from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
Maybe this should go on Meta, but I want to see comments here, first.

As I can see, there are two ways of mass content adding. The first one
includes generation of articles based on some public data (for example
NASA, National Geospatial Inteligence Agency, French government etc.)
Now, this is almost usual way for mass content adding and I think that
a number of us have some experience with such work.

The other way is adding content using English Wikipedia. English
Wikipedia has a lot of categorized articles, a lot of templates etc.
All these typical forms can be used for automatic content creation on
small Wikipedias.

I think that idea of having a thousends of articles with a couple of
sentences and good categorization about a lot of fields -- can be very
helpful not only to small Wikipedias, but also for spreading free
knowledge. I think that it would be a great day for us when people
which native language is Mongolian will be able to read about places
in Amazon and movies from Australia in their native language. And,
this is possible to do much faster then we think.

And not only that: bots should be able to update information; bots
should be able to do more things through time. Finally, it would be
possible to start with knowledge transfer between Wikipedias in
different languages: if we have the same methodology on different
Wikipedias, we would be able to update data semi-automatic (up to full
automatic).

However, this needs a number of people who are interested in such project:

(1) We would need people who know to work with bots (pywikipediabot or
something similar).
(2) We would need make software based on the bot core which would have
to be localized: like MediaWiki should be localized; this software
should have sentences like "<movie> is movie made in <year> in
<country>. Genre of that movie is <genre>. Director was <director>..."
in a number of languages.
(3) We would need good and quality work on English Wikipedia. Rules
like "this goes to the table, that goes to the template up, this goes
to template in the middle" should be more or less strict (but, I see
that people are working in such way on en:).

This is RFC. I am looking for your comments.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Finne Boonen

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on small
	Wikipedias

body:
what you're talking about is slightly dangerous, en: has been known to
be incorrect quite often :)

on another note, this idea is better implementend in the wikidata
idea, but by heart I don't know where info on that lives.

mvg
Finne Boonen

On 1/29/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Maybe this should go on Meta, but I want to see comments here, first.
>
> As I can see, there are two ways of mass content adding. The first one
> includes generation of articles based on some public data (for example
> NASA, National Geospatial Inteligence Agency, French government etc.)
> Now, this is almost usual way for mass content adding and I think that
> a number of us have some experience with such work.
>
> The other way is adding content using English Wikipedia. English
> Wikipedia has a lot of categorized articles, a lot of templates etc.
> All these typical forms can be used for automatic content creation on
> small Wikipedias.
>
> I think that idea of having a thousends of articles with a couple of
> sentences and good categorization about a lot of fields -- can be very
> helpful not only to small Wikipedias, but also for spreading free
> knowledge. I think that it would be a great day for us when people
> which native language is Mongolian will be able to read about places
> in Amazon and movies from Australia in their native language. And,
> this is possible to do much faster then we think.
>
> And not only that: bots should be able to update information; bots
> should be able to do more things through time. Finally, it would be
> possible to start with knowledge transfer between Wikipedias in
> different languages: if we have the same methodology on different
> Wikipedias, we would be able to update data semi-automatic (up to full
> automatic).
>
> However, this needs a number of people who are interested in such project:
>
> (1) We would need people who know to work with bots (pywikipediabot or
> something similar).
> (2) We would need make software based on the bot core which would have
> to be localized: like MediaWiki should be localized; this software
> should have sentences like "<movie> is movie made in <year> in
> <country>. Genre of that movie is <genre>. Director was <director>..."
> in a number of languages.
> (3) We would need good and quality work on English Wikipedia. Rules
> like "this goes to the table, that goes to the template up, this goes
> to template in the middle" should be more or less strict (but, I see
> that people are working in such way on en:).
>
> This is RFC. I am looking for your comments.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app


body:
On 1/29/06, Finne Boonen <finne at cassia.be> wrote:
> what you're talking about is slightly dangerous, en: has been known to
> be incorrect quite often :)

:)) This is the part of collaborative wiki process. If English
Wikipedia fails when bot pass the first time, the second or the third
will be correct. I am not talking about completely automatic process,
but about a team who would work on this issue. Also, if we are able to
make something similar based on German Wikipedia, it would be good,
too.

> on another note, this idea is better implementend in the wikidata
> idea, but by heart I don't know where info on that lives.

Pure data about something are better then nothing :) Also, pure data
are encyclopedic, too. Also, this just should be the beginning of the
article (people should continue to work on such article); as well as
at the beginning of the project. It is possible to find keywords from
some article and generate a number of sentences with a lot of sense.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
	stable version feature?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Anthere schrieb:
>> And what actually needs to be done for any version of the tool to go
>> live Magnus ?
> Someone with access to Wikipedia servers would have to
> 1. check the tool is working OK
> 2. copy a few files
> 3. create new database table
> 4. edit one file
>
> 2.-4. takes, what, five minutes?
>
> 1. could have been done already...

I'd been waiting on Tim's in-progress code to compare. Apparently there's not
really anything much of that left (his work mostly transmogrified into the
templatelinks temple) so I'm poking at Magnus's code now.

It's not ready for use; on a quick lookover there are multiple PHP error
messages on basic page views, odd behavior paging through history, it's
scattered with test code which doesn't include any of the required permission
handling, use of HTML messages may be insecure, and generally it will be hard to
maintain due to heavy mixing of UI and backend code. Cache purging doesn't seem
to be handled either, so it wouldn't work for its intended purpose for Wikimedia.

It'll need some work. I'll see if I can get back to this once the namespace
manager is merged, rather than having to fix up its namespace handling a second
time afterwards.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikien-l

from_name: Michael Lindeen

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
Yes but determining who decides what is "good" and what is "crap" is
the basic problem here. The deletion process isn't perfect but it's
better than individual admins or users deciding what should be
"rescued" and what shouldn't be. The whole purpose of the deletion
process is to get community consensus as to whether an article should
be kept or not. It's attempting to balance inclusionists like yourself
and deletionists like me. If a better system can be devised,
wonderful, but ditching it altogether is a bit rash and foolhardy to
me. Mike

On 1/29/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/28/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> >
> > The problem is that some people treat the process oriented requests as
> > content-oriented and say: "No, we won't undelete it - it doesn't look like
> > a worthwhile article to me." And some people treat the content-oriented
> > requests as process-oriented and say: "No, we can't undelete it because
> > the AfD was legit."
> >
> > This is not good, DRV has to be able to handle both types of requests
> > sensibly.
>
> No. We should never restore crap content, no matter how mucked up the
> process was that deleted it, and we should always restore good
> content, no matter how perfectly the process that deleted it was
> followed.
>
> Anything else is putting process before the encyclopedia.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/29/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sean Barrett wrote:
> > > Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
> > > "Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?
> > >
> >
> > When all other forms of dispute resolution have been tried, of course.
>
> The arbcom has, on occasion, taken cases where not all other forms of
> dispute resolution have been tried.
>
> -Matt

well I seem to recall there has already been an RFC on deletionists so
that would just leave medation.

--
geni


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: John R. Leopold

body:
On 1/28/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've temporarily deleted this article because it has been notified as
> a possible hatchet job on the politician.
>
> The article is quite opinionated and certainly not worthy of
> Wikipedia.  This isn't another Seigethaler but it certainly seems like
> some politically motivated bit of tripe that has been on Wikipedia for
> far too long.
>

I restored the article minus the problematic final paragraph.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Foundation-l] Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll for
	Wikistandards)

body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> This is not an indictment of volunteers. I believe that they are the
> lifeblood of this organization. At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
> responsibilities. All of these efforts at reorganization are attempts to  channel
> volunteer efforts effectively, so that they can continue doing what  they do
> best--fulfilling the Foundation's mission statement by creating and
> distributing high quality free content resources--while limiting the  repercussions
> that the Foundation, and by extension, the volunteers, face when  things do not
> go right. This is something that requires professional legal and  financial
> knowhow.

Exactly. And while the pool of Wikimedians who can help is large and growing larger, that pool
will not always have the right mix of skills we need to run the foundation (sic the oranization
NOT the projects). Thus we will sometimes have to look outside that community to fill certain
roles within the foundation.

BTW, every board member is also a Wikipedian. :) Some just edit more than others.

-- mav

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


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

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

Michael Lindeen stated for the record:
> Jesus. If we did that, it would involve about half of the site. If
> people don't like the deletion policy, they can get it changed through
> consensus just like anything else we do. I don't understand why it
> automatically becomes "we have to use dispute resolution". There is no
> "dispute" per se. Mike

A great many people would dispute that statement.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | That would have worked if you hadn't
 sean at epoptic.org | stopped me. --Dr. Egon Spengler
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Where ends the responsibility of Wikipedia?
	(personal information of people)

body:
It is not that your identity so far as the state or federal
government is stolen. Identity theft refers to someone gaining
sufficient access to your personal information that it is possible to
access your credit card accounts and bank accounts or create new
ones. What they are stealing is your credit rating. They can then run
up a big bill and leave you with it; the banks and credit companies
may forgive the debt, but straightening your credit rating will be
difficult and time consuming, or expensive (if you hire it done).

