body:
>(Doesn't LittleDan state that his parents know about
his >work on Wikipedia?)

Yes, but an initial requirement for parental
permission/knowledge might have detered me. Besides,
restricting minors, even if for legal reasons,
detracts from the whole wiki-ness of Wikipedia. The
whole anon/username/sysop/developer/Jimbo hierarchy
makes proponents of usemod-style wikis say that
WikiPediaIsNotTypical (see MeatballWiki article of
that title) or even that it is not a wiki in the
traditional sense. If we gave children a seperate
level of hierarchy, we'd have twice as many ranks
(actually, we wouldn't have child Jimbos). This is
very undesiarable.

I'm getting on a tangent, but I think we should just
have only the ranks of users, developer-rank people,
and Jimbo. Recently, as you all know, a previously
developer-only feature of Wikipedia was just given to
all sysops. I don't see why  sysops shouldn't have
database access, and that is the only difference. I
also don't think that anons should be treated
differently than other non-sysop users, this is just
discriminating against them.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l]  Wikipedia.ru & Wikimedia.de

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>Then cite from the Russian civil code or from Russian
>precedents the relevent passages that show that
>Russian law acknowledges unregistered trademarks.

Not needed. Unregistered trademarks are legal in the US and EU countries so if
they want to travel to these nations then they should respect our trademark.

ICANN has separate rules that govern domain names; they are very highly
supportive of protecting all trademarks (even more so than regular trademark
law is). And registration in the appropriate jurisdiction will be sought
before any legal action is taken so your point is moot.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Maveric149 wrote:

>Erik (Eloquence) wrote:

>>Um, I'm not sure there even *is* a registered
>>Wikipedia trademark, let alone in Russia.
>>Until we have such a trademark, we can only
>>ask them nicely to stop, but they're acting in full
>>compliance with the law.

>IIRC from my business law classes, registration is only needed before seeking
>actual legal action in court (just as with copyright infringement). But
>"Wikipedia" is still a trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation. That's why
>registered trademarks and plain old trademarks have different symbols to
>represent them.

IIRC (but not from a bona fide business law class),
you must /use/ the symbol for a trade (or service) mark,
even though you don't have to register it, to defend it.
That is, you must put "TM" (or "SM") by your name to stake your claim.
But you don't need the circled "R" -- and can't unless you register.

This is different from copyright law, where you need no circled "C".

>IANAL but the ru.Wikipedia/Wikipedia.ru use does seem to
>cause a very real confusion as to what Russian "Wikipedia" is the actual one
>that is part of the Wikimedia family.

I agree.  But are we defeding the name properly?
It seems to me that we ought to stick up a "TM" (or "SM"?) posthaste!
IANAL either, so let's hope that Alex speaks up.

>[If we let wikipedia.ru go by] - we will have lost control of
>our trademark and IIRC once that happens we will not be able to regain
>control either legally or practically.

This is another difference from copyright law.
A trademark must constantly be defended or it goes away.
That's why there are "Webster's Dictionary"s all over the place,
but only one "Merriam-Webster Dictionary" (the descendant of the original);
they didn't defend "Webster's" for a while so lost the case when they started.

I suppose that if we fail to defend "Wikimedia" from wikimedia.de,
then we'll lose the right to defend it from other random wikis;
but we won't lose the right to defend it from other /encyclopaedias/.
OTOH, since wikimedia.ru is a wiki encyclopaedia, it's all or nothing.
But here I'm thinking logically, rather than legally, to hypothesise;
so take it with a big grain of salt.

>	Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Corporation that sold a soft drink
>	called "Coke" in red and white cans would clearly be guilty
>	of trademark infringement,

(You're missing "[A] company other than" at the beginning here.)

>	The advent of the Domain Name System has lead to attempts
>	by trademark holders to take over domain names based on
>	trade mark rights. Unlike a trademark, which is restricted by
>	country and class of goods, domain names can be global and
>	not limited by goods or service.

>So IMO we are on pretty solid legal grounds here even without the last
>paragraph (IMO, the last paragraph is a bit morally wrong and we shouldn't
>approach this matter via that route unless forced to do so).

I agree.  Remember when Prema Toys sued a 12-year-old kid named "Pokey"
over <pokey.org>?  (They dropped legal action after bad publicity.)

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vote on voting method for final round

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

>Personnaly I think Condorcet method is the more fair method for wide vote,
>but I agree to choose voting system we want for second round using FPTP (I
>fact, imho, "Approval voting" may be better here : vote for all method we
>agree).

That would have been the obvious thing;
I believe that Erik even likes approval voting.
*shrug*

-- Toby


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Members?

body:
At 06:43 PM 9/7/03 -0400, Merritt wrote:
>Please forgive my ignorance.
>1. Are there members?

No. There are editors, contributors, and readers (all overlapping sets).
At the moment, there is nothing to be a member of.

>2. What are they members of?
>3. How do they become members?

Since there are no members, these questions are moot.

>4. How do they know that they have been accepted?

It's not an accepted/rejected thing: you become a contributor by
contributing.

>It seems that when a person becomes a member he should receive a
>membership certificate. This could be something that he can download and
>print out to put in a frame and hang on the wall. It could have a fancy
>border.

It seems to me that (a) you still don't understand Wikipedia, and (b) because
it's a Wiki, if someone wants to create membership certificates, they can go
ahead and do so, and make them available.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Members?

body:
From: "Merritt L. Perkins" <mlperkins3 at juno.com>
> Please forgive my ignorance.

> 1. Are there members?

We are all members.

> 2. What are they members of?

Members of the community of those involved with Wikipedias.

> 3. How do they become members?

By participating.

> 4. How do they know that they have been accepted?

None needed, only participation is required.  All are accepted,.

> It seems that when a person becomes a member he should receive a
> membership certificate. This could be something that he can download
 > and print out to put in a frame and hang on the wall. It could have a
> fancyborder.
> I haven't seen any information about this.
> Merritt L. Perkins

Why not make up a certificate and post it on the Meta Wiki?

Then we can all download it, add our names, print it out, and put it on
the wall.  A fancy border would be nice, like a stock certificate.

Maybe Jimbo will even allow his mechanical signature
to be reproduced on it. It could say something like

"I hereby certify this person is a member of the Wikipedia
community because they decided to participate. "
/signed/
Jimmy Wales
Founder and Lord of All Wikipedian Realms

Here is an example of the Left-Handers Club certificate:
http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/library/Membership_certificate.pdf

It could also have the new logo on it!
Maybe we should have a membership certificate contest too!
(I'm not joking)

Alex756


list: wikien-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

references:
<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907101234.02d87fe8@digitalgrapefruit.com>
	<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 12:11, tarquin wrote:
> Dante Alighieri wrote:
> > It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French ones)
> > with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the US-International
> > keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
> > as: ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, etc.
>
> Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.

At least US releases of Windows have had it for ages; I've used it on
and off since Windows 3.1.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

references:
<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907101234.02d87fe8@digitalgrapefruit.com>
	<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>

body:
At 07:43 PM 9/7/2003, you wrote:
>On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 12:11, tarquin wrote:
> > Dante Alighieri wrote:
> > > It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French ones)
> > > with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the US-International
> > > keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
> > > as: ??, ??, ??, ??, ?, ??, ??, etc.
> >
> > Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.
>
>At least US releases of Windows have had it for ages; I've used it on
>and off since Windows 3.1.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

Any idea why your response broke the characters? They now have weird
capital A's in front of totally different characters....

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Daniel Herding

subject: [Wikitech-l] Links in headings: wikipedia doesn't create valid HTML

body:
When you create links within headings, like on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrika ,
wikipedia creates invalid HTML because it opens an  tag within another
 tag: The outer one for the TOC anchor, the inner one for the link.

I don't know if it's a problem for any browser, but it can easily be fixed
by
closing the first tag before opening the second.

Example: use

Nordafrikanische Staaten

instead of

Nordafrikanische Staaten

Daniel


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 08:42 AM 9/7/2003, you wrote:
>
>> On fr:, plenty of people don't have a french keyboard and so their
>> work has to be corrected for accented characters.
>
>
> It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French ones)
> with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the US-International
> keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
> as: ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, etc.

Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.
Feel free to drop by the fr: and tell us how to do it though!


body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Not needed. Unregistered trademarks are legal in the US
> and EU countries so if  they want to travel to these nations
> then they should respect our trademark.
>
>Stop the fucking FUD, ok ?
>
>Nobody's going to be arrested abroad for breaking
>laws that don't even exist in one's own country
>while being in it.

Stop fucking the strawman; nowhere was the word "arrested" used in my
statement and you can't get arrested for violating trademark law anyway. The
assets you hold or take with you in the nation you violated the law under may
be levied for damages and you may be prevented from doing business in the
same nation, however. But we needn't get to that.

-- mav


body:
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Erik wrote:
> >Um, I'm not sure there even *is* a registered
> >Wikipedia trademark, let alone in Russia.
> >Until we have such a trademark, we can only
> >ask them nicely to stop, but they're acting in full
> > compliance with the law.

Trademarks do not have to be registered as Daniel
correctly states. There is also the passing off issue.
Basically trademarks and domain names are now overlapping
areas of concern.

It has nothing to do with the fact that Wikipedia is not a
business. Here is a recent decision that dealt with
the use of the name of a religious figure:
http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/decisions/html/2003/d2003-0248.html
If you read the decision you will see that goods and services
include such things as "Charitable services" and "meditation".

> The advent of the Domain Name System has lead to attempts
> by trademark holders to take over domain names based on
> trade mark rights. Unlike a trademark, which is restricted by
> country and class of goods, domain names can be global and
> not limited by goods or service.

