from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-26

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20691).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/26/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)" wrote
>
> > I think we need some input from the Office as to how this situation
> should
> > be handled on-wiki.
>
> Maybe. But the deletion of a badly-sourced attack piece biography would
> not be the problem.
>
> Charles

It wouldn't, but this isn't badly sourced, neither is it an attack page.
This is more similar to an article about a criminal - of which we have
several. Any of them will consider them attacks, but that doesn't mean they
are.

Forums are bad sources because anyone can write in them. If a blog has been
established as being written by an authoritive source, it is no longer
unreliable and thus it could be used as a source for what the author thinks
or says. It's basically no different than citing a website.

Are there actually people who would delete something, say, George W. Bush
said, because we cite his personal White House blog as the source?

Mgm


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] strange data loss from recentchanges table

body:
On 26/03/07, Nino Novak <nino at kflog.org> wrote:
> PS: shall I put this information into meta.wikipedia.org?
> Or does it now go to mediawiki.org?

All new documentation regarding MediaWiki goes on MediaWiki.org.

Rob Church


list: foundation-l

from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] Job position: legal coordinator

body:
The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking a legal coordinator to handle the
day-to-day legal needs of the Foundation and to coordinate outside help.
The position can be either a full-time or part-time position, and either
telecommuting or office-based. Please apply with CV or resume attached
to jobs AT wikimedia.org with subject line "Legal Coordinator".

Application deadline: 7th of april
All candidates will be notified of the hiring decision via email by 20th
of april at most.

Responsibilities

Coordinate pro bono help, international legal services, legal interns,
assistance from the project communities, and outside counsel as necessary
Answer legal requests that come in to the OTRS system and by phone
Handle day-to-day legal needs of the Foundation, such as contracts
Evaluate Foundation policies and operating procedures for compliance
with relevant laws
Assist Executive Director with operational tasks as needed
Assist Board of Trustees with legal concerns as needed

Requirements

Licensed to practice law in any U.S. state
Ability to make occasional travel to St. Petersburg, Florida and to
other meetings as needed
Strong commitment to organizational values of the Wikimedia Foundation
Strong communication skills
Familiarity with the variety of legal issues facing the Wikimedia
Foundation (knowledge about intellectual property law, contract law,
libel and personality rights especially helpful)

Florence Devouard
Wikimedia Foundation chair


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:47:33 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>So when did the concept of original research migrate from being about
>work done by Wikipedians to using published original research done by
>others?

About the time they wrote "Wikipedia is not a publisher of first
instance" and the bits about it being a tertiary source, compiled from
reliable secondary sources.  Before my time, anyway.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Sat, 24 Mar 2007 17:43:40 -0800, Ray Saintonge
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

>>Mega society is tiny, of no objectively provable importance and has
>>(or at least had last time it was reviewed) no reliable independent
>>non-trivial sources, which is why it was deleted and has stayed that
>>way despite several attempts by its press officer to re-create it.

>But then how many of the other High-IQ societies for which we keep
>articles are any more notable?

That would be [[WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS]].

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


from_name: Nino Novak

body:
Dear list,

maybe a stupid question, but...

our wiki lost almost all entries from Recent changes. Mysql logs said

 DELETE FROM `recentchanges` WHERE rc_timestamp < '20070317115213';

I looked into apache logs, but could not find any http request around
the time when this DELETE query was issued.

Any possible (automated?) script which deletes recent changes table?
Which one? (And why?)

The only information I came across was
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Rebuildall.php
which states that 1.5rc4 might empty recentchanges table.
However we use 1.5.6.

Any possibility to rebuild recent changes table from page history data?

Thanks for your patience.

Regards, Nino


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> If anybody's interested, the suit is docket number L-001169-07 in
> Monmouth County, New Jersey...

Should've been in Mercer County, New Jersey.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On Monday 26 March 2007 01:14, Rob Church wrote:
> On 26/03/07, Nino Novak <nino at kflog.org> wrote:
> > Any possible (automated?) script which deletes recent changes
> > table?
>
> It happens every few requests; the software itself deals with it.

Ok - but it's however strange that it hasn't been deleted for more than
a year - and today all of a sudden...

...

> maintenance/rebuildRecentChanges.php, although it might ignore the
> entries if MediaWiki has deleted them for being "old" - you could
> raise the $wgRCMaxAge value (or whatever it's called...check
> DefaultSettings.php)

Great, thanks - it worked like a charm :-)

Nino
PS: shall I put this information into meta.wikipedia.org?
Or does it now go to mediawiki.org?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
I doubt you will have such information very soon. We first need to find
out more details.

Ant

Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) wrote:
> I think we need some input from the Office as to how this situation should
> be handled on-wiki.
>
> Newyorkbrad
>
>
> On 3/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>>
>> Ron Ritzman wrote:
>>
>>> Correct me if I'm wrong but shouldn't that comment be in an AFD nom or
>>> is this another one of those "Danial Brandt" deletes?
>> Yes.
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
>> --
>> If you can read this, I'm not at home.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
>
>> That is no more useful or desirable than going to
>> [[Neutrino]] and seeing original physical research that some physics
>> crank has decided to publish on Wikipedia.  If you've made novel
>> historical discoveries by digging through primary sources, then great,
>> but Wikipedia is not the place to publish them any more than it's the
>> place to publish your novel physics discoveries.
>>
>>
> The difference is the one betwen invention and discovery, and the
> physics example is one of invention, not discovery.  In discovery we
> find what was already there, and invention only becomes a factor in
> historical research when the authenticity of the documents is disputed.
>

This seems like a strange distinction to me. I have never heard of
physics discoveries being referred to as "inventions"; one might invent
a machine that helps in making those discoveries, but the discoveries
are simply finding what is already there.  What makes it original
research is that you're the first to have claimed to find it.  In such
cases (whether in physics or history), the proper place to put forth
your claimed discoveries is in a journal or some other such place where
they can be evaluated (and possibly refuted) by others.

As for whether the authenticity of documents is disputed, that's exactly
the sort of thing we should be relying on secondary sources to
determine.  If I find some random archival document that *appears* to
say something about World War II, it would be inappropriate for me to
start relying on it in the article by citing it; I should instead see
what historians have said about it, how it's been interpreted before, if
there is consensus or disagreement on its authenticity or implications,
etc.  If it's never been mentioned before, I would have to conclude that
its authenticity and implications are unknown.  There are many journals
devoted to hashing out that sort of thing, and we shouldn't be
replicating their work on talk pages, imo.

-Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ron Ritzman [mailto:ritzman at gmail.com]
>Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 07:03 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
>
>On 3/25/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>> No, that's why we have BLP. Malicious material may be reverted and deleted without limit > by any user.
>
>And if it's deleted for that reason and no other admin restores it then fine.
>
>Quoting BLB 3
>
>"Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and
>controversial in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to,
>should delete the article without discussion"
>
>I'm assuming that admins are reasonable people, otherwise they
>shouldn't be admins. Therefore, if admin Foo, speedy deletes a bio
>because he feels that there is no NPOV version to revert to and that
>deletion is reverted by admin BAR, then admin BAR reasonably believes
>that the bio can be made NPOV.
>
>At this point what would be better, to discuss the deletion "in
>process" or have wheel war with the article being deleted and restored
>over and over again?

Yes, discussion is appropriate, if it does not spread libelous or malicious material to another page, which it is extremely likely to do.

Bottom line, the user, whether they are an ordinary user or an administrator, may revert or delete libelous or malicious material without limit, for which they will receive, "Well done". Considerable slack will be cut if they make a mistake or are overly conservative. Users, whether they are an ordinary user or an administrator, who restore or repeatedly insert libelous or malicious material may be be blocked or desysopped. Little slack will be cut if there are obvious problems with the material. If you find yourself in such a "wheelwar", you would be well advised to let the deletion stand if the claim that the material is libelous or malicious is at least colorable. To take an obvious example, if someone has removed a statement that John Siegenthaler played a role in the Kennedy assassination, unless you have multiple reliable sources that the statement is sound, don't put that sort of information back in the article.

As to administrators being presumed to be reasonable, reasonable is as reasonable does. Repeated insertion of libelous or malicious material into a Wikipedia article is not reasonable. Nor are actions taken to block or otherwise discipline users or other administrators who are doing their duty by removing or deleting it.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 26/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> This is disgraceful. It's not like the Citizendium people doesn't
>> understand the concept of free content.
>>
>
>
> Read the licensing thread on the forum:
>
>     http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,607.0.html
>
> It's clear that many of the contributors don't, or don't care.
>

That thread is rather appalling, particularly the number of seemingly
senior people (including Larry?) who are willing to countenance blatant
copyright violations.  I have written a number of articles, which I've
released freely under the GFDL.  I do not give anyone permission to
release my work under another license, such as cc-by-nc, and it is no
more legal to do that than it is for Citizendium to take a random
copyrighted book out of the library and purport to release it under
cc-by-nc.  If they wish to use my copyrighted material under the GFDL, I
have given them permission to do so.  If they wish to use it under any
other license, they must contact me to make separate arrangements.