I suspect the same thing  could happen to a Belgium citizen.

Could a person armed with your identity card open up a line of credit
without you knowing it.? Could they get a "lost" identity card issued
in your name to them?

Fred

On Jan 29, 2006, at 1:55 AM, Walter Vermeir wrote:

> I have seen a request form a person who has a entry on the English
> language Wikipedia to remove his date of birth because he fears
> identity
> theft. He is a USA-citizens.
>
> At first glance that seems to me a very strange reason to request to
> remove that information. How can you steal someones identity??
>
>
>> From the day of my bright until the day that I day that I die all my
>>
> movements are tracked in the national population register of
> Belgium. I
> have a electronic identity card, a electronic national medical
> insurance
> card. Most databaseses of the government functions are
> interconnected to
> exchange information about the citizens. There is not much the
> government does not know. (*) So how the hell can you steal some ones
> identify?
>
> But I understand that things are very, very different in the USA
> regarding that. That there no way to verify someone identify. That you
> can get a visa-card whit a drivers licence ID and a drivers licence
> with
> the Visa-card as identification. And that this is also the reason that
> Americans are not enthusiastic to give you there bank account number
> because there is no good protection against abuse.
>
> So when you look at it that way I would be scared also for identify
> theft if I where living in the USA.
>
> Would it not be reasonable to consider the local circumstances when
> putting information in the articles?
>
> Greetings,
> Walter
>
> --
> Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
> Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll
	for	Wikistandards)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>This is not an indictment of volunteers. I believe that they are the
>>lifeblood of this organization. At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
>>responsibilities. All of these efforts at reorganization are attempts to  channel
>>volunteer efforts effectively, so that they can continue doing what  they do
>>best--fulfilling the Foundation's mission statement by creating and
>>distributing high quality free content resources--while limiting the  repercussions
>>that the Foundation, and by extension, the volunteers, face when  things do not
>>go right. This is something that requires professional legal and  financial
>>knowhow.
>>
>>
>
>Exactly. And while the pool of Wikimedians who can help is large and growing larger, that pool
>will not always have the right mix of skills we need to run the foundation (sic the oranization
>NOT the projects). Thus we will sometimes have to look outside that community to fill certain
>roles within the foundation.
>
>BTW, every board member is also a Wikipedian. :) Some just edit more than others.
>
>-- mav
>
>
Having been involved with several other very large volunteer
organizations, I beg to differ that you won't find volunteers with the
right mix of skill necessary for most aspects of developing with
Wikimedia Foundation and associated Wikimedia projects.  If it continues
to grow, I would agree that there must be some professional staff to
deal with things like legal requirements and administrative overhead
that somebody must do but nobody really cares to accomplish without
getting a paycheck because it is pure drudgery.  I am continually amazed
though at how many tasks that would appear to me as mindless tedium
still get accomplished with Wikimedia projects, like the recent changes
patrol and endless battles with trolls.

One of the critical things that happens with large volunteer
organizations is that training becomes a critical attribute, where
volunteers are trained in critical skills like leadership development
and critical aspects of the organization to help that volunteer group
accomplish its mission.  Usually you can even find "train the trainer"
classes, and even people who conduct instruction for those people to
conduct the "train the trainer" classes.  This is something that is
currently missing from Wikimedia projects, where new leaders are usually
developed by throwing them into a leadership position and left to either
sink or swim.

An example of this is with the American Red Cross, where they have
largely volunteers that run almost every aspect of their organization.
 Yes, they do have professional staff that deals with the mundane day to
day issues, but the bulk of what they accomplish could not happen
without a huge group of volunteers that are activly involved.  The Red
Cross also has a huge number of training sessions for these volunteers,
and is constantly trying to get its volunteers trained on things like
knowledge of First Aid, CPR,  and disaster relief.  None of these are
skills that come naturally to any random volunteer unless you have a
medical degree, and even then professional medical personnel still learn
things through their association with the Red Cross that they would
otherwise not learn.

I could mention examples from other very successful volunteer
organizations, but I think this gets the point across fairly well.
 Volunteer groups can be successful, and some very large mostly
volunteer organizations do exist.  I would also add that there is a huge
diversity of background from those who do participate on Wikimedia
projects, and this diversity is something that needs to be exploited to
help the growth of all Wikimedia projects.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 1/27/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> If it's such an awful violation, then why not send a letter to
> Nintendo and/or Pokemon USA informing them of this nefarious
> activity going on right under their noses?
>
> It's such a simple solution, I'm a little surprised that fair-use
> opponents haven't tried this already. (Of course, if the copyright
> holder officially shrugs about WP usage, or defines what they
> consider reasonable limits, that would make it harder to argue
> that fair use is always unacceptable, so there's a little risk.)
>
> Stan

Most "fair-use opponents" realize that the real problem with relying
on fair use has nothing to do with Wikipedia's distribution over the
Internet.  The real problem comes into play with redistributors and
print/CD/DVD editions.

If the "fair-use proponents" got a letter from Nintendo and/or Pokemon
USA saying that they have no problem with Wikipedia including all its
images in a DVD edition, that would certainly go a long way toward
resolving the issue.  Of course, the best solution would be just have
the company release the images under some free or at least semi-free
license.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
His attacks are of the smear by personal association type. One link
he made in a recent article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030

This attempts to smear me based on my membership in the Lawyers Guild
30 years ago. It was aggravated instances of this behavior that got
him a one year ban.

Fred

On Jan 29, 2006, at 6:06 AM, Mark Ryan wrote:

> A quick perusal of this user's postings to the mailing list does not
> scream out "personal attacks!" to me. Could someone kindly point out
> which parts of his posts can be construed as personal attacks? I'm not
> about to kick someone off the mailing list just for being banned on
> Wikipedia proper.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> WikiEN-l mailing list admin
>
> On 29/01/06, Michael Lindeen <wikikitty at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm with Sean here. Nobs is a banned user. He has a long long history
>> of personal attacks. If he's just going to use this list to attack
>> people (no matter if it's a valid reason or not), I'm not sure how
>> helpful it is to let him post here. Mike
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 1/29/2006 9:05:46 AM Eastern Standard Time,
t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au writes:

If  Wikimedia needs qualified outside help, it's in operations, not
oversight.  Only an elected board, accountable to the Wikimedia
community, can ensure  that the principles that the community holds dear
are upheld.

Some  committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
but the  committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
selected by a  transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
Erik suggests,  with open membership.

Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it
does in operations. A large organization entails legal and  financial
responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot  simply throw another
server at the person suing us.

As I understand it, serving on the Board or in some other official  capacity,
such as officer, includes legal responsibility, including liability.  It is
not just the ability to make decisions that comes with a position,  but the
willingness to face the consequences. The issue is not who takes  credit when
things go right, but rather, who takes the blame when something goes  wrong.

This is not an indictment of volunteers. I believe that they are the
lifeblood of this organization. At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
responsibilities. All of these efforts at reorganization are attempts to  channel
volunteer efforts effectively, so that they can continue doing what  they do
best--fulfilling the Foundation's mission statement by creating and
distributing high quality free content resources--while limiting the  repercussions
that the Foundation, and by extension, the volunteers, face when  things do not
go right. This is something that requires professional legal and  financial
knowhow.

Danny


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
>
> The problem is that some people treat the process oriented requests as
> content-oriented and say: "No, we won't undelete it - it doesn't look like
> a worthwhile article to me." And some people treat the content-oriented
> requests as process-oriented and say: "No, we can't undelete it because
> the AfD was legit."
>
> This is not good, DRV has to be able to handle both types of requests
> sensibly.

No. We should never restore crap content, no matter how mucked up the
process was that deleted it, and we should always restore good
content, no matter how perfectly the process that deleted it was
followed.

Anything else is putting process before the encyclopedia.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> Assume good faith, Tony.  Accusing us of being scared is not going to
> persuade us to do what you want us to do.

It was worth a try! :-D


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Where ends the responsibility of Wikipedia? (personal
 information of people)

body:
I have seen a request form a person who has a entry on the English
language Wikipedia to remove his date of birth because he fears identity
theft. He is a USA-citizens.

At first glance that seems to me a very strange reason to request to
remove that information. How can you steal someones identity??

>From the day of my bright until the day that I day that I die all my
movements are tracked in the national population register of Belgium. I
have a electronic identity card, a electronic national medical insurance
card. Most databaseses of the government functions are interconnected to
exchange information about the citizens. There is not much the
government does not know. (*) So how the hell can you steal some ones
identify?

