body:
On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/3/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Robth wrote:
> >
> > >Remember, people learn to write Wikipedia by reading
> > >Wikipedia.  If we're going to relax our content standards
> > >substantially for one area, people are going to carry the lessons they
> > >learn from reading that area into the rest of Wikipedia.
> > >
> > Do you have any evidence for that theory?  Those who are interested only
> > in "serious" subjects are not likely to spend a lot of time with the
> > flakier subjects in order to learn how to write for Wikipedia.  We also
> > have Study Groups (aka WikiProjects) which do a pretty good job setting
> > standards for their area of interest.
> >
> > Ec
> >
>
> It's a hard theory to provide specific evidence for, seeing as it does
> involve trying to get inside people's heads, which is all but
> impossible on the internet.  What I do think we can reasonably state,
> though, is as follows:
>
> 1. People learn more about how to write Wikipedia from reading
> articles than they do from reading style guides.  I know this has been
> the case with me, and I haven't met anyone with whom it isn't.  We
> have an ungodly amount of guideline material relating to what articles
> should look like, and anyone who attempted to read it all before
> sitting down to begin writing for Wikipedia would get bored and give
> up before they ever started typing.  Style guidelines are all well and
> good, but we have to acknowledge that, at the end of the day, the
> drive-by contributors who account for most of our material are, in the
> best case scenario, going to write something that looks like other
> articles they have read on Wikipedia.  The better the average article
> is, the better the average passer-by contribution is likely to be.
> Think how great it would be if just 1 out of every 10 college kids who
> make a drive-by contribution to Wikipedia went and got a book from the
> library, checked their facts, and cited their sources when they wrote.
> That isn't impossible, but it would require that our across-the-board
> quality be high enough that getting the book would seem like the
> natural way to contribute to Wikipedia.  Quality begets quality.

I fully agree with above.

2. You can't quarantine topics from each other.  Now I'm not arguing
> that people are going to read poorly sourced webcomic articles and
> then immediately go write articles on medieval Scandinavian literature
> sourced from the same blogs.  You refer to people who are "only
> interested in serious topics", but people do read and write about more
> than one topic apiece on Wikipedia.  And there is a startling amount
> of really shitty content about serious academic topics on the web,
> waiting for people who have learned to look to google for their
> sources to come snap it up.  I don't use web sources when I'm writing,
> but every now and then I google the topic I'm working on and am blown
> away by the sheer quantity of incorrect information there is out
> there.  If people observe that "Some Internet Guy said it" is accepted
> as a reasonable source for large portions of our site, they're going
> to go look and see what Some Internet Guy has to say about medieval
> Scandinavian literature when they decide to help out Wikipedia by
> writing an article about this cool book they just heard about.

This I find hard to believe.

Also, "Some Internet Guy" seems like a straw man.

 And
> the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.

Why so?

Evidence?

(Really, google an academic topic you're familiar with, and imagine
> just how atrocious an article based on the sites that come up would
> be.  I suspect that history is the worst, as some basic storytelling
> impulse inspires people to write breathless semi-informed narratives
> about stuff they took a class on one time, but it isn't alone.)
>
> 3. We don't have the manpower to contain the spillover.  This is my
> problem with the argument that we can allow Some Internet Guy to serve
> as our source for articles about stuff that only Some Internet Guy
> cares enough about to write about, but then, through rigourous
> enforcement of our standards in other topics, ensure that only
> reliable sources are accepted for most subjects.  Now this might work
> for subjects like Israel-Palestine, where both the IDF and Hamas have
> full-time personnel vetting every single edit (or have we not reached
> that point quite yet?), but it won't work for the vast majority of
> topics, in which most articles are monitored loosely or not at all,
> and any edit that isn't vandalism tends to stick.   Remember, source
> quality and style guidelines are invoked only in those rare cases
> where two people find themselves working on the same article at the
> same time; editing in a fairly popular academic subject area, I have
> seen such simultaneous editing on only two or three occasions (outside
> of the FA or GA processes) in my year here.  We don't have the
> resources to maintain the kind of line that seems to be envisioned in
> many people's comments on this topic.

I really find the "spillover" argument profoundly unconvincing.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 04/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> > [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> > ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> > infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> > that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> > violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> > innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.

> By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
> webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
> contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
> position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
> Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
> well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
> Use common sense please.

Indeed. I've had POVpushers remove links claiming "copyvio" when the
link-remover is working for the organisation that has failed to sue
over the last nine years of the page's presence because they knew damn
well they'd lose if they tried.

The question with anything in the external link is: Does it enhance
encyclopedic value by being one of the few very best and most
explanatory links on the specific subject of the article on the Web?
If it's video of the event that's the actual subject, it's relevant
for example.

For another example, see [[FLV]] - I removed the link to Adobe's Flash
page (arguably too generic to warrant inclusion in that particular
article), and added links to two pages reverse-engineering FLV
(because they're actually informative about the format).

- d.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] 64 bit processor - 32 bit mode OS

body: Great, thanks everyone!


from_name: Manuel Schneider

body:
> What mode are the Wikipedia OSs running on for the 64 bit machines? Is it
> 32 or 64 bit mode? We have some 64 bit processors but our hosting provider
> recommends we run the OS in 32-bit mode unless we require a huge amount of
> memory - which we don't. Are we missing out on anything by doing this?
we - in my business outside of Wikimedia - are running also 64bit CPUs in
32bit mode.

If you have self-built OSs you can nevertheless make use of all CPU features -
except the 64bit adress space of course. It saves some RAM and a lot of
software - especially drivers - are not available in 64bit mode.

--
Regards
Manuel Schneider

Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens
Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement of free knowledge
www.wikimedia.ch


from_name: Ivan Krstić

body:
Travis Derouin wrote:
> What mode are the Wikipedia OSs running on for the 64 bit machines? Is it 32
> or 64 bit mode? We have some 64 bit processors but our hosting provider
> recommends we run the OS in 32-bit mode unless we require a huge amount of
> memory - which we don't. Are we missing out on anything by doing this?

In general, no, you're not missing out unless you're doing certain kinds
of computational loads that can really benefit from the extra registers
(compiling things is a textbook example).

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


list: commons-l

from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
--- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> skrev:

> 2007/1/4, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>:
> >
> > Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
> > > I do think that if we want to develop this free
> stuff concept, our
> > > software needs to be more user friendly.
> Wikipedia is getting big, but
> > > it is still too complicated for ordinary people
> to do things that
> > > should be simple, such as uploading files.

> > This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many
> many people out there
> > seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright
> and other issues related
> > to images. This is not YouTube.
> >
>
> Unless you give me evidence that the people who have
> problems with our
> software are the same people who have problems with
> copyright, this is an
> extremely bad way to tackle this (admittedly large)
> problem.

I was also surprised to see a reply implying that it
would solve copyright problems to have a complicated
interface. From what I've seen, even good intended
contributors initially find it difficult to get
everything right when they are uploading files.

Fredrik

__________________________________________________
Anv?nder du Yahoo!?
?r du tr?tt p? spam?  Yahoo! E-post har det b?sta spamskyddet som finns
http://se.mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

body:
Thursday, January 4, 2007, 3:47:10 PM, The wrote:

> How would it appear on a pinball machine? Electronic displays started
> appearing on pinball machines in the 1970s (if Wikipedia is to be
> trusted), the same era as the introduction of video arcade games.

But you don't need an electronic display for that: all you need is a
small lightbulb behind a coloured glass: when the game is over,
the light bulb lights up.

These "electromechanical" pinball machines have been made from the 1930s
until the advent of electronics.


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 09:04:19AM -0500, Travis Derouin wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What mode are the Wikipedia OSs running on for the 64 bit machines? Is it 32
> or 64 bit mode? We have some 64 bit processors but our hosting provider
> recommends we run the OS in 32-bit mode unless we require a huge amount of
> memory - which we don't. Are we missing out on anything by doing this?
>
Our DB servers are running in 64 Bit mode so that MySQL can use all the
memory of the machines.

