body:
Hi,

Kelly Martin schrieb am 09/01/2005 12:30 AM:
> One would think that all Wikipedias would be subject to the same set
> of copyright rules, since they're all operated out of Florida.  I've
> never understood why people think that the language content is written
> in has any impact on the law such content is required to comply
> with....

a) Please note, that there are Servers in Europe and Asia too.
b) Perhaps it's dumb, but it's reality. If you write a text in german
(to a german audience) in Wikipedia, german courts will judge you - even
if it's done at a server in Florida. Perhaps the court is not able to
force the server to put down the text, but it's able to judge you. If
you are not in germany, that should be no big problem - but as german
person or visiting germany, you will get problems. This happened before.
And I strongly expect, that this is the case not only in germany.

Bye, avatar.
--
5 von 4 Leuten haben Probleme mit Mathematik.
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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews - Licensure straw poll

body:
Hi,

Kelly Martin schrieb am 09/01/2005 12:30 AM:
> One would think that all Wikipedias would be subject to the same set
> of copyright rules, since they're all operated out of Florida.  I've
> never understood why people think that the language content is written
> in has any impact on the law such content is required to comply
> with....

a) Please note, that there are Servers in Europe and Asia too.
b) Perhaps it's dumb, but it's reality. If you write a text in german
(to a german audience) in Wikipedia, german courts will judge you - even
if it's done at a server in Florida. Perhaps the court is not able to
force the server to put down the text, but it's able to judge you. If
you are not in germany, that should be no big problem - but as german
person or visiting germany, you will get problems. This happened before.
And I strongly expect, that this is the case not only in germany.

Bye, avatar.
--
5 von 4 Leuten haben Probleme mit Mathematik.
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Christian Thiele

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!

body:
Hello,

Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> schrieb am Sat, 03 Sep 2005 15:31:59
+0200:

> Working with some small test pages stripped down from the source code
> seems to disprove the above guesswork, as putting the script in <head>
> seems to work fine. However, using Firefox's Javascript console, and
> visiting wikipedia.fr, I get the following error:
>
>     Error: uncaught exception: Permission denied to call method
> Location.toString
>
> However, visiting http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accueil does not.

wikibits.js has an exeption to this for
http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Interwiki-Link-Checker/wiki.php, which is a
very good tool. The JavaScript code for this is:

if (window.top.location !=
'http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Interwiki-Link-Checker/wiki.php')
{
   window.top.location = window.location;
}

But it is NOT possible to access "window.top.location" if window.top is on
another domain/server - thats why firefox says, that the permission of
getting "location" was refused. Opera says "message: Security error:
attempted to read protected variable".

It doesn't work on firefox, opera 8 and IE6/7.

Sorry, but I don't have a solution for that.

Christian Thiele


list: wikien-l

from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
On 9/3/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/3/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > James D. Forrester wrote:
> > >And further, accessing a computer system without authorisation is
> > >illegal in the US, the UK, and Australia, to name but a few countries;
> > >given that you are banned from Wikipedia, any edits that you were to
> > >make would constitute such an illegal act. Several sysops, and not just
> > >Mackensen, have suggested that you may well be doing this, violating
> > >your ban order. Perhaps you might want to think about finding another
> > >place to play, Skyring?

> > I would have a hard time using this to justify the publication of
> > someone's personal information on Wikipedia.
>
> Skyring's name and address were removed pretty sharply. They are no
> longer on Wikipedia. James was pointing out that [[user:mackensen]]
> was justified in accusing Skyring of criminal acts.

On examination, this turns out not to be the case. James (Forrester)
talked of accessing a computer system without authorisation.
Mackensen was talking of something quite different, namely my
relationship with James Duffy, which he regarded as real-life
stalking, based on a letter written to the editor of an Irish
newspaper. Given that the letter was about a statue given by Ireland
to the people of Sydney and had nothing to do with Duffy, Mackensen's
accusation of criminal acts was without foundation.

Jim Duffy [[user:jtdirl]] published my name
and address on his user page.

I complained, it was removed by another editor, then Duffy republished
it, protected his page and attempted to justify his action. The
information was then permanently removed
by Mark Ryan.

My question for the Arbcom is this. In what circumstances is an admin
justified in maliciously publishing, without permission, the personal
details of another editor?

Duffy was in a snit because his submission to Lamest Edit Wars
wasn't judged lame enough. He doesn't have a good record with this
page, possibly because he lacks the sense of humour required to laugh
at some of the ridiculous edit wars people get into.

Duffy tends to see things in black and white terms, and is quite
unable to admit to making an error, which is the basis of our
conflict, because I like finding and fixing them. When my personal
information was removed from his page, he cleared his user and talk
pages and has made no further overt contribution. I think he is active
"under the covers", but more of that in a little bit.

[[User:Mackensen]] then made an
extraordinary post to the Administrator's Noticeboard page. He
stated that he had "often reverted Skyring's vandalism". I took a look
at his contributions and found that although he had certainly reverted
vandalism by others he had had very little to do with me in any guise,
and nothing that could reasonably be seen as vandalism. He would be
hard pressed to produce a single diff to back up his claim.

Far more seriously, he then said: "What Skyring has done to Jtdirl
is quite likely a prosecutable crime in many countries.". He used
as his justification for this statement a letter written to an Irish
newspaper, which he seemed to imagine was an attack on Duffy. In fact
this
letter concerns a statue now standing in Sydney which was a gift
from the Irish people. I quote it in its entirety:

Sir - I recently visited Sydney in Australia, where I
was pleasantly
surprised to find that the statue of Queen Victoria in the city centre
was a gift from the people of Ireland, and that the old Queen had
stood outside Leinster House for many years until 1947.

On researching the statue's history, I found myself fascinated by
Dublin's other statues, especially their witty nicknames. One rumour I
am trying to confirm is whether the statue now standing outside the
Queen Victoria Building once had the marvellously Joycean nickname of
'The Auld Bitch'.

If any of your readers have memories stretching back to those days, I
would be delighted to hear them.

The link to me is through my contributions to the "Queen
Victoria Building" article. The statue may be seen here and I
am charmed that the statue has a colourful history.

Nevertheless, neither this letter nor anything else I may have done
amounts to any sort of criminal offence. Mackensen repeatedly removed
responses pointing this out.

My second question to the Arbcom is this: Is an admin justified in
making allegations of criminal behaviour against another editor
without good evidence?

Mackensen's user page was then vandalised.
The use of the term "AULDBITCH" is clearly a reference to the letter.
I am sure that David Gerard can check on the source of this vandalism
and I am equally sure that he will find nothing to link it to me. In
fact, judging by this extremely interesting series
of edits I suggest that it will turn out to be Duffy.

02:03, 2 September 2005 (hist) (diff) Wikipedia:Administrators'
noticeboard/Incidents (Skyring)
01:34, 2 September 2005 (hist) (diff) User:AULDBITCH LOVES YOU (top)
01:30, 2 September 2005 (hist) (diff) User:AULDBITCH LOVES YOU
01:01, 2 September 2005 (hist) (diff) User:AULDBITCH LOVES YOU
22:21, 23 August 2005 (hist) (diff) Talk:Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (?HRH)
22:21, 23 August 2005 (hist) (diff) Talk:Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (?HRH)

Take a look at those earliest two edits on 23 August - an anon
in Dublin did the four tildes to check on his signature, and
removed the edit a few seconds later. Further, if you check on the
history of this article
, you will see that only four edits were made on 23 August 2005, all
within the span of a few minutes.

(cur) (last)  22:24, 23 August 2005 Jtdirl (?HRH)
(cur) (last)  22:21, 23 August 2005 83.71.15.181 (?HRH)
(cur) (last)  22:21, 23 August 2005 83.71.15.181 (?HRH)
(cur) (last)  22:20, 23 August 2005 Cooldoug111 (HRH)

It might be worthwhile checking where [[user:Cooldoug111]] is posting
from, but I suggest that the sequence of events is highly indicative
of the anon and Duffy being
the same person, with the two minutes intervening between the anon
removing his sig and Duffy posting his contribution being the time
needed for composition.

Looking at the final four edits made by this anon, I think I can rest
my case on this. Duffy vandalised another editor's page and then made
a crude attempt to link me to this vandalism.

My third question to the ArbCom is this: In what circumstances is an
admin justified in forging evidence against another editor?

And my final question: I have complained about Duffy's behaviour for
months now, providing evidence in the form of diffs, as requested.
When are you going to start looking at the facts, and can you see why
I have no faith at all in Wikipedia's dispute resolution process?

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
On 9/4/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>  If what we do is fair and just, then that is not our
> intent, merely a happy by-product. Wikipedia is not a democracy, and not
> a bureaucracy, and the Committee serves to upload neither potential
> set-up, nor any other community model. There is a massive range of
> options to go through in the dispute resolution processes before that of
> Arbitration is reached, all of which in their own ways are fair and just
> (and, in most cases, disproportionately, but not inappropriately,
> unfair, being weighted towards the wronger and against the wronged, as
> it were); by the time one is in Arbitration, the application of fairness
> and justice has seemed to have been unproductive.
>
> On the other hand, we seek as much information as possible from all
> sides when evaluating cases.

My problem with all this is that you don't necessarily evaluate the
information. In the case of Jim Duffy and myself you listened to him
squawking that I'd made more than a hundred edits on his articles, one
after the other, and accepted his claim that this was wikistalking.

But did you look at my edits? Go to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presidential_Inauguration_%28Ireland%29&diff=15106980&oldid=15106944
Presidential Inauguration (Ireland)] and look at the diffs. Jim Duffy
wrote the article single-handed and I then made fourteen edits on it.
My very first one was to correct "President of the United Kingdom" to
"President of the United States" and the following edits are all good
ones, some of them correcting really silly mistakes. As anyone can
see.