But I understand that things are very, very different in the USA
regarding that. That there no way to verify someone identify. That you
can get a visa-card whit a drivers licence ID and a drivers licence with
the Visa-card as identification. And that this is also the reason that
Americans are not enthusiastic to give you there bank account number
because there is no good protection against abuse.

So when you look at it that way I would be scared also for identify
theft if I where living in the USA.

Would it not be reasonable to consider the local circumstances when
putting information in the articles?

Greetings,
Walter

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/29/06, Michael Lindeen <wikikitty at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes but determining who decides what is "good" and what is "crap" is
> the basic problem here.

This is the job of AfD and DRV.  When AfD fails, DRV is supposed to
correct the error.  This isn't rocket science.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 1/29/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Another thing we could do would be to have a project like commons
> for the free images on en that arent eligible for commons (mainly PD
> US only), transwiki as appropriate. us.commons.wikimedia.org

I though PD-US went to commons right now?

-Matt


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
>> Yes but determining who decides what is "good" and what is "crap" is
>> the basic problem here.
>
> This is the job of AfD and DRV.  When AfD fails, DRV is supposed to
> correct the error.  This isn't rocket science.

But DRV also gets out-of-process speedy deletions. If it votes solely
based on content then we've effectively lowered the bar for deleting
something down to 50% support as long as you can find an admin to do the
dirty work. That sends your precious "when in doubt, don't delete" out the
window.

If everyone agrees that an article is crap then we can keep it deleted per
WP:SNOW no matter what satanic ceremonies were used to destroy it. But if
there are people arguing in good faith that an article is worthwhile and
it was indeed deleted out of process then we should restore it and give it
a chance at AfD where a supermajority is required to delete something.

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
Nobs' postings here aren't really attacks (well, this business with Fred
notwithstanding), but they are distracting.  Arbcom has heard all these
arguments and more and ruled to ban him fo ra year; he is now trying to
re-argue his case here.  It's tiresome, more than anything else.

-k

On 1/29/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> His attacks are of the smear by personal association type. One link
> he made in a recent article:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
> Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030
>
> This attempts to smear me based on my membership in the Lawyers Guild
> 30 years ago. It was aggravated instances of this behavior that got
> him a one year ban.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jan 29, 2006, at 6:06 AM, Mark Ryan wrote:
>
> > A quick perusal of this user's postings to the mailing list does not
> > scream out "personal attacks!" to me. Could someone kindly point out
> > which parts of his posts can be construed as personal attacks? I'm not
> > about to kick someone off the mailing list just for being banned on
> > Wikipedia proper.
> >
> > ~Mark Ryan
> > WikiEN-l mailing list admin
> >
> > On 29/01/06, Michael Lindeen <wikikitty at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I'm with Sean here. Nobs is a banned user. He has a long long history
> >> of personal attacks. If he's just going to use this list to attack
> >> people (no matter if it's a valid reason or not), I'm not sure how
> >> helpful it is to let him post here. Mike
> >>
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Foundation-l] CafePres shop change

body:
This morning I updated the CafePress shop for Wikimedia products.

http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/464182

If you have any other design ideas, then please add them to:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas/Cafe_Press

Thank you. :)

-- mav

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


subject: [Foundation-l] CafePres shop change


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:
> Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
>
>>I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
>>that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
>>orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
>>committee is too scared to act.
>
>
> The Arbitration Committee is a judiciary, not a legislature.  We weren't
> elected to design and implement organizational structures and processes.
>
> Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
> "Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?
>

When all other forms of dispute resolution have been tried, of course.

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

body:
On 1/29/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> I have seen a request form a person who has a entry on the English
> language Wikipedia to remove his date of birth because he fears identity
> theft. He is a USA-citizens.

If there is evidence to confirm it, then Wikipedia is not going to add
to his problems.  If there is no evidence, it should be removed
anyway.  I don't see why this is any different to any other request of
the remove-my-personal-information-because-I-say-so type.

--
Sam


from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
 stable version feature?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>>Anthere schrieb:
>>
>>>And what actually needs to be done for any version of the tool to go
>>>live Magnus ?
>>
>>Someone with access to Wikipedia servers would have to
>>1. check the tool is working OK
>>2. copy a few files
>>3. create new database table
>>4. edit one file
>>
>>2.-4. takes, what, five minutes?
>>
>>1. could have been done already...
>
>
> I'd been waiting on Tim's in-progress code to compare. Apparently there's not
> really anything much of that left (his work mostly transmogrified into the
> templatelinks temple) so I'm poking at Magnus's code now.
>
> It's not ready for use; on a quick lookover there are multiple PHP error
> messages on basic page views, odd behavior paging through history, it's
> scattered with test code which doesn't include any of the required permission
> handling, use of HTML messages may be insecure, and generally it will be hard to
> maintain due to heavy mixing of UI and backend code. Cache purging doesn't seem
> to be handled either, so it wouldn't work for its intended purpose for Wikimedia.
>
> It'll need some work. I'll see if I can get back to this once the namespace
> manager is merged, rather than having to fix up its namespace handling a second
> time afterwards.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

thanks Brion :-)

ant


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
Fred,

Some good points; it should be noted, I AGF with you and the Committee
during the process.  It's not my place to tell you how to run your bidness,
but it appears now you handed Cberlet a licence to continue his incivility,
as I prophesized.  A modicum of balance in the proceeding could have
helpful.

As for the NLG, it really is a unique organization that doesn't come under
the Subversive Activities Control Board, nonetheless Congressional Records
as late as 1994 refer to it as a "cited Communist Front organization."  I
assume your membership was benign, and likewise you should be afforded the
opportunity to declaim support for Soviet foreign policy.  It's not like
you've been accused of a lynching.

nobs

On 1/28/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> I may recuse should the matter come to arbitration, but it will not
> be because I am a friend of Chip Berlet, we may have briefly
> encountered one another 30 years ago, but there was no further
> personal or political relationship, although I admire his work. You
> make much of the notion that mere membership in the same organization
> signifies a close conspiratorial relationship. I am more likely to
> recuse because I admire Haynes and Klehr and might feel that I could
> not be fair to Chip if I ruled on the matter. You just don't get it.
> If I feel I can be fair I don't recuse, if I feel I can be, I don't.
>
> And you don't understand the Lawyers Guild. For example one matter
> involved a group of illegal immigrants who had joined a union. The
> employer then turned them into immigration and tried to fire them
> because they were illegals. Now, as long as they didn't join a union.
> he was just fine with that. That's the sort of stuff we worked on.
> That sort of work has nothing to do with the issues you are fussing
> over.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jan 28, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Rob Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > The question is, can he again use Wikipedia prescribed Dispute
> > Resolution
> > Processess to impugn his own professional critics, not further the
> > writing
> > of an encyclopedia, and get the NLG good 'ol boy network to assist his
> > smears
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
> > Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
Well it sounds better than "support for Soviet democide of Afghanistan."

On 1/29/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> How gracious of you.
>
> On 1/29/06, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > you should be afforded the opportunity to declaim support for Soviet
> > foreign policy.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Andrew Gray

body:
On 29/01/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> I have seen a request form a person who has a entry on the English
> language Wikipedia to remove his date of birth because he fears identity
> theft. He is a USA-citizens.
>
> At first glance that seems to me a very strange reason to request to
> remove that information. How can you steal someones identity??

Basically, I take all the personal information I can gather about one
"Vermeir, W.", and use it to... well, impersonate you. I take out
loans in your name, or run up debts against you, or use your identity
instead of mine in order to do various nefarious acts. More "unlawful
borrowing" than "stealing", since the person doesn't lose their
identity per se, but it's a catchy phrase.

And every little bit of data helps - the more questions about "my"
identity I can answer, the more it seems to someone on the other end
of a phoneline that, yes, I do own that bank account or credit card or
small business. It's not common - certainly not as common as it's
sometimes implied - but it is on the rise, it does happen, and I can
understand someone being very burned over it.

(Incidentally, if this is the case I think it is, I'd have no problems
with what he's requesting - just say "born 1978" or whatever. But
other sites, which we link to, have the full date...)

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
Dear Sir:

The record will reveal I have been accused of 1 (one) personal attack in my
Wikipedia career, which occurred during my first ArbCom hearing, not being
familiar with the process.  Likewise I have never recieved a 3RR warning.  I
assume you misspoke, repeating the smears against me manufactured by the
staff of Political Research Associates.