I do not know if this is a completely accurate statement of the law;
but the problem is that Wikipedia.ru is using the name to publish
an encyclopedia and ru.wikipedia.org  What is the point of two
Russian Wikipedia's or two German Wikipedia's.
The problem with the Russian site is that it is not released under
the GFDL.  They use a bsd type of copyleft license:
http://www.wikipedia.ru/wiki/license/bsd-doc.htm
However, it is not completely clear that it is compatible with the
GFDL. It requires a disclaimer and that disclaimer becomes viral
because it MUST be incoporated into any subsequent texts
I.e. if you want to give a greater warranty I am not sure you can,
but I haven't examined that issue in much detail.

Perhaps they should be asked to reliquish the name. Do Wikipedians
want to be associated with porno sites (at least one of the links
from their main page link to a Russian porno site, and in Russia you
do not need to limit such site access to adults, another liability issue
for Wikipedia!

If they do not want to comply with Wikipedia standards it is simple enough
to complain to the WTO. If WTO rules in Wikimedia's favor,
they will have to relinquish the Wikipedia name. IMO Wikimedia has
a good case, long history, lots of press both in the US and abroad.

> So IMO we are on pretty solid legal grounds here even without the last
> paragraph (IMO, the last paragraph is a bit morally wrong and we shouldn't
> approach this matter via that route unless forced to do so).

I am not sure why it is morally wrong to try and keep the WIkipedia
name associated with a high level of standardization. Non-profit
organizations do get into trademark and unfair competition disputes,
you would be suprised at how many churches want to prevent someone
for misappropriating their name (I have researched the case law in this
area).

Certainly it would be more considerate to try and settle the dispute with
them, but I do not see why it is morally reprehensible to resort to legal
recourses if Wikipedia standards are not upheld and someone wants
to use the Wikipedia name.

Alex756


body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:47 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

> *cough* Wikilegal-l ;-)
>
> Geoff wrote
> >And what do we do if a minor makes a submission?
> >After all, while minors can sign contracts, but cannot
> >be held to them. ....
In some jurisdictions those contracts are voidable, but usually
if a contract is completely or sufficiently performed it cannot be
voided ex post facto; otherwise parents could have their kids
buy things in stores and then use them and then just return them
after significant periods of time. Yes, if a contract is signed it may
need the guardian (or even a court's approval in some cases)
before it is considered binding, but such contracts do not cover
the kinds of transactions that minors routinely enter into. There
are also estoppel, detrimental reliance and unjust enrichment
arguments that will also give a remedy or imply a contract.

BTW most contracts are not signed. When you go to a store and
purchase groceries do you sign any kind of agreement (unless you
pay by credit card or check) No, but the purchase of goods is covered
in North America under UCC provisions and elsewhere by similar
sales contracts jurisprudence, statute or codal provision (in civil law
countries).
>
> That's an interesting point. Can a reasonable person expect a minor to
know
> what is legal or not (right and wrong is a different matter)? I think so,
> otherwise society could not allow minors to drive automobiles and obey
> traffic laws.
Children can testify in court, generally speaking the courts look to the
minor's
appreciation of right and wrong and truth and falsehood. Often the judge may
ask the minor if she understands these things and then rule that the minor
is competent.
>
> But this does still seem to be an increasingly sticky issue with younger
and
> younger contributors; at what point can a reasonable person expect a minor
to
> be oblivious to what is legal and illegal (I know there is already
> well-established legal precedent and common law that governs "right and
> wrong" issues with minors)?

How many four year old kids are going to be editing aticles on Wikipedia?
Maybe this is getting too academic.

>
> At what point does a reasonable person need to seek the the explicit
consent
> of a guardian? Does the new edit page text pass this line? For that matter
> does the old edit page text pass this line? It would be a shame to have a
> "Are you 18" click through for editing.

Is that really necessary?

> But here is a thorny question; does releasing copyrighted works under a
> license that /effectively/ frees those works from control by the copyright
> holder (sic a copyleft license), similarly relinquish substantive rights
and
> thus requires explicit permission from a legal guardian?

Even if the license is later overturned (I don't think it would be, the
minor has
to figure out how to edit the page, type in the text, they can see that
Wikis
function on a collaborative basis) it is still a non-exclusive coauthorship
license,
one of the _weakest_ types of licenses to have under EVIL US copyright law.
(try telling that to a federal court judge in NY or California that you
believe
copyright is evil, copyright law is what keeps some of those judges busy,
so if you want to get into the spirit of the law, don't make it an evil
spirit.

The plaintiff would not only have to argue vigorously for damages, i.e.
"my son could have had that article published in Encyclopedia Britanica and
received $500 for it" (highly unlikely) or the court will order copyright
royalties
paid (no problem for Wikipedia,everything is free here, but yet another
wrench
for those potential downstream licensees who might be worried about getting
into disputes with irate parents whose children built part of Wikipedia 1.0)
Anyway that is not Wikipedia's problem, if someone wants to make money
out of Wikipedia why shouldn't they have to pay the due dilligence costs
to do so, they will potentially be making profits, no?

Since the contributor can still release their contribution elsewhere under
any kind of evil copyright law license, Wikimedia's lawyers could argue
that contributing to Wikimedia did not result in any damages. "Hey lady,
your son still could have sold his contribution to Britanica, problem is,
he does not have an advanced degree and they look for contributors who
are recognized experts in their areas before purchasing their work."

There may also a deterimental reliance argument working. As we take steps
to make sure that the user does understand the license and is bound by it,
then we (as subsequent coauthors) must rely upon it. At worst some
judges might order a compulsory licencing scheme/contstructive trust
any profits made by third parties. That would not be Wikipedia's problem.

> Can minors reasonably be expected to know the consequences that submitting
> their copyrighted work under a copyleft license entail? The GNU FDL is
> confusing enough for adults, let alone children.

That is one more reason to have a terms and conditions (but I am now
thinking
to change that term to "Submission Guildelines" and call it terms in the
edit page
notice, see:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Alex756/Annotated_edit_page_announcement
for some discussion about the draft submission text over the last few days.

[[Wikipedia: Submission Guidelines]] could have a clause like this:

"If you are underage, PLEASE inform your parents about your contribution to
{wikimedia project} and get there permission and put a note about that on
your user page. If they do not agree to allow you to participate by
making submissions to this site, they may later be able to have them
removed.
Of course if you submit anonymously it may be very hard to prove who you
are."
(this is only a preliminary off the top of my head rough draft; it obviously
needs more work).

(Doesn't LittleDan state that his parents know about his work on Wikipedia?)

> Of course IANAL and eagerly await a response from a lawyer (of course not
an
> official legal opinion ;-).

Yes, IAAL but NALO! (see my talk page)
alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

references:
<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net> <BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907101234.02d87fe8@digitalgrapefruit.com>
	<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907200513.02d76a20@digitalgrapefruit.com>

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 20:05, Dante Alighieri wrote:
> Any idea why your response broke the characters? They now have weird
> capital A's in front of totally different characters....

The mail I sent was fine, but encoded in UTF-8. Your mailer (QUALCOMM
Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9) doesn't appear to handle this well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Jiang wrote:

>Why don't we create a [[Wikipedia:Pages to be wikified]]?

It already exists at this old-fashioned name:
[[Wikipedia:Votes for wikification]].
It has fallen out of use, but you could revive it.

-- Toby


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice needed

body:
Daniel Ehrenberg wrote:

>If we gave children a seperate
>level of hierarchy, we'd have twice as many ranks
>(actually, we wouldn't have child Jimbos).
>
He does have a daughter. :-)

>I think we should just
>have only the ranks of users, developer-rank people,
>and Jimbo. Recently, as you all know, a previously
>developer-only feature of Wikipedia was just given to
>all sysops. I don't see why  sysops shouldn't have
>database access,
>
Developer access should continue to require some level of technical
competence.  It's not just a matter of people willfully vandalizing the
site.  Someone who does not understand what he is doing could accidently
let loose a Frankenstein bot.
Ec


body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> Alex R. wrote:
> >----- Original Message -----
> >From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
> >
> >>And are you implying that, if I press "I agree" on a
> >>click-through license on software, then I don't have
> >>to follow it?
> >>
> >The license is binding on children. If it wasn't then
> >children could not buy video games, videotapes,
> >books, etc. no one would sell it to them. Children
> >enter into contracts all the time.
> >
> That depends on where they are.  In BC law a child can only be held
> liable in a contract for necessities.  (Wkipediholics might have a hard
> time convincing the courts that Wikipedia is a necessity. :-) )

We are talking about copyright here, contract law does not apply,
copyright law in the US is a federal law and supercedes state
contract law. Anyone who can own property can own a copyright.
Children can own property, it is not a consensual thing, of course
selling or transfering the property may be another issue, but they
cannot get any more title to copyright than they have in a license,
so when a minor receives copyrighted material they are not only
limted by contract, but also by the principals of property law.

> Those who sell video games, etc.to children do so at their own risk
> The most likely kind of dispute is for not having paid for the game,
> and these end up too bad for the vendor.

Don't know any vendors who sell video games on credit to minors,
do you? If the minor has a credit card the bank gets it guaranteed by
the adult; essentially the adult is backing up the purchases by the minor
and must pay for them (this is a form of consent). When you are in retail
you have them pay cash, especially when they are little kids. The parents
may then take them to court, but more than likely most vendors will allow
 the parent (within a reasonable time) to return the game as this is
goodwill
for the vendor (also another reason to put video games in proprietary
no copiable formats so the kids don't buy them, get their parents to
void the sale after they have copied them).  "Hey mom, look I purchased
this CD without your permission, maybe you should go and
get the purchase voided." Yes, son, but have you copied it yet? I want
to listen to that album too."