This wasn't wikistalking, this was wikiduty.

Jim Duffy's problem is that he doesn't like to admit making mistakes,
and he reverted all my changes! I think that I was quite justified in
taking a good look at his other articles, and surprise, surprise, I
found a lot more errors and fixed them.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Jim Duffy is a good editor
and he produces some excellent work based on superb research. But he
makes silly mistakes now and again - I don't know why, maybe he was in
hour 48 of a day long wikisession or something - and if I come along
and polish up his articles, it's for the good of the project.

I was wrong in the "enfeebled mind" edit summary I made when I fixed
the "President of the United Kingdom" thing, and for that and any
other slights, I apologise. But I'm never going to apologise for
correcting an obvious error in Wikipedia, and I trust that my outrage
at being suspended for a year for doing the right thing is
understandable.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 9/4/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wasn't referring to a copyright provision, I was referring to their other
> well-known restrictive laws. I'm not sure I buy the "ethical validity"
> argument, in part because I'm not so sure I, in my heart of hearts, think
> that copyright is about ethics much these days (and suspect that Iran's lack
> of participation in foreign copyright agreements is done so more for their
> own benefit -- not having to pay foreign copyright holders -- than it does
> in inducing any loss-of-profit for the Iranian government or Iranian
> citizens).
>
> But anyway -- my response was just meant to say, "Well, I don't think we're
> legally bound to follow Iranian laws on this or much anything else." Even if
> that's *true* (I'm the first to admit I'm not very well versed in
> international law), it doesn't *necessarily* imply any particular course of
> action. The censorship example was just to illustrate that if we tried to
> follow every country's individual content laws about everything, we'd have
> no encyclopedia.

This is something that has been thrashed out many times, including
well before the advent of the Internet. Just because a copy of (say)
The Washington Post might be sent to Iran doesn't mean that TWP has to
follow Iranian laws. It's up to Iran to enforce their own laws in
their own country and nobody is saying otherwise.

But just because we can legally steal images owned by Iranians doesn't
mean we should. For one thing, they might change their copyright law.
But to my mind it's just plain wrong, especially when we have so many
other avenues available, such as fair use, to illustrate our
encyclopaedia.

--
Peter in Canberra


list: foundation-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!

references:
<dfa7jb$mga$1@sea.gmane.org> <dfae9l$9hc$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<453b6e5050902164841dc8189@mail.gmail.com>

body:
French folks, congrats!

FYI, there was also a large four page spread in China's Lifeweek
magazine about the Wikimania conference, and a long Q&A with Jimbo.
And it has an artistic portrait of Jimbo. See:

http://www.lifeweek.com.cn/2005-09-02/0000412932.shtml

May mess up in Firefox, as it did with me (bad MIME type?). Safari
seems to be OK.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On 9/3/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> > > We are in first page of Le Monde, with several pages included inside.
> > > Le Monde is the *first* newspaper in France. This is an amazing day.
>
> > Is that only on the website or also on "la une" of the paper version ?
>
> Also the paper version... today's (3rd September) edition.
>
> Which is...even more than great :D
>
> Just to make things clear, Le Monde is not the *biggest* newspaper in
> France, as it prints only around 350000 ex a day, far from the first
> daily newspaper in France "Ouest France" (more than a million) but in
> terms of recognition, it is definitely one of the greatest. Making it
> to the first page of Le Monde is *big*.
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

body:
> b) Perhaps it's dumb, but it's reality. If you write a text in german
> (to a german audience) in Wikipedia, german courts will judge you - even
> if it's done at a server in Florida. Perhaps the court is not able to
> force the server to put down the text, but it's able to judge you. If
> you are not in germany, that should be no big problem - but as german
> person or visiting germany, you will get problems. This happened before.
> And I strongly expect, that this is the case not only in germany.
> Bye, avatar.

Why would writing text in German imply that it's written for a German
audience and make the German courts able to judge you? It's not as if
there aren't other German-speaking countries...

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :

(...)In particular we can expect
> 1) more fear from all those we are currently in
> competition with, so
> possibly more attacks
> 2) but mostly more interest from potential partners,
> be it firms,
> organisations, associations, academics etc...

...and 3) more media attention. When will we see you
on TF1 ? :-)

Traroth

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!

body:
> ...and 3) more media attention. When will we see you
> on TF1 ? :-)

Wikip?dia was featured (3 mins) on LCI, which a subsidiary of TF1, so we
can almost say we already did it ^_-

> Traroth

Nicolas


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
2005/9/4, Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>:
> Why would writing text in German imply that it's written for a German
> audience and make the German courts able to judge you? It's not as if
> there aren't other German-speaking countries...

Just my guess - it's all about the IP. If you wrote something from
Poland, you'll be judged in Poland. Well, other countries might ask
for you extradiction - but we're going a bit off topic now. ~~~~

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Assisting Google's language recognition?

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> On 9/2/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>Google miscategorizes the language of some of the Hungarian Wikipedia
>>>pages. E.g. it thinks that our Adolf Hitler article is in czech.
>>
>>How do you know they are miscategorising the language?
>><http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl%3A%22Adolf+Hitler%22+site%3Ahu.wikipedia.org>
>>
>>This makes it seem like they haven't indexed the page at all, not that
>>they've marked it as the wrong language.
>
>
> I believe this is correct.  We've had problems in the past with
> overloading wikipedia so the crawl has been throttled way back.

Throttled back to what? I remember having problems in late 2003 and
early 2004, but we have 30 times as much hardware now, so we could
handle a proportionally higher crawl rate, say 10 or 20 requests per
second. That is, unless one of the other system administrators wants to
disagree.

This doesn't mean every man and his dog can try to crawl our site with
wget at 20 requests per second. Our number of users is higher, and those
users still have to be careful not to take any more than their fair
share of the resources, or else they risk being blocked without notice.
I would still recommend a crawl delay of at least 2 seconds for users
without specific approval. But I think we're in a position now where we
can make an exception for the big search engines.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Changes to the handling of the Board's mail

body:
The Board has been using OTRS (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OTRS>)
for around a year now to receive mails sent to the "board at
wikimedia.org" address. However, the volume of mail received there has
become too much to deal with, so this has been split into two queues:
Board and Board-Private.

Everyone with an official position
(<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMF_organigram#Wikimedia_committees_and_Official_positions>)
now has full access to the Board queue, where they will be able to
deal with any mails relevant to their own position, or move mails that
really do need to be answered by the Board to the Board's new private
queue.

Any pages on the wikis that mention the board at wikimedia.org address
should be updated to explain that it is no longer only the Board who
will be reading mails sent there.

See also http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/PR_department which explains
the other queues in OTRS.

Angela.


from_name: François Granger

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Castellano (was: MURCIAN WIKIPEDIA: Wich is the next
	step.)

body:
Le 1/09/05 18:22, ??Miquel Turra?? <ain_xaitan at yahoo.es> a ?crit?:

> por cierto... nadie aqu? comprende el castellano?

Pienso que hay muchos.

Lo entiendo pero no lo escribo muy bien.

--
je soutiens M?dicalistes : http://www.medicalistes.org/divers/adherer.php


from_name: Fadix

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOVE courses for those in probation?

body:
Is there a way to organize something to force some
users that don't know what NPOV really means to learn
it from Administrators assisting them? I just think
that those that don't understand what NPOV mean should
not contribute in Wikipedia, plain and simple.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] New mailing list for newbies?

body:
On 8/8/05, jjleahy at umich.edu <jjleahy at umich.edu> wrote:

> This mailing list often serves the purpose of allowing "old timers" to discuss
> Wikipedia policy, but it gets its share of newbies asking things like
> requesting article changes (which if they knew what Wikipedia was they could do
> themselves).  [...]
> One idea is to make a new mailing list specifically for newcomers to Wikipedia,
> which would be manned by a group of people that respond to newcomers and lead
> them places where they could learn more

Since this is a great idea and there were no objections to it over the
last month, Jeronim has created this list. It is called helpdesk-l

I would like to encourage anyone interested in helping newbies to join
this list and answer questions there. You can subscribe at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/helpdesk-l

If anyone would like to be the list admin, please let me know.

Angela.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] A small Ultimate Wiktionary demo

body:
A while ago, Gerard posted this on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Ultimate_Wiktionary_for_Commons

It was a short explanation how UW could be used to internationalize
categories on the Wikimedia Commons. I've now hacked together a small
mock-up that demonstrates (hopefully) more clearly how this could work
in practice:

http://epov.org/uwd/index.php?title=Tag:Dog&action=edit

(Further demos will be posted on http://epov.org/uwd/ in the coming
weeks and months.)

It should work in Firefox and IE. The only active component are the
radio buttons you can click.

Essentially, what this shows is:

1) A new tag for images of dogs is created. (In this demo, I call
categories "tags", because I hope this will be what they are eventually
called.)

2) The user can choose from the languages they speak to clarify which
language this tag name is written in.

3) Based on the tag name and language, a lookup on UW is performed,
which fetches all the associated meanings for this word.

4) The user selects one of these meanings.

5) Automagically, another lookup is performed to determine the available
translations, if any. After saving the tag, it is then instantly
available under these names in the other languages.

In the demo, the first two meanings have translations available, while
the other two do not.

Why is this so powerful? Because, if UW itself is successful and
contains many words, it almost instantly makes the entire media
repository on Commons available to speakers of all languages. (Now,
hopefully, you can see why we've been excited about getting millions of
translations for free from the Logos project.) No need to create many
different tags - just select the right meaning. Furthermore, it builds
bridges from other projects to UW. The language work we are constantly
doing will no longer be redundant, but focused on one place.