-Mark


list: commons-l

from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject: [Commons-l] Metalmania 2007

body:
hi!

I want to proudly announce that we have harvested more than 2.5 GB of photos
on 'Metalmania 2007' festival :)

In next few weeks Commons will gain photos of metal bands listed here:

http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Metalmania_2007

If anybody want to help in recognizing band members, etc. please contact me
:)

AJF/WarX
-------------- nast?pna cz??? ---------
Za??????cznik HTML zosta??? usuni???ty...
URL:  http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20070326/91c5f556/attachment.htm


body:
On Monday 26 March 2007 01:35, Rob Church wrote:
> On 26/03/07, Nino Novak <nino at kflog.org> wrote:
> > PS: shall I put this information into meta.wikipedia.org?
> > Or does it now go to mediawiki.org?
>
> All new documentation regarding MediaWiki goes on MediaWiki.org.

ok, but there it is already nicely stated in
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Recentchanges_table

Bye
Nino


from_name: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
(This message contains my personal opinions, not those of the subcommittee.)

Hello,

The policy is not at fault for the delays. A slightly different
version was ready four months ago; the unfortunate problem is that the
subcommittee is ill-suited for policy development, which is best
accomplished by a proactive editor with changes by others through the
wiki process. The subcommittee is much better suited to actually
processing requests, but we still have to get the policy development
out of the way first.

I've said this so many times I'm starting to doubt whether it's
possible, but it should not take much longer. Assuming nobody suddenly
notices another all-important problem and forces a full halt, we
should begin processing requests within a week or two.

Although the current delays are unacceptable, please be careful not to
mistakenly hearken back to the good old days before the subcommittee;
it was common for a request to take over a year, be approved and
archived, and forgotten (without being created) forever more until a
subcommittee came along and replaced the old process. For example, see
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Cook_Islands_Maori>,
proposed in July 2005 and still open as of December 2006, when the
subcommittee closed it along with other old requests.

Feedback on the policy would be much appreciated. Is there anything in
particular you oppose or dislike?

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

> From: "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
> But for new languages, I do not think it is a good idea anymore to
> have a committee. I supported the idea in the beginning, but I have
> seen NO REAL ACTION and 0 agreement between members. No new Wikipedias
> have been formed since the creation of this committee, while certain
> test Wikis are bursting at their seams!!! (Kabyle, Latgalian, Lower
> Sorbian, Crimean Tatar, Saterfrisian).
>
> The Incubator Wiki was not made to hold such large projects. It was
> made to hold proto-projects, not a web of standalone projects (like
> Wikia).
>
> Also, I am strongly against the "new proposal policy" by Pathoschild.
>
> While I do see a problem with a voting system, I ALSO see a problem
> with a system where it takes ten thousand years for a Wiki to get
> approved!!!
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: David Goodman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: censership (from Yiddish Wikipedian)

body:
I am given to understand by those who can read the language, there are
various views about who is censoring whom on that particular WP. ~~~~

On 3/26/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hoi!
>
> I can't see any data about hapened in the message. Maybe there was an older
> message I missed?
>
> B?rto 'd S?ra
> Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


from_name: Arie van Buuren

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand your
point?

We often need to know the relative importance of  information in the context
of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who hold
this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or relevance
(is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited
number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?) To
discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources:
the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors is
unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its
importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media
reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they
provide, may tell us what we need to know.

Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original
research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do
not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights
instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the
encyclopedia.

Thanks,

AvB


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Wow, very fast response. Thanks.

Also a note that where I wrote "Information without sources that provide a
context" I intended to write "Information without sources that provide such
context" which is somewhat more specific.

AvB

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 4:22 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

> This all sounds about right to me.  Context matters, of course, and so I
> think there is a huge red herring here if we too simplistically compare
> potentially libelous or simply hurtful information in a biography of a
> living person with arcane information from academic journals, etc.
>
>
>
> Arie van Buuren wrote:
>> Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand
>> your
>> point?
>>
>> We often need to know the relative importance of  information in the
>> context
>> of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who
>> hold
>> this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or
>> relevance
>> (is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited
>> number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?)
>> To
>> discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources:
>> the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors
>> is
>> unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its
>> importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media
>> reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they
>> provide, may tell us what we need to know.
>>
>> Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original
>> research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we
>> do
>> not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal
>> insights
>> instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the
>> encyclopedia.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> AvB
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Keith Old

body:
G'day folks,

Associated Press  reports that Citizendium will launch this week.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/2007-03-25-wikipedia-alternative_N.htm

'This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative,
Citizendium<http://www.citizendium.org/>.
His goal is to capture Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism
and inconsistency that are its pitfalls.

Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be non-profit, devoid of ads and free to
read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will
be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be
asked to check articles for accuracy."
More in story.

It will be interesting to see what they actually deliver as opposed to
talking about delivering.

Regards

Keith Old


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Imagine the lawsuit... just imagine it...

body:
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium to launch this week
> Larry Sanger: "The conclusion you are trying to establish is that
> we cannot
> relicense our versions of Wikipedia articles with GFDL and CC.  Why
> not?
> Does the GFDL explicitly forbid licensing works under another
> license in
> addition?"
>
> Is he seriously suggesting that they can basically just license our
> works
> under whatever license they please as long as they also license it
> under the
> GFDL?
>
> I can't believe they've gone 'live' without even sorting out basic
> copyright
> issues... CZ is a joke.

IANAL... IANAIPL.. but I read Slashdot a lot (isn't that just as
good?) and I don't remember any headlines saying "Supreme court
decides in favor of GPL!" Even the GPL is a bit up in the air.

Now, the GFDL... I don't think there's any really big, important
project _except_ Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia has ever
engaged in any lawsuits in which the GFDL played any kind of role
whatsoever. The GFDL is so legally puzzling that Wikipedia itself
can't give nice, simple, crystal-clear rules on how to re-use
Wikipedia content. Nobody understand what the attribution and history
rules really mean and what does or does not satisfy them in practice.
And none of what anyone thinks they might understand has ever been
tested in court.

Suppose Citizendium does go ahead and reuse big chunks of Wikipedia
under some complicated legal mishmash of a license, and let's suppose
the essence of the situation is that a) in a broad sort of way,
Citizendium allows free-as-in-freedom re-use; b) Wikipedia, the Free
Software Foundation, and the EFF all agree that whatever Citizendium
is doing can be characterized as a "free license."

Who the heck is going to sue Citizendium? Nobody has a big stake in
their Wikipedia contributions. There's no money involved. And so many
of the issues involve other licenses being _less_ free than GFDL.

Who is going to pay the big lawyers' fees? And pay for a photographer
to take the twenty-five eight-by-ten color photographs with arrows
and a paragraph on the back to bring to court, showing which
paragraphs were in which versions of what when under which license?

And there probably isn't even anything resembling a case _until a
third party re-uses Citizendium content_.

"Your honor, this print publisher will testify that they WOULD have
published a print book based on Citizendium content, and it WOULD
have included MY paragraphs, if Citizendium hadn't used a
noncommercial license. And if they had, they would have paid me
exactly nothing at all. And I've been terribly hurt by the fact that
they don't have the _potential_ to reuse my work without paying me.
Or maybe they do, but they aren't sure they do, because the
Citizendium license is so tangled and murky and self-contradictory.
So I've been deprived of the precious opportunity to see my name in
print and to get paid nothing for it. Unless they use the Wikipedia
version, of course, which they don't want to do because, they just
don't."

And the other side says "Your honor, please ask the plaintiff, Horace
Wadsworth Pennypacker II, SSN 078-05-1120, to _prove_ that he is
indeed user 'Pfiffltriggi.'"

The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have
Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I
don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince
the Wikimedia Foundation to do it.

And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your
contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against
Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from
_me._


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/26/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 25/03/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Only the last part is problematic, why are we quoting blogs making
> > > allegations about somebody?  Teresa Nielsen Hayden should be
> > specifically
> > > identified in the text of the article, who she is, what her notability
> > is
> > > for saying this, and her page wikilinked.
> >
> >
> > This is one of those things that is obvious if you're in the SF field
> > - i.e., the Nielsen-Haydens are highly respected editors, and their
> > blog is not your average blog any more than Groklaw is.
> >
> > Just how far out of our way should we have to go to justify references
> > to those ignorant of the field who still consider their proudly
> > ignorant opinion is just as valid on AFD as that of someone who
> > actually has half a clue what they're talking about?
> >
> >
> > - d.
>
>
> Wikipedia is not a specialized encyclopedia with little subcultures
> limited
> to their own reading, it is a general encyclopedia, and as such, I should
> be
> able to read an article about a topic without knowing much about it, like
> who the insiders are, and who the major players are.  This is, again, one
> of
> those things that folks fight against tooth and nail on FAC, but when they
> rewrite the articles for a general audience at my insistence (for the few
> unlucky ones whose articles  I edit), they ALL agree the articles are
> better
> and more appropriate and more in line with Wikipedia policies and
> guidelines.  In addition this takes care of BLP issues.  It takes care of
> a
> lot, most of all it makes Wikipedia in line with its goals: being a
> general
> encyclopedia.
>
> This article is not written FOR readers of Science Fiction.  It is written
> for users of Wikipedia.
>
> KP

Google is your friend. Dropping any of the names in the article into a
search engine or actually reading the linked pages tells a reader all they
need to know to be expert enough to understand the sources were reliable.
You don't need an expert.

