from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/21/05, Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Anthony,
> > The most important point of non-compliance on the site itself is the
> > lack of a title page listing five principal authors and the name of
> > the publisher.
> Once an article has a history of e.g. 30 entries, it is no longer feasable to
> identify the 5 principal authors. What makes things even more complicated:
> once you move a certain paragraph into a new article, you would have to find
> the 5 principal authors of this passage. If you insist on being compliant
> here, you can as well prohibit any moval of any content from one article to
> another. Is that what you want?
>
Well, the GFDL doesn't require that you identify *the* 5 principal
authors.  It requires that you identify 5 principal authors.  But you
don't have any argument from me that this would be a PITA to do.  I'm
not insisting on GFDL compliance, I'm just pointing out that Wikipedia
isn't compliant.

I'm not sure why this GFDL requirement prohibits any "moval of any
content".  It's not that hard to put 5 names next to the title.
"Article Blah, by A, B, C, D, E, and others" (with others linking to
the full list of authors).  Whether content is moved or not doesn't
affect that.

Alternatively, an effort could be made to abandon the GFDL altogether.
 In the long term that's probably a better solution.  The GFDL wasn't
made for wikis.

> A proposal by Magnus was interesting:
> >While I agree with this, a simple technical solution could be a "copy"
> >function, similar to "move". Instead of splitting an article, just
> >duplicate it by clicking on "copy" to a new name (and preserving editing
> >history), then delete everything not intended for the split-off article.
> But unfortunately this does not help at all if the target article already
> exists and you just want to move a passage from one article to another just
> because it fits there better.
>
> Demanding to mention the 5 principal authors is also impossible, once you try
> to translate an article from en to any other language.
> * There is no way to find out this information from the history of e.g.
> [[creationism]] or [[Jehovah's witnesses]]
> * There is no way to cramp this information (just in case you managed to get
> it after all) into the checkin comment.
> * You cannot put it into the discussion page, because old discussions might
> get deleted.
>
> So what is your proposal? You are the one who interprets things in this strict
> way. Please make a viable proposal. Otherwise one would have to put Wikipedia
> on hold. There have been lots and lots of edits and translations that violate
> the GFDL (if your interpretation is correct). Lots of pages are in violation
> and would have to be taken down because of copyright infringement. And you
> cannot even know which ones. The only way out then would be to find a more
> suitable licence and to start all over with an empty wiki. But this would be
> a huge waste of resources.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Heiko Evermann

You don't seem to have read many of my posts.  While I think it's
clear that Wikipedia is not GFDL compliant, I never claimed that was a
copyright infringement.  Like I said before (look up a few posts), I
think you'd have a tough time convincing a judge that an ISP was
infringing copyright by distributing text that you gave it to
distribute.

Anyway, I've already given an example of how one can become compliant
with the requirement to list 5 principal authors on the title page
(which is defined in the GFDL as the area around the title).  It
wouldn't be that hard to do, and there isn't really even an attempt at
compliance with this requirement.  That's why I called that point the
most important one.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Preserving GFDL requirements when splitting articles

body:
Hoi,
The only thing that I read in all this wrangling about licenses is that they
are a major pain in the posterior. Whan you think about it in an abstract
way, we all know what the intentions of our projects are. In general the
advocates of all these 'free' licenses want us to do what we do. So 'de
jure' there may be a problem, in practice we have to be carefull not so much
about the differences of the Free licenses but more about the non-free
licenses.

The people who think that one Free license is better than the other and have
this as their reason for not cooperating are as crazed as the people who
believe that non-free licenses are not preventing cooperation.

Thanks,
GerardM

On 11/21/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia's use of the GFDL is already absurd. If you want to
> > make any sense of things you have to look beyond the GFDL.
>
> Dual licensing is not uncommon, with MySQL software often
> mentioned as an example.
>
> In a wiki without any mention of a license (I think c2.com <http://c2.com>falls
> in this category, and susning.nu <http://susning.nu> certainly does), the
> wiki system
> itself silently implies that articles can be edited and refactored
> by other users, and that an entire text paragraph can be cut out
> of one article and pasted into another within the same wiki.
> People who save their contribution to any wiki can be assumed to
> have agreed to this "implicit wiki license". In the case of
> Wikipedia, this is de facto a dual licensing with GFDL, where the
> implicit license includes recipies being moved to Wikibooks,
> dictionary definitions being moved to Wiktionary, source texts
> being moved to Wikisource, and articles being translated and
> reused in other languages of Wikipedia. Because that is how the
> system works, and you better know this when you contribute.
>
>
> --
> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
> Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/21/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>I've speedied articles occasionally myself, and the only situation I can
>>think of where it would have been an actual problem not being able to
>>just click "delete" and be done with it would be when I'm trying to move
>>an article to a location where there's already another article or
>>redirect. This situation could be given an expemption to the "tag and
>>bag" requirement easily. Any other situations come to mind?
>>
>>
>
>with permission images
>
>
These are have all essentially been marked as speedies already
("tagged") by the with-permission template.

>orphan fair use.
>
>
One should not be speedy deleting orphan images the first time you
notice that they're orphaned. What if they're only orphaned for that
particular moment because the article that normally uses them has been
vandalized, and is going to be fixed in a few hours to use them again?
Since image deletion is irreversable, extra care should be taken with
such things and something akin to the tag-and-bag approach should be
done regardless of whether it's a general policy. I'd suggest putting it
on IfD, in fact, to make sure it gets a few days' delay before the time
comes to wipe it.

>RC patrol when there is a lot of vandalism going on.
>
>
I don't see how this is different from tagging vandalism for speedying
when there _isn't_ a lot of vandalism going on. The RC patroller would
spot the vandalism, slap a tag on it, and then eventually the article in
question would be deleted. Why should there be an exemption to a rule
meant to ensure that speedy deletions are given due consideration
specifically during a situation where speedy deletions would probably be
given less consideration than usual? That would seem to me to be the
most important sort of situation to have it in.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new project mailing lists

body:
On 11/20/05, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Support Delirium's idea and I concur with Sj.
>
> On 11/17/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/14/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >
> > > Would it be useful to separate discussion of new projects (incl.
> > > languages) to a separate mailing list? It's currently taking a
> >
> > I would like that. In fact, I would go so far as to say that
> > proliferation of mailing lists is a positive thing, when done the
> > right way... but that we do not currently do it the right way.
> > the whole community should take part in..
> >
> > > disproportionate amount of general mailing list traffic (particularly
> > > wikipedia-l and foundation-l), so discussion of improving existing
> > > Wikipedias tends to get lost in the mess. It's also a frequently
> >
> > Right. It would be useful to have a new- and minority-languages list.
>
> >From my impression through discussions and testwiki activities on meta,
> perhaps it is fruitful to separate general new project proposals and
> new language wikis.
> The former proposers might be interested in the latter, but not vice
> versa assumedly.
>
>
>
> --
> Aphaea@*.wikipedia.org
>

Hoi,
When the new project proposals and new language requests are done in a
seperate mailing list, this mailing list will not have a representative
population of the Wikimedia crowd. The discussions, even when interesting,
will not lead to a consensus that is representative. This in turn will lead
to a consensus brought as what is to be done which will be angrily denied to
be a consensus by those who were not aware of what was going on.

All the overly much huha about new languages needs its place. If there is
one thing wrong is that too little is said about other things. This is not
remedied by removing this not ununimportant subject from the mailing lists.

Thanks,
GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias (was
	Howdidthis happen (comixpedia??))

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>  People also suggest things like "clean up spelling" or "remove the
> bright purple tables" or whatever, and those are often good ones too.

The problem being, I can remove the bright purple tables and correct the
spelling while the article's still in AFD (if I think it's worth it, I
wouldn't do that for a very probable deletion candidate...) What I
*can't* do is speedy merge, because it's strictly verboten to mess with
the AFD tag. So, I've got to *vote* merge and hope that somebody
listens, or I have to revisit the article after the AFD is over (if I
don't forget about it).

grm_wnr


body:
On 11/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Well, the GFDL doesn't require that you identify *the* 5 principal
> authors.  It requires that you identify 5 principal authors.  But you
> don't have any argument from me that this would be a PITA to do.  I'm
> not insisting on GFDL compliance, I'm just pointing out that Wikipedia
> isn't compliant.

> Anyway, I've already given an example of how one can become compliant
> with the requirement to list 5 principal authors on the title page
> (which is defined in the GFDL as the area around the title).  It
> wouldn't be that hard to do, and there isn't really even an attempt at
> compliance with this requirement.  That's why I called that point the
> most important one.
>
> Anthony

OK, I contradicted myself here.  I said it would be a pain, then I
said it wouldn't be that hard.

I don't know which one is right, and really I don't know how to solve
the problem.  But I stand by my assertion that Wikipedia isn't GFDL
compliant.  I just don't know what to do about it, if anything.