A 14-year-old Italian kid can then use the tag "cane" to look for photos
of dogs, while a Maori girl from New Zealand can use "kurii". Moreover,
the same category hierarchy can be used to browse in different languages
(based on user perferences, a fallback hierarchy would be queried to
determine the language that should be used should no translation be
available).

We could also automatically make use of synonyms, plurals and
inflections (though this requires further changes to the category code
beyond internationalization). Given that we are mapping one of multiple
meanings to a single tag, there will be tag collisions -- those will
have to be dealt with through disambiguation. But this is not important:
Try to see the tag name merely as a key to a meaning. What this key is
called is secondary.

The key principle of selecting a meaning and then performing automatic
translations can be used in many different contexts. For example, in
Wikidata, one could use the same principle to internationalize field
names such as "Country", "Flag" and "Population".

This application also shows that UW must contain everything from words
to names to phrases. There is no limit to the scope of it. This makes it
a potentially massively useful tool for both human and machine translation.

The category internationalization functionality will not be part of the
first release of Ultimate Wiktionary, but we believe we can get funding
to work on this later. I believe that UW, in combination with better
tagging features in general, could make our tagging system the most
advanced one available. Flickr, for example, has no localization, is
unlikely to ever get semi-automatic localization, and apparently
supports no synonyms either.

See the demo footnotes for further explanations. Feedback is welcome.
(I'll be away until Wednesday.)

Best,

Erik


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Fwd: [Wikitech-l] A small Ultimate Wiktionary demo]

body:
Hoi
Erik did send this e-mail to the developers. I think however that you
will be as interested in it as the developers. The relevance is that the
Commons "tags" as Erik calls them use meanings defined in Ultimate
Wiktionary. It is a preview that is really rough, but it shows the idea
of using meaning and translations really well.

Thanks,
    GerardM

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[Wikitech-l] A small Ultimate Wiktionary demo
Date: 	Sun, 04 Sep 2005 21:57:47 +0200
From: 	Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
Reply-To: 	Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
To: 	Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>

A while ago, Gerard posted this on Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Ultimate_Wiktionary_for_Commons

It was a short explanation how UW could be used to internationalize
categories on the Wikimedia Commons. I've now hacked together a small
mock-up that demonstrates (hopefully) more clearly how this could work
in practice:

http://epov.org/uwd/index.php?title=Tag:Dog&action=edit

(Further demos will be posted on http://epov.org/uwd/ in the coming
weeks and months.)

It should work in Firefox and IE. The only active component are the
radio buttons you can click.

Essentially, what this shows is:

1) A new tag for images of dogs is created. (In this demo, I call
categories "tags", because I hope this will be what they are eventually
called.)

2) The user can choose from the languages they speak to clarify which
language this tag name is written in.

3) Based on the tag name and language, a lookup on UW is performed,
which fetches all the associated meanings for this word.

4) The user selects one of these meanings.

5) Automagically, another lookup is performed to determine the available
translations, if any. After saving the tag, it is then instantly
available under these names in the other languages.

In the demo, the first two meanings have translations available, while
the other two do not.

Why is this so powerful? Because, if UW itself is successful and
contains many words, it almost instantly makes the entire media
repository on Commons available to speakers of all languages. (Now,
hopefully, you can see why we've been excited about getting millions of
translations for free from the Logos project.) No need to create many
different tags - just select the right meaning. Furthermore, it builds
bridges from other projects to UW. The language work we are constantly
doing will no longer be redundant, but focused on one place.

A 14-year-old Italian kid can then use the tag "cane" to look for photos
of dogs, while a Maori girl from New Zealand can use "kurii". Moreover,
the same category hierarchy can be used to browse in different languages
(based on user perferences, a fallback hierarchy would be queried to
determine the language that should be used should no translation be
available).

We could also automatically make use of synonyms, plurals and
inflections (though this requires further changes to the category code
beyond internationalization). Given that we are mapping one of multiple
meanings to a single tag, there will be tag collisions -- those will
have to be dealt with through disambiguation. But this is not important:
Try to see the tag name merely as a key to a meaning. What this key is
called is secondary.

The key principle of selecting a meaning and then performing automatic
translations can be used in many different contexts. For example, in
Wikidata, one could use the same principle to internationalize field
names such as "Country", "Flag" and "Population".

This application also shows that UW must contain everything from words
to names to phrases. There is no limit to the scope of it. This makes it
a potentially massively useful tool for both human and machine translation.

The category internationalization functionality will not be part of the
first release of Ultimate Wiktionary, but we believe we can get funding
to work on this later. I believe that UW, in combination with better
tagging features in general, could make our tagging system the most
advanced one available. Flickr, for example, has no localization, is
unlikely to ever get semi-automatic localization, and apparently
supports no synonyms either.

See the demo footnotes for further explanations. Feedback is welcome.
(I'll be away until Wednesday.)

Best,

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


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload overwrite restrictions

body:
Due to popular demand (and my general dislike of interaction between
image changes and caching, plus a rash of vandalism of a certain type)
I've added two new permission keys to limit uploads that overwrite
existing images.

Disabling the 'reupload' right will prevent any upload of a file which
already is present, either locally or on the shared repository (Commons).

Disabling the 'reupload-shared' right will prevent overwrites of images
which are present on the shared repository but _not_ on the local wiki.
(A pre-existing local image overrides the Commons image.)

For fun I've set the default message to display a thumbnail of the
conflicting image on the error page like so:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/3/3f/Upload_restrictions.png

Currently, reupload-shared is set to off for regular users on all
Wikimedia wikis, but the general reupload right is left on so local
images can be overwritten (and images on Commons can still be
overwritten there).

The message can be customized/localized at
[[MediaWiki:Fileexists-forbidden]] (for local images) and
[[MediaWiki:Fileexists-shared-forbidden]] (for Commons images)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
You just keep repeating your interpretation and listening to that of
others. It helps to occasionally consult the text and quote from it.
Maybe the Arbitration Committee's interpretation, "NPOV contemplates
that all significant points of view shall be included and fairly
represented" helps too.

Fred

On Sep 4, 2005, at 7:23 PM, Fadix wrote:

> Is there a way to organize something to force some
> users that don't know what NPOV really means to learn
> it from Administrators assisting them? I just think
> that those that don't understand what NPOV mean should
> not contribute in Wikipedia, plain and simple.
>
> __________________________________________________
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> _______________________________________________
> 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: Benjamin Webb

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: New project licensing

body:
Wikitree is currently voting on a new liscence at http://wikitree.org/index.php?
title=WikiTree:License_poll.

So far the consensus seems to be public domain, would this be acceptable for a
Wikimedia project?


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!

body:
Traroth wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :
>
> (...)In particular we can expect
>
>>1) more fear from all those we are currently in
>>competition with, so
>>possibly more attacks
>>2) but mostly more interest from potential partners,
>>be it firms,
>>organisations, associations, academics etc...
>
>
> ...and 3) more media attention. When will we see you
> on TF1 ? :-)
>
> Traroth

Me ?
Unlikely to happen before long :-)
I will soon be "immobilized" in my city for many months.
Many wikipedians are in Paris, and media does not like going to a remote
city when they have just what they need in the capital ;-)

ant (getting slowly but surely, bigger, in Clermont Ferrand)

PS : but my mail box state is sure reflecting the Le Monde article.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: We made it !!!!!!


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Improvement request: redirect, synonyms,
	fuzzy system (ENG/ITA)

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

> Yes, I get the idea of having them conceptually attached to the
> article, but in terms of implementation this raises some complex
> issues:

I think most of those questions are quite easy to answer once you
realise that (a) 99% of people looking for a topic do so via the search
box, not the URL; (b) when someone links to an article, they do it via
the URL, not the search box. Hence:

> * How do you deal with the fact that a given title can be both an
> article in its own right, and an alias defined by another article?

The URL should display the article. The search box should give a
selection of both possibilities.

> * How do you keep the code efficient if it has to check two places
> (the list of redirects and the list of actual pages) every time it
> wants to look up a title?

Caching.

> * If you abandon the current "redirect created by magic page content",
> how do you convert a page to an alias, or vice versa?

You don't "convert" a page to an alias; you just create the alias, and
independently of that, delete the page (if that is what you want to do).
Similarly, removing an alias and creating a page should also be separate
actions.

> * What happens when somebody tries to create an alias which is already
> a page, or which is already an alias for something else?

The alias gets created as always. Now if someone searches for the alias,
it should (obviously) list all the pages that have this alias. The same
should probably happen to the URL if there is no actual page at that
title; although I wouldn't mind having the URL display the "page does
not exist" screen so that it is easier to create a page at that title.

> * What happens when you remove something from the list of aliases?

The alias gets removed. Duh. :-) We already have this happening with
categories.

> (you can't create an alias, because there's a page there / you can't
> create a page, because there's an alias there)

No, such arbitrary limitations are unnecessary.

Timwi


from_name: Roth Philippe

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recherche de caractères accentués

body:
Bonjour ? tous,

Tout d'abord un grand merci pour votre aide que j'appr?cie tout particuli?rement.

J'ai maintenant une question concernant la recherche de caract?res accentu?s:
- Dans les pages d'aide, il est indiqu? qu'une recherche sur le mot "?glise" ou "eglise" doit donner le m?me r?sultat.
- Dans notre configuration, mediawiki 1.4.5, une recherche sur le mot "cr?er" donne 17 articles, mais une recherche sur le mot "creer" donne aucun r?sultat...

Comment faire pour que les r?sultats soient identiques dans les deux cas?
Quelle instruction dans quel fichier de configuration?

Merci d'avance et ? bient?t,
Philippe Roth


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et recherches
	documentaires sur l'Internet)]

body:
Could people who speak French please take a closer look? I understand
quite well and in particular the thing about copyrights is not correct.