Mgm


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Just what *is* Jimbo's role anyway? - personality
	cult

body:
On 26/03/07, Seth Finkelstein <sethf at sethf.com> wrote:

>         Do you mean the specific or the general? The specific was:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/066381.html
> "David, if you take a swipe that arguably includes me, I think it's
> fair to do a "Marshall McLuhan right here" bit, and correct the ideas."
>         Which was in reply to:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-March/066339.html
> "It surprises me when our odder critics claim Wikipedia is the
> personality cult of Jimbo Wales. I really can't imagine L. Ron Hubbard
> putting up with the crap Jimbo does ..."
>         Note I was *not* the person who introduced the word "cult"
> into the thread. I did change the subject line then to indicate a
> subthread, but that was in *response*, not an original assertion.

Uh, I wasn't even thinking of you. I was thinking in fact of Wikitruth et al.

You then decided it was about you, dived in, seemed to claim it and
now say that you didn't do any of that. Oookay ...

>         I have conceded. Gerard has found me out. Can't get anything
> past him. I am *not* going to do a detailed elaboration here of
> "Why I Think Wikipedia Is A Cult", in 25,000 words or more. It
> wouldn't do anyone any good.

Nevertheless, you go for the headline-grabbing accusation, without
actually showing a shred of evidence that you're using the word "cult"
in a way that any other person purportedly speaking the English
language is.

- d.


body:
On 26/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is disgraceful. It's not like the Citizendium people doesn't
> understand the concept of free content.

Read the licensing thread on the forum:

    http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,607.0.html

It's clear that many of the contributors don't, or don't care.

- d.


from_name: bobolozo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some rambling thoughts on Citizendium

body:
First of all, I hope they succeed.

Wikipedia is one of a kind, at this point, we have no
real competitors in the field of free wiki
encylopedias, and having another out there could do us
a lot of good.  Having another group out there doing
what we do, but better in some ways (inevitably) would
spur us on to improvement, unstick us from whatever
policies and habits we might have which are producing
suboptimal results, and I'm all for this.

However, in looking at their website, I think they're
in for some major trouble.

First of all, the bitter anti-wikipedia attitude is
rather over the top.  Nearly every single page on
Citizendium contains attacks on us. This is not an
exaggeration. Look at the top of any of their pages,
and you see "The world needs a better free
encyclopedia".  Better than what?  Better than
Wikipedia, of course.  Not to mention their policy
pages and statements and discussions, which are all
about how much better they're going to be than we are,
how they'll do right every terrible thing we do wrong.

Secondly, their claims that they're going to be able
to avoid vandalism, and avoid something like the
Essjay situation happening to them, are quite dubious.

They've already been extensively vandalized.  Look at
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki?title=Special:Contributions&target=Peter+Lacey
for a bit of amusement.  10% of their articles
vandalized by one person, and it took an hour for
anyone to notice it was happening!  Had this vandal
used a bot, instead of apparently doing it by hand, he
could have gotten their entire 1000 article database.

Something like the Essjay situation is vastly MORE
likely to happen on Citizendium.  This is because
Citizendium forces all editors to give a name and
upload a bio, and it gives experts broad authority
over articles on their area of expertise.

If you force everyone to give a name and enter a bio,
you will get large numbers of fake names and fake
bios.  If you give experts the ability to
automatically win every edit conflict in articles in
their category, you give a strong incentive for people
to fake credentials.  Imagine how many cranks we have
of various sorts who would love to be able to say,
"Look at my credentials, I'm a particle physicist and
a Doctor of Alienology, therefore my edits on
[[Anti-gravity machine hidden in Area 51]] must stay".

That having been said, if they can stop driving away
3/4 of their potential editors with their real name
policy, and start being Citizendium instead of
Anti-Wikipedium, they may well manage to be a success,
to rival us, and to force us to better to avoid losing
many of our best editors to them.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Now that's room service!  Choose from over 150,000 hotels
in 45,000 destinations on Yahoo! Travel to find your fit.
http://farechase.yahoo.com/promo-generic-14795097


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia has no policy on word articles

body:
The article for [[The]] was recently deleted on the grounds that Wikipedia
is not a dictionary. [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The]].

Clearly the article is not a dictionary *definition*; but it was argued that
this is a dictionary article, and that the things other than definitions that
it contains still don't belong on Wikipedia.

I don't think your essay fits practice too well.


subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google'

body:
On Sun, 25 Mar 2007, Ruud Koot wrote:
> Do we want ArbCom pages where the accused's real identity is revealed
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Carl_Hewitt)
> to appear on Google, especially given the fact that searching for the
> accused's name will result in this page appearing as the second entry
> (just after the Wikipedia article on him?)

BLP says that it applies to project space, so the BLP policy says "no".  Of
course, BLP is broken in this area.


body:
--- Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

> The article for [[The]] was recently deleted on the
> grounds that Wikipedia
> is not a dictionary.
> [[Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/The]].
>
> Clearly the article is not a dictionary
> *definition*; but it was argued that
> this is a dictionary article, and that the things
> other than definitions that
> it contains still don't belong on Wikipedia.
>
> I don't think your essay fits practice too well.

Thanks for letting me know about this.  I believe that
this is a rare occurrence and unusual; do you have
other examples of deletion of reasonable-quality
articles on words?

I'm going to take this to Deletion review, as a way of
trying to clarify what the hell we're doing regarding
word articles.  Although this surely validates my main
point, that we don't know what we're doing.

____________________________________________________________________________________
Don't get soaked.  Take a quick peek at the forecast
with the Yahoo! Search weather shortcut.
http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/#loc_weather


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
On Mon, 26 Mar 2007, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original
> > research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do
> > not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights
> > instead.
> This all sounds about right to me.

If this is your position, then I find it unbelievable.

Any meta decision about how to edit an article and what to include in it
involves the Wikipedia editor drawing a conclusion.  If inserting a factual
statement from a primary source is "original research" because the editor
had to draw a conclusion that it was important, then Googling something to
determine notability, or even saying "Sheesh, he's George Bush, obviously he's
notable" or "he's published 20 New York Times bestsellers, obviously he's
notable" is original research.

I do agree that information taken from a primary source like this shouldn't
be included in the article, but we need to be correct about why.  It shouldn't
be included because it isn't notable (or perhaps because of undue weight),
not because it's original research.  If you call it original research,
you are stretching original research to the point where it applies to
everything.


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales speaks on Radio National in Australia

body:
On Mar 26, 2007, at 2:03 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> But that's IMPOSSIBLE because newspapers are RELIABLE SOURCES. Or
> so I'm told.

Yeah, right....

Go and try now and make a change to RS in which you say "take
newspaper articles with a pinch of salt, and be sure to confirm that
source with other sources so as not to republish their mistakes in
Wikipedia".

You will be slaughtered there...

-- Jossi


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 3/26/07, Nick Wilkins <nlwilkins at gmail.com> wrote:
> My first click of the "random page" button brought me to
> http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Choosing_a_horse.
>
> My second brought me to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Liechtenstein, which
> is clearly taken directly from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtensteinwithout any attribution
> whatsoever.  They've even left in most of the image
> links and template calls, not to mention the great mass of red at the bottom
> where our interwiki links are.

I tried that too and found a bunch of pages taken directly from
wikipedia without any attribution what so ever. It's probably likely
that most of their 1000 or so articles are direct copies.

This is disgraceful. It's not like the Citizendium people doesn't
understand the concept of free content. I mean, I would think proper
attribution and non-copyright infringement was a big deal for them,
but apparently not. It's not even so much the legality of this as the
fact that they are trying to pass themselves off as "better" or
"higher quality" and then they go and steal content our editors have
worked hard at for months.

Initially I was positive to the project. You know, the more free
content the better, it's a good thing to experiment with different
editorial models. But if this is how it's going to work (did someone
actually suggest relicensing wikipedia content under cc-by-nc so we
couldn't use it?) I won't feel bad at all a year from now when they
will be virtually forgotten.

"We are not Wikipedia", says Larry Sanger. That's right! And you never will be.

--Oskar


from_name: Berto 'd Sera

body:
Hoi!

I can't see any data about hapened in the message. Maybe there was an older
message I missed?