On 1/28/06, Michael Lindeen <wikikitty at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm with Sean here. Nobs is a banned user. He has a long long history
> of personal attacks. If he's just going to use this list to attack
> people (no matter if it's a valid reason or not), I'm not sure how
> helpful it is to let him post here. Mike
>
> On 1/28/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > I may recuse should the matter come to arbitration, but it will not
> > be because I am a friend of Chip Berlet, we may have briefly
> > encountered one another 30 years ago, but there was no further
> > personal or political relationship, although I admire his work. You
> > make much of the notion that mere membership in the same organization
> > signifies a close conspiratorial relationship. I am more likely to
> > recuse because I admire Haynes and Klehr and might feel that I could
> > not be fair to Chip if I ruled on the matter. You just don't get it.
> > If I feel I can be fair I don't recuse, if I feel I can be, I don't.
> >
> > And you don't understand the Lawyers Guild. For example one matter
> > involved a group of illegal immigrants who had joined a union. The
> > employer then turned them into immigration and tried to fire them
> > because they were illegals. Now, as long as they didn't join a union.
> > he was just fine with that. That's the sort of stuff we worked on.
> > That sort of work has nothing to do with the issues you are fussing
> > over.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> > On Jan 28, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Rob Smith wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > The question is, can he again use Wikipedia prescribed Dispute
> > > Resolution
> > > Processess to impugn his own professional critics, not further the
> > > writing
> > > of an encyclopedia, and get the NLG good 'ol boy network to assist his
> > > smears
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > > title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
> > > Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
On 1/25/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 25 Jan 2006, at 21:47, Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> > Properly done each fact (or set of facts) will point somehow to the
> > source, including the page in the source.
>
> How? And how will the article still be readable? And what is a fact?
> And what use is the page number
> when there are loads of editions of a source?
>
> No encyclopaedia is written like this.

Here's an example of an article that is readable, and has a good set of
sources and footnotes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radhanite . Kudos to
Briangotts for writing it.

Jay.


from_name: Delirium

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it
>does in operations. A large organization entails legal and  financial
>responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot  simply throw another
>server at the person suing us.
>
>
The problem is that nobody outside the community has the moral authority
to provide such oversight.  Technical oversight and advice, sure---few
people have issues with contracting outside lawyers where necessary to
provide legal advice, and I doubt there would be too many objections to
obtaining assistance with accounting, grantwriting, or anything else of
that sort.  Strategic direction and decision-making though, of the sort
that the board has the authority to make, cannot be put in the hands of
non-Wikimedians.

-Mark


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 29 Jan 2006, at 13:53, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Most "fair-use opponents" realize that the real problem with relying
> on fair use has nothing to do with Wikipedia's distribution over the
> Internet.  The real problem comes into play with redistributors and
> print/CD/DVD editions.

I can imagine any such distributor using any fair use images at all.

It would almost certainly fall under the deprivation of revenue
clause - books and CD/DVD always license imagery.

Perhaps we should be thinking of ways of making the encyclopaedia
usable for this type of use?

We *really* need global logins so that things can be meaningfully
transwikied to commons with talk pages etc.

And a separate namespace for free and non free images would be good.

Another thing we could do would be to have a project like commons
for the free images on en that arent eligible for commons (mainly PD
US only), transwiki as appropriate. us.commons.wikimedia.org

Actually it would be nice to split out all the media to projects
like this. But not sure anyone would want to touch
nonfree.wikimedia.org - I wouldnt.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
The Arbitration Committee found you engaged in a lengthy personal
attack on the talk page of [[Chip Berlet]] based on posting there of
a large amount of negative material associated with the National
Lawyer's guild, most of which Chip Berlet had no known involvement
with. That got you a month. Then during the arbitration you converted
your user page into an extended personal attack of the same sort.
That got you the year. That makes two.

Fred

On Jan 29, 2006, at 1:48 PM, Rob Smith wrote:

> Dear Sir:
>
> The record will reveal I have been accused of 1 (one) personal
> attack in my
> Wikipedia career, which occurred during my first ArbCom hearing,
> not being
> familiar with the process.  Likewise I have never recieved a 3RR
> warning.  I
> assume you misspoke, repeating the smears against me manufactured
> by the
> staff of Political Research Associates.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
OK. Thank you for the clarifying.  Incidently, the NLG evidently has several
branches or arms, like its "Police Crimes" and Labor issues groups.  Any
insight you'd be willing to share on its internal organization would be
appreciated.

nobs

On 1/29/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> The Arbitration Committee found you engaged in a lengthy personal
> attack on the talk page of [[Chip Berlet]] based on posting there of
> a large amount of negative material associated with the National
> Lawyer's guild, most of which Chip Berlet had no known involvement
> with. That got you a month. Then during the arbitration you converted
> your user page into an extended personal attack of the same sort.
> That got you the year. That makes two.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jan 29, 2006, at 1:48 PM, Rob Smith wrote:
>
> > Dear Sir:
> >
> > The record will reveal I have been accused of 1 (one) personal
> > attack in my
> > Wikipedia career, which occurred during my first ArbCom hearing,
> > not being
> > familiar with the process.  Likewise I have never recieved a 3RR
> > warning.  I
> > assume you misspoke, repeating the smears against me manufactured
> > by the
> > staff of Political Research Associates.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 1/29/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> It is not that your identity so far as the state or federal
> government is stolen. Identity theft refers to someone gaining
> sufficient access to your personal information that it is possible to
> access your credit card accounts and bank accounts or create new
> ones. What they are stealing is your credit rating. They can then run
> up a big bill and leave you with it; the banks and credit companies
> may forgive the debt, but straightening your credit rating will be
> difficult and time consuming, or expensive (if you hire it done).
>

Can someone really "run up a big bill and leave you with it"?  I
thought your authorization was needed in order to enter into a loan.

IOW, I thought that while the credit reporting agencies might report
the outstanding loan, no court would actually attempt to enforce such
a loan.

Straightening out your credit rating can occassionally be difficult,
but the vast majority of the time it's actually quite straightforward.
 Actually getting a bank to "forgive" a debt on the other hand...

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
http://www.nlg.org/

Fred

On Jan 29, 2006, at 2:42 PM, Rob Smith wrote:

> OK. Thank you for the clarifying.  Incidently, the NLG evidently
> has several
> branches or arms, like its "Police Crimes" and Labor issues
> groups.  Any
> insight you'd be willing to share on its internal organization
> would be
> appreciated.
>
> nobs


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
How gracious of you.

On 1/29/06, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> you should be afforded the opportunity to declaim support for Soviet
> foreign policy.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/29/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> >> Yes but determining who decides what is "good" and what is "crap" is
> >> the basic problem here.
> >
> > This is the job of AfD and DRV.  When AfD fails, DRV is supposed to
> > correct the error.  This isn't rocket science.
>
> But DRV also gets out-of-process speedy deletions. If it votes solely
> based on content then we've effectively lowered the bar for deleting
> something down to 50% support as long as you can find an admin to do the
> dirty work. That sends your precious "when in doubt, don't delete" out the
> window.

Not at all.  If the speedy is undeleted while being discussed on DRV,
there's nothing to stop someone cleaning it up listing it in good
faith on AfD.  That's the beauty of having (non-problematic) articles
undeleted while on DRV.  The article becomes visible, editable and
improvable and if it ends up going to AfD and being kept there then so
much the better.


subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 1/29/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 29 Jan 2006, at 13:53, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Most "fair-use opponents" realize that the real problem with relying
> > on fair use has nothing to do with Wikipedia's distribution over the
> > Internet.  The real problem comes into play with redistributors and
> > print/CD/DVD editions.
>
> I can imagine any such distributor using any fair use images at all.
>
> It would almost certainly fall under the deprivation of revenue
> clause - books and CD/DVD always license imagery.
>
I assume you mean "can't", and not "can".  In that case, I can see a
redistributor using *some* images available under fair use (though
probably not any Pokemon ones).    I certainly doubt it's true that
books and CD/DVD *always* license images, though off the top of my
head I don't know of any examples to the contrary.

And, of course, what people mean by "fair use images" varies.  There
are some images which aren't licensed, but would be available for use
under the laws of many countries, not just under the US doctrine of
fair use.  Are they "fair use images"?

> Perhaps we should be thinking of ways of making the encyclopaedia
> usable for this type of use?
>
Not just perhaps.  It is unarguably true that allowing distribution by
methods other than the Internet is a goal of the project.

> We *really* need global logins so that things can be meaningfully
> transwikied to commons with talk pages etc.
>
> And a separate namespace for free and non free images would be good.
>
> Another thing we could do would be to have a project like commons
> for the free images on en that arent eligible for commons (mainly PD
> US only), transwiki as appropriate. us.commons.wikimedia.org
>
> Actually it would be nice to split out all the media to projects
> like this. But not sure anyone would want to touch
> nonfree.wikimedia.org - I wouldnt.
>
> Justinc


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New anti-spam initiatives

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:
>
>> Running currently on all but the top 20 Wikipedias plus meta, commons,
>> and a few misc.
>>
> Great!  How do I go about getting the logs?