For now I asked Gabi to pass me the addesss of the mailing list, since
things like these need to be immediately sorted out otherwise they can
really harm. This is one of those messages that will reach I don't know
how many translators (we are at least at some four or five thousand now
if Gabi passed this article forward considering in how many different
lists she is) and as you know: translators do translate - also messages
from other lists that sometimes could contain wrong data. This is one of
the disadvantages of fast comunication if you don't intervene
immediately a wrong message spreads anywhere.

Translators in many particular situations can make a huge difference.

So please help me to get things right.

Thanks, Sabine

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et recherches documentaires sur l'Internet)
Date: 	Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:39:53 +0200
From: 	Gabi Francois
To: 	Sabine Cretella <cretella.s at cretella.de>

Kam eben ?ber eine franz?sische Liste.

LG

Gabi

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

D'exp?rience, je dirais qu'il faut savoir ?tre prudent lors de la
lecture des fiches de Wikipedia. J'en ai d?j? consult? le contenu et j'ai
constat? que le s?rieux de leur contenu d?pend de celui de leurs r?dacteurs
et relecteurs respectifs ; or les uns et les autres peuvent ?tre n'importe
lesquels.

N'?tant qu'informaticien, je me suis born? ? consulter les fiches
concernant mon domaine. Pour cela, j'ai consult? trois versions dans les
langues que je connais : anglais, fran?ais, allemand. R?sultat global : peut
mieux faire !

Voyons ce que dit cette encyclop?dique sur l'inventeur de
l'ordinateur en 1941, l'allemand ZUSE. En fran?ais : n?ant. En anglais : un
seul article assez bref. En allemand : un seul article, bien moins d?taill?
que les diff?rentes pages se trouvant sur Internet. Aucun ne parle
clairement de sa longue bataille perdue sur les brevets (1938-1967)
concernant notamment la m?moire d'un ordinateur, ni (tout juste mentionn? en
allemand) sur l'importance de sa cr?ation du premier langage de haut niveau
en 1946, bien avant les r?alisations aux ?tats-Unis (1960).

En regard, l'anglais TURING a droit ? de longues pages dans toutes
les langues, bien qu'il n'ait cr?? ses premiers ordinateurs qu'apr?s la
deuxi?me guerre mondiale (pendant la guerre, il n'a cr?? que des machines de
d?chiffrement).

De son c?t?, l'allemand von NEUMANN est qualifi? d'Am?ricain et
inventeur de l'ordinateur, alors qu'il ?tait originaire de Hongrie, membre
de la communaut? scientifique allemande et r?sident en Europe puis ?migr?
aux ?tats-Unis seulement en 1937 et que ses premi?res publications sur
l'architecture d'un ordinateur ne datent que de 1946-1947.

Passons maintenant aux inventeurs fran?ais :
- CARMILLE, le fran?ais inventeur de la notion d'identifiant pour les bases
de donn?es en 1934. Anglais : inconnu. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand :
inconnu.
- GERNELLE, cr?ateur du premier micro-ordinateur au monde en 1973. Anglais :
inconnu. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand : inconnu. Andr? TRUONG, l'industriel
qui a produit cet ordinateur la m?me ann?e: inconnu de m?me.

Cherchons maintenant un inventeur des ?tats-Unis : HYATT Gilbert,
cr?ateur du premier microprocesseur en 1970, soit deux ans avant que Intel
en commercialise un. Anglais : conna?t la cha?ne d'h?tels homonyme (quelle
ironie !) Fran?ais
: inconnu. Allemand : inconnu.

Voyons enfin un inventeur sovi?tique : LEBEDEV, cr?ateur des
premiers ordinateurs de l'URSS apr?s-guerre. Anglais : une toute petite
page, pas plus grande qu'un ?cran. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand : ne cite
que l'institut portant son nom (ce qui est l? aussi assez ironique).

Wikipedia se distingue ?galement en mal pour d'autres raisons : si
n'importe qui peut r?diger ou modifier une fiche sous sa responsabilit?,
quelque soit la valeur de son contenu, son nom n'appara?t pas dans la fiche,
seule figurant son adresse ?lectronique dans l'historique de la r?daction
pour les ?ventuels utilisateurs pensant ? le consulter (oubli du droit
moral) et de plus en c?dant de force tous ses droits d'auteur dans le cadre
d'une licence dite libre, interpr?t?e ? sens unique, comportant notamment
des restrictions (abandon forc? des droits patrimoniaux au profit exclusif
de Wikipedia), toutes choses contraires au droit commun selon la Convention
de Berne.

Or Wikipedia se situe aux ?tats-Unis, pays signataire de la
convention en question.

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
--- Erik Zachte <epzachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Finally new wikistats

Great news! Thank you so much for doing that. :) Your efforts are deeply
appreciated - I just love looking at the stats.

-- mav

______________________________________________________
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Traroth

body:
The texte speaks from not so famous inventors, who
have no article in wikipedia, and uses this argument
to say wikipedia is not reliable, and after that, some
reasoning is done to explain that wikipedia does not
conform to the Bern convention about author right.
Where does this text come from ?

Traroth

--- Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> a ?crit
:

> Could people who speak French please take a closer
> look? I understand
> quite well and in particular the thing about
> copyrights is not correct.
>
> For now I asked Gabi to pass me the addesss of the
> mailing list, since
> things like these need to be immediately sorted out
> otherwise they can
> really harm. This is one of those messages that will
> reach I don't know
> how many translators (we are at least at some four
> or five thousand now
> if Gabi passed this article forward considering in
> how many different
> lists she is) and as you know: translators do
> translate - also messages
> from other lists that sometimes could contain wrong
> data. This is one of
> the disadvantages of fast comunication if you don't
> intervene
> immediately a wrong message spreads anywhere.
>
> Translators in many particular situations can make a
> huge difference.
>
> So please help me to get things right.
>
> Thanks, Sabine
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et recherches
> documentaires sur l'Internet)
> Date: 	Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:39:53 +0200
> From: 	Gabi Francois
> To: 	Sabine Cretella <cretella.s at cretella.de>
>
>
>
> Kam eben ?ber eine franz?sische Liste.
>
> LG
>
> Gabi
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> D'exp?rience, je dirais qu'il faut savoir ?tre
> prudent lors de la
> lecture des fiches de Wikipedia. J'en ai d?j?
> consult? le contenu et j'ai
> constat? que le s?rieux de leur contenu d?pend de
> celui de leurs r?dacteurs
> et relecteurs respectifs ; or les uns et les autres
> peuvent ?tre n'importe
> lesquels.
>
> N'?tant qu'informaticien, je me suis born? ?
> consulter les fiches
> concernant mon domaine. Pour cela, j'ai consult?
> trois versions dans les
> langues que je connais : anglais, fran?ais,
> allemand. R?sultat global : peut
> mieux faire !
>
> Voyons ce que dit cette encyclop?dique sur
> l'inventeur de
> l'ordinateur en 1941, l'allemand ZUSE. En fran?ais :
> n?ant. En anglais : un
> seul article assez bref. En allemand : un seul
> article, bien moins d?taill?
> que les diff?rentes pages se trouvant sur Internet.
> Aucun ne parle
> clairement de sa longue bataille perdue sur les
> brevets (1938-1967)
> concernant notamment la m?moire d'un ordinateur, ni
> (tout juste mentionn? en
> allemand) sur l'importance de sa cr?ation du premier
> langage de haut niveau
> en 1946, bien avant les r?alisations aux ?tats-Unis
> (1960).
>
> En regard, l'anglais TURING a droit ? de longues
> pages dans toutes
> les langues, bien qu'il n'ait cr?? ses premiers
> ordinateurs qu'apr?s la
> deuxi?me guerre mondiale (pendant la guerre, il n'a
> cr?? que des machines de
> d?chiffrement).
>
> De son c?t?, l'allemand von NEUMANN est qualifi?
> d'Am?ricain et
> inventeur de l'ordinateur, alors qu'il ?tait
> originaire de Hongrie, membre
> de la communaut? scientifique allemande et r?sident
> en Europe puis ?migr?
> aux ?tats-Unis seulement en 1937 et que ses
> premi?res publications sur
> l'architecture d'un ordinateur ne datent que de
> 1946-1947.
>
> Passons maintenant aux inventeurs fran?ais :
> - CARMILLE, le fran?ais inventeur de la notion
> d'identifiant pour les bases
> de donn?es en 1934. Anglais : inconnu. Fran?ais :
> inconnu. Allemand :
> inconnu.
> - GERNELLE, cr?ateur du premier micro-ordinateur au
> monde en 1973. Anglais :
> inconnu. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand : inconnu.
> Andr? TRUONG, l'industriel
> qui a produit cet ordinateur la m?me ann?e: inconnu
> de m?me.
>
> Cherchons maintenant un inventeur des ?tats-Unis :
> HYATT Gilbert,
> cr?ateur du premier microprocesseur en 1970, soit
> deux ans avant que Intel
> en commercialise un. Anglais : conna?t la cha?ne
> d'h?tels homonyme (quelle
> ironie !) Fran?ais
> : inconnu. Allemand : inconnu.
>
> Voyons enfin un inventeur sovi?tique : LEBEDEV,
> cr?ateur des
> premiers ordinateurs de l'URSS apr?s-guerre. Anglais
> : une toute petite
> page, pas plus grande qu'un ?cran. Fran?ais :
> inconnu. Allemand : ne cite
> que l'institut portant son nom (ce qui est l? aussi
> assez ironique).
>
>
> Wikipedia se distingue ?galement en mal pour
> d'autres raisons : si
> n'importe qui peut r?diger ou modifier une fiche
> sous sa responsabilit?,
> quelque soit la valeur de son contenu, son nom
> n'appara?t pas dans la fiche,
> seule figurant son adresse ?lectronique dans
> l'historique de la r?daction
> pour les ?ventuels utilisateurs pensant ? le
> consulter (oubli du droit
> moral) et de plus en c?dant de force tous ses droits
> d'auteur dans le cadre
> d'une licence dite libre, interpr?t?e ? sens unique,
> comportant notamment
> des restrictions (abandon forc? des droits
> patrimoniaux au profit exclusif
> de Wikipedia), toutes choses contraires au droit
> commun selon la Convention
> de Berne.
>
> Or Wikipedia se situe aux ?tats-Unis, pays
> signataire de la
> convention en question.
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da
> 10MB
> http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et
	recherches	documentaires sur l'Internet)]

body:
Hi, the contents parts are quite easy to deal with - my problem is to
understand the copyright part well and to be able to give an answer (if
possible in French as well).

The thing is: it was forwarded within a network of translators coming
from a French translator's discussion list - I already asked for the
exact source. I will keep you informed as soon as I have news.

Ciao, Sabine

Traroth wrote:

>The texte speaks from not so famous inventors, who
>have no article in wikipedia, and uses this argument
>to say wikipedia is not reliable, and after that, some
>reasoning is done to explain that wikipedia does not
>conform to the Bern convention about author right.
>Where does this text come from ?
>
>Traroth
>
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
Hi all,

All political, sociolinguistic, and practical arguments aside, there
are currently 29 votes in support of a separate Cantonese Wikipedia
and 6 against (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal_for_Sinitic_linguistic_policy#Vote_-_.E6.8A.95.E7.A5.A8).

While it's been said that Wikipedia isn't nessecarily a democracy, and
people have questioned the expertise of people who have given their
input on the issue of Cantonese, I think that the fact that the vote
so far is 29 to 6 against for the creation of a separate Cantonese
Wikipedia (a good portion of the votes on either side cast by native
speakers) should be enough to support the unconditional creation of a
Cantonese Wikipedia in the very very very near future.

Mark


from_name: Valentina Faussone

subject: [Wikitech-l] unsubscribing

body:
Dear ML,

I'm unsubscribing from wikitech because of overwork.
If somebody needs me please use my e-mail address.

thanks

Valentina Faussone

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: Re:[Foundation-l] [Fwd: Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et recherches documentaires sur l'Internet)]

body:
Hello.

The mail claims:
* moral rights are violated since authors are only displayed
in history
* only the mail (?) and not the name is displayed in the
history, which violates moral rights
* authors yield their exclusive right of ownership to
Wikipedia. This is wrong imo: authors licence the content
under the GFDL, but keep ownership, articles are the authors'
property, not Wikipedia's. And authors still have their right
to licence their contribution to something else - but all
content written on Wikipedia is GFDL.

Of course IANAL, so someone else will explain more in details :)

Nicolas

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgIP -> wfGetIP()

body:
Just a short note for developers: I've delayed the initialisation of
$wgIP, so you can no longer use that variable, except for debugging.
Instead, use wfGetIP(). It's cached, so feel free to call it regularly.

See the commit notice for more details:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-cvs/2005-September/011072.html

-- Tim Starling


body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> Brion, I would be interested:
>
> how is this related to ( or a solution of  )
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2497
> Admins ought to be able to upload any file

In no way at all related.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: Ordering Wikipedia

body:
We could make them pay the price of the cost of all the servers.

On 9/5/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ed Poor wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Donald Smith" <donald_smith123 at yahoo.ca>
> > To: uncle_ed_poor at yahoo.com
> > Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 13:46:34 -0400 (EDT)
> > Subject: Ordering Wikipedia
> >
> >
> >> Sir,
> >>
> >> I honestly love working with Wikipedia. At such a point that I wish
> >> to order one sample for our family's need.
> >>
> >> How do we proceed to acquire one?
> >>
> >> Also, what are the modalities to pay the required fees and charges,
> >> besides sending a Credit Card Number on the Internet, if any other
> >> mode of payment is available of course !
> >>
> >> Thank you for your time, and may your team keep on the excellent
> >> work done so far. Thousands of users appreciated.
> >>
>
> Tell him to simply sign over the rights to his first born child... :)
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
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> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> _______________________________________________
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Accepting XFF headers from NTL proxies

body:
We're now accepting XFF headers from NTL proxies. This means that NTL
users will now appear to be editing from their home IP address, rather
than from a proxy. Blocks will be specific to a particular NTL
connection. This should be a big help in dealing with a couple of really
annoying NTL vandals who have been operating on en, e.g. MARMOT.

The proxy list I'm using comes from:

http://ben.cheetham.me.uk/resources/net/ntl-proxy-list

That was the most up-to-date list I could find, it's possible there are
some missing. If anyone has a better source for this information, please
speak up.

Big thanks to NTL for being good a Internet citizen and sending out this
information, as opposed to our arch nemesis ISP, AOL.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

body:
Hi there,

 > because of the mob of pissy deletionists who dominate VfD

So I take it you are a pissy inclusionist then? :)

In all seriousness though it is a difficult issue. I think the more
recent controversial ones like Stardestroyer.net (its 3rd VfD which
finally resulted in its demise) and trekbbs one or whatever highlight
this.

VfD itself is an interesting mentality that is really easy to get
sucked into. Even though are many fairly notable websites that get
canned because they fall just short of WB:WEB for example, many other
articles that don't meet it get kept for other reasons, such as because
they are entertaining (GNAA, List of Ethnic Stereotypes etc. etc.).

The system does work in a sense though. For example, a couple a put up
there that were of somewhat non-notable websites, but were written very
well, got deleted rather soundly with a surprising turnout given the
subject matter (and some funny but demeaning jokes from the voters).

Of course, I say it works in the sense that you're making a strict
encyclopedia, which tends to go against the wikiway (I mean the C2
wikiway not the wikipedia wikiway :)). In fact when I first came to WP
a long time ago I thought that was the way it worked... and was
surprised to see VfD and other venues to removing content.

I myself got sucked into it earlier on (admittedly its quite fun and a
great way to inflate your edit count), plus there are a lot of
old-timers there (who probably are deletionists themselves ;)). Lately,
I've been realizing that there needs to be more inclusionists voting
there (although some self-described inclusionists seem to vote delete
on everything anyway...).

Maybe it gets back to the old argument that you need people who are
really familiar with the subject to judge it. Who knows...


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
 From what I can see, this email is only some angry message from an
expert in computer science history.

But even if he discusses the credibility of wikipedia on these very
specific points of history, there is not much reality to the various
legal points he points out :

It's true that the Bern Convention forbids to impersonate authors, but
it never mandates to quote them by their names (ah ah). Actually,
wikipedia does a much better job than most other publications by
allowing any user to access the complete list of author's emails.

Then, the GFDL license used by wikipedia does not ask authors to
attribute their copyright to wikipedia. It's only a non-exclusive and
transferable license agreement authorizing specific uses for wikipedia
users. Authors always remain the sole owners of their patrimonial rights.

These 2 mistakes are very common and already well-documented on
Internet. He could have avoided them very easily by having a look on the
available internet pages on these subjects.

If I had a comment, I would say that I don't know much about computer
science history, but before trying to criticize wikipedia, this guy
could at least try to inform himself on the legal aspects of his
argumentation if he really wants to get some credibility.

Sabine Cretella a ?crit :
> Could people who speak French please take a closer look? I understand
> quite well and in particular the thing about copyrights is not correct.
>
> For now I asked Gabi to pass me the addesss of the mailing list, since
> things like these need to be immediately sorted out otherwise they can
> really harm. This is one of those messages that will reach I don't know
> how many translators (we are at least at some four or five thousand now
> if Gabi passed this article forward considering in how many different
> lists she is) and as you know: translators do translate - also messages
> from other lists that sometimes could contain wrong data. This is one of
> the disadvantages of fast comunication if you don't intervene
> immediately a wrong message spreads anywhere.
>
> Translators in many particular situations can make a huge difference.
>
> So please help me to get things right.
>
> Thanks, Sabine
>
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:     Fw: Wi ki ? Wi ki ? (et recherches documentaires sur
> l'Internet)
> Date:     Mon, 5 Sep 2005 08:39:53 +0200
> From:     Gabi Francois
> To:     Sabine Cretella <cretella.s at cretella.de>
>
>
>
> Kam eben ?ber eine franz?sische Liste.
>
> LG
>
> Gabi
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
>
> D'exp?rience, je dirais qu'il faut savoir ?tre prudent lors de la
> lecture des fiches de Wikipedia. J'en ai d?j? consult? le contenu et j'ai
> constat? que le s?rieux de leur contenu d?pend de celui de leurs r?dacteurs
> et relecteurs respectifs ; or les uns et les autres peuvent ?tre n'importe
> lesquels.
>
> N'?tant qu'informaticien, je me suis born? ? consulter les fiches
> concernant mon domaine. Pour cela, j'ai consult? trois versions dans les
> langues que je connais : anglais, fran?ais, allemand. R?sultat global :
> peut
> mieux faire !
>
> Voyons ce que dit cette encyclop?dique sur l'inventeur de
> l'ordinateur en 1941, l'allemand ZUSE. En fran?ais : n?ant. En anglais : un
> seul article assez bref. En allemand : un seul article, bien moins d?taill?
> que les diff?rentes pages se trouvant sur Internet. Aucun ne parle
> clairement de sa longue bataille perdue sur les brevets (1938-1967)
> concernant notamment la m?moire d'un ordinateur, ni (tout juste
> mentionn? en
> allemand) sur l'importance de sa cr?ation du premier langage de haut niveau
> en 1946, bien avant les r?alisations aux ?tats-Unis (1960).
>
> En regard, l'anglais TURING a droit ? de longues pages dans toutes
> les langues, bien qu'il n'ait cr?? ses premiers ordinateurs qu'apr?s la
> deuxi?me guerre mondiale (pendant la guerre, il n'a cr?? que des
> machines de
> d?chiffrement).
>
> De son c?t?, l'allemand von NEUMANN est qualifi? d'Am?ricain et
> inventeur de l'ordinateur, alors qu'il ?tait originaire de Hongrie, membre
> de la communaut? scientifique allemande et r?sident en Europe puis ?migr?
> aux ?tats-Unis seulement en 1937 et que ses premi?res publications sur
> l'architecture d'un ordinateur ne datent que de 1946-1947.
>
> Passons maintenant aux inventeurs fran?ais :
> - CARMILLE, le fran?ais inventeur de la notion d'identifiant pour les bases
> de donn?es en 1934. Anglais : inconnu. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand :
> inconnu.
> - GERNELLE, cr?ateur du premier micro-ordinateur au monde en 1973.
> Anglais :
> inconnu. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand : inconnu. Andr? TRUONG, l'industriel
> qui a produit cet ordinateur la m?me ann?e: inconnu de m?me.
>
> Cherchons maintenant un inventeur des ?tats-Unis : HYATT Gilbert,
> cr?ateur du premier microprocesseur en 1970, soit deux ans avant que Intel
> en commercialise un. Anglais : conna?t la cha?ne d'h?tels homonyme (quelle
> ironie !) Fran?ais
> : inconnu. Allemand : inconnu.
>
> Voyons enfin un inventeur sovi?tique : LEBEDEV, cr?ateur des
> premiers ordinateurs de l'URSS apr?s-guerre. Anglais : une toute petite
> page, pas plus grande qu'un ?cran. Fran?ais : inconnu. Allemand : ne cite
> que l'institut portant son nom (ce qui est l? aussi assez ironique).
>
>
> Wikipedia se distingue ?galement en mal pour d'autres raisons : si
> n'importe qui peut r?diger ou modifier une fiche sous sa responsabilit?,
> quelque soit la valeur de son contenu, son nom n'appara?t pas dans la
> fiche,
> seule figurant son adresse ?lectronique dans l'historique de la r?daction
> pour les ?ventuels utilisateurs pensant ? le consulter (oubli du droit
> moral) et de plus en c?dant de force tous ses droits d'auteur dans le cadre
> d'une licence dite libre, interpr?t?e ? sens unique, comportant notamment
> des restrictions (abandon forc? des droits patrimoniaux au profit exclusif
> de Wikipedia), toutes choses contraires au droit commun selon la Convention
> de Berne.
>
> Or Wikipedia se situe aux ?tats-Unis, pays signataire de la
> convention en question.
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i
> messaggi e allegati da 10MB http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

body:
On Sat, Sep 03, 2005 at 12:24:07PM +1000, Skyring wrote:
> On 9/3/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > And further, accessing a computer system without authorisation is
> > illegal in the US, the UK, and Australia, to name but a few countries;
> > given that you are banned from Wikipedia, any edits that you were to
> > make would constitute such an illegal act. Several sysops, and not just
> > Mackensen, have suggested that you may well be doing this, violating
> > your ban order. Perhaps you might want to think about finding another
> > place to play, Skyring?
>
> Thanks, James. Given that Wikipedia doesn't require checking of
> real-life identification before allowing access to the system, I can't
> see your theory lasting too long in any court.

I can't see as "real-life identification" matters.  Permission to access
the system is withdrawn from a person, not an "identification".  Once
that permission is withdrawn, access is unauthorized.

A shop does not require "real-life identification" before allowing you
to enter, either.  But if you behave in a manner which offends the
shopkeeper and she orders you to leave and never come back, and you fail
to obey, you are trespassing.  Identification doesn't enter into it:
the shopkeeper withdrew _your_ permission to be on her property -- not
your _name's_ or _ID card's_ permission.

It isn't your "identification" that's breaking the law by continuing to
edit Wikipedia (if you are so doing).  It's you.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
The message was sent by  Fr?d?ric de SOLLIERS to the TLSFRM-list (three
times - one copy on 6 May 2005 and two copies on 3 September 2005).

http://listes.uhb.fr/wws/arc/tlsfrm/

In that list there are only 537 members - not much for a translator's
list, but enough to pass such messages on and on, just like I received it.

The author should know about wikipedia copyrights, since he left a note
here:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discuter:Droit_d%27auteur

I suppose he does not understand the difference between copyright and
license.

Well I suppose there should be some kind of short standard explanation
in as many languages as possible that can then be used by all of us to
send it to people who create such misunderstandings. The thing is:
negative statementes are more easily remebered as positive ones (and if
they are repeated ... well...). As for the German translators I can
write a short note - up to now it did not appear on the Italian
translator's lists so it does not make sense to write something now, but
I suppose it would make sense to send a mail to the French discussion
group.

As for the French translator's list: who of you could help me? I could
write and someone of you corrects it ... well I have the objective
problem that in French I will have some problems in expressing these
sentences that make the tiny difference ... hmmm.

The situation is quite clear: or he commented on wikipedia without
having read the present information, or he did not understand what is
written there, or he is simply someone who tries to talk negatively
about the projects whenever he has the possibility.

All three need some "please do your homework before talking this way".

As for the contents the answer is simple: if he finds that the French
contents is not good enough: click on edit and improve it, giving
something back to the community instead of complaining.

This combined with some "why the wikimedia pojects" are useful for
translators will do it - maybe also help to create new and interesting
contacts.

So, please let me know who has time :-)

Ciao, Sabine

Traroth wrote:

>The texte speaks from not so famous inventors, who
>have no article in wikipedia, and uses this argument
>to say wikipedia is not reliable, and after that, some
>reasoning is done to explain that wikipedia does not
>conform to the Bern convention about author right.
>Where does this text come from ?
>
>Traroth
>
>

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] One Where We Blew It

body:
I thought people should be aware of the recent creation of a fork off
of Wikipedia at www.comixpedia.org.

This is a wiki intended for webcomics.

It exists separate from Wikipedia because we blew it big time with
the webcomics community.

We blew it by creating webcomics inclusion guidelines that were just
plain stupid, based on Alexa rankings and not on any sort of artistic
or critical notability. That meant that comics that lots of people
cited as influences were getting ignored. We blew it with moronic
votes for deletion debates that drove people who wanted to write
good, detailed articles on things away by telling them their work was
"fanwank." We blew it, in short, because of the mob of pissy
deletionists who dominate VfD, and who have gotten plenty of people
to call VfD a pit that's hurting Wikipedia.

If you want an example of this, I encourage you to look at the case
of [[Elf Only Inn]]. Elf Only Inn is a webcomic on a syndicate called
Keenspot. Keenspot is a business. Keenspot makes its money publishing
webcomics. They are an online publisher. Being published by Keenspot
is a big deal, and I would argue should be grounds for notability.

It turns out my argument wasn't the prevailing one on VfD, and the
article got deleted. What really sticks in my craw, though, is that
the webcomic inclusion guidelines say that the top twenty comics on
Keenspace are notable enough for inclusion. What's wrong with this?
Keenspace is a free webcomic hosting service offered by Keenspot.
It's also one of Keenspot's main talent pools - they move comics out
of Keenspace and into the main Keenspot. So, in theory, every comic
in Keenspace is less notable than any comic in Keenspot.

But following these frankly idiotic guidelines, the comic was
deleted. It got recreated later, but still - it NEVER should have
been deleted. The guidelines would also have us delete [[Athena
Voltaire]], which is on Graphic Smash, a webcomics syndicate that
doesn't pass the Alexa test of top 200,000 sites. Athena Voltaire was
nominated for an Eisner award. There is something wrong when a comic
that can get an Eisner nomination could be deleted. [[Digger]] is
similarly indisputably notable - except for the fact that it fails
the Alexa test.

Equally annoying was the deletion of [[Gossamer Commons]], nominated
with a simple "nn four-month-old webcomic" nomination. A case can be
made for deletion - the webcomic's creator even made it. But the case
for its deletion is not as simple as "nn four-month-old webcomic,"
especially considering that we have an article on the comics' writer
already, that the comic has attracted considerable praise and
attention among notable webcomics artists, and that the comic as a
whole was something of a Big Deal at its launch.

And it's not enough to say, "Oh,  [[Gossamer Commons should have been
kept." The point is that there shouldn't be endless deletion debates
on articles where people wave guidelines around that are
transparently crap. Deletionists should not be running rougshod over
a substantial group of people who want to contribute on a topic.
There should not be a webcomics fork born out of frustration about
how unfriendly we are to people who want to contribute on webcomics.
A fork born of a desire to have even more detailed coverage than is
appropriate for Wikipedia, and that wants to supplement Wikipedia's
coverage? Fine. Neat. That would be cool. But this isn't that. This
is a fork. This is good people taking their ball and going home,
because of the toxic culture on VfD.

We blew this one.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dump progress

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

> Thanks Brion, very neat.
>
> One more question: it would be nice if each project also wrote a line
> to a global log that is publicly accessable. People could monitor this
 > to detect that a dump has started and how much progress has been made.
>
> E.g. at http://download.wikimedia.org/dumpprogress.txt
>
> 2005-Sep-03 12:18:30 special commons / completed normally
> 2005-Sep-03 12:27:10 special sources / completed normally
> 2005-Sep-03 12:39:12 wikiquote ab / completed normally
> 2005-Sep-03 12:39:23 wikiquote ac / completed normally
> 2005-Sep-03 12:40:23 wikiquote ae

A simple grep -r statement should be enough to get these lines of every
backup.log file:

sourceswiki 2005-09-03T00:38:40+0000 OK: Starting backup of sourceswiki
sourceswiki 2005-09-03T08:43:59+0000 SUCCESS: done.

see http://download.wikimedia.org/special/sources/backup.log

I'm sure somebody will provide an RSS-feed, OAI-Repository,
dumplog2wiki-bot or what's requested if you just provide the simple log.

Greetings,
Jakob


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

Benjamin Webb wrote:
> Wikitree is currently voting on a new liscence at http://wikitree.org/index.php?
> title=WikiTree:License_poll.
>
> So far the consensus seems to be public domain, would this be acceptable for a
> Wikimedia project?

No, based on the inability for almost all people in the world to legally
contribute based on that licence (many countries have no legal scope for
a person to relinquish their work into the public domain, including the EU).

CC-BY is effectively the same, FWIW, and I would counsel the use of that
instead. CC-BY 2.5 even allows the crediting of an overall collective
organisation in lieu of the individuals (i.e., "this is released under
the Creative Commons Attribution licence; please credit WikiTree").

HTH.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Looking at the real world

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

Skyring wrote:

> On 9/3/05, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>
> > geni wrote:
> >
> > > On 9/2/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > In the past day, [[user:jtdirl]] has published my name and address, and
> > > > [[user:mackensen]] has accused me of criminal acts.
> > >
> > > People who play with fire get burned.
> >
> > And further, accessing a computer system without authorisation is
> > illegal in the US, the UK, and Australia, to name but a few countries;
> > given that you are banned from Wikipedia, any edits that you were to
> > make would constitute such an illegal act. Several sysops, and not just
> > Mackensen, have suggested that you may well be doing this, violating
> > your ban order. Perhaps you might want to think about finding another
> > place to play, Skyring?
>
> Thanks, James. Given that Wikipedia doesn't require checking of
> real-life identification before allowing access to the system, I can't
> see your theory lasting too long in any court.

Which shows just how much you know about such laws. :-) Seriously,
Wikipedia's very openness means that blocking and banning are highly
visible and obvious instructions to people to not access the system, and
IMO would be very easy to point to in court as opposed to merely
unadvertised computer systems that have an open port on them that people
connect to (which has landed people in gaol in several locations,
especially when said computer systems are military in nature). Not that
we have any intention of having you prosecuted, so this is all by-the-by
and rather irrelevant.

However, wikien-l is not the place to query your ban by the Arbitration
Committee; it is not a community matter, but one for the Board, and
Jimbo in particular. Feel free to email them about it. Certainly, feel
free to cease emailing /us/ about it, unendingly and pointlessly.

Yours,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Fadix wrote:

>Is there a way to organize something to force some
>users that don't know what NPOV really means to learn
>it from Administrators assisting them? I just think
>that those that don't understand what NPOV mean should
>not contribute in Wikipedia, plain and simple.
>
The wiki does not operate by force.

We were all newbies at one time, and we learned to understand NPOV
through experience (though some who have been around for a long time
still don't understand it).  Help from administrators is fine, but when
those administrators insist upon a particular interpretation of NPOV
they are no longer acting in the spirit of NPOV.

Ec


body:
> Angela is right - the Proposal_for_Sinitic_linguistic_policy failed to
> make an open call to the ZH community for their opinion.

But then, it also failed to make an open call to any other Wikipedia community.

If it deserves advertising on zh.wiki, it should also be advertised on
en.wiki and pt.wiki due to the relevance of those languages to the
Cantonese language.

Wikipedia-l was the only public area where I saw fit to announce it:
this is a request for the creation of a new Wikipedia.

If I hold a vote on the creation of a Wikipedia in Venetian, do I have
to inform wikiit-l? No. Would it be nessecary? Probably not.

> Due diligence has not been performed. My suggestions from July:

In fact, it has. Just because I didn't heed YOUR suggestions doesn't
mean I suck.

I contacted all those users on en.wiki and zh.wiki who were listed
with babel templates indicating they were native speakers of
Cantonese.

You *were* proven wrong about voting separately for Cantonese and Wu,
by at least two people.

I did not feel and still do not feel that links to the mailinglist
discussion and Meta vote are nessecary; however as I said before you
may add them yourself.

You claimed you weren't aware as to which discussions I was referring;
however: There was only one major discussion re:Cantonese/Wu on
wikipedia-l, and there is only one other page specifically about
Sinitic languages on Meta.

> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-July/041203.html
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-July/041207.html
>
> were not heeded. The voting page does not have complete background
> materials;  nor was the page translated into Chinese, the main
> relevant community; nor was the announcement made to wikizh-l or the
> main zh.wikipedia.org community pages.

1) What is the main relevant community is a personal judgement on your
part. As Jogloran said "My mother tongue is Cantonese, not Mandarin,
not 'Chinese', but specifically Cantonese", and others echoed similar
sentiments, I don't think "Chinese" (aka Mandarin baihuawen) can be
deemed any more relevant than can English: the English Wikipedia
counts quite a few Cantonese native speaking users, and English is
co-official in Hong Kong. Many Cantonese speakers live in countries
where English is an official or very prominent language: Malaysia (->
Kuala Lumpur; Penang is more largely Hokkien-speaking), Singapore,
overseas Chinatowns (TongSaan) in Australia, the UK, and the US...
There are actually nearly identical numbers of self-identified
Cantonese speakers on English and Mandarin WPs
2) I sent e-mails about it to all users who listed themselves as
Cantonese native speakers with Babel templates. Thus, while
Mandarin-only ppl didn't get a message, people who cared enough to
note their mad Cantonese skillz on their userpage did in fact get one.
Nevertheless, a few people from zh.wikipedia, like Milcheflasche,
Jasonzhuocn, Pektiong, and Chun-hian, found the vote without me having
to inform them of its existence.
3) Some section headings are in both languages. and I gave a list of
Mandarin- and Cantonese-language links. As I noted before, it is a
Wiki page, and for this reason you are and have always been welcome to
be bold and add translations in any language you should so wish, from
Arrernte to Mandarin to Italian to Haitian to Hopi to Luganda to Manx
to Slovio.
4) The lack of announcement was partially intentional. I felt that it
was most fair to send a message to wikipedia-l, and international
mailing list, and then to individual Cantonese-speaking users.

> Personal differences aside, the organizer of a vote, as an implicit
> "overseer," should show restraint in terms of commenting on individual
> votes and as a result, influencing the votes on the page.

I'm not sure how comments on votes could influence them. Other than
those directed towards Jeromy~Yuyu, my comments were in a spirit of
disambiguation rather than challenging the reasoning behind votes, as
some people appeared to think we were talking about writing a
Baihuawen Wikipedia in Traditional Chinese and then calling it
"Cantonese Wikipedia", rather than writing a YutYuhBakWaMaan Wikipedia
as was the idea.

> One reason the final (sixth) GNAA VfD was accepted after several
> controversial rounds of voting was because of how professionally the
> vote was administered. We should learn from that.

And by "we", you mean "Node", right?

Mark


body:
"Some dialect of English" implies that Cantonese is merely a dialect of Chinese.

Anyhow, if a Wikipedia in an English dialect were requested, and the
person organising the vote sent private e-mails to all people claiming
that to be their home dialect notifying them of the vote, those people
would most likely vote "against" the creation of such a Wikipedia.

Why should we leave the future of a Cantonese Wikipedia up to Mandarin
speakers? That would be like not only letting (which is what we're
already sort of doing by allowing non-speakers to vote), but actually
ENCOURAGING all of Serbia to vote in a referendum on Kosovar
independence, which is by no rational measure fair.

Given the current results of the vote, and the fact that a huge
portion of the people who voted are actually native Cantonese speakers
(on both sides -- in fact,

Mark

On 05/09/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
> > I found our policy with regards to Chinese languages stranger and
> > stranger. We do not do this if we open another Germanic or Romanic
> > language pedia!
>
> It's not policy. There is no policy for creating new languages (just a
> draft one at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>).
> I was just giving my opinion, and I feel that the relevant communities
> should be told about any language proposals, not only Sinetic ones. If
> some dialect of English were proposed, it would be very unfair to try
> to hide that from the existing English language communities within
> Wikimedia.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
If the thread was about copyright then dragging in other matters that
are unrelated can only create confusion.  I agree that there are many
aspects of Iranian law where human rights are not properly respected,
but that does not justify our ignoring whatever other rights Iran may
have allowed to its citizens.  If Iran already gives its citizens
copyright protections that are substantially less than what is available
in most other countries, how can one justify reducing those protections
even further?  Speculating about Iranian motives for not participating
in international agreements is not helpful; not paying foreign copyright
holders is indeed a consequence, but that does not make it a motive.

Of course, much of copyright law is not about ethics.  The Disney
Corporation has done much to establish that fact.  Law and ethics
frequently diverge.  Ethics underlie the spirit of law, and the ethical
person acts out of a conviction that what he is doing is right, and not
because he is so obliged by the word of written laws.  It's true to say
that we are not bound to follow Iranian laws, but that does not prevent
us from respecting them out of our own sense of fairness.