B?rto ?d S?ra
Personagi dl?ann 2006 p?r l?arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


from_name: Vee

body:
On 26/03/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 26/03/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> This is disgraceful. It's not like the Citizendium people doesn't
> >> understand the concept of free content.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Read the licensing thread on the forum:
> >
> >     http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,607.0.html
> >
> > It's clear that many of the contributors don't, or don't care.
> >
>
> That thread is rather appalling, particularly the number of seemingly
> senior people (including Larry?) who are willing to countenance blatant
> copyright violations.  I have written a number of articles, which I've
> released freely under the GFDL.  I do not give anyone permission to
> release my work under another license, such as cc-by-nc, and it is no
> more legal to do that than it is for Citizendium to take a random
> copyrighted book out of the library and purport to release it under
> cc-by-nc.  If they wish to use my copyrighted material under the GFDL, I
> have given them permission to do so.  If they wish to use it under any
> other license, they must contact me to make separate arrangements.
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
On 3/25/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I believe we request a feature that allows the pages to be available to
> logged in users only.  This would prevent Google spidering while allowing
> the pages to be seen by any logged-in user.

That would be a useful addition.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/26/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Please don't make assumptions.  The fact that the office has no opinion
> at this time about the article does not earn it a magic "Seal of
> Approval".  It still must qualify based on English Wikipedia standards,
> and, from what I've seen, it fails those.

I think, in fact, that the office (and thus WMF) has no opinion at
this time means only that in the opinion of their legal counsel, no
actions need to be taken to limit the Foundation's legal exposure.

My own personal take is that the only notable thing about this person
is that they are listed among the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
Association's "20 worst agents".

IF a Wikipedia article is to exist on this person at all, it should
certainly mention that ... distinction ... and I don't see anything
wrong with quoting the SFWA on the matter - in fact, better to have it
in their own words than ours.

On the other hand, is it enough for an article?  Quite possibly not.

-Matt


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/26/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> The message that started this thread quoted a message from the Barbara Bauer
> situation. It may look and sound malicious to the untrained eye and ear at
> first glance, but anyone who dives deeper into the material will find all of
> the sources are truthfull and reliable.

The deleting admin didn't think so. If my idea was in effect and the
foundation didn't have the Bauer article in limbo, then you, if an
admin, could have restored it and that would have been the end of the
story as far as super fast ultra-speedy deletes are concerned. The
"truthfullness" and "reliability" of the sources could then be argued
on AFD if necessary.
Also, I have a hard time imagining a situation where it is absolutely
impossible to purge POV from the bio of an otherwise notable person
without nuking the article.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] More mwdumper bugs

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

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> After running mwdumper to strip out the NS_MEDIAWIKI namespace entries
> from the 20070206 SQL dumps, the output filtered
> XML file created by mwdumper after stripping out the name space has sql
> syntax errors in the output:
>
> 1.  The output files cannot be used by mwimport because the text labels
> for XML types, etc, are modified by mwdumper to the extent the program
> can no longer read the dump.

If you want bug reports acted on, it is a requirement that you do the
following:

1) Report them in our Bugzilla at bugzilla.wikimedia.org

2) Include all relevant information, specificially the exact command
lines used and the exact files you used.

Bug reports which include no information on how to reproduce the bug are
useless.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGB8eqwRnhpk1wk44RAt10AKCp1baYkoiderAJSWQMvCfTDu/sCQCghJZA
kTWRq7HOV6xlQEp1M78CH9U=
=VCCS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
The message that started this thread quoted a message from the Barbara Bauer
situation. It may look and sound malicious to the untrained eye and ear at
first glance, but anyone who dives deeper into the material will find all of
the sources are truthfull and reliable.

Mgm

On 3/26/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Ron Ritzman [mailto:ritzman at gmail.com]
> >Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 07:03 PM
> >To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
> >
> >On 3/25/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> >
> >> No, that's why we have BLP. Malicious material may be reverted and
> deleted without limit > by any user.
> >
> >And if it's deleted for that reason and no other admin restores it then
> fine.
> >
> >Quoting BLB 3
> >
> >"Administrators encountering biographies that are unsourced and
> >controversial in tone, where there is no NPOV version to revert to,
> >should delete the article without discussion"
> >
> >I'm assuming that admins are reasonable people, otherwise they
> >shouldn't be admins. Therefore, if admin Foo, speedy deletes a bio
> >because he feels that there is no NPOV version to revert to and that
> >deletion is reverted by admin BAR, then admin BAR reasonably believes
> >that the bio can be made NPOV.
> >
> >At this point what would be better, to discuss the deletion "in
> >process" or have wheel war with the article being deleted and restored
> >over and over again?
>
> Yes, discussion is appropriate, if it does not spread libelous or
> malicious material to another page, which it is extremely likely to do.
>
> Bottom line, the user, whether they are an ordinary user or an
> administrator, may revert or delete libelous or malicious material without
> limit, for which they will receive, "Well done". Considerable slack will be
> cut if they make a mistake or are overly conservative. Users, whether they
> are an ordinary user or an administrator, who restore or repeatedly insert
> libelous or malicious material may be be blocked or desysopped. Little slack
> will be cut if there are obvious problems with the material. If you find
> yourself in such a "wheelwar", you would be well advised to let the deletion
> stand if the claim that the material is libelous or malicious is at least
> colorable. To take an obvious example, if someone has removed a statement
> that John Siegenthaler played a role in the Kennedy assassination, unless
> you have multiple reliable sources that the statement is sound, don't put
> that sort of information back in the article.
>
> As to administrators being presumed to be reasonable, reasonable is as
> reasonable does. Repeated insertion of libelous or malicious material into a
> Wikipedia article is not reasonable. Nor are actions taken to block or
> otherwise discipline users or other administrators who are doing their duty
> by removing or deleting it.
>
> Fred
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
On 3/26/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Rob Smith [mailto:nobs03 at gmail.com]
> >Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2007 06:32 PM
> >To: 'English Wikipedia'
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google
> >
> >I would like to formerly request an unblock for the limited purpose to
> >Appeal before ArbCom making a separation of the unfounded smears that my
> >name is associated with he Lyndon LaRouche movement. <
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AMA_Requests_for_Assistance/Requests/November_2006/Nobs02#unfounded_allegations
> > >
> >
> >Google Nobs01+LaRouche brings up 226 Google hits. <
> >http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Nobs01%2BLaRouche >
> >
> >ArbCom has twice failed to rectify this injustice, despite (a) Mr. Fred
> >Bauder admitting five times the smear is unfounded; (b) the perpetrator
> >himself has made statements that the allegation is false. <
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Workshop&diff=next&oldid=30398271
> > >
> >
> >
> >Thank you,
> >
> >Rob Smith
> >aka User:Nobs01 and Nobs02
>
> We already know this. You got lumped together in the arbitration case, but
> there was no connection.
>
> Fred

There is a simple solution: separate and move the Findings & Remedies
regarding the LaRouche editors out of the case and rename it LaRouche3. This
can be done without rehearing any substanitive issues.

Rob Smith
aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02


body:
On 3/26/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> G'day folks,
>
> Associated Press  reports that Citizendium will launch this week.
>
> http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/2007-03-25-wikipedia-alternative_N.htm
>
>
> 'This week, Sanger takes the wraps off a Wikipedia alternative,
> Citizendium <http://www.citizendium.org/>. His goal is to capture
> Wikipedia's bustle but this time, avoid the vandalism and inconsistency that
> are its pitfalls.
>
> Like Wikipedia, Citizendium will be non-profit, devoid of ads and free to
> read and edit. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium's volunteer contributors will
> be expected to provide their real names. Experts in given fields will be
> asked to check articles for accuracy."
> More in story.
>
> It will be interesting to see what they actually deliver as opposed to
> talking about delivering.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old

Folks,

It is now live with 1,100 articles.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Main_Page

Further, there are red links on the main page in areas such as earth
sciences, theater, education, sports, architectecture, visual arts,
journalism, military and the media. It is probably where Wikipedia was in
early 2001.

Regards

*Keith Old*


body:
On 26/03/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Now in this
> particular case I think the problem arose because the person who put the
> entry in simply took the information from various newspapers who had got it
> wrong in the first place so you have one falsehood being reinforced by
> another and another ?

But that's IMPOSSIBLE because newspapers are RELIABLE SOURCES. Or so I'm told.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committers

body:
Kim Bruning (kim) - Wikidata/OmegaWiki work

Alexander Sigachov (ajvol) - Russian localization updates

-- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)


subject: [Commons-l] How's the POTD working on Gmail?

body:
Last few days' pictures have been fine for me - link displaying at top
in a useful manner. Has anyone else been getting the message
displaying without the link?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
On 3/26/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > There is a simple solution: separate and move the Findings & Remedies
> > regarding the LaRouche editors out of the case and rename it LaRouche3.
> > This
> > can be done without rehearing any substanitive issues.
> >
> > Rob Smith
> > aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02
>
>
> If you want to pursue this, it should be with the arbitrators, not on this
> general mailing list.  Ordinary users can do nothing about the matter you
> are raising; conversely, many of the arbitrators may not be subscribed or
> reading here.
>
> Newyorkbrad

Thank you.  This involves two steps (1) a limited unblock (2) forwarding
this request to ArbCom1.  Given the serious nature of these slanders that
Google picks up, and my efforts at redress through Wikipedia's internal
regulatory processes, coupled with bureaucratic rebuffs, this thread here
appears to be the first time this problem has been brought to the attention
of the Community.

Is there a way to expedite a limited unblock for the purpose of ArbCom
addressing a very simple matter that could be disposed fairly quickly and
painlessly?  This matter has lingered for one and half years now and must be
addressed sooner or later.

Thank you.

Rob Smith
aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02


from_name: Denny Colt

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Possible spam]Re: Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/26/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> I await with interest the court's interpretation of the merits of the
> case.
>
Guy (JzG)

Is this the first case specifically targeting WP/WMF along these lines?
Trying to hold us liable for reporting what OTHERS said? It could be a slam
dunk precendent for us in a good way if the Judge dismisses, right? As in,
we aren't responsible for reporting what others said?

--
- Denny


body:
On 3/26/07, Vee <vee.be.me at gmail.com> wrote:
> From the forum:
>
> Larry Sanger: "The conclusion you are trying to establish is that we cannot
> relicense our versions of Wikipedia articles with GFDL and CC.  Why not?
> Does the GFDL explicitly forbid licensing works under another license in
> addition?"
>
> Is he seriously suggesting that they can basically just license our works
> under whatever license they please as long as they also license it under the
> GFDL?
>
> I can't believe they've gone 'live' without even sorting out basic copyright
> issues... CZ is a joke.

It's baffling that the founder of this project has only a cursory
knowledge of copyright, less than an experienced wikipedia editor.

However, what bothers me the most isn't necessarily the legalities,
but the ethics of what they are doing. Wikipedia is a proud member of
the free content movement, and we give our content away for free for
others to use. We believe it is The Right Thing to Do. We didn't have
to do it, but we did. They would like to take that content that we
produced, modify it slightly, and then not release their content in
the same way we have. Even though we did the majority of the work.

It's an absolute disgrace. The contributors to Citizendium should feel
ashamed about what their founder and fellow editors are saying. I know
I would, if I were in that situation.

--Oskar


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> I think that "thou" is validly included in the encyclopedia, but there
> would be no need to include separate articles on its inflected forms,
> "thee", "thy", or "thine".  It remains important in the linguistic
> development of the English language, and the evolution of the second
> person singular in the language.
>
Maybe we're just talking about title, then.  I would think that the
evolution of the second person singular in the language would be
better off in an article titled [[second person singular pronoun]]
than one titled [[thou]].

Anthony


body:
On 3/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Moron" and "idiot" are nouns.  They can't possibly have the same
> > meaning as "stupid", which is an adjective, because they're different
> > parts of speech.
>
> Ok, so they have the same meaning as "stupid person". The part of
> speech isn't really relevant.
>
So what is relevant, that Wikipedia has articles on both "moron" and "idiot"?

Personally I'd redirect them both to [[mental retardation]].

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
On 3/26/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 26/03/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Any such request must be addressed to the Arbitration Committee.  You
> can
> > e-mail me a request to forward to the committee if you wish, or perhaps
> one
> > of the arbitrators who is subscribed here will indicate that he is doing
> > so.  I have no view on the merits of such request but obviously as clerk
> > will implement any changes authorized by the committee.
>
>
> Emailing an arbitrator or a clerk will get email to the AC, and
> there's the direct address, arbcom-l - the list is moderated, but
> basically anything from a human is let straight through (and the
> buckets of spam aren't).
>
>
> - d.

Thank you.  I will likewise forward an unblock request to unblock-1

Rob Smith
aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are newspapers reliable resources?


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
This all sounds about right to me.  Context matters, of course, and so I
think there is a huge red herring here if we too simplistically compare
potentially libelous or simply hurtful information in a biography of a
living person with arcane information from academic journals, etc.

Arie van Buuren wrote:
> Jimbo, could you please comment on the following attempt to understand your
> point?
>
> We often need to know the relative importance of  information in the context
> of an article. An important use is to e.g. establish attribution (who hold
> this POV; are they the majority, a minority, a tiny minority), or relevance
> (is it relevant to many people; is this between the subject and a limited
> number of others; how widely has it been reported/interpreted/analyzed?) To
> discover this, we will virtually always need reliable, secondary sources:
> the mere *existence* of a primary source whose actual number of visitors is
> unknown (such as court records) does not tell us anything about its
> importance, while both the existence of e.g. books or mainstream media
> reports on the information and the interpretations/analysis/etc they
> provide, may tell us what we need to know.
>
> Information without sources that provide a context, constitutes original
> research - not to the degree that it is untrue, but to the degree that we do
> not *know* how (un)important it is and are relying on our personal insights
> instead. We should err on the side of caution by not including it in the
> encyclopedia.
>
> Thanks,
>
> AvB
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 3/25/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> This part of their policy is almost funny seeing how much we all just
> "love" WP:TLAs
>
> "No initialisms. The Policy pages of the Citizendium may not contain
> any three-letter "initialisms." For example, "IAR," "NOR," and "AFD"
> are three letter initialisms. These expressions are a considerable
> problem for new users who are unfamiliar with them. The first time a
> user introduces such an expression in a policy page, he/she will be
> warned and the expression removed. The second time a user repeats this
> offense, he will be banned for a suitable amount of time.?

I look forward to seeing what sort of private jargon they wind up
developing -- and if they realize that they've done so.  Initialisms
are the English Wikipedia's jargon.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
Cary Bass wrote:
> I will say this much.  In a cursory review of the situation, nothing should
> be done with regard to the restoration of this article until the Wikimedia
> Foundation office has had a chance to look at it in an official capacity; no
> matter what consensus Deletion Review may encounter.  This will occur some
> time after 13h00 (UTC) Monday, March 26, when the office is open.
>
> Discussion aside, without being able to discuss the matter from a legal
> standpoint, there's no case in restoring the article with the questionable
> content.
>
> Cary Bass
> ---
> ~ bastique
>
I wanted to follow up with my email from last night.  If anyone is
waiting for any official word from the office, as far as we're
concerned, unless something changes, there will be none.

Thanks,
Cary Bass
---
~ bastique


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 26/03/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> IANAL... IANAIPL.. but I read Slashdot a lot (isn't that just as
> good?) and I don't remember any headlines saying "Supreme court
> decides in favor of GPL!" Even the GPL is a bit up in the air.

Er, not really. The FSF say they regularly sort out GPL problems
quietly by starting with the original premise of the license - that
the *default* is all rights reserved, and that you don't have to
accept the license terms, but they're the only thing making it not all
rights reserved. That the GPL hasn't been through court is because
only a bloody idiot would try. (The last bloody idiot to try was
Daniel Wallace, and IBM is now using his tattered legal corpse to beat
SCO, the second-last bloody idiot to try, over the head with.)

The GFDL works the same way. The only thing that gives you the right
to reuse my contributions to Wikipedia is that I've released them
under the GFDL. (I've also dual-licensed my own under any CC-by-sa
licence.) No-one has to accept the licence terms for my work - but if
they reuse it other than under one of the licenses, they are violating
my copyright. Note - not Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's, but *mine*.

Now multiply that by a thousand.

> Now, the GFDL... I don't think there's any really big, important
> project _except_ Wikipedia, and I don't think Wikipedia has ever
> engaged in any lawsuits in which the GFDL played any kind of role
> whatsoever. The GFDL is so legally puzzling that Wikipedia itself
> can't give nice, simple, crystal-clear rules on how to re-use
> Wikipedia content. Nobody understand what the attribution and history
> rules really mean and what does or does not satisfy them in practice.
> And none of what anyone thinks they might understand has ever been
> tested in court.

I think the cut'n'paste planned is pretty bloody blatant.

> Who the heck is going to sue Citizendium? Nobody has a big stake in
> their Wikipedia contributions. There's no money involved. And so many
> of the issues involve other licenses being _less_ free than GFDL.

Someone pissed off enough. For one, there's the DMCA to apply.

If you strike the hornet's nest, you get to negotiate with each hornet
individually.

> The only way this can ever be a problem is if Jimbo decides to have
> Wikipedia sue Citizendium based on ego and personal spite, and I
> don't think he's that spiteful, and I'm not sure he could convince
> the Wikimedia Foundation to do it.
> And by golly if I ever see a banner saying "Wikimedia needs your
> contribution to fund its continuing legal struggle against
> Citizendium" you can't expect much in the way of contributions from
> _me._

You appear to be under the impression the copyright in question is
Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's. It's not - they own hardly any of the
stuff on the sites.

- d.


from_name: Rich Holton

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> My second brought me to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Liechtenstein, which
>> is clearly taken directly from
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtensteinwithout any attribution
>> whatsoever.  They've even left in most of the image
>> links and template calls, not to mention the great mass of red at the bottom
>> where our interwiki links are.
>
> So Citizendium is a non-compliant mirror. What is our standard
> procedure for dealing with them?
>

Small, but important clarification: I'm pretty sure they would be
considered a fork or sorts, not a mirror.

-Rich


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was Wikimedia
	Foundation sued)

body:
About the current DRV... is there a reason why the article's history is
still obfuscated? Makes it hard for non-admins to judge/evaluate fairly. I
see people saying "RS were there" and others saying "No RS was there", but I
recall seeing some. However, it's currently just the word of people who can
see it against all else...

Shouldn't it be restored?

--
- Denny


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
On 3/26/07, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> From the Christian Science Monitor:
>
>
> _http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Tak
> en_in_Tow_
> (
> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Taken_in_Tow
> )
>
> Danny
>
>
>
> ************************************** AOL now offers free email to
> everyone.
> Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.

I'm sure the CSM published a new article when the truth was found out,
however. This is why we shouldn't immediately write massive, unproportionate
sections about something that was recently in the news. Instead, we should
wait a while, to determine what its real notability is and give time so
everything in the news reports can be confirmed.


body:
On 3/26/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 26/03/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
> > About the current DRV... is there a reason why the article's history is
> > still obfuscated? Makes it hard for non-admins to judge/evaluate fairly.
> I
> > see people saying "RS were there" and others saying "No RS was there",
> but I
> > recall seeing some. However, it's currently just the word of people who
> can
> > see it against all else...
> >
> > Shouldn't it be restored?
>
> Well, the point of a deletion review is to decide whether or not the
> article should be undeleted. Surely undeleting it in order to decide
> to undelete it seems a bit odd...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray

I'd seen some DRVs where the article history (but not the article, which
stayed locked as that protected stub page) was restored for the duration of
the DRV so people could judge. is that an exception then? what makes
something qualify for that?

--
- Denny


from_name: Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
>
> There is a simple solution: separate and move the Findings & Remedies
> regarding the LaRouche editors out of the case and rename it LaRouche3.
> This
> can be done without rehearing any substanitive issues.
>
> Rob Smith
> aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02

If you want to pursue this, it should be with the arbitrators, not on this
general mailing list.  Ordinary users can do nothing about the matter you
are raising; conversely, many of the arbitrators may not be subscribed or
reading here.

Newyorkbrad


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> The legal team doesn't seem to be worried as I thought they would react.
> There's nothing inappropriate about the article.
>
> Mgm
>
>

Please don't make assumptions.  The fact that the office has no opinion
at this time about the article does not earn it a magic "Seal of
Approval".  It still must qualify based on English Wikipedia standards,
and, from what I've seen, it fails those.

Cary Bass
---
~bastique


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin, March 25, 2007

body:
Wikimania 2007 Team Bulletin

Date: March 25, 2007

Summary:

* Wikimania registration starts
* Call for Participation
* Volunteer rights
* Wikimedia Academy Tour in Taiwan
* WikiReader editing begins
* Interview with Business Next Bi-Weekly

1. Wikimania registration starts

The registration is open for Wikimania 2007 now, and it will be ended in
July 30, 2007. In this year Wikimania will be held from August 3-5, 2007 in
Taipei, Taiwan at Chien Tan Overseas Youth Activity Center. You are also
welcomed to register for the Hacking Days Extra and Citizen Journalism
Unconference, which will be held in August 2, 2007 at the same place. For
more information, please refer to Registration
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Registration> .

The Wikimedia Foundation is also offering a limited number of scholarships
to help attendees defray part of the costs of attending Wikimania 2007.
Applications must be received as soon as possible, but no later than April
1, 2007, and they will be reviewed by the Wikimania 2007 Scholarship
Committee. For more information, please refer to Scholarships
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships> .

2. Call for Participation

We are accepting submissions for posters, presentations, workshops, and
discussion groups. We are also accepting nominations for speakers and
speaker panels, and suggestions for other activities. The submission should
not be later than April 30, 2007 and should address one or more of the
following themes: Wikimedia Communities, Free Content and Technical
infrastructure. Your topic must be related to Wikimedia projects and its
communities or to the creation of free content in general. For information
and guidelines, please refer to Call for Participation
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_Participation> .

3. Volunteer rights

The organization team would like to remind volunteers to record their
working hours on Translating, Website Content Building, WikiReader and
Coordination. If the working hours are more than 50 hours then volunteers
can attend Wikimania for free from August 3 to 5, 2007 (however, you still
need to pay for accommodation and foods). Please report your working hours
to Htchien <http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Htchien> . For more
information, please refer to the volunteer program
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20070205#The_obligati
ons_and_rights_of_volunteers> .

4. Wikimedia Academy Tour in Taiwan

The tour is held to let Taiwanese people know what is Wikimedia and its
projects and how to enrich the Chinese content in the projects; through the
participation in the projects, they can improve their communication skills
with participants from all over the world so they can become Wikimania
volunteers. For more information, please refer to Seminar (Chinese)
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Seminar> .

5. WikiReader editing begins

The editing for WikiReader on Wikimania 2007 now also begins and is planned
to be delivered to the attendees when Wikimania is been held in August 3-5,
2007.

6. Interview with Business Next Bi-Weekly

A Taiwanese IT media, Business Next Bi-Weekly <http://www.bnext.com.tw>, has
interviewed the organization team on the organization process of Wikimania
last Saturday (March 16, 2007). We will keep you informed when the article
is been published.

7. Distribution of this Bulletin and feedback

Everyone is welcomed to reproduce and distribute this bulletin to their
websites, mailing lists, BBS, blogs, and so on, but please kindly include
the Bulletin's original location
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Team_Bulletin/20070325>  on the
official Wikimania 2007 website in your distribution.

If you have any questions, ideas or suggestions, please leave them in:

* The talk page of the team bulletin
<http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Team_Bulletin/20070325>
* Wikimania-l mailing list
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l>


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
Oh pshaw.

Even ignoring the fact that en's inclusion policies on articles like
this are a load of crap, it passes the most stringent proposed ones.
It has multiple non-trivial mentions in reputable sources (SFWA and
Making Light), the sources are all reputable (her website is a valid
primary source for information on her). There's a reason it
overwhelmingly survived an AfD last year.

There is no policy justification whatsoever for deleting this page.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >

On Mar 26, 2007, at 12:05 PM, Cary Bass wrote:

> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> The legal team doesn't seem to be worried as I thought they would
>> react.
>> There's nothing inappropriate about the article.
>>
>> Mgm
>>
>>
>
> Please don't make assumptions.  The fact that the office has no
> opinion
> at this time about the article does not earn it a magic "Seal of
> Approval".  It still must qualify based on English Wikipedia
> standards,
> and, from what I've seen, it fails those.
>
> Cary Bass
> ---
> ~bastique
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
To answer the question, I don't think newspapers are particularly
reliable sources.  I've seen them get things wrong way too often.
Most recently the so called "Essjay incident" has brought to light how
easy it is to get completely made up stuff into even a respectable
newspaper.  Before that we've seen time and again when Jimmy has
complained that newspapers have misquoted him or otherwise gotten
their facts wrong, and even before that I remember him commenting when
Wikipedia published information about how much he spent on bandwidth
that the figure was provided by him and wasn't fact checked (so he
could have easily made the number up).

That said, I don't think we could possibly throw out the use of
newspapers altogether.  Maybe a rule that a fact which is
substantiated only by newspapers should be attributed?  Even that
might be too harsh, but I certainly think one should lean toward
attribution when using a newspaper as a source.

And I disagree with Oskar that the number of newspapers makes much of
a difference.  Multiple newspapers often have the exact same
misinformation, due to associated press stories and other borrowings
(legal and illegal).  I remember the police killing of the subway
bombing suspect as one prominent incident where the newspapers were
getting the story blatantly wrong, and Wikipedia adopted much of the
misinformation from them, reporting some of the misinformation as fact
and without attribution.

Along those lines, and agreeing with Rory, that's one reason I
suggested at the time that we should leave the reporting of breaking
news to Wikinews.  Immediately correct anything obviously made
incorrect (Lisa Nowak is a NASA astronaut), but leave the details to
time and/or Wikinews.

But that's all just my opinion.

Anthony

On 3/26/07, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> From the Christian Science Monitor:
>
> _http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Tak
> en_in_Tow_
> (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passengers_Safely_Moved_and_Steamer_Titanic_Taken_in_Tow)
>
> Danny
>


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
Thanks for your reply, Jesse.

2007/3/26, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com>:

> The policy is not at fault for the delays.
Correct

> but we still have to get the policy development
> out of the way first.

You mean the subcommittee itself considers [[Meta:Language proposal policy]]
not final? Is that what you're saying? If so, why did it reject requests (e.
g. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ladin)
"in accordance with the Language proposal
policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy>"
for incompatibility with the same?

