from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google

body:
Hoi,
The question of "central or decentral" will have to decided. You mention
a "wikifoundation" and that implies an hierarchy of some kind. Wikia is
a for profit organisation, so what? Does that make Wikia and Jimmy evil?
I would also not be surprised that Jimmy is doing it at Wikia because it
takes a long time to convince the Wikimedia Foundation that a new
project is the right thing to do. In this case I am not even sure that
this project is in line with the aims of the WMF, my money would not be
on it and I am not a betting man.

With the feeling for a need of an alternate search engine, you will have
obviously considered a business model for this project, even "not for
profits" need business plans. This business plan will make plain why it
is a good thing to do but most of all how it will be possible to make it
a sustainable project. Sustainable as in being both able to scale and to
be there next year as well.

Freedom from the hierarchy only works for those that are the hierarchy
or are not part of a collaborative process. Even within collaborative
processes there is a hierarchy. The point of this thread is that it is
best to acknowledge the cooperation and the help that we get even when
it comes from "unexpected" corners. It is not only sensible, it is also
the gracious thing to do.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Till Weber schreef:
> Anthony, I don?t think it is posible to merge both projects, wikiasari and peerpedia. Though the central person is Jim Wales, but he already decided to built a project without the foundation and one for profit. As well the proposal concept for wikiasari is still missing, if it is central or decentral. So I recommend to have the wikifoundation to run as well a search propject the p2p way.
>
> Just my to cents. If there are persons, which decide to act, it then really a question of freedom in organizations. Open source is one thing, but freedom from the hierachy is one other.
>
> /Till
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> An: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google
>
>
>> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
>>
>>
>>> I'd love to see Google torn down and replaced with an open source
>>> collaborative search engine run democratically by the world.  I'd love
>>> to have access to a search engine as good as Google, with a truly open
>>> API (i.e. sans http://code.google.com/apis/soapsearch/api_terms.html),
>>> and with all the results being released under an open content license.
>>>  Is Wikimedia the one to do that?  It's arguable whether it'd be
>>> within the scope of the Foundation's mission.  And in any case, I
>>> haven't seen a reasonable proposal of how to do it.  So I guess when
>>> it comes to that point, we're both in agreement.  And yeah.  Google
>>> did good.  Google does good.  But Google did bad, too.  Google does
>>> bad, too.  And Microsoft also did/does good/bad.
>>>
>>> Anthony
>>>
>>>
>> Who is in defence of Google? Wikifoundation?
>> "wikifoundation in defence of Google"
>>
>> The problem is, Jimmy is one of the founders of wikipedia, has nothing to
>> do with wikiseek; and wikiasari is a concept supported by a lot of people.
>> But: If wikifoundation makes a peerpedia-search, this means that there are
>> several conflicts. Is wikiasari more in solidarity to wikiseek, because
>> they both are for-profit ads-projects? or more in solidarity to peerpedia, to
>> support the core competencies of the foundation?
>> Wikifoundation need the courage, to steal Jimmies Idea to make it (a
>> search project) really open with p2p and without ads.
>> Ok, this is not about one person and I do not want to annoy anyone, so
>> let?s talk about the peerpedia project of the foundation here on this list.
>> Wikiasari is a different project on a different list.
>>
>> This simple sentence, said by Jim originally, means foe the rest of the
>> foundation members, to have the courage, to first develop a similar project
>> and split the development. This must be the rest of the foundation board
>> members aware of. Acting like wikiseek and play a card against the
>> wikisariproject. And this card here was suggested as a peerpedia-search, which means
>> (as the url was announced with a concept) to set up several yacy.net servers
>> to index the web p2p.
>>
>> (Or: Jim has to be asked, if he is agreeing to make wikiasari a kind of a
>> peerpedia project and if we are pulling the same goals. He still has not
>> announced, if nutch or yacy is on the three servers and/or if there is a
>> cooperation with the foundation, last I guess not, but if this is clear, this
>> means we need couraged people to do the same from the foundation side but
>> only p2p with the community).
>>
>> I wonder, why the members here on the list doubt the core cometencies or
>> Mission of the foundation, if the peerpedia-search project is in accordance.
>>
>> Here is the mission again:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>>
>> you see, several stars fit the project and social software is nutch not at
>> all, it is yacy, this is why I recomment to ask Jim to join the peerpedia
>> idea with his large knowledge and history experience.
>>
>> We could wook out a proposal (which jim announced the day before his
>> disney journey on anotehr list,  but still has not published) together, here is
>> the peerpedia "blanket" for this:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_P2-search_peerpedia
>>
>>
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
>>
>> The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the
>> following:
>>
>> Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and maintenance of
>> online *free*, *open content* encyclopedias, collections of quotations,
>> textbooks *and other collections of documents*, *information*, and other
>> informational *databases* in *all* the languages of the world that will be
>> distributed free of charge to the public under a free documentation license such
>> as the Free Documentation License written by the Free Software Foundation
>> Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or similar licensing scheme, see
>> http://www.wikimedia.org.
>>
>> The goals of the foundation are to *encourage* the further growth and
>> development of *open content*, *****social software**** WikiWiki-based projects
>> (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the full contents
>> of those projects to the public free of charge. In addition to managing the
>> already developed multilingual general encyclopedia and almanac named
>> Wikipedia, (http://www.wikipedia.org) there is a multi-language dictionary and
>> thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote,
>> a collection of e-book resources aimed specifically toward students (such
>> as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks and a
>> collection of source works called Wikisource; other projects are envisioned like
>> **peerpedia** - the open source search-engine yacy.net community in a p2p
>> style. The Foundation also manages the operations of the largely dormant
>> Nupedia project (which is not a wiki but is open content).
>>
>>
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-January/date.html
>>
>> BTW: we discuss here only in a free brainstorming, and indeed the leader
>> of foundation and the leader of wikia should meet at a round tabel and
>> discuss, if a collaboration is possible, and if the foundation is behind the p2p
>> idea, which several times was stated as the only way to have 1 Mio google
>> servers in defence. If both leaders or the board does not agree, the
>> question is open, if the foundation is willing to start and found a
>> yacy-wikipedia-indexing serverfarm project with several servers.
>>
>> Ok, let?s say each year we add 2 servers. Is this too much?
>> Yacysearch.com has done this in one weel with 7 servers.
>>
>> Kind regards.
>>
>>
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggestion: "Maintenance mode"

body:
On 1/21/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/01/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > - Links that go to disambiguation pages
>
> Depends upon finding a decent solution for
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6754#c8.

So I see. Looks like a useful thing for a variety of other reasons, too.

>
> > - Spelling errors, possibly?
>
> British, Australian or American English? We get enough editing
> disputes as it is. What about all the other languages we support? We'd
> have to maintain dictionaries, and we don't even have full maintenance
> of our *translations* at the moment.

That problem is easy at least: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AWB/T
The rule is easy: if a spelling is correct in *any* variation, don't
propose it as a mistake.

> > - Stuff that goes against MoS (for example, level 1 headings, links in
> > headings...)
>
> "MoS" is extremely variant from wiki to wiki and could change on a
> whim, which would mean software changes.

Yes. Perhaps any such "style violations" should be configurable
through a config page of some sort. Or simply that rules be codified
and set as preferences: "Highlight formatting in section headings
[yes/no]"

Incidentally, I think Platonides is right about CSS. I was thinking
about this afterwards and realised it could pose a problem for caching
if an error-highlighted page had to be stored separately from a
non-highlighted page. But you could actually just mark all the
highlighting with a CSS class and make it display as plain text for
users not in "maintenance mode".

Would this be a lot of work, do you think?

Steve


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

body:
On 1/18/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> In all fairness didn't the problem lay in his refusal to segregate
> ethnic and gender studies from their larger supercategories.  When you
> give special status to ethnic studies you bring attention to it.  When
> there is systemic bias recognizing that bias is a first step toward
> solving the problem, but if you overemphazixe a specific bias there is a
> risk that you will generate new biases.  Bias against African-Americans
> may be a significant problem in the United States, but other Wikipedians
> in other countries may see this as a particularly American problem.  The
> ethnic priorities in other countries can be quite different.  If America
> is indeed the great melting pot, what indeed is the point of classifying
> African-American literature as something separate from plain old
> American literature.

Well, nobody has really called America the great melting pot earnestly
for some time now (see [[melting pot]]). Whether the proper response
to different cultures is to assimilate them or to preserve them as
equals has been a big question in the U.S. for a long time, to say
nothing of other countries. It is an intensely politicized question,
one you're going to run into these questions in more places than the
U.S., and Americans are likely to wince at some of the distinctions
made in other countries as well. This is, no doubt, one of the big
problems with international, internet-driven problems, is that (as
we've all known for a long, long time), categories don't match up
across cultures, even within the relatively constrained environment of
Western academic culture. Again, this is one reason that the "free for
all" style of Wikipedia can probably cope with such things in a way
that a more traditional approach would have difficulties with.