To simplify system management, new machines get the same OS, so that
files only have to be compiled once. Due to the DB requirements, this
means 64 bit. But there are still some boxes running 32 Bit OS.

Regards,

jens


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> [[WP:COPYRIGHT]] makes it clear that
> ''knowingly'' linking to infringing material is contributory
> infringement (also that linking to copyvios makes us look bad). Given
> that many YouTube vids are copyvios, we can be argued to *nkow* that
> violation is likely, and looking the other way and whistling
> innocently does not seem to me to be exercising due diligence.

By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.

Use common sense please.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
On 04/01/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> I was referring to the claim that a bad user interface is the reason why
> the Foundation and others get requests for reuse of images or text.
> In my humble opinion, this has little to do with user interface and
> rather more to do with habits.

No, in the case I was speaking of they knew it was a PD image scanned
from a book, they were trying to track down a better copy. I said
"well, the original uploader is the one with that." "Who's that on the
page?" "See there?" "... no ..."

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Migration to a new mailing list server

body:
On 04/01/07, Mark Bergsma <mark at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Old addresses will continue to work however; all mail sent to the
> current @wikimedia.org addresses will be forwarded to the new address.

What about @wikipedia.org addresses?

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Game Over (was Thousands of *awful* articles on
	websites)

body:
Thursday, January 4, 2007, 4:06:28 PM, The wrote:

> On 1/4/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>> > How would it appear on a pinball machine? Electronic displays started
>> > appearing on pinball machines in the 1970s (if Wikipedia is to be
>> > trusted), the same era as the introduction of video arcade games.
>>
>> But you don't need an electronic display for that: all you need is a
>> small lightbulb behind a coloured glass: when the game is over,
>> the light bulb lights up.
>>
>> These "electromechanical" pinball machines have been made from the 1930s
>> until the advent of electronics.
>>
> True enough. Do we have any examples of that existing so we can fix
> the [[Game over]] article?

I found a 1950 patent on a "Miniature Bowling Alley" mentioning a
"Game Over lamp", but it's probably not the oldest appearence.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT2643884&id=fUZFAAAAEBAJ&pg=PA9&vq=game+over


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn
stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3
player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free players:

   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011514.html

Our policy is motivated correctly: Wikipedia needs to be free, and that
includes the technology which is required to access it.

However, is there any problem with having a rule along the lines of: "MP3
format can be used by Wikipedia only in those cases where the same material is
also available in Ogg in equal or better quality"? That way, Wikipedia audio
content can always be read by legal free players AND by devices which do not,
and maybe cannot, support Ogg.

(As usual, feel free to point me to wherever this has been beaten to death
already, if that's the case)

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mailing list scheduled downtime and changes

body:
On 1/4/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello, WikiEN-l subscribers.
>
> This coming Saturday at 10:00 UTC/GMT, the mailing lists will be
> shifted to a new server. This will cause a downtime for the mailing
> lists (and may also incidentally affect other Wikimedia mail systems).
>
> The mailing lists will also be shifted to a new subdomain, so that the
> WikiEN-l mailing list email address will in fact be either
> "wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org" or "wikien-l at lists.wikipedia.org" (I
> don't know myself yet; probably the former). You will still be able to
> send mail to the mailing list via the current (wikien-l at wikipedia.org)
> email address, but all emails will have fields like "reply-to" reflect
> the new address. This will break most email filters which subscribers
> have in place to tag mailing list emails and sort them, so many of you
> will have to tweak your settings a bit once the change is made.
>
> Sorry for any inconvenience and confusion this might cause.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
> WikiEN-l mailing list admin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

And thank you and the rest of the mailing list coordinators for keeping
things running smoothly.

--
theProject


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

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

Tim Starling wrote:
> Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
>
> docs: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap
> demo: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMap

Just the comment I already made at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1227#c12

"IMHO the extension's rather low-level and awkward. It works, but it's
ugly, and as with too many of our fancy syntaxes and extensions it drops
this big blob of incomprehensible _stuff_ directly into the text of the
article using it, cluttering up the editor's view.

What would be slicker would be if we can rig up a visual editor for the
thingy; compare with adding notations to images on flickr.

That might end up spitting back the same extension code, or we might
integrate it more directly into the image page, or something else. (cf
the long-ago talk of having a separate namespace for tables... man I
wish we'd done that instead of what we did, it would make a lot of thing
simpler)"

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OG

body:
On 04/01/07, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn
> stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3
> player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
> MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free players:
>
>    http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011514.html
>
> Our policy is motivated correctly: Wikipedia needs to be free, and that
> includes the technology which is required to access it.
>
> However, is there any problem with having a rule along the lines of: "MP3
> format can be used by Wikipedia only in those cases where the same material is
> also available in Ogg in equal or better quality"? That way, Wikipedia audio
> content can always be read by legal free players AND by devices which do not,
> and maybe cannot, support Ogg.
>
> (As usual, feel free to point me to wherever this has been beaten to death
> already, if that's the case)

I thought we didn't allow MP3s because they are patent encumbered. I
believe that those who encode MP3s (our volunteers) could,
theoretically, be asked to pay to do it. If this is the case, as I
believe it is, there is no way Wikimedia could ever host MP3s while
these patents stands and claim them to be "free" content.

Our content needs to be free on all layers: the content itself must be
free, the medium in which it is encoded must be free and access to it
(at Wikimedia level) should be free.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/4/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/4/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  And
> > > the article they write will be, as a result, bad and inaccurate.
> >
> >
> > Why so?
> >
> > Evidence?
>
> Bad, inaccurate sources=bad, inaccurate article.  To pick an example
> I'm familiar with, here's are the first five non-Wikipedia google
> results for the first major article I ever did for Wikipedia,
> [[Epaminondas]] (filtering out totally off-topic or near-duplicate
> results).
>
> <snip>
>
> You could write an article from these sources.  It would omit numerous
> important points, and would probably also include numerous untruths.
> Such an article would be, in my opinion, worse than nothing.

 And I
> have seen sites like these used as the basis history articles; here's
> one of my favorites:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Methuselah&oldid=71757344
> -Article bloated with dubious speculations drawn from the internet
> (not all of them directly cited, but google shall reveal for those
> that aren't) and of course, the requisite In Popular Culture section.
> And actually, looking back, my rather timid cleanup probably wasn't
> sufficient.
>
> That's obviously a pretty susceptible article, but it isn't the only
> example, just the one that jumped to mind for me, and I can't convince
> myself that the belief (inherent in the edits that produced that page)
> that Wikipedia is a place to put information you found on the internet
> doesn't in some part stem from the fact that we have a number of
> articles that are, well, a place to put stuff you found on the
> internet.
>
> Thanks for the serious response.

What I would say is that Wikipedia has worked remarkably well by letting
people who are not experts (i.e. just some internet guys) write imperfect
but well-intentioned articles at first.

Over time articles improve.

Sure, everyone's better off the better articles begin, but experience has
demonstrated that the seeds generally flower well, no matter how ugly they
look at first.


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Allmovie.com links in movie articles

body:
On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hundreds of movie-related articles currently contain a very prominent
> link to allmovie.com, as contained in the infobox film:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3AInfobox_Film
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox_Film
>
> This is one of two links included in the infobox. The other one goes
> to IMDB.com.
>
> Allmovie.com is an advertising-heavy site with information about
> films. Its Alexa rank is consistently above 10,000.
>
> IMDB is the largest movie information database on the Net. Its Alexa
> rank is 32. There are other large databases, most notably perhaps the
> meta review site rottentomatoes.com (rank 930).
>
> I can see little reason to include a link to Allmovie.com. Its content
> is not freely licensed, nor of particularly impressive quality, and
> the amount of advertising is obnoxious.
>
> A November poll on the issue concluded 10/7 against keeping the link.
> Participation was primarily from WikiProject film editors:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Films/archive6#VOTE
>
> The link has been kept due to "no consensus" for removal. I think that
> this issue needs a) wider attention and b) more debate in general
> terms. Is it appropriate and helpful for us to prominently feature a
> site like allmovie.com, which barely passes our notability criteria
> for websites, when other similar and larger sites are not featured in
> the same way?
>
> I have nothing in principle against linking to proprietary external
> content, but this choice strikes me as unusually selective and
> arbitrary. I will assume good faith (i.e. not a case of SEO) but I
> think if this link is to be kept, we need to develop more objective
> criteria for link inclusion.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

IIRC allmovie is a sister site of allmusic.com, which seems to be our
external link of choice when it comes to musical release-related
articles.  It seems that we have no problem trusting them.