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
GerardM wrote:

>Hoi,
>The only thing that I read in all this wrangling about licenses is that they
>are a major pain in the posterior. Whan you think about it in an abstract
>way, we all know what the intentions of our projects are. In general the
>advocates of all these 'free' licenses want us to do what we do. So 'de
>jure' there may be a problem, in practice we have to be carefull not so much
>about the differences of the Free licenses but more about the non-free
>licenses.
>
>The people who think that one Free license is better than the other and have
>this as their reason for not cooperating are as crazed as the people who
>believe that non-free licenses are not preventing cooperation.
>
>

While I agree with this, a simple technical solution could be a "copy"
function, similar to "move". Instead of splitting an article, just
duplicate it by clicking on "copy" to a new name (and preserving editing
history), then delete everything not intended for the split-off article.

Magnus


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

body:
On 11/16/05, Jtkiefer <jtkiefer at wordzen.net> wrote:
> My suggestion is just to ignore them, the guardian has, is, and most
> likely be anti Wikipedia though for the life of me I don't know why
> they're so anti-us.

The Guardian absolutely is not opposed to Wikipedia at all.  This
statement is apparently an utterly ludicrous overreaction to a pretty
good attempt by the Guardian to establish how reliable Wikipedia is,
by referring selected articles on traditional encyclopedia subjects to
experts in their relevant field.

Does failure to fall drooling at our feet now count as opposition?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/16/05, M. Creidieki Crouch <creidieki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [[John Lauritsen]] was recently nominated for speedy deletion by some
> > ignorant moron. SPEEDY deletion. Absolutely unbelievable. How many more
> > cases do we have to show??
>
> I assume you're making an argument against the "no claim of
> notability" speedy criterion?  The current article doesn't state
> notability; it mentions only profession.  Being an activist or
> journalist aren't notable enough to merit automatic inclusion.  So
> [[John Lauritsen]] seems to qualify.
>

CSD A7 doesn't excuse a RC patroller being too lazy to do any research.


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: crew]

body: (This message removed from archives by request.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
 "geni" <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:f80608430511201957t789f8ce7y9c255459d19565a4 at mail.gmail.com...
 >  If people want to create articles in a way
 > that involves them beeing a speedy candidate as some point could they
 > not do it in their user space?

That is not an acceptable requirement.  Wikipedia is a wiki and is
specifically intended for creation of works-in-progress.  If these
works are being deleted by overzealous administrators, then those
administrators really should be considering whether they're still
interested in the project to create an encyclopedia.  If not, they're
not welcome here and should find another place to play.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/20/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> In a wiki without any mention of a license (I think c2.com falls
> in this category, and susning.nu certainly does), the wiki system
> itself silently implies that articles can be edited and refactored
> by other users, and that an entire text paragraph can be cut out
> of one article and pasted into another within the same wiki.
> People who save their contribution to any wiki can be assumed to
> have agreed to this "implicit wiki license".

And how to you reconcile this with the fact that there is a non
trivial amount of GFDLed content inserted into Wikipedia by someone
other than its copyright holder?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikimedia Servers and Organization

body:
J?rgen Herz wrote:

> The RTT between me (Germany) to knams is the same as to pmtpa (around
> 60ms) but it's 350ms to yaseo. That's of course a lot higher, but if
> they would have the right data available, this would be still a lot
> faster than the dozent seconds (if not timing out) the knams Squids need
> to deliver pages.
>
> I must admit it's not always slow but if, it is constantly for a longer
> time (mostly in the evening hours). But then I can't see noticeable
> problems on Ganglia. I mean I know that Wikipedia's servers have to
> serve a lot requests and they increased constantly (judging from the
> graphs at NOC) but if it's slow there's no higher load, not more
> requests or so - strange.
> Maybe it's some internal reason like waiting for NFS server or so, but
> I'm sure you'll make it work smooth again.

The main reason for slow service squid service times lately seems to have
been memory issues. A couple of days ago, one of the knams squids was very
slow (often tens of seconds) because it was swapping, and another was
heading that way.

System administration issues like this are a very common cause of slowness.
There's no magic bullet to solve it -- it's just a matter of progressively
improving our techniques, and increasing the size of the sysadmin team. Lack
of hardware may be an issue for certain services, but identifying which
services are the problem, determining what we need to order, and then
working out which part of the chain will give out next, is no easy task. We
have 3 squid clusters and 2 apache clusters with their own memcached, DB,
NFS and search -- if any one of those services has a problem, it will lead
to a slow user experience. To add to the headache, many reports of slowness
are due to problems with the client network rather than with our servers.

Luckily most of our monitoring statistics are public, so the entry barrier
to this kind of performance analysis is low. I'm glad you're taking an
interest. If you want to offer advice on a real-time basis, the
#wikimedia-tech channel on irc.freenode.net is the best place to do it.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expertise

body:
On Nov 21, 2005, at 8:45 AM, <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> If someone were to contribute an article on the Roadshow barbershop
> quartet,
> http://www.roadshowquartet.com/ , it would properly be deleted as
> not meeting
> WP:MUSIC or WP:BIO. The world's greatest expert on barbershop quartets
> testifying to their notability in the barbershop community would
> not matter,
> and ignoring his testimony would not constitute bias against
> expertise.

That's absolutely untrue. If the world's foremost expert on
barbershop quartets comes and tells me that the Roadshow quartet is
of tremendous importance and significance to the barbershop
community, but that the MUSIC and BIO guidelines are not written in
such a way that small subcultures of music are marginalized (Which is
the case - the MUSIC guidelines are appallingly slanted against world
music, for example, and are similarly slanted against anything like
Barbershop quartets that is generally performed rather than
recorded), I would be strongly inclined to keep, and to feel that the
WP:MUSIC guidelines must be flawed if we are deleting things that are
of such obvious notability.

-Phil


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikisource Copyright

body:
David Newton wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Le Wednesday 16 November 2005 23:48, David Newton a ?(c)crit :
>
>
>>It is clear that most of the documents in Wikisource are under public domain,
>>because their copyright has expired. A few new documents are under free
>>licences (GFDL?or CC) or public domain when the author decided to release
>>them in that way.
>>
>>
>So it sounds to me that documents do not have to be under the GFDL or
>a GFDL-compatible licence, just a licence that allows their
>reproduction on the website. Is that what you are saying?
>
That's not what he's saying at all. The simple point is that being in
the public domain overrides GFDL or any other licence.

>>>I think fair use doesn't apply to any document in Wikisource because these are
>>>published in their entirety.
>>>
>>>
>>>>When considering the copyrightability of UN resolutions, or all UN
>>>>documents for that matter, what law do you apply?  Is there a UN
>>>>Copyright Act?  In the absence of such a law can any UN document be
>>>>copyright?
>>>>
In his reply to this Soufron made particular reference to section
104{b)(5) of the United States copyright law. This has the effect of
extending copyright protection under United States law to publications
of the United Nations. It derives from the adherence of the United
States to the Second Protocol of the Universal Copyright Convention
(UCC). That protocol has the effect of extending the applicability of
Article II(1) of the UCC to the certain international organizations
including the United Nations. In turn that article says:

> 1. Published works of nationals of any Contracting State and works
> first published in that State shall enjoy in each other Contracting
> State the same protection as that other State accords to works of its
> nationals first published in its own territory, as well as the
> protection specially granted by this Convention.

So United Nations works are protected in the United States to the same
extent that works of United States citizens are protected in the United
Nations. Unless there is such a thing as a copyright act of the United
Nations, that protection is nothing at all.

If these works are copyright then from when? From 1955 based on the 50
year Berne Convention Rule? From 1964 based on the presumed failure of
the United Nations to renew copyrights on these resolutions? From 1971
based on the year when the United States adopted the Second Protocol?

This still does not address the United States position that laws cannot
be copyrighted as a matter of public policy. That is especially clear in
relation to the federal law of the United States, but less so in
relation to the laws of the several united states and foreign laws. That
begs the question, "What is the legal status of international laws and
resolutions in the United States?" It could easily be argued that as
long as the United States is a member of the legislating organization
those laws have the status of laws of the United States, and are
therefore uncopyrightable.

The applicability of UN copyrights in other countries is still not
solved by this, and may very well depend on their separate national laws.

>[cut]
>
>
>>>As for fair use, I have posted in the Scriptorium and the response has
>>>disappointed me to say the least. The responses that I have received
>>>have been contrary to the policy of Wikisource as set out at
>>>[[Wikisource: Copyright]] and they indicate to me that the people
>>>concerned do not have a deep understanding of copyright law, or if
>>>they do they choose to ignore those bits of copyright law that they do
>>>not like. The argument for fair use applying to entire documents in
>>>incredibly weak, and no account seems to be take of that fact.
>>>
>>>
>>Agreed.
>>
>>
>Given the above what do we do about it? If, as you seem to be saying,
>that licences allowing reproduction on the website other than the GFDL
>can be used, then we need to get a copyright notice at the bottom of
>each copyrighted work on the site setting out the terms under which
>they can be reproduced.
>
I don't see fair use as being relevant to our publication of the UN
resolutions. I will be the first to agree that fair use is often
misunderstood, and applied to excuse actions that would not otherwise be
acceptable. Some misuse it because they feel it is an easier argument
than going through the work of establishing public domain status; for
others it is an act of desparation when they can find no other basis for
including a desired work. There is nothing in fair use doctrine that
would disallow its applicability to whole works, but such cases would be
uncommon and need to be argued separately.

