislike the idea. I don't think the convenience outweighs the
> > possible security problems and I don't think we should keep putting
> > bricks onto temporary solutions: obviously the function should be
> > performed by MediaWiki. But then, we already rely on CheckUsage, so...
> > sigh...
>
> Well, your password is transmitted unencrypted to through the internet
> every time you log into a Wikimedia project. So, there's already risk.
> The *additional* risk is in trusting me. That's everyone's decision.
>
> > Another possibility is that we ask for upload-from-url to be enabled
> > on Commons. (I can't remember if it is an actual feature yet or just a
> > mooted one.) Then CommonsHelper could be more or less single click,
> > right?
>
> Yes, it is an actual feature which has to be turned on by
> the-one-whose-name-we-must-not-speak, or one of his minions ;-)
>
> No, it won't fix that problem; upload-from-url only offers a different
> source (web instead of your own PC); you'll still have to give a
> username and password to the script, one way or another.
>
> > It has been suggested that allowing upload-from-url will bring
> > torrents of copyvios. Undoubtedly it will, but we get torrents of
> > copyvios already. Upload-from-url should allow us to track the true
> > origin of images much more easily (assuming that info is made
> > available!). At the moment it is a lot of guesswork and hunches.
>
> Yes, there might be more copyvios than now, but they'll be easier to
> hunt down and exterminate, and if some "violators" use this instead of
> the current upload, it would reduce overall stress on the admins,
> IMHO.
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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from_name: Anthony

subject:
[Foundation-l] Sep11 Wiki/Partnership Message Removal/Mr. Wales
	Concerns

body:
On 12/19/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> I located a reference to a "partnership" on hosting the
> sep11.wikipedia.org website on one of my personal websites which
> referred to this project where
> WMG took over the hosting and server costs for the sep11.wikipedia.org
> domain for the Foundation.   This appears to be the source of the
> confusion on the part of folks about this topic.
>
> Mr. Wales has expressed concerns about our hosting of the
> sep11.wikipedia.org domain as request by Erik Moeller since
> it may create the impression of a "partnership" between WMF and WMG,
> which should be avoided.
>
> I am going to leave the site active for now, but I would suggest peraps
> wikia.com take over this task to avoid remove any discomfort on
> the part of Mr. Wales, or at a minimum, the stakeholders contact Wales
> and find out what his beef is with the decision.
>
Moving the site to wikia.com wouldn't solve the problem, it'd just
shift the problem from giving the impression of a "partnership" with
one company to another.

> I would ask that Erik Moeller check with Mr. Wales on whether we should
> continue to host this site or have wikia.com or one of
> the chapters take it over.
>
When I initially heard of the plan I didn't realize that the
sep11.wikipedia.org domain name was going to be redirected to
sep11memories.org.  That's the only part that I'd criticise.

sep11.wikipedia.org should be a simple page that says that the project
is no longer a Wikimedia project.  A link from there to
sep11memories.org (and/or any other appropriate sites) saying that the
content is still available there would be appropriate too, IMO.  But
this should be a click-through link, not an automatic redirect.

Anthony


subject: [Commons-l] Wikimedia Commons 1M

body:
It just had to be a zoo image...
    - Cool Cat

On 11/30/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Commons is proud to announce it now has over one million uploaded
> files. The one millionth file, as determined by
> en:User:Daveydweeb/commons:User:RandyWang who was watching the logs at
> the time (or closely after), is a photograph of a sealife viewing
> gallery at Singapore Zoo, part of a series taken by User:Terence Ong
> in a visit to the zoo.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Singapore_Zoo_37.JPG
>
> Congratulations Terence!
>
> Press releasey stuff here, improvements and translations welcome:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/1M
>
> The logo mosaic is now frozen, as well:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_logo_mosaic
>
> regards,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
On 19/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/12/06, henna <henna at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > there was a huge fuss when the feature was introduced on nl: :)

I've been advised that this change is causing problems on projects
where all autoconfirmed users are allowed to mark changes patrolled,
since it's negating the effects of recent changes patrol for users
older than four days.

I'm not sure what the most effective cure for this would be, to be
honest; I would think it more appropriate to restrict patrolling back
up to administrators. Of course, if we had a nice new interface for
assigning permissions, then we could probably create a "patrollers"
group and have done with it.

Rob Church


from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

body:
I support the use of contextual (Google AdSense) ads on Wikipedia.

Contextual ads are small and unobstrusive. In addition, they may
benefit the reader by pointing them to additional resources.

Wikipedia is now a top-20 site. Server and bandwidth costs will grow
rapidly. Donations are not a reliable way to keep Wikipedia
financially afloat.

I remember reading a report in the Signpost which says that Wikipedia
could earn over $500 million if it used contextual ads.

On 12/19/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 18/12/06, Parker Conrad <parkerconrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > I'm curious -- what is the objection to advertising? If there was, say,
> > one
> > > unobtrusive text ad per page, I imagine that would cover all of the
> > > wikimedia foundation's costs and allow new features to be developed a
> > little
> > > more quickly. Would people be offended and stop contributing?
> >
> >
> > Because people hate, despise and loathe the idea of advertising, and a
> > substantial fraction of the volunteers who write all the content would
> > get up and *leave*. And that would be bad.
> >
> > Basically, instead of the annoyance of advertising you get the
> > annoyance of slow servers on a Sunday afternoon and occasional
> > downtime. And people seem to be willing to accept that deal. Jimbo has
> > said in the past that downtime is our most lucrative product ;-)
> >
> > So we get money by asking the readers, and now that we have properly
> > audited books we're going after big-time donors.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
> Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with Coca-Cola
> buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
> perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a donation
> from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
> some of them have articles.
>
> Not that I support advertising on Wikipedia -- something just seems a bit
> disconnected.
>
> --
> theProject
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] J.L.W.S. The Special One has invited you to open a
	Google mail account

body:
I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
an invitation to create an account.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

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To accept this invitation and register for your account, visit
http://mail.google.com/mail/a-e691274bdf-4b936b095f-9fcf0691f7

Once you create your account, J.L.W.S. The Special One will be notified with
your new email address so you can stay in touch with Gmail!

If you haven't already heard about Gmail, it's a new search-based webmail
service that offers:

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out our new switch guide: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/switch/

We're still working every day to improve Gmail, so we might ask for your
comments and suggestions periodically.  We hope you'll like Gmail.  We
do.  And, it's only going to get better.

Thanks,

The Gmail Team

(If clicking the URLs in this message does not work, copy and paste them
into the address bar of your browser).


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/19/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Why not? If I'm an admin on that remote wiki, it might be handy when
> moving images to Commons. At the moment of writing this mail, there
> are 657,331 media files on en.wikipedia. If 1/3 of them (rough guess)
> are suitable for Commons, that means >200,000 manual deletions when
> moving. If an api would allow image deletions by admins, it would save
> a lot of unneccessary work, without compromising safety (the images
> are kept, and the api could also offer undelete).

These images need to be reviewed by a human.. many of them obtained a
free tag through license roulette and are obvious violations to even
the most cursory examination. A move to commons is a good time to
perform such a check.