--Ryan

--
[[en:User:Merovingian]]


from_name: Mark Bergsma

body:
[BCC to all mailing list administrators]

Dear list admins,

Please read the following info carefully.

Currently we are in the process of setting up a new mailing list server
for all Wikimedia mailing lists. The migration of all lists to the new
server is scheduled for Saturday January 6th, around 10:00 UTC. This
will unfortunately cause some downtime for at least the mailing lists
and possibly the rest of the mail system around that time, and will
bring some (user) noticeable changes, which is why I am writing to you.

We have decided to split off the mailing lists from the rest of the mail
system, and put them on a separate hostname/domain, lists.wikimedia.org.
This means that the Mailman web interface will be accessible through
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/... and that all mailing lists will
use e.g. wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org instead of @wikimedia.org.

Old addresses will continue to work however; all mail sent to the
current @wikimedia.org addresses will be forwarded to the new address.
Newly created mailing lists will *not* get @wikimedia.org aliases
though. The old web interface at http://mail.wikimedia.org will redirect
to the new server. The old static page at
http://mail.wikimedia.org/index.html will disappear; instead
http://lists.wikimedia.org/ will redirect to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/overview on meta, where it
can be maintained by the community instead of just us system administrators.

This also means that the current practice of naming mailing lists with a
"-l" suffix, e.g. foundation-l at wikimedia.org, is no longer strictly
necessary. We will however not rename the existing mailinglists (other
than the domain change), as this is likely to bring confusion. Newly
created mailing lists are free to use a name with or without that suffix.

One problem with the hostname/domain change is that many user's mail
filters might break. The Reply-To, List-Id, etc. mail headers will be
changed to reflect the new domain, which might cause them to not be
recognized by user mail filters, breaking their mail sorting or other
inconveniences. Therefore, if you deem it necessary for your mailing
list, I hope you will notify your members of this upcoming change, which
will take effect on Saturday. Even though the old addresses will
continue to work, I hope you will encourage everyone to start using the
new @lists.wikimedia.org addresses for better stability and faster delivery.

The new setup will of course bring a few improvements. First of all, we
hope it will be more stable than the current system is, as it appears
that Mailman is currently the major cause for downtime of our weak,
overloaded mail server.
Furthermore, it will be possible to create mailing lists without system
administrator intervention, by using a Mailman web interface and a
mailing list creator's password. (It is yet to be determined who will
get this password.) Also, no mail aliases will need to be set up for new
mailing lists, the mailing list will automatically and immediately work
under the @lists.wikimedia.org domain once created in the web interface.
And, the new setup will utilize some spam filtering, although this will
likely need some fine tuning. More details on that will follow.

If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me directly.

Thanks,

--
Mark Bergsma <mark at wikimedia.org>
System & Network Administrator, Wikimedia Foundation


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
Fredrik Josefsson wrote:

>I was also surprised to see a reply implying that it
>would solve copyright problems to have a complicated
>interface. From what I've seen, even good intended
>contributors initially find it difficult to get
>everything right when they are uploading files.
>
I was referring to the claim that a bad user interface is the reason why
the Foundation and others get requests for reuse of images or text.

In my humble opinion, this has little to do with user interface and
rather more to do with habits.

People have been told to request permission from the web site before
reusing content. Even though our page say that you can reuse content
under the terms of <link to GFDL or CC or whatever>, people assume they
must email those who run the site, that is, the Foundation.

I don't see how rearranging the user interface will change anything to
this. And I must say, the user interface at Flickr is even less clear
with respect to image reuse rights.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 16:07:43 +0100, "Erik Moeller" <erik at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

>By that same logic, we ought not link to any site hosted on a free
>webspace provider like Yahoo!, since many of the sites hosted there
>contain copyright violations. I think that would be an excessive
>position that would deprive us from many useful external links.
>Moreover, many videos which are "copyvio" by Wikipedia's standards may
>well be found to be fair use by US legal standards.
>Use common sense please.

I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.  What I'm proposing is
that we don't ignore the copyright status of YouTube links, since a
lot of them are copyright violations and that could get us in trouble.
As always I advocate a Clue-based approach, but some people seem to
want to legislate anti-Clue.  Jjay's version was best: *do not link to
material that violates copyright*.  Neat but not gaudy.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:50:36 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.

Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

references:
<i3mpp25ifn8mp58s02diamfnioboc7ita0@4ax.com>
	<b80736c80701040707xcbe34edn448f150eb237b1ea@mail.gmail.com>
	<6tcqp2lh0pmj4b2t2gfu3en878p5psuu09@4ax.com>

body:
On 04/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
> link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
> on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.  What I'm proposing is
> that we don't ignore the copyright status of YouTube links, since a
> lot of them are copyright violations and that could get us in trouble.
> As always I advocate a Clue-based approach, but some people seem to
> want to legislate anti-Clue.  Jjay's version was best: *do not link to
> material that violates copyright*.  Neat but not gaudy.

It would never come to trial, but it seems that internet copyright is
a very grey area at the moment. P2P technologies have been unfairly
blamed (and tried) for some of the uses they are put to. It has become
possible to be tried for facilitating copyright violation, rather than
committing it. In theory, we could be "facilitating copyright
violation", or supporting it, in the courts eyes, by linking to
copyvio YouTube videos.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

references:
<20070104112249.MVMR17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<f80608430701040331l291c2c91i20f66dc54d5a0f16@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050701040357g6b1ca93che1c833406449b0a1@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0701040432m196df6eak73d11e1580bdba25@mail.gmail.com>
	<snvpp2lr48lc39otjoj1iouq140n220ghc@4ax.com>
	<1760.69.21.252.114.1167922236.squirrel@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<h3dqp25rhaavhg0lceojt72c1jnla7fk5n@4ax.com>

body:
> >It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.
>
> Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?

This is getting a little off topic, but I'll contribute anyway. Anyone
that qualifies for the olympics is notable for that reason alone. The
problem with this particular case is that he didn't qualify, he got in
on a wildcard. Basically, he reached the olympics by luck - you can't
be notable simply by being lucky. However, it is a fairly unique case
and got lots of press coverage, so it's notable for that reason even
if he isn't notable for simply being an Olympian.

A similar situation - a Formula One racing driver that is always at
the back of the field. He's not notable within F1, but he's very
notable within racing in general, as he's reached the top competition.
Reaching F1 (and similarly the olympics) is a major achievement, even
if you lose.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 04/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 4 Jan 2007 08:50:36 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> >It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.
>
> Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?

Being an Olympian, whether they won or lost, is reason enough to have
a Wikipedia article. Olympians represent some of the best athletes in
a particular country at a particular time. If that is not "notability"
[spit], what is?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 1/3/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> wrote:
>> "The Cunctator" wrote
>>
>>> Who is expressing hate for anyone?
>> You called someone a 'deletion nazi'? This should have been Game Over for
>> your argument.
>
>
> Oh, come on.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_Nazi
>

No intehrwebz for you!

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

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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 04/01/07, Mark Bergsma <mark at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> Old addresses will continue to work however; all mail sent to the
>> current @wikimedia.org addresses will be forwarded to the new
>> address.
>
>
> What about @wikipedia.org addresses?

Those too. Currently all domains are handled in the same way. That will
change within some weeks too, but before then I'll make a statistical
analysis of what addresses are actually used and make sure they'll
continue to work.