FF


list: foundation-l

from_name: Birgitte SB

subject:
[Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of
	Google)

body:
--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have had the privilege to learn first hand how
> this can be done in a pilot
> project. In this project Wikimedians were in charge
> of a translation project
> where English featured articles were translated in
> Persian. The list of
> articles that were to be translated was presented
> before the work started to
> prevent the notion that an American POV was pushed
> out. Several articles
> were removed as a result. We have learned a lot from
> this project and, are
> now able to do a similar project where a mix of
> translation and original
> articles can be written.
>
> Important is that the articles selected are the ones
> that will have
> relevance. This is why a theme of "background
> articles to the news" was
> extremely valid. It is these articles that are found
> to be most read; the
> Gerald Ford article was read a lot after his death.
> By consistently focusing
> on the background information to the news, you
> create the relevance that
> will attract other people to enrich the project with
> other content. Things
> that are in the news have a tendency to get back
> into the news... :)
>
> Having a mix of translations and new articles is
> better also because the
> English featured articles are overdeveloped. It is
> much better for the
> creation of a community to create a tapestry of
> linked articles that provide
> a start. Many people have a fear of starting
> articles. There are with some
> regularity opportunities for projects like this. Of
> importance is that they
> are managed well and that the core values of our
> projects are respected this
> can be ensured by having established Wikimedians
> play a role in this.

I have wondered that it would be better to encourage
translations to purposely "stubify" articles rather
than focus on full Featured Article translations.
This would give the less developed langages something
where they see a need to "edit", eliminate most
cultural bias without a detailed study, and make the
limited translation reasources go farther to creating
a interlinked web of articles.  This idea was brought
up in BOF at Wikimania but I do not know if anything
was ever done in this line of thinking.

BirgitteSB

____________________________________________________________________________________
Need Mail bonding?
Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mathematics university lecture notes - useful to
	anybody?

body:
> I'm not at all saying that an editor should depend on others to find
> sources.  I am saying that there is no urgency to add them in each
> editing session.  When you look at the article's history, and see a
> regular and continuing series of diffs that keep adding material to the
> article you need to be ready to cut that person some slack.

When I say editing session I don't mean the time between clicking
"Edit this page" and clicking "Save", I mean the time between sitting
down at the computer and standing up again. If someone wants to save
the page multiple times to avoid losing all their work if something
goes wrong, that's fine, and they can put the references in at the
end. I think it's easier to do it as you go along, but it's a personal
thing. If they stand up and walk away from the computer for the night
without adding the references, then they've just put an unsourced
article on Wikipedia, and that's a bad thing. It's not necessarily
worse than no article at all (some would say it is), but it's still a
bad thing and shouldn't happen.

When you write an article, you should automatically know what the
sources are, because they are where you got the info. If you've
written the article without finding sources, then it's written from
your memory, which is not reliable and the entire article should
probably be deleted. Adding sources is really easy, because you've
already done the work before you started writing the article, so there
is really no excuse not to add them.


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an "expert"?

body:
> On 21 Jan 2007 at 07:42, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net>
> wrote:
>
>> This is my very first experience with a Mailing List of any kind. Please
>> bear with me. Are you saying that, when replying, I should delete all other
>> material on the original message except the exact statement(s) I am replying
>> to?
>
> Normal netiquette (though subject to some degree of debate, as with
> just about anything on the Internet) is to trim down the quoted
> material to the relevant portions and reply beneath them.  Exactly
> what is "relevant" may be up for discussion; certainly, the exact
> statements you're replying to are relevant, and perhaps a little bit
> more that's related to them (lest you be accused of taking quotes out
> of context), but certainly such things as message headers and
> footers, and entire paragraphs that have nothing to do with anything
> you're replying to, are irrelevancies that should be snipped.
>
> Here, mailing list reply style differs from the style often enforced
> in corporate communications, where they insist on preserving the
> entire thread history (somewhat wastefully) in order that the
> participants can follow the CYA (cover your ass) principle by showing
> that they received all parts of the previous messages (even while
> often showing, in their replies, that they failed to have any decent
> degree of reading comprehension as to actually understanding any of
> it).
>
> More info:
> http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/
>
> As for your other problem, with character sets, your mail program is
> apparently putting in such things as "curly" quotes and apostrophes
> in the proprietary Macintosh character encoding, which has these
> characters in different positions from the proprietary Windows
> character encoding that many of the readers support; however, your
> messages are also going out without any header indicating what
> character encoding they are in, which means that standards-compliant
> readers should render them as US-ASCII, a 7-bit character encoding
> containing only 128 different characters (including control
> characters) which does not include any of the "extended" characters
> of either the Mac or Windows proprietary encodings, or of more
> standardized encodings such as ISO-8859-1 or UTF-8.  What it means is
> that you're better off sticking to plain-ASCII straight quotes and
> apostrophes unless you can get your program to send the more exotic
> characters in a standards-compliant, platform-independent way.
>
> http://mailformat.dan.info/body/charsets.html
>
Thank you for the time and care you took with your response. I'm somewhat
computer challenged to begin with, so I have forwarded your response to my
computer guy who's in Vermont for a while. We'll see what he can come up
with to help improve things.

I hope I trimmed this response better this time.

Marc Riddell


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nofollow back on URL links on en.wikipedia.org
	articles for now

body:
On 1/20/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/20/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Having been requested by Jimmy to do so, and having seen a fun rumor of
> > a "search engine optimization world championship" contest targeting
> > WP[1], I've gone ahead and switched rel="nofollow" back onto URLs in
> > en.wikipedia.org's article namespace.
> >
> > (Better heuristic and manual flagging tools for URLs would of course be
> > super; anyone interested in working on integrating such support into
> > MediaWiki should swing on by the tech channels and give a shout.)
> >
> > [1]
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Globalwarming_awareness2007.2FSEO_world_championship_--_expect_a_spam_onslaught.
> >
>
>
> and the reviews start to come in:
>
> http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=224044&highlight=wikipedia

Hmm an I evil for enjoying this:

http://www.seorefugee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4655
http://www.wickedfire.com/industry-news/7373-wikipedia-external-links-now-nofollow.html

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
> I just blanked, and deleted
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death
>
> We had names of many famous people, stating they were responsible for
> someone else dying.
> ** Not a single reference **

Well done. You have improved Wikipedia.

Anyone saying that article shouldn't be speedied is just
wikilawyering. Try genuine lawyering, which would tell you that such
an article is borderline illegal. If that's not a good reason to
speedy something, then I don't know what is.

In many cases it is fine to essentially use the Wikipedia articles as
the sources for the items in the list. In the case of accusing people
of killing someone, it is absolutely not.


subject: [Foundation-l] In defence of Google

body:
Anthony schreef:
> On 1/20/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Commerce is an abstraction. Google a reality. The traffic that we have
>> and the resulting relevance that we acquired as a result is largely due
>> to Google. This is a reality. As I said earlier, it is relevant to
>> appreciate our friends. Microsoft's search engine does not do us any
>> favours. This is a reality. Our aims are in bringing information to
>> people; that is what Google helps us do. If we had twice the amount of
>> content and we did not have the traffic that comes from Google we would
>> not be half as good in achieving our goal. Our goal is to get the
>> information out, it is not sitting on it and think ourselves great for
>> having created such a large body of work.
>>
>>
> I don't think you're right that 50% of Wikipedia traffic comes as a
> result of Google searches ([[Wikipedia:Search_engine_statistics]] says
> it's 33%).  Nor do I believe that none of that traffic would have come
> to Wikipedia had Google not existed.  Nor do I believe that Google
> should be praised simply for giving Wikipedia a fair ranking.  Nor do
> I believe that traffic is the sole goal.
>
Once people become "addicted" to Wikipedia, they go directly to
Wikipedia. This means that the statistics about what percentage actually
comes from any source today does not make plain the effect such a source
has had on our popularity. The aim of the WMF is to make knowledge
available to people. We do that by making this knowledge available; the
amount of traffic has a direct correlation to our success.

Again, I acknowledge the importance that Google played, I am thankful
for all the help we get. All the little bits of help we got helped us to
become what we are today. The Google factor has been substantial; just
consider the amount of Firefox users compared to IE users and wonder why
this happened.