A copy of the raw log for a day or so:
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/captcha.log.txt.gz

Extracted the items which didn't get a pass, did some first-pass sorting:
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/captcha-failed-extracts.txt.gz

The log doesn't contain any personally-identifiable information that's not
already available through the wiki.

Last night I added the captcha to the new account creation form, also, which
will protect against automated sleeper accounts for spammers and automated
vandal username registrations.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 1/29/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Can someone really "run up a big bill and leave you with it"?  I
> thought your authorization was needed in order to enter into a loan.

But they got 'your' authorization.

> IOW, I thought that while the credit reporting agencies might report
> the outstanding loan, no court would actually attempt to enforce such
> a loan.
>
> Straightening out your credit rating can occassionally be difficult,
> but the vast majority of the time it's actually quite straightforward.
>  Actually getting a bank to "forgive" a debt on the other hand...

The challenge can be convincing them it wasn't you... once you've done
that it's just a matter of getting people to apply some common sense.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 1/29/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/29/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Can someone really "run up a big bill and leave you with it"?  I
> > thought your authorization was needed in order to enter into a loan.
>
> But they got 'your' authorization.
>
They got the authorization of someone pretending to be you.  If that's
what you mean by "your", then yeah.  Granted, it might be hard to get
it off your credit report, as that might ultimately require
*initiating* a lawsuit, but Fred seemed to imply that the "victim"
(that is, the person whose identity was being used) was actually
responsible for the loan just because someone used their personal
information without their authorization!

> > IOW, I thought that while the credit reporting agencies might report
> > the outstanding loan, no court would actually attempt to enforce such
> > a loan.
> >
> > Straightening out your credit rating can occassionally be difficult,
> > but the vast majority of the time it's actually quite straightforward.
> >  Actually getting a bank to "forgive" a debt on the other hand...
>
> The challenge can be convincing them it wasn't you... once you've done
> that it's just a matter of getting people to apply some common sense.

In the few cases I've personally witnessed where there were false
items on someone's credit report, the creditors have been fairly easy
to convince to remove the information from the report.  One thing that
does help is contacting the creditor first, because the credit
reporting agency is pretty much always going to believe them (and the
law largely backs them up in this position).  "Identity theft" can
definitely be a nightmare in the case of a stubborn creditor or a
really well executed attack, but I've always assumed the person who
actually loses the money is the creditor, barring some sort of
negligence on the part of the "victim".

Anthony


from_name: Jim

body:
On 1/29/06, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
>
> I have seen a request form a person who has a entry on the English
> language Wikipedia to remove his date of birth because he fears identity
> theft. He is a USA-citizens.
>

This seems clearly a verifiability issue. If his dob is publicly verifiable,
then having it on wikipedia creates no additional risk for him. If not,
someone who knows him is a wikipedian and they added it, then it should be
removed as not verifiable. And we don't have to bother with the identity
theft issue.

Jim


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>
>Not so long ago we were using indexes from other encyclopedias to get
>ideas for articles to write on Wikipedia. The indexes, which had already
>be pruned to exclude articles we already had, were just on some "backend"
>page and weren't intended for our readers at all. It seemed like fair use
>to me. But then we got an edict from above that those had to be removed or
>we might get sued IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRE... sorry, got carried away
>there. Anyway, the indexes were removed.
>
Well, we were copying a chunk from a direct competitor in order to
compete with them better, with the distinct possible consequence
that they would be harmed financially. (The first time I saw one
of those, I thought "whoa, chutzpah".) We want to be sure that
our uses are not cutting into the copyright holder's ability
to profit from the copyright - in a sense, fair use amounts to
filling "niches" that are neutral or positive with respect to the
value of the copyrighted bits.

Stan


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
> In a message dated 1/29/2006 9:05:46 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au writes:
>
> If  Wikimedia needs qualified outside help, it's in operations, not
> oversight.  Only an elected board, accountable to the Wikimedia
> community, can ensure  that the principles that the community holds dear
> are upheld.
>
> Some  committees might benefit from the guidance of qualified outsiders,
> but the  committees should still be dominated by volunteers, either
> selected by a  transparent and fair process with Board oversight or, as
> Erik suggests,  with open membership.
>
>
>
> Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it
> does in operations. A large organization entails legal and  financial
> responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot  simply throw another
> server at the person suing us.
>
> As I understand it, serving on the Board or in some other official  capacity,
> such as officer, includes legal responsibility, including liability.  It is
> not just the ability to make decisions that comes with a position,  but the
> willingness to face the consequences. The issue is not who takes  credit when
> things go right, but rather, who takes the blame when something goes  wrong.
>
I am amazed that you suggest that an officer of the Wikimedia Foundation
would be personally liable for the work done as an officer. I would
expect that an officer of an organisation speaks for the organisation
and as a consequence the organisation is liable for the actions of its
personnel. Normally someone employed by an organisation is liable only
when gross incompetence can be proven or in cases where the law has been
violated to an extend where criminal intend can be proven.

I am sure that someone can and will explain to what extend an employee
is personally liable for his actions as an employee of the Wikimedia
Foundation.
>
> This is not an indictment of volunteers. I believe that they are the
> lifeblood of this organization. At our size, however, we are faced with enormous
> responsibilities. All of these efforts at reorganization are attempts to  channel
> volunteer efforts effectively, so that they can continue doing what  they do
> best--fulfilling the Foundation's mission statement by creating and
> distributing high quality free content resources--while limiting the  repercussions
> that the Foundation, and by extension, the volunteers, face when  things do not
> go right. This is something that requires professional legal and  financial
> knowhow.
>
> Danny
When you mean to say that we have to be careful in our actions, I could
not agree with you more. However, many of the volunteers in our
community have qualifications that are hard to get when you want to have
their effort done by professionals. When you imply that only
professionals do a professional job, you have to look at what we do and
provide, it is unorthodox how things get done, and it is exactly this
unorthodoxy that makes the distinction between how things are done in a
full professional organisation and in our organisation, an organisation
that is seen and priced for the quality it provides.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: German wikipedia to be printed - where's the
	stable version feature?

body:
>
> Neither of them had the structure required for efficient caching,
> that is, page/tag retrieval instead of page/revision retrieval. The
> basic problem is that tugela, which we are now using instead of
> memcached, has no efficient means for identifying and purging
> expired keys. In fact at the moment, this garbage collection is not
> done at all.

It is actually done. I've purged already tugela caches because of
some weird behavior when more than several gigabytes of cache are
used. I'm wondering whether to return back to memcached or have some
tugela improvements. We do not need gazilibytes of cache at the
moment, and at 27GB or so we already have really high rates of hits.

It could be quite feasible to maintain a time index inside tugela and
use it for some fifo purging. The main important thing now for site
performance is to have good response times in all tiers.

BR,
Domas


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
> Not at all.  If the speedy is undeleted while being discussed on DRV,
> there's nothing to stop someone cleaning it up listing it in good
> faith on AfD.  That's the beauty of having (non-problematic) articles
> undeleted while on DRV.  The article becomes visible, editable and
> improvable and if it ends up going to AfD and being kept there then so
> much the better.

Good, especially if we can institutionalize it. We need a streamlined DRV
procedure to avoid time-wasting wheel-wars and blocks. Currently we have
something of a Wild West atmosphere.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] CafePress shop updated

body:
I spent a few hours today updating the Wikipedia CafePress shop tonight (20% from every purchase
goes to the foundation). The biggest change was replacing the 'Edit this page' image on the back
of items with an image that shows the multi-lingual nature of the project (the 'Edit this page'
image is still there, just much reduced in size). Here is the image:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WikipeidaIntl.PNG

All items with front and back options now have a big Wikipedia logo in front and the multi-lingual
'The Free Encyclopedia' logo (see above) on back. A new item that shows this well is a golf shirt:
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46067950

I also added a mousepad and clock with the new image:
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46065179
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46066953

New items with just the standard logo include a black cap, a khaki cap, teddy bear, and wall
clock.

Just for fun I also created a "We make the Internet not suck" bumper sticker:
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46073071

The full shop is here: http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/528088

If you have ideas for slogans and artwork, then please add them here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas/Cafe_Press

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/29/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > Not at all.  If the speedy is undeleted while being discussed on DRV,
> > there's nothing to stop someone cleaning it up listing it in good
> > faith on AfD.  That's the beauty of having (non-problematic) articles
> > undeleted while on DRV.  The article becomes visible, editable and
> > improvable and if it ends up going to AfD and being kept there then so
> > much the better.
>
> Good, especially if we can institutionalize it. We need a streamlined DRV
> procedure to avoid time-wasting wheel-wars and blocks. Currently we have
> something of a Wild West atmosphere.

