from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: browser black list

body:
Anthere wrote:

>
>
> Gerard Meijssen a ?crit:
>
>> Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Some browsers are not UNICODE compliant.
>>> The consequence is that some users are breaking pages... and don't
>>> understant how/why.
>>> I propose to implement a test on each update of article, and put a
>>> warning if the user's browser belongs to a regexp (browser black
>>> list) specified in the config file.
>>>
>>> reactions ?
>>>
>>> Best regards
>>>
>>> Emmanuel Engelhart
>>>
>> As they have a negative effect on mediawiki content, why not banning
>> them from changing stuff ? The reason is obvious NPOV and there are
>> good quality alternatives like Firefox.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>
>
> Banning someone just because he has an old browser/computer is not a
> good idea...
>
> Which NPOV are you talking about ?
>
> anthere

Banning someone because he has an old computer is not in question.
Banning someone because he has an old browser is in itself also not a
problem. The neutral point is when a particular brand / version breaks
the Mediawiki content AND when we have no way of preventing damage. When
we inform that we DO want their edits but that a different browser like
Firefox, prevents the user to damage our data, it will be reasonable and
measured to request the user to install a browser that we help him choose.

Most defininitly we are NOT banning persons here, we are banning tools
that damage our data.

Thanks,
    Gerard


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

body:
On Oct 7, 2004, at 8:35 AM, Andre Engels wrote:

> On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 10:59:58 -0700 "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales"
> <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> But this sort of permission is inadequate for us.  We need a free
>> license.
>
> I don't agree. People should have the possibility to take a Wikipedia
> article, change it, and publish it either commercially or
> non-commercially. What we need is that people have the right to do
> _that_. I have no problems with images that are not allowed to be sold
> as is, as long as it is allowed to sell a book or encyclopedia that
> contains those articles.
>
> Andre Engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

At which point the article is no longer open source, because someone
else owns part of the source that does not travel with the article, and
the owner of the images can precent wikimedia from selling the exact
product, or at any future time decide to unilaterally alter the license
and require payment.

Proprietary source is a seductive trap, and proprietary vendors will
give away for free for a while, and then, once you are locked in -
because the open source solutions are killed off - raise prices to
monopoly levels. Jimbo is absolutely on the money: don't take the
proprietary crack, stay clean and sober on this one.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: browser black list

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>
> Most defininitly we are NOT banning persons here, we are banning tools
> that damage our data.
>
Maybe we can serve them "de-unicoded" text for the edit box, then
"re-unicode" it upon preview/save?

Magnus


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Email notification enotif v1.1 released (patch for
 current phase3 CVS version 1.4)

body:
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454

To whom it may concern:

today I released a new version of *** e-mail notification for changed
pages and user_talk pages (enotif) ***, which corrects a text and
recipients' address problem when sending the notification mails. The
patch is based on yesterday's evening version of CVS 1.4, further
updates are currently synchronised with 1.4 version as suggested by
Brion, and a lot of documentation pages are available on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Enotif .

Remark: the useful proposals by Brion, JeLuF and Wil - see Bugzilla -
are not yet integrated into this v1.1 source, but will be soon.

I am looking forward to your feedback, if you can invest the time for
implementing and testing it.

Tom
Berlin


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: browser black list

body:
Selon Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com>:

> Anthere wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Gerard Meijssen a ?crit:
> >
> >> Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hi
> >>>
> >>> Some browsers are not UNICODE compliant.
> >>> The consequence is that some users are breaking pages... and don't
> >>> understant how/why.
> >>> I propose to implement a test on each update of article, and put a
> >>> warning if the user's browser belongs to a regexp (browser black
> >>> list) specified in the config file.
> >>>
> >>> reactions ?
> >>>
> >>> Best regards
> >>>
> >>> Emmanuel Engelhart
> >>>
> >> As they have a negative effect on mediawiki content, why not banning
> >> them from changing stuff ? The reason is obvious NPOV and there are
> >> good quality alternatives like Firefox.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>    GerardM
> >
> >
> > Banning someone just because he has an old browser/computer is not a
> > good idea...
> >
> > Which NPOV are you talking about ?
> >
> > anthere
>
> Banning someone because he has an old computer is not in question.
> Banning someone because he has an old browser is in itself also not a
> problem. The neutral point is when a particular brand / version breaks
> the Mediawiki content AND when we have no way of preventing damage. When
> we inform that we DO want their edits but that a different browser like
> Firefox, prevents the user to damage our data, it will be reasonable and
> measured to request the user to install a browser that we help him choose.
>
> Most defininitly we are NOT banning persons here, we are banning tools
> that damage our data.
>

I agree with Ant. We have to encourage people to participate.

I propose :
- put a warning for the edit box
- a confirm dialog box
- a appended string on the update notice, so someone on the 'last changes' page
can be warned.

Emmanuel


list: wikien-l

from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: completely off-topic

body:
Ugh, Real Player.

Jens Ropers wrote:
> Completely off topic, but I just '''had to''' send this, because of it's
> humour value:
>
> http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/1006/1news/1news56_11.smil
> This is a Real video stream about Google opening its European HQ in Dublin.
>
> Note towards the end -- what essential inventory did they bring to
> [[Baile Atha Cliath]]?
> You couldn't make it up.
> :-D


subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	Re: "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV shows, etc.

body:
It's just a pity that fair dealing is so restrictive in Australia.

TBSDY

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>>--- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I wouldnt like it if someone took a frame grab from one of my movies,
>>>but then you do see a lot of them on movie review sites.
>>
>>Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. ;)
>
>
> :-)
>
> Precisely.
>
> "Fair use" and "fair dealing" are important rights that should be
> defended and expanded, in my personal opinion.  We should be legally
> conservative in our use of them, of course.
>
> --Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Addressing bias in Malaysian political articles

body:
As a disinterested party, I'm happy to make suggestions.

TBSDY

John Lee wrote:
> Following up, it's just as I feared. I've had to place the NPOV notice
> on [[Malaysia]] as well, because it was corrupted *again*. The
> situation's degraded a lot; there's plenty of bickering particularly at
> [[Talk:Malaysia]], [[Talk:Bumiputra]] and [[Talk:Malaysian New Economic
> Policy]]. Would mediation be suitable? Because I really want someone
> else to critique the articles and past revisions for neutrality, not
> just mediation between the three parties here (myself, Malbear and
> Jpatokal).
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])


list: foundation-l

from_name: Eric Pöhlsen

subject: AW: [Foundation-l] Is the Voter's Guide legal?

body:
> But per our NPOV policy, we don't engage in political advocacy anyway.
>

NPOV is for the encyclopedia not for the books or am I mistaken?

Eric


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Apparently the basis of including them in [[List of alleged diploma mills]]
is this practice:

AGGREGATE-LEARNING ('external') DEGREES

The term "external degree" is fairly widely understood - but our 'external'
degree process is similarly applied to most programs completed at our
constituent and affiliate member colleges, and collaborating institutes. In
other words, our 'internal' students usually also achieve their degree on an
aggregate-learning basis, just like external candidates. Besides completing
a particular program of studies with us, they may also have received credit
for a wide range of learning accomplished elsewhere, including by
correspondence or on-line. Degree designations include Applied Science,
Arts, Business, Education, General Studies, Languages, and Technology. See
degree subjects.

We helped pioneer the degree designation of 'General Studies' for people who
have completed various programs, often discontinuously in time, and needing
a context in which to aggregate them for an appropriate degree. In our oral
interview/dissertation stage of the degree process, we encourage candidates
to explore ways of relating one or more such learning outcomes to another,
if they have not already done so. Our pioneering of the General Studies
degree has commended itself to other universities, including Canada's Simon
Fraser University - which commenced 2000 a classroom-based Bachelor of
General Studies.

NEED THE DEGREE - BUT NOT REALLY MORE STUDIES?

You may have done past courses and other learning which equals an associate
or bachelor or master degree - but you accumulated that learning in a
variety of contexts, with no resulting degree outcome. Meeting your need,
Vancouver University's enhanced prior learning assessment process may
conclude with a degree in General Studies, or some other appropriate degree
designation. Your transcript then credibly documents all of your learning."

I can imagine this procedure being carried out in good faith, or not. I have
created a stub [[Vancouver University Worldwide]] with a link to their
website.