There is also the fact that Wikipedia is not well known in many
countries. When our articles are found positively in search engines, it
will slowly but surely help us get to the tipping point where Wikipedia
is a household name. It is not even well known in countries like Italy.
We need good relations to get us where we will be a well established
movement outside of the English language as well. It helps when we have
friends like Google.
>
>> Google does not need to be actively creating Open Content to be
>> considered beneficial to the Open Content. As they gave us a fair
>> ranking in their search engine we thrived. With your dismissal of Google
>> Books you conveniently ignore the controversy that exists because of the
>> audacity that Google had in making this tool available. You conveniently
>> ignore that many publishers went to court in order to prevent this
>> service in the first place. If anything, Google should be applauded for
>> services like Google book search, Google scholar.
>>
>
> Don't take my word for it.  Read up on what Brewster Kahle from
> Internet Archive had to say about Google Book Search, or find out more
> about the Open Content Alliance he co-founded largely to respond to
> it.  "They don't want the books to appear in anyone else's search
> engine but their own, which is a little peculiar for a company that
> says its mission is to make information universally accessible," Kahle
> said.
>
> "Google, for instance, is digitizing some great libraries. But their
> contracts (which were actually secret contracts with libraries ? which
> is bizarre, but anyway, they were secret until they got sued out of
> them by some governments) are under such restrictions that they're
> pretty useless... the copies that go back to the libraries. Pretty
> much Google is trying to set themselves up as the only place to get to
> these materials; the only library; the only access. The idea of having
> only one company control the library of human knowledge is a
> nightmare. I mean this is 1984 ? a book about how bad the world would
> be if this really came about, if a few governments' control and
> corporations' control on information goes too far."
>
> I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to choose sides on this one, and I'm
> going with Kahle, not with Google.
I have read enough to learn why Google is getting the opposition to its
program. I agree with that opposition. However, you will also have read
that Bruster Kahle acknowledges that his project is very much a reaction
to the Google project. The opposition that exists is not unlikely to
have Google to reconsider its position. When we consider Google a
friend, we can as a friend discuss these issues. When we consider Google
an enemy, we will not even try to engage in a conversation.

I object to see enemies everywhere, I prefer to see friends that have a
different outlook, friends that may be convinced to consider an other
approach. I think this approach is more productive.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] In defence of Google


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 1/21/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> >I don't think you did the *wrong* thing, but I think we should always
> >aim to stick to process. The fact that we have processes to delete
> >articles and to remove libelous content (OFFICE) should protect us. If
> >the risk was that great, I'm sure someone in the office would have
> >done something (perhaps you should have e-mailed?).
> >
> >--
> >Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> He did follow process, the process in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.
>
> Office is 3 people. The bulk of the work needs to be done by the users.

Definitely concur. The office is the *last* resort, not the first.

-Kat

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 1/21/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Sunday, January 21, 2007, 12:06:04 AM, Anthony wrote:
> > What about links to sister projects, like Wikinews?  It seems some of
> > those projects could benefit greatly from the links not being
> > nofollowed.
>
> I checked it and links to Wikinews do not have Nofollow, if
> you use the {{wikinews}} template.

Internal links, interwiki links and external links are treated
separately in the code. Brion has turned on nofollow for all external
links by changing a setting in the site configuration, but this only
affects external links. The setting can be applied only to certain
namespaces; before now, for example, nofollow was enabled for all
namespaces except the main namespace.

Here's the code that does it all:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/includes/Linker.php?revision=19502&view=markup

If you look closer at the HTML for a page you'll see there are all
different classes on the links, "extiw" for interwiki links,
"external" for a link to an external page, "image" for links to images
and so on. The short answer is that nofollow only applies to external
links.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 1/21/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Rob Church wrote:
> > On 20/01/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Interesting. What was the reason?
> >
> > I assume you'll be insulted if I assume you can't read.
>
> Either there is no reason given in the bug, or he and I both can't read.

It's the very first comment, by the person who WONTFIXed it (i.e.,
Brion, who as you may recall is the lead developer):  "Redirects are
meant to be a transparent part of the user interface. Behaving just
like other links is desired behavior, not a bug."


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just blanked, and deleted
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death
>
> We had names of many famous people, stating they were responsible for
> someone else dying.
> ** Not a single reference **
>
> I was told that I should have AFD it instead
>
> The potential for libel was huge, afd was likely to come as no
> consensus or delete.
> Wikimedia can't take the risk of being sued for the sake of process.
>
> So I deleted the entry to hide history, and drop a note stating should
> anybody readd content it must be with references.
>
> Probably many people will complain and ask for my head, just telling
> you people why I did it.

I don't think you did the *wrong* thing, but I think we should always
aim to stick to process. The fact that we have processes to delete
articles and to remove libelous content (OFFICE) should protect us. If
the risk was that great, I'm sure someone in the office would have
done something (perhaps you should have e-mailed?).

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
> I don't think you did the *wrong* thing, but I think we should always
> aim to stick to process. The fact that we have processes to delete
> articles and to remove libelous content (OFFICE) should protect us. If
> the risk was that great, I'm sure someone in the office would have
> done something (perhaps you should have e-mailed?).

WP:OFFICE is there is fix problems after we've received complaints. We
should be aiming to fix the problems before anyone complains.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think you did the *wrong* thing, but I think we should always
> aim to stick to process.

e.g. [[WP:BLP]], which says shoot this sort of rubbish on sight, then
rebuild with an incredibly hardarsed attitude to references.

- d.


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiGadugi Wikipedia Rating???

body:
Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote:

>In order to comply: You must link to a local copy of the GFDL, you must
>make it clear that the content from Wikipedia is available under the
>GFDL license, your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL, you
>must credit Wikipedia and link back to the source article. We also
>recommend that you include the date of the version copied, so that one
>is able to clearly figure out the authors by checking the history tab
>(it will likely have changed since you copied the content, and the
>authorship will have changed, too).
>
>Dominic
>
>
>
While I would agree that a "local copy" is a good idea, it is not in a
very strict sense necessary.  All that is necessary is to have a copy
that is accessable through the network you are using, somehow.  Having a
local copy means that it is accessable at the same time the rest of the
site is up/down.

As for the requirement to have the content link to the original source
article, that is not necessary either.  It may be a good idea, but it is
not required by the GFDL, nor a legal requirement.  All that is
necessary is that you credit five authors of the text, presumably the
five "leading contributors".  It isn't clear exactly which five, or if
random vandals on the history page qualify, or what edits done that are
credited only to an IP address really mean, but only five are strictly
needed.  The metric for determining the five "leading contributors" is
certainly a very grey area in terms of what the GFDL asks you for here.
 Edit count is hardly the best metric for many reasons.

All of the other requirements are completely made up here and are not
needed by the GFDL.  If this is something the Wikipedia community wants
to put into here, they ought to change the license that Wikipedia is
licensed under.  Good luck on trying to do that.  That would mean
restarting Wikipedia from scratch, essentially.

I'm not suggesting that these are bad recommendations in terms of being
nice to Wikipedia and helping to grow Wikimedia projects, but be very
clear that this is what you are saying and not that these are legal
requirements that are strictly necessary to copy the content, or even
republish it in the form of another website.  While "good advise" in
terms of being nice, this is awful legal advise on the whole.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ray Saintonge [mailto:saintonge at telus.net]
>Sent: Sunday, January 21, 2007 01:27 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb
>
>Pedro Sanchez wrote:
>
>>I just blanked, and deleted
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death
>>
>>We had names of many famous people, stating they were responsible for
>>someone else dying.
>>** Not a single reference **
>>
>>I was told that I should have AFD it instead
>>
>>The potential for libel was huge, afd was likely to come as no
>>consensus or delete.
>>Wikimedia can't take the risk of being sued for the sake of process.
>>
>>So I deleted the entry to hide history, and drop a note stating should
>>anybody readd content it must be with references.
>>
>>Probably many people will complain and ask for my head, just telling
>>you people why I did it.
>>
>That sounds terribly unilateral.  AFD would have been more prudent.
>Altering the title would have been more sensible, given that some were
>apparently only accused, and never convicted.
>
>I don't know how long the list was but being a "list" it should be
>enough if there are sources on the listed pages themselves.  Nobody puts
>sources on the index or Table of Contents of a book, because the sources
>would already be at more appropriate places.
>
>The "huge" potential for libel is a product of your imagination.  I'm
>not saying that there is none at all, but it is certainly much less than
>what you imagine.  In any event, other ways of fixing the article would
>also have eliminated that problem.  I don't know when the page was
>started but its talk page has been there four months; there was no urgency.
>
>The chronic bad blood in the deletion process is precisely because of
>people who take drastic and sudden unilateral action when they could
>have taken the time to think of softer ways of dealing with a problem.
>
>It would be a peaceful gesture if you restored the page, and initiated
>alternative solutions.
>
>Ec

I looked at the deleted material. Most entries are not controversial. However, all entries on the page fall under Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and may thus properly be deleted by any person without limit. This is a case where a user has taken responsibility. They should be commended.

Fred


references:
<45B32EC9.5070605@wolfmountaingroup.com> <45B3239B.8070103@cox.net>
	<45B3DC25.1090203@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>I request persmission from the Foundation to use its trademarks solely
>for the purpose attribution as required by the GFDL. Email of such
>consent to
>this list is acceptable as a reply to this email. The foundation must
>release WMG and Wikigadugi from any and all liability, claims, and causes
>of action for the use of its trademarks and names SOLELY for the purpose
>of GFDL compliance. I ca find no page on the wikimedia.org site
>that grants such a release. I will not use or misuse Foundation
>trademarks without such permission.
>
>Jeff
>
>
I'll defer here to Brad in terms of strict legal requirements, but I
fail to see how it is a violation and abuse of trademarks to cite
Wikipedia as the source of the material, in a bibliographic reference.
 Or that you even need permission to do this sort of citation.  Indeed,
I would think it to be a violation of the GFDL on the part of the WMF to
even require permission in this manner, as it would then be legally
impossible to comply with the GFDL when giving this content to a 3rd party.