--
Mark Bergsma <mark at wikimedia.org>
System & Network Administrator, Wikimedia Foundation


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

references:
<i3mpp25ifn8mp58s02diamfnioboc7ita0@4ax.com>
	<b80736c80701040707xcbe34edn448f150eb237b1ea@mail.gmail.com>
	<6tcqp2lh0pmj4b2t2gfu3en878p5psuu09@4ax.com>
	<b80736c80701040937n7f67eda4nb3841843f086d05b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 04/01/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
> > link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
> > on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.
>
> Can you give some examples of copyvios that have been linked to /
> should be removed?

I just removed links to videos of episodes (on Google  Video) which
were on an article about a television programme called Sacred Weeds -
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sacred_Weeds&oldid=95693602

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Wed, 3 Jan 2007 14:38:55 -0600 (CST), "Jeff Raymond"
> <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
>> The sooner we start allowing blogs and other self-published publications
>> be reliable sources for these sorts of things, the better.
>
> Yes, you'll get rid of all those tiresome people who think Wikipedia
> is an encyclopaedia and aspire to some kind of credibility, and you
> can get on with the job of documenting crap off teh internets, a genre
> for which there is a real paucity of verbiage based on other crap off
> teh internets.
>
> Wait, I think you just invented Fark.
>

Or that-site-which-must-not-be-named-on-threat-of-arbcom.

--
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: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OG

body:
There's plenty of conversion software out there that allows you to
make the conversion for such files yourself. Have you googled it?

Mgm

On 1/4/07, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn
> stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3
> player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
> MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free players:
>
>   http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-July/011514.html
>
> Our policy is motivated correctly: Wikipedia needs to be free, and that
> includes the technology which is required to access it.
>
> However, is there any problem with having a rule along the lines of: "MP3
> format can be used by Wikipedia only in those cases where the same material is
> also available in Ogg in equal or better quality"? That way, Wikipedia audio
> content can always be read by legal free players AND by devices which do not,
> and maybe cannot, support Ogg.
>
> (As usual, feel free to point me to wherever this has been beaten to death
> already, if that's the case)
>
> -- Matt
>
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
> Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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] From the Spellfecker community on LiveJournal

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> http://community.livejournal.com/spellfecker/49108.html
>
> Wikkan: A person who believes with a near religiously unshakeable
> faith anything that they see on wikipedia.
>
> (I have indicated our position on this ...)
>

This is something I continue to try and impress on people:

Wikipedia is a great source of general information, but don't believe
the specifics unless you've verified them for yourself.

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

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from_name: Steve Block

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:

> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.

Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.

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from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 1/4/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
> >
> > I feel like a total doofus, but how do you give coordinates for four
> > corners (in rect) using four single numbers?? The order must be
> > significant, but the documentation doesn't say what it should be.
> > Likewise with poly, how are the numbers interpreted as coords exactly?
>
> It's all specified in the HTML specifications:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.6>.

Sorry again for what may be a naive question, but if you're going to
use HTML semantics why not just use HTML?

Any parser of wikitext at this point must understand HTML anyway, and
doubly so for a renderer.  I appreciate that other wiki markup intends
to make the text more human-friendly, but in this particular instance
I suppose it's not really possible to make image coordinates human
friendly, and the proposed syntax has a one-to-one correspondence with
"more complicated" HTML but with a syntax nobody has seen before.


body:
James Hare wrote:
> This is my opinion about references: Each one to its own.
>
> What that means is that depending on the topic, we should use sources that
> are appropriate. Something like science and history should typically always
> use peer reviewed publications, however webcomics do not have peer reviewed
> publications about them. That would be an appropriate time to invoke sources
> that would be more unorthodox for traditional scholarly subjects like
> science: blogs. I, for one, would trust a web comic blog about web comics
> because that's the best there is.
>
> Likewise, just because something is appropriate for one subject, doesn't
> mean it's appropriate for the next. If a web comic blog says that George
> Washington crossed the Delaware and defeated the Hessians, we shouldn't cite
> that web comic in our article about George Washington.
>
> This brings up another point of debate: using primary sources. There are
> times when primary sources are appropriate, and there are times when it's
> not. When quoting what someone famous said, the primary source is *the best*
> source for that information. That's what primary sources are for: pure facts
> (like what someone said). And then there are the times when secondary
> sources are more appropriate. Use those, then.
>
> There really isn't a source, or type of source, that is perfect for every
> kind of knowledge imaginable. Each one to its own.

We used to have a policy which actually expressed what you said.  It was
called Wikipedia:Verifiability.  Unfortunately, over time people became
concerned that allowing an article on the Webcomic Foo meant that we
might also have an article on Joe Blogg's Grand Theorum of Everything.
So they rewrote a perfectly good common sensical policy so that it
became a legal document which would be used to remove all possible use
of case by case logic, and Wikipedia in part became an arena for lawyers
to battle it out.  Somewhere, if you listen really quietly, and block
out all the white noise, you can hear the sound of someone tapping away
at writing an actual article. I'm sorry, but I have a bad cold and I've
just had the worst back handed compliment possible directed at The
Adventures of Tintin.  This is one hell of a way to create a free
encyclopedic resource. And before anyone asks, no I can't think of a
better one.

--
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from_name: Gurch

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>
>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>
> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>
>

As far as I'm aware, the OED cites such sources as examples of words in
use. In effect the OED is saying "this word was used in this document on
this date", and citing the document itself to show this. This is not the
same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.

-Gurch


subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>David Monniaux wrote:
>
>
>>People have been told to request permission from the web site before
>>reusing content. Even though our page say that you can reuse content
>>under the terms of <link to GFDL or CC or whatever>, people assume they
>>must email those who run the site, that is, the Foundation.
>>
>>
>>
>I get emails like that too. I just reply with, "sure, you have
>permission", and try to reinforce a bit with "just like the license on
>the image page says", although I'm sure they stop reading my message
>once they see the "you have permission" part. :-)
>
>We do tell people not to rely on WP as their sole source, so it
>shouldn't be too surprising if responsible persons want confirmation
>about the information on an image page. It's not like it's protected
>from vandalism...
>
Yes, but generally, people don't ask for confirmation of the conditions
on the image page, but ask for a permission from the site provider.


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Donation of DVDs to Wikimedia Foundation Projects

body:
On 1/4/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's, in part, because the ones that have.drifted into the public
> domain really haven't:  The PD movies are PD because their copyright
> was not renewed, however most of them contain copyrighted plots, or
> copyrighted music which were renewed.
>

There are a few around that are PD due to shear age. For example I
can't see any copyright claims on A Trip to the Moon that could last
past 2008 and that assumes a couple of worst case senarios. I can't
see it not being PD in the US in any case. There are other films of a
simular age and stuff adapted from pre film systems such as
Kinetoscope and Mutoscopes

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 1/4/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> I am using common sense.  I am absolutely not suggesting that we don't
> link to YouTube period.  If the video has a valid fair use rationale
> on YouTube then it's not a copyright violation.

Can you give some examples of copyvios that have been linked to /
should be removed?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


body:
Gurch wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>>
>>
>
> As far as I'm aware, the OED cites such sources as examples of words in
> use. In effect the OED is saying "this word was used in this document on
> this date", and citing the document itself to show this. This is not the
> same thing as providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.

Isn't that the very definition of a primary source.  Something we seem
loathe to allow.  We can't state that "these words were used in this
document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this
web address on this date.  Sorry, but this is the same thing as
providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.  The OED
make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources
to provide the citation.

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body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Robth wrote:
>> On 1/4/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>>>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>>>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>>>>
>>> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>>>
>> Professionally published dictionaries use those kind of sites as
>> primary sources (examples of contemporary usages) in academic research
>> about the usage of the English language.  In other words, exactly the
>> sort of thing we [[WP:OR|don't do]].

Funny, I thought they used it to document the English language.  Maybe
documenting the language is academic research though.

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body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>> I would note that "Game Over" comes from American video game culture
>>>
>> It's much older than.  It appeared on pinball machines before video
>> games ever existed.
>>
> Hmmm... you're going to have to edit
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_over then...
>

Oh for crying out loud, what on earth does a referee's whistle mean at
the end of a footie match if not game over?  Christ, how many PE
teachers around the world have called out come on in boys, game over...