>>I copy the answer from JB Soufron below:
>>
>>
>>"Actually, the texts on the website of the UN are copyrighted by the UN as
>>mentionned on [the copyright notice]. It is forbidden to reproduce these
>>texts except in the limit mentioned in their [terms of use]. To put it
>>simply, this basic license allow people to reproduce the texts but not to
>>modify them, which seems normal since these are legal texts and that
>>distributing modified versions could induce people in error. I think that
>>wikisource could make a good use of these texts if they come with a proper
>>disclaimer. --Soufron 11:22, 20 November 2005 (UTC)"
>>
Copyright does not arise from the notice alone. There must be authority
for an editor to attach these notices.

Modifying these texts, or any other, would be contrary to the purpose of
Wikisource. I would not consider wikifying a link to an earlier
resolution to be a modification. In any event to the extent that GFDL is
applicable it does allow for sections to be declared invariant.

>>Personally, I don't see anything useful in copying UN?resolutions on
>>Wikisource. The UN web site is certainly as much as available Wikisource, so
>>I don't understand why we should copy anything from it, since we can't modify
>>anything in these texts anyway.
>>
The usefulness is an issue that is quite different from copyrights. The
UN web site is indeed available, but it does not provide immediate
cross-links between related resolutions. It does not provide
opportunities for other references or commentary. Wikisource has the
potential ability to make them far more useful than they are on the UN site.

>Actually Jean-Baptiste is incorrect about those terms of use. They
>allow people to download the material on the website for their own
>personal, non-commercial use. The UN terms and conditions do not allow
>redistribution or compliation of the material on their website.
>
>http://www.un.org/terms.htm
>
And what is their basis for making those statements. Terms of Use of
this sort are paper tigers. It is interesting to read the Specht v.
Netscape case at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/stjohns/Specht_v_Netscape.pdf "We conclude
that in circumstances such as these, where consumers are urged to
download free software at the immediate click of a button, a reference
to the existence of license terms on a submerged screen is not
sufficient to place consumers on inquiry or constructive notice of those
terms.... When products are ?free? and users are invited to download
them in the absence of reasonably conspicuous notice that they are about
to bind themselves to contract terms, the transactional circumstances
cannot be fully analogized to those in the paper world of arm?s-length
bargaining."

It would seem that these "Terms of Use" on the UN website do not require
a clear assent on the part of the user. The website will work whether or
not the user views the page of terms, or even knows about it. Nor is
there any specification of legal jurisdiction where a dispute arising
from those terms could be settled. In the absence of a clear contract,
one must conclude that statutory provisions.

>That rules out the resolutions being put on Wikisource, which is
>exactly why I posted this thread in the first place, particularly the
>questions about fair use. The results of the discussion seem to be
>that I am correct in my interpretation of fair use at Wikisource and
>that the UN resolutions on the site need to go as they are copyright
>violations.
>
In the absence of an actual claim of fair use I don't see that your
argument purportedly negating its application can have any relevance.
Your paragraph is a series of non-sequiturs.

>I think we also need to reinforce the terms and conditions on the site
>to make it clear that fair use is completely banned for the text
>itself.
>
Absolutely not. That would carry the implication that all quotations of
any kind from copyright material would not be allowed. Public domain
material which happened to quote copyright material would not be allowed
under those terms. As an obvious example, a work of literary criticism
from the United States whose copyright was not renewed could not be
included if it happened to include passages from literature that did
have its copyrights properly renewed. Your extremist position leads to
an open range of absurd possibilities.

>At the moment users are wilfully misinterpreting ambigous
>terms and conditions.
>
Please do not confuse ignorance with willfulness. Assume good faith.

>The problem with sites like Wikipedia and
>Wikisource is that many of the users of them do not understand
>copyright law. Where there is a grey area like fair use then we have
>people using wishful thinking to stretch the concept way beyond its
>limits. Particularly with the whole texts reproduced at Wikisource we
>are exposed to potential legal liability with greater risk than at
>Wikipedia.
>
I am well aware of wishful claims of fair use, but I repeat that they
are not relevant to this discussion. Some of the UN resolutions have
already been on the Wikisource site since its earliest days, but there
has not been a peep from the United Nations itself about this. As long
as a reasonable copyright argument for keeping these resolutions exists
we should keep them. I would take a direct complaint from the United
Nations far more seriously than that from one individual who is suddenly
infected with a bout of copyright paranoia. Given my comments above
regarding usefulness, they could even become convinced that we are doing
them a service that is better than what could develop in their own
diplomatic/bureaucratic system.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikisource Copyright


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] discus without wiki makeup? (was: Moodle,
	newgroups for Threading)

body:
>>>>> "Timwi" == Timwi  <timwi at gmx.net> writes:

   Timwi> There's nothing stopping you from writing a WYSIWYG editor
   Timwi> for Wiki mark-up. :-)

Well the lack of sufficiently  technical abilities  would qualify as a
reason, I think.
   >> _paranoia_ ??? It happened to me 3 times,

   Timwi> What happened to you three times? That a comment of yours
   Timwi> was edited?  That is to be expected, and perfectly
   Timwi> alright. That it was edited maliciously and nobody reverted
   Timwi> it? That's hard to believe.

Twice the format was changed, once it was lost and could not be found
nor reverted believe me. I thought one of the wiki commitments is:

   thou shalt not chance  thy content no thy format of  thy neighbour

   Timwi> This is because friendly list administrators clean out the
   Timwi> spam behind the scenes so you don't have to. Just because
   Timwi> you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist ;-)

And that would be difficult to implement?

Another idea:

    - would it be possible  to have the discussion page,  without
      the wiki makeup language.  While this formating is nice for
      reading and writing articles,  I find that checking whether
      the format of  my  contribution is  correct is a  real time
      consumer.

And a question:

    -  is it possible that a certain paragraph starts each line
    with the same prefix, like
    >I say bla bla
    >and moreove
    but I say bla bla

Uwe Brauer


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Webcomics Bit

body:
On Nov 21, 2005, at 12:51 PM, geni wrote:

> On 11/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>> You've already *asserted* your bad faith outright, when you proudly
>> declared you were systematically removing content from articles.
>
> Systematically? Prove it (and with permission images don't count). You
> can't my edits are rarely if ever systematic.  We refure to
> wikipedians as editors not authors. Editing does from time mean
> removeing material. Material can lose its function within an article
> if previously it's only function is to pad the article out.

He is referring, I believe, to your advocacy of removing well-
referenced "in popular culture" sections from articles.

-Phil


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming convention under vote

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>Anyhow, if you have opinions on the matter - or, *sigh*, if you want to
>use this vote as a proxy to express your blanket opposition to non-English
>characters in article titles - here's the location again:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Norse_mythology)
>
>
Thanks for pointing this out---it's sort of a tricky edge case. In the
extremes it's obvious what we should do: If there's a common English
name, it goes there, and if the name is *obviously* in a foreign
alphabet, then it gets transliterated one way or another (nobody
supports having even obscure Greek cities on the English Wikipedia
having titles in the Greek alphabet).

With alphabets that are mostly like the one used in English but with a
few different characters it's more tricky---is an alphabet with a thorn
or an eszet "close enough" to keep as is, or more like a completely
foreign letter that should be transliterated like Greek (or Chinese)? I
would probably lean towards transliterating---thorn and eszet and
whatnot aren't really characters used in English any more than beta or
gamma are. It does introduce some ambiguity (is the 'th' a thorn or
something else?), but that always happens---nearly every Greek name has
2-3 different ways to write it ([[Veria]], Veroia, Beroea, Berea), but
that's not a good reason to use [[??????]], even if that would be nicer
from the point of view of anyone who knows the Greek alphabet.

-Mark


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 11/20/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Why
> is "no claim of notability" a crietrion for speedy delete? Why should it
> even be a criteron for deletion? There is difference between CLAIM OF
> NOTABILITY in the article and ACTUAL NOTABILITY. In this case, anyone
> familiar KNOWS the subject is notable, but just because the STUB fails to
> provide evidence, this is considered enough for speedy delete or delete?

Because new articles on completely questionable and unknown and
usually dubious things are created at the rate of around a hundred a
day. The vast majority of articles speedied in this fashion are
created by anonymous IPs. High school kids seem to spend all day long
creating articles about people in their class that they don't or do
like. Sometimes it is pretty hard to tell some articles which later
turn out to be "legitimate" topics from the mountain of crap. I
usually try Googling but that doesn't always help, especially when the
name is fairly common.