Most parents will not give the child money for purchases, or the child will
not
tell the parent where they bought the game. If it is a cash sale, how do you
even find the retailer? There is no privity of contract with the software
developer.  Even without the contract there is alway the quantum merit
or unjust enrichment restitution argument. I would be interested in seeing
a statistical study of retailers being taken to small claims courts for
selling
to minors; bet it is very rare case indeed.

>If vendors had to rely on some kind of
> assurance that the child could properly agree to the licensing agreement
> the entire video game market would collapse.  Concerned parents would be
> loath to agree to these as a way of keeping the kids away from games.
>  If these children do not develop a video game "addiction" during
> childhood, they are much less likely to be customers when they grow up.

I guess you are saying that they give the games to kids even without the
binding legal contract, because it is good business practice.

But if they have been paid and the parents don't  object after a period of
time that parents cannot sit on their hands (laches) and then go to court
and try to get the sale overturned. After the sale is ratified, explicitly
or
implicitly by the parent, it will likely be very hard to get a judge to void
the confirmed contract. Are most parents going to be so diligent as
to run to court after every small purchase by the minor child?

I think this is becoming a very academic discussion about minors
and their contract rights, maybe someone should add it to the page about
contract and the variations on voidable contracts, restitution and mis-
representations that effect contracting with minors.

> >We can certainly add text about minors to the Terms and
> >Conditions (maybe it should be called Submission
> >Standards, terms and conditions sounds too much like
> >contract boilerplate that no one may ever read).
> >But getting permission from their parents?
> >
> Oh, no!  More wrds! :-)

Ain't words wha' Wikipedia awl 'bout?

> >What about marital property? Should a wife get her
> >husband's approval because he might later say that
> >she is wasting valuable marital property by releasing
> >it under the GFDL?
> >
> The nimber of possible variations is endless.

 Do you want me to start listing them? For the edification
of other list members? (just kidding)

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 12:11, tarquin wrote:
>
>>Dante Alighieri wrote:
>>
>>>It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French ones)
>>>with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the US-International
>>>keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
>>>as: ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, etc.
>>>
>>Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.
>>
>At least US releases of Windows have had it for ages; I've used it on
>and off since Windows 3.1.
>
I've never had any problem with these. Thus for ? I simply use Alt+0233
(with leading zero and numbers from the numerical pad.  That covers all
West European languages.

Ec


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>>The Condorcet vote is of no relevance whatsoever.

>>Simply because you have so decreed, AFAICT.

>Your point being?

First, being not meant so brusquely, sorry.
(Although actually it wasn't so brusque in the orginal.)
But anyway ...

The whole setup looks very odd for Wikipedia.
Why is Erik deciding by fiat how things are run?
Given that you are, what's the relevance of your comment
that you won't participate if they're not run as you like,
and other people's comments that they will do it in that case?
Why does Tillwe not think that you can make these decisions?
This is all a highly unusual thing for Wikipedia,
where one person (other than Jimbo) can just say so and it's so.
Thus it's no surprise that some people don't like how it's happening.
If you're going to assert your authority, then people should know why.

And my point is not to demand that you tell /me/ why;
I suspect that I could find out by doing some research.
The point is that the reasons for your authority are unclear
to people that come into the process to make their votes.
Hence "AFAICT" = "as far as I [such a voter] can tell".

But anyway, I apologise if this sounded like an accusation.

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> At 07:43 PM 9/7/2003, you wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 12:11, tarquin wrote:
>> > Dante Alighieri wrote:
>> > > It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French
>> ones)
>> > > with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the
>> US-International
>> > > keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
>> > > as: ?, ?, ?, ?, , ?, ?, etc.
>> >
>> > Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.
>
>
> Any idea why your response broke the characters? They now have weird
> capital A's in front of totally different characters....

Maybe your machine is peforming obscene act on the characters.  In the
first messages I received them as question marks in black diamonds.
 They showed up correctly on Brion's message, but on your last message
they were mostly showed up as Cyrillic two-letter combinations.
 Nevertheless they ended up correct again when I quoted the message
above.  Go figure!

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

references:
<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<BB80ACF0.429A%fredbaud@ctelco.net>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907101234.02d87fe8@digitalgrapefruit.com>
	<3F5B82E5.4010605@planetunreal.com>
	<5.2.0.9.2.20030907200513.02d76a20@digitalgrapefruit.com>

body:
At 10:02 PM 9/7/2003, you wrote:
>Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
>>At 07:43 PM 9/7/2003, you wrote:
>>
>>>On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 12:11, tarquin wrote:
>>> > Dante Alighieri wrote:
>>> > > It's very easy to write accented characters (and not just French ones)
>>> > > with a "standard" English keyboard. Just load up the US-International
>>> > > keyboard layout and you too can easily type such exciting characters
>>> > > as: ??, ??, ??, ??, , ??, ??, etc.
>>> >
>>> > Must be a Windows 2000 / XP thing, I can only see English-US on Win98.
>>
>>
>>Any idea why your response broke the characters? They now have weird
>>capital A's in front of totally different characters....
>
>Maybe your machine is peforming obscene act on the characters.  In the
>first messages I received them as question marks in black diamonds. They
>showed up correctly on Brion's message, but on your last message they were
>mostly showed up as Cyrillic two-letter combinations. Nevertheless they
>ended up correct again when I quoted the message above.  Go figure!
>
>Ec

Sigh... Well, I'm totally open to suggestions on how to solve the
problem... just about anything short of switching e-mail clients is
acceptable. On a related note, allow me to voice my deep and abiding love
for lack of standards... why have one useful and quality standard when we
can have several confusing and un-interoperable formats...

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: Till Westermayer

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Guillaume,

>From: "Daniel Mayer"
>> Erik wrote:
>>>The Condorcet vote is of no relevance whatsoever.
>>
>> I agree. I've already voted once on this issue and will not vote
>> again via another method. Everyone who is voting via the
>> Condorcet method is wasting their time.

If you look at the history of the page, mav, than you'll see that a
alternative condorcet voting was available almost at the same time then
the fptp voting ...

>Personnaly I think Condorcet method is the more fair method for
>wide vote, but I agree to choose voting system we want for second
>round using FPTP (I fact, imho, "Approval voting" may be better
>here : vote for all method we agree).

I tried to do this, but was edited out.

 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Alex Tievsky

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice
	needed

body:
======= At 2003-09-07, 19:00:00 Daniel Ehrenberg wrote: =======

>I also don't think that anons should be treated
>differently than other non-sysop users, this is just
>discriminating against them.
>LDan

Is such discrimination prevelant?  The only distinction I make between the two "classes" is that an uncommented change from an anon user on Recent Changes is the most likely type to be an act of vandalism.  Otherwise, I don't go about reverting changes from anon users or anything of the type.  I also don't see any real opportunity to "discriminate" against an anon user since such a user doesn't have a static talk page, probably doesn't belong to a mailing list and probably doesn't post much in the way of discussion.

-Alex Tievsky
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Basil Fawlty


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Sun, 7 Sep 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> *cough* Wikilegal-l ;-)
>
> Geoff wrote
> >And what do we do if a minor makes a submission?
> >After all, while minors can sign contracts, but cannot
> >be held to them. ....
>
> That's an interesting point. Can a reasonable person expect a minor to know
> what is legal or not (right and wrong is a different matter)? I think so,
> otherwise society could not allow minors to drive automobiles and obey
> traffic laws.
>
> But this does still seem to be an increasingly sticky issue with younger and
> younger contributors; at what point can a reasonable person expect a minor to
> be oblivious to what is legal and illegal (I know there is already
> well-established legal precedent and common law that governs "right and
> wrong" issues with minors)?
>
> Contract law is a separate matter but IIRC even minors can enter into many
> non-major contracts with adults and other minors in good faith without the
> explicit consent of a guardian (this may be stretching the term "contract"
> though). But in those cases the minor's guardian is still ultimately the
> responsible party.
>
> At what point does a reasonable person need to seek the the explicit consent
> of a guardian? Does the new edit page text pass this line? For that matter
> does the old edit page text pass this line? It would be a shame to have a
> "Are you 18" click through for editing.

Indeed, & that's not in any shape what I would want to see happen with
Wikipedia. I hope it would be a satisfactory solution to this problem
I have described were the Wikipedia Foundation to state at some point
before Wikipedia 1.0 is published, "We will be publishing Wikipedia, &
are providing everyone a fair chance to explain that they were unable
to agree to the terms of submission because they were a minor, so we can
remove their contribution. Otherwise, we will assume from their silence
that they gave consent."

But IANAL, & I don't know if this annoucnement woudl be considered
satisfactory by the court system.
>
> >This has been something that has nagged me ever
> >since I learned that the FSF does check for this of
> >every contributor to their code base. If someone
> >under 18 wants to contribute, they have to get their
> >parents or guardians to agree to the FSF's terms.
> >(This is done to provide the necessary documentation
> >to prevent a SCO v. IBM lawsuit.)
>
> I think that has more to do with the FSF's copyright assignment policy; a
> minor simply cannot legally give up substantive ownership rights to their
> copyrighted materials without the consent of their guardian. This is designed
> to protect minors from exploitation from adults (and rightly so).

Exactly my point, Mav. And I should have been more clear about that subtle
point in my first email.
>
> But here is a thorny question; does releasing copyrighted works under a
> license that /effectively/ frees those works from control by the copyright
> holder (sic a copyleft license), similarly relinquish substantive rights and
> thus requires explicit permission from a legal guardian?

This has been moot for Wikipedia & similar projects because no one is
making money off of Wikipedia. At least using both the materials & the
trademark. If & when Wikipedia 1.0 is available for sale, & money is made
from this sale (& I hope it is a lot, & supports a quick progress to Wiki 2.0),
I figure this will become an issue.