The reason for this, in my opinion, is that there is a very storng
culture of bad faith on the deletion forums.  Just a few minutes ago
on IRC one administrator whom I respect greatly said, quite candidly
and without any hint that what he was saying might be controversial,
that nearly all DRV listings are in bad faith, anyway.  I'm doing my
best to lead by example, opening up the procedure so that it doesn't
unnecessarily hamper the wiki aspect of Wikipedia and so that
commonsense moves of venue from DRV to AfD, where appropriate, are not
artificially hampered.

Yes, In the past I have had to repeatedly undelete articles in order
to shift venue, in cases where the subsequent AfD has resulted in near
unanimous keeps of good articles.  I'm not ashamed of having done
that, and I don't care if people call it wheel warring.  It certainly
was not abuse of my administrator powers. But it is, undoubtedly,
undesirable to have administrators faced with the dilemma of either
going against other admnistrators in order to ensure a move to AfD, or
accepting the rubber-stamping of a bad deletion call.  This change in
procedure should make that unnecessary.  Articles will be visible and
editable and a switch to AfD, where appropriate, will be painless.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
> This change in
> procedure should make that unnecessary.  Articles will be visible and
> editable and a switch to AfD, where appropriate, will be painless.

Okay, I'm sold.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll for
	Wikistandards)

references:
<1d8.4dd33c70.310e2ed8@aol.com> <43DCEBB6.2070909@gmail.com>
	<drjl2h$qqb$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>I am amazed that you suggest that an officer of the Wikimedia Foundation
>>would be personally liable for the work done as an officer. I would
>>expect that an officer of an organisation speaks for the organisation
>>and as a consequence the organisation is liable for the actions of its
>>personnel. Normally someone employed by an organisation is liable only
>>when gross incompetence can be proven or in cases where the law has been
>>violated to an extend where criminal intend can be proven.
>>
>>I am sure that someone can and will explain to what extend an employee
>>is personally liable for his actions as an employee of the Wikimedia
>>Foundation.
>>
>>
>Well, firstly IANAL and secondly most of my legal knowedge comes from studying Australian law rather
>than US law. But my understanding is that civil liability for the action of employees rests with the
>corporation or individual employing them. This is called vicarious liability.
>
Gerard's response on this seemed na?ve.  No-one wants to go into a
situation where there is a high risk of liability,  But these things do
happen, and there are situations where the law needs to pierce the
corporate veil when the corporate structure is there to assist in the
perpetration of a scam.  In some cases liability insurance can be
purchased, but that too can be expensive.  It's also important to
remember the level of litigiousness that is found in US society.  A
plaintiff will often cast a wide net in the hopes of catching the right
victim with deep enough pockets to pay for the wrongdoings of a
penniless associate.  This can be a frightful experience when people
with only marginal involvement find themselves put through the expense
of defending themselves in court.

>Members of the Board of Directors are not ordinary employees though, and I think Danny's implication
>was that the Board is responsible for the actions of the corporation. At common law, the civil
>liability is limited to the assets of the corporation, that's the major difference between a
>corporation and a partnership. The threats to the Board of Directors then fall into three categories:
>
>* Statuatory -- many countries have laws making the Board of Directors liable for gross
>mismanagement, or other forms of misconduct.
>
Here in Canada the directors of a company can be held personally liable
for failing to remit employee deductions to the tax department.

>* Contractual -- for example, some wholesale suppliers require that the Board of Directors accepts
>liability for debts accrued.
>
Banks especially ask directors to co-sign for a company's loans.

>* Criminal -- limitation of liability and vicarious liability do not apply in criminal cases.
>
Enron!

>I don't know whether vicarious liability extends to officers. Their legal position is less clear
>than, say, Kyle's (an outsider employed by the Foundation).
>
Anthere has already referred to an ambiguity in the use of the term
"officer".

>Let's just say that I for one wouldn't be deterred from accepting a position of responsibility
>within the foundation by legal liability. We all live in a world ruled by law. That should be an
>impetus to educate ourselves about the issues, and to seek advice where appropriate, not to hand
>over the keys to the lawyers and let them run the place.
>
I would feel the same way.  As an organization gets bigger it needs to
consider startegies for risk management.  From a lot of the discussion
that I've read since I've been here I can observe that very few bother
to educate themselves about the legal issues.  Having an organization
overrun by lawyers is just another risk that needs to be managed.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Garion1000 wrote:

>On 1/30/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/29/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes,
>>>decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity
>>>with a strong volunteer component.  An ideal candidate should have
>>>extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory
>>>compliance, international chapters, donor relations management,
>>>staffing, budgeting, etc.
>>>
>>>
>>What kind of salary do you think someone like that is going to get?
>>You bring up the Red Cross as an example in another post, the top
>>executives at that organization make around half a million a year.
>>Hiring from the outside is probably going to be expensive, though if
>>there's no one competant on the inside it might be more expensive not
>>to do so.
>>
>>
>That is indeed something to be considered carefully. It recently happened in
>the Netherlands when the salary of the chair person of the heart foundation
>was revealed. (which was a lot). He finally resigned and the heart
>foundation lost a whole lot of money (and good will) in their following
>fundraising activities. Not that I think wikimedia will ever pay as much as
>that though.
>
This is best overcome by making all salary arrangements public and
easily accessible.  Salary arrangements include any perks that might be
paid directly or indirectly.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Foundation-l] Outsiders on the Board? (was Re:
	Poll	for	Wikistandards)

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> An example of this is with the American Red Cross, where they have
> largely volunteers that run almost every aspect of their organization.

http://www.redcross.org/static/file_cont4989_lang0_1762.pdf

I agree that the Red Cross is one example (but only one, and not
necessarily the best one) of an overwhelmingly volunteer organization.
I think it is very instructive to look at their board of directors,
which consists overwhelmingly of people with decades of experience
managing large organizations and providing strategic guidance to them.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: CafePress shop updated

body:
--- SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> We clearly need an "edit this page!" line of post-its, notebooks, etc.
>  That is, the world needs one... Wikipedia may as well provide it.  I
> imagine this means finding an outside supplier interested in getting
> involved...

:) FYI - I just created a Wikinews shop as well. See
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/1168362

Those items that have front and back options have the Wikinews logo on front and CITIZEN
JOURNALIST with the Wikinews url on the back.

Other shops later. Must sleep now.

-- mav

> SJ
>
> On 1/29/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I spent a few hours today updating the Wikipedia CafePress shop tonight (20%
> > from every purchase
> > goes to the foundation). The biggest change was replacing the 'Edit this
> > page' image on the back
> > of items with an image that shows the multi-lingual nature of the project
> > (the 'Edit this page'
> > image is still there, just much reduced in size). Here is the image:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:WikipeidaIntl.PNG
> >
> > All items with front and back options now have a big Wikipedia logo in front
> > and the multi-lingual
> > 'The Free Encyclopedia' logo (see above) on back. A new item that shows this
> > well is a golf shirt:
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46067950
> >
> > I also added a mousepad and clock with the new image:
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46065179
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46066953
> >
> > New items with just the standard logo include a black cap, a khaki cap,
> > teddy bear, and wall
> > clock.
> >
> > Just for fun I also created a "We make the Internet not suck" bumper
> > sticker:
> > http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.46073071
> >
> > The full shop is here: http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/528088
> >
> > If you have ideas for slogans and artwork, then please add them here:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas/Cafe_Press
> >
> > -- mav
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
> > Do You Yahoo!?
> > Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ++SJ
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: CafePress shop updated


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> It is my understanding that our mid term goal is to have a full-time CEO
> in addition to the Board. This CEO position is highly relevant, as the
> CEO will have to make many of the immediate short term decisions. I
> would strongly recommend not to pick a complete outsider for this
> position. While non-profit experience is obviously helpful in running an
> organization like Wikimedia, Wikimedia is a very unusual beast and a
> highly participatory community.

I think that the title "CEO" is probably misleading, because in general
the CEO provides a great deal more guidance to the overall vision and
mission of the organization than the position which is being
contemplated here.

I think that "Executive Director" or "COO" or "Business Manager" is a
more appropriate title.

We have amazing opportunities before us to achieve our charitable goals,
and in order to take advantage of them we have to do a much better job
going forward of behaving like a serious professional organization on
the business end of things.

A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes,
decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity
with a strong volunteer component.  An ideal candidate should have
extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory
compliance, international chapters, donor relations management,
staffing, budgeting, etc.

Upon being hired, it is absolutely true that this person needs to be
thoroughly and extensively trained in how the website functions, how the
volunteer community works, and they absolutely must understand that
without the community, there is no success.  But hiring and training
someone in this area is not difficult -- the best Wikimedians are able
to pick it up in a week or two of editing, and after a few months can
understand it all quite deeply.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Standard Wikipedia procedure?