What's the worst-case scenario here? If the fellow is really so
notable, it is likely someone else will come along and write an
article about him in the future with enough information in it to keep
it from getting speedied. Just because something gets speedied as not
containing enough information to meet the basic standards of stub
creation does not mean it is a permanent decision. It is really not
that big a deal.

Why don't admins want to "wait a few days" in most instances? Because
by that point they've probably forgotten the article ever existed, and
it becomes part of the mountain of crap that people delight in
pointing out Wikipedia is full of.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
On 11/20/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
> Actually, Charles is one of the few people at wikipedia with significant
> life experience both in and out of academia, so he probably is in a good
> position to judge how accurate those "ivory tower" stereotypes really are.

Maybe you missed my meaning, but anecdotal accounts about academia,
especially those which are from people who have spend significant time
"in and out of academia" are not really very useful data, in my view.

And my point still stands that we are apparently receiving significant
support from those same apparent ivory tower intellectuals.

I won't even get into the other methodological problems -- which
academics (which fields), what time period (is experience from 10
years ago applicable to academics and Wikipedia today?), or what
location (state schools vs. privates, etc.), all of which have a
certainly noticeable effect when one is talking about the attitudes of
"academics".

But don't let me stop anyone from offering arm-chair opinions,
parroting tired stereotypes, and maybe a few anecdotes or two which
are supposed to inform a larger point. Better yet if they don't
actually pertain to Wikipedia itself, but are broad generalizations
about how academics think!

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

body:
I think "the point" you are getting at is what academic standards for
undergraduate research are, and, perhaps more importantly, what the
goal of such assignments are. Most undergraduates are not assigned
papers on topics because the instructor doesn't know about them or
really wants the undergraduate to know about them -- it is usually an
exercise in whether the student can properly do research, synthesize
it, and write it up according to the tropes of the discipline.

As someone else noted, citing Wikipedia is probably at about the same
level as citing Encyclopedia Brittanica, though it probably falls even
a bit lower than that since 1. Wikipedia is not know for its accuracy
or reliability and 2. it is even easier to access than EB and could in
that respect reflect a lesser amount of effort made under some
interpretations.

All of this is, of course, just one possible rationale for why people
might penalize for citing Wikipedia. Whether instructors think that
much about it on the whole is probably unlikely, but they do probably
get sick of seeing so many citations to one electronic resource,
especially one without any expert-based content control.

FF

On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't this whole argument about academic institutions penalizing
> people for citing encyclopedias missing the point?
>
> If the Wikipedia article is any good it should cite sources, and if
> you're at a university you have access to those sources and should
> check them and cite those where appropriate.
>
> Suppose two of my students turn in  essays on the Milgram experiment,
> one citing Wikipedia as the source and obviously relying on the
> Wikipedia article on that experiment, the other citing Milgram's paper
> and Blass' fairly recent critiques, and demonstrating a knowledge of
> the material. Well odds are that both went to Wikipedia first, but the
> second one actually did his homework.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming convention under vote

body:
Just make sure there's redirects from titles without diacratic (non
English) marks on the letters, so people who can't write them can
still link to them and find the articles without problems.

Mgm

On 11/20/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> There's currently a vote underway at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Norse_mythology)
>
> The proposal under consideration is, basically, to use common English
> names - like Thor, Odin and Valhalla - where those exist (as per "Use
> English") and to use the original Old Norse forms where no common English
> name exists (as per "Use English"). There are also some specific
> recommendations regarding representation of alternative forms and some
> thoughts on what the "native spelling" should be considered in this case.
>
> Last time around those of us most heavily involved in editing the Norse
> mythology articles (Wiglaf and myself) agreed on a convention and slowly
> worked according to it for several months. Then this fact suddenly came to
> the attention of people who criticized us for not having publicized our
> proposal outside of Norse mythology pages and naming convention pages. So,
> this time I'm posting notices hither and yon and this is one of them.
>
> What grates me a bit is that there has been very little material
> discussion on Old Norse names. Many of those expressing their opinions
> simply have a blanket opinion against all non-English characters in
> article titles.
>
> So we have oppose votes like these:
>
> "I do not think that article names in an English language encyclopedia
> should ever use non-English letters."
>
> "Strongly Oppose the use of exotic non-English characters as if they were
> a normal part of the alphabet"
>
> This is, of course, an entirely legitimate opinion but I just wonder if
> the larger issue of non-English characters couldn't be settled one way or
> another somewhere else.
>
> Anyhow, if you have opinions on the matter - or, *sigh*, if you want to
> use this vote as a proxy to express your blanket opposition to non-English
> characters in article titles - here's the location again:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Naming_conventions_(Norse_mythology)
>
> Regards,
> Haukur ?orgeirsson
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Heiko Evermann

body:
Hi Anthony,
> The most important point of non-compliance on the site itself is the
> lack of a title page listing five principal authors and the name of
> the publisher.
Once an article has a history of e.g. 30 entries, it is no longer feasable to
identify the 5 principal authors. What makes things even more complicated:
once you move a certain paragraph into a new article, you would have to find
the 5 principal authors of this passage. If you insist on being compliant
here, you can as well prohibit any moval of any content from one article to
another. Is that what you want?

A proposal by Magnus was interesting:
>While I agree with this, a simple technical solution could be a "copy"
>function, similar to "move". Instead of splitting an article, just
>duplicate it by clicking on "copy" to a new name (and preserving editing
>history), then delete everything not intended for the split-off article.
But unfortunately this does not help at all if the target article already
exists and you just want to move a passage from one article to another just
because it fits there better.

Demanding to mention the 5 principal authors is also impossible, once you try
to translate an article from en to any other language.
* There is no way to find out this information from the history of e.g.
[[creationism]] or [[Jehovah's witnesses]]
* There is no way to cramp this information (just in case you managed to get
it after all) into the checkin comment.
* You cannot put it into the discussion page, because old discussions might
get deleted.

So what is your proposal? You are the one who interprets things in this strict
way. Please make a viable proposal. Otherwise one would have to put Wikipedia
on hold. There have been lots and lots of edits and translations that violate
the GFDL (if your interpretation is correct). Lots of pages are in violation
and would have to be taken down because of copyright infringement. And you
cannot even know which ones. The only way out then would be to find a more
suitable licence and to start all over with an empty wiki. But this would be
a huge waste of resources.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: crew]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS,
	NCs for language reasons.

body:
On 11/19/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Tony Sidaway" wrote
>
> >The BBC uses it
>
> BBC World Service uses CI:
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/worldservice/psims/ScheduleSDT.cgi?Pg=Co&Co=CI%3aCote%20D%27Ivoire%3a0%2d45
>
> so that's enough half-truths for the moment.
>

Excuse me, Charles. I've never, ever claimed that Cote d'Ivoire was
not also used as the name of the country by any part of the BBC, and
I'm sorry if you thought I was claiming that.  If you look more
closely at my email you will see that I was simply addressing a false
insinuation that the term "Ivory Coast" isn't also in common use.

I accept that the former term is sometimes used by some British sources.

Apologies if my contribution muddied the waters.  It was intended
solely to counter a blatant falsehood.

You write in another email: "What I object to is the hammering away at
''BBC uses IC'' as
if that is an argument."

It's actually a pretty good argument against the false claim that was
being advanced by one single person. I don't mistake that single
person's false claims for the substance of the argument in favor of
using the French name for the country instead of the English one.


from_name: Any File

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: <link> elements for interlanguage link

body:
Timwi  wrote:
<snip>
> Speaking of which - this reminds me of an idea I had a while ago and I
> was wondering if anyone would be interested to hear this. Currently many
> Wikipedia pages in Google search results are redirects (for example,
> Google for "nonogram" and look at the seventh search result). I was
> wondering if there is a <link> element one could use to say that another
> URL is the "real" page? Then the page returned for a redirect's URL
> would tell search engines the URL of the page it's redirecting to.

Is a list the names of the pages redirected to a page inserted among
he keywords of the target page?

One more radical way would be to respond to a request of a page that
is a redirect page with an http redirect, when a web crawler is
detected asking the page.

AnyFile


from_name: Finne Boonen

body:
On 11/21/05, Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi Anthony,
> > The most important point of non-compliance on the site itself is the
> > lack of a title page listing five principal authors and the name of
> > the publisher.
> Once an article has a history of e.g. 30 entries, it is no longer feasable to
> identify the 5 principal authors. What makes things even more complicated:
> once you move a certain paragraph into a new article, you would have to find
> the 5 principal authors of this passage. If you insist on being compliant
> here, you can as well prohibit any moval of any content from one article to
> another. Is that what you want?
>
> A proposal by Magnus was interesting:
> >While I agree with this, a simple technical solution could be a "copy"
> >function, similar to "move". Instead of splitting an article, just
> >duplicate it by clicking on "copy" to a new name (and preserving editing
> >history), then delete everything not intended for the split-off article.
> But unfortunately this does not help at all if the target article already
> exists and you just want to move a passage from one article to another just
> because it fits there better.
>
> Demanding to mention the 5 principal authors is also impossible, once you try
> to translate an article from en to any other language.
> * There is no way to find out this information from the history of e.g.
> [[creationism]] or [[Jehovah's witnesses]]
> * There is no way to cramp this information (just in case you managed to get
> it after all) into the checkin comment.
> * You cannot put it into the discussion page, because old discussions might
> get deleted.
>
> So what is your proposal? You are the one who interprets things in this strict
> way. Please make a viable proposal. Otherwise one would have to put Wikipedia
> on hold. There have been lots and lots of edits and translations that violate
> the GFDL (if your interpretation is correct). Lots of pages are in violation
> and would have to be taken down because of copyright infringement. And you
> cannot even know which ones. The only way out then would be to find a more
> suitable licence and to start all over with an empty wiki. But this would be
> a huge waste of resources.