This isn't an argument against the API allowing deletion, but just a
factor pointing out that the dream of fully automated moves should
never be made real. :)


from_name: George Herbert

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

references:
<20061219203220.OZAR29112.aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<45884E9D.5060403@gmail.com>
	<bujgo2dovnbbi3el5c12vg6688esjc73dv@4ax.com>

body:
On 12/19/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:42:05 -0600, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >The NOR policy section Sarah quoted tells those
> >people that their talents are not valued here.
>
> The problem here is that we cannot tell the difference between an
> expert and an "expert", and we don't necessarily know if the editor is
> pushing a personal agenda.
>
> But access to good academic references and knowledge of how to write a
> cited paper should allow any genuine expert to contribute
> authoritatively and without problems.
>
> Guy (JzG)

It seems to me that part of this is the way we want to spin this.

Yes, we all agree, we want good experts to come contribute and make highly
technical articles better.

No, we don't want to allow anyone including experts to slip unverifyable
unreferenced stuff in, because we basically don't know for sure what
anyone's qualifications are.

It is likely that in many cases, "anyone" isn't going to be qualified to
understand primary or secondary sources.  That is probably simply cold
reality; as an example, I don't understand much of the math in the advanced
physics articles, and less so in the primary sources, despite having had
many years of advanced university math.

Policies which are good for soft sciences, history, etc, where anyone
generally can read the source and understand it, are probably not a good
match for hard ones where even the notations used are domain-specific and
arbitrary.

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


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Firefox 2.0 spell checking

body:
We already communicate to the browser that nl.wikipedia.org is in
dutch, I haven't looked at the firefox 2.0 spell checker but I suspect
they don't do any language detection at all since:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="nl" lang="nl" dir="ltr">

is *the* standard way to say that a web page (and by extension any
text areas on it that don't have their own lang and xml:lang
attributes) is written in dutch.

With regards to the legal issues Gerard is right, there are none.


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with Coca-Cola
> buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
> perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a donation
> from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
> some of them have articles.

The nature of the relationship is different.  Consider the following
two scenarios:

1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on
Wikipedia.  Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been
manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat
sales.  They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel
the contract.  What does Wikipedia do?

2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation.  Some time
afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the
caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales.  They
tell us to keep it out of their article.  Wikipedia puts it in the
article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks.  What are they
going to do, ask for their donation back?

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Registering www.wikipedia.cat for ca.wikipedia.org

body:
Hi all,
I would like to suggest to register www.wikipedia.cat for ca.wikipedia.org; however I am not sure that this is the right place. Thnk you.
Claudi

---------------------------------
 D?couvrez une nouvelle fa?on d'obtenir des r?ponses ? toutes vos questions ! Profitez des connaissances, des opinions et des exp?riences des internautes sur Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Sarah wrote
> Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
> library.

Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.

We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.

Charles

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


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Firefox 2.0 spell checking

body:
Lars Aronsson schreef:
> The new version 2.0 of the (Mozilla) Firefox web browser supports
> spell checking in web forms.  This is a new feature with some
> obvious deficiencies that might be improved in coming versions.
>
> Has there been any discussion, proposal or attempts to adopt
> Firefox' spell checker to Wikipedia's needs? Currently, wiki
> syntax is not recognized, and the language needs to be set
> manually.  If I go to nl.wikipedia.org and click edit, I want the
> browser to automatically select the Dutch spelling dictionary.
> And there is no need to apply spell checking to interwiki links,
> external URLs, template names or template parameter names.
> Perhaps the website needs to communicate this to the browser by
> some tags to the HTML, e.g. <textarea lang=nl syntax=mediawiki>?
>
> Currently the language support in Firefox is only a spell checker.
> As a comparison, OpenOffice also offers automatic corrections (if
> I type "abotu", this can automatically be corrected to "about"),
> hyphenation, and a thesaurus.  I have no idea what is planned, but
> I guess these features will eventually creep into Firefox too.
>
> One option offered by the interaction between browser and website
> is that the spelling dictionary could be maintained and updated
> online.  For example, if I spell "abotu", a word not found in the
> browser's built-in dictionary, the browser could send a request to
> Wiktionary (-Z) for advice on that word.  This option is not so
> obvious to developers of OpenOffice as it should be to developers
> of Firefox.  This opens up a new can of legal worms: Should
> Wiktionary offer spelling help only for documents that are
> released under a free license?
Hoi,
The suggestion that a spell checker created from open content could only
operate on Open/Free content is absolutely brain dead. The point why you
want to build a spell checker is to provide better support to the people
who are in need of a spell checker. You do not open a can of legal
worms, spell checkers can operate on any content, you do not create a
derivative work in that way.

What is needed in the creation of content and in the use of the right
spell checker is for content to be marked correctly as to the language
it is. According to a presentation of Google only 15% of the content of
the web has an indication as to what language is used. Much of these 15%
are tagged incorrectly.
Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As far as templates on TFA, is there consensus as to whether they should be
> semi or fully protected? We're obviously dealing with somebody smart enough
> to start using sleeper accounts, is what I figure, but I'm not sure how much
> they've done so, yet.

Full protection, obviously. The incident last week where such
vandalism was on the main page for fifteen minutes until it was found
was by an established account, semi-protection wouldn't have stopped
it; indeed the template that was affected *was* semi-protected at the
time the vandalism occurred.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 12/19/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
>> with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images into
>> transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting this
>> to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
>> extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to it.
>> The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload them,
>> and protecting every single template on TFA (including
>> transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
>> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
>> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?
>
> Every type of vandalism goes away if we can implement a short delay
> before the page goes "live". Allow rollbacks/undos to be carried out
> on non-live versions of the page, and edits should also always be
> performed on the newest version.
>

You're wrong. Subtle vandalism isn't prevented by a time delay.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I assume most of the list's readers know what problems we've been having
> with the TFA each day on the main page (vandals inserting shock images into
> transcluded-on-transcluded templates). In case some don't, I'm posting this
> to see if anyone has ideas off how to avoid this. It's been discussed
> extensively on ANI, and there does not seem to be a workable solution to it.
> The images are being uploaded by sleeper socks old enough to upload them,
> and protecting every single template on TFA (including
> transcluded-on-transcluded ones) can be tedious for the admins. I've
> suggested perhaps substituting the templates before they become TFA (and
> re-transcluding after), but do the other list readers have any solution?

Every type of vandalism goes away if we can implement a short delay
before the page goes "live". Allow rollbacks/undos to be carried out
on non-live versions of the page, and edits should also always be
performed on the newest version.

The problem is not vandalism in itself. The problem is that our
timeframe for reacting to vandalism is zero. Any act of vandalism is
instantly visible to the entire world. Even a short delay of 2 minutes
would drastically reduce the incentive for vandals and their impact
even if successful.