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from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

references:
<20070104112249.MVMR17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<f80608430701040331l291c2c91i20f66dc54d5a0f16@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050701040357g6b1ca93che1c833406449b0a1@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0701040432m196df6eak73d11e1580bdba25@mail.gmail.com>
	<snvpp2lr48lc39otjoj1iouq140n220ghc@4ax.com>
	<1760.69.21.252.114.1167922236.squirrel@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<h3dqp25rhaavhg0lceojt72c1jnla7fk5n@4ax.com>
	<a4359dff0701040915h76e4c8dekf5140baa0fa8f043@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 04/01/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >It continues to worry me that we would delete an article on any Olympian.
> >
> > Oh so we're now a directory of losing athletes as well are we?
>
> This is getting a little off topic, but I'll contribute anyway. Anyone
> that qualifies for the olympics is notable for that reason alone. The
> problem with this particular case is that he didn't qualify, he got in
> on a wildcard. Basically, he reached the olympics by luck - you can't
> be notable simply by being lucky. However, it is a fairly unique case
> and got lots of press coverage, so it's notable for that reason even
> if he isn't notable for simply being an Olympian.

Of course, there's [[Eddie the Eagle]] (to keep with the E theme) who
not only didn't do anything to qualify, but made them put in the rule
that you had to actually have some previous success to become an
Olympian ;-)

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


body:
Steve Block wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>> On 1/4/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>>
>>>> I would note that "Game Over" comes from American video game culture
>>>>
>>> It's much older than.  It appeared on pinball machines before video
>>> games ever existed.
>>>
>> Hmmm... you're going to have to edit
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_over then...
>>
>
> Oh for crying out loud, what on earth does a referee's whistle mean at
> the end of a footie match if not game over?  Christ, how many PE
> teachers around the world have called out come on in boys, game over...

I mean Thackery wrote in Vanity Fayre that "The Game, in her opinion,
was over".  That's a century before pinball culture.  Did Americans
invent sex too?

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Line endings; set your SVN props!

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

Just a little note; I've been going through fixing line ending styles on
a bunch of files and thought I'd remind you all of the issue. :)

As you probably know, DOS/Windows and Unix/Linux traditionally use
different control character sequences for line endings: Windows uses a
CR followed by LF (\r\n) while Unix uses LF alone (\n).

This can lead to annoyance when people edit each others' files; the
files can end up mixed or incorrect or otherwise very WTF-ish.

In particular the Semantic MediaWiki and Wikidata extension files had a
lot of unmarked DOS files and broken mixed-style files, which I've
cleaned up, but there were others in core and other extensions.

Subversion can do automatic conversion of line endings on
checkin/checkout, like CVS, but unlike CVS this isn't the default on new
files you check in unless you've configured it.

To help keep the line endings straight, I strongly recommend setting up
your Subversion 'auto-props' settings to set the svn:eol-style property
on new text and source files:

http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion/auto-props

Please note that this isn't just for Windows users; _all_ committers
should ensure that their files are properly marked when they check them
in, or some other schmuck may mess them up when editing it later.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>> Isn't that the very definition of a primary source.  Something we seem
>> loathe to allow.  We can't state that "these words were used in this
>> document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this
>> web address on this date.  Sorry, but this is the same thing as
>> providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.  The OED
>> make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources
>> to provide the citation.
>>
> The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional
> judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their
> assertions.

I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without
worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as
long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable
it didn't matter.  I hadn't realised that we couldn't do some things
because Dave said so.

> WP *really* doesn't want much to do with primary sources;

No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want.  We
have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the
community may not agree.

  very few
> amateurs even know how to evaluate the trustworthiness of a primary, or
> how to reconcile multiple contradictory primaries, and we just embarass
> ourselves when we play at that. Unfortunately many WP editors are
> unaware of how much they don't know.

No, that applies to Wikipedia across the board.  Not many people know on
what topic to start an encyclopedic article, if we look at the speedy
category.  That doesn't stop us creating new articles.  And that's
ignoring the logical flaw in your argument; that the people telling us
we can't use primary sources may actually be the wikipedians who are
"unaware of how much they don't know". Swings and roundabouts.  We used
to judge info on a case by case basis.  Now we have hoops we can all
jump through and strange and varying criteria we have to meet.  Welcome
to Wikipedia, not a bureaucracy in name only.

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from_name: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.2.1RC2 testing

body:
Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we
hope to make sure that you are either aware of things that might
break, or to make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions.
With this effort we hope to build a better relation between the PHP
Team and the major projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to
me personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that
you want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable tool.

The second release candidate of PHP 5.2.1 was released today, it can
be downloaded from http://downloads.php.net/ilia/. Since RC1 there
have been mostly bug fixes and I do believe any new regressions or
bugs were introduced. If you discover any (we hope not) please notify
PHP's QA team at "php-qa at lists.php.net".

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds
of emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the
list of projects to contact.

Best Regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.2 Release Master


from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 30

body:
On 1/4/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 05/01/07, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org
> <wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org> wrote:
> > From: theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com>
> > And thank you and the rest of the mailing list coordinators for keeping
> > things running smoothly.
>
> You're thanking the wrong Mark. :P
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Well, whoever it is! There's plenty of cheers and thanks to go around, it's
not like there's a shortage... :-)

--
theProject


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

references:
<20070104112249.MVMR17393.aamtaout02-winn.ispmail.ntl.com@smtp.ntlworld.com>
	<f80608430701040331l291c2c91i20f66dc54d5a0f16@mail.gmail.com>
	<54f6f2050701040357g6b1ca93che1c833406449b0a1@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0701040432m196df6eak73d11e1580bdba25@mail.gmail.com>
	<snvpp2lr48lc39otjoj1iouq140n220ghc@4ax.com>
	<1760.69.21.252.114.1167922236.squirrel@internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<h3dqp25rhaavhg0lceojt72c1jnla7fk5n@4ax.com>
	<a4359dff0701040915h76e4c8dekf5140baa0fa8f043@mail.gmail.com>
	<f3fedb0d0701041056m69e2f0efg7b8f53bfdd273f6@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> Of course, there's [[Eddie the Eagle]] (to keep with the E theme) who
> not only didn't do anything to qualify, but made them put in the rule
> that you had to actually have some previous success to become an
> Olympian ;-)

Being so bad they had to make a rule to get rid of you sounds very
notable to me.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
> Sure you can! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_McNamara

I stand corrected.


from_name: James Hare

body:
So are you suggesting it is redundant to the already-done linking to IMDB?

On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Hundreds of movie-related articles currently contain a very prominent
> link to allmovie.com, as contained in the infobox film:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3AInfobox_Film
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox_Film
>
> This is one of two links included in the infobox. The other one goes
> to IMDB.com.
>
> Allmovie.com is an advertising-heavy site with information about
> films. Its Alexa rank is consistently above 10,000.
>
> IMDB is the largest movie information database on the Net. Its Alexa
> rank is 32. There are other large databases, most notably perhaps the
> meta review site rottentomatoes.com (rank 930).
>
> I can see little reason to include a link to Allmovie.com. Its content
> is not freely licensed, nor of particularly impressive quality, and
> the amount of advertising is obnoxious.
>
> A November poll on the issue concluded 10/7 against keeping the link.
> Participation was primarily from WikiProject film editors:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Films/archive6#VOTE
>
> The link has been kept due to "no consensus" for removal. I think that
> this issue needs a) wider attention and b) more debate in general
> terms. Is it appropriate and helpful for us to prominently feature a
> site like allmovie.com, which barely passes our notability criteria
> for websites, when other similar and larger sites are not featured in
> the same way?
>
> I have nothing in principle against linking to proprietary external
> content, but this choice strikes me as unusually selective and
> arbitrary. I will assume good faith (i.e. not a case of SEO) but I
> think if this link is to be kept, we need to develop more objective
> criteria for link inclusion.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 1/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
>
> I feel like a total doofus, but how do you give coordinates for four
> corners (in rect) using four single numbers?? The order must be
> significant, but the documentation doesn't say what it should be.
> Likewise with poly, how are the numbers interpreted as coords exactly?