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Is it a standard Wikipedia procedure to move pages from the Wikipedia
> namespace to meta? If so, who has decided this? And is it allowed for
> other languages to decide differently?

What kind of pages do you mean? Stuff generally gets transwikied to meta
if it's not really about Wikipedia but more about the community. What do
you mean by other languages deciding differently? To not transfer stuff
to meta? I don't think it's a dictated policy by Jimbo so I reckon you
can do what you like with it.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> While I'm extremely flattered at the suggestion, I must advise the
> board to not consider me for a post as CEO. I'm not qualified and
> don't have the relevant experience to run the size and scope of an
> organization that we want the foundation to be. We need somebody with
> an MBA and years of non-profit experience. While it would be nice to
> have a Wikimedian fill this role, I don't think that is a critical
> thing for the board to consider.

I think that's exactly right.  What I'm standing up and saying is that
while I'm very very good at what I do very very well (nice tautology,
eh?), *I* am not the right person to handle the job of Executive
Director going forward.

There are people out there with decades of experience with public-facing
international charities with a strong community focus who can very
quickly be trained in our community norms.  And if they already know
about Wikipedia, and have edited, then so much the better.

But we aren't hiring a new Jimbo, we've already got one of those. :)

What we need to be hiring is someone to help the _organization_ live up
to the incredible potential before us.

This is not a community position, this is a position on the
organizational front.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> The issue is about the page [[Wikipedia:Wikiholic]] and its equivalent
> in other languages. Someone (CoolCat) moved them from all languages he
> could find to meta. Getting reverted in some languages, he wrote "I
> already moved everything here to the meta page, what is the problem?
> True Wikipediholic always put this stuff to meta :P" and then
> re-reverted in some cases, not in others.

Well, that's typically what is transwiki'd to meta from English, but
it's up to the local community what (if anything) gets transwiki'd to
meta. Of course if he's reverted he shouldn't then revert back
(especially since it's not his usual project) but making the edit in the
first place seems fine with me.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
On 1/29/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> A proper executive director for the organization will have decades (yes,
> decades!) of experience at a major international public facing charity
> with a strong volunteer component.  An ideal candidate should have
> extensive experience at an executive level with: fundraising, regulatory
> compliance, international chapters, donor relations management,
> staffing, budgeting, etc.
>
What kind of salary do you think someone like that is going to get?
You bring up the Red Cross as an example in another post, the top
executives at that organization make around half a million a year.
Hiring from the outside is probably going to be expensive, though if
there's no one competant on the inside it might be more expensive not
to do so.


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
Is it a standard Wikipedia procedure to move pages from the Wikipedia
namespace to meta? If so, who has decided this? And is it allowed for
other languages to decide differently?

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


body:
2006/1/29, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>:
> What kind of pages do you mean? Stuff generally gets transwikied to meta
> if it's not really about Wikipedia but more about the community. What do
> you mean by other languages deciding differently? To not transfer stuff
> to meta? I don't think it's a dictated policy by Jimbo so I reckon you
> can do what you like with it.

The issue is about the page [[Wikipedia:Wikiholic]] and its equivalent
in other languages. Someone (CoolCat) moved them from all languages he
could find to meta. Getting reverted in some languages, he wrote "I
already moved everything here to the meta page, what is the problem?
True Wikipediholic always put this stuff to meta :P" and then
re-reverted in some cases, not in others.

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


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
A quick perusal of this user's postings to the mailing list does not
scream out "personal attacks!" to me. Could someone kindly point out
which parts of his posts can be construed as personal attacks? I'm not
about to kick someone off the mailing list just for being banned on
Wikipedia proper.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list admin

On 29/01/06, Michael Lindeen <wikikitty at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm with Sean here. Nobs is a banned user. He has a long long history
> of personal attacks. If he's just going to use this list to attack
> people (no matter if it's a valid reason or not), I'm not sure how
> helpful it is to let him post here. Mike
>


from_name: Elonka at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Block of a Notable Wikipedian

body:
Hello.

I am a public figure who has contributed over a thousand edits to  Wikipedia,
and created dozens of articles.  I was attempting to  go through the dispute
resolution process to build an RfC to address a series of  personal attacks
that were generated towards me by user DreamGuy, but  earlier today I was
accused by Admin Bishonen of harassment, and  then blocked "indefinitely", without
warning, by Admin David Gerard,  with the comment, "clearly not here to write
an encyclopedia in any  way."

More information is available here, including a link to the related
discussion on the Admin noticeboard: _http://www.elonka.com/wikipedia/_
(http://www.elonka.com/wikipedia/)

I hope that this will be sufficient information to get the block removed
immediately.  I have several articles which I would like to continue  editing.

If anyone has any questions, I can be reached at _elonka at aol.com_
(mailto:elonka at aol.com) .

Thank you,

Elonka Dunin
[[User:Elonka]]
_http://www.elonka.com_ (http://www.elonka.com)

 (http://www.e)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Hello, Danny!

> Actually, as Wikipedia grows it requires help in oversight no less than it
> does in operations. A large organization entails legal and  financial
> responsibilities. If we are sued, for whatever reason, we cannot  simply throw another
> server at the person suing us.

I agree entirely. And as our legal problems grow, it is equally
essential that we make an important distinction. It is the distinction
between law and ethics. It is entirely possible to act utterly immorally
without violating any law; and in fact, many of the most immoral acts in
history have been protected by unethical laws.

Furthermore, laws governing the Internet in particular are not static
structures; they are ever-changing both in civil and common law
jurisdictions due to the power of interpretation and precedent, and an
organization with substantial financial assets is more than capable to
influence legal decisions to its advantage (and, eventually, even the
process used to create laws).

Wikimedia, as an organization, must therefore cherish, preserve and
maximize its core principle of openness. In this process, lawyers are
servants to the community and not the other way around. Lawyers must
never dictate how the organization is run. The Board, elected and
thereby empowered by the community, and the committees, open and
representative, must instead consult the lawyers to seek ways to further
our mission.

This is a quite important statement, as the interpretation of law is
something that is treated by many with a sort of grudging respect few
other professions enjoy, and it is easy for lawyers to eloquently make a
case, since that it is their job. That lets them quickly gain influence.
Lawyers, also, will be inclined to be extremely cautious and overly
protective in their legitimate desire to minimize harm. An organization
run by lawyers would naturally evolve into a closed, corporate,
inflexible structure full of rigid procedures that impede the work of
both paid employees and volunteers.

Such an organization will be entirely incapable of dealing with the very
real challenges we have set ourselves. We have set these challenges the
moment we have decided to accept projects like Wikibooks: free textbooks
for every person on the planet. Wiktionary: all words, all meanings, all
languages. Wikisource and Commons: free media of all types. Wikinews:
free news presented from a neutral point of view. And so forth.

If we are serious about these goals - and some of the others we may set
ourselves, including a subset of Jimmy's "10 things that need to be
free" <http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/08/jimbos_problems_1.html> -
then we cannot allow ourselves to turn into the non-profit equivalent of
AOL. Those who live by the sword, perish by it. If we compete like a
corporation, we will lose like a corporation, we will be replaced by a
corporation.

In our 5 years of existence, we have not even managed to achieve that
one goal we have been talking about from the beginning: stable versions.
Wikipedia 1.0. Let's not even begin to talk about "every single human
being on the planet". This is not because we have been too open, but
because we have been too closed, and highly atypical in our
organizational model even by standards of the typical non-profit. No
matter, mistakes happen. The only unforgivable mistake is not to learn
from the last one.

Yes, there are legal questions to be answered. But they are questions,
not answers, and they are not as difficult as you may think they are to
deal with. When I proposed Wikinews on this very list, I still remember
the feedback I got. "The legal problems we're going to have with this
will make this a nightmare! We can not shoulder this responsibility!"

It was these words of warning which inspired me then to come up with a
very complex review process that was used initially on the English
Wikinews to ensure that we did not publish libelous claims. And it was
after Jimmy's intervention that I decided to get rid of this process,
which turned out to be disastrously inefficient, especially without
special tools. Have we had any major legal problems with Wikinews since
then? Nothing we couldn't handle, in spite of about 15,000 articles
published so far.

And let us not forget Wikipedia itself. We all remember the major media
campaigns of the last year. Scrambling for answers, some quick and
questionable countermeasures were taken. But let's be honest. If we had
consulted a team of lawyers before starting Wikipedia to tell us whether
this could become a libel issue, we would have never gotten past 10,000
articles. Maybe we would still be at Nupedia's 30. Let's be careful not
to break our processes from the top, but instead, let's try to improve
them from the bottom.