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] J.L.W.S. The Special One has invited you to open
 a	Google mail account

body:
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:

>I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
>an invitation to create an account.
>
SPAM - I don't appreciate it

Ec


from_name: Rich Holton

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

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> zero 0000 wrote
>> 3. Sarah points out the following text from WP:NOR :
>>       "anyone--without specialist knowledge--who reads the
>>       primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
>>       passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation
>>       of primary source material requires a secondary source."
>>   That seems to be broken.  Examples of specialist knowledge
>>   which might be required are the ability to read a foreign
>>   language and the ability to understand mathematical notation.
>
> I agree. Not only is this implausible in technical areas - it looks like an extrapolation from current affairs and biography - it is self-defeating there. The whole point of making good surveys, in less technical language and aimed at the 'general reader', is to make an honest reformulation of technical literature by reducing the jargon. The aim is to end up with readable articles, with reliable sources attached. It is not at all clear that the 'general reader' should be assumed competent to compare the originals, in say general relativity, with the formulation given. In fact the more this is insisted upon, the harder it may be to write for wide comprehension.
>
Right. This is the sort of thing that leads people to conclude that
Wikipedia has a bias against experts. Those people who can read and
understand highly specialized source _and_ communicate those ideas in
language that is accessible to the general reader are the people we need
to attract to Wikipedia. The NOR policy section Sarah quoted tells those
people that their talents are not valued here.

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The policy dictating the protection of templates and images directly on
> the Main Page is long-standing. Luna was referring to the templates on
> Today's Featured Article itself; the protection of images / templates on
> that article is a relatively new thing.

Of course, what I was intending to convey is that the type of
vandalism we're seeing lately (using more complicated tricks of
wikisyntax), of which that main page template vandalism was the
clearest example, isn't something that can be defeated by
semi-protection.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Lars Aronsson

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

body:
Aphaia wrote:

> Again, "the pun is one of most difficulties for translation".
> There are at least two ways to deal with:

C.O.R.E. is not a pun, because it isn't funny.  I'm not laughing
when I see this user interface and this translation request.
Most importantly, the translation request on meta doesn't provide
any context, not even a link back to the website
fundraising.wikimedia.org.

I made the Swedish translation of http://www.citeulike.org/
and that work was a dream, because of how the user interface was
designed.  It was the wiki principle applied to a UI.  I was
browsing the real website, never out of context, but every phrase
had an edit link.  There is a lot to learn from there.

The existing Swedish translation, made by two anonymous editors,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_C.O.R.E./sv
has at least two obvious spelling errors (that any spellchecker
would reveal) and several phrases that just sound stupid.  But
worse than that, since no context is provided I cannot determine
if "Count" is supposed to be the verb or the noun, and if "Total"
is supposed to be the adjective (and what gender) or the noun
(total sum, grand total), so I cannot tell if the current
translations are OK or plain wrong.  I have to flip between the
website and the phrase list, in a very frustrating hunt.  The
first phrase in the list is the longest and hardest ("Discloses
fundraising data while preserving requested donor privacy."), but
I cannot find this phrase in the live user interface.  Since one
of the blatant spelling errors is in that phrase, I see no point
in fixing the spelling error while letting the rest of the overly
complicated phrase stand ("medans donatorns privatliv bevaras"
is worse than child language).

On the website fundraising.wikimedia.org, the first phrase on the
page is "Wikimedia Fundraising C.O.R.E." and I am allowed to
translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.", but I cannot translate the next
line "Central Online Reporting Engine", so I suppose that phrase
will continue to appear in English?!  And the non-Swedish word
Fundraising is already in the URL, so there is little point in
trying to translate "Fundraising C.O.R.E.".

Judging from the French and Czech translations of the website, the
phrases "Coming soon: RSS feeds and maybe an IRC bot", "We're
working on translating this site into multiple languages. You can
help." and "Languages" still appear in English, as does the
navigation bar with "Gift Policy" and "Old Fundraising Records"

I give up.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Kusma

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> > If nothing else, this indicates another reason why nested-
> > transclusion is problematic, and why complexity like this ought
> > perhaps to be avoided.  (But of course this observation does
> > nothing to solve the current problem.)
>
> True!
>
> Perhaps a solution would be a sort of reverse whatlinkshere, showing
> all the pages that are transcluded by a page so that they can all be
> protected.  Time-limited protection would also be useful here, but I
> doubt this mitigates the disadvantages in other areas.
>

The pages transcluded are already shown at the bottom of the edit page.

I think we should have an additional feature (let's call it
[[Special:Recentchangestranscluded]]) that shows all changes to
templates used on an article (all levels of transclusion). Then we
could easily spot the offending change and revert, block and ignore
the vandal as quickly as we do for regular FA vandalism. The problem
is not that penis vandalism happens on a page linked to from the Main
Page (we are used to that, and do not protect the FA of the day), it
is that finding out what exactly has happened and reverting it takes
too long. We just have to make it easy to figure out how to revert the
vandalism.

Kusma


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Additional Sitenotice message

body:
Right - I added a new page for translation of the "anonymous" version of the
site notice.

I have placed
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_request/WMF/Fundraising_Sitenotice%28Anonymous%29/2006on
meta-wiki, is anyone available to translate this one sentence?

"Your contribution today will be matched by an anonymous donor."

As for links, the "contribution" link goes to [[Fundraising]] page, and if
possible "matching" to Fundraising_FAQ.  The emphasis is on the culturally
normal practice of having benefactors remain anonymous.

"Matching" is for some a new concept, which is why it should go to the FAQ
if at all possible.

Thank you!

On 12/19/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I have seen it and started a translation into Japanese. I'll
> appreciate your copyedit. > jafolks
>
> Soon Brad will inform us I expect so my question will be answered
> there - Is it okay to change the link target of "matching" from WMF
> website to its language wikipedia or wiktionary, if a decent article
> exists on the latter and there is no Fundraising FAQ available in that
> language?
>
> I confess my version of additional message is exactly such, so if
> there is any problem, please rewrite it (I put a remark about this
> change for our proofreader).
>
> Cheers,
> --
> KIZU Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


from_name: henna

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
On 12/19/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19/12/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 19/12/06, henna <henna at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> > > there was a huge fuss when the feature was introduced on nl: :)
>
> I've been advised that this change is causing problems on projects
> where all autoconfirmed users are allowed to mark changes patrolled,
> since it's negating the effects of recent changes patrol for users
> older than four days.
>
> I'm not sure what the most effective cure for this would be, to be
> honest; I would think it more appropriate to restrict patrolling back
> up to administrators. Of course, if we had a nice new interface for
> assigning permissions, then we could probably create a "patrollers"
> group and have done with it.

I'm seriously in favor of creating a group with patrollers rights,
preferably something that you get automatically (like autoconfirmed,
but longer), but that you can be trown out from easily when patrolling
the wrong stuff.  For this we would need a record of who patrolled
what tho.

henna

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're wrong. Subtle vandalism isn't prevented by a time delay.

Yeah, I didn't read closely enough. Although, come to think of it, the
issue is basically the same:

Page A indirectly transcludes page X. User U can't modify page A, but
can modify X. Modifying X instantly modifies the appearance of A: big
problem.

If there was a time delay between when the change was made to X and
when the change appeared on A, there would be time to react. One way
to do that might be to "freeze" all the templates that appear in A,
perhaps by cloning them (with subst) to protected copies of
themselves. Or perhaps by hacking the page caching code? Maybe give
some trusted user the ability to control when the rendered view of the
page is updated?

It seems pointless to me to attempt to somehow predict or track down
vandals who are obviously pretty cluey and determined. Much better to
focus our efforts on reducing the effectiveness of vandalism in
general.