It's all specified in the HTML specifications:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.6>.  Rectangles
are determined by just two points, and pair of opposing corners, so
four numbers make sense for that.  More specifically: for rectangles
it's left-x, top-y, right-x, bottom-y; for circles it's center-x,
center-y, radius; and for polygons it's just the x, y coordinates of
each point in turn.  All coordinates are relative to the top left
pixel, which is 0, 0.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keep_it_to_Yourself_%28single%29&diff=prev&oldid=87401447
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luther_Blissett_%28footballer%29&diff=prev&oldid=87403693
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snowman_%28album%29&diff=prev&oldid=87398157
>
> Examples like this, where a whole work is "illustrated" by linking to
> what appears to be an unauthorized copy, should generally be removed.
> A common sense "don't link to apparent copyright violations" policy
> seems most reasonable to me.

One should keep in mind that YouTube has made a deal with some record
companies, including Time Warner (see
http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/17/warner-music-to-license-music-to-youtube/),
to legally host certain music videos.

On that note, I really have no clue how to determine which music
videos are covered by that deal, and which aren't.  So is, for
example, "Reuben - Keep It To Yourself" an "apparent" copyright
violation?  I don't know, and I also don't know how in the world one
could find out.  Google doesn't seem to want to be of any help.  I
guess an email to someone who represents Reuben might work.  Should we
wait until they've responded to remove the link?

Anthony


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Steve Block wrote

> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>
> > Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
> > credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
> > sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>
> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.

The OED does English language usage; we do reference material. Comment has no merit.

Charles

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body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Steve Block wrote:
>> Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>> Steve Block wrote:
>>>
>>>> Isn't that the very definition of a primary source.  Something we seem
>>>> loathe to allow.  We can't state that "these words were used in this
>>>> document on this date". We can't state that this thing existed at this
>>>> web address on this date.  Sorry, but this is the same thing as
>>>> providing a citation for a factual claim made in an article.  The OED
>>>> make the claim of a specific usage or first usage, and use web sources
>>>> to provide the citation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> The difference is that OED editors are experts exercising professional
>>> judgement and putting their reputations on the line when they make their
>>> assertions.
>>>
>> I thought Wikipedia was an attempt to write an encyclopedia without
>> worrying about professional judgement, that we could add anything and as
>> long as it was written from a neutral point of view and was verifiable
>> it didn't matter.
>>
> Well then, how do you verify? How do you know a primary source isn't
> flat-out lying? Experts write whole monographs on the massive extent of
> falsification and error in the primary sources for Roman history, for
> instance; other experts then use that analysis in constructing a
> plausible narrative of what happened. Our role is as glorified
> stenographers for all these experts; we summarize their results and
> withhold judgement on which version is "correct".

How do we know reliable sources aren't lying.  Every newspaper and
source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the
2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that
mathematically won the cup.  Monty's story simply made better press.  If
we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct,
why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying.
  Obviously some judgement is at play.

>> No, that's your opinion of what Wikipedia does and doesn't want.  We
>> have the occasional featured article built on primary source, so the
>> community may not agree.
>>
> That's why I didn't say "never use primaries";

Then I misunderstood you when you said "WP *really* doesn't want much to
do with primary sources" and I apologise.

> I've been working on WP steadily for almost four years now, and if you
> look at my oldest edits, you'll see many of them (though not all!)
> including reputable secondary sources, and I did that because I read it
> on a policy page. So this isn't some kind of new thing.
>
> If all this really is "strange and varying criteria" to you, you really
> need to stop and consider whether WP is the project you want to be
> involved with.

Maybe you want to check my edit history before you start chucking such
accusations about.  If you want to make the apology now I'll accept it
in good grace.  Just because I happen to disagree with you it doesn't
mean you get to impugn my edits, my contributions or my considerations
of Wikipedia.  Get off the soap box.  My first edit was
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Helen_Hoyt&diff=prev&oldid=12263884
a new article written from scratch and referenced.  I have a static ip
before anyone pulls that one too.

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body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> Steve Block wrote
>
>> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>>
>>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>
> The OED does English language usage; we do reference material. Comment has no merit.
>

Go list Featured article Spoo for deletion then.

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from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Just a little note; I've been going through fixing line ending styles on
> a bunch of files and thought I'd remind you all of the issue. :) [snip]

Why don't you add a pre-commit hook that does the check on the commonly
text file extensions and fail it if the user hadn't set svn:eol-style?
Certainly would save a lot of trouble. If a user legitimately needed to
have a *.txt file that was binary (which is extremely unlikely) you
could also check for svn:mime-type.

Developers can be quite forgetful!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFncNFqTO+fYacSNoRArFzAJ0Wk/qdpeMzfBfIGH8HS7veN/yVQgCfaSpL
Uz1Ep2rVT9/3U5QImKTgAWQ=
=Lza0
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: howard chen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright in quoting wikipedia contents?

body:
We want to quote some contents of a specific term from the wikipedia,
and will put a full link to wikipedia page.

I want to ask:

1. Are there any limit on the words that we can quote?
2. Any specical things we need to take care of?

Thanks.


list: textbook-l

from_name: percy tiglao

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibook User Arbitration

body:
On 1/4/07, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> I have lothed the day that this would be necessary, but Wikibooks has
> now gone to a formal user arbitration situation.
>
> For details, see:
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Arbitration/Panic2k4_vs._SBJohnny
>
> I have agreeed to step in here in terms of trying to resolve this
> situation.  Panic hasn't been doing blatant vandalism, but he has been
> making it tough (apparently) to edit the C++ Programming Wikibook and
> has made a few enemies and a few others who are upset over his editorial
> style.
>
> In an attempt to formalize this discussion and try to bring some order
> here, and to keep this from spilling into areas like policy pages to
> legislate the behavior of Panic out of existance, this has really turned
> into a judicial situation instead.  Both that, and this situation is
> quickly approaching the level of blatant wheel warring, and I want to
> nip that right away to keep it from happening.
>
> Yes, this is perhaps a little more complicated than the Wikipedia
> arbitration.  OK, that is intentional in this situation, as I would like
> to set this up in such a way that you don't want to go through this meat
> grinder if at all possible.  Arbitration is clearly the last and final
> resort beyond trying to pull in people from outside of the project to
> make very arbitrary decisions based on very incomplete information.  I
> certainly don't want to see Jimbo, Anthere, or Erik having to get
> involved here being pressured to act when they won't know what is going
> on in the first place.  I know I have had to ask around a bit and work
> hard to even see if there is a case to be made here at all.
>
> It is my hope that these arbitration/mediation cases are very, very
> rare.  I'm trying hard to stay objective here as well, and am leaving
> most of what is said to the discussion pages above.
>
> Once all of this has been more or less resolved, I hope that we can come
> up with the formal arbitration guidelines that have been discussed now
> for more than a year on Wikibooks.  I guess that until a situation like
> this came up, there wasn't a percieved need to get this put together.

*Sigh* it was only a matter of time. Get a bunch of people working
together, and people will suddenly not want to work together for
whatever reason :-/

I have not looked at the current issue (in fact, this is the first
time I have heard of it. But I feel that in this specific case,
community consensus may be a bad thing. Eventually, there may be
groups of users vs other groups of users. Maybe Jimbo or some other
person would have to step in there.

Oy, this is a whole new can-o-worms in Wikibooks policy...

--Dragontamer


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l]  MP3 & OGG

body:
On 4 Jan 2007 at 16:19, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn
> stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3
> player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
> MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free players:

With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


body:
Steve Block wrote

> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> > Steve Block wrote
> >
> >> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> >>
> >>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
> >>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
> >>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
> >> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
> >
> > The OED does English language usage; we do reference material. Comment has no merit.

> Go list Featured article Spoo for deletion then.