You should not have to seek permission from the WMF or anybody on
Wikipedia in order to copy content from Wikipedia.  That is the whole
point of the GFDL.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: SPUI

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nofollow back on URL links on
 en.wikipedia.org	articles for now

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Serious question:
>
> Is it worth the Foundation approaching Google with a suggestion to
> *penalise* links from wikipedia.org? Not single links, but many links.

So Google Maps, TerraServer, etc get penalized?


body:
On 21/01/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> Sorvoja:
> | :-( :-( Wikipedia has added the fracking NOFOLLOW attribute to
> | all external links. There goes hours upon hours of editing and
> | link building down the drain. :-( :-(

Serious question:

Is it worth the Foundation approaching Google with a suggestion to
*penalise* links from wikipedia.org? Not single links, but many links.

- d.


body:
> Serious question:
>
> Is it worth the Foundation approaching Google with a suggestion to
> *penalise* links from wikipedia.org? Not single links, but many links.

I doubt it... It's quite hard to tell the difference between spam
links and real links.

Stable Versions are the solution, yet again - have nofollow on
unstable versions and allow the links to be indexed on stable
versions, that way everyone gets the benefit of google indexing the
links, without there being an incentive to add linkspam.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> I don't know how long the list was but being a "list" it should be
> enough if there are sources on the listed pages themselves.  Nobody puts
> sources on the index or Table of Contents of a book, because the sources
> would already be at more appropriate places.

With a book, we can reliably know that there are sources elsewhere. To
keep an article like this reliable, we either need to source it on
that page or else keep checking the section saying "In 1972, she was
involved in a car accident which left two dead." is still there on
another page...

"Sources on the other page" is fine enough, but perhaps a more
practical use of this system would be to have *categories*, not a
list; if the original article has the content change, they zap the cat
as well, and they disappear from our "list". Plus we don't need to
clutter it with sources.

(As an aside - our users tend to treat categories as a rather
simplistic list, anyway, so the difference ought to be limited...)

> The "huge" potential for libel is a product of your imagination.  I'm
> not saying that there is none at all, but it is certainly much less than
> what you imagine.  In any event, other ways of fixing the article would
> also have eliminated that problem.  I don't know when the page was
> started but its talk page has been there four months; there was no urgency.

Stupid things have been going on for a long time, sure. It doesn't
mean we shouldn't respond to them swiftly and cleanly when we discover
them.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, no, and just plain... no. "Process" is what killed Nupedia. The OP
> has our sincere thanks for removing another of our drive-by-stupidity
> magnets. Seriously. Next thing you know [[snopes.com]] or [[The Straight
> Dope]] will have entire sections labelled "according to Wikipedia..."
> where they debunk all of the unreferenced tripe that's lying around.

Just to clarify: Keeping to established processes when it comes to
contentious actions (deletion process, etc.) is important to ensuring
the project works day-to-day, flows well and reduces editor annoyance.

Having too much process (for example, when it is not necessary) is not
good. It takes away from the ease and enjoyability of volunteering for
Wikipedia. More importantly, it stops users taking spontaneous
decisions which are usually beneficial to the project (I, for one, am
less likely to do something if there are lots of hoops to jump
through.)

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
On 1/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Serious question:
>
> Is it worth the Foundation approaching Google with a suggestion to
> *penalise* links from wikipedia.org? Not single links, but many links.
>

Google have long standing principle that it is imposible for anything
not on your site to hurt your page rank or whatever. The logical
responce to this would be to spam your oponent's links.

There is also the problem of site like www.findagrave.com who quite
legitimately have rather a lot of links on wikipedia.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] In defence of Google

body:
Anthony schreef:
> On 1/21/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I have read enough to learn why Google is getting the opposition to its
>> program. I agree with that opposition. However, you will also have read
>> that Bruster Kahle acknowledges that his project is very much a reaction
>> to the Google project. The opposition that exists is not unlikely to
>> have Google to reconsider its position. When we consider Google a
>> friend, we can as a friend discuss these issues. When we consider Google
>> an enemy, we will not even try to engage in a conversation.
>>
>>
> When we consider them a corporation trying to make a buck, and not a
> friend or an enemy, we are best positioned to engage in that
> conversation.  By all means this world we live in rewards those who
> form symbiotic relationships.  If I ever referred to Google as the
> enemy, then I admit I was wrong for that.
>
>
>> I object to see enemies everywhere, I prefer to see friends that have a
>> different outlook, friends that may be convinced to consider an other
>> approach. I think this approach is more productive.
>>
>>
> I prefer to see corporations as corporations, entities that are bound
> by law not to have friends or enemies but only to consider what is in
> the best interest of their shareholders in terms of making the most
> money (in terms of for-profit US corporations, anyway).  By all means
> I think we should recognize that corporations do change their
> approaches.  But that has nothing to do with them being a friend and
> everything to do with it being in the best interests of both of us to
> do, whatever.
>
> I'd love to see Google do a complete 180 on its relationship with the
> open content movement.  Do you see any way they could do that without
> destroying their entire business?  For now I think it's enough that
> they don't actively try to harm Wikipedia and other open content sites
> by biasing their search results against them.  So thank you Google.
> Thanks for not destroying us.  We love you.
>
> Anthony
Hoi,
Yes, I see Google change several of their business practices without
destroying their business model. It is in the fact that they DID make
their applications in such a way that you are able to remove your data
from their applications. This gives users some confidence. It is in the
fact that their motto is to do good. I see it in organisations denying
Google the possibility to digitise their content because of the reasons
given; this thwarts their objective and at some stage even Google has to
collaborate in order to achieve what they really want. They do not
require exclusivity here either to be the best.

In this day and age where Time makes "us" the person of the year 2006,
it will take time to get companies and organisations to connect to the
changed way of this new brave world. It is for us to understand what is
key in what we do, and keep to those values. What we have to learn is
how to make our effort sustainable giving the growth of our projects. It
will not be easy and neither will it be uncontroversial however it is
the road in front of us.

Thanks,
     GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] In defence of Google


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an "expert"?

body:
On 21/01/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The first place that I looked at for help on this was my 1816 11th
> edition of Samuel Johnson's dictionary.  What surprised me was to see
> that it appears there only as an adjective.

According to my copy of W. Peacock's version of the Dictionary (fifth
edition, London, 1797), it is an adjective meaning "skilful,
intelligent, ready". Well, we have a great number of /ready/
contributors, that's for sure...

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>

> I don't know how long the list was but being a "list" it should be
> enough if there are sources on the listed pages themselves.  Nobody
> puts
> sources on the index or Table of Contents of a book, because the
> sources
> would already be at more appropriate places.

The book analogy does not hold because are integral entities. Once a
book is printed, the table of contents doesn't change independently
from the rest of the book.

In theory, I agree that "it should be enough if there are sources on
the listed pages themselves," but in practice this is _far_ from
being the case. People simply add names to the list. Just because the
name is a blue link, it doesn't mean the person who added the name
even glanced at the linked article.

It is common for the linked article not even to _mention_ the list
topic. It is _extremely rare_ for the mention to have an inline
citation of a confirming source. It is probably _less than an even
chance_ that the page has a general reference or external link that
is identifiable by inspection as a obvious source that ought to
confirm the specific fact.

Just for laughs, let me look at a list I've never checked: the
section of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_Swarthmore_College_people headed Arts, film, theatre, and
broadcasting, blue links only.

Peter Bart: Article says he graduated from Swarthmore, but statement
has no inline citation. No "references" section. None of the seven
external links explicitly says "bio." The most plausible place to
look seems to be the imdb profile link? Nope, the imdb profile does
not say anything about his education. The next most likely would be
"Variety's website," maybe he has a bio or profile there? Nope, that
link is just to http://www.variety.com. Conclusion: not easy to find
a confirming source.

Al Camines: Article says he graduated from Swarthmore, but statement
has no inline citation. Article is completely unreferenced.

David Dye: Article does not mention Swarthmore at all.

Judith Edelman: Article says she graduated from Swarthmore, but
statement has no inline citation. Article has no references section.
Article has a single external link, to her profile at Compass
Records. Linked page is not her bio, but has the start of an
"about..." article. That "about" page is a bio... and does say "She
followed one of her brothers, coincidentally a bluegrass-loving
fiddler, to Swarthmore College."

H. C. Robbins Landon: article says he studied music at Swarthmore
College and Boston University, but statement has no inline citation.
Article has no references at all and no external links.

So, of the first five entries checked,
a) I was only able to trace _one_ of them to a published source,
b) One of them did not even _assert_ the fact asserted by the list.

This is pretty typical.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
OK Dominic, lt's g through it. Couple of points I must make first.

1. I do not ever use Wikipedia logos, trademarks, or other materials as
these violate US Trademark laws. I don't care
if Wikipedia says "Please link back to us with attribution", it is
irrelevant. I have received no permission from the foundation
to use its trademarks in such a way. Whether or not the Wikipedia
community says this is ok and should be done for
GFDL compliance, the FOUNDATION has given no such consent to anyone, and
any sites doing it are subject to legal
action from the Foundation. The Wikipedia Community has **NO** authority
to release third party sites from
claims and causes of action from the Foundation for trademark misuse, on
the **FOUNDATION** has such
authority. Before I post any attribution back to the Foundation (which
would make the foundationliable for the
content) I need the Foundation to grat permission for use of its
trademarks in this manner.

2. http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/WikiGadugi:About points to the GFDL.
This statement is apprently not
accurate.

3. The date the articles were uploaded and the last author is already
listed in kanohesdi (history) for each article,
so this statement is inaccurate.

I request persmission from the Foundation to use its trademarks solely
for the purpose attribution as required by the GFDL. Email of such
consent to
this list is acceptable as a reply to this email. The foundation must
release WMG and Wikigadugi from any and all liability, claims, and causes
of action for the use of its trademarks and names SOLELY for the purpose
of GFDL compliance. I ca find no page on the wikimedia.org site
that grants such a release. I will not use or misuse Foundation
trademarks without such permission.

Jeff

Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote:

>There are a few problems with the site currently. In order to be in
>compliance, you must also credit Wikipedia as your source. I'm clicking
>"random page" and not seeing any articles that do this. They are just
>direct copies with no reference to Wikipedia. You should have a note,
>perhaps at the bottom of the page, like:
>
>This article is licensed under the
> GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
> Wikipedia article
>"Foo".
>
>
>
>Also, your content does not appear to be licensed under the GFDL; it
>says on each page: "Content is available under Wikigadugi Public License
><http://www.wikigadugi.org/index.php/License>." And the link to that
>license is broken. Your disclaimer and about pages linked at the bottom
>are also blank, so I'm not sure where the GFDL is posted to your site.
>
>

>In order to comply: You must link to a local copy of the GFDL, you must
>make it clear that the content from Wikipedia is available under the
>GFDL license, your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL, you
>must credit Wikipedia and link back to the source article.
>

>We also
>recommend that you include the date of the version copied, so that one
>is able to clearly figure out the authors by checking the history tab
>(it will likely have changed since you copied the content, and the
>authorship will have changed, too).
>
>Dominic
>
>
>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>Wikigadugi is listed here at:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance
>>
>>as
>>
>>" ...Either more research is needed, or it is disputed Fail in a very
>>significant way such as claiming their own copyright without including a
>>GFDL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL> notice ..."
>>
>>
>>Pardon me folks, but if someone feels we are not in compliance with the
>>GFDL, can please someone point out where this is the case?   All of our
>>content
>>is GFDL compliant and we do not offer any license other than the GFDL
>>and post the GFDL to our site.
>>
>>I am happy to address and correct any issues with use of the Foundations
>>content if anyone feels it is not adequately spelled out as GFDL.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
As a note to this request, I do not play the "Fair Use" game with regard
to the use of IP of third parties. I will NOT be using
Foundation trademarks without their permission. I realize the Wikipedia
Community operates this way, WE DO NOT. I need
a release before I will post attribution back to Wikipedia through the
use of its trademarks without the Foundations consent.

Thanks

Jeff

Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>OK Dominic, lt's g through it. Couple of points I must make first.
>
>1. I do not ever use Wikipedia logos, trademarks, or other materials as
>these violate US Trademark laws. I don't care
>if Wikipedia says "Please link back to us with attribution", it is
>irrelevant. I have received no permission from the foundation
>to use its trademarks in such a way. Whether or not the Wikipedia
>community says this is ok and should be done for
>GFDL compliance, the FOUNDATION has given no such consent to anyone, and
>any sites doing it are subject to legal
>action from the Foundation. The Wikipedia Community has **NO** authority
>to release third party sites from
>claims and causes of action from the Foundation for trademark misuse, on
>the **FOUNDATION** has such
>authority. Before I post any attribution back to the Foundation (which
>would make the foundationliable for the
>content) I need the Foundation to grat permission for use of its
>trademarks in this manner.
>
>2. http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/WikiGadugi:About points to the GFDL.
>This statement is apprently not
>accurate.
>
>3. The date the articles were uploaded and the last author is already
>listed in kanohesdi (history) for each article,
>so this statement is inaccurate.
>
>I request persmission from the Foundation to use its trademarks solely
>for the purpose attribution as required by the GFDL. Email of such
>consent to
>this list is acceptable as a reply to this email. The foundation must
>release WMG and Wikigadugi from any and all liability, claims, and causes
>of action for the use of its trademarks and names SOLELY for the purpose
>of GFDL compliance. I ca find no page on the wikimedia.org site
>that grants such a release. I will not use or misuse Foundation
>trademarks without such permission.
>
>Jeff
>
>
>
>Dominic McDevitt-Parks wrote:
>
>
>
>>There are a few problems with the site currently. In order to be in
>>compliance, you must also credit Wikipedia as your source. I'm clicking
>>"random page" and not seeing any articles that do this. They are just
>>direct copies with no reference to Wikipedia. You should have a note,
>>perhaps at the bottom of the page, like:
>>
>>This article is licensed under the
>>GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
>>Wikipedia article
>>"Foo".
>>
>>
>>
>>Also, your content does not appear to be licensed under the GFDL; it
>>says on each page: "Content is available under Wikigadugi Public License
>><http://www.wikigadugi.org/index.php/License>." And the link to that
>>license is broken. Your disclaimer and about pages linked at the bottom
>>are also blank, so I'm not sure where the GFDL is posted to your site.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>>In order to comply: You must link to a local copy of the GFDL, you must
>>make it clear that the content from Wikipedia is available under the
>>GFDL license, your materials in turn have to be licensed under GFDL, you
>>must credit Wikipedia and link back to the source article.
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>We also
>>recommend that you include the date of the version copied, so that one
>>is able to clearly figure out the authors by checking the history tab
>>(it will likely have changed since you copied the content, and the
>>authorship will have changed, too).
>>
>>Dominic
>>
>>
>>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Wikigadugi is listed here at:
>>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance
>>>
>>>as
>>>
>>>" ...Either more research is needed, or it is disputed Fail in a very
>>>significant way such as claiming their own copyright without including a
>>>GFDL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL> notice ..."
>>>
>>>
>>>Pardon me folks, but if someone feels we are not in compliance with the
>>>GFDL, can please someone point out where this is the case?   All of our
>>>content
>>>is GFDL compliant and we do not offer any license other than the GFDL
>>>and post the GFDL to our site.
>>>
>>>I am happy to address and correct any issues with use of the Foundations
>>>content if anyone feels it is not adequately spelled out as GFDL.
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

> Meanwhile, I've already restored about 5 of those in the article, and
> I'll try to get to more later.  a quick post somewhere saing "we know
> these things are true, can we find sources" and it'd be done in 5
> minutes.  Instead, knee-jerk reaction time, whee!!!

That knee-jerk reaction was absolutely a right process per WP:BLP -
blank the unsourced silly thing, then add back sources with hard
verifiability.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 1/21/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia also should always be neutral and it should try not to
> directly influence the events outside of it.

Unfortunately, the nofollow tag forces sites to make that decision.
There's no avoiding it: whether we use nofollow or not, we are
"influencing events" in the outside world.

It's like tipping or not tipping in a restaurant: You have to decide,
and either way there is a consequence.

Steve


body:
On 21/01/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Sorvoja:
> | :-( :-( Wikipedia has added the fracking NOFOLLOW attribute to
> | all external links. There goes hours upon hours of editing and
> | link building down the drain. :-( :-(
>
> (Those are little animated, pyrotechnic thumbs-down frownies,
> not simple three-char ASCII emoticons.  The blog crowd, they do
> love their icons.)

Not even thumbs-down frownies, but angrily-shooting-a-gun-dudes. Hold
me, I'm frightened.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an "expert"?

body:
> I'd say, by the way, that this is by far secondary to contributing
> something smart and thoughtful to the list, which you do fine at.
> Content beats form. I far prefer badly-formatted good stuff to
> immaculately-presented rubbish.
>
>
> - d.

Thank you.

Marc


body:
On 21/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> There is also the fact that Wikipedia is not well known in many
> countries. When our articles are found positively in search engines, it
> will slowly but surely help us get to the tipping point where Wikipedia
> is a household name. It is not even well known in countries like Italy.
> We need good relations to get us where we will be a well established
> movement outside of the English language as well. It helps when we have
> friends like Google.

On a slight variation on this topic:

What can we do for countries where people routinely use the English
wikipedia and ignore their own language Wikipedia? I try to push local
Wikipedias when talking to the press (and far too many  seem to be
unaware of their own language Wikipedia) and mention the international
character talking to the English-language press. That hopefully does a
little, but not enough.

One factor appears to be that en:wp has achieved usefulness. (If
Wikipedias weren't actually useful, wikipedia.org wouldn't be a top 10
site on Alexa.) I think this is two things:

1. Incredible breadth of coverage - journalists LOVE en:wp because
it's the universal backgrounding resource on any subject, if
approached with due caution.
2.Very up-to-date.