Oh, one last thought: if the major is problem is certain bad images,
would there be any way of tagging those images so that they simply
could not be displayed on the main page (or other designated page)?
Regardless of how many layers of transclusion? This might have to be
right at the web server level...?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Assume good faith" is no longer policy.

body:
On 12/18/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/17/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Incidentally, see the "Assume high intelligence" bit?
>
> Yeah.  That should be a different guideline, at least, and probably
> someone should do an essay attempting to put forth a coherent idea of
> what exactly it means and how to interpret it.
>
> If it's an attempt to say "please stop telling people that they're
> dumb so often" then it belongs under NPA anyways.

I actually think it's the complete reverse of what AGF is really
about. I frequently interpret AGF as "Assume incompetence". That is,
assume that someone is just clueless, absentminded, ignorant or
something, rather than malicious...

Steve


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
I thought it was agreed "Your donation will be matched by an anonymous
friend."


body:
You are right - donor = friend.  That's a nice translation. :-)

Danny is right, it should read "anonymous friend".

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I thought it was agreed "Your donation will be matched by an anonymous
> friend."
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
2006/12/18, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
>
> On wikis where recent changes patrol ($wgUseRCPatrol) is enabled,
> users who are permitted to mark edits as patrolled (administrators,
> usually) have an additional user preference; when enabled, this causes
> their edits to be automatically marked as patrolled. I added this some
> time ago.
>
> I'm wondering whether or not it would have been a better idea for me
> to simply make this the default behaviour, and do away with the toggle
> altogether; it certainly makes more sense now, on reflection.
>
> What do people think? This is also bug 5411.
>

Recent changes patrol is on on Dutch Wikipedia, and auto-patrolling edits is
very much frowned upon there. You would get more agreement on a change where
noone can check their own edits as patrolled than on a change where people
do this automatically.

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


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
On 12/19/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 20/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > Anyone else think it would be good to be able to refine a linksearch
> > by namespace?  Or can this be done with black magic already?
> >
> > Guy (JzG)
>
> It can be done with google specials I am guessing.
>
> I use 'site:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User: "blah" ' when I want to search
> just user pages. Not sure how you would do it with article space
> though.
>
> Peter
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

He's referring to [[Special:Linksearch]].


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/19/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Having watched the discussion and thought about it for a few hours, I
> think that of the options which are technically viable, this one seems
> to win for ease of near-term implimentation and completeness of proper
> function.
>
> Assuming that a {{subst:}} works recursively and automatically, which
> I really don't know...  My MediaWiki installation is outside my
> immediate hands-on test radius unfortunately.

Naively substituting all templates used on a given page isn't viable
imho - some templates would subst into a huge, ugly mess of code. What
I was attempting to suggest before was taking something like this:

{{infobox foo|
aoeuoae|
oaueoau|
...
}}

and substituting it into a temporary template, then replacing that in
the page code:

{{_tfa_infobox foo|
aoeuoae|
oaueoau|
...
}}

It's a bit of work to organise (every template used on the page has to
go through this protection mechanism), but has the advantage that the
effect on the code in the page itself is minimal: every instance of {{
is replaced by {{_tfa_, and then vice-versa after the page is no
longer TFA.

Steve


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/19/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> 3) Rather a lot of the SVGs on Wikimedia are *created* using Inkscape,
> so the rendering will be precisely what the author saved.

Except for differences in the font collections.. although we should
make sure to have at least one consistent font installed everywhere
and tell people on all platforms to use that font. (The obvious
recommendation would be dejavu
http://dejavu.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page  since it's
complete, free, and included in most current Linux distros as the
default font).


from_name: Asher

subject: [Foundation-l] Club Supports The Wikimedia Foundation

body:
The Resources of Sheboygan Club is saying that they will being supporting The Wikimedia Foundation.

  What can The Resources of Sheboygan Club do to support The Wikimedia Foundation?

  The Resources of Sheboygan Club has a good background in providing free educational and informational services to the online community as well as Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

  http://www.roscfriends.tripod.com

  Asher

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


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Magnus Manske" <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote
in message
news:fab0ecb70612190104y741e5bb6of789bb1ca3132d51 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 12/19/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk>
wrote:
> >
> > I agree, Special:Import should copy the full image history as well as
the
> > full page history.  The way it is at the moment just feels broken, and
> > making it a two stage process won't fix that.
>
> OK. So, how do we handle the user ids from the other project? Do we
> assume single login is in place? Or do we create dummy users like
> "en:someguy", user_id=0? (I didn't bother to look how it's handled in
> Special:Import right now, easier to ask here;-)
>
> Also, if we plan to do mass-moving, of images, should we add this
> function to the api? What about handling the deletion of the images on
> the "source wiki"? If these functions were available using
> "name=xxx&password=yyy" on the api, it would save a lot of clicks with
> a decent front-end (which I then would volunteer to develop;-)
>

The current system works fine, as far as I am concerned.  The import is a
one-way process, and doesn't touch the material on the source wiki.  This is
as it should be, as there will be situations where you are trying to copy,
not move the material.  Currently you do the import and, if the content is
being moved, login to the remote wiki and either delete the page or add a
soft redirect. There should definitely _not_ be a mechanism for remotely
deleting wiki content from a remote wiki!

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Sarah wrote
> > Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
> > library.
>
> Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
>
> We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
>
Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to
fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia,
so that has to be our priority. Your argument seems to be that because
everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to,
and that we should instead leave the writing and research to
self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may
have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by
other experts in the field.

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

Sarah


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
I'm not aware of any current black magic solutions to sort by namespace,
unfortunately, although it seems like Javascript would proooobably be up to
the task. I'd also be intrigued if we could sort [[Special:Whatlinkshere]]
results by namespace.

Unfortunately, I know next to no JS. :p

-Luna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
<snip>
> Oh, one last thought: if the major is problem is certain bad images,
> would there be any way of tagging those images so that they simply
> could not be displayed on the main page (or other designated page)?
> Regardless of how many layers of transclusion? This might have to be
> right at the web server level...?
>

[[MediaWiki:Bad image list]] does this, but in this case they were
uploading the images they were using.

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

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from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
There have also been suggestions of communicating with the vandal's ISP.
Should that just take place, instead of us trying to figure out how to
preempt the vandal?


from_name: James Hare

body:
Indeed. We should be using good sources to write articles for the
publically-available Wikipedia. Ain't our fault all the good stuff can't be
afforded by everyone.

On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Sarah wrote
> > Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
> > library.
>
> Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up
> anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global
> project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check
> anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5%
> of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
>
> We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source
> material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet
> connection.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
> Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

>"You took the words right out of my mouth."  Exactly.  For those who
>want answers,
>(a) it's complicated
>(b) the answer is "it depends"
>(c) there is no "right" answer
>(d) if there is a "right" answer, it can be challenged
>(e) no, we aren't going to represent you to fight about it.
>
>This is a somewhat flip response, but it is the truth.
>
It may seem "flip", but it's a good starting point.  The first four are
as clear an expression of the law as one can expect.  The area where the
law of any country will clearly result in an act being absolutely legal
or absolutely illegal is very thin indeed.  The grey area in between is
massive.

I agree with (e) being a policy statement.  The costs involved would
suggest filling a bottomless money pit.  Since a decision to represent
anyone would imply a decision about which ones to represent, it is just
as well not to open that question.  Certainly, representing everyone who
is sued would be completely impractical.