Ec

Fastfission wrote:

>I wasn't referring to a copyright provision, I was referring to their other
>well-known restrictive laws. I'm not sure I buy the "ethical validity"
>argument, in part because I'm not so sure I, in my heart of hearts, think
>that copyright is about ethics much these days (and suspect that Iran's lack
>of participation in foreign copyright agreements is done so more for their
>own benefit -- not having to pay foreign copyright holders -- than it does
>in inducing any loss-of-profit for the Iranian government or Iranian
>citizens).
>
>But anyway -- my response was just meant to say, "Well, I don't think we're
>legally bound to follow Iranian laws on this or much anything else." Even if
>that's *true* (I'm the first to admit I'm not very well versed in
>international law), it doesn't *necessarily* imply any particular course of
>action. The censorship example was just to illustrate that if we tried to
>follow every country's individual content laws about everything, we'd have
>no encyclopedia.
>
>FF
>
>On 8/7/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>There is some ethical validity to respecting Iranian copyright law
>>whether or not an obligation exists. Iran's failure to participate in
>>international treaties on the matter should not be a primary concern.
>>Infringement of Iranian copyrights are still infringements even if US
>>courts would not consider those laws. Copyright terms in Iran (life +
>>30) are still shorter than in most countries, so there would be no need
>>to extend them beyond that time. I'm not aware of any Iranian copyright
>>provision regarding the depiction of women, and you admit that you don't
>>know about that either. That aspect seems like a red herring.
>>


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia misinformation, revisited

body:
Back in June, I complained that a little particle of misinformation
from Wikipedia had gotten lodged in my brain, and might potentially
have affected my car-purchasing decision. Specifically, I was
referring to an article that characterized the Toyota Echo, as a
"flop" in the U.S. whose sales had tanked in 2004 and was due to be
discontinued--despite continuing success in many other countries,
including Canada.

I challenged this, and Michael Turley responded that "The Echo is a
failure, and is being discontinued." He referenced  http://
www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0501/14/B02-58761.htm which indeed
says "Toyota to pull compact Echo from lineup in '06"

Yet I just got my October 2005 copy of Consumer Reports, and right
there on page 14 the Toyota Echo is billed among the "New and
Notable: Cars to Watch in 2006-2007." They say "It should continue as
a fuel-efficient small car... Small cars often grow with redesigns so
you may see a longer, wider Echo and possibly a hatchback version."

So, just what's going on? I'm not really complaining about Wikipedia
here, since what it says is backed up by "The Detroit News Auto
Insider," but if the Echo is being replaced by an improved Echo--
that's not exactly my idea of a "flop" that's been "discontinued."

By that measure, every refreshing of a car model line could be
described as a "flop."

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block on false (and never even reported) 3RR

body:
If interested, editors can read the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Recent_block
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Bratsche#3RR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:66.216.226.34
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Lulu_of_the_Lotus-Eaters#Blocked_for_WP:3RR

The user was blocked according to policy after multiple (i.e >4) reverts to
[[Homosexuality]]. Users SlimVirgin, Radiant!, Nunh-huh, Hipocrite, and
Raul654 have all reviewed my blocking action, and found nothing wrong or
unusual. Just a cut-and-dry 3RR case.

-[[User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 9/5/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> David Mertz, Ph.D. wrote:
> <snip>
> > (I wouldn't be so petty as to report it to mediation if it is not
> > repeated).
> >
>
> And you took it to the mailing list because...?
>
> --
> Alphax | /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Alphax

body:
David Mertz, Ph.D. wrote:
<snip>
> (I wouldn't be so petty as to report it to mediation if it is not
> repeated).
>

And you took it to the mailing list because...?

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: Ordering Wikipedia

body:
Ed Poor wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Donald Smith" <donald_smith123 at yahoo.ca>
> To: uncle_ed_poor at yahoo.com
> Date: Thu, 1 Sep 2005 13:46:34 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: Ordering Wikipedia
>
>
>> Sir,
>>
>> I honestly love working with Wikipedia. At such a point that I wish
>> to order one sample for our family's need.
>>
>> How do we proceed to acquire one?
>>
>> Also, what are the modalities to pay the required fees and charges,
>> besides sending a Credit Card Number on the Internet, if any other
>> mode of payment is available of course !
>>
>> Thank you for your time, and may your team keep on the excellent
>> work done so far. Thousands of users appreciated.
>>

Tell him to simply sign over the rights to his first born child... :)

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 9/5/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Back in June, I complained that a little particle of misinformation
> from Wikipedia had gotten lodged in my brain, and might potentially
> have affected my car-purchasing decision. Specifically, I was
> referring to an article that characterized the Toyota Echo, as a
> "flop" in the U.S. whose sales had tanked in 2004 and was due to be
> discontinued--despite continuing success in many other countries,
> including Canada.
>
> I challenged this, and Michael Turley responded that "The Echo is a
> failure, and is being discontinued." He referenced http://
> www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0501/14/B02-58761.htm<http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0501/14/B02-58761.htm>which indeed
> says "Toyota to pull compact Echo from lineup in '06"
>
> Yet I just got my October 2005 copy of Consumer Reports, and right
> there on page 14 the Toyota Echo is billed among the "New and
> Notable: Cars to Watch in 2006-2007." They say "It should continue as
> a fuel-efficient small car... Small cars often grow with redesigns so
> you may see a longer, wider Echo and possibly a hatchback version."
>
> So, just what's going on? I'm not really complaining about Wikipedia
> here, since what it says is backed up by "The Detroit News Auto
> Insider," but if the Echo is being replaced by an improved Echo--
> that's not exactly my idea of a "flop" that's been "discontinued."
>
> By that measure, every refreshing of a car model line could be
> described as a "flop."
>

I would guess that either the Detroit News Auto Insider's sources aren't as
reliable as thought, or that Toyota has reconsidered it's position given
this year's steady and continuous rise in fuel prices.

The third possibility is an auto industry trick to get around (or at least
ease or speed up the process of) NHTSA and EPA certification requirements.
That is, keep the name around, and put it on either an all new vehicle, or
one that has been completely redesigned. The crash test requirements in
particular are much less onerous on returning models (even redesigned ones)
than all new nameplates. Nissan did this more than once, first with their
corporate name, from Datsun to Datsun Nissan (or was it Nissan Datsun?),
then to just Nissan; then they did it with a car, the Stanza, which became
the Stanza Altima before they later dropped the Stanza name.

On a related side note, I've been consistently dumbfounded by steady SUV and
4x4 truck sales as fuel prices rise, while fine smaller, more efficient cars
like the Toyota Echo and my own car, the Ford Contour, are widely ignored by
the public. Are we as a culture really that short-sighted? (I bought my car
in the closeout year and got a great deal, primarily because I keep my cars
for about 8-10 years and don't care at all about resale value.)

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
That's honestly only part of the problem, though. The other problem
is that the gudelines we have are crappy. Which is a helpful warning
against instruction creep - your old instructions are likely to stick
around and bite people in the ass long after their time has passed.

-Snowspinner

On Sep 5, 2005, at 8:03 PM, J.F. de Wolff wrote:

>
>
> I agree with Phil's observation, but it's not just the [[profanity|
> ****]] deletionists that are to blame. There are honestly too many
> people so hungry for attention that they continuously seek to make
> Wikipedia aware of their unnotability. These characters are an
> undesired effect of being completely open, and cause pollution of
> good material with their own vanity. It is them we should blame to
> a large degree for our failure to distinguish between bona fide and
> shockingly unnotable.
>
> When it comes to webcomics, it is extremely hard (for a non-
> insider) to make a judgment between notable and non-notable, which
> is exactly the point in having guidelines. I know this is elitist,
> but in these matters an uninformed opinion is a potentially
> destructive one.
>
> Jfdwolff
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.18/89 - Release Date:
> 02/09/2005
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: One Where We Blew It

body:
On 9/5/05, J.F. de Wolff <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk> wrote:
>
>
>
> I agree with Phil's observation, but it's not just the
> [[profanity|****]] deletionists that are to blame. There are honestly
> too many people so hungry for attention that they continuously seek
> to make Wikipedia aware of their unnotability. These characters are
> an undesired effect of being completely open, and cause pollution of
> good material with their own vanity. It is them we should blame to a
> large degree for our failure to distinguish between bona fide and
> shockingly unnotable.
>
> When it comes to webcomics, it is extremely hard (for a non-insider)
> to make a judgment between notable and non-notable, which is exactly
> the point in having guidelines. I know this is elitist, but in these
> matters an uninformed opinion is a potentially destructive one.
>
> Jfdwolff

I agree that we have a very difficult problem with VfD/AfD. The current
culture is of war, not tolerance. I think it is because the deletion forums
(and deletion forum policy discussions) are populated (and some might say
dominated) by many the same people who are our best workers in the fight
against vandals.

Far too often the case is "people write about what they care about; VfD
voters vote against what they don't care about".

There are several article drafts that I just haven't bothered to write in
this toxic environment.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
Brion, I would be interested:

how is this related to ( or a solution of  )
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2497
Admins ought to be able to upload any file

I think, this bugzilla could be closed (if your new permission keys are
correspondingly applied to the group sysop).
Tom

Brion Vibber schrieb:

> Due to popular demand (and my general dislike of interaction between
> image changes and caching, plus a rash of vandalism of a certain type)
> I've added two new permission keys to limit uploads that overwrite
> existing images.
>
> Disabling the 'reupload' right will prevent any upload of a file which
> already is present, either locally or on the shared repository (Commons).
>
> Disabling the 'reupload-shared' right will prevent overwrites of images
> which are present on the shared repository but _not_ on the local wiki.
> (A pre-existing local image overrides the Commons image.)
>
> For fun I've set the default message to display a thumbnail of the
> conflicting image on the error page like so:
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/3/3f/Upload_restrictions.png
>
> Currently, reupload-shared is set to off for regular users on all
> Wikimedia wikis, but the general reupload right is left on so local
> images can be overwritten (and images on Commons can still be
> overwritten there).
>
> The message can be customized/localized at
> [[MediaWiki:Fileexists-forbidden]] (for local images) and
> [[MediaWiki:Fileexists-shared-forbidden]] (for Commons images)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>