Why? You made a global argument based on a ropey comparison. I happen to think 'reliable sources' needs a bit of modulation according to topic area. But even within "blog/forum/usenet posts", in areas where there is some validity in what is posted, these sources are not generally acceptable, and it is at best a gold-panning exercise.

Charles

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from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
On 04/01/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> You make a valid point, but I don't know if there is a general solution
> at all. The example from the Canadian cabinet shuffle is the kind that
> is likely to be fixed quickly.  Nevertheless there are many more
> articles where this will pass unnoticed.  Articles about schools often
> name the principal of the school, and I doubt that there is any
> mechanism for updating these as needed.

I think the present tense wording is preferable to "As of...". Perhaps
articles with present tense wording could be placed in a metacategory
similar in function to [[Category:Living persons]]. If this is done
using a template perhaps a field would also indicate when the
information will no longer be correct in the present.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] YouTube links

body:
On 1/4/07, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keep_it_to_Yourself_%28single%29&diff=prev&oldid=87401447
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Luther_Blissett_%28footballer%29&diff=prev&oldid=87403693
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Snowman_%28album%29&diff=prev&oldid=87398157

Examples like this, where a whole work is "illustrated" by linking to
what appears to be an unauthorized copy, should generally be removed.
A common sense "don't link to apparent copyright violations" policy
seems most reasonable to me.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


from_name: George Chriss

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
"...influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?"

Indirectly, yes.  Same goes for the entire free software movement.  Products follow consumer demand.

Directly, I think the issue is not within the Wikimedia Foundation's immediate purview.  Just my thoughts.

-George
[[User:GChriss]]

On Thu, 04 Jan 2007 22:31:18 -0500  English Wikipedia  wrote:

On 4 Jan 2007 at 16:19, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I'd like to download Spoken Wikipedia articles to my MP3 player so I can learn
> stuff without being stuck at a computer. At present I cannot, because my MP3
> player doesn't play Ogg Vorbis, and cannot be made to support it. Further,
> MP3's are not permitted on Wikipedia because of the lack of legal free
players:

With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

_______________________________________________
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: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:
> On 05/01/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
>> any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
>> to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?
>>
>
> I don't wish to sound conspiratorial, but there are two great
> paradigms in computing at the moment: free/libre/open and
> proprietary/closed. Wikimedia is ideologically committed to one and
> Apple seems to be ideologically committed to the other.
>
No, Apple is ideologically committed to maintaining a healthy balance
sheet in a market dominated by a ruthless predator. I worked there for
nearly seven years, entirely on the free software that is an integral
part of Mac OS X (I only left to go to Mozilla), as part of a sizeable
team all working on free software. OS X is a descendant of the NeXT
system, for which Jobs adopted free software in the 1980s, long before
most people had even heard of the concept. So it's reallya
misrepresentation to characterize Apple as ideologically proprietary.

On music players, the high-order bit is the deal with record companies
that allows for music to be sold online in vast quantities; Apple isn't
going to jeopardize that just to placate the 43 techies who really want
ogg support. For instance, an ogg implementation that was able to defeat
the DRM would trash Apple's entire music business. I don't have any
inside knowledge though, so for all we know they may announce ogg
support at Macworld in a couple weeks.

Stan


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
theProject schreef:
> Would it be difficult to use phrases like "as of 2007" more often?

You may be interested in [[Wikipedia:As of]] and associated talk page.
Unfortunately, it is not marked as "guideline" or "policy", so I have no
idea if these pages are at all sensible. (also 1/2 :-)

> I was thinking something along the lines of a template saying "this
> article contains facts that may not be true in the future", but any
> thoughts?

See [[Wikipedia:Updating information]] and {{Update after}}.

(Note: I don't know if these pages answer all your questions, and if use
of this template is accepted. Just pointing at some relevant and perhaps
useful information)

Eugene


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues

body:
Gatto Nero wrote:

>> ...if
>> you've been subscribed to this list, and truly have no memory of reading
>> communications about the Foundation's issues, I really can't help you
>> with that.
>
> Maybe you can't help me, but you should be worried about it.
> "Receiving" is one of the most important element of the communication.
> It *is* the most important element.
> A communication which's not received, is a communication which has
> failed. If theres' no receveing, there's no communication. There's one
> of the first things learned by a communicator.
> What you should do is wondering "Why has he not memories of CommComm
> comunication at all?"

I agree that listening and receiving communication is important to the
process. I'm not wondering why you have no memory of hearing
specifically from the Communications Committee - as I indicated, it
hasn't exactly "signed" everything it has input on. I am wondering why
you spoke as if you'd never seen any kind of communication from the
Wikimedia Foundation at all. Considering that Anthere, Brad, Jimbo, and
Erik have all been actively involved in raising and discussing issues on
this list, I don't know whether you've missed that entirely, or you're
looking for Wikimedia's communications to take some other form we
haven't dreamed up yet.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] The present tense

body:
--- theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> Basically, my issue is with pages that contain statements that may be
> *directly* false in the future. (Omission of facts that may be true in the
> future is, of course, completely expected.) So instead of "Person X is the
> CEO of ABC Company, Inc.", or even "as of 2006, Person X is the CEO of ABC
> Company, Inc.", we'd write instead, "as of 2006, Person X was the CEO of ABC
> Company, Inc." Even if X is no longer the CEO of ABC sometime down the road,
> that statement -- as of 2006, he WAS the CEO -- is still true.

I don't think there's any one solution to this (sometimes using "is" is quite
reasonable), but another option is to simply bypass the issue of the present,
and go with something like "person X was appointed CEO in May 2006".

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
On 1/4/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
> On 4 Jan 2007 at 16:19, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
>> any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
>> to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?
> "...influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?"
>
> Indirectly, yes.  Same goes for the entire free software movement.  Products follow consumer demand.
>
> Directly, I think the issue is not within the Wikimedia Foundation's immediate purview.  Just my thoughts.

Of course, there is also the possibility that some companies have
entered into agreements that allowed them use to the MP3 and AAC
patents at greatly reduced prices in exchange for excluding support
for certain free formats, in spite of the existent (although small)
market demand for these formats.

Of course, such agreements would be especially unobtrusive to a player
manufacture who expects to manage the content distribution as well as
the end devices. In fact, a distributor with preferential codec
pricing would have a vested interest in the failure of free formats
which would level the playing field (i.e.  a fractional cent per
download overhead is better than no overhead, so long as all the
competition is paying more overhead than you)

Greedy middlemen seem to be a constant in the universe, alas.

...

In any case, their are already third party firmwares for many players
(including many generations of the popular iPOD devices) with support
for Vorbis and other free formats. These replacement firmwares often
with a wealth of other enhanced features.


subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
"Apple seems to be ideologically committed to [propriety formats].'

To their credit, Apple is not quite Microsoft.  A good overview of FLOSS supported by Apple:

http://developer.apple.com/opensource/overview.html

Thanks, George
[[User:GChriss]]

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 04:09:35 +0000  English Wikipedia  wrote:

On 05/01/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
> any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
> to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?

I don't wish to sound conspiratorial, but there are two great
paradigms in computing at the moment: free/libre/open and
proprietary/closed. Wikimedia is ideologically committed to one and
Apple seems to be ideologically committed to the other.

I think supporting an open format such a Ogg will be seen as a
concession by Apple to FLO and will be avoided for a while. By
supporting Ogg, one aspect of the free/libre movement could quickly
become ubiquitous. This may be seen as a slippery slope.

Anyway, even if I'm wrong, Ogg Vorbis (and Wikipedia's support of Ogg)
is not yet large enough to concede to the open movement for.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
_______________________________________________
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: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues

references:
<mailman.7036.1167725807.15768.foundation-l@wikimedia.org>
	<459B4DDB.7090609@earthlink.net>
	<d0823d3a0701030147s4d29bf59yfcbdc4a76c452c88@mail.gmail.com>
	<enj0e0$oeb$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Thank you for reminding our activities, Florence,
and again (I am not tired to repeat it) my all gratitude would go to
our fellow translators.

On 1/4/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Aphaia, god bless her, was supposed to be offline at that time, and jd
> had said he would help. It so happened that Jd was not available either,
> and thank god, Aphaia came to help nevertheless.

Fortunately I was available at that time. But it was genuine *of
fortunes*. Yes, I am afraid no one was aware of how we have been in a
tight rope - when I got a message about first matching donor notice
from the office to ask me to coordinate translations,  it was at *4:30
am* in my local time and just before four and a half hours.
Occasionally I was vigilant at that time - perhaps God would have
blessed us really - I got the mail from Brad just before going to bed
and could contact other translators before diving into sheets. But I
wouldn't be bored to repeat it was just a fortune which we shouldn't
expect such come upon us again and again. We need to establish
organizational system with which we can handle a good amount of tasks.

> I suggest that we need more back up on transcom. There is room for at
> least one more coordinator there.

Definitely. I would rather say three - three in major timezone. I
invite specially all TCPLs to consider to be more involved into this
sphere. Including not yet publicly announced staff, Mido and Fruggo,
in my opinion all of them deeply understand what is coordination  of
translators and communications between the local community and global.
I repeat three additional coordinators we need to deal with our
concerns properly. Our global activities requires an amount of
manpower suitable for our tasks both daily and occasional.

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Communications issues


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 05/01/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's all specified in the HTML specifications:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.6>.  Rectangles
> are determined by just two points, and pair of opposing corners, so
> four numbers make sense for that.  More specifically: for rectangles
> it's left-x, top-y, right-x, bottom-y; for circles it's center-x,
> center-y, radius; and for polygons it's just the x, y coordinates of
> each point in turn.  All coordinates are relative to the top left
> pixel, which is 0, 0.

That's wonderful; I'm glad we have a clear specification document with
which to...ah, but it's implemented? Hm.

That someone had to ask how to use the feature indicates that we need
much clearer documentation, perhaps with a tutorial and a few nice
diagrams.

Volunteers?

Rob Church


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Hundreds of movie-related articles currently contain a very prominent
link to allmovie.com, as contained in the infobox film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template%3AInfobox_Film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Infobox_Film

This is one of two links included in the infobox. The other one goes
to IMDB.com.

Allmovie.com is an advertising-heavy site with information about
films. Its Alexa rank is consistently above 10,000.

IMDB is the largest movie information database on the Net. Its Alexa
rank is 32. There are other large databases, most notably perhaps the
meta review site rottentomatoes.com (rank 930).

I can see little reason to include a link to Allmovie.com. Its content
is not freely licensed, nor of particularly impressive quality, and
the amount of advertising is obnoxious.

A November poll on the issue concluded 10/7 against keeping the link.
Participation was primarily from WikiProject film editors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Films/archive6#VOTE

The link has been kept due to "no consensus" for removal. I think that
this issue needs a) wider attention and b) more debate in general
terms. Is it appropriate and helpful for us to prominently feature a
site like allmovie.com, which barely passes our notability criteria
for websites, when other similar and larger sites are not featured in
the same way?

I have nothing in principle against linking to proprietary external
content, but this choice strikes me as unusually selective and
arbitrary. I will assume good faith (i.e. not a case of SEO) but I
think if this link is to be kept, we need to develop more objective
criteria for link inclusion.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


body:
On 05/01/07, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org
<wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org> wrote:
> From: theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com>
> And thank you and the rest of the mailing list coordinators for keeping
> things running smoothly.

You're thanking the wrong Mark. :P

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 1/5/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> "IMHO the extension's rather low-level and awkward. It works, but it's
> ugly, and as with too many of our fancy syntaxes and extensions it drops
> this big blob of incomprehensible _stuff_ directly into the text of the
> article using it, cluttering up the editor's view.

The syntax lacks discoverability, which could be addressed by making
it more verbose. Beyond that, I don't think the deficiencies of our
general approach to extensions should be held against this particular
one.

What could be a long term solution? Perhaps a combination of the following:
a) a general namespace devoted to syntax that is passed to extensions,
e.g., Render:
b) a hook mechanism that makes it possible to define a frontend for
creating or updating data of a particular type (extension tag).

When following a red link to e.g. [[Render:Timeline US history]], one
would be taken to a selection box to choose the extension which should
be used for rendering. If a frontend is defined for that extension,
one could use it to create (and later edit) the timeline.  But when
editing such a page, one could also switch to "Edit source" mode to
modify the extension code directly, and that would be the only mode
available if no front-end is given.

In such a model, tables could be turned into an extension. Their
frequent interaction with templates would complicate things, however.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
>>>for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
>>>cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
>>>because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
>>>the Atlantic".
>>>
>>>
>>The youngest verifiable person to cross the Atlantic was probably a baby
>>during early colonial days. ;-)
>>
>>
>Did they do it solo, unassisted, etc? Please, stop trolling.
>
That wasn't stated in the quote.  Your risk of exploding from over
inflation, and deficient sense of humour do not support your accusation
of trolling.

Ec


subject: [Commons-l] Full-text book: A Guide to Inkscape

body:
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/

This is free as in beer, not speech, but may be useful to some of our
budding illustrators. Inkscape itself is an open source vector
graphics editor that is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
On 05/01/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> With Wikipedia's large current degree of popularity, doesn't it have
> any influence that could be wielded with manufacturers such as Apple
> to encourage them to add Ogg support to their players?

I don't wish to sound conspiratorial, but there are two great
paradigms in computing at the moment: free/libre/open and
proprietary/closed. Wikimedia is ideologically committed to one and
Apple seems to be ideologically committed to the other.

I think supporting an open format such a Ogg will be seen as a
concession by Apple to FLO and will be avoided for a while. By
supporting Ogg, one aspect of the free/libre movement could quickly
become ubiquitous. This may be seen as a slippery slope.

Anyway, even if I'm wrong, Ogg Vorbis (and Wikipedia's support of Ogg)
is not yet large enough to concede to the open movement for.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] RfC: PDF and document management for MediaWiki

body:
I have identified an organization which is willing to spend up to
about EUR 10,000 on adding support for exporting MediaWiki pages as
PDF files, and improving document management for documents consisting
of multiple pages.

My current thinking is that the functionality implemented, as a
minimum, would be as follows:
a) Using an extension, integrate of a "PDF link" on any wiki page
which would call an external library like HTMLDOC on a single wiki
page
b) Support filters on the rendered HTML (replacing image thumbnails
with high resolution images, filter content by regular expression,
etc.), and revision filters (export last revision edited by user on
whitelist Y, or approximating currentdate-Z)
c) Create a "PDF basket" UI which makes it possible to compile a PDF
from multiple pages easily (and rearrange the pages in a hierarchy).
The resulting structures could potentially also be stored as wikitext,
using a new <structure> extension tag, so that they can be used both
by individuals compiling PDFs for personal use, and by groups
collaborating on complex documents.

Possibly some budget could also be allocated for improving the
external PDF library used, especially if we can allocate additional
funds for this project.

I'd like to request comments on this approach, specifically:
- Besides HTMLDOC, do you know a good (X)HTML-to-PDF library which
could be used for this purpose?
- Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?
- If you are a developer, would you be interested in working on this
project, and available to do so? (If so, please contact me privately.)

Any other comments would also be appreciated.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] MP3 & OGG

body:
On 05/01/07, George Chriss <GChriss at psu.edu> wrote:
> "Apple seems to be ideologically committed to [propriety formats].'
>
> To their credit, Apple is not quite Microsoft.  A good overview of FLOSS supported by Apple:
>
> http://developer.apple.com/opensource/overview.html

I've always considered Apple more aggressively proprietary than
Microsoft. Microsoft practices vendor lock-in at peripheral hardware
and operating system levels. Apple practices vendor lock-in at the
hardware (traditionally), peripheral hardware and operating system
levels.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
The currently proposed mission & vision statement of WMF are at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=485535
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vision/Unstable&oldid=470952

I originally intended for us to have a community poll on these
statements once the open editing phase is complete. However, editing
and discussion activity on these statements have been minimal in spite
of repeated announcements. Would there be objections to the Board
simply ratifying these two statements as they are now?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement