body:
> All speaking requests in which people go out and represent the Foundation
> should be under the auspicies and supervision of the Foundation.

Perhaps, but it isn't currently clear when people are representing the
Foundation. Personally, as I'm moving to focusing more on Wikia than
Wikimedia, how would I know which organisation I'm representing, or
whether I'm not representing either, but just attending as someone who
knows something about wikis? Most people attending these events will
have multiple affiliations, and as far as I can tell, most invitations
go directly to the speaker, not via the Foundation (though that could
be because there's never been a central point of contact for this sort
of thing within the Foundation). Also, people do talk about Wikipedia
without having any affiliation - http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2586 is
one of a few examples of Mitch Kapor giving a talk about Wikipedia.

As an example of a talk I couldn't attend, I asked the organisers
whether they wanted me to find someone else from the Foundation, and
they said no because they specifically wanted a British female Board
member, so it's likely some of these events do want specific people,
or at least specific types of people, regardless of any official
affiliation with the Foundation. Other talks I've been invited to have
said they asked me not because of Wikimedia, but because of other
affiliations I have (ourmedia in one case), or because I was female
(perhaps as a result of me being listed on Socialtext's speakers'
wiki).

> Finally, when people contact the Foundation asking for a speaker, it is
> safe to  assume that they expect an "official representative."

That might be true, but most of the events I've been to, I've been
contacted personally. I don't think that necessarily means they
weren't expecting an official representative.

What would it mean for a speaker to attend something *not* as an
official representative? Perhaps guidelines on what people can do if
they are/are not attending in that capacity are needed. It needs to be
something more than just not keeping the money since there generally
isn't any offered anyway.

Angela.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] board, babysitting, speaking engagements, etc.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Foundation-l] Honorarium (was Re:  [Found>,
 > This conversation had jumped back and forth ....)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I have for a very long time now stressed to everyone who invites me to
>> speak that they are inviting me in my personal capacity.  So this
>> policy will have no impact on me.  But it could have impact on many others.
>
> You, above all other members of the board and officers, have the very real capacity to generate
> significant revenue for the foundation to help us further our charitable mission. Your fame is
> wholly the result of your founding and guiding of Wikipedia. People would not ask you to speak if
> it were not for that. Thus it seems perfectly reasonable to me, and in fact most ethical, for any
> honorarium you receive for speaking about Wikipedia/Wikimedia to go to the foundation. In fact, I
> would love to use your fame as a significant fundraising mechanism - $200 per plate dinners and
> such.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these honoraria essentially Jimmy's only
means of income? I don't know if he draws a salary from Wikia, but I'm
fairly sure that the company is not yet turning a profit. He works almost
full-time publicising Wikimedia. It would seem very strange to me to deny
him this one small token of our appreciation.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthony

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
	reusability

body:
On 8/11/06, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>   I think that there is plenty of room for contributors to wikimedia projects
> who aren't interested in the potential for reuse of those projects, but I am
> wondering where en is at if admins are actively dissuading contributors who
> value it.
>
>                                   Jkelly
>
At a place which is somewhat better than where it used to be.  I've
been blocked more than once for repeatedly removing obviously non-free
images from encyclopedia articles and from the main page.  My blocks
of course weren't explicitly over what I did but how I did it,
similarly to your RFC.  But the copyright page used to say that
"Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the text of
all Wikipedia materials under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License", and there were quite a few admins who claimed this meant
that images need not be under any license at all, so long as it was
legal for Wikipedia to use the image.  I guess I was acting with far
too little patience, as many of Wikipedia's policies over non-free
images have gotten a lot better on these points.

Anyway, there are some admins that still don't understand what it
means to be a free encyclopedia.  But most of them now get it, and
even accept it.  That said, patience is still required when creating
new policies, unless you don't mind getting involved with a number of
heated disputes, and getting asked to leave the project.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
> you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
> Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
> members.
>
How long do we have to comment?  I'm thinking about writing my own
proposal for a membership section, but this will take some time.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


body:
On 8/13/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Mr Schmoll, ZabadumWiki" and not "Mr Schmoll, Wikimedia Foundation".

That makes sense, but what if "ZabadumWiki" is "Wikipedia" (or any
other Wikimedia project)? There could still be trademark issues.

I wish I could go to a conference where they would correctly write
"Wikimedia Foundation" on my badge, and not the random collection of
things they put instead. I was apparently from "Wikipedia, Wikia
Foundation" at one event this year.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<44DC5C85.7030405@wikia.com>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKPDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<71cd4dd90608120617q341d679cs8030b83b855cfd26@mail.gmail.com>
	<41a006820608120920w52206e07ld1d3a8d8289e101d@mail.gmail.com>
	<71cd4dd90608121527o1cdcd328u91689565e8b3db8b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 8/13/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Looking at
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_OTRS, there has
> apparently been a board resolution (as of May 26, 2006) to hire
> someone to take care of this.  It's unclear to me whether or not
> someone has yet been hired to do so.

Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
a replacement.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


list: commons-l

from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
Fred:

Please don't take Paddy's answer as an indication of the responses from any
of the rest of the project members.  Based on every single response he has
to this email list, I question his entire motivation for participation in
the project at all, and I doubt he has any interest in constructive
cooperation.

Cary Bass
aka Bastique

>
> --- Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> skrev:

>
> I had the vision of creating a list for the amusement
> of the administrators, where there would be monthly
> awards (a ribbon) to those three that delete the most
> images, and userboxes one could use saying e.g. "this
> user has deleted over 4k images". I had hoped this
> would encourage deletions.
>
> The fierce restistance naturally takes the amusement
> away from the vision. If anyone else wants to fulfil
> my intention, go ahead.
>
> Fred
> aka Fred-Chess
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>
The proposed bylaws do not at all mention the chapters.  Is this
intentional?  It's my understanding that chapters are not legally
affiliated with Wikimedia except that they license the use of certain
trademarks.  Is this correct?  And is this pretty much what everyone
wants?  What do Jimbo and Brad (apparently the two main proponents of
a non-membership organziation) think the role of chapters should be?

I think how chapters are going to be handled is very important when
formulating bylaws.  Of course that doesn't mean chapters have to be
mentioned in the bylaws, if the decision is for them to be treated
like any other trademark licensee.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
GerardM wrote:

>Hoi,
>There is a big difference between how "it should" and "how it is". For all
>kinds of reasons, there is a big NEED and EXPECTATION that a WMF board
>member spends a lot of time on the organisational matters of the board. Not
>only is there the need to communicate in order to come to the strategy of
>the foundation, it is also expected that board members are part of
>committees and play an active part in these. I have heard horror stories
>where board members were denied access to information of "committees" and it
>is therefore understandable that these invisible organisational units are
>considered to operate in stealth mode.
>
Although at least one Board member should be a part of each committee
this is a problem with the current small size of the Board, and the fact
that some Board members are not in a position to properly participate in
this way.  As the Board is enlarged this problem will be eased, and
Board members should be advised that being members of more than two
committees may be injurious to their mental health.  The Board member on
a committee does not need to do any more in the committee than be there
and participate in the discussions.  All committees should be required
to have a chairperson and a secretary.  The former would be responsible
for the operations and meetings of the committee; the latter would
insure that reports of the committee are produced and provided to all
Board members.  The circumstances where a Board member could be denied
access to information about a committee would be rare and exceptional,
as when that member is involved in a serious conflict of interest.

>When it is said that a board member only needs to spend "only" a few hours a
>week on this function, the reality is very much ignored. By expressing that
>this "should be the case" and by not indicating what needs to be done to
>make this happen, I am afraid that false expectations are raised. At this
>time, being a board member seems to be the kind of activity that eats up all
>the time that you can throw at it. It has relatively little to do with any
>one project and as Anthere says, it is hard work for little recognition.
>
Absolutely!  Perhaps what is needed is a clear statement of what is
required of a Board member, and what is optional.  Some work much harder
than necessary.  As committees, chapters, projects, etc. become more
clearly developed there should be a better capacity for the Board to
delegate tasks with the confidence that the delegatee won't make a
complete fuck-up of the task.

>I wish all future board members well, but I hope that none are chosen
>because of their ideas on how the English Wikipedia can be improved. They do
>not understand what is needed.
>
The people involved on the English Wikipedia, or any of our hundreds of
projects, run that project.  The people who run an other project may do
so in strange ways that you would oppose on your own favorite projects,
but that is allowed as long as it stays broadly within basic
principles.  The intervention of a Board member (especially Jimbo) on a
project can have a highly disruptive effect; you can't expect to drop a
bowling ball into a tub full of water without creating a splash.  From
the other side, projects should not expect that the Board will send them
a white knight to save them from themselves; learning how to deal with
one's own problems is a part of growing up.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>> Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
>> exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
>> a replacement.
>>
> This came up in one of the many casual conversations around Wikimania.
> The problem is apparently related to labour market conditions in the St.
> Petersburg area where there is a labour shortage.

Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?

Most of our labor is distributed; for technical staff, we have one guy on site
part-time to physically manhandle the machines and everybody else is thousands
of miles away.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>> Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
>> exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
>> a replacement.
>>
> This came up in one of the many casual conversations around Wikimania.
> The problem is apparently related to labour market conditions in the St.
> Petersburg area where there is a labour shortage.

Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?

Most of our labor is distributed; for technical staff, we have one guy on site
part-time to physically manhandle the machines and everybody else is thousands
of miles away.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>> Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
>> exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
>> a replacement.
>>
> This came up in one of the many casual conversations around Wikimania.
> The problem is apparently related to labour market conditions in the St.
> Petersburg area where there is a labour shortage.

Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?

Most of our labor is distributed; for technical staff, we have one guy on site
part-time to physically manhandle the machines and everybody else is thousands
of miles away.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>> Someone was hired for this but she quit already. I don't know the
>> exact details of why she left. I believe Brad was tasked with finding
>> a replacement.
>>
> This came up in one of the many casual conversations around Wikimania.
> The problem is apparently related to labour market conditions in the St.
> Petersburg area where there is a labour shortage.

Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?

Most of our labor is distributed; for technical staff, we have one guy on site
part-time to physically manhandle the machines and everybody else is thousands
of miles away.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> mboverload wrote:
>> Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a
>> book.
>>
>
> Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted.

Quotes can indeed be copyrighted. If we quote a paragraph from a book we
need to consider issues like fair use, we can't just take the text and
integrate it into an article willy-nilly as if it were under the GFDL.

> A screenshot is one of several thousand (~= 24 * 60 * 45) copyrighted
> images, a story, the characters in the story, and an audio track which
> make up an episode of a TV show.

Books can have thousands of paragraphs too, all of them copyrighted and
forming a story (assuming it's one of those newfangled story-books). I
fail to see the distinction, or even why the number of frames a
screencap is taken from is relevant. Would a screencap from a 30-second
commercial with no story be different?

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from_name: Fastfission

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Wikipedia Empire Based on Open Source Worst
	Practices?"

body:
On 8/11/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Article squatters are the feudal lords of Wikipedia and the only way
> to displace someone is to spend a great deal of time fighting with
> them, possibly escalating through the central authority. No doubt
> there exist article squatters who make it there mission to work with
> others to improve content but, in my samples, the trend is more
> towards censorship."

It'd be great to see his "samples." In most instances where people are
simply unilaterally rejected they are usually trying to push a strong,
un-sourced, un-neutral agenda. Even in cases where editors are very
protective of articles, in *my* "samples" it is rare that the entire
group is against genuine improvement, corrections, and additions. Even
articles which are rather tightly controlled by editors ([[Evolution]]
as an example), major changes happen every few weeks or so when
someone new comes to the page and says "Hey, I don't think this
section is correct or clear." They are, however, against things which
contradict our content policies, or people with severe POV axes to
grind show up and try and re-write the page into a Creationist screed.

The exact implementation of the policies is always open to some
leeway, but the epistemic goals of the policies themselves (which
ideally try to root Wikipedia in reliable knowledge and disallow its
use as a place where quacks and spammers can run rampant) are surely
commendable. Of course, one can call all quality control "censorship,"
but you'd have to have a pretty liberal sense of what it would mean to
have a reliable encyclopedia if you don't believe in any checks on
knowledge. And in fact that has been tried before.

And those that don't like them CAN start a fork. Wikipedia itself
doesn't have to try and host multiple versions and all of that slog
which makes places like everything2 so unreliable and unmanageable. It
would be trivial for me to start a "World War II" encyclopedia
licensed under the GDFL which used Wikipedia content as a base. The
problem isn't that it couldn't be done, but that it would be hard to
convince people to spend their time wrangling over my little fork
rather than the big dog. But that's the case with all Open Source
models. And in fact lots of crank groups are happy to fork -- the
Neo-Nazis had a wiki for awhile, and the Creationists have a wiki too.
Best of luck to them.

Strangely this fellow does not seem to interrogate WHY Wikipedia has
been successful. It is NOT the first Wiki. It is not the only place on
the internet where people can "edit this page" or contribute
knowledge. Despite the many attacks often levied against Wikipedia's
accuracy, it remains massively popular in comparison with any similar
alternatives. Why? Perhaps it is because the model of
de-facto-centralization-with-the-opportunity-to-fork-if-you-really-want-to
actually works pretty well. The human resources issue puts a high
price on forking, but since human resources are the breeder reactor
which keeps this factory pumping, that's not a bad thing (if people
could easily diffuse, then no one place would build up the critical
mass needed to keep high enough production and maintenance for long
term success). The option to fork is always there, and occasionally
probably does serve as a pressure-release valve. And in the end,
forcing people to come together and work out content issues under a
reasonable epistemic model actually might end up producing better
content than one would get under a "free for all" model.

Science is often criticized as conservative in its treatment of
knowledge, and the rejection of controversial ideas is often decried
as "censorship" by those so rejected. But philosophers of science have
long argued that this conservatism actually is what results in its
knowledge being generally reliable and, in the end, useful for
practical ends. Sure, it makes mistakes sometimes. Sure, sometimes
those controversial ideas end up being correct. But I think it is
pretty self-evident that systems of knowledge generation which are
concerned with quality-control, even to the point of epistemic
conservatism, end up producing more reliable knowledge than those
which are "anything goes." If we had unlimited resources and unlimited
time, yes, we could all work tirelessly to flesh out every conceivable
possibility for "truth." But it would be a wasteful endeavor.
Methodology is that which cuts down on options so that we focus only
on the most likely to produce results. As with science, with
Wikipedia, if one does not take too much offense from the overwrought
and pretentious analogy.

FF


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categories

body:
On 8/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Other than closed lists like "Months of the year" which are essentially
> complete, and thus have minimal utility, many lists provide us with a
> dynamic presentation of things that still need to be done.  If this
> results in a large degree of overlap with the contents of a category
> it's no big deal.  The underlying premise that we should be eliminating
> lists is far from being broadly supported.

Lists are good. I'm not sure if I explained my idea clearly enough.
I'm suggesting that instead of having a "list of X" on one page, and
[[Category:X]] on another page, you simply put the "list of X" text up
the top of the [[CategoryX]] page. That way, you gain the benefit of
being able to painlessly add items to the "listory" (by the normal
[[Category:X]] link), but you can also manually add new items, and
reorganise existing items by editing the listory text.

It's fairly clear to me that the right solution would be a way of
extending that [[Category:X]] link as follows:
* Allow more information about the link. A meta-article category like
"requests for photos" would be much more helpful if you could add
arbitrary-length text like [[Category:Requests for photos:It should
show the front of the building, including the famous statue]] when you
put the link on some article talk page. Also useful for including
footnotes justifying the page's inclusion in the category...
* Allow entries in the category from pages other than the included
page itself - basically, to allow red links. No idea what syntax would
make sense...
* Allowing greater control over layout on the category page. Consider
all the lists we currently have, and whether those formats could be
automatically generated somehow. What are the common threads?
Presenting lists in tables, breaking lists up into groups, presenting
several similar but discete categories on a single page...

I don't know if there are lists that simply could never work well as
categories, but by making categories more powerful, we could certainly
have less in that "category"...

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Future avenues of garnering participation;
 or, How Wikipedia is currently a crappy/crack-tastic game

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:

> Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn
>
>*all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway?
>You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the
>error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)?
>That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be
>interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but
>rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and
>repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them
>in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more
>worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
>
Why does the game need to be competitive?

A game that teaches co-operative skills in developing an article would
be a very helpful educational tool.

Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of
a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on
Wikipedia.  He does not see the articles, only the titles.  He then
proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from
that list.  He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other
students can view and edit the article.  Marks can be allocated for
different types of writing and editing, including big marks for
achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting
into an edit war.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: cohesion

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Factual error on main page of en.wikipedia.org

body:
On 8/13/06, Robert Brockway <rbrockway at opentrend.net> wrote:
> Hi all.  I'm posting here as I consider this fairly high urgency.
>
> There is a factual error on the main page in the featured article for
> Caroline Island.  I can't edit the page although I have fixed the Caroline
> Island article itself.
>
> Caroline Island is not the land closest to the International Date Line
> (outside of Antartica) on the western side.  [[Big Diomede Island]] holds
> this honour at a distance of one mile from the IDL.  Caroline Island was
> among the first places to see the new year and dawn in 2000 as it is in
> GMT+14, which is where the confusion arises.
>
> For more on this see [[talk:International Date Line]] where a discussion
> has taken place over the last few months on this issue.
>
> Perhaps someone could fix the main page.
>
> Rob

I removed the sentence from the main page summary, looking at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:International_Date_Line#First_land_to_the_west
it seems to be a more complex issue than what was stated. It's
probably better not to have anything there for now until people verify
things, and then repost a corrected version if people want to.

Judson


from_name: Robert Brockway

body:
Hi all.  I'm posting here as I consider this fairly high urgency.

There is a factual error on the main page in the featured article for
Caroline Island.  I can't edit the page although I have fixed the Caroline
Island article itself.

Caroline Island is not the land closest to the International Date Line
(outside of Antartica) on the western side.  [[Big Diomede Island]] holds
this honour at a distance of one mile from the IDL.  Caroline Island was
among the first places to see the new year and dawn in 2000 as it is in
GMT+14, which is where the confusion arises.

For more on this see [[talk:International Date Line]] where a discussion
has taken place over the last few months on this issue.

Perhaps someone could fix the main page.

Rob

--
Robert Brockway B.Sc.        Phone:          +1-905-821-2327
Senior Technical Consultant  Urgent Support: +1-416-669-3073
OpenTrend Solutions Ltd      Email:          support at opentrend.net
                              Web:            www.opentrend.net

If you are emailing regarding an open ticket please consider
mentioning the ticket ID as this will assist us in responding
as quickly as possible.


subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Timwi wrote:

>Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>On 7/28/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>The last sentence of the lead,
>>>>
>>>>
>>It actually can be spelt "lede".
>>
>>
>I couldn't find any dictionary that agrees with this other than
>Wiktionary. I am therefore inclined to suspect that someone made it up.
>
It's there without evidence, so I've moved that definition to the talk
page until someone can come up with proper evidence of this usage.

I could only find evidence for it as a Middle English variant of "lead"
in both pronunciations.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Steve Summit wrote:

>Timwi wrote:
>
>
>>>>>The last sentence of the lead,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>It actually can be spelt "lede".
>>>
>>>
>>I couldn't find any dictionary that agrees with this other than
>>Wiktionary.
>>
>>
>
>How hard did you look?  The first three google hits are to
>
>http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001128
>
>	lede... refers to the opening lines of a newspaper
>	article, also called the "lead."
>
>http://www.uark.edu/~kshurlds/FOJ/HW2.html
>
>	Lede is often spelled lead. The odd spelling was adopted...
>
>and Wikipedia's own http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style
>
>	The most important structural element of a story is the
>	lead -- namely contained in the story's first sentence
>	(sometimes spelled lede to avoid confusion with...
>
That mention in Wikipedia was undocumented too.

Ec


from_name: xaosflux

body:
If the 5.5.4 error is comming for your email server, it may be that you are
trying to send it an email that it does not have a registered user for.  If
you are goign to use your mail server as a relay agent, you may need to
enable relaying from your wiki server.

xaosflux
----- Original Message -----
From: "liu haokai" <haokai.liu at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 8:28 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] An error occur when send a mail

> I am running a mediawiki 1.7.1 on a PC of my company, and the email server
> is another pc on the intranet. I setted the mailserver address in php.ini,
> and enabled the mail function in mediawiki. Once I test the mail function
> in
> mediawiki I got the message like this:
>
> "Error sending mail: mail()
> [function.mail<http://192.168.21.25/ewiki/function.mail>]:
> SMTP server response: 501 5.5.4 Invalid Address"
>
> However, the following script in a soly php file has been tested working
> well.
>
> <?php
> // The message
> $message = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3";
>
> // In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use
> wordwrap()
> $message = wordwrap($message, 70);
>
> // Send
> mail('caffinated at example.com', 'My Subject', $message);
> ?>
>
> I wonder is it a bug of mediawiki?
> BTW, I am running mediawiki on windows xp sp2 professional chinese
> edition,
> apache 2.0.58, php 5.1.4 and mysql 5.0.22 .
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?
>
Of course not.  Someone answering the office main number and helping
with basic office stuff probably ought to be *in* the office, though.
It's working so far.
> Most of our labor is distributed; for technical staff, we have one guy on site
> part-time to physically manhandle the machines and everybody else is thousands
> of miles away.
>
Genius, isn't it?  8-D
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> On 8/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
>> I heard there's a really fun game you can play on Wikipedia already -
>> vandalise something and wait to see how long (if ever) it takes for
>> someone to fix it!
>>
>> In all seriousness, "offically" turning Wikipedia into a game is a Bad
>> Idea, because too many people already think that it is, for all the
>> wrong reasons. They seem to forget that we're meant to be writing the
>> world's most comprehensive, and better yet, FREE (as in Speech)
>> Encyclopedia. WP:NOT a game.
>>
>
> Well, I was trying for a funny conclusion there. I doubt we could turn
> *all* of Wikipedia into a game - how would that even work, anyway?
> You'd have people presented random paragraphs and asked where the
> error is (in some cases added by computer, and in some cases not)?
> That's the best I can come up with anyway, although it might be
> interesting to have competitive article writing-based games - but
> rather that we might as well formalize some otherwise tedious and
> repetitve aspects of Wikipedia that do need to get done and put them
> in game form so they can get done and free up editor effort for more
> worthwhile things like writing new articles or rewriting old ones.
>

Oh, people have certainly made games out of Wikipedia; see
[[Category:Wikipedia games]].

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

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from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
 reusability

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 8/12/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>>Whether we like it or not, the views expressed by an identified admin
>>carry more weight than those of, say, Joe Bloggs, who's merely written a
>>few hundred articles, taken thousands of beautiful photographs, taken
>>dozens of pages from Cleanup to FA status, and so on, but has not
>>otherwise contributed meaningfully to the project as yet (what a parasite!).
>
> In practice, sure. But if an admin tells you that you should think
> about moving on, it actually carries no more weight than if a newbie
> said that.

My point is that, because *in practice* it *does* carry more weight,
admins should not be saying that sort of thing.

> At some stage I'll probably apply for adminship and I will find it
> hard to avoid putting "because it's a free ride to respect" or
> something equally impolite in my reasons for applying.

If it helps, I don't think I'm any more respected as an admin than I was
without the shiny buttons.  Read into that what you will ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"But the visibility was very poor, and you yourself admit that you were
being struck by thunderbolts all the time, which must have distracted
your attention, so it is more than probable you were mistaken."
- Esmond Haddock, /The Mating Season/


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update

It is still here.
Summary : we need to update the bylaws. On the page mentionned above, a
new text is proposed. Please comment.

This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
members.

Another issue I think matters is making it even clearer what our mission
is. I think we all agree we are working so that our content stays
available to the largest number of people on earth. We aim at lowering
the barriers of language (in being multilingual) as well as financial
barriers. And we seek reusability as a dogma.

Right now, people can reuse our content in three ways.

They can use the dumps. Everyone has full access to the entire content;
it is not so easy to reuse though. And update are roughly once a month only.

Second, they can use the html dump. Everyone has full access to the
entire content; it is easier to reuse. Updates are very poor
(understatement)

Third, they can use live feeds. This requires cash (so, the barrier gets
higher). Update is by definition live.

Fourth, they can copy and paste page by page. This is free, live. But it
is a hell of a job.

I'd like us to consider the future. Not next month. Not even next
spring. But maybe in 2 or 3 years.

Do we want html dumps to be more frequent ?

Do we want regular dumps to be more frequent ?

Could it happen that all attempts to automatically "feed" on the content
  may be blockable ? And that a requirement be made to "pay" to get the
content in a decent fashion ?

Doing dumps is currently free. But one may argue in the future that
dumps actually requires employee working time. And one might argue that
this cost money and that this service should require by default
financial participation.

If so, the license will be respected, since everyone will be able to
simply copy and paste content by hand, but will the *spirit* of sharing
information with the world be respected ? I think that as soon as we
start making people pay to get the content, it will not be since it will
put a barrier to access.
Another barrier still respecting the license would be to provide dumps
for free, but only for example, once a year.

I'd like that a note saying that global database content will always be
made available for free from internet.

For that purpose, I actually think that our current "purpose" and "goal"
as stated in the proposal, do not stress enough the "freedom" of
content, as opposed to the "free of charge access".

I fear a slipery slope here, which I think is already starting with the
concept of monetizing live feed.

I'd like some feedback on those thoughts please.

(with in mind that I do trust *entirely* current board members on such
issues, but do not necessarily trust those who might come in the
future). I am just trying to look ahead of potential dark pits.
The fact it is ahead does not mean it is less dangerous :-)

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
On 8/13/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Even someone answering the officenumber doesn't have to be in the
> office.
[snip]

It's a little harder to deal with things like postal mail that arrive
at the office without additional contortions.

There is nothing wrong with having some office staff. Of course, as we
scale up more remote workers will make sense... no one has argued
otherwise.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Anthony wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
>>you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
>>Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
>>members.
>>
>
> How long do we have to comment?  I'm thinking about writing my own
> proposal for a membership section, but this will take some time.
>
> Anthony

I hope new bylaws will be agreed upon 3 months ago.

------
Hmmmm
According to our standards of voting speed, my best hope would be that
Angela participates to this vote (before 6 weeks).

My second best hope if not would be that new bylaws are voted during the
board retreat in october.

If not, I do not expect they will be voted before the end of my own
mandate (next june)... unless we can pass a resolution saying that "no
vote within 3 months means approval" (but I am not sure this is legal).

in short, the sooner the better.

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

>Brad Patrick wrote:
>
>
>>Brion Vibber wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?
>>>
>>>
>>Of course not.  Someone answering the office main number and helping
>>with basic office stuff probably ought to be *in* the office, though.
>>It's working so far.
>>
>>
>Even someone answering the officenumber doesn't have to be in the
>office. Together with my father and a friend we have started a voip
>telephony company last year. This year we decided to also do
>retailtraffic and we are currently testing with numbers that for
>instance are Dutch local numbers but can be teminated (through voip)
>anywhere in the world.
>
>This can be done with numbers in many countries now. So people can call
>you on a local number but you can be anywhere in the world as long as
>your comp is on.
>
>As far as I know the same is possible with US numbers.
>
It already happens with customer service and help lines.

There are still some mundane tasks that cannot be done well at a
distance.  Bookkeeping would be a prime example of this.  That person
needs direct access to the paperwork to verify that what is recorded
matches the invoices, or that the right amount is paid for bills.  A
person could phone someone to check data, but that involves two people's
time when it would be easier just to walk across the room to the filing
cabinet.  It's also difficult to give supervision and direction from a
distance.  If the person suddenly quits (as happened in St. Petes) time
could be wasted just trying to sort out what happened or getting all the
paperwork back so that you can send it to a different person in yet
another city.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 8/13/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:

> If we make a WYSIWIG editor, I wouldn't give users a box to pick colors
> with. I probably wouldn't let them change font either (though switching
> to monospace is acceptable) or let them change font size.  If they want
> to do that, let them switch to HTML mode and write the HTML themselves.

 I agree - a wysiwyg editor that guides people to using standard markup
would be very useful (ie, provide easy access to h1,h2,h3,etc. and provide
no or non-obvious access to <font size=34>). Providing some sort of "black
box" interface to templates would also be useful - that way people can
easily add and edit the fields of templates in pages, but couldn't readily
create more (it seems reasonable to expect a certain level of "more
advanced" knowledge from people doing that).

The idea would be to make it so that if you sit down at the interface and
click randomly for a while, you'll end up with a page that largely conforms
to the wikipedia notions of style, even if it's non-sensical in terms of
content.

Maybe all that's needed here is for someone to spend a week or two hacking
on something like fckeditor to provide a suitably trimmed down "mediawiki
oriented" version...

(Then again - as this message reflects I prefer basic HTML to wiki syntax;
it's a bit more complex but tremendously simpler to parse and work with, and
it's much easier therefore to get nice GUI stuff going around it.)

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
mboverload wrote:
> Maybe I need to simplify it further:
>
> The only syntax people need to learn is [[link]].  That's it.  Maybe
> ''italics'' if they feel like it.  There's no need to do anything else.
>
> That's damn simple.
>
Hoi,
If we are going to be that simple just leave the ''italics'' as it is
incompatible with some languages.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> IMHPOV we should have people in the office and not scattered around the
> globe. I was just pointing out that there are alternatives possible as I
> surmised from the reaction of Brad that he wasn't aware of this possibility.
hanks for the suggestion, but, uh, quite the contrary.
Telecommuting/remote workplaces are not novel, nor are redirected phone
lines.  Personal acquaintances of mine have been working virtually since
at least 1994; I'm sure there are other examples that date back
further.  That was when a 14.4Kb modem was smoking hot.  The entire
customer support industry of US-based software firms has been exported,
mostly to India.  "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Friedman comes
immediately to mind.  The office presently uses VoIP technology now.

Right now we need to keep the functions clear - we need help with the
things like phone, mail, faxes - that are typical office functions.
They are more efficient if kept concentrated.  For now.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Anthony wrote:
>
>
>>On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
>>>you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
>>>Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
>>>members.
>>>
>>>
>>How long do we have to comment?  I'm thinking about writing my own
>>proposal for a membership section, but this will take some time.
>>
>>
>I hope new bylaws will be agreed upon 3 months ago.
>
>------
>Hmmmm
>According to our standards of voting speed, my best hope would be that
>Angela participates to this vote (before 6 weeks).
>
>My second best hope if not would be that new bylaws are voted during the
>board retreat in october.
>
>If not, I do not expect they will be voted before the end of my own
>mandate (next june)... unless we can pass a resolution saying that "no
>vote within 3 months means approval" (but I am not sure this is legal).
>
It may be legal, but it just allows too much to get through unnoticed.
Very unwise.

>in short, the sooner the better.
>
Why the rush?  Let's get the ideas right first before we harden them
into legal language.  I understand that it's difficult to get meaningful
participation on this kind of thing.  People tend to run away from
meetings when they see that by-laws are on the agenda.  As flawed as the
existing by-laws may be there is not much damage done by keeping them in
place for a little longer while we try to get things right.

My previous analysis of what I view as the most important points was
done with civility despite the corporatist tone of the document.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>>
>>
>The proposed bylaws do not at all mention the chapters.  Is this
>intentional?  It's my understanding that chapters are not legally
>affiliated with Wikimedia except that they license the use of certain
>trademarks.  Is this correct?  And is this pretty much what everyone
>wants?  What do Jimbo and Brad (apparently the two main proponents of
>a non-membership organziation) think the role of chapters should be?
>
I have yet to see a clear rationale for a memberless Foundation.  In
some jurisdictions such a concept is unthinkable.

>I think how chapters are going to be handled is very important when
>formulating bylaws.  Of course that doesn't mean chapters have to be
>mentioned in the bylaws, if the decision is for them to be treated
>like any other trademark licensee.
>
Chapters are organized under the laws of other countries to cope with
legal circumstances in various countries.  The influence that the Board
has on the operation of these chapters is limited.  Some mention of
chapters in the section of the by-laws relating to purpose, and in the
dissolution clause may be warranted.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I fail to see how not being about to make large bold red text is a barrier
> to entry

I don't know why you think a WYSIWYG editor necessarily needs to
encourage anyone to make large bold red text.

On 8/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If the WYSIWYG editor were actually good, and actually displayed
> > > *exactly* what the end result would be, I think you'd find that you'd
> > > acclimate to it extremely quickly.
> >
> > That's not WYSIWYG, that's live preview.
> >
> Oops, that came out wrong, what I meant was that live preview can do that,
> no need for WYSIWYG

The difference between WYSIWYG and live preview is that in live
preview, you still need to see the raw markup tags.  In WYSIWYG, you
don't.  You see all these markup tags and have no idea what they do
until you learn.  It's a psychological issue.

On 8/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> The only syntax people need to learn is [[link]].  That's it.  Maybe
> ''italics'' if they feel like it.  There's no need to do anything else.

You will inevitably *encounter* much more markup than that.  You may
not need to *use* it . . . at first . . . but it's user-unfriendly
even to have it there.  Many, many people will freak out upon seeing a
page of markup, especially (as Gregory points out) markup so abstract
as the template infoboxes that begin most large pages nowadays.


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

>**Purpose of Bylaws**
>
>About the Bylaws: can someone explain to me what the Bylaws are for? I would
>think laws, and bylaws for that matter, serve at least two purposes:
>
>1 Serve as binding guidelines for conduct, in other words communicate wanted
>and unwanted behaviour a priori.
>2 Act as a final frame of reference a posteriori for how to resolve
>conflict, when disputes arise over these guidelines.
>
>A lawyer can certainly improve on these impromptu definitions.
>
>1 Is always useful, even when all affairs are conducted in harmony. If we
>decide on wanted behaviour lets put it down to writing.
>2 Is what laws tend to be associated with in the first place. They give
>guidance in times of conflict, be it between nations, an individual and a
>state, a board and a community, etc. They form a frame of reference that
>(hopefully) is still recognized by contesting parties a posteriori, and if
>not, at least serves to show that the party in power is consistent in its
>behaviour.
>
Not all laws (or by-laws) relate to disputed situations.  For the most
part by-laws lay down the ground rules for how an organization will
operate.  The best by-laws reflect existing practice.

>**Solidity of proposed Bylaws**
>
>So I ask myself: for whom are these guidelines in the Wikimedia Bylaws and
>to whom are they binding?
>
>Parts of the Bylaws are very detailed. For example article IV section 4
>about board meetings is the longest section and deals in detailed legalistic
>terms with how board members can not get around each other.
>
Having detailed rules is not unusual.  Sometimes it's favourable.  I may
disagree with some specific provisions, but I have no argument over the
length of details.  Compared to by-laws that I have previously drafted
myself for other organizations, these are short.

>I can't help but smile when I read:
>
>"Notice of any special meeting shall be given at least ten (10) days before
>the meeting by written notice delivered personally, or by email, chat, or
>fax to each Trustee at his business address, unless in case of emergency,
>the chair of the Board of Trustees or the vice-chair of the Foundation shall
>prescribe a shorter notice to be given personally or by communicating to
>each Trustee at his email address, residence or business address in like
>manner."
>
>Of course 'state of emergency' leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
>Lawyers thrive by the unavoidable ambiguities of language.
>
Sometimes it even helps to include avoidable ones.  This allows the
parties to be satisfied by interpreting the same clause in opposing
ways.  Most often that clause deals with an unlikely eventuality, and
never has to be tested.

>Now the bylaws really come to life when a serious dispute occurs, let us say
>for arguments sake, between the board and the community. As I said earlier
>on several occasions: that is a hypothetical question, but of immense
>relevance, and to be discussed before the situation arises, in other words
>now.
>
The rights of the community are exactly as described in the by-laws, and
that community is exactly as defined in the by-laws.

>When a serious dispute occurs the community is pretty much powerless. They
>may have voted only for a minority of the board, as they effectively did up
>till now. This does not change with the proposed amendments to the Bylaws.
>Although the Bylaws allow for more than two community elected members
>(Article IV section 3) they give no guarantees, they don't even specify
>which proportion of the (possibly enlarged) board should be true
>representatives, it is all at the discretion of the board.
>
Don't worry about it.  The guarantee of two elected community
representatives can be amended by a simple majority vote of the Board.
That will guarantee you right to stop worrying.

In any corporation members (or shareholders) have rights in relation to
the corporation.  The absence of members protects the corporation from
the embarassments that members sometimes raise.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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

Simetrical wrote:
> I don't know why you think a WYSIWYG editor necessarily needs to
> encourage anyone to make large bold red text.

It's a hyperbole, I agree, however, the basic gist is there. People have
their own idea of "What looks right", and then, if given the tools to do
so, will reformat the text to their vision, not necessarily preserving
structural meaning. (And, many other times, it just looks plain bad.
Check out all those free-hosted amateur websites out there).

A good example happened a while ago in a series of articles on a few
bands. A few anonymous editors had been trying to spruce up the pages
with lots of HTML, adding non-standard styling and the whole nine yards.
Now, this was troublesome from a few editors who knew how to write HTML.
Give that weapon to regular people.

The bottom-line is WYSIWYG is an even worse offender of causing people
to base things around presentation rather than structure. Granted,
wikitext can be abused, but when all that extra possible styling is
stuffed away in esoteric s and
s, it will prevent most Joe
Averages from excessively formatting text.

One may argue that Wikitext doesn't really enforce structure. At least
we don't have people typing [font size=5][b]Header[/b][/font] (bbcode,
see it a lot in tutorials).
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE35ToqTO+fYacSNoRAh3JAJ9R+o6CbmnhJinL5QbDet1fACsGugCfagw6
3AiEzG6CHIqRycldH+785HE=
=3o9z
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from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] OmegaT, WiktionaryZ,
 Betawiki (/me adding: Wikipedia) ... some questions that need an
 answer ...

body:
Well I am crossposting this blog text as well as copying it to some
people in blind copy since it involves various projects - as for
Wikipedia: it is about contents creation for small wikipedias (that's
why I changed the original title above).

The original post is at:
http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com/2006/08/omegat-wiktionaryz-betawiki-some.html

Your comments and thoughts are  very much appreciated.

Best, Sabine

*****

      OmegaT, WiktionaryZ, Betawiki ... some questions that need an
      answer ...

In the Wiktionary IRC the following questions were made by Connel: "...
considers omegat.org. Is the intent for it to just auto-upload stuff to
WZ? to/from ZW? Or betawiki, or both betawiki and WZ? Or is betawiki
just for WikiMedia total localization?"

That is a lot ... so let me go step by step.

The intent of OmegaT <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OmegaT> is not to
auto-upload stuff to WiktionaryZ <http://wiktionaryz.org> or download it
from there. Nor is it only there for Betawiki
<http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Etusivu> and WiktionaryZ, even if
it will probably be used for both sooner or later. OmegaT is a CAT
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-assisted_translation>-Tool that
helps translators to do their work.

What does this mean: imagine you use for all of your translations a tool
that creates a Translation Memory, a file containing the translations
you did segmented into sentences, combining source and target sentence.
Then you do further translations and let the CAT-Tool access these
already translated files. Now if your translation is of a subject you
already translated chances are high that most terminology needed is
already in there and you can even see in which context it was used. So
with OmegaT you do a search on your project and the available
translation memories to see if and how a term was already translated.
This can help a lot.

Now consider a manual - of a machine, a computer, whatever. These
manuals need updates once a new version of that machine or computer is
produced. Normally companies than also just update the description and
parts of it remain the same as before (simply because the functionality
of these parts is still the same). When you then translate you will find
these parts that are unchanged in your translation memory and depending
on how you set your options OmegaT proposes the 100% match or overwrites
the translation part of your project with the already existing
translations. In this way you can save loads of time.

Having the right parser also the MediaWiki <http://mediawiki.org> UI
could be translated in such a way. Now we always will have people that
translate things manually online and who will not use a CAT. This means
that OmegaT should be able to access the single pages containing the
messages on Betawiki, you translate them on your computer and store them
to the page in the correct language version. This is feasible.

Another use will be: creation of contents for small wikipedias. Once we
get our wiki read/wiki write option within OmegaT it is possible to
start a translation of an article, let's say from the English wikipedia
<http://en.wikipedia.org>, and translate it to any language, let's say
the Neapolitan wikipedia <http://nap.wikipedia.org>. This means you tell
OmegaT which page to get on en.wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org> and
which page to write on nap.wikipedia <http://nap.wikipedia.org>. The
same is valid for any African language. The advantage of this is: if
there is no online-connection people can work offline on translations.

The translation memories out of these translations should be stored
(WiktionaryZ is already enabled to upload translation memories)
somewhere in order to allow others to access and use them to be faster
and of higher quality during their own translations. Another aspect of
doing things this way is: the proof reading of a translation is easier
since you see the source text above the translation for each sentence.
This easens the job a lot and the quality of the translated article raises.

Now to WiktionaryZ and OmegaT: OmegaT for now has quite a simple
glossary function - you create a tab separated text file and put it into
your glossary directory. While you translate OmegaT shows you the
translation proposals for the words that are present in that sentence
and in the glossary. Now imagine what that means if you connect the
glossary function to WiktionaryZ: the whole repository of data at your
fingertips - of course: considering the mass of data that is online in
WiktionaryZ it becomes very important to attribute domains to
terminology. Often a word can be translated in 20 ways or even more into
another language ... well, it does not make sense if you are doing a
translation about medical equipment that you get proposals from another
domain, let's say machinery - the possibilities from other domains
should only be proposed (showing that other domain) when there is no
entry for medical equipment.

At this stage we don't have this domain structure for terminology on
WiktionaryZ and therefore the data, once we have loads of it online,
cannot be used - it would just create a huge mess and would be very time
consuming. So one of the things we really nees asap is a domain
structure where we can connect the single terms to - the sooner we have
it the better .... otherwise we will have loads of double and triple
work or WiktionaryZ could become completely useless for the use within
OmegaT and as such it would not be of any advantage for translators. Not
even for scientist really ... imagine a biologist search for terminology
and get whatever result ... also those of machinery or whatever other
domain.

Back to the use within OmegaT:

The next step is then: what if the searched term is not in WiktionaryZ
... I already noted that during my last translation - for now it is too
time consuming to add terms to WiktionaryZ and also Wiktionary when you
wish to do that while you are translating - but: it would make so much
sense. So what is planned in the reference implementation for a
translation glossary
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reference_implementation_for_a_translation_glossary>
is that when working with OmegaT you get the possibility to add such a
term directly from there. You simply tell OmegaT to add it to
WiktionaryZ with your user ID and you can attribute all the necessary
domains etc. without problems as well as tag the term as "definition
needs to be added". What happens in that way is that WiktionaryZ will
get quite a bunch of very specific terminology over time.

Another use is OmegaT for language lessons - Connel, from en.wiktionary
<http://en.wiktionary.org> thought about it and he is right: OmegaT
could be used for language learning as well ... what if we have a huge
sentence repository and people start to translate texts to study that
language - they do not need a paper dictionary - OmegaT would help them
to see the use of a word in various sentences and they would get the
terminology proposals like the translators. When being back at school or
university (or maybe also online with a language teacher) they can
understand their errors, update WiktionaryZ and the online sentence
repository.

For exams teachers would have a mass of proposals and they could
determine which glossary group shall be included in the exams ... that
is to be thought about ... it was not considered up to now even if there
are already thoughts on how to use WiktionaryZ for language learning.

Did I miss something? Hmmm ... not sure. Well if you have questions:
just ask :-)


list: wiktionary-l

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] OmegaT, WiktionaryZ,
 Betawiki (/me adding: Wikipedia) ... some questions that need an
 answer ...


body:
On 8/13/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> It's a hyperbole, I agree, however, the basic gist is there. People have
> their own idea of "What looks right", and then, if given the tools to do
> so, will reformat the text to their vision, not necessarily preserving
> structural meaning.

That's why you don't give them easy access to tools like font color,
just as they don't have easy access now (they have to know the right
HTML).  The editor will have to display such text correctly, and give
*some* way to allow it to be added (unless you want to ban inline
style altogether), but it doesn't have to be easier than now.


body:
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Simetrical wrote:
> That's why you don't give them easy access to tools like font color,
> just as they don't have easy access now (they have to know the right
> HTML).  The editor will have to display such text correctly, and give
> *some* way to allow it to be added (unless you want to ban inline
> style altogether), but it doesn't have to be easier than now.

Well, right now, there's really no reason for people to be using inline
style except for formatting templates, infoboxes, and portals. So yeah,
banning inline style wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
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from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a
> library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online.
> How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?

Presumably by obtaining the movie in VHS or DVD form.  Many libraries
have collections of movies for loan, and there are commercial
providers as well (cf Blockbuster, etc)

Once there, one can look for the scene.

A corollary of this is that screencaps of movies or TV programs not
available in purchaseable/rentable/loanable form should not be used as
source material, since they are effectively unverifiable.

-Matt


body:
G'day Ray,

> jayjg wrote:
>
>>On 8/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>>If one draws from a Star Trek Encyclopedia, comparing what is said there
>>>with the original source is still important.  How else are you going to
>>>know whether the Encyclopedia information is accurate?
>>
>>"Wikipedia articles include material on the basis of verifiability,
>>not truth. That is, we report what other reliable sources have
>>published, whether or not we regard the material as accurate. In order
>>to avoid doing original research, and in order to help improve the
>>quality of Wikipedia articles, it is essential that any primary-source
>>material, as well as any generalization, analysis, synthesis,
>>interpretation, or evaluation of information or data, has been
>>published by a reputable third-party publication (that is, not
>>self-published) that is available to readers either from a website
>>(other than Wikipedia) or through a public library. It is very
>>important to cite sources appropriately, so that readers can find your
>>source and can satisfy themselves that Wikipedia has used the source
>>correctly." WP:NOR
>
> I see.  So you believe that slavish adherence to the ravings of policy
> wonks is more important than accuracy.  By your analysis above, if the
> material in a Star Trek Encyclopedia is just plain dead fucking wrong we
> would not be allowed to point that out because you consider it to be
> original research.  When it gets that far it strikes me as though the
> lunatics have taken over the asylum.

I can confirm that non-canon but official publications have been known
to get things wrong from time-to-time.  It's been a while since I hung
out on the geekier side of USENET and listened to more financially
well-off (i.e. able to afford such publications and all the eps on video
etc.) Trekkies whinge, but I'm sure there's plenty of examples out there
(maybe Trekkies on this list who can call up a few examples of their own?)

Also, I'm not too sure how a Paramount-commissioned book becomes a
"secondary source".  When it describes stuff that doesn't actually
appear in the episodes --- the standard non-canon starship specs,
explanations for plot holes, etc. --- it's not a secondary source, as
such, is it?  It's a primary source.  And when it describes stuff that's
already appeared in the episodes, how is it more a secondary source than
another episode?

Let's say Captain Picard is captured by the Borg and forced to become
their Official Spokesdroid to the Federation (far-fetched, I know, but
it could happen).  We'll call that episode "BOBW1".  In a later episode,
let's call it "BOBW2", Deanna Troi mentions that the Spokesdroid "sounds
kinda stressed; probably that's Picard's mind suffering under the
transformation the Borg subjected him to in BOBW1".  A year later, the
"/Star Trek: The Next Generation/ Yearbook" is released, and it
describes, going into a LOT of non-canon detail, exactly what happened
to Picard.

Let's play "spot the source-related buzzword".  Now, BOBW1 is a primary
source, right?  So basing an article on sitting down in front of the
telly with some popcorns and a few mates who happen to love MST3k counts
as "original research".  However, reading through the Yearbook is *not*
original research, since that's a "secondary source".  Now, at what
point does the Yearbook stop being a primary and become a secondary
source?  Is it the point where it starts regurgitating information
already available by simply watching the episodes?  If so, why is BOBW2
not a secondary source?  What does this mean for programmes like
/Babylon 5/, which (mostly) eschew standalone episodes?

>>>I seriously question the notion that using material from the original
>>>movie or book is original research.
>>
>>I don't see how you possibly could question it; it's clear as day (see
>>above). Where have the screencaps in question been published?
>
> It's clear as day that they were published when the movie was released.

Not clear as day *as such*.  A common misconception, and one that causes
many copyright issues, is that screencaps are completely separate from
the films from which they were taken.  How often do we see film
screencaps uploaded to Wikipedia with the uploader feeling justified in
saying "self-made work, I release it under CC-BY-SA" because he went to
all the trouble of pressing PrtScr on his keyboard?

In such an environment, I wouldn't be getting too snarky at someone who
got the idea that screencaps had to be separately published before we
could refer to them.  We're so oriented towards text and still pictures,
it's hard to remember that screen caps are just us taking part of an
existing, published and copyrighted film (much like copying and pasting
text from a book, or cropping a photograph).  It's a prefectly natural
mistake.

>>>The original research was done by
>>>the author of the book.
>>
>>That's right, and he's allowed to. Scientists, researchers, authors,
>>newspaper reporters - they all do original research.  We don't, we use
>>the material the have published in reliable sources instead.
>
> Then I'm glad that you agree that since the author of the Star Trek
> novel or movie script did the original research our use of that material
> is not original research.

Err, not sure I'd go that far.  My approach, which will surely have
certain list members (if anyone bothers to scroll down this far)
groaning and clutching at their foreheads, is: fuck policy.  Or, to put
it another way, "adopt a purposive and commonsense-oriented approach
designed to increase flexibility and allow in-depth tailoring of
resources towards specific project needs" (but I prefer "fuck policy",
because it's shorter).

The original research policy can be summarised as: "don't make shit up".
  Since a small but significant proportion of the editors who fall afoul
of this policy don't tend to think of their activities as "making shit
up"[0], we had to craft a new stick with a nail in it (sorry, "policy")
and write "WP:NOR" on the side[1].  NOR exists to deal with physics
crackpots and the like; however, in our enthusiasm to follow policy,
however poorly-written, to the letter, we trip over ourselves to explain
that articles on TV programmes must be deleted, Jimbo Wales can't
advertise his own birthday, diagrams must be copied from textbooks, and
high-quality GFDL pictures from amateur photographer Wikipedians cannot
be accepted.

I haven't read the /Star Trek/ uniforms article, but I can see several
ways such an article could be written in a way that *isn't* in
contravention of the spirit of the principle whilst still falling afoul
of the letter of the policy.  And in such cases, frankly: fuck policy.

[0] Who can forget the LaRouchite's failed (but entertaining, in a
     teeth-grinding sort of way) attempts to argue that Chip Berlet's
     contributions were "original research" because he's also an
     investigative journalist (or something of that kidney)?

[1] A similar procedure with "don't be a dick" led to WP:NPA and
     WP:CIVIL.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


body:
On 8/13/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> Well, right now, there's really no reason for people to be using inline
> style except for formatting templates, infoboxes, and portals. So yeah,
> banning inline style wouldn't be too much of a stretch.

But one irrelevant to WYSIWYG.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/13/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> And those that don't like them CAN start a fork. Wikipedia itself
> doesn't have to try and host multiple versions and all of that slog
> which makes places like everything2 so unreliable and unmanageable. It
> would be trivial for me to start a "World War II" encyclopedia
> licensed under the GDFL which used Wikipedia content as a base. The
> problem isn't that it couldn't be done, but that it would be hard to
> convince people to spend their time wrangling over my little fork
> rather than the big dog.

That may not be a problem. I may decide I don't want anyone else
working on my GFDL encyclopedia of canals undergoing restoration.

>And in fact lots of crank groups are happy to fork -- the
> Neo-Nazis had a wiki for awhile,

Still do although it is now a start from scratch job.

>Why? Perhaps it is because the model of
> de-facto-centralization-with-the-opportunity-to-fork-if-you-really-want-to
> actually works pretty well.

Unlikely since the sucess of our other projects has been lower. More
likely a lot of people on the web wanted a free encyclopedia there
isn't anything else in that market area.

--
geni


body:
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Steve Bennett wrote:
> I'm not sure I share the attitude that the only way to avoid
> Wikipedians making incredibly ugly articles with too much character
> formatting is to make it difficult for them.

There's a difference between making things difficult and not making
shortcuts for those things.  You could look at wikitext as HTML on
steroids: non-SGML shortcuts for the most commonly used formatting, but
after that you have to use HTML.

If we make a WYSIWIG editor, I wouldn't give users a box to pick colors
with. I probably wouldn't let them change font either (though switching
to monospace is acceptable) or let them change font size.  If they want
to do that, let them switch to HTML mode and write the HTML themselves.
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Anthere:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>
> It is still here.
> Summary : we need to update the bylaws. On the page mentionned above, a
> new text is proposed. Please comment.
>
> This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
> you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
> Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
> members.
>
> Another issue I think matters is making it even clearer what our mission
> is. I think we all agree we are working so that our content stays
> available to the largest number of people on earth. We aim at lowering
> the barriers of language (in being multilingual) as well as financial
> barriers. And we seek reusability as a dogma.
>

**Board involvement**

I would like to thank Anthere for all the time she spends on keeping the
community involved in foundation issues. One of the reasons that she is so
busy may well be that some other board members are less involved in this.

I wholly concur with GerardM's statement that there is always more to do for
a board member than time allows. Not the least to keep communication
channels open in both directions, to the community at large, to committees,
projects, external organisations (with others of course).

Being part of the community, instead of just overseeing it from a distance,
takes time, a whole lot of it. This is different from normal spare-time
Wikimedia involvement of any volunteer: many of those discussions will be
from the perspective of a board member, explaining decisions and I would
hope proposals for decisions, asking for input and feedback. How can one
honestly expect a person to be part of and represent the community if he or
she spends just a few hours a week on that task? Somehow people seem to
think that organising a global movement at our scale can be done as a
pasttime?

**Purpose of Bylaws**

About the Bylaws: can someone explain to me what the Bylaws are for? I would
think laws, and bylaws for that matter, serve at least two purposes:

1 Serve as binding guidelines for conduct, in other words communicate wanted
and unwanted behaviour a priori.
2 Act as a final frame of reference a posteriori for how to resolve
conflict, when disputes arise over these guidelines.

A lawyer can certainly improve on these impromptu definitions.

1 Is always useful, even when all affairs are conducted in harmony. If we
decide on wanted behaviour lets put it down to writing.
2 Is what laws tend to be associated with in the first place. They give
guidance in times of conflict, be it between nations, an individual and a
state, a board and a community, etc. They form a frame of reference that
(hopefully) is still recognized by contesting parties a posteriori, and if
not, at least serves to show that the party in power is consistent in its
behaviour.

**Solidity of proposed Bylaws**

So I ask myself: for whom are these guidelines in the Wikimedia Bylaws and
to whom are they binding?

Parts of the Bylaws are very detailed. For example article IV section 4
about board meetings is the longest section and deals in detailed legalistic
terms with how board members can not get around each other.

I can't help but smile when I read:

"Notice of any special meeting shall be given at least ten (10) days before
the meeting by written notice delivered personally, or by email, chat, or
fax to each Trustee at his business address, unless in case of emergency,
the chair of the Board of Trustees or the vice-chair of the Foundation shall
prescribe a shorter notice to be given personally or by communicating to
each Trustee at his email address, residence or business address in like
manner."

Of course 'state of emergency' leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
Lawyers thrive by the unavoidable ambiguities of language.

Now the bylaws really come to life when a serious dispute occurs, let us say
for arguments sake, between the board and the community. As I said earlier
on several occasions: that is a hypothetical question, but of immense
relevance, and to be discussed before the situation arises, in other words
now.

When a serious dispute occurs the community is pretty much powerless. They
may have voted only for a minority of the board, as they effectively did up
till now. This does not change with the proposed amendments to the Bylaws.
Although the Bylaws allow for more than two community elected members
(Article IV section 3) they give no guarantees, they don't even specify
which proportion of the (possibly enlarged) board should be true
representatives, it is all at the discretion of the board.

Pretty much anything is at the discretion of the board: the bylaws allow the
board to act as they please most of the time: they can fire anyone they
appointed at will, instantaneous, without community discussion, or written
notice 10 days in advance, etc etc. Not only whom they appointed though:
"Any officer or agent elected or appointed by the Board of Trustees may be
removed by the Board of Trustees whenever, in its judgment, the best
interests of the Foundation would be served thereby." (Article V Section 3)

Finally when things heat up the board should not feel restricted in any way
by these bylaws, and the community should not feel either too reassured or
worried by these bylaws, because they are pretty volatile, they can be
changed on short notice by a simple majority in the board. If bylaws stand
in the way of what a majority of the board thinks is best, well it takes a
week or two delay only and the same minimal majority can have its way. For
those of us that think these bylaws give any long term assurance and or
guidance, this is not the case. Relevant section is article X, section 1, I
quote:

"These bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be
adopted by a majority of the entire Board of Trustees at any regular meeting
or special meeting, provided that at least ten days written notice is given
of intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new Bylaws at such
meeting."

Oh just a minor oddity: at the time of writing these new proposed bylaws
have only been added and edited by anonymi. Probably an oversight.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


body:
On 8/13/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> All of this is quite a tangent from the original question about
> WYSIWYG editors though. The basic question is "is it possible to have
> a user-friendly, genuine WYSIWYG editing tool that does not conflict
> with editors working directly in wikitext".

And my counter-question is "What about a WYSIWYG editor that's good
enough to make working directly in wikitext unnecessary for even the
most hardcore power-users?"

Of course, you could always have a partial solution, keeping some of
the more arcane wikitext in the otherwise-WYSIWYG editor.  This could
be a transition phase, or indefinite.  The WYSIWYG editor in
vBulletin, for instance, doesn't render [quote]s or some other tags,
making it a not-quite-WYSIWYG editor but still more user-friendly than
plain BB code.

> The follow-up question is
> "is anyone going to write it?"

That's a definite yes.  Jimbo hath spoken, and I think work is
supposed to already be underway (but apparently not in our SVN repo).


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
jayjg wrote:

>On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>jayjg wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 8/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Joe Anderson wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Cool Cat recently created an article called Starfleet
>>>>>>Uniforms<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Uniforms>,
>>>>>>and it was nominated for deletion as cruft and OR.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The screencaps/promo photos in the article, IMO, acted as a reputable
>>>>>>source. I mean, how else (canonically) are you going to know about the
>>>>>>uniform switch between TOS and TNG? Using a book is not canonical, and
>>>>>>therefore is surely not [[WP:V]].
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>There are such things as Star Trek encyclopediae, which report canon and
>>>>>real life (and probably not fanfic/other non-canon).
>>>>>
>>>>>While the TV shows are canonical (as are the movies (except where
>>>>>continuity fails, cf. /Enterprise/)), using a screencap is close to
>>>>>original research and on dangerous ground wrt. using "fair use" as an
>>>>>excuse for copyright infringement. (****)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>So using a picture from the secondary source would be somehow more free
>>>>than using a screen capture?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>No, the secondary source would describe the uniform switch from TOS to TNG.
>>>
>>>
>>So would sample screen captures from episode of the two programs.  You
>>would be able to see the difference without explanation.  This doesn't
>>explain your gratuitous red herring about copyright infringement.
>>
>>
>Copyright infringement? I don't know what you're talking about, I
>never mentioned copyright infringement.
>
See (****) above.  If that was somebody else, I apologize for any
implicitly wrong attribution.

>>>>If one draws from a Star Trek Encyclopedia, comparing what is said there
>>>>with the original source is still important.  How else are you going to
>>>>know whether the Encyclopedia information is accurate?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>"Wikipedia articles include material on the basis of verifiability,
>>>not truth. That is, we report what other reliable sources have
>>>published, whether or not we regard the material as accurate. In order
>>>to avoid doing original research, and in order to help improve the
>>>quality of Wikipedia articles, it is essential that any primary-source
>>>material, as well as any generalization, analysis, synthesis,
>>>interpretation, or evaluation of information or data, has been
>>>published by a reputable third-party publication (that is, not
>>>self-published) that is available to readers either from a website
>>>(other than Wikipedia) or through a public library. It is very
>>>important to cite sources appropriately, so that readers can find your
>>>source and can satisfy themselves that Wikipedia has used the source
>>>correctly." WP:NOR
>>>
>>>
>>I see.  So you believe that slavish adherence to the ravings of policy
>>wonks is more important than accuracy.  By your analysis above, if the
>>material in a Star Trek Encyclopedia is just plain dead fucking wrong we
>>would not be allowed to point that out because you consider it to be
>>original research.  When it gets that far it strikes me as though the
>>lunatics have taken over the asylum.
>>
>>
>Um, you might not be aware of just how many crackpots there are that
>insist that the facts printed in books are wrong.
>
Of course, and it's not enough just to say that it's wrong.  Saying so
requires evidence, and a specific reference to the episode or novel
would be evidence.  As long as the episode is available it's verifiable.

>>>>I seriously question the notion that using material from the original
>>>>movie or book is original research.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I don't see how you possibly could question it; it's clear as day (see
>>>above). Where have the screencaps in question been published?
>>>
>>>
>>It's clear as day that they were published when the movie was released.
>>
>>
>Published in what sense?
>
Made public.

>>>>The original research was done by the author of the book.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>That's right, and he's allowed to. Scientists, researchers, authors,
>>>newspaper reporters - they all do original research.  We don't, we use
>>>the material the have published in reliable sources instead.
>>>
>>>
>>Then I'm glad that you agree that since the author of the Star Trek
>>novel or movie script did the original research our use of that material
>>is not original research.
>>
>>
>Huh? Writing a work of fiction is not "original research". Writing
>*about* a work of fiction *is* original research. When the authors of
>the Star Trek encyclopedia write about the series, they are engaging
>in original research.
>
>Ray, how could putting words in my mouth that you clearly know I don't
>mean help further a discussion?
>
Tit for tat.  Why did you say "That's right." in relation to the author
of the book when I was clearly referring to the writer of the novel or
episode?  The actual writing of the work of fiction (or any book for
that matter) is not research at all; the research preceeds the writing.
Certainly the novellist had to do some original research so that the
novel could make some sense.  That encyclopedia is a secondary source,
and not original research.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
We used to use SORBS to blacklist open proxies, but that's pretty
dodgy (requiring a $50 donation to remove an IP).  Now we don't use
anything, which means that admins have to manually block thousands of
IPs if some spammer or vandal starts attacking from open proxies.  See
bug 6988: http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6988.  An admin
from kuwiki just came on #mediawiki asking how to block *all*
anonymous users due to the severity of the onslaught (see
http://ku.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Taybet:Recentchanges&hideliu=1).
 Similar issues on a lesser scale occur on many projects, which is why
we have the open-proxy-blocking policy in the first place.

So, after some Googling, I found
http://www.declude.com/Articles.asp?ID=97, a list of various DNSBLs.
One promising one appears to be AHBL: see
http://www.ahbl.org/services.php.  They offer various DNSBLs, but the
two of interest to us are probably their Tor and IRC lists (the latter
blocks open proxies and otherwise infected computers).  Of course,
these need to be subjected to scrutiny before we actually use them,
and a whitelist (per-project? on Meta?) would be a good idea as well
in case we're convinced there's a false positive.

What should detected proxies be prevented from doing?  Editing
anonymously, obviously, and creating accounts, at least to begin with.
 Registered editing could eventually be prohibited if known good users
are whitelistable per-project somehow (by username, not by IP).


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
On Mon, 2006-14-08 at 00:20 +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:

> All of this is quite a tangent from the original question about
> WYSIWYG editors though. The basic question is "is it possible to have
> a user-friendly, genuine WYSIWYG editing tool that does not conflict
> with editors working directly in wikitext". The follow-up question is
> "is anyone going to write it?"

Yes, people at SocialText and Wikia are being paid to write it.

This is the software:

http://www.wikiwyg.net/

This is the adaptation to MediaWiki:

http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/

~Evan


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
On 8/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is nothing wrong with having some office staff. Of course, as we
> scale up more remote workers will make sense... no one has argued
> otherwise.

Remote workers could result in you haveing assets within the
juristiction of legal systems less friendly than the US.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>mboverload wrote:
>
>
>>Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a
>>book.
>>
>>
>Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted.
>
Wow!  Some people really work hard to prove they haven't got a clue.
Quotes may be factual, but they are not facts.  What is copyrighted is
the way something is expressed rather that its informational content.
Sometimes they become merged when the two are indistinguishable.  The
merger principle can render something uncopyrightable; this was the
basis for Lexmark's loss over the copyrightability of the software in
its ink cartridges.  When the work in question is fictional you are less
likely to be dealing with facts, and unless the work is in the public
domain the use of any quotation from it is an example of fair use.
Picking up the quote from a work about the work doesn't change that.

>A screenshot is one of several thousand (~= 24 * 60 * 45) copyrighted
>images, a story, the characters in the story, and an audio track which
>make up an episode of a TV show.
>
>
My understanding was that "screenshot" and "screencap" referred to
stills from a moving picture.  You make it sound like each pixel is
copyrightable. :-)

Ec


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Books can have thousands of paragraphs too, all of them copyrighted and
>
>forming a story (assuming it's one of those newfangled story-books). I
>fail to see the distinction, or even why the number of frames a
>screencap is taken from is relevant. Would a screencap from a 30-second
>commercial with no story be different?
>
Filmed commercials (the most shameful of Canadian inventions) would face
other hurdles besides copyright:
    -Is it notable?
    -Is it encyclopedic?
    -Is it spam?
    -Is it NPOV?

Over the years some commercials have become creative classics in their
own right.

Ec


from_name: liu haokai

subject: [Wikitech-l] An error occur when send a mail

body:
 I am running a mediawiki 1.7.1 on a PC of my company, and the email server
is another pc on the intranet. I setted the mailserver address in php.ini,
and enabled the mail function in mediawiki. Once I test the mail function in
mediawiki I got the message like this:

"Error sending mail: mail()
[function.mail<http://192.168.21.25/ewiki/function.mail>]:
SMTP server response: 501 5.5.4 Invalid Address"

However, the following script in a soly php file has been tested working
well.

<?php
// The message
$message = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3";

// In case any of our lines are larger than 70 characters, we should use
wordwrap()
$message = wordwrap($message, 70);

// Send
mail('caffinated at example.com', 'My Subject', $message);
?>

I wonder is it a bug of mediawiki?
BTW, I am running mediawiki on windows xp sp2 professional chinese edition,
apache 2.0.58, php 5.1.4 and mysql 5.0.22 .


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>The original research policy can be summarised as: "don't make shit up".
>
Excellent!

>  Since a small but significant proportion of the editors who fall afoul
>of this policy don't tend to think of their activities as "making shit
>up"[0], we had to craft a new stick with a nail in it (sorry, "policy")
>and write "WP:NOR" on the side[1].  NOR exists to deal with physics
>crackpots and the like; however, in our enthusiasm to follow policy,
>however poorly-written, to the letter, we trip over ourselves to explain
>that articles on TV programmes must be deleted, Jimbo Wales can't
>advertise his own birthday, diagrams must be copied from textbooks, and
>high-quality GFDL pictures from amateur photographer Wikipedians cannot
>be accepted.
>
>I haven't read the /Star Trek/ uniforms article, but I can see several
>ways such an article could be written in a way that *isn't* in
>contravention of the spirit of the principle whilst still falling afoul
>of the letter of the policy.  And in such cases, frankly: fuck policy.
>
I'm glad to read that classical Australian bullshit detection is alive
and well. :-)

Ec


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 8/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a
> book.

The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a
library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online.
How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?

Jay.


body:
On 8/13/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a
> > library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online.
> > How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?
>
> Presumably by obtaining the movie in VHS or DVD form.  Many libraries
> have collections of movies for loan, and there are commercial
> providers as well (cf Blockbuster, etc)
>
> Once there, one can look for the scene.

24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000
frames.  Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a
time? And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been
altered in some subtle way? And then one must actually describe what
one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different
interpretations (i.e. original research).

With a quotation, it's quite simple - get the book, open up to the
page number listed, and read a couple of hundred words. Do the words
in the article match what's in the book? Verified.

> A corollary of this is that screencaps of movies or TV programs not
> available in purchaseable/rentable/loanable form should not be used as
> source material, since they are effectively unverifiable.

In my view *all* screencaps are effectively unverifiable.

Jay.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Future avenues of garnering participation;
	or, How Wikipedia is currently a crappy/crack-tastic game

body:
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Each student uses the Random article generator (perhaps with the help of
> a bot) to generate a list of ten articles that already exist on
> Wikipedia.  He does not see the articles, only the titles.  He then
> proceeds to write a first draft of an article on a chosen topic from
> that list.  He uploads the article to a local wiki where the other
> students can view and edit the article.  Marks can be allocated for
> different types of writing and editing, including big marks for
> achieving NPOV on a controversial topic and marks taken off for getting
> into an edit war.

It'd be better for us if they worked on articles that *don't* already
exist on Wikipedia...

(Incidentally, anyone ever think of trying to contact teachers of
translation classes to set them Wikipedia articles as translation
exercises? There are lots of articles, including featured articles,
waiting to be translated from other wikipedias...)

Steve

Steve