Fred

> From: Jeff Bonham <jbonham at mail.utm.utoronto.ca>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 01:21:45 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University
> <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu> -----
>
> X-Original-To: silsor at localhost
> To: jbonham at mail.utm.utoronto.ca
> From: Infotech - Vancouver University <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu>
> Subject: List of fake universities
> X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any
> abuse report
> X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - canada3.dnshotel.com
> X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - mail.utm.utoronto.ca
> X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
> X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - vancouveruniversity.edu
> X-Source:
> X-Source-Args:
> X-Source-Dir:
>
> Hi,
> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
> universities.
> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
> and note how inappropriate to so list us
> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>
> Thanks for any help in this matter,
> Derrick
>
>
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.772 / Virus Database: 519 - Release Date: 10/1/2004
>
>
> ----- End forwarded message -----
>
> --
> Jeff Bonham
> jbonham at mail.utm.utoronto.ca
> PGP Public Key ID: BA289747
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
According to the Oregon Student Assistance Commission Office of Degree
Authorization which lists Vancouver University Worldwide under "illegal
degrees" and defines

Illegal degrees in Oregon
Types of illegal degree providers classified under Oregon law. Degrees from
all of these suppliers are illegal for use in Oregon and the use of such
degrees can result in criminal prosecution or civil penalties. Note:
Definitions of Substandard Schools and Diploma Mills are from OAR 583-050;
foreign suppliers and unknown status suppliers are classified based on ORS
348.609.

Diploma Mills
"Diploma mill" or "degree mill" means an unaccredited school that meets any
one of the following conditions. (a) Issues degrees without requiring any
student academic work. (b) Issues degrees based solely on the student's life
experience or portfolio without requiring any college-level work submitted
to and evaluated by faculty with appropriate academic degrees from standard
institutions. (c) Issues degrees using more than 50 percent of required
credits based on the student's life experience or portfolio.

Vancouver University Worldwide    British Columbia    Appears to be a
diploma mill. ODA has no evidence that this is a legitimate provider of
postsecondary education meeting Oregon standards. Not authorized by
appropriate BC authority

See:

http://www.osac.state.or.us/oda/unaccredited.html

Fred

> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 12:58:02 -0600
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
>> Hi,
>> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
>> universities.
>> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>> and note how inappropriate to so list us
>> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>>
>> Thanks for any help in this matter,
>> Derrick


body:
Also listed in Michigan amoung decrees not accepted for civil service there:

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf

I have changed the name of the article to [[List of institutions of higher
learning which may not be accepted by civil service or other employers]]

That way it is not us but employers who publish lists that are designating
the institutions.

Fred

> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 13:09:53 -0600
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
>>> Hi,
>>> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
>>> universities.
>>> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>>> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>>> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>>> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>>> and note how inappropriate to so list us
>>> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>>> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>>>
>>> Thanks for any help in this matter,
>>> Derrick


from_name: ruimu uestc

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV shows, etc.

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

> --- Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wouldnt like it if someone took a frame grab from one of my movies,
> > but then you do see a lot of them on movie review sites.
>
> Whether you like it or not is irrelevant. ;)
>
> What matters is the amount of the work that is used and the use of that
> subset. Since a feature-length movie has over 150,000 frames in it, a
> single low resolution frame grab is an utterly tiny part of the whole
work.
> Add in the educational use and we have an *extremely* firm fair
> use/dealing/practice defense; far stronger than any claim of fair use
> over what was from the start a still photo.

Hum... If I understand you well, you are slicing a movie in frames and you
suggest that one frame would represent 1/150,000 of a movie's copyright.
Movies aren't homogenic chocolate bars you can slice and get pieces of the
same substantial chocolate in result. If I had made a suspense movie, the
last "slice" showing who is the murderer would weight a lot more than other
ones and I would hate a web-site to display it. What is copyrighted is the
work of the director (and co.), so a single frame could theorically be the
result of months of creative work, with never-seen dispositions of colors,
shapes, etc., and be as creative as, say,
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/PT/cranach-apollo-diana.gif

That's theory. In practice, most of today's movies are all made on the same
few prototypes, and creation skills are used the same way as the salt is
added by mcbots on bigmacs to give a little bit of a taste to oily cotton,
therefore taking the full movie in full resolution is hardly stealing the
work of someone' brain, but a simple copy of a copy of something already
done, already seen, alr...

(gbog)


from_name: Jan-Åke Larsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Size of images from WikiTeX

body:
Peter Danenberg wrote:
> > IE supports transparent PNGs just fine so long as they're binary
> > transparency rather than alpha.
>
>
>      Interesting,  Brion;  I'm  rewriting  WikiTeX  as a PHP
> extension, interfacing natively with ImageMagick's API.  Yet
> under IE, I've had limited success with DVI-derived PNG's.
>
>      Of  course, everything works beautifully in Firefox and
> company; and an alternative library may do the trick.

Or an alternative renderer. Try dvipng

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvipng/

I even have a small js solution to make the stuff render at the right
size and on the baseline in a web browser, but this is not released
(yet). Visual output of my latest try can be found at
http://www.mai.liu.se/~jalar/dvipng/test2.html
You can change fontsize as you want. AFAIK there is no js event for
text zoom, so you'll have to click in the page after a text zoom.

/J?

--
UNIX _is_ user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>"Fair use" and "fair dealing" are important rights that should be
>defended and expanded, in my personal opinion.  We should be legally
>conservative in our use of them, of course.
>
>
>
As there is probably no way to get images from famous TV shows under
GFDL/PD/CC, does that mean we *should* add frame grabs to the shows, one
for each episode, eventually? Or is such a thing discouraged in favor of
one or two frame grabs per show?

Magnus


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

body:
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 10:59:58 -0700 "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>But this sort of permission is inadequate for us.  We need a free license.

I don't agree. People should have the possibility to take a Wikipedia
article, change it, and publish it either commercially or non-commercially.
What we need is that people have the right to do _that_. I have no problems
with images that are not allowed to be sold as is, as long as it is allowed
to sell a book or encyclopedia that contains those articles.

Andre Engels


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV

body:
For what it's worth, a former film professor at BU told me a story once about
how he had found it difficult to impossible to get permission to use actual
film frames to illustrate a more-or-less scholarly book. He said that the
movie studios want everyone to use "production stills" instead, which are
high-quality conventional still photographs taken more or less concurrently
with the actual production. I'm not sure exactly why they want this, but
apparently most photographs "from films" that appear in traditional print
media are production stills rather than actual frames.

In his case, it was very annoying because he wanted to point out some
lighting and compositional details which were quite different in the
production stills and the actual film.

He eventually shrugged his shoulders and decided to risk using the frame
grabs without permission. This was a while ago and he never received any
lawyer letters about it.

His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was that
_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly laws
are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Nefercheprure Waenre

subject: [Wiktionary-l] czech wiktionary: case sensitive titles

body:
Hello.

Would there be any objections here to setting $wgCapitalLinks = false;
for the Czech Wiktionary? I have been advised by en:User:Angela to ask here,
before posting the change request submittal to wikitech-l. On the wiktionary
itself there are no objections as of today (three users supporting the switch
of a total of thirteen users).

--TMA [http://cs.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wikipedista:TMA]


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> On 7 Oct 2004, at 22:55, <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> For what it's worth, a former film professor at BU told me a story
>> once about
>> how he had found it difficult to impossible to get permission to use
>> actual
>> film frames to illustrate a more-or-less scholarly book. He said that
>> the
>> movie studios want everyone to use "production stills" instead, which
>> are
>> high-quality conventional still photographs taken more or less
>> concurrently
>> with the actual production. I'm not sure exactly why they want this, but
>> apparently most photographs "from films" that appear in traditional
>> print
>> media are production stills rather than actual frames.
>
>
> But it's obvious, isn't it:
> Simple framegrabs they can't exercise any control over because the
> aforedescribed fair use rationale would likely be found to apply if
> challenged in the courts (which they probably don't want people to know).
> So instead, they want everybody to use production stills because the
> said fair use rationale would NOT apply with them and the studio would
> thus have full copyright control over those and be able to dictate
> everybody wanting to use such pictures to heed their every wish and whim.

While I don't doubt film companies have some nefarious motives, in this
case they might also be looking to maximize how good they
look---high-quality still photographs look much better than framegrabs,
and so make the movie look better.  That's partly due to higher
resolution and such, but also because framegrabs are part of a film that
was exposed/colorbalanced/etc. with the moving sequence of frames in
mind---the individual frame wasn't exposed and color-balanced in such a
way that would make it look optimal on its own.

-Mark


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities

body:
Jeff Bonham wrote:

>----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu> -----
>
>
>Hi,
>We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
>universities.
>We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>and note how inappropriate to so list us
>(unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>
>Thanks for any help in this matter,
>Derrick
>

Has anyone been able to find the article in question? As far as I can
see it doesn't exist.  We don't seem to have any other articles
mentioning Vancouver University either.

--sannse


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vancouver university

body:
See http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2003-09-28-fakedegrees_x.htm

In particular, "The state of Oregon keeps a list of some of the
institutions whose degrees cannot legally be used in the state because
they're not accredited by an agency recognized by the U.S. Department
of Education or the state (www.osac.state.or.us/oda). The list includes
Columbia State University in Louisiana, which was closed by court order
(not affiliated with Columbia University in New York or any other
accredited colleges and universities that use the Columbia name),
Hamilton University in Wyoming, Great Britain's Hartley University,
Stanton University in Hawaii, Vancouver University Worldwide and
University of Wexford in Great Britain."

See also
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf :
"This is a listing of colleges and universities which are not currently
accredited by an accrediting  body of the Council on Higher Education
Accreditation.  Degrees from these institutions will not be  accepted
by the Department of Civil Service as satisfying any educational
requirements indicated  on job specifications." This is admittedly
quite a long list; Vancouver University Worldwide appears on page 12.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> According to the Oregon Student Assistance Commission Office of Degree
> Authorization which lists Vancouver University Worldwide under "illegal
> degrees" and defines
> Illegal degrees in Oregon

[...]

Don't forget to put all this on their talk page ;-D

- d.


from_name: John Fader

body:
[[List of alleged diploma mills]]

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 18:26:02 +0000, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
> Jeff Bonham wrote:
>
> >----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu> -----
> >
> >
> >Hi,
> >We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
> >universities.
> >We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
> >Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
> >www.VancouverUniversity.edu
> >and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
> >and note how inappropriate to so list us
> >(unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
> >who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
> >
> >Thanks for any help in this matter,
> >Derrick
> >
>
> Has anyone been able to find the article in question? As far as I can
> see it doesn't exist.  We don't seem to have any other articles
> mentioning Vancouver University either.
>
> --sannse
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
John Fader


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] Print edition of the newsletter

body:
Would anyone actually want a print copy of the foundation newsletter?
This was discussed recently; I think it would be a neat thing to have,
but then I have a fondness for printed matter.  (I wonder if those of
us who frequent mailing lists are a balanced audience to ask...)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikimedia_Quarto#Newsletter_in_Print

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Print edition of the newsletter


body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Also listed in Michigan amoung decrees not accepted for civil service there:
>
>http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf
>
>I have changed the name of the article to [[List of institutions of higher
>learning which may not be accepted by civil service or other employers]]
>
>That way it is not us but employers who publish lists that are designating
>the institutions.
>
>Fred
>
I'm not sure that's a necessary change and that seems an over-long
article title.  But either way, it seems we have some justification for
listing this institution on that page - and I'll take ropers' advice and
not reply.

Thanks Fred an all

sannse


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fw: List of fake universities

body:
I got this list of British Columbian universities off the University of Waterloo (Ontario) website. We should stay by the Canadian government's term of "University", with all the accreditation tests that are involved with it.

British Columbia Institute of Technology
British Columbia Open University*
Century College
Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design*
Institute of Indigenous Government
Kingston College
Kwantlen University College
Malaspina University-College*
Okanagan University College*
Royal Roads University*
Sea to Sky University
Seminary of Christ the King
Simon Fraser University*
Trinity Western University*
   Associated Canadian Theological Schools

University College of the Cariboo*
University College of the Fraser Valley*
University of British Columbia*
University of Northern British Columbia*
University of Phoenix, Vancouver campus
University of Victoria*
Vancouver School of Theology
Colleges with university transfer courses:
   Camosun College
   Capilano College
   College of the Rockies
   Columbia College
   Coquitlam College
   Douglas College
   Langara College
   North Island College
   Northern Lights College
   Selkirk College

wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
> From: Jeff Bonham
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia
> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 2004 01:21:45 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
> ----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University
> -----
>
> X-Original-To: silsor at localhost
> To: jbonham at mail.utm.utoronto.ca
> From: Infotech - Vancouver University
> Subject: List of fake universities
>
> Hi,
> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
> universities.
> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
> and note how inappropriate to so list us
> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>
> Thanks for any help in this matter,
> Derrick

---------------------------------
 ALL-NEW Yahoo! Messenger - all new features - even more fun!


from_name: Reinhardt Wiewe

body:
Hallo Sheepdog,

I just have seen your e-mail name "Sheepdog", the name in the e-mail address "Valkov" and your reference to "mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian".

Are you interested in dogs? I suppose you understand Russian. I ask because according to my opinion the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dog_breeds would be happy to have some interface to http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/ .

To my understanding it is just about linking items related to dogs / dog breeding between the Wikipedias in the different languages. My russian is not good enough to make this. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Dog_breeds#linking_to_Wikipedias_in_other_languages .

Thank you very much for reading so far.

Kve?ja / Gru? / Salutas / Best regards

Reinhardt
Tel.: +49-89-89670017
Mobile: +49-171-4861913
http://easy.go.is/gangleri/ ( for updates see http://easy.go.is/gangleri/uppfaert/ )

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Sheepdog
  To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
  Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 8:14 PM
  Subject: [Wikitech-l] installation error (v.1.3.5)

  Hello
  i have the following problem :

  i trying to install a mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian and after chmodding the "config" dir and filling the installation formular ive got this:

  Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace...

  Warning:  Undefined index:  1movedto2 in /home/ZTM3PNG1/htdocs/encyclopedia/languages/LanguageRu.php on line 1028

  And then if i trying to access the main page (after moving localsettings.php to the root directory) im getting:

  [pear_error: message="fopen("/tmp/tpl_0_7_0_239b6c042560228b7d7cdf729efbd138.php", "w") - Operation not permitted" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]

  Wats wrong ?
  _______________________________________________
  Wikitech-l mailing list
  Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
Sannse, all --

I *STRONGLY* suggest *NOT* to respond to these folks.

The X-AntiAbuse email header fields are an indicator that they might be
spammers.
The fact that their online business practices have been questioned
(offering degrees purely based on prior experience is RARELY legit) is
another indicator that they might be spammers.

Again, I would NOT reply to that.
Because odds are if you do grace them with a reply there'll be a lot of
cheap generic Viagra deals heading towards your inbox real soon.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 7 Oct 2004, at 20:26, sannse wrote:

>
>
> Jeff Bonham wrote:
>
>> ----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University
>> <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu> -----
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of
>> fake universities.
>> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>> and note how inappropriate to so list us
>> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>>
>> Thanks for any help in this matter,
>> Derrick
>>
>
> Has anyone been able to find the article in question? As far as I can
> see it doesn't exist.  We don't seem to have any other articles
> mentioning Vancouver University either.
>
> --sannse
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sheepdog

subject: [Wikitech-l] installation error (v.1.3.5)

body:
Hello
i have the following problem :

i trying to install a mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian and after chmodding the "config" dir and filling the installation formular ive got this:

Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace...

Warning:  Undefined index:  1movedto2 in /home/ZTM3PNG1/htdocs/encyclopedia/languages/LanguageRu.php on line 1028

And then if i trying to access the main page (after moving localsettings.php to the root directory) im getting:

[pear_error: message="fopen("/tmp/tpl_0_7_0_239b6c042560228b7d7cdf729efbd138.php", "w") - Operation not permitted" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]

Wats wrong ?


body:
Why not rename it [[List of items we want to call what they are but
really are scared sh*tless to do so and of which we happy to have any
random SCO copycat influence our coverage as we love responding
favourably to blackmail before it is even attempted and please here is
my purse, please take it and please don't shoot me]] ?

On 7 Oct 2004, at 21:35, Fred Bauder wrote:

> Also listed in Michigan amoung decrees not accepted for civil service
> there:
>
> http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Non-accreditedSchools_78090_7.pdf
>
> I have changed the name of the article to [[List of institutions of
> higher
> learning which may not be accepted by civil service or other
> employers]]
>
> That way it is not us but employers who publish lists that are
> designating
> the institutions.
>
> Fred
>
>> From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
>> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 13:09:53 -0600
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of
>>>> fake
>>>> universities.
>>>> We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>>>> Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>>>> www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>>>> and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>>>> and note how inappropriate to so list us
>>>> (unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>>>> who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any help in this matter,
>>>> Derrick
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Peter Danenberg wrote:
> > Or an alternative renderer. Try dvipng
>
>      Hello,  Jan-?ke; as a matter of fact, I was just brows-
> ing your source.  Fantastic work, by the way; very fast.

Thanks. Now, the important bit is: is it _useful_?
Or perhaps the source provides ideas to speed up your code?