So, let me repeat. The goals come first. The legal problems are solved
to achieve these goals. And legal advice must, always, be taken with a
great deal of skepticism, and if possible, solicitation of alternative
answers. Yes, sometimes it may even be a good idea to utterly ignore it
and take whatever risk is gloomily predicted. When talking to a lawyer,
it is often good to know beforehand what you _want_ to do, or they will
only tell you what you _cannot_ do. The fairly unhelpful legal study
commissioned by the German chapter is an example of that.

The English Wikipedia alone currently has more than 850,000 registered
users. Among them: students, physicists, architects, photographers,
musicians, nuclear engineers, businesspersons, historians, computer
scientists (loads of them), comedians, midwives, soldiers, judges,
ethologists -- I could go on, but you could just check [[List of
occupations]] yourself and pick some randomly. This eclectic mix of
people is an asset that we _must_ utilize if we are to come even close
to achieving our goals.

Our goal, then, is to build a global network of human beings to
revolutionize knowledge on all levels of society, through businesses and
institutions and individuals, establishing cooperations and partnerships
numbering in the thousands, receiving financial support from
foundations, institutions, businesses, governments and individuals of
several million dollars every year to further our mission.

And this is only possible if we empower individuals.

Now, there are perfectly reasonable ways to institute measures of
control, such as consensus processes and voting and multiple
organizational layers, before potentially legally problematic endeavors
are undertaken. As long as we avoid bottlenecks caused by single
individuals being equipped with extraordinary decision-making power, we
should be fine.

To, out of fear, not build and develop a culture of openness in our
organizational processes, would be disastrously wrong and kill Wikimedia
before it has even started. Instead of following old models, Wikimedia
should _set_ a model of what an open organization could be. In fact,
ideally, I would like to see us publish an "Open Organization Manual" on
Wikibooks or elsewhere, collecting our experiences and recommending
workflows for non-profit organizations that have worked for us.

Funnily enough, it is one of our partner companies, Directmedia
Publishing, that is experimenting with publishing as much information as
they can about their company and their upcoming products and strategies
openly on a wiki - wiki.directmedia.de - and that has been fantastically
successful at working with both volunteers and employed professionals.
They are, after all, the makers of the German Wikipedia DVD, whereas we
still do not have an English one or seem to be much closer to this goal
than one year ago.

I doubt that Directmedia is as open as it could be, but when our
for-profit partner companies are getting the better of us when it comes
to openness and participation, we should start seriously reconsidering
the ways we do things.

And let us not forget, finally, that a lack of openness can bring out
the very worst in people: the lust for power, control, and money. Pure,
unadulterated greed. As an organization that gets its money from small
donations by people all over the world, we have a non-negotiable
responsibility to make sure that our donated money is spent wisely and
efficiently, and transparency is the best to prevent corruption and
unnecessary centralization. As an organization, we have to answer to the
people who pay our hardware and employees' salaries. When someone asks
one of us: "What do you do with this money?" Our answer should never be:
"None of your business!"

I therefore will state here, again, my hope that the forthcoming
organizational changes will be debated in an open manner, and that they
will empower the greatest number of individuals possible to turn
Wikimedia into the incredible success that Wikipedia has been so far.

Sincerely,

Erik


body:
Hoi,
As this is a RFC, I will comment to the RFC itself and not on the other
comments.

Danny mentioned in his response that a bot could do great work. Henna
did remark that Wikidata could make a difference. Milos mentions that
data may need localisation.. I want to remind you about an e-mail that
Sabine Cretella send to the lists. Sabine is really active in the
Neapolitan Wikipedia. A project much younger than the Swahili wikipedia
but already with 4336 articles. The secret of this success is among
other things that Sabine uses professional tools to translate into the
Neapolitan language. OmegaT, the software Sabine uses, is GPL software
and is what is called a CAT or Computer Aided Translation tool. This
allows for an efficient translation and is /not /the same as Automated
Translation.

When we have Wikidata ready for prime time, we will be able to store
structured data about one subject. This is not a full solution as many
of the words used in the presentation need to be translated, maybe even
localised to make sense in another language. I for instance always have
to think if 9/11 is the ninth of November or the eleventh of September;
I do know of it for the event. In order to present data, labels have to
be translated and data may have to be localised. The WiktionaryZ project
will help with the labels and standards like the CLDR are what define
how the localisation is to be done.

We are making steady progress with WiktionaryZ, the first alpha demo
project is at epov.org/wd-gemet/index.php/Main_Page (a read only project
for now). There is a proposal for a project at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_for_standards that intends to help
us where the standards prove to be not good enough. As Sabine is part of
the team behind OmegaT, it is being researched how OmegaT can read and
write directly to a Mediawiki project.

One other aspect that is needed in new project is commitment. People who
express their support for a new language project should see this as an
indication of /their /commitment and not as an expression of their
opinion. When people start to work on a new project it is important that
like on the Neapolitan wikipedia, there are people who are knowledgeable
and willing to help the newbies, I hope that the IRC channel
#wikipedia-bootcamp can serve a role for this as well.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Milos Rancic wrote:
> Maybe this should go on Meta, but I want to see comments here, first.
>
> As I can see, there are two ways of mass content adding. The first one
> includes generation of articles based on some public data (for example
> NASA, National Geospatial Inteligence Agency, French government etc.)
> Now, this is almost usual way for mass content adding and I think that
> a number of us have some experience with such work.
>
> The other way is adding content using English Wikipedia. English
> Wikipedia has a lot of categorized articles, a lot of templates etc.
> All these typical forms can be used for automatic content creation on
> small Wikipedias.
>
> I think that idea of having a thousends of articles with a couple of
> sentences and good categorization about a lot of fields -- can be very
> helpful not only to small Wikipedias, but also for spreading free
> knowledge. I think that it would be a great day for us when people
> which native language is Mongolian will be able to read about places
> in Amazon and movies from Australia in their native language. And,
> this is possible to do much faster then we think.
>
> And not only that: bots should be able to update information; bots
> should be able to do more things through time. Finally, it would be
> possible to start with knowledge transfer between Wikipedias in
> different languages: if we have the same methodology on different
> Wikipedias, we would be able to update data semi-automatic (up to full
> automatic).
>
> However, this needs a number of people who are interested in such project:
>
> (1) We would need people who know to work with bots (pywikipediabot or
> something similar).
> (2) We would need make software based on the bot core which would have
> to be localized: like MediaWiki should be localized; this software
> should have sentences like "<movie> is movie made in <year> in
> <country>. Genre of that movie is <genre>. Director was <director>..."
> in a number of languages.
> (3) We would need good and quality work on English Wikipedia. Rules
> like "this goes to the table, that goes to the template up, this goes
> to template in the middle" should be more or less strict (but, I see
> that people are working in such way on en:).
>
> This is RFC. I am looking for your comments.
>


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki API

body:
On Thursday 26 January 2006 21:04, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:

> There are several issues with implementing a robot API like that, one
> is that a lot of our logic is still tied to our current XHTML output
> code, which would have to be split off into a backend and presentation
> frontends.

i have spent quite a lot of though on a machine-friendly API for MediaWiki.
naturally, at first i focussed on getting some SOAP, XML-RPC or REST-API.
then i ran into the above mentioned problem: i would not like to implement
an API if i don't have a cleanly separated backend i can use. this would
mean much work.

the next thing i did was: i wrote an API using simple screen-scrapping,
which works surprisingly good. you can generate regexps from
[[Special:Allmessages]] output and take the namespaces from
[Special:Export]]. using this API for some time now i noticed: the forms
MediaWiki uses and the format of its XHTML seldomly change. the XHTML tags
have most of the classes and ids you need find the data you need inside
pages.

in a little brainstorming with [[meta:User:Duesentrieb]] the idea
of a bot-language appeared, which would make a screenscrapping-API
quite stable. seen from the "we need a properly separated backend layer,
then we build an API on top", this is ugly, and it does not go far enough
for the client-part of the API. besides, brion hates it, because it's not
the right way to do it.

after that, i began to see MediaWiki as a somewhat convoluted server for
some ajax-application i was building atop of it. again, it's surprising
how good such a thing works.

then it came to me: we nearly have a usable REST-style API.

there's three parts to an API: a path for data to get into the server.
for this purpose, i think the forms are usable, because they are stable
enough. if the forms change, the API changes, yes, but when they are
changed there is a reason for it, that in many cases would make a
change in the API necessary anyway.

the second part is getting data out of the server: it has to be
marshalled in some way the client can understand. the XHTML output
our skins produce is not perfect, but it's possible to write
a skin that generates well enough structured  XHTML with more ids
and classes to use the output everywhere XML can be parsed and
queried.

the third part is the application logic working with the incoming
data and producing outgoing data. this part we get for free - it's
already there, it's properly tested an i would not want to mess
with it.

daniel