Britannica may have more consistent writing quality and more
consistent fact-checking, but it's not there on people's desks and
it's not kept obsessively up-to-date.

So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to
achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are
there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public
awareness?

[cc: to wikien-l for further ideas]

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of Google)


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an

body:
>This is my very first experience with a Mailing List of any kind. Please
>bear with me. Are you saying that, when replying, I should delete all other
>material on the original message except the exact statement(s) I am replying
>to?
>
>Help!
>
>Marc Riddell

Yes, provided those following the thread can still understand the context.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
>I don't think you did the *wrong* thing, but I think we should always
>aim to stick to process. The fact that we have processes to delete
>articles and to remove libelous content (OFFICE) should protect us. If
>the risk was that great, I'm sure someone in the office would have
>done something (perhaps you should have e-mailed?).
>
>--
>Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)

He did follow process, the process in Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons.

Office is 3 people. The bulk of the work needs to be done by the users.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
>Process merely makes things run smoother and keeps people from doing
>dumb things more often than not.
>
>Meanwhile, I've already restored about 5 of those in the article, and
>I'll try to get to more later.  a quick post somewhere saing "we know
>these things are true, can we find sources" and it'd be done in 5
>minutes.  Instead, knee-jerk reaction time, whee!!!
>
>Maybe some people would like to pitch in?  The Google cache is right here:
>
>http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:FBnIbSOEGeoJ:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death+http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1
>
>-Jeff

Yes, please pitch in. This monstrosity has been nominated for deletion.

Fred


from_name: Henry Skelton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Development of a Metadata/Cross-Indexing System

body:
I'm interested in helping out in the development of mediawiki. I
think it's very good, but one that seems missing is a good system for
metadata and cross indexing information.

That might not be the best way to put it. As I see it, an article
would include more than just the text of the article. It would have a
summary (possible present on the page), and also metadata (like the
classification for an organism). e.g., on an article for a family of
turtles, say Chelydridae,  you might want to list all of the genuses.
Instead of searching and hoping you have them all, then copy/pasting
or making your own summaries, you could just do something like

[[wikipedia searchForArticlesWithTags:genus,family=Testudinidae]
listData:scientificname,commonname,conservationstatus]

This would then automatically get all of those genuses, with the
information specified, and would update if anything changed or new
ones were added. You could also automatically grab summaries, which
are quite common [someArticle getSummary].

Something like this could also keep data in sync. I've seen several
instances of conflicting information between an article, and a small
summary in another article.

Is there something like this in progress? I'd like to help, but I'd
like to avoid duplicating effort on something someone is already
working on. I know how to program, and know a small amount of PHP.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of
	Google)

body:
How easy would it be to put a featured article symbol next to the
links to other language versions of a page when the other version is a
featured article (or equivalent) on that wiki?

It might help persuade people that other language wikipedias are worth reading.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an

body:
> Thanks. I'm going to take a closer look at how some other persons' responses
> in the past are set up, and take my cue from these.
>
> Still learning,

That was a good reply. I would have removed the header information (we
don't need to know the subject line of the email you're replying to,
for example, as it's copied in your subject line anyway), and the
"WikiEN-l mailing list" footer at the end (it's added to every email
automatically, so if you include it in your email, there ends up being
two). As for the text, you quoted the right amount, I think.


from_name: Dmcdevit

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/21/07, Dominic McDevitt-Parks <dmcdevit at cox.net> wrote:
>
>> There are a few problems with the site currently. In order to be in
>> compliance, you must also credit Wikipedia as your source
>>
>
> Please read the GFDL before makeing comments like this.
>
>
>> . I'm clicking
>> "random page" and not seeing any articles that do this. They are just
>> direct copies with no reference to Wikipedia. You should have a note,
>> perhaps at the bottom of the page, like:
>>
>> This article is licensed under the
>>  GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the
>>  Wikipedia article
>> "Foo".
>>
>>
>
> This is painfully wrong.
>
>
This is a copy-and-paste from Wikipedia's own information pages on the
matter. I won't claim to be the expert here. Perhaps you could fix them
then, or maybe even *say* what the problem is?

Dominic


body:
On 1/21/07, Henry Skelton <dimensiondude.oss at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm interested in helping out in the development of mediawiki. I
> think it's very good, but one that seems missing is a good system for
> metadata and cross indexing information.
>
> That might not be the best way to put it. As I see it, an article
> would include more than just the text of the article. It would have a
> summary (possible present on the page), and also metadata (like the
> classification for an organism). e.g., on an article for a family of
> turtles, say Chelydridae,  you might want to list all of the genuses.
> Instead of searching and hoping you have them all, then copy/pasting
> or making your own summaries, you could just do something like
>
> [[wikipedia searchForArticlesWithTags:genus,family=Testudinidae]
> listData:scientificname,commonname,conservationstatus]
>
> This would then automatically get all of those genuses, with the
> information specified, and would update if anything changed or new
> ones were added. You could also automatically grab summaries, which
> are quite common [someArticle getSummary].
>
> Something like this could also keep data in sync. I've seen several
> instances of conflicting information between an article, and a small
> summary in another article.
>
> Is there something like this in progress? I'd like to help, but I'd
> like to avoid duplicating effort on something someone is already
> working on. I know how to program, and know a small amount of PHP.

The major issue here tends to be optimization.  Semantic MediaWiki
more or less has what you're looking for, but as I understand it, it
scales far too poorly to be used for a site like Wikipedia.  Category
intersection is a more specific much less ambitious thing to do, and
there appears to be some progress in that direction right now,
although it's not necessarily ready for prime time.

But for the overall idea of what you posted, well, that strikes me as
basically like allowing anyone to run arbitrary SELECT queries.  You
just can't do that with a database Wikipedia's size.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mathematics university lecture notes - useful
	to	anybody?

body:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote

> > Aha. There is no adequate textbook for the typical [[Mathematical Tripos]] course. So a wikibook rendering is actually quite a sound idea; the main issue not being reliability, but the need to expand exposition.
>
> There won't be one textbook for the entire Tripos, no... you have to
> get textbooks on each lecture course. Sometimes the textbook won't
> coincide exactly with the lecture course, but you can usually find one
> that covers a superset of the course, or two that cover the entire
> course between them.

Not so, really. If you did the Fluid Dynamics course as set up by George Batchelor, then, yes, the Batchelor book would be the 'book of the course'. But this is not typical.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
On 21/01/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> How easy would it be to put a featured article symbol next to the
> links to other language versions of a page when the other version is a
> featured article (or equivalent) on that wiki?
>
> It might help persuade people that other language wikipedias are worth reading.

It's a nice ide - so nice that we do it already :-)

There's a CSS hack for it; as well as the interwiki link, you use
{{Link FA|xx}} which gives an interwiki with a little star. It's not
perfect - it needs manual maintenance - but it works well enough...

See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon - half a dozen of
the interwiki links are FAs.

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


body:
On 20/01/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Thomas Dalton"
>
> > I don't think your lecture notes are a reliable source, so anyone
> > using them would have to verify them with a textbook, so they might as
> > well just use the textbook to start with...
>
> Aha. There is no adequate textbook for the typical [[Mathematical Tripos]]
> course. So a wikibook rendering is actually quite a sound idea; the main
> issue not being reliability, but the need to expand exposition.

Has no over-enthusiastic Cantabrian yet tried to turn a specialised
one out, or do they fear that would make it too easy for their
charges? ;-)

--
- Andrew Gray
(who has written short articles on two Oxbridge maths professors of
late and has a couple more coming...)
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>I request persmission from the Foundation to use its trademarks solely
>>for the purpose attribution as required by the GFDL. Email of such
>>consent to
>>this list is acceptable as a reply to this email. The foundation must
>>release WMG and Wikigadugi from any and all liability, claims, and causes
>>of action for the use of its trademarks and names SOLELY for the purpose
>>of GFDL compliance. I ca find no page on the wikimedia.org site
>>that grants such a release. I will not use or misuse Foundation
>>trademarks without such permission.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>I'll defer here to Brad in terms of strict legal requirements, but I
>fail to see how it is a violation and abuse of trademarks to cite
>Wikipedia as the source of the material, in a bibliographic reference.
> Or that you even need permission to do this sort of citation.  Indeed,
>I would think it to be a violation of the GFDL on the part of the WMF to
>even require permission in this manner, as it would then be legally
>impossible to comply with the GFDL when giving this content to a 3rd party.
>
>You should not have to seek permission from the WMF or anybody on
>Wikipedia in order to copy content from Wikipedia.  That is the whole
>point of the GFDL.
>
>
>
It could potentially be trademark infrginement and trading on the
goodwill of the foundation in certain situations. In any event, companies
are not about civil disobediance. WMG needs permission or implied
pemission in the form of a statement by he Foundation that use if its
valuable trademark rights is granted for purposes of attribution through
the use of its trademarks.

Apolicy page on wikimedia.org would probably address any issues on this
topic.