/J?

--
We are MicroSoft.  You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile.


from_name: Erdal Ronahi

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Project proposal: Cooperation with Free Dictionaries
	Project

body:
Hello everybody,

I am proposing a joint venture of Wikipedia with fdicts.com, a Free
Dictionaries Project (not run by me, BTW)

The aim of fdicts.com is to provide free (GPL or GFDL) dictionaries in
multiple languages. What makes fdicts.com unique is an algorithm for the
automatized creation of new dictionaries out of existing. This process
is similar to creating interlinks (to NONEXISTING pages) with a bot and
is more effective, the more free dictionaries already exist.

An example for de, en, fr and tr (turkish):
if there are these entries

[house - Haus] (en-de)
[house - maison] (en-fr)
[maison -Haus] (fr-de)
[house - ev] (en-tr)
[Haus - ev] (de-tr)

then you can be almost sure that the automatically generated

[maison - ev ](fr-tr)

will be correct, even if you know neither French nor Turkish. And that
is true for thousands of other words.

Nevertheless the results must then be improved with by-hand-validating.
This is a quite Wiki-like process, and the Wikipedia-community is
perfect for that.

This may not be very exciting for English and German. But think
of the language XY for which NO free dictionaries or JUST an English-XY
dictionary exist, but no German-XY, French-XY, Chinese-XY and so on.
This approach will produce a lot of fine free
dictionaries easily.

What does that have to do with Wikipedia/Wiktionary? Wiktionary is also
a free dictionary, but with a different approach. The translations in
Wiktionary can be extracted to create free dictionaries for the
"smaller" languages, fdicts.com can use its algorithm to multiply the
entries and the result can be given back to Wiktionary for adding more
details if necessary.

The final result would be a really global Free Dictionary. (sigh) Maybe
then hosted by Wikimedia?

If you like, have a look at the project page. (http://www.fdicts.com)
Maybe someone on this list has also ideas how to cooperate with that
project.

Erdal


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Print edition of the newsletter

body:
On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 02:47:22 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Some directions of thought may be added here (these are only flying
> thoughts) : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Newsletter_poll

Flying thoughts, but good ones.  Thanks, ant :)


from_name: John Lee

body:
Sure, thanks. The disputes seem to have calmed down a lot recently, but
if anything crops up tomorrow I'll be sure to notify you.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])

csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> As a disinterested party, I'm happy to make suggestions.
>
> TBSDY
>
> John Lee wrote:
>
>> Following up, it's just as I feared. I've had to place the NPOV
>> notice on [[Malaysia]] as well, because it was corrupted *again*. The
>> situation's degraded a lot; there's plenty of bickering particularly
>> at [[Talk:Malaysia]], [[Talk:Bumiputra]] and [[Talk:Malaysian New
>> Economic Policy]]. Would mediation be suitable? Because I really want
>> someone else to critique the articles and past revisions for
>> neutrality, not just mediation between the three parties here
>> (myself, Malbear and Jpatokal).
>>
>> John Lee
>> ([[User:Johnleemk]])
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Project proposal: Cooperation with
	Free Dictionaries Project

body:
Hi Erdal,

(moving this thread to the wiktionary mailing-list)
I think there has been some discussion of running bots like this.
The validation setup at fdicts looks pretty sweet; some collaboration
between the projects would be a fine thing.

+sj+

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 22:46:42 +0200, Erdal Ronahi <erdal.ronahi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I am proposing a joint venture of Wikipedia with fdicts.com, a Free
> Dictionaries Project (not run by me, BTW)
>
> The aim of fdicts.com is to provide free (GPL or GFDL) dictionaries in
> multiple languages. What makes fdicts.com unique is an algorithm for the
> automatized creation of new dictionaries out of existing. This process
> is similar to creating interlinks (to NONEXISTING pages) with a bot and
> is more effective, the more free dictionaries already exist.
>
> An example for de, en, fr and tr (turkish):
> if there are these entries
>
> [house - Haus] (en-de)
> [house - maison] (en-fr)
> [maison -Haus] (fr-de)
> [house - ev] (en-tr)
> [Haus - ev] (de-tr)
>
> then you can be almost sure that the automatically generated
>
> [maison - ev ](fr-tr)
>
> will be correct, even if you know neither French nor Turkish. And that
> is true for thousands of other words.
>
> Nevertheless the results must then be improved with by-hand-validating.
> This is a quite Wiki-like process, and the Wikipedia-community is
> perfect for that.
>
> This may not be very exciting for English and German. But think
> of the language XY for which NO free dictionaries or JUST an English-XY
> dictionary exist, but no German-XY, French-XY, Chinese-XY and so on.
> This approach will produce a lot of fine free
> dictionaries easily.
>
> What does that have to do with Wikipedia/Wiktionary? Wiktionary is also
> a free dictionary, but with a different approach. The translations in
> Wiktionary can be extracted to create free dictionaries for the
> "smaller" languages, fdicts.com can use its algorithm to multiply the
> entries and the result can be given back to Wiktionary for adding more
> details if necessary.
>
> The final result would be a really global Free Dictionary. (sigh) Maybe
> then hosted by Wikimedia?
>
> If you like, have a look at the project page. (http://www.fdicts.com)
> Maybe someone on this list has also ideas how to cooperate with that
> project.
>
> Erdal
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Project proposal: Cooperation with Free
	Dictionaries Project

body:
fdicts.com looks neat, particularly its onlin/offline validation (in
this case of automatic
translations).  We could use a validation system like that for
suspicious edits...

<discussion moved to wiktionary-l, please followup there>

On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 22:46:42 +0200, Erdal Ronahi <erdal.ronahi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I am proposing a joint venture of Wikipedia with fdicts.com, a Free
> Dictionaries Project (not run by me, BTW)
<snip>

--
+sj+


body:
No, i , and my wiki are not involved id dog breeding in any form - its just
my nickname .  And i suppose i do not have realy much time to help the dog
breeders out - sorry man. I have anogh problems on my own. Please dont take
it as personal aasault.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Reinhardt Wiewe" <reinhardt.wiewe at lenauschule.de>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 11:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] installation error (v.1.3.5)

Hallo Sheepdog,

I just have seen your e-mail name "Sheepdog", the name in the e-mail address
"Valkov" and your reference to "mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian".

Are you interested in dogs? I suppose you understand Russian. I ask because
according to my opinion the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dog_breeds would be happy
to have some interface to http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/ .

To my understanding it is just about linking items related to dogs / dog
breeding between the Wikipedias in the different languages. My russian is
not good enough to make this. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Dog_breeds#linking_t
o_Wikipedias_in_other_languages .

Thank you very much for reading so far.

Kve?ja / Gru? / Salutas / Best regards

Reinhardt
Tel.: +49-89-89670017
Mobile: +49-171-4861913
http://easy.go.is/gangleri/ ( for updates see
http://easy.go.is/gangleri/uppfaert/ )

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Sheepdog
  To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
  Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 8:14 PM
  Subject: [Wikitech-l] installation error (v.1.3.5)

  Hello
  i have the following problem :

  i trying to install a mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian and after
chmodding the "config" dir and filling the installation formular ive got
this:

  Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace...

  Warning:  Undefined index:  1movedto2 in
/home/ZTM3PNG1/htdocs/encyclopedia/languages/LanguageRu.php on line 1028

  And then if i trying to access the main page (after moving
localsettings.php to the root directory) im getting:

  [pear_error:
message="fopen("/tmp/tpl_0_7_0_239b6c042560228b7d7cdf729efbd138.php", "w") -
Operation not permitted" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]

  Wats wrong ?
  _______________________________________________
  Wikitech-l mailing list
  Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
  http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
On 7 Oct 2004, at 22:55, <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> For what it's worth, a former film professor at BU told me a story
> once about
> how he had found it difficult to impossible to get permission to use
> actual
> film frames to illustrate a more-or-less scholarly book. He said that
> the
> movie studios want everyone to use "production stills" instead, which
> are
> high-quality conventional still photographs taken more or less
> concurrently
> with the actual production. I'm not sure exactly why they want this,
> but
> apparently most photographs "from films" that appear in traditional
> print
> media are production stills rather than actual frames.

But it's obvious, isn't it:
Simple framegrabs they can't exercise any control over because the
aforedescribed fair use rationale would likely be found to apply if
challenged in the courts (which they probably don't want people to
know).
So instead, they want everybody to use production stills because the
said fair use rationale would NOT apply with them and the studio would
thus have full copyright control over those and be able to dictate
everybody wanting to use such pictures to heed their every wish and
whim.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Indymedia and FBI

body:
Anthere wrote:

> I think this link is interesting....
> http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml

Let's say a legal meteor hits the wikimedia.org servers in ten minutes.

1. How long until a readable copy of the Wikipedias is up?
2. How long until an editable copy with all the usernames on each
    restored is up?

These could be anywhere in the world. Let's count a copy on a
different domain name as being 'up' for now.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Indymedia and FBI

body:
I think this link is interesting....

http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml


subject: [Foundation-l] Indymedia and FBI


list: textbook-l

from_name: Matthew Wilson

subject: [Textbook-l] How to upload C programs?

body:
I'm working on a distributed operating systems textbook here:

    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ComputerScience:Distributed_Systems

There's lots of example code samples in the text.  The code samples are
getting longer and longer, and I'd like to make them available for
download, but I can't tell how.  I tried the Special:Upload page, but I
kept getting the message ".c is not a valid image type" or something
similar.

Any ideas?  I posted this to the staff lounge last week but got no
responses.

Matt


body:
Some directions of thought may be added here (these are only flying
thoughts) : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Newsletter_poll

ant

Sj a ?crit:
> Would anyone actually want a print copy of the foundation newsletter?
> This was discussed recently; I think it would be a neat thing to have,
> but then I have a fondness for printed matter.  (I wonder if those of
> us who frequent mailing lists are a balanced audience to ask...)
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AWikimedia_Quarto#Newsletter_in_Print
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
I don't think we actually have good reason. The FBI is after a whole
different thing from what we do.

Fred

> From: Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 12:56:39 +0200
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I think this link is interesting....
>>
>>
>> http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml
>
> At least now there is a good reason to have servers in different parts
> of the world.
>
> To have a list of the email addresses form the mailing lists and the
> wiki-users can also be usefull to inform the community if the control
> over the domainname where to get lost to inform them about the location
> of the emergency-wiki.
> --
> [[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
We do get these outfits springing up here from time to time.  They
mostly appeal to the Asian market.  Although this one seems to operate
on line others have had a physical facility, and have gone bankrupt in
mid term leaving foreign students stranded.  Their accreditation
comments on their home page seem awfully full of weasel words, and
that's not an encouraging sign.  There may very well be some common law
right in relation to granting degrees, but if no knowledgeable employer
is going to recognize that degree its value may be limited.

Ec

Jeff Bonham wrote:

>----- Forwarded message from Infotech - Vancouver University <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu> -----
>
>X-Original-To: silsor at localhost
>To: jbonham at mail.utm.utoronto.ca
>From: Infotech - Vancouver University <infotech at vancouveruniversity.edu>
>Subject: List of fake universities
>X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
>X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - canada3.dnshotel.com
>X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - mail.utm.utoronto.ca
>X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12]
>X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - vancouveruniversity.edu
>X-Source:
>X-Source-Args:
>X-Source-Dir:
>
>Hi,
>We certainly do not like being included in the Wickipedia list of fake
>universities.
>We attempted to open the item, but the url was blocked.
>Whoever is responsible, please actually look at
>www.VancouverUniversity.edu
>and sub-pages like www.VancouverUniversity.edu/alumni.php
>and note how inappropriate to so list us
>(unless the person doing so is a public sector fanatic
>who cannot stomach the idea of private non-profit institutions).
>
>Thanks for any help in this matter,
>Derrick
>
>
>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was
> that _nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters,
> absent an actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that
> intellectual properly laws are deliberately vague and ambiguous,
> because that insures power remains in the hands of companies big
> enough to retain lawyers.

There is no question that there is an element of truth to both of
these points.

--Jimbo


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Degree completion (was: List of fake universities)

body:
I'm chiming in a bit late on this one, but I think the name for this is
"[[degree completion]]" - a program for professionals and others who
have done a lot of learning on their own and want official academic
credit for it.

There are CLEP tests and the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). My church's
seminary has had a degree completion program for the last 15 years or
so; when you finish the tests, you get a Regents Diploma which is pretty
much accepted by any graduate school as a bona fide bachelor's degree.

A "diploma mill" is a non-accredited program which awards a degree which
is NOT generally accepted.

Ed Poor


from_name: Sylvain Viart

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wiki source table visual aid

body:
Hi,

Is there some trick to help reading table source in wiki syntax like
this one ?

(Note: this is not a valid MediaWiki parsed syntax)

|  '''Heading1'''|     Heading2      |     Heading3                 |
=====================================================================
| I went to the  |     7             |  * Bullet lists              |
| barber today   |                   |  * Can be in here too        |
| and he gave me |                   |                              |
| a shave and a  |                   |                              |
| haircut.       |                   |                              |
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Currently I've only some ugly trick. Is there are simple short way to
disable the space indenting rendering as preformated text ?

http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/Sandbox#more_section

A simple cell continuous markup would be ok for now:

{|
!  '''Heading1'''!!     Heading2      !!    Heading3
|--------------------------------------------------------------------
|I went to the
barber today
and he gave me
a shave and a
haircut.
                   ||     7
                                       || * Bullet lists
 >                                        * Can be in here too
|---------------------------------------------------------------------
|}

The > sign at in the first column disable the preformating by removing
the indentation and means line continuation. Any other wiki syntax can
be parsed after.
--
Regards,
Sylvain Viart (France)


body:
In some ways, if done in good faith, evaluating someones experience and
knowlege carefully, then awarding them a degree makes a great deal of sense.
In fact, I find it rather a kindred process to our efforts here. The problem
is, no matter how well and carefully done, there is little societal
acceptance of such a procedure. Besides, I think in most instances, there is
little care or good faith.

Fred

> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 05:51:46 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities
>
> We do get these outfits springing up here from time to time.  They
> mostly appeal to the Asian market.  Although this one seems to operate
> on line others have had a physical facility, and have gone bankrupt in
> mid term leaving foreign students stranded.  Their accreditation
> comments on their home page seem awfully full of weasel words, and
> that's not an encouraging sign.  There may very well be some common law
> right in relation to granting degrees, but if no knowledgeable employer
> is going to recognize that degree its value may be limited.
>
> Ec


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Showing last changes on teh wiki since last visit ...

body:
On Wed, Oct 06, 2004 at 11:23:00PM +0200, Victor Fari?a wrote:
> Hi ...
> I need this feature :
> When a user logins , some articles must be marked with a light yellow to
> view faster the last changes ...
>
> My wiki is intended to use by deelopers, so when a user commits a change
> , a mail would be sent and also
> the changes maden to an article must be marked ...
>
> Anyone knows what files are involved on this step ??
> i know this feature may be not interesting to wikimedia , so i will
> start to develop it, but i dont know
> what files i must touch ... any appointment ?? any help ??

Can't you just send out a link to the diff page by mail?

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
On Oct 8, 2004, at 6:30 AM, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to
> create an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki
> entries are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of
> them, perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
>
> Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
> isn't such a project?

See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimaps
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Map_generator

AFAIK no current activity.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to create
an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki entries
are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of them,
perhaps even by a bot process eventually.

Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
isn't such a project?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fun with anagrams

body:
People have been saying that I'm good at telling stories. Well, I've
finally figured out why.

I'm a long-lost descendant of Edgar Allen Poe (author of "The Raven",
etc.)

And that explains why I'm an "ode pro".

Rod Poe


body:
Eric P?hlsen wrote:

>>But per our NPOV policy, we don't engage in political advocacy anyway.
>>
>NPOV is for the encyclopedia not for the books or am I mistaken?
>
>
NPOV is a principle that applies across all projects.  The way that it
applies varies with the circumstances.  If the idea behind these voters'
guides is to present the views of the parties and their candidates then
each individual guide should fairly and sympathetically represent the
view of the particular candidate without the need to engage in long
debates in defence of that position.  NPOV is represented by making sure
that all candidates and their supporters have an equal opportunity to
present their views in their respective guides.

Ec


from_name: Jim Higson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Size of images from WikiTeX

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Oct 6, 2004, at 8:13 AM, Peter Danenberg wrote:
>>> That?s 46% of the original size by switching format.
>>> Futhermore, doesn?t wikipedia prefer PNG?
>>
>>      Right  you  are, Jim; and you?ll notice the raw WikiTeX
>> source provides PNG?s.  I tweaked the local installation  at
>> Wikisophia since transparent PNG?s aren?t supported by IE.
>
> IE supports transparent PNGs just fine so long as they're binary
> transparency rather than alpha.

In my experiance this is the case, so on IE PNG is limited to only
displaying what a GIF could, but at least the files are smaller and
more free.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another comment on wikitex...

body:
I've been wondering about an improvement to wikiTeX.

AFAIKS, there is no way, given the raw wiki code to locate an image
generated from a section of wikitext on the server.

This would seem to be desirable, so third parties who do an XML
export of wiki content can display the wikitex sections

At the moment I'm working on an experimental project (that will be
properly anounced soon) that uses javascript to parse wikitext and
generate the HTML on the client. Of course, I have no way to generate
images so being able to locate the already generated ones on the main
server is necessary.

On wikisophia.org's examples the math image is:
/extensions/wikitex/tmp/2d129aef84955396d6b7a75c141ea41a.gif

I think some kind of namespace for automatically generated images would be
helpful, for example:

/images/wikitex/Wikitex/math1.gif
(where Wikitex is the name of the article, and math1 indicates the first
use of math wikitext on that article)

--
Jim


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Syriac vs Aramaic

body:
Hi all.

Just a short question:

Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
? Presumably, the number of people who could actually read and fully
understand an Aramaic Wikipedia would be very low, while the number of
people who could read and understand a Syriac Wikipedia would be in
the range of millions of people, almost exclusively native speakers.

Also there is the issue of what script to write it in: it would seem
that some people would write Aramaic in the Syriac script, and others
in the Hebrew script; on the other hand, Syriac is written exclusively
in the Syriac script.

I think that ultimately, the existance of arc: is not a Good Thing,
but that the existance of syr: would indeed be a Good Thing,
especially as there are people fex the people at the Beth Marduto
institute who would probably contribute to syr:.

--node


body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> On 7 Oct 2004, at 22:55, <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>> For what it's worth, a former film professor at BU told me a story
>> once about
>> how he had found it difficult to impossible to get permission to use
>> actual
>> film frames to illustrate a more-or-less scholarly book. He said that
>> the
>> movie studios want everyone to use "production stills" instead, which
>> are
>> high-quality conventional still photographs taken more or less
>> concurrently
>> with the actual production. I'm not sure exactly why they want this, but
>> apparently most photographs "from films" that appear in traditional
>> print
>> media are production stills rather than actual frames.
>
> But it's obvious, isn't it:
> Simple framegrabs they can't exercise any control over because the
> aforedescribed fair use rationale would likely be found to apply if
> challenged in the courts (which they probably don't want people to know).
> So instead, they want everybody to use production stills because the
> said fair use rationale would NOT apply with them and the studio would
> thus have full copyright control over those and be able to dictate
> everybody wanting to use such pictures to heed their every wish and whim.

I don't know about that.  One of the criteria for determining fair use
is the nature of the work.  Production stills are a part of the movie's
promotion.  A free use of those stills is consistent with the producers'
intent for issuing them in the firsat place.  I would be surprised if
there were any court cases at all over the fair use of production stills.

Their preference for having people use production stills is probably
because they are more consistent with the impression of the movie that
they want to present to the public.  What frame grabs a user might chose
could prove embarassing.  It's to the producers' advantage to make the
use of production stills as easy as possible.

Ec


from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 9

body:
WRT this issue, there has recently been an interesting court decision in
Australia, while certainly not *legally* binding on Wikipedia, should
give some insight into the matter.

Basically, there is a panel talk show here in Australia called,
imaginatively enough, "The Panel", where a team of well-known comedians
sit around and ramble about the week's news events, chat with a guest or
two, and so on.  In the process, they use short clips of vision from
other programs as a basis to comment on.

One of the other networks sued and lost, on the basis that in Australia,
copyright of a "cinematograph film" or "TV broadcast" only extends to a
"substantial part" of that film or broadcast.  They appealed this all
the way up to the High Court and lost, on a split decision.  The
(probably quite strong) fair dealing defence was never tested, in the
end.  The dissenting High Court judges thought that the majority was
deliberately misinterpreting the law to achieve a victory for common
sense.

More generally, it seems to me that there is a tendancy round here to
assume laws are written the same way as programming language definitions.
>From my layperson's perspective, that seems to be quite wrong - there's a
lot of fudging and playing around with ambiguities to get the "right"
outcome, and screw the pedantry.

So my gut feeling is that the common sense aspect of using film stills to
illustrate an encyclopedia article makes it very, very unlikely we'll
ever get challenged on it, and that if we ever were we'd be highly
likely to win any court case.

Of course, I could be completely wrong :)


body:
On Oct 8, 2004, at 2:21 AM, Jim Higson wrote:
> AFAIKS, there is no way, given the raw wiki code to locate an image
> generated from a section of wikitext on the server.

I'm fairly certain the filename is a hash of the text (probably after
some limited processing).

> I think some kind of namespace for automatically generated images
> would be
> helpful, for example:
>
> /images/wikitex/Wikitex/math1.gif
> (where Wikitex is the name of the article, and math1 indicates the
> first
> use of math wikitext on that article)

This would make it impossible to locate an image based only on the
text, since you would also need to know the context (which page it's on
and what other TeX areas are on it).

It also would mean you'd have to separately rasterize the same TeX
fragments when they appear on different pages (waste of CPU time and
disk space) and regenerate all TeX fragments on a page when you change
the order (ditto only more so). Also this would create caching
problems, since a cached TeX image would become incorrect when the
order changed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was that
>_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
>actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly laws
>are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
>the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.
>
I think the issue is quite evident without having to resort to
conspiracy theories.  Laws are driven by people who want those laws, not
by the bulk  of people, who are disinterested.  The original copyright
period in Queen Anne's law of 1710 was 14 years.  Since then changes
have been promoted by those who have a vested interest.  The public
domain has not been supported because there is no profit in it for
them.  We don't make any money through making a text freely available.
Until recently a potential infringer could not go ahead without
significant investment; if he were sued he would have something to
lose.  The fact that the little guy now has the means to infringe is a
whole new ball game.

When the little guy engages in copyright paranoia or otherwise tries to
do things within the law, or is intimidated by the IANAL argument, he's
not using the same rule book as the big companies.  The power that most
little people don't realize that they have lies in the fact that for a
company to fight 1,000 small $100 fires is a lot more expensive for them
then fighting a single $100,000 fire.  Even if all they do is send a
take down letter, to which there is full and immediate compliance, it
hurts and costs them more than it does us.

Ec


body:
Sj wrote:

>Would anyone actually want a print copy of the foundation newsletter?
>This was discussed recently; I think it would be a neat thing to have,
>but then I have a fondness for printed matter.  (I wonder if those of
>us who frequent mailing lists are a balanced audience to ask...)
>
I too would question whether this is an audience of the balanced. :-)

I would certainly be one to appreciate printed copies, but then I have
an addiction to buying books.  Perhaps a subscription could be linked to
the idea of paid membership.

In fact, letting active people have several copies would give them
something to hand out as a promotional item.

Ec


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
On 10/8/04 7:15 AM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> I don't think we actually have good reason. The FBI is after a whole
> different thing from what we do.
>
Since we don't know what the FBI was after, your claim has no direct factual
basis.

I would say that it's likely that the FBI is after something that is not
very like what we do.

Considering that Wikipedia is a large, open globally accessible database of
information, just like Indymedia, it is unreasonable to surmise that the FBI
is after a whole different thing from what we do.

And again, since we have no information as to what the FBI was actually
after, and they have no obligation to say, we cannot know.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


body:
Robert Graham Merkel wrote:

>The dissenting High Court judges thought that the majority was
>deliberately misinterpreting the law to achieve a victory for common sense.
>
I can sympathize with his outrage. ;-)

>More generally, it seems to me that there is a tendancy round here to
>assume laws are written the same way as programming language definitions.
>>From my layperson's perspective, that seems to be quite wrong - there's a
>lot of fudging and playing around with ambiguities to get the "right"
>outcome, and screw the pedantry.
>
We've often heard it said that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  It
works both ways.  It neither excuses a wrongful act, nor a failure to
take a rightful benefit.

>So my gut feeling is that the common sense aspect of using film stills to
>illustrate an encyclopedia article makes it very, very unlikely we'll
>ever get challenged on it, and that if we ever were we'd be highly
>likely to win any court case.
>
>
Absolutely.


body:
It's difficult to evaluate outside experience.  The BC provincial
education system does allow for high school students to get a small part
of their credits through outside activities.  Participation on a regular
basis on a sports team that is not a part of the school system is worth
something, as is regular volunteer activity in the community.  It's even
more difficult to evaluate at the post secondary level.