> I've said this so many times I'm starting to doubt whether it's
> possible, but it should not take much longer. Assuming nobody suddenly
> notices another all-important problem and forces a full halt, we
> should begin processing requests within a week or two.

So what exactly is the problem?

> Although the current delays are unacceptable, please be careful not to
> mistakenly hearken back to the good old days before the subcommittee;

We agree that there's no going back to the old, often chaotic system. I
still think that a language subcommittee _can_ play a positive role in
fostering multilingualism. But unfortunately that's only a potentiality so
far, while the reality is far from it. So let's see to changing that.

> Feedback on the policy would be much appreciated. Is there anything in
> particular you oppose or dislike?

The policy is not bad, especially since it picks up many criteria that had
previously been applied already, in a less formalized manner. Of course, one
could always place a slightly different emphasis here and there but the very
last thing we need now is another endless, tedious policy discussion.* What
we really need now are _results_. What I'm really dreading is a new,
infinite discussion of principles locking out all those fellow Wikipedians
who speak Kabyle, Lower Sorbian and forth for another, dunno, three years.

So I'd suggest to work with what we have. Let's apply the Language proposal
policy _judiciously_, not prohibitively. Especially, let's not expect
potential new Wikipedians to do things that are not part of the policy and
then wonder why highly promising new projects never come to live. Let's
always bear in mind that proposers of new Wikipedias from remote regions of
the earth might not necessarily have ten years of Internet experience and be
wiki-savvy and that many of them don't understand English as well as you and
I. Let's support them proactively. Let's never forget that there's tens of
millions of people out there who are currently excluded from our treasure of
free knowledge because they cannot understand any of the languages we're
using at the moment.

And above all: Let's put aside un-wikilike nitpicking and boldly say:
"Yes, you can. Go ahead. Welcome aboard, good to have you here!"

Have a good day everybody
--Arbeo

* Just one small suggestion. Policy says under section "Conditional approval":
"At least five active users must edit that language regularly before a test
project will be considered successful." I'd set a lower requirement (e. g. 3
users) here for small languages (under, say, 100,000 speakers or so) in
order to make the policy non-discriminatory. While it might be fairly easy
for communities like the Kabyle to round up a start-up team of five editors,
it is probably disproportionately difficult for small language communities.


body:
On 3/25/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Seriously, the whole "personality cult" thing loses all meaning if it
> automatically applies to anyone who has successfully led anything.
> Surely there must be some sort of leadership which involves something
> other than encouraging "cult" behaviors.
>
Your tendency to rewrite history to suit your own purpose is certainly
a factor against you.  Your previous use of Wikimedia funds to travel
around the world certainly didn't score a plus for you.  And your
current practice of profiting off of Wikia while still maintaining
your positions of power within Wikipedia is questionable at best.

That said, if I understand the term correctly personality cults are
generally much more blatant than this, and as such I don't think
"personality cult" an appropriate term.

Anthony


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
When we are to support languages, we have to support them well and, we have
to support them in an equal way. With Incubator we have the potential of
having people prove that there language is viable as a new language. For
users the ability of having support of their user interface is an important
factor of this.

The technical  procedures of creating new languages are faulty because they
do not create message files for these languages and when new projects are
created, the only place where these language files are created are the new
projects. When you ask for these message files to be imported into MediaWiki
proper, there are too many hoops to jump through.

It is for this reason that we explicitly want the message files to be
created in the Incubator and have the messages created in this way supported
in MediaWiki. At this moment we are waiting for the developers to create the
missing message files in the Incubator.

If you can find a friendly developer to create these message files in
Incubator, when the basic messages have been translated, we LOVE to have
more projects.

You have to appreciate that by having a committee, a committee that spends a
lot of time to come up with some sensible policies, they have to have a
certain authority because only this will make things move forward. The
requirement of the message files has  been communicated on many occasions.
It is the one thing stopping projects becoming full projects.

Thanks,
     GerardM

On 3/26/07, Arbeo M <arbeo.wiki at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks for your reply, Jesse.
>
> 2007/3/26, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com>:
>
> > The policy is not at fault for the delays.
> Correct
>
>
> > but we still have to get the policy development
> > out of the way first.
>
> You mean the subcommittee itself considers [[Meta:Language proposal
> policy]]
> not final? Is that what you're saying? If so, why did it reject requests
> (e.
> g.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikipedia_Ladin)
> "in accordance with the Language proposal
> policy<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy>"
> for incompatibility with the same?
>
>
> > I've said this so many times I'm starting to doubt whether it's
> > possible, but it should not take much longer. Assuming nobody suddenly
> > notices another all-important problem and forces a full halt, we
> > should begin processing requests within a week or two.
>
> So what exactly is the problem?
>
>
>
> > Although the current delays are unacceptable, please be careful not to
> > mistakenly hearken back to the good old days before the subcommittee;
>
> We agree that there's no going back to the old, often chaotic system. I
> still think that a language subcommittee _can_ play a positive role in
> fostering multilingualism. But unfortunately that's only a potentiality so
> far, while the reality is far from it. So let's see to changing that.
>
>
>
> > Feedback on the policy would be much appreciated. Is there anything in
> > particular you oppose or dislike?
>
> The policy is not bad, especially since it picks up many criteria that had
> previously been applied already, in a less formalized manner. Of course,
> one
> could always place a slightly different emphasis here and there but the
> very
> last thing we need now is another endless, tedious policy discussion.*
> What
> we really need now are _results_. What I'm really dreading is a new,
> infinite discussion of principles locking out all those fellow Wikipedians
> who speak Kabyle, Lower Sorbian and forth for another, dunno, three years.
>
> So I'd suggest to work with what we have. Let's apply the Language
> proposal
> policy _judiciously_, not prohibitively. Especially, let's not expect
> potential new Wikipedians to do things that are not part of the policy and
> then wonder why highly promising new projects never come to live. Let's
> always bear in mind that proposers of new Wikipedias from remote regions
> of
> the earth might not necessarily have ten years of Internet experience and
> be
> wiki-savvy and that many of them don't understand English as well as you
> and
> I. Let's support them proactively. Let's never forget that there's tens of
> millions of people out there who are currently excluded from our treasure
> of
> free knowledge because they cannot understand any of the languages we're
> using at the moment.
>
> And above all: Let's put aside un-wikilike nitpicking and boldly say:
> "Yes, you can. Go ahead. Welcome aboard, good to have you here!"
>
> Have a good day everybody
> --Arbeo
>
>
> * Just one small suggestion. Policy says under section "Conditional
> approval":
> "At least five active users must edit that language regularly before a
> test
> project will be considered successful." I'd set a lower requirement (e. g.
> 3
> users) here for small languages (under, say, 100,000 speakers or so) in
> order to make the policy non-discriminatory. While it might be fairly easy
> for communities like the Kabyle to round up a start-up team of five
> editors,
> it is probably disproportionately difficult for small language
> communities.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: bobolozo

body:
--- Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/25/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This part of their policy is almost funny seeing
> how much we all just
> > "love" WP:TLAs
> >
> > "No initialisms. The Policy pages of the
> Citizendium may not contain
> > any three-letter "initialisms." For example,
> "IAR," "NOR," and "AFD"
> > are three letter initialisms. These expressions
> are a considerable
> > problem for new users who are unfamiliar with
> them. The first time a
> > user introduces such an expression in a policy
> page, he/she will be
> > warned and the expression removed. The second time
> a user repeats this
> > offense, he will be banned for a suitable amount
> of time.?
>
> I look forward to seeing what sort of private jargon
> they wind up
> developing -- and if they realize that they've done
> so.  Initialisms
> are the English Wikipedia's jargon.

Exactly.

Despite their silly "acronyms are bad, they make it
hard for new people to understand what we're saying"
policy, jargon is necessary and inevitable. In fact, I
think in a way it's better to have acronyms like
"NPOV" than to use common english words like the one
Citizendium has chosen for NPOV, "neutral".

If you use a common english word, then you will have
endless confusion by new or less-than-bright editors
who will believe that by "neutral", everyone means the
common dictionary definition of "neutral", rather than
the policy definition of neutral.

Citizendium will have a policy on precisely what
"neutral" means, which will change over time and take
on a complex meaning as editors argue over it.

I've seen long revert wars kept going by confused
editors on Wikipedia who insisted that "My source IS
reliable, it's never been wrong in the last 2 years!"
and "This information is verifiable, I can verify it!"
and so on.

At least when you type in NPOV, people are instantly
clued into the fact that a specialized term is being
used, one they are not yet familiar with, and which
they need to read up on before they can understand
what is being discussed.

(And for God's sake, we're really supposed to fully
type out "Articles for Deletion" instead of AfD, every
one of the 10,000 times a day the term is used
somewhere on wikipedia?)

____________________________________________________________________________________
Don't pick lemons.
See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos.
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] ArbCom pages and Google

body:
On 3/26/07, Rob Smith <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/26/07, Newyorkbrad (Wikipedia) <newyorkbrad at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > There is a simple solution: separate and move the Findings & Remedies
> > > regarding the LaRouche editors out of the case and rename it
> LaRouche3.
> > > This
> > > can be done without rehearing any substanitive issues.
> > >
> > > Rob Smith
> > > aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02
> >
> >
> > If you want to pursue this, it should be with the arbitrators, not on
> this
> > general mailing list.  Ordinary users can do nothing about the matter
> you
> > are raising; conversely, many of the arbitrators may not be subscribed
> or
> > reading here.
> >
> > Newyorkbrad
>
> Thank you.  This involves two steps (1) a limited unblock (2) forwarding
> this request to ArbCom1.  Given the serious nature of these slanders that
> Google picks up, and my efforts at redress through Wikipedia's internal
> regulatory processes, coupled with bureaucratic rebuffs, this thread here
> appears to be the first time this problem has been brought to the attention
> of the Community.
>
> Is there a way to expedite a limited unblock for the purpose of ArbCom
> addressing a very simple matter that could be disposed fairly quickly and
> painlessly?  This matter has lingered for one and half years now and must be
> addressed sooner or later.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Rob Smith
> aka User:Nobs01 & Nobs02

Any such request must be addressed to the Arbitration Committee.  You can
e-mail me a request to forward to the committee if you wish, or perhaps one
of the arbitrators who is subscribed here will indicate that he is doing
so.  I have no view on the merits of such request but obviously as clerk
will implement any changes authorized by the committee.

Newyorkbrad


body:
On Mar 26, 2007, at 12:19 PM, Vee wrote:

>
> You've summed up exactly how I feel here. I don't care so much that
> CZ is
> copypasting from Wikipedia, per se, but that (from what I have read
> on their
> site) they are trying to do it in such a way that we won't be able
> to take
> back from them if we should want to. It's disgusting to think that
> they are
> trying to get a lift off the backs of hard-working Wikipedia
> editors without
> having to credit them for their work or use their work in the way
> it was
> intended. It's totally against the spirit of what we're trying to
> do here
> and is very underhanded and well, plain wrong.

My sense of reading the relevant thread is that this is not the case
- Larry, at least, does not seem interested in blocking WP from using
CZ content. Some CZ users do, but some CZ users are probably idiots.

-Phil


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
> Is this the first time the WMF has actually been sued? I know there
> are a lot of threats, but how often does it actually eventuate?

I seem to remember something about the German chapter getting sued - I
don't know the details.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/26/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> just a bit of sense.  Some of them seem to think it would be a good
> idea to take Wikipedia content and relicense it under CC-by-nc so that
> Wikipedia couldn't reincorporate their changes.  Many more think it
> will be desirable to at least cut Wikipedia off from any use of what
> Citizendium produces from scratch.  And in order to avoid the license

This would be a very intriguing turn of events. Citizendium takes
Wikipedia's free content, releases it as free content, but won't give
it back... I can just see the XKCD already.

Steve


body:
> My second brought me to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Liechtenstein, which
> is clearly taken directly from
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtensteinwithout any attribution
> whatsoever.  They've even left in most of the image
> links and template calls, not to mention the great mass of red at the bottom
> where our interwiki links are.

So Citizendium is a non-compliant mirror. What is our standard
procedure for dealing with them?


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ron Ritzman [mailto:ritzman at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 07:14 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions
>
>On 3/26/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The message that started this thread quoted a message from the Barbara Bauer
>> situation. It may look and sound malicious to the untrained eye and ear at
>> first glance, but anyone who dives deeper into the material will find all of
>> the sources are truthfull and reliable.
>
>The deleting admin didn't think so. If my idea was in effect and the
>foundation didn't have the Bauer article in limbo, then you, if an
>admin, could have restored it and that would have been the end of the
>story as far as super fast ultra-speedy deletes are concerned. The
>"truthfullness" and "reliability" of the sources could then be argued
>on AFD if necessary.
>Also, I have a hard time imagining a situation where it is absolutely
>impossible to purge POV from the bio of an otherwise notable person
>without nuking the article.

The "offending" information remains in the history without extensive oversighting which would be grossly inappropriate in this case as the article history is the subject of a legal action.

Fred


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/26/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My second brought me to http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Liechtenstein, which
> > is clearly taken directly from
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtensteinwithout any attribution
> > whatsoever.  They've even left in most of the image
> > links and template calls, not to mention the great mass of red at the bottom
> > where our interwiki links are.
>
> So Citizendium is a non-compliant mirror. What is our standard
> procedure for dealing with them?

Start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Abc#Citizendium

--
geni


body:
> So now they're live, and they still have decided what license to use.

What license are the current contributions under? Do they intend to
wipe the database clean and start again once they decide on a license?


from_name: stevertigo

body:
On 3/26/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Most deletion, it doesn't really matter if the history is visible or
> not - it's not that the article is damaging as such, we just don't
> want it as part of Wikipedia. In this case, though, the deletion was
> (asserted to be) because the history was actually defamatory; if this
> is the case, we actively don't want to continue publishing it.
> Deleting libellous material, and then undeleting it so lots more
> people can read it, is conceptually a bit sloppy.

This is a circular argument, and one that seems prejudiced toward deletion.
And you don't actually give the reason for this prejudice until your next email:

> I did not say it was defamatory. I said it was asserted to as
> defamatory. As there is A LAWSUIT CLAIMING THIS, I can't possibly
> imagine how anyone got the idea that the content might be dubious.

In this case, because the removal is based on a fear of WP:SUIT, it should be
an OFFICE action, and not a deletion. Not that I think office actions
are a legitimate
way of editing, nor do I think that a fear or SUIT is a healthy
attitude, but the point is
is that if its a WP process, this notion of sanitizing content in a
prejudicial way is unwiki
and against the community spirit.

-Stevertigo


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 3/26/07, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/07, Vee <vee.be.me at gmail.com> wrote:
> > From the forum:
> >
> > Larry Sanger: "The conclusion you are trying to establish is that we cannot
> > relicense our versions of Wikipedia articles with GFDL and CC.  Why not?
> > Does the GFDL explicitly forbid licensing works under another license in
> > addition?"
> >
> > Is he seriously suggesting that they can basically just license our works
> > under whatever license they please as long as they also license it under the
> > GFDL?
> >
> > I can't believe they've gone 'live' without even sorting out basic copyright
> > issues... CZ is a joke.
>
> It's baffling that the founder of this project has only a cursory
> knowledge of copyright, less than an experienced wikipedia editor.
>
I found this baffling as well, and when I called Larry on his lack of
knowledge of the GFDL he replied that he was the one who chose the
GFDL for Wikipedia!

My initial thought was "oh, so you're the one we have to blame for
that - explains a lot that the person who chose the license for
Wikipedia had no clue what it meant".  My actual reply was a bit
nicer, I believe.

All of this said, I believe Larry had a conversation with some
higher-ups in the free content movement, and some of his
misconceptions were cleared up.  But he still thinks it might be a
good idea to license Citizendium created content under CC-BY-NC (or is
it CC-BY-NC-SA, he doesn't seem to understand the difference).

Anthony


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [20707]
	trunk/phase3/includes/Metadata.php

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

simetrical at svn.wikimedia.org wrote:
> +	if( !isset($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT']) ) {
> +		$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT'] = '';
> +	}

Please don't mess with system variables!

Leave it be and only check when you read it.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGCAg3wRnhpk1wk44RAofUAKDPXZoU1/SDSBySttJsvlgUCwIT2ACeNbX5
wCC3WO+42n+PTWG5qcjx+d0=
=c4x6
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from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
On 3/25/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> > Apparently, literary agent [[Barbara Bauer]] has sued a number of
> > people and organizations, including the Wikimedia Foundation, for
>
> Is this the first time the WMF has actually been sued? I know there
> are a lot of threats, but how often does it actually eventuate?

I believe this is the first time the foundation itself has been sued.
There was the injunction against the German chapter, and someone
(Brandt?) once filed a suit that included 200 "John Doe" Wikipedia
editors but very quickly dropped it.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


body:
On 3/26/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> My sense of reading the relevant thread is that this is not the case
> - Larry, at least, does not seem interested in blocking WP from using
> CZ content. Some CZ users do, but some CZ users are probably idiots.
>
> -Phil

I believe you're correct, and I'd also like to point out that the
license for CZ-originated content has not yet been chosen (it has been
conceded that Wikipedia-originated content must be GFDL).

If you feel strongly about this matter, please participate in the
forums, or on the wiki, or send an email to Larry directly.  I think
he'll be willing to listen, because he doesn't seem to care a whole
lot about the license.

Anthony


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote

> It wouldn't, but this isn't badly sourced, neither is it an attack page.

I don't know the precise meaning of 'attack page'. But WP:BLP obviously means that the concept is to be taken broadly.

Charles

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