As I said before, this is a lot like the situation with Linux: when it was
more or less a hobbyist's project, & there wasn't much money involved, no one
really worried about ownership of the code. And besides, the custom was that
everyone could use the code, & no one could prevent anyone else from using
it, so it was not an issue. Then IBM announced that they invested a billion
dollars into Linux sales & development, & made all of that back, so Darl
MacBride decided to try to sue his way to claim a piece of all of that money.
>
> Can minors reasonably be expected to know the consequences that submitting
> their copyrighted work under a copyleft license entail? The GNU FDL is
> confusing enough for adults, let alone children.
>
> Of course IANAL and eagerly await a response from a lawyer (of course not an
> official legal opinion ;-).
>
Well, again IANAL, but as I see it the fact that a minor cannot sign away
her/his rights to contributions to Wikipedia can come back to haunt us in
one of three ways. (Note: I don't claim that any of these 3 cases would
prevail against Wikipedia in court; yet I claim that they could lead Wikipedia
to spend money on lawyers appearing in court.)

1. Parent or guardian discovers minor has contributed to Wikipedia material
they do not want their child to know about, & demands that the contribution
be removed. An example would be a Christian parent discovering that her/his
child has made a major contribution to the article on Atheism or Evolution --
although the roles could easily be reversed (i.e., the child of Atheist
parents writing a contribution on Jesus Christ or Creationism). By this
act, they sought to halt the publication of Wikipedia.

Here, I would assume we could resolve this problem by removing the material
in question -- but this assumes that the parent wants to be reasonable.
(Maybe they hate Ayn Rand & want to kill Wikipedia because of Jimbo's like
for the authoress. ;-)

2. A more serious scenario would be where a parent or guardian discovers
minor has contributed to Wikipedia material after Wikipedia 1.0 has started
making money, & states that because the child could not permit reuse without
royalties, some share of the income must be paid to the child.

This is a stickier situation. ISTR that over the years schools have published
anthologies of children's writings; perhaps there might be some guidance
from how the rights for those books were acquired.

3. The worst -- & this is one I don't want to advertise to the world -- is
that after Wikipedia 1.0 comes out, & makes a lot of money, some git appears
out of the blue, claims that it made a lot of contributions as an anonymous
contributor under the age of 18, & now that it is older than 18 has decided
NOT to agree to the original terms & wants money. And won't tell anyone
what the contributions were because "Wikipedia will wipe off the fingerprints."

Because this scenario is borrowed from what Darl MacBride is doing as CEO
of SCO, perhaps this possiblity will become less likely if the judge decides
sanely in that case. But even removing that last sentence -- & assuming that
the suit is over a considerable piece of work that can be traced to one or a
group of related IP addresses -- this still remains an ugly situation that
could easily end up in court & cost a lot of money.

In short, what I worry about is someone like Michael or DW deciding to use
the legal system to troll Wikipedia. It sucks, I don't like it any more than
the rest of you, but we need to decide how to deal with it before Jimbo's
dream of the Wikipedia 1.0 CD appears on the Best Seller list.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Guillaume Blanchard wrote:

>I forgot an important question :
>
>- Why are you so hurried with deadlines !?
>
Imposing deadlines means that it will be sooner that people can spend
their time and effort on something constructive. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
> Guillaume-
>
> > I agree and I think we need more time to well
organize this second
round.
> Not really. We have more than a week until we start.

I don't think a week is enough to clear all discussion
and evaluate all
solutions, but let's try.

> > Rules for the second round are already decided (in
details, not
only
vote
> > system) ?
>
> For the most part, yes. I don't think there will be
any major
changes. I
> have just set the deadline for the method to Sep 12
so there will be
three
> days of time to translate the voting instructions.

I only see a "logo vote system" vote. Who decide the
other points?

Even if we have to use Average method (not my favorite
method) for
that, I
think we must create pages to vote on:

* Rules for submission

* Deadlines (too short imho)

* Logo vote method (pending...)

* Cheat handling

For submission I think we have better to have one main
page with only
the
author favorite logo (1 logo) plus a link to one page
per logo with all
variants.

> > Do we vote for a concept or for a final logo ?
>
> You vote for a final logo. There may be a need to
make a transparent
> version or a larger one, but no significant changes
to the winning
logo
> will be made without clear consensus.

If we vote for a final logo we need a lot of variant,
isn't it?

We can like a logo concept but prefer a different
color, font text,
contrast, frame style, etc.

For example, I see a lot of interesting logos variants
in the Paullus
page
(made by him?) and I think it may be great if we can
vote for all those
variants (and new ones).

Imho, encourage wikipedians to propose new logos
variants, is a better
way
to get the logo witch satisfy the most people. Sure,
finalists' authors
must
select themselves witch logos are in accord with there
own concept.

> > In other term do we have for
> > each variant of a logo or just for a concept ?
>
> You vote on each variant.

This must avoid FPTP method that disfavor logo with
the more variants.

> > What is the solutions to reduce vote cheating ?
>
> You need a user page on Meta that points to an
account with at least
10
> legitimate edits.

Who will check each user to see if (s)he done at least
10 edits ? What
about
people who contribute anonymously ?

I forgot an important question :

- Why are you so hurried with deadlines !?

Aoineko

-------

Rulezzzzzzz Aoi ;-)

Merci sinc?rement.

Anthere

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Toby-
> Erik Moeller wrote:

>> The Condorcet vote is of no relevance whatsoever.

> Simply because you have so decreed, AFAICT.

Your point being?

Regards,

Erik


body:
Daniel-
> IIRC from my business law classes, registration is only needed before
> seeking actual legal action in court (just as with copyright infringement).

According to

http://www.iusmentis.com/trademarks/crashcourse/procedure/

- - - -

Unregistered trademarks

It is worth noting that some countries, in particular the United States,
also provide trademark rights for unregistered trademarks. The mere use in
commerce of a particular sign can turn that sign into a trademark, which
others may not use for the same types of goods and services. Such
unregistered trademarks are sometimes indicated with the suffix TM, while
registered trademarks are indicated with the famous R in a circle R.

- - - -

(Note that the name Wikipedia has neither a TM nor an (R) next to it.) Are
we on solid enough legal ground with an "unregistered trademark" to send
nastygrams to some guys in Russia? I highly doubt it. And I wouldn't want
it to be any other way. Trademarks are evil enough as it is.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Till-
>>> I agree. I've already voted once on this issue and will not vote
>>> again via another method. Everyone who is voting via the
>>> Condorcet method is wasting their time.

> If you look at the history of the page, mav, than you'll see that a
> alternative condorcet voting was available almost at the same time then
> the fptp voting ...

Shortly afterwards, yes. And how silly is it to end up with two vote
results and to possibly have to vote again just to find out which one to
accept?

>> Personnaly I think Condorcet method is the more fair method for
>> wide vote, but I agree to choose voting system we want for second
>> round using FPTP (I fact, imho, "Approval voting" may be better
>> here : vote for all method we agree).

> I tried to do this, but was edited out.

And how silly is it to let some people vote in their preferred voting
method even when it is clearly indicated that they should use another one?

Regards,

Erik


body:
Ray-
> Somehow putting all these bureaucratic hoops in front of people seems
> very unwiki.

I agree. Always remember that judges do not only interpret the letter but
also the spirit of the law.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Jim wrote
>This sort of project is bound to attract semi-autists with no social
>skills.
>Nevertheless, I don't think it's acceptable to pass the editing on to
>others
>because you can't be bothered to do it yourself.
>
I agree. It is unfair to dump the responsibility for turning your articles
into something encyclop?dic onto others.  This is an encyclop?dia after all,
and encyclop?dias so tend to think that using sentences matter. Indeed
irrespective of how brilliant an article a sentence-free article would be
binned in every other encyclop?dia. People come on to wiki to contribute and
are happy to improve an article. But they aren't on wiki to clean up a mess
left by someone who is too lazy to fill even the most elementary requirement
when it comes to writing an article.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Aoineko wrote:
>I forgot an important question :
>
>- Why are you so hurried with deadlines !?

You are funny! This whole thing has already gone on for a month and will not
be done until the end of this month. It would also be nice to have the new
logo go live before we distribute the press release; Assuming Brion doesn't
upgrade any more large UseMod wikis to MediaWiki, we will be hitting the
300,000 mark sometime between Sept 20-28. But IMO we can wait a few days to a
week after that if we are not ready.

A nicer/easier way to submit donations would also be nice to have by press
time.... Not to mention a Wikimedia Foundation website. Oh well.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Erik wrote:
>Of course I should be allowed to start Erik's Garden
>Olympics or to call my open source game "Mega Olympics".

Strawman. That's different Erik; you clearly are disambiguating the name from
/the/ Olympics. Even your use examples might still be suspect, however.

This is not the same thing at all compared to Wikipedia.ru whose name is just
Wikipedia.

>I am strongly morally opposed to using the UDRP process
>to hijack domain names registered by others.

And what about the initial hijacking of our trademark to begin with?

>Don't get me wrong: If we had a trademark on the
>Wikipedia name, I would support going after those
>who violate this trademark in their commercial
>self-interest. But we don't.

Sigh. It has already been stated /several/ times to you that we /do/ have a
very clear trademark on the Wikipedia name. Registration is a secondary issue
(as with copyrights).

>I'm not saying we should do nothing. I am saying we
>should ask them to hand over the name. If they don't
>do it voluntarily, we should ask them for the price they
>want.

I agree with this completely. However if they want an unreasonable price (IMO
over 3 times what they paid to register the domain) then IMO we advance to
the next level.

We should also eventually register all Wikimedia trademarks starting with
Wikimedia and Wikipedia. That way we will discourage cybersquatters in the
future from automattically tripling (or greater) their money for each
Wikimedia domain variant they purchase. Trademark registration will be a
cheaper alternative, IMO.

But the Wikipedia.ru case, IMO, is not a case of cybersquatting so we should
treat this situation with kid gloves until and if the Wikipedia.ru people
start to play hardball.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge"

> I still think that before we go on to a second round we need a report on
> each short list item that addresses
>     1.    Whether there are any technical problems in such matters as
> scaling ,
>     2.    Whether there are conflicts with anyone else's logo, including
> trademark violations, and
>     3.    Where a short listed item has multiple variants, how we choose
> between variants

I agree and I think we need more time to well organize this second round.
Is there a coordination page some where on the meta ?
Rules for the second round are already decided (in details, not only vote
system) ?
If it's done, we need time to translate them to non-english Wikipedia.
Do we vote for a concept or for a final logo ? In other term do we have for
each variant of a logo or just for a concept ?
What is the solutions to reduce vote cheating ?

Aoineko


body:
Toby-
> The whole setup looks very odd for Wikipedia.
> Why is Erik deciding by fiat how things are run?

He is the vote coordinator; somebody has to make choices on how to procede or
nothing will happen. He has not been dictatorial and has been reasonably open
to modifying schedules and procedures when a consensus forms to do so. But at
the same time he hasn't been a complete pushover trying to accommodate
everybody; if that were the case then we would be much further behind in the
vote process than we are already.

I think Erik is doing an excellent job and think he should be thanked for the
many hours of his /own/ time he has put into this effort instead of being
accused of dictating terms. This is, after all, the largest vote in
Wikipedia's history and we are all learning as we move along. But at the same
time the vote does have to move along. Arguing over the vote method to use on
the vote to decide what the second stage voting method should be, is, IMO a
petty activity that tends to rerail the process instead of moving it along.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Steve Vertigum

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation

body:
>MM:  You now can also do something like
> 	| Cell 1 || Cell 2 || Cell 3
> with || separating the cells.

Fantastic. The notion of making tables easier has been
around over for a long time. Glad to see its becoming
a reality.

> That's currently "on ice", as I have trouble getting
> the wxWindows HTML
> componjent to display unicode. I'm not sure when
> I'll get back to it.

Are you you opensourcing it?
-S-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Blocking logged-in users

body:
"John Robinson" wrote ...
> So, when is this vaporware going live?
>
> -Hephaestos

I've now fixed the privacy problem, and a few bugs. The updated version
would be running on test.wikipedia.org already but for the fact that
sourceforge was playing up. Hopefully I'll have it updated within a day or
two. After that, I might need a hand with the testing. It's always nice to
have a second pair of eyes looking for bugs. Interested, Hephaestos? Once
it's declared bug-free, it can go live.

-- Tim Starling.


body:
From: "Daniel Mayer"
> Erik wrote:
> >The Condorcet vote is of no relevance whatsoever.
>
> I agree. I've already voted once on this issue and will not vote again via
> another method. Everyone who is voting via the Condorcet method is wasting
> their time.

Personnaly I think Condorcet method is the more fair method for wide vote,
but I agree to choose voting system we want for second round using FPTP (I
fact, imho, "Approval voting" may be better here : vote for all method we
agree).

Aoineko


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote:

> Sigh... Well, I'm totally open to suggestions on how to solve the
> problem... just about anything short of switching e-mail clients is
> acceptable. On a related note, allow me to voice my deep and abiding
> love for lack of standards... why have one useful and quality standard
> when we can have several confusing and un-interoperable formats...

So, in what Inferno circle would you put the standardizers? :-)

Ec

>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Aoineko wrote:
>If we must vote for a final logo (no change after vote)
>I think we really need a lot of variants and I think 1
>week is very short to be able to create all them.

They already had an entire month to create variants silly!

--mav


from_name: Delirium

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>ICANN's trademark rules are evil, have been abused to suppress free speech
>on many occasions and should be fought, not implicitly or explicitly
>supported.
>
>
I disagree with this political statement.  I feel that Wikipedia should
protect its interests through the avenues available, regardless of your
personal viewpoints on ICANN's trademark rules.  If someone is purposely
masquerading as us, they should be stopped.

-Mark


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Current CVS producing a bug

body:
Hello,

I just updated my TEST Wiki and I got a bug if I try editing a page:

PHP Fatal error:  Cannot instantiate non-existent class:  ban in
/home/www/htdocs/midgard/wiki/User.php on line 97, ...

Seems that in Line 97 of User.php 'new Ban' should be 'new Block', IMHO.
Possibly someone knows more about it, therefore I do not fix it in CVS.

Smurf


body:
Daniel-
> Just as copyright exists even in the absence of a (C) symbol, a TM is not
> needed to create a trademark.

It's not quite that simple. Unregistered trademarks are a concept only
acknowledged by some legislations (while unregistered copyright is
acknowledged by all), and even in these countries, there may be precedent
law that the plaintiff has better grounds for claiming grievance when he
has announced his intention to file, or at least publicized the trademark
as such. This is the reason why companies do add the [TM] to their names,
after all.

> Nobody proposed sending nasty grams. We should, of course, exhaust all
> non-legal options before using the law to protect the Wikipedia brand name.

I don't think we should use the law at all.

>> I highly doubt it...

> Sorry, but you are clearly wrong on this point.

Then cite from the Russian civil code or from Russian precedents the
relevent passages that show that Russian law acknowledges unregistered
trademarks. You don't know if it does? Then how can you claim that I am
"clearly" wrong?

>> Trademarks are evil enough as it is.

> No they aren't; the improper use of trademark law to beat others into
> submission after they (without malice and unknowingly) violated a trademark
> is the only thing that is evil here.

Using trademarks to restrain non-commercial activity is always wrong --
non-commercial groups are no real threat to us or our brand. If these
Russians are actually making money off our brand, that is another matter.
But they registered the domain first, we have never registered a
trademark, you don't even know if Russia allows unregistered trademarks,
so it would be morally wrong and possibly illegal to threaten them for
using our name. We can ask them nicely to point the domain to
ru.wikipedia.org. But if they don't, that's about it. In any case, Jimbo
needs to approve any actions that are taken.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Alex R.

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Ehrenberg" <littledanehren at yahoo.com>
To: "Discussion list for English-language Wikipedia"
<wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikitech-l] Re: Update to gfdl copyright notice
needed

> >(Doesn't LittleDan state that his parents know about
> his >work on Wikipedia?)
>
> Yes, but an initial requirement for parental
> permission/knowledge might have detered me. Besides,
> restricting minors, even if for legal reasons,
> detracts from the whole wiki-ness of Wikipedia.

the wikiness of wikipedia is already limited by the need
to make the copyright of user contributions as pure as
possible. There is a certain frenzy regarding dealing with
copyright violations. I think that is very unwiki, but I
understand that many contributors have a sense of
ownership with Wikipedia, that is why they are so
concerned (IMHO) about copyright "violations".
This is understandable and admirable in a certain way.

However, people violate copyright all the time. It is not a big
deal, but here everyone is concerned with the purity
of Wikipedia's text because there is is this belief that
other people will copy it, use it etc. I am not so
convinced that it will happen much for a lot of reasons.
This minor issue is one of them.

What if we told all those people who have spent all
that time that they can just forget redistributing
Wikipedia because no one knows how many minors
have contributed or how many of the users might
have copied text from somewhere and they did not
discover it?

For that reason alone this discussion is important.

Having said that, I think it was clear from my proposed
Submission Guidelines that someone can just post anonymously.
Also they can lie, we cannot prevent children from
posting to WIkipedia, it is up to them and their
parents to deal with it. We just want to raise it as an
issue so everyone gets fair notice. THAT IS very
in tune with wiki-ness; we can keep allowing
contributors and well, if they sue Wikimedia, it will
definitely get us more press and more users. Isn't
that the point? Letting people know there could
be a problem might get them to contribute in a way
that doesn't cause problems, that is what wiki
contribution is all about.

Alex756


body:
From: "Erik Moeller" <erik_moeller at gmx.de>

> Using trademarks to restrain non-commercial activity is always wrong --

Sorry this is clearly cofused thinking. Trademarks can be used to restrain
the misattribution of non-commercial activity. Trademark infringment laws
do not restrain commerce, they prevent people from using the marks that
identify the product of another. If they remove the trademark there is
no restraint. Trademark law only restains the use of trademarks, nothing
else. Non commercial groups have just as much right to these things, take
the Olympics for example, should everyone be allowed to name a sports
competition after the Olympics? Allow that will make people very
confused. Ultimately it is about protecting the general public, more so
with nonprofits, than protecting proprietary interests..

> non-commercial groups are no real threat to us or our brand. If these
> Russians are actually making money off our brand, that is another matter.

They are posting links to porno web sites. Are they doing that for free?
Maybe all the Wikipedia's should do that, we might get more hits that
way! (just joking)

> But they registered the domain first, we have never registered a
> trademark, you don't even know if Russia allows unregistered trademarks,

It has nothing to do with trademark law in Russia. It is a domain name
registration that is covered by ICANN and WIPO. Let's stop talking about
trademarks it is not about that primarily.

> so it would be morally wrong and possibly illegal to threaten them for
> using our name. We can ask them nicely to point the domain to
ru.wikipedia.org.

This is also not true. You don't have to threaten them. Just bring a
complaint
with WIPO>

> But if they don't, that's about it. In any case, Jimbo
> needs to approve any actions that are taken.

That is true,  but one thing to keep in mind if you do nothing then
you are encouraging the name of Wikipedia to be associated with
click through links to pornographic web sites. Is that what an on line
encyclopedia wants? I thought Boomis was keeping pornography
and Wikipedia separate.

Alex756


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] map software

body:
Here's newest version of the map software, used to render maps like those on:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_first_useful_map
    (Poland, BlueMable background, Polish language)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map
    (Poland, Polish language)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map/New_color_scheme
    (whole Earth, no labels)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_polygon_map/Han_support
    (Japan and Korea, Japanese language)
-------------- next part --------------
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Current CVS producing a bug

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> It should have already been fixed when you sent that message. I
> committed the patch about 10 hours ago. Were you using the anonymous CVS
> server or the developer one?

For testing usually the anonymous CVS. Fine, that it was an obolete
information :)

> There's a few other bugs which have also been fixed,so you should get
> the latest version even if you've fixed that particular bug.

I will take a look, as soon as possible.

Thanks so far.

Smurf


body:
From: "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
>
> I agree.  But are we defeding the name properly?
> It seems to me that we ought to stick up a "TM" (or "SM"?) posthaste!
> IANAL either, so let's hope that Alex speaks up.

I mentioned it before, but it is not really necessary. TM or SM only
gives notice in some places that the sign functions as a trademark.
Using the circled R is illegal unless registered. The trademark functions
through usage. Wikipedia is associated with a certain wiki project
that rests on Boomis servers with the permission of Jimmy Wales.
It has been publicised in major media outlets around the world.
That is what gives it protection. If Shri Chinmoy can shut down
web sites that use his name (though there was a free speech
argument and the woman who had those sites decided not to fight
him, she might have won on those grounds) why can't Wikipedia
protect its good name.

> I suppose that if we fail to defend "Wikimedia" from wikimedia.de,
> then we'll lose the right to defend it from other random wikis;

Maybe rather than defend, just enter into a licensing agreement with
them. They can use the Wikipedia logo if certain conditions are met.
If they agree the contract will bolster the argument that the Wikipedia
name and logo are trademarks. I'd also offer the same agreement to
the Russian guys, but they might not take it because they may say,
"Go ahead you Americans, take us Russian Capitalists to court!
We don't care!" (Who won the Cold War?)

> but we won't lose the right to defend it from other /encyclopaedias/.
> OTOH, since wikimedia.ru is a wiki encyclopaedia, it's all or nothing.
> But here I'm thinking logically, rather than legally, to hypothesise;
> so take it with a big grain of salt.

Tryng suing for trademark infringment in Russian court. You are going
to need an expensive set of lawyers to do that. I don't know any
western lawyers who do pro bono litigation in Moscow for American
non-profits, but there is not really any need to sue.

>
> I agree.  Remember when Prema Toys sued a 12-year-old kid named "Pokey"
> over <pokey.org>?  (They dropped legal action after bad publicity.)

Those days are long gone. That is why they have domain name resolution
procedures. It is all done through the mail. (though you can go to the
hearing). Most likely the decision will be written in Russian and English
so that both sides can understand the outcome (don't quote me on that).

Alex756


body:
Daniel-
> Not needed. Unregistered trademarks are legal in the US and EU countries

Evidence that unregistered trademarks have the same validity in the EU as
in the US? Here's another page:

http://www.trademarks.nl/en/introduction/
"Laws generally only protect marks against infringement if registered in
the (state) trademarks register. Otherwise anyone else can register and
even prohibit the use by the original owner. (Note: this is different in
the USA but holds true for most other countries of the world.)"

> so
> if they want to travel to these nations then they should respect our
> trademark.

Yeah, I'm just waiting for Slashdot to run the story about some Russian
being arrested on US soil for violating an obscure and unfair US law .. oh
wait, that already happened! Google for "Dmitry Sklyarov".

> ICANN has separate rules that govern domain names; they are very highly
> supportive of protecting all trademarks

ICANN's trademark rules are evil, have been abused to suppress free speech
on many occasions and should be fought, not implicitly or explicitly
supported.

Regards,

Erik


body:
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>

> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > Not needed. Unregistered trademarks are legal in the US
> > and EU countries so if  they want to travel to these nations
> > then they should respect our trademark.
> >
> >Stop the fucking FUD, ok ?

Guys calm down this is just a legal discussion. Everyone is
entitled to their opinion, even if it is wrong!

> >Nobody's going to be arrested abroad for breaking
> >laws that don't even exist in one's own country
> >while being in it.
>
> Stop fucking the strawman; nowhere was the word "arrested" used in my
> statement and you can't get arrested for violating trademark law anyway.

Depends what you mean by trademark law. There are criminal laws
against trademark misappropriation. This is very informative:
http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/ipmanual/01ipma.htm

Here is some information about opposing registration in Russia.
http://www.patsgr.narod.ru/op_tm.htm

Note the trademark registration fees are high (like US fees)
and someone may not want to spend the money for this.
Even so, Wikipedia's Russian version may have been up and
running before these guys got going (they only have about
170 articles, no?)

Alex756


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] category tags

body:
--- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> That bot (not mine) was trying to insert categories
> based on various
> lists. The author mailed me in private (even before
> tarquin sent his
> first mail to the list). The intention is that once
> we get categories
> enabeled, there's already something in place. I'll
> bcc the author to let
> it go more slowly.
>
> The links are currently hidden [[like this| ]].
>
> Magnus

Do you know anything else about how it chooses
categories? Is there some reason you can't disclose
its author?
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 07:04:35PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> >Then cite from the Russian civil code or from Russian
> >precedents the relevent passages that show that
> >Russian law acknowledges unregistered trademarks.
>
> Not needed. Unregistered trademarks are legal in the US and EU countries so if
> they want to travel to these nations then they should respect our trademark.

Stop the fucking FUD, ok ?

Nobody's going to be arrested abroad for breaking laws that don't even exist
in one's own country while being in it.


body:
--- Alex Tievsky <atievsky at cox.net> wrote:
> ======= At 2003-09-07, 19:00:00 Daniel Ehrenberg
> wrote: =======
>
> >I also don't think that anons should be treated
> >differently than other non-sysop users, this is
> just
> >discriminating against them.
> >LDan
>
> Is such discrimination prevelant?  The only
> distinction I make between the two "classes" is that
> an uncommented change from an anon user on Recent
> Changes is the most likely type to be an act of
> vandalism.  Otherwise, I don't go about reverting
> changes from anon users or anything of the type.  I
> also don't see any real opportunity to
> "discriminate" against an anon user since such a
> user doesn't have a static talk page, probably
> doesn't belong to a mailing list and probably
> doesn't post much in the way of discussion.
>
> -Alex Tievsky
> www.wikipedia.org/wiki/user:Basil Fawlty

There are many very good anon contributers who simply
wish to be anonymous. If you look at the Most Active
Wikipedians page, it shows around four anon
contributors. And that's just the ones with static
IPs.
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
--- cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-09-08 at 09:52, tarquin wrote:
>
> > I'm still stuck working out how to stop mozilla
> mail from pasting
> > formatted text into my "compose email" box. It
> makes  referring to the
> > title of a wikipedia article a real pain :(
> >
> Using Windows? Paste the text into notepad, which
> only handles
> plaintext. Then highlight and copy it and paste it
> into the email.
Or Vim for Linux and SimpleText for mac.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Fine.  I'll stick to my own articles and ignore all
> the rest of Wikipedia.
>
> Please take my sysop powers away.  I won't be
> needing them.
>
> RickK

You're not doing anything wrong. You're not obligated
to edit anything. I don't think you need to quit being
a sysop. Why is everyone being so hard on RK?
LDan

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: logo deadline (was Cheating on logo voting)

body:
Message: 6
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 01:09:14 -0700
From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting
To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Message-ID: <200309080109.14539.maveric149 at yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;  charset="us-ascii"

Aoineko wrote:
>If we must vote for a final logo (no change after
vote)
>I think we really need a lot of variants and I think
1
>week is very short to be able to create all them.

They already had an entire month to create variants
silly!

--mav

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

Silly ? :-)

I am not complaining below, nor asking any extension
of deadlines, just stating facts.

People had one full month to create variants. In that
full month, I have had a computer available for about
5 days, the first days of the contest, and the last
days, just when I came back home.

During the first few days I was still online, I tried
to design 3 logos. Of course, I could not do anything
when away.

When I came back, I hurried to help with the press
release, especially since I understood that at that
point, 300 000 was planned to be about nowadays.

On the day I came back, I also found the french wiki
in eruption because of a "problematic user". He had
been ip-wide-range banned the very same day, and there
was every reason to think he would be user-banned very
soon. I do not support hard banning :-). Thanks for
french users to let me try fixing things another way.
That was kind.
I spent hours going through all the reading material
left during my big 3 weeks off (and my, have they been
writing !), then to try to cool things down, to end up
with an entire sleepless night fixing the most
problematic article (now stable :-)).

In short, I had no time really trying to fix logos,
except to introduce miwiki on them with Olie help.

I wrote to the original author of the book two times
to get a high resolution version. After no answer, the
second time,

I like very much the first version of the logo, with
the face, the triangle and the 01011010 leaving the
book, to melt in the background.

But I have no high res of it. So that logo can't be
used for the contest.
I am no graphist. I can try to do that myself, but it
would take me a lot of time. And I doubt very much it
will be nice in the end :-)

This week and next week, I have a very big deadline at
work, and most of the available computer time will be
on one computer with no adobe photoshop on it. Too old
and junked. That was not planned. Hence, I won't be
able to really make variants of the logo, in
particular, to remake the initial version. Just to fix
things.

If anyone feels motivated, just raise your hand
(sorry, school time started again last week :-)); I
will send you all the original versions I have, book,
realistic ants, miwikis. I am sure Olie will try, but
if anyone else feels interested, just say.

It is no big deal at all. I also am aware it can't be
the winner, so I won't make a fuss on it. It was
really nice to see that some people liked that logo
anyway ;-)

That is just an echo to Mav comment. Yup, that is
silly, but that is just the way it is. No big deal.

I also am glad Aoi is taking care of these matters,
and hope everyone stays civil.

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
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body:
Toby-
> The whole setup looks very odd for Wikipedia.
> Why is Erik deciding by fiat how things are run?

Yeah, I make all the important decisions. Like what voting system to use
to vote on the voting system we want to use. I provided a rationale for
this decision right on the page where it was relevant. Please read it.

> Given that you are, what's the relevance of your comment
> that you won't participate if they're not run as you like,

Very simple. I choose how to spend my time.

> But anyway, I apologise if this sounded like an accusation.

It's simply wrong. I have exercised virtually no authority in important
matters in this contest.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Guillaume-
> I only see a "logo vote system" vote. Who decide the other points?

There's nothing to decide if there is no dissent. It's pointless to vote
on everything if people agree what to do.

> For submission I think we have better to have one main page with only the
> author favorite logo (1 logo) plus a link to one page per logo with all
> variants.

The whole point of having finalists is to reduce the amount of voting that
is necessary. If you allow people to vote on every variant you're dealing
with a very large vote again. It's better to let the artists pick a
selection of variants.

> We can like a logo concept but prefer a different color, font text,
> contrast, frame style, etc.

Then tell the artist that you want a particular variant to be listed and
that you won't vote for the logo unless he chooses that variant. You have
until Sep. 15 to do so.

>> You vote on each variant.

> This must avoid FPTP method that disfavor logo with the more variants.

Huh? We're not using FPTP voting here.

> Who will check each user to see if (s)he done at least 10 edits ?

I will, if the vote is organized using average voting.

> What about people who contribute anonymously ?

They won't be able to vote.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Guillaume-
> I forgot an important question :

> - Why are you so hurried with deadlines !?

Why are you so slow?

Regards,

Erik


body:
Alex-
>> Using trademarks to restrain non-commercial activity is always wrong --

> Sorry this is clearly cofused thinking.

I understand the law. I am talking about the morality behind it. Trademark
law should not allow a trademark holder to punish non-commercial activity
going on under their brand.

> should everyone be allowed to name a sports
> competition after the Olympics?

Of course I should be allowed to start Erik's Garden Olympics or to call
my open source game "Mega Olympics".

>> non-commercial groups are no real threat to us or our brand. If these
>> Russians are actually making money off our brand, that is another matter.

> They are posting links to porno web sites. Are they doing that for free?

I did not notice that. That changes my opinion about them.

> It has nothing to do with trademark law in Russia. It is a domain name
> registration that is covered by ICANN and WIPO.

I am strongly morally opposed to using the UDRP process to hijack domain
names registered by others. Both ICANN and WIPO are insufficiently
controlled anti-speech organizations that are primarily acting in
corporate and government interests. Cooperating with them is like
registering a software patent for the MediaWiki software.

Don't get me wrong: If we had a trademark on the Wikipedia name, I would
support going after those who violate this trademark in their commercial
self-interest. But we don't. For this reason I do not think we have moral
grounds to stop them from using the name "Wikipedia", even if we could
hijack the domain name using UDRP. We didn't tell people in advance:
'Look, you can't use this name. It's ours.' I do not believe that we have
some "natural right" to the name Wikipedia just because we've been
operating under it for a while.

> That is true,  but one thing to keep in mind if you do nothing then
> you are encouraging the name of Wikipedia to be associated with
> click through links to pornographic web sites.

I'm not saying we should do nothing. I am saying we should ask them to
hand over the name. If they don't do it voluntarily, we should ask them
for the price they want. In the future, we should register a Wikipedia
trademark, but we should not use it against those who do not act out of
profit motives.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Dante Alighieri wrote:
>
>> Sigh... Well, I'm totally open to suggestions on how to solve the
>> problem... just about anything short of switching e-mail clients is
>> acceptable. On a related note, allow me to voice my deep and abiding
>> love for lack of standards... why have one useful and quality standard
>> when we can have several confusing and un-interoperable formats...
>
>
> So, in what Inferno circle would you put the standardizers? :-)
>
> Ec

They all go to Circle Eight. Some -- those who deliberately and
consistantly write standards favoring one company's implementations --
are punished with the Simoniacs in Bolgia Three. Most, however, wind up
in Bolgia Nine. Whether they join the Sowers of Religious or Political
Discord is left as an exercise for the Judge.

--
  Sean Barrett
  sean at epoptic.com


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
on 9/8/03 7:24 AM, Daniel Ehrenberg at littledanehren at yahoo.com wrote:

>
> --- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Fine.  I'll stick to my own articles and ignore all
>> the rest of Wikipedia.
>>
>> Please take my sysop powers away.  I won't be
>> needing them.
>>
>> RickK
>
> You're not doing anything wrong. You're not obligated
> to edit anything. I don't think you need to quit being
> a sysop. Why is everyone being so hard on RK?
> LDan

Most of this is self-generated, but there is a definite request on my part
and a few others (with still others encouraging him to be more aggressive)
to take it easy when other contributors don't do exactly what he expects or
wants.

Fred


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cheating on logo voting

body:
Guillaume-
> Discussing with Olizekat I find out he had to work the night to be able to
> finish logos for the deadlines.

Yeah, he's trying to let his ant run all over the place. :-) I like
MiWiki, I really do, but the second stage is not intended for coming up
with entirely new variants; they should have been made in the logo
submission phase which lasted more than one month.

> I suppose other creators that have a job
> can't spend all their time to design logo.

There seems to be a misunderstanding here. The 10 day period is not for
coming up with entirely new variants. It's for talking about the logos and
making small refinements, like adding a little shadow here, making a logo
transparent, making it sharper etc. If people manage to do more than that,
that's great, but this is not really the point. After we have chosen a
winning logo we can still talk about optimizing it, even after it goes
live. We can always work on making things better.

> Honestly I don't understand what are the arguments to hurry the
> deadlines?

Please try to phrase your question in a way that accommodates my point of
view that the deadlines are not hurried.

Regards,

Erik


body:
Daniel-
> Erik wrote:
>> Of course I should be allowed to start Erik's Garden
>> Olympics or to call my open source game "Mega Olympics".

> Strawman. That's different Erik; you clearly are disambiguating the name
> from /the/ Olympics.

Where's the guy who keeps correcting people when they use the term "straw
man"? ;-) So let's call my Garden Olympics "the Olympics". It doesn't
matter for the sake of this example.

> Even your use examples might still be suspect, however.

I agree that they would be legally suspect. I was talking about the
morality of trademark law. If I advertise my Olympics to make money with
them, then I agree that it is moral to stop me from doing that. But if
there is no profit motive, trademark law should not be applicable.

I'm using this example to clarify what moral positions I think Wikimedia
should and should not take. We should never legally act against someone
who is using the name "Wikipedia" without a profit motive. I believe that
this is a misuse of trademark law, and allows things like the use of
trademarks to threaten open source projects, or anti-corporate websites
like StopEsso.com, to happen. Lest we become hypocrites, we should be very
careful about which instruments of the law we do and do not use.

>> I am strongly morally opposed to using the UDRP process
>> to hijack domain names registered by others.

> And what about the initial hijacking of our trademark to begin with?

They did not hijack any registered trademark, and unregistered trademarks
seem to be a US-specific thing.

> Sigh. It has already been stated /several/ times to you that we /do/ have a
> very clear trademark on the Wikipedia name. Registration is a secondary
> issue (as with copyrights).

Unless you show evidence that this is the case outside the US I will
assume that it is not. And that makes the argument very weak, legally
speaking.

>> I'm not saying we should do nothing. I am saying we

> I agree with this completely. However if they want an unreasonable price
> (IMO over 3 times what they paid to register the domain) then IMO we advance
> to the next level.

Which is ignoring them.

> We should also eventually register all Wikimedia trademarks starting with
> Wikimedia and Wikipedia.

I am sympathetic to registering trademarks and using them to stop simple
cybersquatting (that is, a no-content domain). Anything beyond that should
be discussed. In any case, all actions need to be approved by Jimbo.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Delirium wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>ICANN's trademark rules are evil, have been abused to suppress free speech
>>on many occasions and should be fought, not implicitly or explicitly
>>supported.

>I disagree with this political statement.  I feel that Wikipedia should
>protect its interests through the avenues available, regardless of your
>personal viewpoints on ICANN's trademark rules.

Because the ends justify the means?

I'm not sure that Erik is reading this particular situation right;
but I absolutely agree with him on the broad point:
If we use intellectual property law to coerce somebody,
then we had damned well better make sure that it's ethical
(in our own opinions, of course) as well as legally sound.
And I also agree that IP law diverges from ethics greatly,
certainly more than most international law.

-- Toby


body:
Taw wrote:

>Nobody's going to be arrested abroad for breaking laws that don't even exist
>in one's own country while being in it.

Dmitrij Skljarov was.
We should most definitely not go down that route!

Even freezing financial accounts (the kind of civil action that mav meant)
is highly problematic.

-- Toby


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] WikiTable implementation

body:
Steve Vertigum wrote:

> Ah -- so the | at the beginning is needed to enforce a
> line break at the end then-- otherwise something at
> the end would have to do this.  This markup scheme
> seems like itll do the trick.

You now can also do something like
	| Cell 1 || Cell 2 || Cell 3
with || separating the cells.

> Now what about Winor/winol.exe ? ;-)  Ive just started
> toying with my copy -- pint sized dumps only though.

That's currently "on ice", as I have trouble getting the wxWindows HTML
componjent to display unicode. I'm not sure when I'll get back to it.

Magnus


subject: [WikiEN-l] category tags

body:
That bot (not mine) was trying to insert categories based on various
lists. The author mailed me in private (even before tarquin sent his
first mail to the list). The intention is that once we get categories
enabeled, there's already something in place. I'll bcc the author to let
it go more slowly.

The links are currently hidden [[like this| ]].

Magnus

Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 10:01, tarquin wrote:
>
>>I'm getting no reply from this IPs talk page.
>>Is this a bot?
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>>If so, why is it not running on minor edits & a little more slowly?
>
>
> It can't make minor edits since it's not logging in.
>
>
>>Should I block it to get whoever it is to talk?
>
>
> I've already done.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
On Sun, 2003-09-07 at 22:14, Dante Alighieri wrote:
> Sigh... Well, I'm totally open to suggestions on how to solve the
> problem... just about anything short of switching e-mail clients is
> acceptable.

Since you're using an old version of Eudora, you might try the current
version (6.0) and see if it's less broken.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Links in headings: wikipedia doesn't create valid
	HTML

body:
On Sun, 07 Sep 2003 20:09:04 +0100, Daniel Herding <DHerding at gmx.de> gave
utterance to the following:

> When you create links within headings, like on
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrika ,
> wikipedia creates invalid HTML because it opens an  tag within another
>  tag: The outer one for the TOC anchor, the inner one for the link.
>
> I don't know if it's a problem for any browser, but it can easily be
> fixed by
> closing the first tag before opening the second.
>
> Example: use
>
>
 href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordafrika" class='internal'
> title="Nordafrika">Nordafrikanische Staaten

>
> instead of
>
>
 href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordafrika" class='internal'
> title="Nordafrika">Nordafrikanische Staaten

>
Or would the more elegant solution be to use

(IIRC some browsers don't work with completely empty anchors  - and
Netscape 4 users must be so used to functions not working that I don't
think it matters that the TOC won't work for them if it uses id. THey know
what to do if they want the web to work properly.
--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


subject: [Wikitech-l] wikitable markup

body:
I have committed my table markup (in OutputPage.php, "doTableStuff"
function) to the CVS, as well as some CSS to wikistandard.css. It is now
running on the "real" test site (not the "/magnus" subdir).

Magnus


body:
Thomas Corell wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just updated my TEST Wiki and I got a bug if I try editing a page:
>
> PHP Fatal error:  Cannot instantiate non-existent class:  ban in
> /home/www/htdocs/midgard/wiki/User.php on line 97, ...
>
> Seems that in Line 97 of User.php 'new Ban' should be 'new Block', IMHO.
> Possibly someone knows more about it, therefore I do not fix it in CVS.
>
> Smurf

It should have already been fixed when you sent that message. I
committed the patch about 10 hours ago. Were you using the anonymous CVS
server or the developer one?

There's a few other bugs which have also been fixed,so you should get
the latest version even if you've fixed that particular bug.

-- Tim Starling <tstarlingphysicsunimelbeduau>


from_name: Till Westermayer

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi,

I'm a bit used to votings and elections in a party organization, and am
a sociologist, so maybe my level of suspection is higher than that of
other people. So, first of all -- it is a good thing, somebody put's
time in the voting coordination, and it is thanksworthy.

But (you expected that, didn't you ;-)) ...

>Toby-
>> The whole setup looks very odd for Wikipedia.
>> Why is Erik deciding by fiat how things are run?

>He is the vote coordinator; somebody has to make choices on how to
>procede or nothing will happen.

So, the obvious question is: who made Erik the vote coordinator? I don't
ask this because I think someone else should do it or because I see an
actual problem here, but because this may be a weak point of wikipedias
organisation. (On the other hand, I really don't like to get a wikipedia
with by-laws, so I'm a bit concerned and undecided at the same time).

>I think Erik is doing an excellent job and think he should be
>thanked for the many hours of his /own/ time he has put into this
>effort instead of being accused of dictating terms.

Yes, even I find it quite unusual to think that way -- every "free" work
works that way. So what? What about the people who submitted logos? What
about the people who took their time and voted?

>This is, after
>all, the largest vote in Wikipedia's history and we are all
>learning as we move along.

Right, and so I fear we set precedence. Wikipedia has the possibility to
try condorcet voting, or some other more democratic and more fair voting
system. So the vote on the voting system. This vote was made FPTP in a
dictatorial ;-) decision by Erik, me thinks, and initially it wasn't
even clear if it should go FPTP or approval. Someone else started
condorcet as an alternative way shortly thereafter. If everybody votes
FPTP and condorcet, we would see the difference -- same people, same
interests, but maybe a different outcome!

>But at the same time the vote does have
>to move along.

Right.

>Arguing over the vote method to use on the vote to
>decide what the second stage voting method should be, is, IMO a
>petty activity that tends to rerail the process instead of moving
>it along.

Maybe it slows down the voting a bit, but also it helps us to find a
voting system that fits wikipedia. So maybe this slow discussion is
helpful after all, in the longer run.

Regards,
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank main page

body:
When I go to http://www.wikipedia.org/ all I get is a blank page. Did
someone break the cache thingy?

Magnus


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: sep11.wikipedia.org sysop

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Could a sep11.wikipedia.org sysop contact me?  I've gotten a complaint
> that's of a personal nature about one of the pages there, and I'd like
> someone to look into it and protect a page.  I'd rather not say which
> one on the mailing list, because I don't want to repeat the apparent
> slander or to publicize it more than necessary.
>
> I would have just done this myself, but I'm not a sysop there, and
> I had trouble figuring out how to make myself one!

You would have been waiting a while, there weren't any! I've made you a
sysop and developer.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Just to note, in my case, those accented characters showed up as the <A-with
a tilde><odd symbol> form for me in any post from Dante, and Richard
Grevers' reply that quoted tarquin's quote thereof... yet it showed fine in
all others (including tarquin's). (I use OE 6, with security set to maximum
and 'Read all messages as plain text' set.)

--Jake


from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Kwantus

body:
Richard Grevers wrote:

>>
> Tarquin's reply was sent with an inadequate charset to display the
> content of the message:
> Content-Type:     text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
>
> This is rather surprising given the mail client (Thunderbird):
> User-Agent:     Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4)
> Gecko/20030624

I'm still stuck working out how to stop mozilla mail from pasting
formatted text into my "compose email" box. It makes  referring to the
title of a wikipedia article a real pain :(


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Alex756 wrote:
>
>
>Yep - this is exactly what I have been talking about; Wikipedia.ru is a wiki
>encyclopedia using the MediaWiki software and is thus nearly
>indistinguishable from ru.Wikipedia.org. This creates real confusion in
>readers about which is the real Russian Wikipedia. All we need is for the
>Russian press to start mentioning Wikipedia.ru as the Russian Wikipedia when
>writing about that website (which, as you mention, contains adverts we would
>never allow on any Wikipedia version).
>
>They are not Wikipedia! Thus they should not be using our name.
>
Jimbo has contacted them to try to resolve this matter -- is there any
news on this?


from_name: Chris Seaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Index page code glitch

body:
I've fixed it, but it wasn't a software problem. You could have taken it
to "Talk:Main Page" or the pump.

On Mon, 2003-09-08 at 10:44, Richard Grevers wrote:
> Could someone please fix the code which is causing the following error on
> the en wiki homepage? It's causing screwy display in Opera with the
> subjects column very narrow and the community one a mile wide.
>
>
 #e2e2ff; border-bottom: none; padding-top: 0.3em; padding-bottom: 0.3em;
> font-size: large;" align="center"; width="58%">
>
> Note the illegal ; before the width="58%"
--
Chris Seaton

chris at chrisseaton.com
http://www.chrisseaton.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia.ru & Wikimedia.de

body:
Erik wrote:
>I agree that they would be legally suspect. I was
>talking about the morality of trademark law. If I
>advertise my Olympics to make money with them, then
>I agree that it is moral to stop me from doing that.
>But if there is no profit motive, trademark law
>should not be applicable.

Unfortunately, IIRC the law doesn't make a distinction
between for profit vs not for profit uses when it
comes to trademark infringement (that is only
considered when establishing penalties). So if we let
not-for-profit uses run rampant then we still loose
control of our trademark and will have no legal
footing whatsoever when a nasty for-profit user comes
along.

>> And what about the initial hijacking of our
>> trademark to begin with?

>They did not hijack any registered trademark, and
>unregistered trademarks seem to be a US-specific
>thing.

I didn't say they hijacked a registered trademark, and
as far as the ICANN is concerned, we definitely pass
the trademark test.

>Unless you show evidence that this is the case
>outside the US I will assume that it is not. And that

>makes the argument very weak, legally speaking.

Again, we will never get to that level since all we
have to do is write ICANN. Of course we should try to
work things out with Wikipedia.ru first.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
Joy. Thorny legal discussions. I have to say, it's funny, considering making
use of ICANN's domain name resolution policies. Mind you, I'm not opposed to
doing so in this case if the Wikipedia.ru people are difficult about it, but
I don't think they really will be. It's just that I'm very strongly against
ICANN and its policies.
I -do- think we need to defend the Wikipedia name. It's been named on CNN
and in Time, and we don't really have another one. That's a critical bit...
if we let others use the name Wikipedia... what do we use to disambiguate?
'The One True Wikipedia'? Doesn't fit so nice on a logo. (And isn't it POV?
;))
But anyway, this is all academic (not that there's anything /wrong/ with
that) until we hear what they have to say.

--Jake