Even more important, defending any editor would imply accepting that
editor's IP bias.  May I be so bold as to say that this would not
represent an Neutral Point of View.  It may very well be that the
Foundation should observe a policy of strict neutrality in regards to
the activities of editors.  Thus, it should not be up to the Foundation
to determine whether there has in fact been a copyright violation.  Be
that as it may it needs to establish protocols for dealing with such
situations.  Not all apparent copyright violations that appear in the
projects are from people who understand what they are doing, or who
would be willing to take a stand if the situation were made clear to
them.  The Foundation itself, like the law itself, remains blind to such
violations until some individual has identified it and raised the
question.  Even a Trustee is an individual.

When an editor has been notified (most likely on his talk page) that
there is an apparent copyright violation he should respond within a
reasonable time (probably a week); otherwise, he will have acquiesced to
the determination by default.  Different procedures can be established
for those who claim that they did not receive the notification, but that
too presumes that they at least knew of the notice from the day that
they complained that they didn't.

An editor who wants to make a case that his action is within the law
needs to have the opportunity to do so at his own expense.  That expense
could be considerable, but it could also be negligible in the case of
material that is truly orphaned.  Thus when an editor is serious it
becomes important that the requirements for take-down orders be strictly
followed.  The Foundation needs to abide by these orders for its own
protection.  Doing so puts the case firmly in the hands of the editors,
and not necessarily just the one who made the allegedly offending
contribution.  If the matter is to go any further there are legally
defined steps which they must take, failing which the issue dies.  This
is why too I believe that all formal takedown orders whould be a matter
of the public record.

The Foundation should, of course, be prepared to defend itself if it is
sued.  If properly formulated takedown orders have been issued
compliance with that order is a good defence, as is failure to comply
with an order that is not properly formulated.  An order which is
missing key information is not properly formulated.  What would be wrong
would be for the Foundation to engage in argument or put forth a defence
(such as fair use) which would be the responsibility of the editors.

If I have limited myself to copyright matters it is not because I want
to ignore other legal issues.  Parallel treatments are likely
applicable, and tighter rules may be needed in other issues such as
libel where the damage can be more immediate.

>David Monniaux wrote:
>
>
>>Yann Forget wrote:
>>
>>
>>>For my practical use, is a photograph taken in India in 1908 by a Indian
>>>photographer is public domain in USA (first published in India)? and if
>>>it is taken in 1920? in 1945? and if the photographer is American (first
>>>published in USA)? and if the photographer is from a third country,
>>>England, for example? (Indian copyright law is "public domain 60 years
>>>after publication" for photographs and sound recordings).
>>>
It may not always be easy to establish when the picture was taken, or
who took it.  The evidence is often circumstantial.  A standard portrait
cannot be taken after a person's death.  Automobile models in the
background can be helpful in dating a picture.  A photo album that I
found in an eBay lot with unidentified photos from Honolulu could be
dated as no earlier than 1899 because a lawyer whose name appears in a
window started his business in that year, and no later than 1906 because
that was the last year in which Honolulu used horse drawn trams.  I have
no idea whether these photos were ever published anywhere.

>>Two major problems here:
>>* In many cases, copyright questions may be resolved only on a
>>case-by-case basis. For instance, in many countries, copyright only
>>protects "works of the mind" with no exhaustive and clear definition of
>>what a work of the mind is, and it is possible that certain technical
>>photographs are not works of the mind that can be protected by
>>copyright. However, deciding whether this is the case for a particular
>>photograph will entail examining details related to the photographic
>>process, and thus no clear-cut global answer can be provided.
>>
The case-by-case basis cannot be overemphasized.  That is one reason why
the Foundation cannot put itself in the position of making such
determinations.

>>* In many cases, what we intend to do simply has not been tested in
>>court. People often mistakenly believe that there are things that are
>>"legal" vs things that are "prohibited" and thus that lawyers can tell
>>us which is which. In reality, there are things clearly legal, those
>>clearly illegal, and things in between for which a lawyer may only give
>>some kind of educated guess of whether that would fly in court (which in
>>turn depends on how well we argue our case in court).
>>
Absolutely!  Some countries do not allow people to put their works into
the public domain.  Others which do require such a notice to be
notarized.  Most "free licences", and provisions therin, remain untested
by the courts anywhere.

>>Both of this clash with the expectations of many of our users and
>>admins, that is, to get black and white "yes / no" answers to legal queries.
>>
Sure!  It all comes down to editors accepting responsibility for what
they do.  There is no passing on that responsibility to other editors or
to the Foundation.  That desire reflects an even greater social problem
outside of the Wikimedia projects.  Those with expectations are going to
need to get over it, and to learn that lottery tickets do not come with
a guarantee that you will have the price refunded if you do not win.

Ec


body:
geni wrote:

>On 12/14/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>
>>* In many cases, copyright questions may be resolved only on a
>>case-by-case basis.
>>
>>
>So we redefine the question to one that is somewhat more posible to
>answer and in some ways more useful.
>
That won't work.  If you redefine the question it's no longer the same
question.

Ec


body:
On 12/19/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Would anyone like to fiddle with this, put together a test daemon? (Or
> at least a test program that uses the library to render a bunch of
> images from a list, so we can benchmark.) It's probably not that
> difficult, and would be a fun way for some of the Java-heads in the room
> to get involved. ;)

So I decided to do this, .. but I discovered that the
batik-rasterizer.jar already supports running on a collection of svgs
in a single run. It's much faster than running it once per image, but
still much slower than rsvg.

My test collection is 10 'hard svgs' (average size of about 200k, all
commons featured images) plus 10 'easy svgs' (color bar flags all
around 1k or so).

Inkscape is 0.44.1 (fedora rpms)
Rsvg is 2.16.1 (fedora rpms)
batik is 1.6 on SUN Jre 1.5.0_09

System under test is a 1.5ghz pentium-m.

Test - Wallclock time
* rsvg 800px - 14.2 seconds
* Inkscape 800px - 18.277 seconds
* Batik 800px - 38.7
* rsvg 250px - 7.9 seconds
* Inkscape 250px - 8.5 seconds
* Batik 250px - 25.5 seconds

Java vm for Batik is in client mode (server mode is quite a bit
slower.. perhaps on a bigger test set? .. I'll try one later on an
opteron box). Inkscape is called with --without-gui -w width, and both
rsvg and inkscape are forked once per image.


body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>I don't believe you understand how useful it would be
>to just have some one say "That particular case is
>unknown.  The most similar case to this is Foobar."
>Even if there were a table of questions that people
>have asked in the past with yes/no/unknown and no
>futher advice would be extremely helpful.  I think it
>a false expectation of yours that we are expecting
>clearcut answers.  Really we have been mucking through
>copyright questions as best we can for some time; we
>are all well aware there are often not answers only
>arguments.  Just being able to eliminate some
>arguments as invalid would be very helpful.
>
We've been "mucking through" since day one.  Your proposal makes sense
until one examines the disciplined way in which Wikipedians deal with
such things.  High marks for optimism. ;-)

Ec


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Aside from the potential issues with the WMF "officially" giving such
>advice to the communities, Brad (our GC and ED) simply doesn't have
>the time to do this.
>
Nod.