Jeff


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In defence of
 Google)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to
> achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are
> there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public
> awareness?
>

I'd say it depends greatly on the language.  I'm most familiar with el:
(Greek), whose main problem is simply not enough participants.  I don't
think it's that most Greek-speaking Wikipedians work on en:
instead---those who do tend to also work on el: as well.  There just
aren't enough Greek-speaking Wikipedians in the first place.  Why not?
Well, partly advertising, and partly there aren't enough Greek-speaking
people in the world.  English has around 350 million native speakers,
and over 1.5 billion total speakers; Greek has fewer than 15 million
total speakers.  To overcome that disparity in number of speakers
requires a *huge* popularity among the speakers who do exist.  This is
possible, since the German Wikipedia is at least of the same order of
magnitude as the English Wikipedia, despite there being considerably
fewer speakers (~120 million native, ~140 million total).

The harder to overcome problem is international breadth.  The en:
Wikipedia has editors from a wide variety of countries, which is not the
case on smaller Wikipedias---many of the China-related en: articles were
written by people in China, for example, which is simply not going to
happen on most smaller Wikipedians, since almost no Chinese speak
Greek.  This is also a problem for sources, because on some topics, even
very important ones, there is often only information available in one
language---for example many China-related topics have information only
available in Chinese.  On en: this is not so much of a problem, because
we have many Chinese-speaking editors.  But el: has few to no
Chinese-speaking editors, so cannot use such sources, except indirectly
by translating the en: article.

Of course one does the best with what one has, so the smaller Wikipedias
simply need more people to begin with, and then will probably have to
rely more heavily on translating articles from the larger Wikipedias.

-Mark


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/21/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's a CSS hack for it; as well as the interwiki link, you use
> {{Link FA|xx}} which gives an interwiki with a little star. It's not
> perfect - it needs manual maintenance - but it works well enough...
>

Opera	8.5 gives a little black dot rather than a star.

--
geni


body:
On 21/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/21/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > There's a CSS hack for it; as well as the interwiki link, you use
> > {{Link FA|xx}} which gives an interwiki with a little star. It's not
> > perfect - it needs manual maintenance - but it works well enough...
> >
>
> Opera   8.5 gives a little black dot rather than a star.

IE 7 does as well, but only whilst loading - it eventually turns into
a small pale gold star. I think it used to be an actual image of the
FA-star, now changed, but don't quote me on that.

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


body:
> It's a nice ide - so nice that we do it already :-)
>
> There's a CSS hack for it; as well as the interwiki link, you use
> {{Link FA|xx}} which gives an interwiki with a little star. It's not
> perfect - it needs manual maintenance - but it works well enough...
>
> See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon - half a dozen of
> the interwiki links are FAs.

It's a tiny little star in place of the bullet point. If I wasn't
looking for it, I would never notice it. How about a full size star
after the link?


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] template for number of page views?

body:
Marco Schuster wrote:
> Steve Bennett schrieb:
>> On 1/21/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> 2) On Wikimedia projects, page views are not tracked due to load.
>>> Probably because of this, nobody's created a {{PAGEVIEWCOUNT}} magic
>>> word or whatnot.
>>>
>> I thought they kind of were now. Like every 1000th view is recorded
>> somewhere, possibly offsite. Wikicharts, it was called. What's the
>> status of that?
>>
> that is on toolserver. but i think it would produce too much server load
> both on ts and on "normal" servers to call the stat info for every page
> call...

Wikicharts is only accurate for about the top 50 most popular pages.
There's no technical reason why we couldn't count every single page view
and store the counts in an in-memory hashtable for lookup by some
web-based script. There's only 25M pages, so the memory requirements
wouldn't be particularly onerous. This kind of thing would be enabled by
the UDP logging infrastructure I've been setting up.

But it's not going to happen unless someone gets around to writing a
program which:

* Accepts URLs on stdin, separated by line breaks
* Identifies plain page views
* Breaks them down into per-page counts as described
* Provides a TCP query interface
* Does all that for 30k req/s using less than 10% CPU and 2GB memory

Impossible?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
The first thing we can do is not compare it to the English language
Wikipedia. The en.wikipedia.org is what the other projects can aspire to if
that is what they want. If we are serious about making these other projects
successful, we have to give them a priority that they currently do not get
and give them the room to develop.

The first thing that we can do is to make sure that the localisation is done
as efficiently as possible. Practically it means that the Incubator can be
used like the BetaWiki used to be used for. By making Incubator the place
where we do our localisation, we will need to do this only once and, this is
an improvement from the laborious way it is done on for instance the Marathi
projects. It however means that this software needs to be accepted by Brion
and for him it currently does not have the required priority.

In order to get living and breathing language projects there are several
things that help. Localisation is one. With a quality localisation we not
only support one project, we allow MediaWiki to be used as a tool. This will
increase the number of people that can easily help us out. A minimal amount
of content for a project is the next. There have been successful projects to
translate basic information that provides some infrastructure to a project.
The Neapolitan Wikipedia for instance has pioneered the use of CAT or
Computer Translation Tools for the creation of static content.

There are organisations that share the wish with us to provide quality
information in particular languages.

I have had the privilege to learn first hand how this can be done in a pilot
project. In this project Wikimedians were in charge of a translation project
where English featured articles were translated in Persian. The list of
articles that were to be translated was presented before the work started to
prevent the notion that an American POV was pushed out. Several articles
were removed as a result. We have learned a lot from this project and, are
now able to do a similar project where a mix of translation and original
articles can be written.

Important is that the articles selected are the ones that will have
relevance. This is why a theme of "background articles to the news" was
extremely valid. It is these articles that are found to be most read; the
Gerald Ford article was read a lot after his death. By consistently focusing
on the background information to the news, you create the relevance that
will attract other people to enrich the project with other content. Things
that are in the news have a tendency to get back into the news... :)

Having a mix of translations and new articles is better also because the
English featured articles are overdeveloped. It is much better for the
creation of a community to create a tapestry of linked articles that provide
a start. Many people have a fear of starting articles. There are with some
regularity opportunities for projects like this. Of importance is that they
are managed well and that the core values of our projects are respected this
can be ensured by having established Wikimedians play a role in this.

PS This is not to say that the small projects are the only projects that
could benefit from a paid for project. When projects have a bias that exists
because of an under representation of specific information, it would be one
way of addressing it effectively.

PS There is room for the development of content in many more languages that
we are exploring.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 1/21/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > There is also the fact that Wikipedia is not well known in many
> > countries. When our articles are found positively in search engines, it
> > will slowly but surely help us get to the tipping point where Wikipedia
> > is a household name. It is not even well known in countries like Italy.
> > We need good relations to get us where we will be a well established
> > movement outside of the English language as well. It helps when we have
> > friends like Google.
>
>
> On a slight variation on this topic:
>
> What can we do for countries where people routinely use the English
> wikipedia and ignore their own language Wikipedia? I try to push local
> Wikipedias when talking to the press (and far too many  seem to be
> unaware of their own language Wikipedia) and mention the international
> character talking to the English-language press. That hopefully does a
> little, but not enough.
>
> One factor appears to be that en:wp has achieved usefulness. (If
> Wikipedias weren't actually useful, wikipedia.org wouldn't be a top 10
> site on Alexa.) I think this is two things:
>
> 1. Incredible breadth of coverage - journalists LOVE en:wp because
> it's the universal backgrounding resource on any subject, if
> approached with due caution.
> 2.Very up-to-date.
>
> Britannica may have more consistent writing quality and more
> consistent fact-checking, but it's not there on people's desks and
> it's not kept obsessively up-to-date.
>
> So what can small Wikipedias (say, under 100,000 articles) do to
> achieve these effects - breadth and being up-to-date - as well? Are
> there other tacks they should try taking to achieve greater public
> awareness?
>
> [cc: to wikien-l for further ideas]
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Promoting non-en Wikipedias (was In
	defence of Google)


from_name: Timwi

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 20/01/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Interesting. What was the reason?
>
> I assume you'll be insulted if I assume you can't read.

Either there is no reason given in the bug, or he and I both can't read.

Timwi


body:
On 1/21/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2) On Wikimedia projects, page views are not tracked due to load.
> Probably because of this, nobody's created a {{PAGEVIEWCOUNT}} magic
> word or whatnot.

I thought they kind of were now. Like every 1000th view is recorded
somewhere, possibly offsite. Wikicharts, it was called. What's the
status of that?

Steve


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
On 21/01/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just blanked, and deleted
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death
>
> We had names of many famous people, stating they were responsible for
> someone else dying.
> ** Not a single reference **
>
> I was told that I should have AFD it instead
>
> The potential for libel was huge, afd was likely to come as no
> consensus or delete.
> Wikimedia can't take the risk of being sued for the sake of process.
>
> So I deleted the entry to hide history, and drop a note stating should
> anybody readd content it must be with references.
>
> Probably many people will complain and ask for my head, just telling
> you people why I did it.
>
> -- drini

Sounds a pretty sensible way to go about it.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 1/21/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's a nice ide - so nice that we do it already :-)
> >
> > There's a CSS hack for it; as well as the interwiki link, you use
> > {{Link FA|xx}} which gives an interwiki with a little star. It's not
> > perfect - it needs manual maintenance - but it works well enough...
> >
> > See, for example, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon - half a dozen of
> > the interwiki links are FAs.
>
> It's a tiny little star in place of the bullet point. If I wasn't
> looking for it, I would never notice it. How about a full size star
> after the link?

Am I completely crazy, but wasn't that star WAY bigger before? I
remember seeing a big star a while ago and liking it a whole lot, but
these guys are barely visible.

--Oskar


from_name: David Strauss

subject: [Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

body:
Despite how ugly (E)BNF may be, it's the standard format for defining
the syntax of most prominent computer languages. It had the additional
benefit of automatic conversion (via Bison or a similar program) into a
native parser.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> What the f* is an EBNF .. It does not help that you URL is wrong. Being
> clever (ahum) I found Extended Backus?Naur form.. A question, do you
> really think that an average Wiki editor will NOT get hopelessly
> confused and get it hopelessly wrong as well?
>
> Personally I find it horribly ugly as well
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax
>
>
> Virgil Ierubino schreef:
>> I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wikiWikitext_Metasyntax , which I hear is much
>> needed, but have encountered a snag. I don't think EBNF has the power to
>> describe Wikitext. If anyone here can work out how EBNF can describe
>> Wikitext's system for bullet points, I'd like to see it. The problem is that
>> bullet points can build on each other, except each new level has to retain
>> the markup from the old level, plus a new symbol. e.g. **#* then **#* * then
>> **#** * then **#*** # etc.
>>
>> On the topic of "things that need to be done" if writing an EBNF of Wikitext
>> isn't going to be beneficial for MediaWiki's longstanding success, I'll not
>> bother, but is there anything that needs to be done like this to create a
>> standard?
>>
>> Please forward to any other mailing lists in which this might be
>> appropriate. Thanks!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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subject: [Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

body:
Despite how ugly (E)BNF may be, it's the standard format for defining
the syntax of most prominent computer languages. It had the additional
benefit of automatic conversion (via Bison or a similar program) into a
native parser.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> What the f* is an EBNF .. It does not help that you URL is wrong. Being
> clever (ahum) I found Extended Backus?Naur form.. A question, do you
> really think that an average Wiki editor will NOT get hopelessly
> confused and get it hopelessly wrong as well?
>
> Personally I find it horribly ugly as well
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax
>
>
> Virgil Ierubino schreef:
>> I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wikiWikitext_Metasyntax , which I hear is much
>> needed, but have encountered a snag. I don't think EBNF has the power to
>> describe Wikitext. If anyone here can work out how EBNF can describe
>> Wikitext's system for bullet points, I'd like to see it. The problem is that
>> bullet points can build on each other, except each new level has to retain
>> the markup from the old level, plus a new symbol. e.g. **#* then **#* * then
>> **#** * then **#*** # etc.
>>
>> On the topic of "things that need to be done" if writing an EBNF of Wikitext
>> isn't going to be beneficial for MediaWiki's longstanding success, I'll not
>> bother, but is there anything that needs to be done like this to create a
>> standard?
>>
>> Please forward to any other mailing lists in which this might be
>> appropriate. Thanks!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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subject: [Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

body:
Despite how ugly (E)BNF may be, it's the standard format for defining
the syntax of most prominent computer languages. It had the additional
benefit of automatic conversion (via Bison or a similar program) into a
native parser.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> What the f* is an EBNF .. It does not help that you URL is wrong. Being
> clever (ahum) I found Extended Backus?Naur form.. A question, do you
> really think that an average Wiki editor will NOT get hopelessly
> confused and get it hopelessly wrong as well?
>
> Personally I find it horribly ugly as well
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikitext_Metasyntax
>
>
> Virgil Ierubino schreef:
>> I'm working on writing out an EBNF description of Wikitext at
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wikiWikitext_Metasyntax , which I hear is much
>> needed, but have encountered a snag. I don't think EBNF has the power to
>> describe Wikitext. If anyone here can work out how EBNF can describe
>> Wikitext's system for bullet points, I'd like to see it. The problem is that
>> bullet points can build on each other, except each new level has to retain
>> the markup from the old level, plus a new symbol. e.g. **#* then **#* * then
>> **#** * then **#*** # etc.
>>
>> On the topic of "things that need to be done" if writing an EBNF of Wikitext
>> isn't going to be beneficial for MediaWiki's longstanding success, I'll not
>> bother, but is there anything that needs to be done like this to create a
>> standard?
>>
>> Please forward to any other mailing lists in which this might be
>> appropriate. Thanks!
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] What is an "expert"?

body:
On 21/01/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> Thank you for the time and care you took with your response. I'm somewhat
> computer challenged to begin with, so I have forwarded your response to my
> computer guy who's in Vermont for a while. We'll see what he can come up
> with to help improve things.

I'd say, by the way, that this is by far secondary to contributing
something smart and thoughtful to the list, which you do fine at.
Content beats form. I far prefer badly-formatted good stuff to
immaculately-presented rubbish.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] defused timebomb

body:
Ken Arromdee wrote:

>On Sun, 21 Jan 2007, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>>I just blanked, and deleted
>>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_people_responsible_for_a_death
>>>
>>>We had names of many famous people, stating they were responsible for
>>>someone else dying.
>>>** Not a single reference **
>>>
>>>I was told that I should have AFD it instead
>>>
>>>
>>That sounds terribly unilateral.  AFD would have been more prudent.
>>Altering the title would have been more sensible, given that some were
>>apparently only accused, and never convicted.
>>
>>
>Remember [[WP:BLP]].  Anything making accusations about living people without
>a source should be deleted immediately.
>
Saying that someone was accused is very different from making the
accusation..  In any event, did you even make an effort to separate the
living from the dead?

Ec


body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/21/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>It could potentially be trademark infrginement and trading on the
>>goodwill of the foundation in certain situations. In any event, companies
>>are not about civil disobediance. WMG needs permission or implied
>>pemission in the form of a statement by he Foundation that use if its
>>valuable trademark rights is granted for purposes of attribution through
>>the use of its trademarks.
>>
>>
>>
>
>You don't need them for attribution.
>
>
Unfortunately, I do.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>On 1/21/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>With the feeling for a need of an alternate search engine, you will have
>>obviously considered a business model for this project, even "not for
>>profits" need business plans. This business plan will make plain why it
>>is a good thing to do but most of all how it will be possible to make it
>>a sustainable project. Sustainable as in being both able to scale and to
>>be there next year as well.
>>
>>
>As the recent Wikipedia fundraising drive demonstrates, it's one thing
>to start a collaboration project, but it's entirely another to keep up
>with your own wild success if you do take off.
>
>If you introduce the world's best, brand new search engine open source
>tech project tomorrow, that's more useful and open than Google, you're
>going to have a hard time managing the growth, by any standards,
>commercial or open source...
>
>To amplfy Gerard's comment, the "vision" has to include a business
>plan and some operational clue.
>
Absolutely!  We can't be everything for everybody.  But a more
sophisticated internal search function would still be nice.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] in defence of Google


body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/22/07, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Unfortunately, I do.
>>
>>
>>
>
>How do you need the foundation's logos to credit me?
>
>

Under the GFDL you give consent to relicense your changes. This means
whomever is the last editor of an article is the "Author", not the
whole chain of editors to that point since subsequent editors are simply
relicening your content when they add their own edits. By editing and
saving the article, the final editor is the author in this sense.

The GFDL and Wikipedia's posted policies state that Wikipedia must be
given attrbution to comply with the GFDL. Your website is then listed
in the "Mirrors and Forks" as a BAD WEBSITE if you do not. Wikipedia
cannot give consent to use "Wikipedia" since it does not own the
trademark, the foundation does.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] EBNF of Wikitext

body:
Indeed. Having an (E)BNF grammar is invaluable to creating efficient,
reliable parsers. (E)BNF grammars have enormous numbers of tools
available including automatic detection of ambiguity and (as I mentioned
before) automatic conversion into efficient parsers.

MediaWiki's parser is currently a product of years of subtle additions
and compatibility fixes. Instead of being a proper parser, it relies on
regular expressions.

This is not to malign Brion, Erik, and others' work. It's amazing
everything works as well as it does and that they've been able to keep
improving Wiki syntax without significantly changing existing semantics
or syntax.

However, I'm not sure a MediaWiki syntax -- as it is now -- can be
modeled unambiguously in BNF.

?ukasz Garczewski wrote:
> Virgil did not even hint at the fact that this is to be used by
> editors. You assumed that and it's most probably a wrong assumption.
>
> Maybe it's for developers? Maybe it's for research and comparison with
> other similar markups? Maybe it's just for the fun of it?
>
> Personally, I'm intrigued. Virgil, could you elaborate on the purpose
> of this project? In what ways can it help us (and who exactly is the
> 'us' in this case :))?
>

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