I hope that we will maintain the care and good faith that will prevent
Wikiversity from being associated with the diploma mills. :-)

Ec

Fred Bauder wrote:

>In some ways, if done in good faith, evaluating someones experience and
>knowlege carefully, then awarding them a degree makes a great deal of sense.
>In fact, I find it rather a kindred process to our efforts here. The problem
>is, no matter how well and carefully done, there is little societal
>acceptance of such a procedure. Besides, I think in most instances, there is
>little care or good faith.
>
>Fred
>


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
Anthere wrote:

> I think this link is interesting....
>
>
> http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml

At least now there is a good reason to have servers in different parts
of the world.

To have a list of the email addresses form the mailing lists and the
wiki-users can also be usefull to inform the community if the control
over the domainname where to get lost to inform them about the location
of the emergency-wiki.
--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Anthere wrote:

>
> Talking about recipees....
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>
> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?

Ah, but Anthere, the marijuana brownie holds a special place in the
hearts of the subculture of non-legal cookery, that is to say foods made
with controlled substances (cuisine ill?gale?). You can even buy them in
certain parts of the US.

- David


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Syriac vs Aramaic

body:
Indeed. However, what is there could probably go on a Syriac
Wikisource with a note at the  beginning that it is in Aramaic and not
Syriac. (Aramaic is the liturgical language of the Syriac church,
while Syriac is used in daily life and in non-religious writings)

--node

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 15:29:45 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is an audience for an arc: section of wikisource, at least.   ~sj
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 10:27:14 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > Just a short question:
> >
> > Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
> > Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
> > its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
> > which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
> > ? Presumably, the number of people who could actually read and fully
> > understand an Aramaic Wikipedia would be very low, while the number of
> > people who could read and understand a Syriac Wikipedia would be in
> > the range of millions of people, almost exclusively native speakers.
> >
> > Also there is the issue of what script to write it in: it would seem
> > that some people would write Aramaic in the Syriac script, and others
> > in the Hebrew script; on the other hand, Syriac is written exclusively
> > in the Syriac script.
> >
> > I think that ultimately, the existance of arc: is not a Good Thing,
> > but that the existance of syr: would indeed be a Good Thing,
> > especially as there are people fex the people at the Beth Marduto
> > institute who would probably contribute to syr:.
> >
> > --node
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> +sj+
>  _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: installation error (v.1.3.5)

body:
Sheepdog wrote:
> Hello
> i have the following problem :
>
> i trying to install a mediawiki version 1.3.5 in Russian and after chmodding the "config" dir and filling the installation formular ive got this:
>
>
> Initialising "MediaWiki" namespace...
>
> Warning:  Undefined index:  1movedto2 in /home/ZTM3PNG1/htdocs/encyclopedia/languages/LanguageRu.php on line 1028
>
> And then if i trying to access the main page (after moving localsettings.php to the root directory) im getting:
>
> [pear_error: message="fopen("/tmp/tpl_0_7_0_239b6c042560228b7d7cdf729efbd138.php", "w") - Operation not permitted" code=0 mode=return level=notice prefix="" info=""]
>
> Wats wrong ?

See
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=34373&atid=411192&func=detail&aid=976568


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Anthere stated for the record:

> Talking about recipees....
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>
> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?

Why?


from_name: Adi Eyal

subject: [Wikitech-l] New User Types

body:
I need to add a new user type to my local wiki, in addition to the
existing sysop, developer etc. Can anyone point me to any resource which
suggests what needs to be changed?

In particular, I want a particular user type to only be able to access
a  subset of special pages. MediaWiki already restricts normal users
from accessing some special pages but I want to restrict my new user
from accessing any of the specialpages and user pages except a few
special pages that I will specify. Is there any easy way to do this or
do I have to go through all the existing SpecialPages and check for
access rights?

Adi


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV

body:
Delirium wrote:

>
> While I don't doubt film companies have some nefarious motives, in
> this case they might also be looking to maximize how good they
> look---high-quality still photographs look much better than
> framegrabs, and so make the movie look better.  That's partly due to
> higher resolution and such, but also because framegrabs are part of a
> film that was exposed/colorbalanced/etc. with the moving sequence of
> frames in mind---the individual frame wasn't exposed and
> color-balanced in such a way that would make it look optimal on its own.
>
I have no problem with that - we use framegrabs, and if the studios mind
that, we will be happy to use all stills they release under GFDL or put
in the PD instead :-)

Magnus


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
See also:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-July/033704.html
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GALILEO_Masters_2004

And the discussions surrounding the galileo-contest application.
There are certainly many people interested in these ideas.

~sj

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 08:19:01 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Oct 8, 2004, at 6:30 AM, Stirling Newberry wrote:
> > Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to
> > create an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki
> > entries are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of
> > them, perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
> >
> > Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
> > isn't such a project?
>
> See:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimaps
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Map_generator
>
> AFAIK no current activity.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Syriac vs Aramaic

body:
There is an audience for an arc: section of wikisource, at least.   ~sj

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 10:27:14 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> Just a short question:
>
> Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
> Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
> its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
> which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
> ? Presumably, the number of people who could actually read and fully
> understand an Aramaic Wikipedia would be very low, while the number of
> people who could read and understand a Syriac Wikipedia would be in
> the range of millions of people, almost exclusively native speakers.
>
> Also there is the issue of what script to write it in: it would seem
> that some people would write Aramaic in the Syriac script, and others
> in the Hebrew script; on the other hand, Syriac is written exclusively
> in the Syriac script.
>
> I think that ultimately, the existance of arc: is not a Good Thing,
> but that the existance of syr: would indeed be a Good Thing,
> especially as there are people fex the people at the Beth Marduto
> institute who would probably contribute to syr:.
>
> --node
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] The "don't show this" string

body:
So, there are some language entries in the LanguageXX.php files that can
be set to a value to indicate "Don't show this". For example,
'disclaimers', 'currentevents', 'portal'.

The 'don't show this' value used to be '-'. At some point in the recent
past, this was changed to the empty string (""). The problem with using
the empty string is that it converts to a boolean FALSE value. So in
places where we check that _any_ string was returned, like this:

	if (!$message) { do_something_else(); }

...a blank value is going to make us do_something_else().

It'd probably be good coding practise to make a clear distinction
between returning the empty string and returning NULL. However, that's a
lot of work, and it's not clear that that's a distinction that needs to
be made for any other reason.

So, I'm kinda unilaterally deciding that '-' means "don't show this". I
would put in code to allow "" to mean "don't show this", too, but since
the lower-level functions will never return an empty string, it'd be
untested code, which I don't want to leave in as a time bomb for later.

So: "-" now means "don't show this." I'm making changes to Skin.php,
SkinPHPTAL.php, and Language.php (just the documentation part) to
indicate that.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
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from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>
>> I think this link is interesting....
>>
>>
>> http://www.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/111999.shtml
>
>
> At least now there is a good reason to have servers in different parts
> of the world.

Like where?

Note that the hard drives seized were not in the US---they were in the
UK.  So having backup UK servers wouldn't help us in such a case.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Talking about recipees....
>
> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>
> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?

On a cultural level I would keep it.

On a culinary level I would consider it as a brownie variant.  The
strong taste of the chocolate will likely overwhelm the taste of the
added herb.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
Stirling Newberry wrote:

> Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to
> create an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki
> entries are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of
> them, perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
>
> Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
> isn't such a project?

The last time I looked at it, the maps Grass produced looked _really_
bad, along the lines of the quality of maps I could view on my Apple ][
in the mid-1980s.  Simple color schemes, no shading, lots of aliasing,
etc.  There are a few such auto-generated maps in Wikipedia, and they
generally look pretty bad too---much worse than the maps we have from
other sources, including some Wikipedian-created maps.

Has this gotten any better?  Ideally I'd love such a solution, but it'd
have to produce results that looked reasonably good.

-Mark


from_name: Eric Pöhlsen

subject: AW: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
 Well, this was about a place where people can post anonymously, wikipedia
may be neutral, but there are times when neutrality is not wanted, it may
not be to bad to know what to do in this case.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

references:
<4165DEFB.7060405@yahoo.com>
	<ck5rrk$662$1@sea.gmane.org>	<4166F975.8030107@hackish.org>
	<ck6vbg$fqg$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> Like where?
>>
>> Note that the hard drives seized were not in the US---they were in
>> the UK.  So having backup UK servers wouldn't help us in such a case.
>>
>> -Mark
>
>
> Yes, but the UK is not a good example. When the UK can gain something
> from the EU the are Europeans. But many times the act like the are
> part of the USA.  The UK is even part of the ECHELON network.

Well, the interplay of governments these days is pretty strong, and not
just US/UK.  The current rumor going around the Indymedia folks is that
the server seizure was actually requested by the Swiss government, and
the US merely implemented the request.  Apparently Indymedia posted some
photographs of undercover Swiss police officers during a protest, was
asked to take them down, and didn't.

So if the US, UK, and Switzerland are all colluding, I can imagine a
good part of the rest of the world is too.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Another comment on wikitex...

body:
> Ah, in that case the image URL is probably determinable from the wikitext
> anyway.

     Raw MD5 as a matter of fact, Jim.

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

body:
On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 08:46:23 -0400 Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:

>At which point the article is no longer open source, because someone else
>owns part of the source that does not travel with the article, and the
>owner of the images can precent wikimedia from selling the exact product,
>or at any future time decide to unilaterally alter the license and require
>payment.
>
>Proprietary source is a seductive trap, and proprietary vendors will give
>away for free for a while, and then, once you are locked in - because the
>open source solutions are killed off - raise prices to monopoly levels.
>Jimbo is absolutely on the money: don't take the proprietary crack, stay
>clean and sober on this one.

I don't see the problem here. Either they can alter the license, and then
they can do so whether or not they allow certain things, so we should not
take ANYTHING from others, or they cannot change the license and then, well,
they cannot. I don't see the problem. But if we really go this way, then
please START by getting rid of all 'fair use' pictures and all 'allowed for
Wikipedia use' pictures. Those have MUCH stricter restrictions on them than
"not allowed to sell the picture stand-alone." For that matter, let's get
rid of GNU/FDL pictures too, we may not sell those alone either. We may only
sell them with the whole license attached...

Andre Engels


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV

body:
At 08:35 PM 10/8/2004 +0100, phil hunt wrote:

>On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 15:55:41 -0500, dpbsmith at verizon.net
><dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was that
> >_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
> >actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly
> laws
> >are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
> >the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.
>
>And ensures lots of lucrative income for lawyers.

Considering how many lawmakers are former lawyers, this is a _very_ easy
conspiracy theory to believe in. :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Anthere wrote:

> In France, it is illegal to give someone the idea to eat or smoke (or
> whatever) an illegal substance. An article suggesting to purchase an
> illegal substance to put it in food, might be illegal (it is called
> "incitation ? l'usage"). Possibly not. Possibly yes.

Anti-free-speech laws like that could be problematic for a whole range
of Wikipedia articles, and I'm not sure we should really cater to them.
For example, our article on [[cocaine]] gives what amounts to
instructions for manufacturing freebase (a particularly potent smokable
form of cocaine), but I don't think it's satisfactory to remove this
information, as it is legitimate information, and the article is worse
without it (it's impossible to research some social aspects of the drug
trade if you can't find information on how they're commonly manufactured).

I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
tag pretty much all of them.

-Mark


from_name: Jim Higson

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> On Oct 8, 2004, at 2:21 AM, Jim Higson wrote:
>> AFAIKS, there is no way, given the raw wiki code to locate an image
>> generated from a section of wikitext on the server.

> I'm fairly certain the filename is a hash of the text (probably after
> some limited processing).

Ah, in that case the image URL is probably determinable from the wikitext
anyway. Unless there are collisions I suppose, but the hash is so long I
doubt that'll be a problem.

Thanks for clearing that up.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Open Mapping

body:
Brion Vibber a ?crit:
> On Oct 8, 2004, at 6:30 AM, Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to
>> create an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki
>> entries are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of
>> them, perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
>>
>> Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
>> isn't such a project?
>
>
> See:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipediatlas
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimaps
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Map_generator
>
> AFAIK no current activity.

I renew my interest for these projects.


from_name: phil hunt

body:
On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 15:55:41 -0500, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>His belief system--and I regard him as knowledgeable about this--was that
>_nobody really knows_ the the legal situation in such matters, absent an
>actual lawsuit. He held the conspiracy theory that intellectual properly laws
>are deliberately vague and ambiguous, because that insures power remains in
>the hands of companies big enough to retain lawyers.

And ensures lots of lucrative income for lawyers.

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
--- Stirling Newberry <stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:

> Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to create
> an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki entries
> are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of them,
> perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
>
> Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
> isn't such a project?

There is from me. I have more than two years experience with GIS so far, but
none working with GRASS GIS yet. I'd like to change that in the near future.

Right now I'm taking an Internet-based GIS class.

-- mav

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] recipees

body:
Anthere wrote:

> The big return of recipees.
> . . .
> And I think the network should exist. Our goal is to GIVE access to
> information to readers. Not only to CREATE information. We must create
> the information, organise it, categorize it, link it, and make it
> accessible. Each time we delete information links from one project to
> another, we may not hurt the content itself, but we reduce the
> networkability (does that word exist ? If not, here it is) : we limit
> access to information. We hid it.
>
> When information exists, but can not be found easily by readers, then
> we have failed. Imho. SweetLittleFluffyThing 23:59, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I absolutely agree with you  on this,  as I  have on previous occasions
when this issue has come up.  I just find this kind of situation
completely depressing.  It manifests itself in the recipes this time,
but it's really about the broader issue that some editors have a narrow
idea about what is important.  Whatever falls outside of their
definition of importance is trash.  In their logical and mechanistic
world they are blind to what others find important.

I don't think that this can be solved by reasoning with them, because in
doing so we need to rely on premises that fall beyond thei view of the
world.  To their credit. I believe that they are acting in what they
consider to be to the benefit of Wikipedia.  I suppose that makes
dealing with them so much tougher.  What it takes is for someone with
authority to tell them bluntly, "You are not respecting the honest
efforts of others.  You are not considering the human values that are
just as important to success, as the intellectual ones."

There is a paradox in democratic institutions.  One side, usually the
"left" has a remarkable gift for analysis and for developing
well-reasoned and ethical policies, but they are so caught up in the
world of ideas that like the communards of 1871 they forget that they
have to decide and do something about it.  Their opponents on the
"right" are as remarkable for their ability to organize and get things
done; they simply lose track of what they are trying to accomplish and why.

So for as much as I believe that democratic principles should prevail, I
still see that there are times when what is needed is leadership.

> Meanwhile, in case the redirect article is deleted, I will restore it
> as it was agreed last spring.

Good!


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Syriac vs Aramaic

body:
What about languages with 3-letter ISO codes? I would think that would
be significant. We don't have a whole lot of those lying around.

Speculation and linguistic trivia? What the hell are you talking
about? Speculation? Hmm. Yes. I think it would probably be a good
thing for Syriac speakers to have an open-content encyclopedia.
That's generally true for most languages though, I think.

"If you want a Syriac wiki" - this isn't about me wanting a Syriac
wiki, it's about having an inactive wiki for a dead language whose
addition would have been controversial had it been discussed on this
list (at least recently), while lacking one for its modern descendent
spoken by millions.

--node

On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 07:38:58 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > Just a short question:
> >
> > Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
> > Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
> > its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
> > which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
> > ?
>
> There's no particular pattern to the creation of inactive wikis. To save
> server resources, inactive wikis, with no edits, should be deleted. It
> was my intention to delete inactive wikis when I wrote the automatic
> wiki creation script, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
>
> If you want a Syriac wiki, I suggest you find some Syriac speakers to
> write it, instead of troubling this list with speculation and linguistic
> trivia.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
>Hi ...
>I need this feature :
>When a user logins , some articles must be marked with a light yellow to
>view faster the last changes ...

TWO independent answers:

Solution and answer 1:

My "enotif"  - email notification for changed pages and user_talk pages
- implements what you want as a positive side-effect - see
http://meta.wikipedia.com/Enotif for the whole documentation.

All watch-listed pages (User X has in his/her watchlist) with not-yet
visited(!) changes are visible marked with this green label. See middle
of page http://meta.wikipedia.com/Enotif .

I call it side-effect because not everyone wants to store his/her
email-address in the preferences; however, with this green marker
everyone can notice what pages have new contents since the last visit.
The marker signals, that an email notification was actually sent out to
the stored email address -- but the marker is shown in any case, no
matter if an address is stored or not.

Is this what you want ?

-------

Solution and answer 2:

First, please visit the Recent Changes view on the German wikipedia:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:Recentchanges .

There, we applied 2 months ago an NEW icon which clearly indicates any
NEW page with an icon .

A discussion was started on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Newpageletter to have this
also on the English WP (WE).

Intermediate positive result:
EVERYUSER can now edit his/her page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:EVERYUSER/monobook.css with this line:
#newarticlemark {background-color:yellow;}

See my User-CSS page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Nyxos/monobook.css

I think, we need to put this info onto the Meta (I will do, because I
started the discussion).

Tom