At least for translating articles, or for splitting articles it might
be interesting to have a '(transwiki)copy feature like we have a move
feature.

Finne

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Interpreting merge votes (was Wikipedia's provable
	anti-expertise bias)

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 11/20/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Sam Korn wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 11/20/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>They should be voting "merge and delete", then. If they just vote
>>>>"merge" then calling that a delete vote is itself putting words into
>>>>mouths, whereas keeping is the default.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Merge and delete is not a possible vote.  People should not have to
>>>vote in such a specific way to prevent vote-hijacking.
>>>
>>>
>>People can vote any way they want.  If people vote that way then it's
>>possible.  I don't know anything about the "vote-hijacking" jargon that
>>you are trying to introduce.
>>
>>
>The suggestion to merge is a vestige from a time when VfD was about
>reaching consensus about what to do rather than about voting and
>counting votes.
>
A whiff of nostalgia!

>If you want to count votes, then I guess you could
>take two positions.  The first, which I'll call the Al Gore position,
>is to try to figure out whether the voter intended the merge vote to
>mean delete or not delete.  The second, which I'll call the George W.
>Bush position, is to throw out the vote as invalid.
>
Just choose the one which best achieves your goals. ;-)

Ec


body:
Isn't this whole argument about academic institutions penalizing
people for citing encyclopedias missing the point?

If the Wikipedia article is any good it should cite sources, and if
you're at a university you have access to those sources and should
check them and cite those where appropriate.

Suppose two of my students turn in  essays on the Milgram experiment,
one citing Wikipedia as the source and obviously relying on the
Wikipedia article on that experiment, the other citing Milgram's paper
and Blass' fairly recent critiques, and demonstrating a knowledge of
the material. Well odds are that both went to Wikipedia first, but the
second one actually did his homework.


body:
On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
> > information must be kept.
>
> That is still putting things into people's mouths.

No.  Absolutely not.  Utterly, completely, obviously false.  You
cannot merge information without keeping it.  If you don't keep it, it
isn't there to be merged.  This is pretty basic stuff.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Brute force image server upgrade

body:
Since everybody's so frustrated about this, I'm going to go ahead and
force the issue with the upload server. I'll be disabling uploads and
turning off the upload.wikimedia.org web server for a few hours so we
can get everything moved over and totally copied once and for all.

Alas this'll mean not seeing images for a few hours, but it should
finally be nicer after this. :D

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/November_2005_image_server

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Tower of Babel - Voting to ignore MoS, NCs for language
	reasons.

body:
charles matthews wrote:

> "Andrew Gray" wrote
>
>> I meant of course Western Africa.
>
> Damn. And there I was wondering how to carry the joke further and
> explain you were all getting it confused with Nicaragua.

At one time Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, with places like Bluefields
which were colonized by the English, was known as the Mosquito Coast.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Help needed for helpdesk-l

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 11/15/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>> This sounds to me like a good use of PHPbb.  I am strongly against the
>> use of this for general Wikipedia talk, but it seems a useful idea for
>> this case.  I'll host a test forum on my own server if this would be
>> appreciated.  Does the Foundation have a problem with using this
>> software?
>
> It's free software, so it wouldn't be something the Foundation objects
> to. Whether it's something any developers are prepared to maintain is
> another matter.

As I recall PHPBB has a bad reputation for security.

I would strongly prefer not to run it on our servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Gerrit Holl wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
>>>text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
>>>if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
>>>infringement.
>>>
>>>
>>It seems as though you don't understand the concept of interpretation.
>>Anybody has the right to interpret any legal text the way he wants.
>>This does not mean that his interpretation will be correct.  What you
>>state is nothing more than your interpretation of what licensing is about.
>>
>>
>What is "correct"? Agreeing with judges?
>
There is rarely a single "correct" interpretation.  Perhaps it's the
other way around: It's when the judges agree with you.

Ec


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/21/05, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> When the new project proposals and new language requests are done in a
> seperate mailing list, this mailing list will not have a representative
> population of the Wikimedia crowd. The discussions, even when interesting,
> will not lead to a consensus that is representative. This in turn will lead
> to a consensus brought as what is to be done which will be angrily denied to
> be a consensus by those who were not aware of what was going on.
>
> All the overly much huha about new languages needs its place. If there is
> one thing wrong is that too little is said about other things. This is not
> remedied by removing this not ununimportant subject from the mailing lists.
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM

I don't see the harm.  So a new project is started which some people
would have opposed if they had known about it?  What they don't know
won't hurt them.

Why does there need to be a consensus to start a new project in the first place?

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
Anthere wrote:

> then, I suppose you would rather support the idea of letting new
> languages develop on a seed wiki... and see to which point it is viable ?
>
> This still raise the issue of "when do we consider a language should
> be removed from the seed wiki and put in the live wiki" (even though
> the entire content might be a hoax :-)) ?

Objective criteria can be established for this.

    1. A key set of interface pages must have been written in or
translated into the language,
    2. There must be a minimum number of articles exceeding a specified
length written in the main namespace of the project, and
    3. There must be a minimum number of contributors, EACH of whom has
written a minimum number of qualifying articles in the main namespace.

Perhaps there could be others too.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> then, I suppose you would rather support the idea of letting new
>> languages develop on a seed wiki... and see to which point it is
>> viable ?
>>
>> This still raise the issue of "when do we consider a language should
>> be removed from the seed wiki and put in the live wiki" (even though
>> the entire content might be a hoax :-)) ?
>>
>> Ant
>
> Why do it difficult with seedwiki's. Give languages a chance on a real
> wiki for say three months. If they haven't created 100 articles of
> some length by then (so not 1 line, but lets say approx 10 lines at
> least) we lock them. Also make a requirement that a new language has
> one "adopter" an experienced wikipedian that regardless if he speaks
> the language or not will guide the new wikipedians on the pad of NPOV
> etc. And who will be a preliminary admin so he will be able to kick
> vandalism.

How can a person recognize POV behaviour if he doesn't at least have a
basic reading knowledge of the language?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikisource dump

body:
Thank you, Brion!

On 11/21/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Sergey Samoylov wrote:
> > Is it possible to get dump of en.wikisource.org<http://en.wikisource.org><
> http://en.wikisource.org>
> > The dump from http://download.wikimedia.org/special/sources/ include
> just
> > dump of wikisource.org <http://wikisource.org> <http://wikisource.org>
> which doesn't
> > contain usefull articles.
>
> http://download.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com <http://pobox.com>)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Gerrit Holl

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> >>Wikipedia is interpreting the GNU/FDL so freely anyway that adding this to
> >>
> >Wikipedia has no legal right to "interpet the GFDL", when people save
> >text they give permission to use the text under a certain license, and
> >if you don't follow that license you're guilty of copyright
> >infringement.
> It seems as though you don't understand the concept of interpretation.
> Anybody has the right to interpret any legal text the way he wants.
> This does not mean that his interpretation will be correct.  What you
> state is nothing more than your interpretation of what licensing is about.

What is "correct"? Agreeing with judges?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-11-21 16:49:51   -1.2 degrees Celsius ( 29.8F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee members granted checkuser
	tool

body:
I think that people with clearly hostile sentiments judging me and 4
others based on a near complete lack of evidence, at this juncture
(right after my long and loud complaint about lack of recusals) is
unfortunate.

My comment about slavery and whatnot was obviously an absurdist
interpretation of current events, rather than a literal depiction of
them.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 11/21/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Jack Lynch stated for the record:
> > Isn't that what its doing now? I feel rather intimidated by the
> > slavemasters whip (arbcom) at the moment...
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> You think that the enforcement of community rules on a volunteer-run Web
> site is comparable with slavery.
>
> /me boggles.
>
> --
>   Sean Barrett     | And that's the latest version
>   sean at epoptic.org | of the Internet, right?
> _______________________________________________
> 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: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expertise

body:
"Philip Sandifer"  wrote

>. If the world's foremost expert on  barbershop quartets comes and tells me
>that the Roadshow quartet is  of tremendous importance and significance to
>the barbershop  community, but that the MUSIC and BIO guidelines are not
>written in  such a way that small subcultures of music are marginalized
>(Which is  the case - the MUSIC guidelines are appallingly slanted against
>world  music, for example, and are similarly slanted against anything like
>Barbershop quartets that is generally performed rather than  recorded), I
>would be strongly inclined to keep, and to feel that the  WP:MUSIC
>guidelines must be flawed if we are deleting things that are  of such
>obvious notability.

Good point.  Guidelines exist; they can't all be junked.  On the other hand
they exist in tension.  Unfortunately, policy, semi-policy, guideline,
whatever, is used in the same fashion as stone clubs in the Neolithic:
anything to hand to win an argument.  (Yes, yes, uncalled-for slur on Fred
Flintstone, I know.)

Charles


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Peter Mackay wrote:
> The UK must care more about small nations. Here in Australia most people,
> when asked for information on the widely-known Ivory Coast, would go "Huh?",
> a few smartarses might suggest that it is some sort of resort for elephants,
> but only a few know that it is actually a landlocked Asian kingdom.

Those few would be wrong, as it's actually in East Africa, on the coast.

Chris


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Those few would be wrong, as it's actually in East Africa, on the coast.

I meant of course Western Africa.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 21/11/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> > Those few would be wrong, as it's actually in East Africa, on the coast.
>
> I meant of course Western Africa.

Damn. And there I was wondering how to carry the joke further and
explain you were all getting it confused with Nicaragua.

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


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Webcomics Bit

body:
On 11/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> You've already *asserted* your bad faith outright, when you proudly
> declared you were systematically removing content from articles.

Systematically? Prove it (and with permission images don't count). You
can't my edits are rarely if ever systematic.  We refure to
wikipedians as editors not authors. Editing does from time mean
removeing material. Material can lose its function within an article
if previously it's only function is to pad the article out.

> It's a bit odd you now claim you're entitled to a fresh assumption
> of good faith.
>
>
> - d.

Yes and no. If we follow the logic that if a person committs one act
of bad faith from then on AGF does not apply to them we run into the
problem of practicaly formaliseing grudge matches. While this wouldn't
really worry me on a personal level I don't think it would produce the
kind of community atmosphere people are aiming for. Of course I could
be wrong since I'm not aware of any real research into this area.

--
geni


body:
On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
> > > information must be kept.
> >
> > That is still putting things into people's mouths.
>
> No.  Absolutely not.  Utterly, completely, obviously false.  You
> cannot merge information without keeping it.  If you don't keep it, it
> isn't there to be merged.  This is pretty basic stuff.

What if the person only wants part of the article merged?

--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/21/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>These are have all essentially been marked as speedies already
>>("tagged") by the with-permission template.
>>
>>
>
>Not always correctly
>
>
And things that are tagged as candidates for speedy deletion aren't
always correctly tagged, either. The whole point of "tag and bag" is to
get a second person to take a second look at these things to _find out_
if they're incorrectly tagged. If you run across an article tagged for
speedy deletion that you think shouldn't have been, remove the tag
rather than just deleting it anyway. We're editors, not bots.

>>One should not be speedy deleting orphan images the first time you
>>notice that they're orphaned. What if they're only orphaned for that
>>particular moment because the article that normally uses them has been
>>vandalized, and is going to be fixed in a few hours to use them again?
>>Since image deletion is irreversable, extra care should be taken with
>>such things and something akin to the tag-and-bag approach should be
>>done regardless of whether it's a general policy. I'd suggest putting it
>>on IfD, in fact, to make sure it gets a few days' delay before the time
>>comes to wipe it.
>>
>>
>
>Can IFD cope with 5000 images?
>
>
Why not? If it can't, either feed them in more slowly in the first place
or extend the IfD deadline to allow the backlog to build up without
overwhelming processing.

If we're having to delete articles without taking adequate care because
our current mechanisms aren't capable of providing adequate care, that's
an argument for changing our current mechanisms rather than an argument
that we _should_ be deleting articles that way.


body:
 "Andrew Gray" wrote

> I meant of course Western Africa.

Damn. And there I was wondering how to carry the joke further and
explain you were all getting it confused with Nicaragua.

You must mean Rice Coast. Or The Saviour.  Or Trinity and Tobago.

Charles


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lauritsen speedy deletion??

body:
On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> CSD A7 doesn't excuse a RC patroller being too lazy to do any research.

Actually, Tony, I disagree. It requires the admin to do nothing more
than read the article and decide whether there is a claim of
notability.  If there is not, it is a speedy candidate.  Research is a
ridiculous requirement for admins at peak time.  Work is hard enough
as it is.

--
Sam


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] new language policy

body:
Hi

I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
languages creation, the editor
* has an account on meta
* has an account on any already existing project

I do not know what the current policy is.
I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....

Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murciano.29_.2825_support.3B_12_oppose.29

On this new languages, we have
* anon ips voting
* accounts on meta with no edits voting
* accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
* accounts on other projects voting.

Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red
meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
sharing the same living-room...

I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
be different poeple ?

What should we do ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] new language policy


body:
Fastfission wrote:

>Why don't admins want to "wait a few days" in most instances? Because
>by that point they've probably forgotten the article ever existed, and
>it becomes part of the mountain of crap that people delight in
>pointing out Wikipedia is full of.
>
Templates and categories take care of this quite handily, though. Slap a
"notability not established" tag on the article, or whatever, and then
eventually someone else can come along doing "notability patrol" to give
the article its second look. It won't be lost track of in the interim,
and it might even prompt the guy who put it there to fix his own oversight.


body:
On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > People who vote to merge are implicitly acknowledging that the
> > > information must be kept.
> >
> > That is still putting things into people's mouths.
>
> No.  Absolutely not.  Utterly, completely, obviously false.  You
> cannot merge information without keeping it.  If you don't keep it, it
> isn't there to be merged.  This is pretty basic stuff.

In your opinion.  In my opinion, merge is completely separate from
keep.  Can you at least see how I came to this opinion?  If so, you'll
kindly allow me to keep it.  If not, you clearly are being
over-zealous in your opinions.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Another Webcomics Bit

body:
On 11/21/05, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> He is referring, I believe, to your advocacy of removing well-
> referenced "in popular culture" sections from articles.
>
> -Phil

I know. But he can't show I have systematically done so (that would
suggest I care way more about the subject than I really do).

In an ideal world articles such as [[Nuclear weapons in popular
culture]] would be the way to go however if I'm looking to reduce
article size cuting and pasteing the section to the talk page is a
short term solution.

There are of course other issues with the trivia section. For example
[[Checkerboard Nightmare]] does not currently include the one resason
I've herd of the comic, the Kestrel/something posertive incerdent.
Does this deserve a mention in the article? I don't know that is why I
left a comment on the talk page but I could just have easy added it to
a trivia section. As a result over time these sections tend to pick up
a lot of stuff that doesn't really matter. The important stuff gets
incoperated into the article and the rest gets left to rot.

Still it appears people object to the removal of these sections so I
wont. I do however reserve the right to argue that the GWB article
does not need a trivia section.

--
geni


body:
On 11/21/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> In your opinion.  In my opinion, merge is completely separate from
> keep.  Can you at least see how I came to this opinion?  If so, you'll
> kindly allow me to keep it.  If not, you clearly are being
> over-zealous in your opinions.
>
> --
> Sam

I suspect this may be due to diffence in focus with one person
focusing on content and the other on organisation.

--
geni


body:
On 21/11/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> They found what is pretty much the real state of Wikipedia right now;
> that we have some excellent articles, a fair number which are OK but
> need improvement, and some real stinkers.  We've come a long way, BUT
> there's still a long way to go.

David Gerard has argued that "if we want a good encyclopedia in ten
years, it's going to have to be a good Wikipedia" - the Rubicon of
free-content has been crossed, and good-but-costly doesn't handle well
against free-but-patchy in the marketplace (at least, not in the
general public sphere).

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/more_on_wikiped.php

We've come a long way, and there's still a long way to go - but the
key third clause is, arguably, that we've already gone too far to
stop...

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


body:
On 11/21/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "geni" <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:f80608430511201957t789f8ce7y9c255459d19565a4 at mail.gmail.com...
> > On 11/21/05, Philip Sandifer
> > <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On Nov 20, 2005, at 10:45 PM, geni wrote:
> > > > Well going through the critiria for articles:
> > > > 3.no reason to have a limit on that one(a link is a link)
> > > I would say that 3 should have, if not 24 hours, at least some lag,
> > > if only because people start articles in different ways.
> > They can recreate it. I can't think of any reason to start an article
> > by just putting up a link and if they do it's hardly a hudge amount of
> > work that has been lost.
>
> Would they then not run the risk of having their article tagged for Speedy
> Deletion on the grounds of "recreating an article which was already
> deleted"?
>

I don't think that is a speedy criteria.

> Why should people have to jump through hoops simply to avoid impolite people
> tromping all over perfectly good articles-in-progress?
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

It is harldy jumping though a hoop to ask a person to at least create
a substub. If I can't tell something from spam I suggest we have a
problem.

--
geni


body:
On 11/21/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> These are have all essentially been marked as speedies already
> ("tagged") by the with-permission template.

Not always correctly

> One should not be speedy deleting orphan images the first time you
> notice that they're orphaned. What if they're only orphaned for that
> particular moment because the article that normally uses them has been
> vandalized, and is going to be fixed in a few hours to use them again?
> Since image deletion is irreversable, extra care should be taken with
> such things and something akin to the tag-and-bag approach should be
> done regardless of whether it's a general policy. I'd suggest putting it
> on IfD, in fact, to make sure it gets a few days' delay before the time
> comes to wipe it.

Can IFD cope with 5000 images?

> I don't see how this is different from tagging vandalism for speedying
> when there _isn't_ a lot of vandalism going on. The RC patroller would
> spot the vandalism, slap a tag on it, and then eventually the article in
> question would be deleted.

Eventualy? Most people accept rollback of vandalism should be as fast
as posible. I see no reason for article creation vandalism to be any
different. It is always posible to undelete.

> Why should there be an exemption to a rule
> meant to ensure that speedy deletions are given due consideration
> specifically during a situation where speedy deletions would probably be
> given less consideration than usual? That would seem to me to be the
> most important sort of situation to have it in.

Content of article:

"PERSON X IS GAY"

I think that took me 2 seconds to give due consideration to.

--
geni


body:
Anyone who played CM2 to a reasonable degree will have herd of the
place and know it as Ivory coast. The reason is that one of the better
players in the game came from there.

--
geni


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 21 Nov 2005, at 18:31, geni wrote:

> On 11/21/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> geni wrote:
>> These are have all essentially been marked as speedies already
>> ("tagged") by the with-permission template.
>
> Not always correctly
>
>> One should not be speedy deleting orphan images the first time you
>> notice that they're orphaned. What if they're only orphaned for that
>> particular moment because the article that normally uses them has
>> been
>> vandalized, and is going to be fixed in a few hours to use them
>> again?
>> Since image deletion is irreversable, extra care should be taken with
>> such things and something akin to the tag-and-bag approach should be
>> done regardless of whether it's a general policy. I'd suggest
>> putting it
>> on IfD, in fact, to make sure it gets a few days' delay before the
>> time
>> comes to wipe it.
>
> Can IFD cope with 5000 images?

It coped with over 500 the other week.

There is a bot to help with orphaned fair use images which tags them,
notifies, waits a week and adds them to a list for deletion. I havent
had any complaints from anything I have deleted under this process.
They go away if they become used within the week.

Justinc


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
The same problem exist for andalousian language. Many anon votes.
Sockpuppetry chances raise high as well.

In short, the voting system as is is a pure joke. What do you suggest ?

Ant

Anthere wrote:
> Hi
>
> I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
> languages creation, the editor
> * has an account on meta
> * has an account on any already existing project
>
> I do not know what the current policy is.
> I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
> I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
> language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
> However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....
>
> Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murciano.29_.2825_support.3B_12_oppose.29
>
>
> On this new languages, we have
> * anon ips voting
> * accounts on meta with no edits voting
> * accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
> * accounts on other projects voting.
>
> Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red
> meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
> sharing the same living-room...
>
> I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
> puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
> Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
> language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
> be different poeple ?
>
>
> What should we do ?
>
> Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


body:
On 11/21/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suspect this may be due to diffence in focus with one person
> focusing on content and the other on organisation.

Yes, you are probably right.  Thank you for articulating this.

--
Sam


body:
On 11/21/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> No, you misunderstood.
>
> There is a need for users to be able to ask questions. You attempted to
> cater for this need by creating helpdesk-l. It has become obvious that
> people cannot do the task properly in a mailing list, and as a result,
> helpdesk-l doesn't fulfill its purpose.
>
> So I suggested a ticket system. Then you said "we already have one" and
> linked to it. So I looked at it and noticed it is completely shut off
> and private and secret. As such, it doesn't fulfill the task either. I
> would have thought making a part of the system public and open would
> only be a quick and simple configuration setting, but if it isn't, well
> then OTRS clearly isn't the solution either.
>
> Either way, you'll have to come up with something better than helpdesk-l.

Hence my suggestion of a PHPbb bulletin board.  Would this be possible
to implement?  It's only a simple SQL database and a few PHP files.
Just as a test?  It would save *a lot* on inbox space.

--
Sam


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
The user should be registered in meta with a minimum of numbers of edits.

This solution can be reduce the problem of sockpuppets (but not solve).

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>From: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>
>Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 18:41:59 +0100
>Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>
>The same problem exist for andalousian language. Many anon votes.
>Sockpuppetry chances raise high as well.
>
>In short, the voting system as is is a pure joke. What do you suggest ?
>
>Ant
>
>Anthere wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
>> languages creation, the editor
>> * has an account on meta
>> * has an account on any already existing project
>>
>> I do not know what the current policy is.
>> I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
>> I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
>
>> language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
>> However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....
>>
>> Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murciano.29_.2825_support.3B_12_oppose.29
>
>>
>>
>> On this new languages, we have
>> * anon ips voting
>> * accounts on meta with no edits voting
>> * accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
>> * accounts on other projects voting.
>>
>> Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red

>> meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
>
>> sharing the same living-room...
>>
>> I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
>
>> puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
>> Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
>> language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
>
>> be different poeple ?
>>
>>
>> What should we do ?
>>
>> Ant
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Naming convention under vote

body:
On 21/11/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> It does introduce some ambiguity (is the 'th' a thorn or
> something else?), but that always happens---nearly every Greek name has
> 2-3 different ways to write it ([[Veria]], Veroia, Beroea, Berea), but
> that's not a good reason to use [[??????]], even if that would be nicer
> from the point of view of anyone who knows the Greek alphabet.

Of course, there's no reason not to have a redirect at ?????? - I
would guess there's nothing more infuriating to a native Greek speaker
to have to plough through half a dozen different transliterations in
order to find the English page he wants...

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


body:
On 11/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> The suggestion to merge is a vestige from a time when VfD was about
> reaching consensus about what to do rather than about voting and
> counting votes.  If you want to count votes, then I guess you could
> take two positions.  The first, which I'll call the Al Gore position,
> is to try to figure out whether the voter intended the merge vote to
> mean delete or not delete.  The second, which I'll call the George W.
> Bush position, is to throw out the vote as invalid.
>
> I'd like to take this moment to thank the arb com for banning me from
> participating in the joke that has become AfD.

Ah, the old days!  It's an interesting social phenonemon that people
almost always think that what went before was better.  Here, they're
right.

Are people really going to say that the old consensus style was worse
than the current voting style?  I think that it is exactly the "this
means keep and this means delete" atmosphere that has created the
malodious pit that is AfD today.

--
Sam


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] new language policy

body:
On 11/21/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi
>
> I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
> languages creation, the editor
> * has an account on meta
> * has an account on any already existing project
>
> I do not know what the current policy is.
> I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
> I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
> language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
> However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....
>
> Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murciano.29_.2825_support.3B_12_oppose.29
>
> On this new languages, we have
> * anon ips voting
> * accounts on meta with no edits voting
> * accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
> * accounts on other projects voting.
>
> Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red
> meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
> sharing the same living-room...
>
> I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
> puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
> Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
> language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
> be different poeple ?
>
>
> What should we do ?
>
> Ant

Hoi,
When you read many of the nay-sayers, you can read in many of their remarks
that this many of these language problems are really political. Not only is
it denied that many of these languages are languages, it is also suggested
that people who ask for some recognition are extremists that should make do
with the one and only language that suffices for all.

When you know about these languages, I often wonder what a good reason is
for supporting a language. One of the languages that is voted down because
it 'does not exist' is Stellingwerfs. Stellingwerfs has a very active
language community; a dictionary has been published the bible is being
translated into Stellingwerfs and now there are these people who think it
does not need its own wikipedia. Now Stellingwerfs is not as politicial as
the Spanish languages. Then again take an other infamous example; the nds-nl
is denied because people consider that it should be part of the nds-de. What
people do not mention is that the nds-de has a vocal community that insists
on an orthography that is German oriented. This is a great example of a
language where there is NO standard orthography. The same can be said for
Limburgs, there is something of a 'standard' orthography but it does not
match the language that is actually spoken. The Limburg wikipedia is alive
and well. It gets mentioned in the press I am really happy with it. However
if a good example needs to be found of a WIkipedia that also does not have a
'standardised' spelling have a look at Neapolitan or Sicilian. The Napolitan
WIkipedia for instance has already more than 3000 articles.. the amount of
local involvement is great. It is there because local people are
entheausiastic about this project.


subject: [Foundation-l] new language policy


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
Anthere, as for a language Andalusian exists - I think it is the same
for Murcian. This has nothing to do with policies. I know some info from
different sources on Andalusian, but I am about to prepare two
presentations (yes now there are two: 1) Wiki projects , 2) OmegaT and
OpenOffice.org) for the translator's conference in Cracow this week.
After that I will have more time to care about these things (at least I
hope so, unless my customerso do not "secretly meet ;-)" and send work
all together.

I know one thing that could be interesting: for Andalusian I know that
people access through a computer at the university - at home they only
have very expensive dial in connections - maybe this could be a reason
for sharing the same IP. It is something to ask. It could also be the
case for Murcian.

Considering how things are here on the Amalfi coast I would not wonder
that Andalusia has more or less the same problems.

Sorry for keeping information so short.

Ciao, Sabine

Anthere wrote:

>
> The same problem exist for andalousian language. Many anon votes.
> Sockpuppetry chances raise high as well.
>
> In short, the voting system as is is a pure joke. What do you suggest ?
>
> Ant
>
> Anthere wrote:

___________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brazilian Portuguese

body:
It seems quite interesting to me that this is at least the second
request we've seen with regards to Portugues do Brasil.

A while back, somebody was adding pages in "Brazilian" at br.wiki
(really for the Breton language), too.

I certainly don't think it needs a separate Wikipedia, but it's an
interesting consideration.

Mark

On 21/11/05, joao miranda <jmiranda at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Portuguese Wikipedia (http://pt.wikipedia.org) is a multiversion
> wikipedia by design. Several versions of the portuguese language as
> well as people from several countries, including many brazilians,
> coexist in the same wikipedia. There are rules that must be followed
> so that the wikipedia remains neutral in respect to versions of the
> portuguese language.
>
> Please see:
>
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vers%C3%B5es_da_l%C3%ADngua_portuguesa
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoria:Usu%C3%A1rios_do_Brasil
>
> JoaoMiranda
>
> On 11/21/05, Marcio - CSP <marcio at csp.org.br> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > my name is Marcio.
> > I would like to know if there is any project involving the Brazilian Portuguese language.
> > If not, there is a chance of starting one ?
> > Brazilian Portuguese is similar to European and African Portuguese are similar, but there is a lot of differences in writing and meaning of the words that can make the enciclopedia articles tricky.
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Marcio
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Thue Janus Kristensen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Licensing for community images

body:
I have created a proposal which would allow the use of non-free images
in special cases outside the encyclopedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Licensing_for_community_images

Please CC any replies to me, I am not on this mailing list

Regards
en:User:Thue


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy

body:
GerardM wrote:
> On 11/21/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Hi
>>
>>I was asked yesterday if it was mandatory that during votes for new
>>languages creation, the editor
>>* has an account on meta
>>* has an account on any already existing project
>>
>>I do not know what the current policy is.
>>I am hesitant to be in favor of one or another.
>>I would rather say the voter should be at least a participant to another
>>language, because this would imply he at least know the concept.
>>However, I am not sure this should be mandatory... except that....
>>
>>Someone raised a complaint about the current vote here :
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Murcian_.28Murciano.29_.2825_support.3B_12_oppose.29
>>
>>On this new languages, we have
>>* anon ips voting
>>* accounts on meta with no edits voting
>>* accounts on meta with just a user page on meta voting
>>* accounts on other projects voting.
>>
>>Fact is, I made a bunch of quick semi-random checks (in short, on red
>>meta accounts in particular), and admittedly, many of them are probably
>>sharing the same living-room...
>>
>>I fear the editor who complained is probably right in mentionning sock
>>puppetry... though we can not entirely prove it of course.
>>Which raise the question of how fair is a vote on a controversial
>>language, when half voters are not current participants and may not even
>>be different poeple ?
>>
>>
>>What should we do ?
>>
>>Ant
>
>
>
> Hoi,
> When you read many of the nay-sayers, you can read in many of their remarks
> that this many of these language problems are really political. Not only is
> it denied that many of these languages are languages, it is also suggested
> that people who ask for some recognition are extremists that should make do
> with the one and only language that suffices for all.
>
> When you know about these languages, I often wonder what a good reason is
> for supporting a language. One of the languages that is voted down because
> it 'does not exist' is Stellingwerfs. Stellingwerfs has a very active
> language community; a dictionary has been published the bible is being
> translated into Stellingwerfs and now there are these people who think it
> does not need its own wikipedia. Now Stellingwerfs is not as politicial as
> the Spanish languages. Then again take an other infamous example; the nds-nl
> is denied because people consider that it should be part of the nds-de. What
> people do not mention is that the nds-de has a vocal community that insists
> on an orthography that is German oriented. This is a great example of a
> language where there is NO standard orthography. The same can be said for
> Limburgs, there is something of a 'standard' orthography but it does not
> match the language that is actually spoken. The Limburg wikipedia is alive
> and well. It gets mentioned in the press I am really happy with it. However
> if a good example needs to be found of a WIkipedia that also does not have a
> 'standardised' spelling have a look at Neapolitan or Sicilian. The Napolitan
> WIkipedia for instance has already more than 3000 articles.. the amount of
> local involvement is great. It is there because local people are
> entheausiastic about this project.
>
> From my perspective I do not mind to have many wikipedias. I do want
> wikipedias by local people who are interested in doing this. I would welcome
> many projects. We will see what works and what does not. If people who start
> a project steal a page out of the Neapolitan book we will do exceedingly
> well. The argument that we do not need to revive languages is problematic in
> my opinion. The problem is that WE do not revive these languages, it is the
> people wo are the community of this wikipedia who do that. When they do well
> they will become us as well. My point is, do we want to be inclusionist or
> do we want to exclusionists. There is always a reason why we should not do
> something. The point is that it is not you who is doing it, it is you who is
> denying someone else.

Thanks for your long and detailed answer Gerard.... but it is not the
point I really raise. I absolutely do not want right now to enter into
issues of whether a language should or should not exist, but only in the
issue of "if we make a vote, this vote must be fair. If not, then let us
not do any vote at all". And "if we choose the vote option, how to make
a vote fair" ?

> As to anonymous people voting, might it be possible that they are actually
> be people speaking that language that say they want to get involved? (assume
> good faith) And given all these people who are NOT going to involve
> themselve in a language why would they vote against, what is it to them?
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM

I assume good faith up to a certain point. After some point, this is not
good faith, this is innocence :-)

My problem is that if we start a project because there are 10
supporters, we sort of hope that a certain momentum will exist from the
very beginning. When it actually turns out that only 1 person is behind
10 supports... errrrr.... there is no momentum.

And if a language is started with 10 supports and 5 oppose. And the 10
supports are only one person... is there sense in making a vote at all ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: new language policy


from_name: Galwaygirl

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dutch Main Page

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:
> I don't think that there are real problems with that page - and to tell
> the truth: I like it - where did you get the icons from?

I have no idea. :-) Ask Rex
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Rex), he designed the new main page.

Galwaygirl


body:
"Fastfission" wrote

>>On 11/20/05, Brown, Darin <Darin.Brown at enmu.edu> wrote:
>> Actually, Charles is one of the few people at wikipedia with significant
>> life experience both in and out of academia, so he probably is in a good
>> position to judge how accurate those "ivory tower" stereotypes really
>> are.

>Maybe you missed my meaning, but anecdotal accounts about academia,
especially those which are from people who have spend significant time
"in and out of academia" are not really very useful data, in my view.

>And my point still stands that we are apparently receiving significant
support from those same apparent ivory tower intellectuals.

Yes to the second point (the first is all wrong, obviously; actual lived
experience plus some perspective is not 'anecdotal').  But, as you failed to
show you actually comprehend by answering before as you did (which wasn't
going to get an answer from me - my thanks to Darin Brown for answering for
me):

JUST BECAUSE ACADEMICS MAY APPROVE OF SOME ASPECTS OF WP AND EVEN HELP DOES
NOT MEAN THEY UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS.

And that's because WP operates at the level of the social facts, which are
rooted in community action and are QUITE DIFFERENT from academia.  The rest
of your posting seems to assume we take the US model as a given.  That's
more quantitatively than qualitatively impressive.  However it covers quite
a number of different traditions, if principally the German model, I'd say.
Nothing in that prepares for the unfiltered wiki way.  And especially not th
absence of 'guild standards', the topic of this thread.

Charles


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 11/21/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Bollocks it's verboten to speedy merge. Anyone who thinks it is has a
> bad case of process over product and is inappropriately asserting the
> supremacy of AFD over writing an encyclopedia.

Wholly agreed.  Although I know already that merges have been undone
for entirely that reason.  I'm surprised nobody has an issue with
anyone making any edits to a AFD'd article.

-Matt


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: <link> elements for interlanguage link
	information

body:
On 11/18/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> > I think it'd be useful for most multilingual MediaWiki installations
> > that use interlanguage links to have such hidden <link> elements.
>
> Speaking of which - this reminds me of an idea I had a while ago and I
> was wondering if anyone would be interested to hear this. Currently many
> Wikipedia pages in Google search results are redirects [snip]

I've never understood why people think this is a problem. If I search
for a term in a search engine I think it increases the value of the
search if I get a redirect under the title I searched for rather than
a synonym for the term which I may or may not be familiar with.