>Let's brainstorm about how we can get juriwiki-l
>going, i.e. a functioning, community-driven group of advisors with
>demonstrable legal expertise.
>
Given the history of how threads tend to wander into nothingness, most
issues end up rolling back down the hill like Sisypus' boulder.

>At the moment juriwiki-l is configured so that postings from the
>outside are moderated and replied to by a group of insiders. Is there
>any real issue, from a legal point of view, with making it a public
>mailing list? This is perhaps something Brad can answer.
>
>
There are both good and bad reasons for a public or private list.  I
can't see any of our lawyer types (Brad included) putting themselves in
a position where their legal observations can be used against them.
Public perception is often very different from what a person actually
says.  This is especially problematical where people expect answers even
when answers don't exist.

We really need to promote an attitude of critical thinking in a game
theoretical model.  It might even take a whole new wiki, but I'm not
sure of that.  The state of the law is questionable when any kind of
solution really depends on a sophisticated analysis that depends on the
efforts of professionals at a cost far in excess of the amounts being
discussed.

Maybe we need to be writing our own law.  Free the law!

Ec


from_name: Steve

body:
Technically, I don't see a difference.

Also, who would physically make sure it stayed out of the article? They'd
quickly be reverted.

WMF couldn't make such a guarantee in the first place, and I'm pretty sure
language to that effect would appear in any advertising contract.

-S

On 12/19/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/18/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Someone's going to have to explain this to me. If the problem with
> Coca-Cola
> > buying advertisements on our site is that our article on them might be
> > perceived as not NPOV, then how is it any different if we accept a
> donation
> > from them? As far as I know, we do have a list of fairly big donors, and
> > some of them have articles.
>
> The nature of the relationship is different.  Consider the following
> two scenarios:
>
> 1) Starbucks signs a $20,000-a-month contract to place banner ads on
> Wikipedia.  Some time afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been
> manipulating the caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat
> sales.  They tell us to keep it out of their article or they'll cancel
> the contract.  What does Wikipedia do?
>
> 2) Starbucks gives Wikipedia a $20,000 donation.  Some time
> afterwards, it comes out that Starbucks has been manipulating the
> caffeine levels of their products to encourage repeat sales.  They
> tell us to keep it out of their article.  Wikipedia puts it in the
> article and thumbs its collective nose at Starbucks.  What are they
> going to do, ask for their donation back?
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY

On 12/18/06, Parker Conrad <parkerconrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm curious -- what is the objection to advertising? If there was, say,
> one
> unobtrusive text ad per page, I imagine that would cover all of the
> wikimedia foundation's costs and allow new features to be developed a
> little
> more quickly. Would people be offended and stop contributing?
>
>
> On 12/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Feed the 'pedia, Let them know it's cup-rattling time ... I've put a
> > note on my blog, as has Kat Walsh:
> >
> >   http://reddragdiva.livejournal.com/375133.html
> >   http://mindspillage.livejournal.com/11763.html
> >
> > If others could follow suit, that would probably be a good thing. If
> > we're not going to have ads on the site, we need to get the money
> > other ways. Let EVERYONE know we need their pennies!
> >
> > (Note I also suggest that if they're not cashed up, they can give us
> > photos or write stuff!)
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Sarah wrote:
> On 12/19/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>> Sarah wrote
>>> Any public library can order material that's in a regular academic
>>> library.
>> Sorry - any public library in Kerala, Kampala or even Lima can order up anything from any academic library? Do remember that this is a global project. The 'populist' idea that anybody should be able to fact-check anything rather founders on the reality that it at most refers to about 5% of the world population, selected just about entirely on wealth.
>>
>> We are really doing the opposite: making the cream of reliable-source material actually globally available whereever there is a decent internet connection.
>>
> Charles, anyone in the English-speaking world should be able easily to
> fact-check our material, and this is the English-language Wikipedia,
> so that has to be our priority. Your argument seems to be that because
> everyone in the world can't fact-check it, no one should be able to,
> and that we should instead leave the writing and research to
> self-selected Wikipiedia "experts," many of whom are anonymous and may
> have no expertise at all, or if they do, may not be highly regarded by
> other experts in the field.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly that we should make the cream of
> reliable-source material globally available, but I strongly disagree
> with allowing Wikipedians to insert their own opinions and
> interpretations between those sources and our readers.
>
> Sarah

Sarah,

It seems to me that there are two related but separate issues that are
getting intertwined here. I'm not sure if I'm just reading you wrong, or
  something else.

At times it seems that you are suggesting that reference material that
is not "generally available" is off limits for Wikipedia references.
While we might be able to discuss what level of unavailability makes a
reference unsatisfactory, but those responding here seem to think that,
for instance, a legal database, or a subscription-only database are
acceptable.

The other issue is that of Original Research, and where "collation and
organization" becomes OR.

My thought is that it's better to keep the two issues separate. If you
see them as directly related, please do make it clear how.

-Rich


body:
On 12/19/06, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sarah,
>
> It seems to me that there are two related but separate issues that are
> getting intertwined here. I'm not sure if I'm just reading you wrong, or
>   something else.
>
> At times it seems that you are suggesting that reference material that
> is not "generally available" is off limits for Wikipedia references.
> While we might be able to discuss what level of unavailability makes a
> reference unsatisfactory, but those responding here seem to think that,
> for instance, a legal database, or a subscription-only database are
> acceptable.

Richard, I agree they're separate issues.

I don't mean that we should only use sources that are *easily*
available, because that would be very limiting, but they must be
reasonably available in the English-speaking world. I can't be precise
about what I mean by "reasonable," but broadly speaking the man in the
street should not have to move mountains, or pay a great deal of
money, to obtain the material if he's determined to find it, and the
source must be a published, citable one, not something circulated
within a limited group of people.
>
> The other issue is that of Original Research, and where "collation and
> organization" becomes OR.

The issues of availability of sources and OR merge when a Wikipedian
explores a database that isn't widely available, as Zero was
suggesting, adds his own interpretation of his research on that
database to an article, and then calls the database his "source," even
though there isn't a single document in that database that actually
supports what he's saying. In other words, he has no citable,
published source. That's a violation of NOR and V; it's a misuse of
the primary source (the database); and it's arguably not reasonable to
expect the man in the street to find a way to duplicate the research.

But otherwise, yes, I agree it's best to keep the two issues -- OR and
availability of source material -- separate.

Sarah


from_name: simo amed

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE : Re: SVN: [18372] trunk/phase3 Special:Booksources

body:
please stop  your message
  stop

Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> a ?crit :
  On 19/12/06, Raimond Spekking wrote:
> booksources-summary is defined but not used at the special page. Could
> it be activated please?

It seems to be redundant, what with "booksources-text", but since I
don't read German all that well, I'm not sure whether I understand the
purpose of the message right.

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

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
En finir avec le spam? Yahoo! Courriel vous offre la meilleure protection possible contre les messages non nollicit?s
http://mail.yahoo.ca Yahoo! Courriel


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] J.L.W.S. The Special One has invited you to open
	a Google mail account

body:
If you hate this thread so much, why are you still giving it attention?

On 12/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 19/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
> >
> > >I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
> > >an invitation to create an account.
> > >
> > SPAM - I don't appreciate it
>
> You could always start by assuming it was an accident.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
Sam Korn wrote:
>
> Perhaps a solution would be a sort of reverse whatlinkshere, showing
> all the pages that are transcluded by a page so that they can all be
> protected.  Time-limited protection would also be useful here, but I
> doubt this mitigates the disadvantages in other areas.

There is one already: just click the "edit" tab and look beneath the
edit box.  I've been wondering, as I've been reading this thread, why
people don't just go through the list and protect all the templates
listed there.  After all, that seems like the easiest solution by far.

(Then again, the solution of using Special:ExpandTemplates to create a
templateless protected copy on a subpage, and linking to that instead of
directly to the original article, has its merits too.)

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 19/12/06, Abigail Brady <morwen at evilmagic.org> wrote:
> On 12/19/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes. AGF can be thought of as a nicer way of saying "Never assume
> > malice when incompetence will suffice."
>
> For historical interest, you may which to see the initial version of
> AGF that I wrote.  It wasn't some "let's all hug and be happy" type
> thing, it was some practical notes about how assuming good faith is a
> good debating tactic because you can give your opponent Enough Rope
> (tm).
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith&oldid=3024815
>
> --
> Abi

I don't think it is okay to assume malice. If you think something is
malice you should have some proof, including an effort to discern the
nature of the action. I guess it depends also on whether you are
thinking about the idea in the context of a discussion, or in the
context of vandalism on articles or otherwise.

Peter Ansell


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

body:
"Magnus Manske" <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote
in message
news:fab0ecb70612191032s4db8b922h4e121b4413b6c3ba at mail.gmail.com...
> On 12/19/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk>
wrote:
> > The current system works fine, as far as I am concerned.  The import is
a
> > one-way process, and doesn't touch the material on the source wiki.
This is
> > as it should be, as there will be situations where you are trying to
copy,
> > not move the material.  Currently you do the import and, if the content
is
> > being moved, login to the remote wiki and either delete the page or add
a
> > soft redirect. There should definitely _not_ be a mechanism for remotely
> > deleting wiki content from a remote wiki!
>
> Why not? If I'm an admin on that remote wiki, it might be handy when
> moving images to Commons. At the moment of writing this mail, there
> are 657,331 media files on en.wikipedia. If 1/3 of them (rough guess)
> are suitable for Commons, that means >200,000 manual deletions when
> moving. If an api would allow image deletions by admins, it would save
> a lot of unneccessary work, without compromising safety (the images
> are kept, and the api could also offer undelete).
>

Because you are changing the trust model.  PersonA is an admin on WikiA and
has been trusted enough to delete articles and to perform a transwiki
import.  WikiB has not made PersonA an admin - they (implicitly) do not
trust PersonA to delete articles.  However, PersonA is allowed to delete
articles by using the transwiki import + delete.

Admins at WikiA have full delete rights at WikiB, even if they are
non-admins and explicitly blocked at WikiB!

I understand that you qualified your statement with "If I'm an admin on that
remote wiki...", but I don't see how that can be done without explicitly
requiring a username/password each time a user wants to delete (plus, you
are then giving your remote details to the local wiki sysadmin - an
unscrupulous sysadmin or maybe even a badly behaved extension would be able
to access these).

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Auto-patrol preference

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> 2006/12/18, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
>> On wikis where recent changes patrol ($wgUseRCPatrol) is enabled,
>> users who are permitted to mark edits as patrolled (administrators,
>> usually) have an additional user preference; when enabled, this causes
>> their edits to be automatically marked as patrolled. I added this some
>> time ago.
>>
>> What do people think? This is also bug 5411.
>
> Recent changes patrol is on on Dutch Wikipedia, and auto-patrolling edits is
> very much frowned upon there. You would get more agreement on a change where
> noone can check their own edits as patrolled than on a change where people
> do this automatically.

Right.  I believe it rather comes down to how patrolling is being used
on each project.  _If_ we assume that all patrollers are implicitly
trusted (say, admins), _and_ that patrollers are only expected to check
for problems that any trusted user will always recognize (say, blatant
vandalism), then it makes sense for the edits of patrollers to be marked
as patrolled, since we trust them and expect them to recognize any
potential problems in their own edits.

However, if we're allowing potentially untrusted users to patrol (on the
assumption that most of them are still trustworthy, and that having one
untrustworthy user patrol the edit of another is even less likely), or
if we're expecting patrollers to check for mistakes that even generally
trusted users might make in good faith, then it certainly doesn't make
sense to allow, let alone force, users to patrol their own edits.

The former situation apparently holds on Meta, the latter on the Dutch
Wikipedia.  Perhaps the solution is to make this a project-wide setting,
rather than a per-user one.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
Not to get philosophical, but don't we always give the most attention to the
things we hate?

-S

On 12/19/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If you hate this thread so much, why are you still giving it attention?
>
> On 12/19/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 19/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > > J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
> > >
> > > >I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out.
> Here's
> > > >an invitation to create an account.
> > > >
> > > SPAM - I don't appreciate it
> >
> > You could always start by assuming it was an accident.
> >
> > --
> > Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] J.L.W.S. The Special One has invited you to open
 a Google mail account

body:
gwern branwen wrote:
> On 12/19/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/18/06, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip>
>> Ah, the dangers of the "Invite Wikipedia to Gmail" button. :-)
>>
>
> Wikimail - the email account anyone can edit?
> Number 11 on Jimbo's list of Things That Should Be Free - Free the Emails?
> All licensed under the GNU Free Email License (GFEL)?
>

Ahh, the wonders of trimming your quoted replies...

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

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from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
On 12/19/06, Mark Clements <gmane at kennel17.co.uk> wrote:
> The current system works fine, as far as I am concerned.  The import is a
> one-way process, and doesn't touch the material on the source wiki.  This is
> as it should be, as there will be situations where you are trying to copy,
> not move the material.  Currently you do the import and, if the content is
> being moved, login to the remote wiki and either delete the page or add a
> soft redirect. There should definitely _not_ be a mechanism for remotely
> deleting wiki content from a remote wiki!

Why not? If I'm an admin on that remote wiki, it might be handy when
moving images to Commons. At the moment of writing this mail, there
are 657,331 media files on en.wikipedia. If 1/3 of them (rough guess)
are suitable for Commons, that means >200,000 manual deletions when
moving. If an api would allow image deletions by admins, it would save
a lot of unneccessary work, without compromising safety (the images
are kept, and the api could also offer undelete).

Magnus


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images

body:
On 12/19/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi - I'd be interested to know the thinking behind the exclusion of
> non-commercial images please. Anyone care to explain?

Erik has a good explanation of the reasons for not using content under
a non-commercial license at http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC

Angeka

--
Angela Beesley
Wikia.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Non-commercial images


from_name: gwern branwen

body:
On 12/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> gwern branwen wrote:
> > On 12/19/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 12/18/06, J.L.W.S. The Special One <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> >> Ah, the dangers of the "Invite Wikipedia to Gmail" button. :-)
> >>
> >
> > Wikimail - the email account anyone can edit?
> > Number 11 on Jimbo's list of Things That Should Be Free - Free the Emails?
> > All licensed under the GNU Free Email License (GFEL)?
> >
>
> Ahh, the wonders of trimming your quoted replies...
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax

The information is still there, you know. If I got rid of the date and
author, then I might be guilty of taking trimming way too far...
Actually, that sounds like a good barber horror novel title: "Trimming
Way Too Far".

--Gwern
at least, it sends shivers down _my_ spine!


from_name: Bence Damokos

body:
>
> Admins at WikiA have full delete rights at WikiB, even if they are
> non-admins and explicitly blocked at WikiB!

As I understand this feature in no way would give deletion rights of WikiA
at WikiB,  they would still delete the file only at WikiA, regardless of the
interface they use.

I understand that you qualified your statement with "If I'm an admin on that
> remote wiki...", but I don't see how that can be done without explicitly
> requiring a username/password each time a user wants to delete (plus, you
> are then giving your remote details to the local wiki sysadmin - an
> unscrupulous sysadmin or maybe even a badly behaved extension would be
> able
> to access these).
>
Shouldn't single login (minus username conflicts), allow such
identification?

Bence


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

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

body:
zero 0000 wrote
> 3. Sarah points out the following text from WP:NOR :
>       "anyone--without specialist knowledge--who reads the
>       primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia
>       passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation
>       of primary source material requires a secondary source."
>   That seems to be broken.  Examples of specialist knowledge
>   which might be required are the ability to read a foreign
>   language and the ability to understand mathematical notation.

I agree. Not only is this implausible in technical areas - it looks like an extrapolation from current affairs and biography - it is self-defeating there. The whole point of making good surveys, in less technical language and aimed at the 'general reader', is to make an honest reformulation of technical literature by reducing the jargon. The aim is to end up with readable articles, with reliable sources attached. It is not at all clear that the 'general reader' should be assumed competent to compare the originals, in say general relativity, with the formulation given. In fact the more this is insisted upon, the harder it may be to write for wide comprehension.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
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from_name: SJ Klein

body:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Aphaia wrote:
>> And I have no idea if it is good or not to represent English with UK
>> national flag. Is it controvertial for many language communities or
>> not?
>
> Please don't use flags to represent languages, ever.

Seconded.

It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but can't
recall where.

SJ


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

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

body:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:42:05 -0600, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com>
wrote:

>The NOR policy section Sarah quoted tells those
>people that their talents are not valued here.

The problem here is that we cannot tell the difference between an
expert and an "expert", and we don't necessarily know if the editor is
pushing a personal agenda.

But access to good academic references and knowledge of how to write a
cited paper should allow any genuine expert to contribute
authoritatively and without problems.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Linksearch

body:
Anyone else think it would be good to be able to refine a linksearch
by namespace?  Or can this be done with black magic already?

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


from_name: Matthew Brown

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

body:
On 12/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> All these things are sliding scales. It's easy to objectively say "all
> the victims were women". It's just *harder* to objectively say "all
> the papers supported notion X". Maybe it's ok. Maybe it isn't.

For one thing, if a source exhaustively lists all X, it's a definitive
claim that can be sourced.  Stating that all of them have something in
common is simply a collation and editing function, IMO.

A database search like that described is different; it's not
definitive and not a single source that can be cited.  It's headed
into original research to deem the results definitive and decisive;
there is no guarantee whatsoever that the results have to be
exhaustive and complete.

-Matt


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>On 12/20/06, SJ Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>It could be neat to have small icons with two-letter codes in them to
>>represent each language; they could have color to make them easy to pick
>>out of a list.  I feel I've seen a good example of this before, but can't
>>recall where.
>>
>>
>
>Much better, and in which script? Such letter-codes most of its
>speakers are simply unfamiliar might make no sense ...
>
>
>
>
Aphaia,

Can someone plug in the Cherokee translation I finished. I would like to
read the fundraising results on my native language.

please?

Jeff


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

references:
<20061219203220.OZAR29112.aamtaout04-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<45884E9D.5060403@gmail.com>
	<bujgo2dovnbbi3el5c12vg6688esjc73dv@4ax.com>
	<38a7bf7c0612191343t22a40adek7326872ef4d1b270@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Tue, 19 Dec 2006 13:43:48 -0800, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>It seems to me that part of this is the way we want to spin this.
>Yes, we all agree, we want good experts to come contribute and make highly
>technical articles better.
>No, we don't want to allow anyone including experts to slip unverifyable
>unreferenced stuff in, because we basically don't know for sure what
>anyone's qualifications are.

Exactly.  The only way to do it is to have *enough* experts that they
can point out the fringe ones when they turn up, and enough
non-experts to point out when the article is unintelligible.

>Policies which are good for soft sciences, history, etc, where anyone
>generally can read the source and understand it, are probably not a good
>match for hard ones where even the notations used are domain-specific and
>arbitrary.

I have a horrible suspicion that this is a gross oversimplification. I
am pretty sure there are areas of Balkan history that require both a
substantial amount of background research and a fireproof suit...

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


from_name: Krohon

body:
Wikispam - global, user editable spam. :)

On 12/19/06, gwern branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Wikimail - the email account anyone can edit?
> Number 11 on Jimbo's list of Things That Should Be Free - Free the Emails?
> All licensed under the GNU Free Email License (GFEL)?
>
> --Gwern
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Krohon


from_name: Marco Schuster

subject: [Wikitech-l] Main site live again

body:
Brion Vibber schrieb:
> This figure has been available for some time on the IRC feeds of
> changes, but is now stored in the database for display in the recent
> changes list.
>
Any way to display the new/old article size in the RC feed?
It would be a really nice thing for anti-vandal-bots which prevent
page-blanking.

Regards,
Marco


subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [18446] trunk/phase3

body:
robchurch at svn.wikimedia.org wrote:
> Revision: 18446
> Author:   robchurch
> Date:     2006-12-19 05:42:35 -0800 (Tue, 19 Dec 2006)
>
> -			$wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsgForContent( "recentchangestext" ) );
> +			$wgOut->addWikiText( wfMsgForContentNoTrans( "recentchangestext" ) );

Is there actually any proper documentation explaining which wfMsg*()
functions to use with which OutputPage methods for various purposes?  I
count 13 wfMsg*() functions (of which wfMsgExt() has 16 possible major
variants) and 8 or 9 relevant OutputPage methods.  This seems like a
recipe for disaster, and the change I quoted (as well as r18444) just
confirms my suspicion that several of the combinations I've seen in the
live code are just plain broken.

The problem is that most of the default messages just contain plain text
with no template calls or other oddities, which means that such bugs
will go unnoticed until someone tries to customize the interface.  The
fact that many of the functions involved have names that are both long
and uninformative at the same time, and the fact that the documentation
comments for them are patchy at best, makes it worse.

I've half a mind to rewrite the whole mess, but of course we'd still
have to keep the old functions for extension compatibility even if we
deprecated them.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update

body:
Greetings:

WMF is pleased to announce the first day of a matching gift challenge
from a friend of the Foundation who wishes to remain anonymous.  During
this time, our friend will donate up to $60,000 per day to match the
gifts made by the community to WMF.  This has the effect of doubling the
amount of each gift.  Gifts made via Paypal and Moneybookers as well as
donations received in the WMF office during the matching period will
count against the total.

A new sitenotice is being rolled out to call attention to this
unprecedented generosity from our friend.  We sincerely appreciate our
anonymous donor's decision to provide for the Foundation in this way.

It is our sincere hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity
to leverage your donation to support the Foundation.

-Brad


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising update