subject: [WikiEN-l] Bigger shovel (was: Blocked user: HeadCase)

body:
viajero at quilombo.nl wrote:

>On 11/14/03  at 05:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:
>
>><< So, a big round of applause for Ed for taking time out of his busy
>>schedule to demonstrate to us blithering halfwits mired in mindless
>>bickering how collaborative decision-making works. I guess we just
>>needed a guy with uncle in his name to set us straight, and I propose
>>that when he is done here we see if we can't fast-track him too for
>>beatification -- I think Blessed would be much more becoming and
>>appropriate title. >>
>>
>>Time for me to go shopping for a bigger hat;
>>
>Actually, a bigger leash would be a better idea.
>
I confess that at times I prefer to refer to him as '''Mister''' Ed.

Do we have anyone with a connection to the Vatican.  JP2 does seem a
little shaky these days.  Maybe somebody could slip the beatification
papers under his nose so he could sign them.  Imagine!  Our very own
Blessed Ed of the Moon!  With that every Catholic on Earth would be
making big donations to Wikipedia -- We could even digitize the entire
Vatican Library and distribute it under FDL.  Fantastic!

Ec


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body:
> From: Poor, Edmund W
>
> I blocked user:HeadCase for blanking my talk page and using profanity.

You really shouldn't have done that. Using profanity has never been a
bannable offense. And blanking a talk page hasn't either. Unless it was
done repeatedly and maliciously.

And you should never have blocked someone who was going after you. You
really should have let someone else do it.

> Let me know if I'm still a sysop on Monday...

Does this statement mean that you recognize that what you did was
questionable, but you still went ahead and did it?

C'mon.


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body: Well, if you say so, I'll unblock him.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please remove the "support" message from
	en.wikipediapage headers

body:
> This message:
>   Find out how you can help support Wikipedia's phenomenal growth.
>
> should only be displayed when we are having a fundraising drive. Since we
> received the money for the new database server before such a drive even
> started, and since we are going to delay distribution of our next press
> release until we hit 500,000, I see no need to keep this message at this
> time.

Fully agree.

Aoineko


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body:
> From: Poor, Edmund W
>
> Well, if you say so, I'll unblock him.
>
I just want to make it clear I have no idea whether or not HeadCase
should be blocked or not. It's just that from how Ed described the
situation, Ed should not have been the one to take such an action.


list: textbook-l

from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [Textbook-l] pdf files

body:
Most of you have probably seen Maffus comment in the staff lounge, but just
in case you haven't-:

PDF or other e-Book method?
Being new to Wikipedia, perhaps this is an old question. Are there any means
to obtain a PDF file or other electronic book (other than HTML)? When I
select "Printable Version" it would be very nice if I could find a PDF link
(or something similar). Maffu 00:36, 11 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I've done a search for html to pdf converters on the web and found this
site. http://www.easysw.com/htmldoc/pdf-o-matic.php which provides a program
that converts html pages to pdf. It's not for me, I'm still on Windows. But
are there any Unix users who want to download it.

Theresa


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body:
Oh, it's okay. Even Angela agree with you...

-----Original Message-----
From: The Cunctator [mailto:cunctator at kband.com]
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 4:46 PM
To: 'English Wikipedia'
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

> From: Poor, Edmund W
>
> Well, if you say so, I'll unblock him.
>
I just want to make it clear I have no idea whether or not HeadCase
should be blocked or not. It's just that from how Ed described the
situation, Ed should not have been the one to take such an action.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Ray eclectically wrote:

> One thing to be said about Ed is that he has
> the courage to act quickly in uncertain circum-
> stances, but equally quick to acknowledge when
> he has been in error, and to undo the damage
> that his error may have caused.

Oh, please *blush* - if you're gonna shovel that
stuff, why not drop that tiny shovel for a real
big one, like Viajero did about the [[Mother
Teresa]] article:

<< So, a big round of applause for Ed for taking time out of his busy
schedule to demonstrate to us blithering halfwits mired in mindless
bickering how collaborative decision-making works. I guess we just
needed a guy with uncle in his name to set us straight, and I propose
that when he is done here we see if we can't fast-track him too for
beatification -- I think Blessed would be much more becoming and
appropriate title. >>

Time for me to go shopping for a bigger hat; I
hope Macy's is still open...

Uncle Ed


from_name: Peter Bartlett

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please remove the "support" message fromen.wikipedia
	page headers

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: Jimmy Wales [mailto:jwales at bomis.com]

>This is really not a wikitech-l type of question, is it?  I don't
>personally have a firm opinion about it.

>1.  On the one hand, we're always having a fundraising drive in a
>sense.  We have enough funds right now, or nearly so, to buy a 4th
>machine to either be used exclusively as our mail server, or to be
>used exclusively as our load balancer, or to be used as our 3rd
>webserver.  Even after the new db server is installed, all three of
>those will be legitimate needs.  (We might combine some of those
>functions at first, of course.  But there are good arguments for
>separating them all as soon as we can afford it.)
>
>2.  On the other hand, Mav's argument is (perhaps) that we can
>maximize revenue by not having the request up there all the time,
>and I think there's something to that.
>
>--Jimbo

Re 2) Perhaps experimentation is in order. I think it is hard to tell
from here which method i.e. "continuous" or "periodic" style of
requesting will generate the most.

Re 1) The load-balancing recently introduced seems to have created an
almost miraculous speed compared with before. Obviously the monster
machine is going to have an effect as well. We should expect the upward
curve on bandwidth use to continue for a good while yet - regardless of
the purchase of a fourth machine and its purpose. Is cost of bandwidth
likely to become a great issue than now, where we are extremely grateful
to one person that it hardly seems to be an issue at all. It would be
terrible if we had lots of machines at some point in the medium-term but
not able to utilise them due to bandwidth costs.

Pete, [[User:Pcb21]],

Wikarma: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Cetaceans]] over half of all whale
species now have an article!


from_name: John Merrall

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 4, Issue 50

body:
----- Original Message -----
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 13:43:13 -0800
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 4, Issue 49
>
> John Merrall wrote:

> >??? This seems like a problem of transliteration.
> >
> Not really.  That would be the case if we were talking about Russian or
> Greek.  The last time I looked German and English used the same
> alphabet.

Well, except for ? and ? and suchlike, in which case we anglos write ue
and oe. But if the Germans
spell it Adolf, why not make that the main entry and link over from
"Adolph"?

I mean, what's the argument here? Do they want two identical entries, or
is someone really suggesting Wikipedia should put the main entry under
"Adolph"? I can't see the argument.

I could see an argument over an entry for Leo Tolstoy, if someone wanted
to put him under "Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy", which I'd suggest would be
more proper except I don't want to start a war....


from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body:
--On Friday, November 14, 2003 4:21 PM -0500 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:

> I blocked user:HeadCase for blanking my talk page and using profanity.

This may or may not be a questionable decision.  Given that you realized your mistake in 3 minutes, I don't see a huge problem (but then I'm just an ordinary user).

> Coincidentally (?) this was just after Pakaran speculated that
> user:Illuminati is a reincarnation of Khranus.

Which, by the way, I no longer believe - Illuminati does not use profanity, and seems to like to talk *about* vaguely conspiracy-related topics rather than *advocating* every conspiracy theory that pops into his head.

> Anyway, I'm probably going to go off-line in the next half hour and take
> my usual weekend off from Wikipedia.
>
> Let me know if I'm still a sysop on Monday...

I hope you are, you'd be missed!

Nathan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: HeadCase

body:
--On Friday, November 14, 2003 4:30 PM -0500 The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:

>> From: Poor, Edmund W
>>
>> I blocked user:HeadCase for blanking my talk page and using profanity.
>
> You really shouldn't have done that. Using profanity has never been a
> bannable offense. And blanking a talk page hasn't either. Unless it was
> done repeatedly and maliciously.

I agree...  though most users who maliciously use profanity aren't logged in,
for example the person a few weeks back who kept making anatomical references about sysops on vandalism in progress.
>
> And you should never have blocked someone who was going after you. You
> really should have let someone else do it.
>
>> Let me know if I'm still a sysop on Monday...
>
> Does this statement mean that you recognize that what you did was
> questionable, but you still went ahead and did it?

To quote Sesame Street, everyone makes mistakes.  Personally, I see Uncle Ed as a mentor.

Nathan


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Adolph

body:
"Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> schrieb:

> Voting on the content of articles is not something that I think is
> generally helpful, since it tends to lead to a lot of carping about
> what the result of the vote actually means.
>
> Rather than voting one way or the other, a better approach is for all
> sides to work towards creatively accomodating the other people working
> on the article.

Which is a method that also doesn't work. People just talk and talk and talk until one side decides they're tired of the whole thing and gives up.

> In general, let's say the vote goes 80%/20% on some specific content
> issue?  To me, that says that the 20% side has conclusively
> demonstrated that the article is _not_ NPOV.  NPOV requires (near)
> unanimity.

I think that's a ridiculous assumption. There can easily be near-infinitely many versions that are _all_ NPOV. And some prefer one, others the other. There's more differences in opinion than just NPOV.

> I wish, too, that people would generally refrain from reverting,
> except in cases of actual simple vandalism.  Reverting doesn't say "I
> don't fully agree with your changes, but I'm willing to work with you
> to try to improve the article."  Reverting says "I refuse to
> co-operate with you by pretending that what you're doing is in any way
> worthwhile."

So what would YOU advise those that are of the opinion that mentioning a misspelling is not a good idea to do? Just give up because there are some that think differently?

> Hey, sometimes the second is actually true, and we actually should
> refuse to co-operate.  If someone puts in utter and complete nonsense,
> a very good thing to do is just clean it up, revert it, quickly and
> with as little effort as possible.
>
> But in this case, Adolph/Adolf, I don't see how it's appropriate to
> just revert.

Which basically means that you DO choose side in this debate. Because one side can do nothing but revert, while the other can choose a different wording every time.

Andre Engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
"Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> schrieb:
> It is being argued that xiangqi (Chinese chess) is appropriately labelled
> 'chess variant', when it predates chess and can't be a variant of it. So
> it's like saying soccer is a 'gridiron variant'.

Chinese chess is a form of chess, and thus cannot predate it. In my opinion, it is a 'chess variant' - and western chess is a 'chess variant' as well. 'Chess' is, in the English language, simply the word for both western chess and the family of chess games as a whole.

Andre Engels


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
>I hope we can try a similar approach to the issues you are raising.

Ed Poor
Culturally Sensitive American

Well, it doesn't seem that cultural sensitivity is being built into the
system.  It looks more like a case-by-case cost benefit analysis.

Certainly your approach does little or nothing for the sensitivities of
cultures where the primary rule is not to fuss about what you probably can't
change.

Charles


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Downloading Wikipedia (was: please help me)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Please do *not* use programs such as Webstripper. Especially on dynamic
> sites like Wikipedia, they create a huge amount of load on the servers by
> downloading thousands upon thousands of pages extremely rapidly. [...]
> Use a web browser like everybody else, and please stop attacking the web
> sites that you enjoy.

While I of course agree with Brion's statement, I think we should also
try to understand the other side. When I was still on a dial-up line
that charged by the minute, I also several times tried to download
interesting sites all at once, so that I could read them leisurely
off-line. That seems to be quite natural behavior. You can't really
learn stuff when the clock is ticking.

Don't we have a nice compressed static HTML tree by now that we could
offer people under the "Download Wikipedia" heading on the main page?

Our customer here was only interested in math articles, and a download
of the whole Wikipedia probably wouldn't even have been attractive
for him. So a web site with a static version of Wikipedia that is open
to programs like Webstripper would also be a good thing.

Actually, I'm sure that once we offer ready-made HTML trees for
download, someone somewhere will set up such a site.

Axel


from_name: jol at osoft.biz

body:
Dear Sir/Madam,

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Please do *not* use programs such as Webstripper. Especially on
>> dynamic sites like Wikipedia, they create a huge amount of load on the
>> servers by downloading thousands upon thousands of pages extremely
>> rapidly. [...] Use a web browser like everybody else, and please stop
>> attacking the web sites that you enjoy.
>
> Don't we have a nice compressed static HTML tree by now that we could
> offer people under the "Download Wikipedia" heading on the main page?

I haven't looked at the wikipedia software but I expect it's two tier; the
wiki markup is stored in a database and converted to HTML with every
request.  This is not very efficient.

I designed a similar piece of software but with three tiers.  The wiki
markup is converted to XML before being stored in the database, and back
again for editing.  This may be time consuming, but it doesn't happen very
often.  It also allows me to change my wiki markup language (though I
don't use that term) if necessary.

When a user requests a page, it is retrieved as XML from the database and
transformed to HTML by an XSLT program.  The important point is that most
users have a browser that can do the XSL transformation.  So they can
download as much as they want and read it offline, with the XSLT program
in their browser cache.  The download involves a couple of table lookups
per page requested from the server and little processing.  (If the user
doesn't have a modern browser then they can elect to have transformation
done by the server, but that's another story.)

Just an idea...

Regards,
John O'Leary.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
 "Ray Saintonge"

> That which you complain about
> on the [[Chess variants]] page is very mild in comparison to other
> things that I have read.  In other places calling certain behaviour
> "culturally insensitive" would be the epitome of euphemism.

Yes, I realise that.  I didn't post about this because it was the worst
example I could find - quite the opposite, really.  I wanted to go over the
arguments.  Thanks to everyone who has responded.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
"Andre Engels" wrote

>Chinese chess is a form of chess, and thus cannot predate it. In my
opinion, it is a 'chess variant' - and western chess is a 'chess variant' as
well. 'Chess' is, in the English language, simply the word for both western
chess and the family of chess games as a whole.

Not in my dictionary.  You may think this should be the usage.  If it were,
then actually this particular problem would go away.

Charles


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV

body:
Cunctator wrote:

>A brief summary of what I'd like to see as the policy:
>1. The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to be neutral and authoritative.
>2. All claims made in Wikipedia should be confirmable by outside
>sources.
>3. For contentious issues, provide the reasoning behind the antagonists'
>contentions.
>4. Recognize that neutrality is impossible to achieve without
>omniscience.
>5. Eliminate ambiguity. (Make as strong claims as possible.)
>6. Celebrate terseness. (If another entry says the same thing, link to
>it. Don't say it twice if possible.)

This is all well-stated, but some of this goes beyond mere editorial
policy and reaches the status of philosophy. Maybe we need a new
word: "wikilosophy"?

Regarding the idea of simply "reporting things that really exist,"
Cunctator  wrote:

>Yes. Fortunately we can rely on the pool of perfectly accurate,
>non-propagandizing, value-judgmentless historical references to do so.
>
>Oops, they don't exist.

Actually, they do. For example, "Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5,
1821" is a statement whose accuracy no one seriously disputes, and it
doesn't carry any particular propaganda or value judgments. Whether
you believe that Napoleon was a great leader or a foolish despot,
you're bound to agree on the date of his death.

Unfortunately, there are many other things about history and the
world that are important enough to deserve inclusion in the Wikipedia
that are _not_ this clear-cut. If the Wikipedia restricted itself
simply to these sorts of undisputed facts, it wouldn't be a very
interesting encyclopedia.
--
--------------------------------
|  Sheldon Rampton
|  Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org)
|  Author of books including:
|     Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities
|     Toxic Sludge Is Good For You
|     Mad Cow USA
|     Trust Us, We're Experts
|     Weapons of Mass Deception
--------------------------------


from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Blocking

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I...please...would like some help/suggestions.
>
> I hereby annonce giving up soft security attempts with
> Papotages. I think I have tried to the latest end I
> possibly could. And now, to my shame, I decided to
> give up. Criticisms toward me trying to do this is is
> part of my decision, but today it is also clear that
> it is not efficient in the end.
>
> Now, given that : when his user name was blocked, he
> created 9 vandal user names and went on.
>
> Given that after his 10 user names were blocked, he
> went on with ips, I wonder if it is very valuable to
> try the same pattern, and to meet the same problems.
>
> So, I am asking help here, either from someone who
> would feel like doing something (in truth, I do not
> think any of the french-speaking person is interested
> in discussing with him constructively), or from
> someone who will find a technical suggestion (going as
> far as blocking half of switzerland :-)). Either way.
>
> I am done with it.
>
>

This is the IP ranges that he use:
colt.ch:        212.23.252.0 - 212.23.255.255
tele2.ch:       212.152.0.0 - 212.152.15.255
tele2.ch:       213.103.0.0 - 213.103.159.255
ch-sunrise:     62.167.0.0 - 62.167.255.255
bluewin.ch:     62.202.0.0 - 62.202.15.255

-- ~~~


from_name: viajero at quilombo.nl

body:
On 11/14/03  at 05:02 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said:

> << So, a big round of applause for Ed for taking time out of his busy
> schedule to demonstrate to us blithering halfwits mired in mindless
> bickering how collaborative decision-making works. I guess we just
> needed a guy with uncle in his name to set us straight, and I propose
> that when he is done here we see if we can't fast-track him too for
> beatification -- I think Blessed would be much more becoming and
> appropriate title. >>

> Time for me to go shopping for a bigger hat;

Actually, a bigger leash would be a better idea.

(For the humor-challenged, the comment quoted above was made
sarcastically).

V.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
This comment is offensive.  Wikipedia, as a whole, is a multilingual project, but the *English* Wikipedia is NOT, and it isn't acceptable to attempt to force non-English common usage on English speakers.

RickK

Charles Matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
Because the lowest common denominator of English-speaking users is to know
nothing about other cultures, this argument in effect can always be used to
lower standards of cultural sensitivity. The worry is that we then get a
tabloid version, not something compatible with scholarly practice.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
>copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
>nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
>the bottom there is the statement
>
>   Copyright ?? 2003 Chess And Beyond
>   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They
not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
wrong.

Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
complain.

First, list the website at:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Articles_with_issues

Then write them a letter:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter

If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back to
the list and we will discuss what to do next.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Development timeline

body:
I've been talking to Tim on the IRC channel and there is some desire to
get things moving on the dev branch.

He's got pretty much all the fixes in stable merged into dev, so what
I'd like to see is for us to commit to putting the dev branch onto the
live main servers in about a week. I'm going to say November 23 sounds
good... (Nov 22 is the SoCal Linux Expo so I'll be busy that day, but
free the next.)

In the next week we should make sure that everything in the dev branch
either _works_ and is ready for prime time, or is cleanly disabled
pending further work. Once we put it on the main server it'll get more
exposure and we'll find more bugs. :)

After a few more days of fixes we can branch it off as a new stable
point release and swear never to touch it again except for emergency
bug fixes. For real this time!

I'd like us to then commit to a fairly regular release schedule;
perhaps every 3 or 4 weeks we make sure that anything in the dev branch
is either cleanly working or can be cleanly taken out.

It'd also be great if we had more automated testing tools. Lee wrote
this whole big Java-based client-side test suite that takes up a huge
amount of space and, as far as I can tell, no one has ever used it or
attempted to maintain it. Heck, I couldn't even figure out how to
compile it... I don't know if it'd be worth someone trying to update
that, or if we should just toss it and concentrate on unit tests in PHP
that work with the actual code and test individual components in
isolation.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Deletionism

body:
--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot
> census junk

What? Rambot, the crown jewel on the head of the wiki
-- actually coming under scrutiny for belying the
Wikispirit? Golly, could it be that I actually had a
point in challenging the Israbot's stats too?

~S~
By golly.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Blocking and promotion

body:
> > So, I am asking help here, either from someone who
> would feel like doing something (in truth, I do not
> think any of the french-speaking person is
interested
> in discussing with him constructively), or from
> someone who will find a technical suggestion (going
as
> far as blocking half of switzerland :-)). Either
way.
> > I am done with it.
> > This is the IP ranges that he use:
colt.ch:        212.23.252.0 - 212.23.255.255
tele2.ch:       212.152.0.0 - 212.152.15.255
tele2.ch:       213.103.0.0 - 213.103.159.255
ch-sunrise:     62.167.0.0 - 62.167.255.255
bluewin.ch:     62.202.0.0 - 62.202.15.255

-----

Just as a reference, for I just checked

On the unique day of 14th of november, PP created 100
pages (+/-5) that were deleted.

This is not counting the pages that had to be
reverted.

Sensible times are during the night, because there is
not necessarily a sysop to revert.

I would like to mention an article on wiki was
published on the 12th of november.

http://www.fing.org/index.php?num=4229,2

It makes extensive reference to wikipedia, and
especially the french wikipedia.

I must add however, that it also makes very clear
reference to our current issue with Papotages and the
limits of wiki process and ability to handle
disagreement.

----------
Aux limites de la collaboration

Pour autant, l'?laboration de projets wiki plus
structur?s peut donner naissance ? des probl?mes
complexes, de nature ?ditoriale ou m?me ?thique.
Wikipedia est un bon cas d'?cole en la mati?re. Par
nature, l'encyclop?die se veut "neutre" et se doit de
pr?senter "le plus objectivement possible" les
articles qu'elle contient. Lorsqu'il s'agit de
l'article relatif ? la tour Eiffel
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_Eiffel), la chose
est simple. Mais pour des sujets plus sensibles, la
difficult? est toute autre.

Ainsi, la branche fran?aise de Wikipedia a-t-elle ?t?
le th??tre r?cent d'un vaste d?bat portant sur
l'article consacr? aux sectes
(http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sectes). Ayant subi plus
de 300 modifications depuis sa cr?ation en juin
dernier, l'article a notamment vu s'opposer des
auteurs r?put?s "neutres" ? un repr?sentant du
mouvement Ra?lien. Amendements et contre-amendements
se sont succ?d?s ? un rythme soutenu sur la page
incrimin?e, marquant des dissensions de fond sur la
question sectaire et ce qu'il convient de d?finir
comme tel. Il est d'ailleurs pr?cis? sur la page
relative aux sectes que "cet article est soup?onn? de
ne pas respecter la neutralit? de point de vue de mise
sur l'encyclop?die Wikipedia" et que, "son contenu ne
devant pas ?tre consid?r? comme objectif",
l'utilisateur est invit? ? consulter l'int?gralit? des
?changes ayant eu lieu sur la question, et ? y
participer.

L'anecdote ne jette bien s?r pas le discr?dit sur
Wikipedia-Fr et les 18 000 articles de qualit? qu'elle
contient ? ce jour. Mais elle montre, l? aussi de
fa?on paradoxale, les limites et l'int?r?t du wiki.

----------

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Deletionism

body:
>--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot
>> census junk
>
>What? Rambot, the crown jewel on the head of the wiki
>-- actually coming under scrutiny for belying the
>Wikispirit? Golly, could it be that I actually had a
>point in challenging the Israbot's stats too?
>
>
>~S~
>By golly.

It was generally agreed by everyone who responded to this post except for
you that Rambot's stuff was very good.

Fred


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
On Friday 14 November 2003 19:40, Andre Engels wrote:
> "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> schrieb:
> > It is being argued that xiangqi (Chinese chess) is appropriately labelled
> > 'chess variant', when it predates chess and can't be a variant of it. So
> > it's like saying soccer is a 'gridiron variant'.
>
> Chinese chess is a form of chess, and thus cannot predate it. In my
> opinion, it is a 'chess variant' - and western chess is a 'chess variant'
> as well. 'Chess' is, in the English language, simply the word for both
> western chess and the family of chess games as a whole.

You've got it nicely, I guess noone could be insulted if a list of chess
variants boldly lists [[Chess]] at the top.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
On Friday 14 November 2003 21:11, Charles Matthews wrote:
> "Andre Engels" wrote
> >Chinese chess is a form of chess, and thus cannot predate it. In my
>
> opinion, it is a 'chess variant' - and western chess is a 'chess variant'
> as well. 'Chess' is, in the English language, simply the word for both
> western chess and the family of chess games as a whole.
>
> Not in my dictionary.  You may think this should be the usage.  If it were,
> then actually this particular problem would go away.

It just popped up in my mind - how about moving [[Chess variants]] to [[Chess
relatives]]?


body:
"John Merrall" <merrall at mountaincable.net> schrieb:
> Well, except for ? and ? and suchlike, in which case we anglos write ue
> and oe. But if the Germans
> spell it Adolf, why not make that the main entry and link over from
> "Adolph"?
>
> I mean, what's the argument here? Do they want two identical entries, or
> is someone really suggesting Wikipedia should put the main entry under
> "Adolph"? I can't see the argument.

Everyone agrees the main entry is under "Adolf", and everyone agrees (as far
as I can see) that "Adolph" should be a redirect. The question is, whether
in the "Adolf Hitler" article we do or do not mention whether the name is
sometimes spelled "Adolph Hitler".

Andre Engels


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
>copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
>nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
>the bottom there is the statement
>
>   Copyright ?? 2003 Chess And Beyond
>   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They
not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
wrong.

Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
complain.

First, list the website at:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Articles_with_issues

Then write them a letter:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter

If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back
to
the list and we will discuss what to do next.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA
art 512 takedown
request in a few days?

Alex756


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:

>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> >The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
> >copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
> >nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
> >the bottom there is the statement
> >
> >   Copyright ?? 2003 Chess And Beyond
> >   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
>
>This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL. They
>not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
>try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
>wrong.
>
>Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
>complain.
>
>First, list the website at:
>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Articles_with_issues
>
>Then write them a letter:
>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
>
>If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back
>to
>the list and we will discuss what to do next.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA
>art 512 takedown
>request in a few days?

NO.

Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us,
rather than assuming the worst. Two,  the DCMA is designed to prevent the
spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We
should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>

At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:

>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> >The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
> >copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
> >nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
> >the bottom there is the statement
> >
> >   Copyright ?? 2003 Chess And Beyond
> >   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
>
>This really pisses me off and is a very clear violation of the GNU FDL.
They
>not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
>try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
>wrong.
>
>Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
>complain.
>
>First, list the website at:
>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_conten
t#Articles_with_issues
>
>Then write them a letter:
>http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Standard_GFDL_violation_letter
>
>If they stonewall you after a letter and a follow-up letter, then come back
>to
>the list and we will discuss what to do next.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA
>art 512 takedown request in a few days?

NO.

>Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us,
>rather than assuming the worst. Two,  the DCMA is designed to prevent the
>spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We
>should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.

A reasonable time is being interpreted as 24 hours on the internet. If
Wikipedia
authors do not assert their rights they will lose them. I do not think it is
antithetical to the purposes of Wikipedia because if Wikipedia wanted to
give it
away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
domain,
 it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.

If it is not followed people should not be allowed to ignore the license.
Then  Wikipedia may be nothing more than a free for all, anyone can
copy anything and use it anyway they want without any fear of the copyright
laws that are their to protect the authors who are making their valuable
contributions and have an expectation that those contributions will be
linked back to Wikipedia.  If the takedown notice is followed the copyright
infringer still has the right to follow the GFDL policy and then they will
obviously have the right to use the material.  I do not see how using the
OCILLA provisions are against Wikipedia. Actually they make the GFDL
stronger in my "nonlegal" opinion.

Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that
is what it was created for.

Alex756


from_name: John Merrall

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 4, Issue 51

body:
----- Original Message -----

From: <wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org>> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003
21:09:07 -0600
> From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton at verizon.net>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV

> Regarding the idea of simply "reporting things that really exist,"
> Cunctator  wrote:
>
> >Yes. Fortunately we can rely on the pool of perfectly accurate,
> >non-propagandizing, value-judgmentless historical references to do so.
> >Oops, they don't exist.
>
> Actually, they do. For example, "Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5,
> 1821" is a statement whose accuracy no one seriously disputes, and it
> doesn't carry any particular propaganda or value judgments. Whether
> you believe that Napoleon was a great leader or a foolish despot,
> you're bound to agree on the date of his death.

Thing is, once you start using words like "great" and "foolish", you're
not reporting facts, you're quite obviously reporting personal value
judgments. I know, you already know that.

> Unfortunately, there are many other things about history and the
> world that are important enough to deserve inclusion in the Wikipedia
> that are _not_ this clear-cut.

Then do like the journalists are supposed to do (not like they ever bother
in this modern age of state & corporate propaganda) - don't report as
facts, but as personal value judgments. Attribute to people. There's a
little handbook on journalistic ethics which journalists supposedly use
sometimes to ensure they are always reporting objective fact - maybe we
can find it online somewhere?

Or is that not enough to make it work? What is there, which is not a
personal value judgment, which is also not an objective fact?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Alex wrote:
>Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send >
>their ISP a DCMA art 512 takedown request in a few days?

IMO, no. First let's give them the benefit of the doubt and officially be nice
for a few weeks. If they ignore our first letter and then a sternly-worded
follow-up in that time frame, /then/ we should consider going to their ISP.
This has worked fairly well so far, but it does take more time (at least a
few weeks to a month). Most of the time people are just making hasty mistakes
and really don't think they are doing anything wrong.

However, I thought that it cost at least a few hundred bucks lawyer time for
every DMCA letter... Do you mean to say that /anybody/ with a reasonable
amount of intelligence and knowledge of the DMCA can write these things? That
is at the same time empowering but also scary. And what do we do if they are
their own ISP?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Hi all,

The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has copied
several articles from Wikipedia. There's nothing about
wikipedia on those pages, and at the bottom there is
the statement

   Copyright ?? 2003 Chess And Beyond
   ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

I know for sure that they copied from us and not the
other way round because there's a lot of stuff there
that I originally contributed to wikipedia.

Some of the copied articles are:

http://www.chessandbeyond.com/the_club/stratigies_endgame.htm -- [[Endgame]]
http://www.chessandbeyond.com/the_club/rules_of_chess.htm -- [[Rules of chess]]
http://www.chessandbeyond.com/the_club/stratigies_tactics.htm -- [[Chess strategy and tactics]]
http://www.chessandbeyond.com/the_club/notation.htm -- [[Algebraic chess notation]]

These aren't the only ones. And the images used in these
articles have also been copied.

I'm not sure what to do, so I'm posting this here.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Lightning

subject: [Wikitech-l] stats still broken

body:
The stats in english are still broken... is it an error in the script or
in the DB dumps?

Lightning


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
  Alex R. wrote:

>From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>
>
>At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
>
>>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
>>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>>
>>>The site http://www.chessandbeyond.com has
>>>copied several articles from Wikipedia. There's
>>>nothing about wikipedia on those pages, and at
>>>the bottom there is the statement
>>>
>>>  Copyright ? 2003 Chess And Beyond
>>>  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
>>>
>They
>
>>not only failed to credit the Wikipedia article as the source but then they
>>try to pretend that they own the copyright! This is legally and morally
>>wrong.
>>
>>Since you are actually one of the authors you are on very good footing to
>>complain.
>>
>>Good plan to start but wouldn't it be appropriate to send their ISP a DCMA
>>art 512 takedown request in a few days?
>>
>NO.
>
>>Two reasons. First, we should give them a reasonable time to answer us,
>>rather than assuming the worst. Two,  the DCMA is designed to prevent the
>>spread and sharing of material, and is antithetical to what we're doing. We
>>should use it only as a last resort, not by reflex.
>>
>A reasonable time is being interpreted as 24 hours on the internet.
>
7 days seems more reasonable.  If they are a business (and they do offer
goods for sale) they might not even be there to receive the message on a
weekend.

> If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them. I do not think it is
>antithetical to the purposes of Wikipedia because if Wikipedia wanted to give it
>away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public domain,
> it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>
>If it is not followed people should not be allowed to ignore the license.
>Then  Wikipedia may be nothing more than a free for all, anyone can
>copy anything and use it anyway they want without any fear of the copyright
>laws that are their to protect the authors who are making their valuable
>contributions and have an expectation that those contributions will be
>linked back to Wikipedia.  If the takedown notice is followed the copyright
>infringer still has the right to follow the GFDL policy and then they will
>obviously have the right to use the material.  I do not see how using the
>OCILLA provisions are against Wikipedia. Actually they make the GFDL
>stronger in my "nonlegal" opinion.
>
You're not going to get any argument from Wikipedians against the
philosophical and theoretical basis of what you just said.  It was at
least a year ago that I commented that the violation of Wikipedia
copyrights will be a much bigger problem than violations by Wikipedians.
 It is relatively easy to develop policies to deal with the latter
circumstances, and I think that what we have done is fairly
conservative, meaning that we could probably have given ourselves a much
greater benefit of the doubt.

The present problem will become more difficult as the years go on.  To
start with the violations will become harder to find, and will likely
only be discovered as a matter of sheer luck.  When we do discover them
we need a strategy that will work.  There is more to that strategy than
trying to decipher legal texts.  Assuming na?vet? on the part of the
violator is a good first start.  A friendly letter of explanation
suggesting possible solutions is a good first start, providing we at
least give them enough time to respond.  The amount of time should vary.
 If the violator has a site with many of our pages, it may suffice to
see a steady progress in making the needed change.

A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here
will often depend on time limits provided in the law.

Beyond that, if the violator refuses, what strategies are available?
 Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step.  The choice of
legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem.  Legal actions
can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective.  Who would be
responsible for those costs?  If there were someone with deep enough
 pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of
computer hardware that that could buy.  It would be immoral to expect
Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have
far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on
material that is in one way or another already freely available to the
general community for its re-use.

Protecting the public interest is a public sector function.  To some
extent that comes into conflict with sincerely held Libertarian ideals
which depend very much on the freedom and sense of responsibility of the
individual.  Of course, there are too many big-buck vested interests
involved with government for them to be a dependable ally.  If push
comes to shove, strategic alliances may be required.

Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based
violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international
law.  Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?

>Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that
>is what it was created for.
>
Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-)   This
is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list.
Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>> if Wikipedia wanted to give it
>> away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
>> domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>
> Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by
> me and is therefore in the public domain.

Who defends the public domain?


subject: [Wikitech-l] re: stats still broken

body:
On Nov 15, 2003, at 17:22, Erik Zachte wrote:
> The dumps have been fixed, but Brion is obviously too busy fixing
> other problems to rerun the stats

I _did_ rerun them, but haven't had a chance to check up on the
results. The machine I run the stats on is currently partially
disassembled; when I've got the drives shuffled back into a working
computer I'll look into it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rambot Deletionism

body:
> From: Fred Bauder
>
> >--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >> That is the essence of what is wrong with the Rambot
> >> census junk
> >
> >What? Rambot, the crown jewel on the head of the wiki
> >-- actually coming under scrutiny for belying the
> >Wikispirit? Golly, could it be that I actually had a
> >point in challenging the Israbot's stats too?
> >
> >
> >~S~
> >By golly.
>
> It was generally agreed by everyone who responded to this post except
for
> you that Rambot's stuff was very good.
>
That's not true. I stated my dislike of Rambot.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV

body:
> From: Sheldon Rampton
> Regarding the idea of simply "reporting things that really exist,"
> Cunctator  wrote:
>
> >Yes. Fortunately we can rely on the pool of perfectly accurate,
> >non-propagandizing, value-judgmentless historical references to do
so.
> >
> >Oops, they don't exist.
>
> Actually, they do. For example, "Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5,
> 1821" is a statement whose accuracy no one seriously disputes, and it
> doesn't carry any particular propaganda or value judgments. Whether
> you believe that Napoleon was a great leader or a foolish despot,
> you're bound to agree on the date of his death.

There's a difference between accurate statements and accurate
references. I didn't say that accurate statements don't exist. I said
that "perfectly accurate, non-propagandizing, value-judgmentless
historical references" don't exist.

Even in that one sentence are a variety of value judgments, starting
with the language used to express such a statement, as well as the name
used to describe "Napoleon Bonaparte", to the choice of calendar by
which to mark the date of his death. Those are minor choices, and I
would agree that it would be counterproductive to challenge the
statement.

But when you accumulate the sum of the thousands of minor (and major)
choices that go into any reference work (such as whether or not to
discuss the death of Napoleon), you get an unavoidable bias.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV

body:
> From: Sheldon Rampton
>
> Cunctator wrote:
>
> >A brief summary of what I'd like to see as the policy:
> >1. The ultimate goal of Wikipedia is to be neutral and authoritative.
> >2. All claims made in Wikipedia should be confirmable by outside
> >sources.
> >3. For contentious issues, provide the reasoning behind the
antagonists'
> >contentions.
> >4. Recognize that neutrality is impossible to achieve without
> >omniscience.
> >5. Eliminate ambiguity. (Make as strong claims as possible.)
> >6. Celebrate terseness. (If another entry says the same thing, link
to
> >it. Don't say it twice if possible.)
>
> This is all well-stated, but some of this goes beyond mere editorial
> policy and reaches the status of philosophy. Maybe we need a new
> word: "wikilosophy"?

The one statement above that verges on the philosophical is #4. I
recognize that it's a philosophical point, but I think that it's a
crucial position for Wikipedians to agree upon to move past the flawed
prevailing conception of NPOV.

Another way of stating #4 is "NPOV is a goal, not a style." Our style
choices need to move us toward a NPOV. But it should be recognized as
nonsensical to say "The article was POV, I fixed it to be NPOV."

The way I stated #4 originally also contains what I believe is a central
goal of Wikipedia, which is comprehensiveness (since neutrality is a
goal, and neutrality is impossible to achieve without
comprehensiveness).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
I have sent the standard GFDL letter to them as Mav said.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
--On Saturday, November 15, 2003 2:46 PM -0800 Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
>>> if Wikipedia wanted to give it
>>> away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
>>> domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>>
>> Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by
>> me and is therefore in the public domain.
>
> Who defends the public domain?

Nobody - by definition, it can't be.

So what claim do we have?

Nathan


from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Alex R. wrote:

> If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.

That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend
copyrights or not, you always keep them.

> if Wikipedia wanted to give it
> away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
> domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.

Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me
and is therefore in the public domain.

Axel


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>>Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me
>>and is therefore in the public domain.
>>
>>
>I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD?
>The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are
>considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License".
>Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD?
>Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're
>still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
>
>
They're only bound by the terms of the GFDL if the text was copyrighted
in the first place.  If the author released it into the public domain
before putting it on Wikipedia, Wikipedia cannot add additional
restrictions to it.  He doesn't have to have published it somewhere
else, just to make a statement, "I disclaim copyright interest in any of
the works I have submitted to Wikipedia" or something similar.  If it's
edited, the derived work can then be copyrighted and therefore GFDL'd --
but the mere fact that they got it from Wikipedia doesn't mean it's
GFDL'd if it's a verbatim text in the public domain.  As a similar
example, if someone came and copied some of our public domain poems
(say, [[Invictus]]), the fact that they got them from Wikipedia would
not oblige them to follow the GFDL, because we have no copyright on them.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Alex R. wrote:

>From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>>  Alex R. wrote:
>>
>>>From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>
>>>
>>>At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
>>>
>>>>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
>>>>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>>>>
><...snip...>
>
>>A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here
>>will often depend on time limits provided in the law.
>>
>
>There are no strict time limits, and one can always bring an infringement
>action for damages, but one wants to try and get an injunction.
>
Or a mandamus requiring that they give appropriate credits, maybe even
achieving the effect that whatever original material they added
themselves becomes subject to to FDL.  That would be a more fitting
result than just winning a lump of money.

> Since the DCMA OCILLA provisions are available, judges are going to ask,
>why didn't you invoke those provisions before coming to court? That
>is what they are there for.
>
Of course,  the easy options should normally be tried first.

>> Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step.  The choice of
>>legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem.  Legal actions
>>can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective.  Who would be
>>responsible for those costs?  If there were someone with deep enough
>> pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of
>>computer hardware that that could buy.  It would be immoral to expect
>>Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have
>>far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on
>>material that is in one way or another already freely available to the
>>general community for its re-use.
>>
>
>If Wikipedia is registered as a collective work with the US Copyright
>office, attorneys fees will be paid by the infringer. This is one reason
>that Wikipedia should be periodically registered as the copyright protection
>is only available after registration (though unpublished works are not
>required to be registered). Most copyright litigators will take on these
>cases on contingency if the proper registrations are done.
>
This is a precautionary move.  It should probably be done quarterly,
given the frequency of change in the Wikipedia corpus.

>>Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based
>>violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international
>>law.  Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?
>>
>It has nothing to do with international law, the work is protected by US
>law, if they infringe on the internet  it is published in the US and US
>federal courts have jurisdiction over foreigners.
>
Most countries properly find the extraterritorial application of US law
objectionable.  If you start an action against a foreign defendant, he
may not show up.  There would be a default judgement, perhaps even fully
enforceable in the defendant's home country.  That really accomplishes
nothing.  The action was not primarily for the money.  Only one violator
is knocked off the net, and no precedents are set for the future.  What
are we trying to accomplish?

> So I don't know what issues you are trying to create here.
>
The verb "create" makes this an offensive comment.

>If the infringer is overseas, get a US judgment
>and then take it to the foreign court to be recognized. The trend is for
>courts to recognize judgments, especially in areas of relatively uniform
>laws, i.e. copyright that is applied through the Berne Convention (or other
>conventions) on a fairly standard basis.
>
I wouldn't count on that.

>>>Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list that
>>>
>>>is what it was created for.
>>>
>>Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-)   This
>>is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list.
>>Ec
>>
>
>Well, the general ideas that are covered here apply to all Wikimedia projects
>and the issues are legal ones, that is what the legal list is for. Isn't a low
>traffic list better because it is limited to those who are interested in legal
>topics?
>
This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the Wikilegal list.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:21:44PM +0100, Axel Boldt wrote:
>
>>Alex R. wrote:
>>
>>>If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.
>>>
>>That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend
>>copyrights or not, you always keep them.
>>
>>>if Wikipedia wanted to give it
>>>away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
>>>domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>>>
>>Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me
>>and is therefore in the public domain.
>>
>I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD?
>The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are
>considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License".
>Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD?
>Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're
>still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
>
It does all get very tricky.  Axel has a perfect right to put his
writing into the public domailn.  Nothing prevents us or chessandbeyond
from using public domain material.  What was added by others later is
not necessarily also in the public domain.

Our big argument is with people plagiarize, and purport to claim
copyright on their plagiarism.

Ec


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:NightCrawler

body:
It has been suggested that User:NightCrawler is the hard banned user DW.  Could someone look at the logs to see what ISP he's posting from, and if the addressed match those of DW?  He is more than a problem user, he has already driven a new user away, and is making threats to other users that are eerily familiar to those of DW.

RickK

---------------------------------
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
>   Alex R. wrote:
>
> >From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>
> >
> >At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
> >
> >>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
> >>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> >>
<...snip...>
> A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here
> will often depend on time limits provided in the law.

There are no strict time limits, and one can always bring an infringement
action for damages, but one wants to try and get an injunction. Since
the DCMA OCILLA provisions are available, judges are going to ask,
why didn't you invoke those provisions before coming to court? That
is what they are there for.

> Beyond that, if the violator refuses, what strategies are available?

It is not up to the violator, it is up to the ISP. If the violator is also
an ISP,
well then you must sue if they issue the required counter notice and restore
the works.  The limitations period is four years.

>  Beginning a legal action may not be the best next step.  The choice of
> legal jurisdiction would only be a part of the problem.  Legal actions
> can be costly, especially if we want them to be effective.  Who would be
> responsible for those costs?  If there were someone with deep enough
>  pockets to foot that kind of bill, we could only drool at the kind of
> computer hardware that that could buy.  It would be immoral to expect
> Jimbo alon to be responsible for the costs of an action that could have
> far reaching implications about attempted claims of copyright on
> material that is in one way or another already freely available to the
> general community for its re-use.

If Wikipedia is registered as a collective work with the US Copyright
office, attorneys fees will be paid by the infringer. This is one reason
that
Wikipedia should be periodically registered as the copyright protection
is only available after registration (though unpublished works are not
required to be registered). Most copyright litigators will take on these
cases on contingency if the proper registrations are done.

> Protecting the public interest is a public sector function.  To some
> extent that comes into conflict with sincerely held Libertarian ideals
> which depend very much on the freedom and sense of responsibility of the
> individual.  Of course, there are too many big-buck vested interests
> involved with government for them to be a dependable ally.  If push
> comes to shove, strategic alliances may be required.
>
> Choosing the right opponent to go after will be important; a US based
> violator will at least avoid the problems that come with international
> law.  Are there other strategies available before it gets to the courts?

It has nothing to do with international law, the work is protected by US
law, if they infringe on the internet  it is published in the US and US
federal
courts have jurisdiction over foreigners. So I don't know what issues you
are trying to create here. If the infringer is overseas, get a US judgment
and then take it to the foreign court to be recognized. The trend is for
courts to recognize judgments, especially in areas of relatively uniform
laws, i.e. copyright that is applied through the Berne Convention (or other
conventions) on a fairly standard basis.

> >Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list
that
> >is what it was created for.
> >
> Some of us would prefer not to subscribe to yet another list. :-)   This
> is too important to be relegated to a low traffic list.
> Ec

Well, the general ideas that are covered here apply to all Wikimedia
projects
and the issues are legal ones, that is what the legal list is for. Isn't a
low
traffic list better because it is limited to those who are interested in
legal
topics?

Alex756


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] re: stats still broken

body:
The dumps have been fixed, but Brion is obviously too busy fixing other
problems to rerun the stats (or spending quality time with his fiancee,
to make yet another unfounded accusation).

Also, the en: stats for November are missing since two weeks (I expect a
runtime error, or lack of memory, who knows, it puts quite some load on
the machine).

Without feedback from Brion who runs the job on his PC there is not much
I can do.
At least the log files will be uploaded from now on, so that I have some
clues where to look for.

Erik Zachte

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from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Multilingual?

body:
> Wikipedia, as a whole, is a multilingual project, but the *English*
Wikipedia is NOT, and it isn't acceptable to attempt to force non-English
common usage on English speakers.

RickK

Misses the point.  I get down the Concise Oxford Dictionary from my shelf:
it says chess is a game with 32 pieces and so on.  Not the general type of
king-hunt game.  That usage, which is therefore _not_ the common one, is
being suggested by people with a specialist point of view.

To clarify: mancala _is_ an English term for a class of many games (probably
over 100).  The question is whether omweso, the Ugandan game of this family,
should be called 'Ugandan mancala' instead.  Neither term , 'omweso' or
'Ugandan mancala', is common usage.  The former term is more accurate (there
is apparently an omweso variant played in Entebbe).  If you go down this
line you'd end up calling Bao 'Tanzanian mancala' and so on.  To avoid
introducing terms from another language; but in a context where you can't
say there is much common English usage, outside East Africa.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: NPOV

body:
On Saturday 15 November 2003 04:09, Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> Cunctator wrote:
> >A brief summary of what I'd like to see as the policy:
> >Yes. Fortunately we can rely on the pool of perfectly accurate,
> >non-propagandizing, value-judgmentless historical references to do so.
> >
> >Oops, they don't exist.
>
> Actually, they do. For example, "Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5,
> 1821" is a statement whose accuracy no one seriously disputes, and it
> doesn't carry any particular propaganda or value judgments. Whether

Some believe that Napoleon was poisoned. Not mentioning that in a sentence
about his death is inaccurate to them.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
 From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
 > Alex R. wrote:
>
> >From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> >
> >>  Alex R. wrote:
> >>
> >>>From: "Vicki Rosenzweig" <vr at redbird.org>
> >>>
> >>>At 08:47 AM 11/15/03 -0500, Alex756 wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>"Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> said:
> >>>>Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> >>>>
<...snip...>

> The verb "create" makes this an offensive comment.

It was a typo, there was no intention to be offensive, it is a discussion
of legal strategy, you are reading too much into it.
<..snip..>
> >>>Once again this discussion should be on the Wikilegal discussion list
that
> >>>
<..snip...>
> This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the Wikilegal
list.

If people are effected by some legal strategy then shouldn't they subscribe
to the legal list to be informed?  Otherwise doesnt' that  place the horse
before the cart.  If an issue effects all of Wikipedia but more people are
on
the English list then it should be discussed on the English list rather than
the general list!  No wonder those people on French Wikipedia have their
own ideas about Wikipedia because none of them are subscribed to the
English list where the discussions occur because that is where the poster
gets the most publicity.

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

in_reply_to:
<bp61sv$mlo$1@sea.gmane.org>;
	from axelboldt@yahoo.com on Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:21:44PM +0100

body:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 09:21:44PM +0100, Axel Boldt wrote:
> Alex R. wrote:
>
> > If Wikipedia authors do not assert their rights they will lose them.
>
> That applies to trademarks, but not to copyrights. Whether you defend
> copyrights or not, you always keep them.
>
> > if Wikipedia wanted to give it
> > away it would all be put into the public domain. It is not in the public
> > domain, it is under a complex license that needs to be followed.
>
> Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me
> and is therefore in the public domain.
>
I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD?
The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are
considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License".
Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD?
Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're
still bound by the terms of the GFDL.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Takedown Notice was Copyright violation

body:
From: "Arvind Narayanan" <arvindn at meenakshi.cs.iitm.ernet.in>

<..snip..>

> Another thing I noticed is that many (most?) of the sites violating
> GFDL don't know about it until we tell them about it. This is easily
> preventable and shouldn't be happening! I want to suggest a couple of
> things to ensure this:
>
> * that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line.  As we
> know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre.
> I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia"
> with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
>
> * at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
> _obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish
> to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release
> it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.

These are both good suggestions, it is more accurate to say "open
content" than free (implying PD) and the link back is giving someone
an easy way to comply with the GFDL, and very specific directions
on how to do it.

> IMHO we should also be more vigorous in pursuing violators. Why are
> people saying this is antithetical to sharing? We are preventing them
> from *putting restrictions* on our free articles. Writing a legal notice
> is costly, that's a valid point. But we'll have to do it sometime,
> haven't we? Otherwise we lose credibility. And since we (presumably)
> have to write a template letter only once, the cost is amortized. I hope
> we never actually need to go to court. IANAL, of course.

Actually the notice does not have be drafted by a lawyer and it can
be sent by email. It just has to be done by someone who can certify
that the content is protected by copyright. You basically just have
to follow the requirements of the law. It is not that complicated,
most corporations do it through lawyers but individuals can do
it too without legal help.

Here is a database of these C&D takedown notices:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/notice.cgi

Of course the question of sending out these notices needs to be
vetted by Wikimedia as it would involve some "corporate" action
as it would be invoking the name of Wikimedia.

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

in_reply_to:
<3FB6ABBD.1080308@telus.net>;
	from saintonge@telus.net on Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 02:42:05PM -0800

body:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 02:42:05PM -0800, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> You're not going to get any argument from Wikipedians against the
> philosophical and theoretical basis of what you just said.  It was at
> least a year ago that I commented that the violation of Wikipedia
> copyrights will be a much bigger problem than violations by Wikipedians.
>  It is relatively easy to develop policies to deal with the latter
> circumstances, and I think that what we have done is fairly
> conservative, meaning that we could probably have given ourselves a much
> greater benefit of the doubt.
>
> The present problem will become more difficult as the years go on.  To
> start with the violations will become harder to find, and will likely
> only be discovered as a matter of sheer luck.  When we do discover them
> we need a strategy that will work.  There is more to that strategy than
> trying to decipher legal texts.  Assuming na??vet?? on the part of the
> violator is a good first start.  A friendly letter of explanation
> suggesting possible solutions is a good first start, providing we at
> least give them enough time to respond.  The amount of time should vary.
>  If the violator has a site with many of our pages, it may suffice to
> see a steady progress in making the needed change.
>
> A legal take-down notice is a logical second step, and the timing here
> will often depend on time limits provided in the law.

I agree with all this. I was looking at [[Wikipedia:Sites that use
Wikipedia for content]] for the first time and I was surprised at the
extent/number of sites that we *know* about and have issues. NationMaster
(which has the entire wikipedia content) though listed as compliant
violates the spirit of the license by putting the GFDL notice in an
unreadably small font.  4reference, in spite of a letter and a warning,
is not compliant (again entire wikipedia content). A lot of times I see
4reference copies of wikipedia articles ranked higher by google than
the source article. I don't like this.

Another thing I noticed is that many (most?) of the sites violating
GFDL don't know about it until we tell them about it. This is easily
preventable and shouldn't be happening! I want to suggest a couple of
things to ensure this:

* that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line.  As we
know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre.
I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia"
with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.

* at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish
to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release
it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.

IMHO we should also be more vigorous in pursuing violators. Why are
people saying this is antithetical to sharing? We are preventing them
from *putting restrictions* on our free articles. Writing a legal notice
is costly, that's a valid point. But we'll have to do it sometime,
haven't we? Otherwise we lose credibility. And since we (presumably)
have to write a template letter only once, the cost is amortized. I hope
we never actually need to go to court. IANAL, of course.

Arvind
--
Its all GNU to me


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

in_reply_to:
<3FB7133A.4090509@rufus.d2g.com>;
	from delirium@rufus.d2g.com on Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 10:03:38PM
	-0800

body:
On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 10:03:38PM -0800, Delirium wrote:
> Arvind Narayanan wrote:
>
> >>Ironically, the bulk of [[Chest strategy and tactics]] was written by me
> >>and is therefore in the public domain.
> >>
> >>
> >I don't understand. Could you please explain how your contributions are PD?
> >The edit pages say: "Please note that all contributions to Wikipedia are
> >considered to be released under the GNU Free Documentation License".
> >Do you mean to say that you've also put it up at some other site as PD?
> >Even in that case, chessandbeyond copied it from wikipedia, and so they're
> >still bound by the terms of the GFDL.
> >
> >
> They're only bound by the terms of the GFDL if the text was copyrighted
> in the first place.  If the author released it into the public domain
> before putting it on Wikipedia, Wikipedia cannot add additional
> restrictions to it.  He doesn't have to have published it somewhere
> else, just to make a statement, "I disclaim copyright interest in any of
> the works I have submitted to Wikipedia" or something similar.  If it's

OK.
> edited, the derived work can then be copyrighted and therefore GFDL'd --

It certainly looks like a derived work; looking at the page history
there are authors with significant contributions other than Prof. Boldt.

In any case, it does not affect the overall claim of copyright violation,
since they have copied about a dozen articles.

Arvind
> but the mere fact that they got it from Wikipedia doesn't mean it's
> GFDL'd if it's a verbatim text in the public domain.  As a similar
> example, if someone came and copied some of our public domain poems
> (say, [[Invictus]]), the fact that they got them from Wikipedia would
> not oblige them to follow the GFDL, because we have no copyright on them.
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

--
Its all GNU to me


body:
--On Sunday, November 16, 2003 11:27 AM -0500 "Alex R." <alex756 at nyc.rr.com> wrote:

> Actually the notice does not have be drafted by a lawyer and it can
> be sent by email. It just has to be done by someone who can certify
> that the content is protected by copyright. You basically just have
> to follow the requirements of the law. It is not that complicated,
> most corporations do it through lawyers but individuals can do
> it too without legal help.

Corporations do it through lawyers because it's worth it to them to make sure the case isn't thrown out due to failure to dot all the i's.

I agree that Wikipedia should be registered as copyright - that basically requires sending a form to the government and paying a fee that was (when last I checked) in the range of 20-30 USD.

Nathan


body:
Alex R. wrote:

>These are both good suggestions, it is more accurate to say "open
>content" than free (implying PD) and the link back is giving someone
>an easy way to comply with the GFDL, and very specific directions
>on how to do it.
>
>
Perhaps it shows my GNUish bias, but I much prefer the term "Free
encyclopedia" to the term "open-content encyclopedia".  If the use of
the term "free" is ambiguous, perhaps it should be capitalized, to
indicate it's being used in a particular sense.

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] WRONG LIST!!! (was: Copyright violation)

body:
Ec wrote:
>This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the
>Wikilegal list.

Oh, so that is why you are OK with this thread being on the English mailing
list? Do all the other people on all the other language versions of Wikipedia
along with those people involved with other Wikimedia projects not matter?
Please.

Move it to Wikilegal-l - this is /exactly/ what the list was made for.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Ec wrote:
>
>>This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the
>>Wikilegal list.
>>
>
>Oh, so that is why you are OK with this thread being on the English mailing
>list? Do all the other people on all the other language versions of Wikipedia
>along with those people involved with other Wikimedia projects not matter?
>Please.
>
I didn't start the thread but would likely have used wikipedia-l if I
had.  You're right to say that it isn't an English-only problem..  That
would be a good place to start something with such broadly applicable
implications.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright violation

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Axel Boldt wrote:
>>
>>> Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written
>>> by me and is therefore in the public domain.
>>
>> Who defends the public domain?
>
> Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
> forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
> bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not
> change its public domain status.

This is a problem!  I see "public domain" as "belonging to the people".
 When I ask about who defends the public domain, I implicitly ask about
who defends the collective rights of the people.

You're right to say public domain status continues despite bogus
copright claims, but that claim is not without implications.  The ones
whose use of that material is chilled, are likely those without the
resources to verify those claims.  I have plenty of material in old
obscure books that are well into the public domain, if I were so
inclined, it would be easy to publish it under my own copyright, and
take steps (falsely) to defend that copyright.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:NightCrawler

body:
Rick wrote:
> It has been suggested that User:NightCrawler is the hard banned user
> DW.  Could someone look at the logs to see what ISP he's posting from,
> and if the addressed match those of DW?  He is more than a problem user,
> he has already driven a new user away, and is making threats to other
> users that are eerily familiar to those of DW.

I looked up a single NightCrawler log entry. It came from the same small
range DW was using. Brion tells me that entire range was blocked when DW
was banned originally, so apparently it has been accidentally unblocked
at some stage.

-- Tim Starling.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please remove the "support" message from en.wikipedia
	page headers

body:
There seems to be general agreement to do this. Can somebody with developer
access either do it give me access to do it?

I'll figure it out.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Please remove the "support" message from
	en.wikipedia page headers

body:
Erik wrote:
>Done, but I'd prefer not to flush the page cache for
>performance reasons.

Fair enough, and thanks (I knew asking for developer access would scare one of
you guys into action ;).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Allan Crossman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User:NightCrawler

body:
> I looked up a single NightCrawler log entry. It came from the same small
> range DW was using.

OK. I put a block on User:NightCrawler.

--
Allan Crossman - http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
PGP keys - 0x06C4BCCA (new) || 0xCEC9FAE1 (compatible)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Copyright violation

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
>> Ironically, the bulk of [[Chess strategy and tactics]] was written by
>> me and is therefore in the public domain.
>
> Who defends the public domain?

Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change
its public domain status.

Axel


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki stable release 2003-11-17 (security update)

body:
New release contains a number of bug fixes (see release notes) and an
important security update (see below). All sites are strongly
encouraged to upgrade, or use the workarounds described below.

Release notes:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=198060

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-20031117.tar.gz?
download

Previous versions of MediaWiki contained a flaw that could be exploited
in some configurations to execute arbitrary PHP code on the server if
the *.php files are located in a web-accessible directory and are
runnable through the PHP interpreter. This likely includes most
installations.

If you can't upgrade immediately, you should be able to easily
substantially reduce the risk by doing one or more of the following:

* Leave just LocalSettings.php and the *.phtml files exposed to the
web, moving the other *.php files into a directory that's not exposed
to the web; set $IP to point to this directory in LocalSettings.php.
-or-
* Remove the "$IP/" or "{$IP}/" from all include() and include_once()
statements, keeping the *.php and *.phtml files in one place.

* Explicitly disallow access to all the *.php files in the web server.

* Configure the server to run only *.phtml files through PHP, and not
*.php. (If you do this, be sure your database passwords are not exposed
through LocalSettings.php!)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: tarquin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>I want to suggest a couple of
>things to ensure this:
>
>* that we change the "From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" line.  As we
>know very well when people see "free" they think gratis, not libre.
>I suggest we make it "From wikipedia, the open-content encyclopedia"
>with the word open-content linking to the copyrights page.
>
>* at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
>_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish
>to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release
>it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.
>
>
Well, "the free encyclopedia" has sort of become our "tagline".
Plus, it's been translated into most languages (Wikip?dia,
l'encyclop?die libre, etc) so I think interlanguage co-ordination would
be required to move on that.

I agree with your second point -- we could do to make the licence text
at the foot of the page a bit clearer.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack

body:
Matt M. wrote:

>>Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
>>forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
>>bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change
>>its public domain status.
>>
>
><warning: personal interest coming>
>
>Do you happen to know if this is true in Canada? I ask because the Gov't of
>Quebec has several photos on one of their archive websites that are
>definitely old enough to be P.D. but which they claim to have copyright
>over. I'm wondering if I could get away with using them without asking.
>
Sure!  Why not?  I assume that the pictures have a closer connection
with Canada.  Canada follows the life + 50 rule before material goes
into the public domain.  U.S. copyright law does not give a person a
longer copyright period than he would have in his own country.  Thus a
picture taken in 1920 that is clearly in the public domain in the United
States could still be copyright in Canada if the photographer was still
alive in 1953.

Copyright subsists whether on not there is a notice.

Ec


from_name: Alex T.

body:
 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> >Ec wrote:
> >
> >>This issue will affect more people than those who sit on the
> >>Wikilegal list.
> >>
> >
> >Oh, so that is why you are OK with this thread being on the English
mailing
> >list? Do all the other people on all the other language versions of
Wikipedia
> >along with those people involved with other Wikimedia projects not
matter?
> >Please.
> >
> I didn't start the thread but would likely have used wikipedia-l if I
> had.  You're right to say that it isn't an English-only problem..  That
> would be a good place to start something with such broadly applicable
> implications.
>

Isn't Wikilegal-L the place for this discussion, it is designed to deal with
all of Wikimedia's projects. The fact that not a lot of people are signed up
should not be a deterent to discuss these issues there. Shouldn't there be
some encouragement to get those interested in legal questions to sign up
there,
rather than encourage the discussion to continue on more general lists?

Alex756


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>Matt M. wrote:
>
>>>Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
>>>forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
>>>bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change
>>>its public domain status.
>>>
>><warning: personal interest coming>
>>
>>Do you happen to know if this is true in Canada? I ask because the Gov't
>>
>of
>
>>Quebec has several photos on one of their archive websites that are
>>definitely old enough to be P.D. but which they claim to have copyright
>>over. I'm wondering if I could get away with using them without asking.
>>
>
>Just because the photo's PD doesn't mean a scan of it is. It's the same as
>how a photograph of public property is copyrightable. That's how I recall it
>being described to me, anyway. Your mileage (kilometerage?) may vary...
>
It doesn't mean that the scan is copyright either; that depends on
whether there is a creative act in making that scan.

A photograph of public property is copyrightable of course, but, at
least in Canada, taking a picture of an permanently placed building or
outdoor statue is not a breach of copyright, even if you intend to
publish the photograph.

Ec


from_name: Matt M.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack

body:
> Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
> forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
> bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change
> its public domain status.

<warning: personal interest coming>

Do you happen to know if this is true in Canada? I ask because the Gov't of
Quebec has several photos on one of their archive websites that are
definitely old enough to be P.D. but which they claim to have copyright
over. I'm wondering if I could get away with using them without asking.

M


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Daniel-
> There seems to be general agreement to do this. Can somebody with developer
> access either do it give me access to do it?

Done, but I'd prefer not to flush the page cache for performance reasons.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack

body:
Matt M. wrote:
> > Material that's in the public domain remains in the public domain
> > forever. Nobody can attack it and nobody can defend it. You can slap a
> > bogus copyright notice on a public domain work, but that does not change
> > its public domain status.
>
> <warning: personal interest coming>
>
> Do you happen to know if this is true in Canada? I ask because the Gov't
of
> Quebec has several photos on one of their archive websites that are
> definitely old enough to be P.D. but which they claim to have copyright
> over. I'm wondering if I could get away with using them without asking.

Just because the photo's PD doesn't mean a scan of it is. It's the same as
how a photograph of public property is copyrightable. That's how I recall it
being described to me, anyway. Your mileage (kilometerage?) may vary...

-- Jake


subject: [Wikitech-l] Making our content easier to use

body:
I just noticed something a bit amusing. Science Daily has an Encyclopedia
section now that uses Wikipedia content. Now I don't have any problem with
that and in fact think that it is great since they provide the credit, links
and mention of the GNU FDL that we require. However they seem to include
/all/ pages from en.wikipedia including user pages, wikipedia pages, talk
pages and special pages (minus the dynamic stuff).

Example:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/user:maveric149

Would it be possible to have backup dumps of just pages in the article
namespace with footers that have all the attribution/license stuff we
require? That would make third party use of our content more clean.

Oh and that also reminds me that the url on the print versions of pages is not
an active link. Could somebody make that an active link so that all third
parties would have to do to comply with our copyright terms is copy the print
versions of articles?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Web space request

body:
> From: Alfio Puglisi <puglisi at arcetri.astro.it>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 10:17:31 +0100 (CET)
> To: Wikitech-L <Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Web space request
>
> Hello,
> for a while I've been generating html dumps of Wikipedia, that I would
> like now to make public (since similar things are popping up left and
> right, and it seems that it would be useful for legitimate mirroring).
>
> Unfortunately, I lack the web space/bandwidth to host it myself. The
> complete, compressed dump of the English wikipedia is around 750MB,
> including all images. Adding the other languages (the ones using MediaWiki
> software) it's about 1 GB. Removing images it goes down to maybe 200
> megabytes.
>
> Is there anyone with a suitable hosting? It needs aboud 1GB of space (and
> growing a bit week after week :-), and reasonable bandwidth. Also, should
> the dump include images or copyright issues are still unresolved?
>
> Ciao,
> Alfio

Ibiblio would probably host a mirror. email help at ibiblio.org. Images on a
mirror should be no worse than the images on Wikipedia itself, the problem
comes up when they are used in other contexts, especially commerical
contexts.

Fred


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Mediawiki-l] MediaWiki stable release 2003-11-17
	(security update)

body:
Since the release I've uncovered and fixed some new errors in the
maintenance scripts; also some old bugs in rebuildlinks.inc are now
fixed. If you need to use these, you can pull the fixed versions out of
CVS (-r stable) or grab an updated copy of the maintenance directory
alone here: http://wikipedia.sf.net/maintenance-20031117b.tar.gz

If you're not rebuilding your link tables, recentchanges, or search
index, you can ignore this.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack, cont'd.

body:
>
>> A photograph of public property is copyrightable of course, but, at
>> least in Canada, taking a picture of an permanently placed building or
>> outdoor statue is not a breach of copyright, even if you intend to
>> publish the photograph.
>
> Oh really! That's very interesting. Even if the statue is still new enough
> to be under copyright in its own right?
>
> (This is helpful given the topic of the site I was collecting the photos I
> originally asked about for.)
>
> Matt

You can imagine a number of different fact situations with images of
creative works, a statue still in the artist's workshop, in a private home,
but on public display the situation is pretty clear, not a problem; a copy
of a statue is a whole other matter, perhaps a hologram would be a
significant fact change.

Fred


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright violation

body:
Tarquin wrote in part:

>Arvind Narayanan wrote:

>>* at the bottom of each article we should remind people about their
>>_obligations_ in copying it. Something along the lines of "if you wish
>>to redistribute this article you must link back to this page and release
>>it under the GFDL. See <here> for details" or something like that.

>I agree with your second point -- we could do to make the licence text
>at the foot of the page a bit clearer.

Like here:

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3ASites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Suggested_notice

(aka [[Wikipedia_talk:Sites_that_use_Wikipedia_for_content#Suggested_notice]]).

This has been around for a while, but people didn't have much interest
when it came to the mailing list (I forget which) in the past.

(Ultimately, we need to get a developer interested,
since that footer text is not wiki-editable.)

[Posting to <wikiEN-L> since we could change the text only on [[en:]] --
and we may need to only on [[en:]] if that's all that's being violated.
[[fr:]] et al can then copy us if they find it necessary, or desirable;
or even do their own thing, within reason.]

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack, cont'd.

body:
> A photograph of public property is copyrightable of course, but, at
> least in Canada, taking a picture of an permanently placed building or
> outdoor statue is not a breach of copyright, even if you intend to
> publish the photograph.

Oh really! That's very interesting. Even if the statue is still new enough
to be under copyright in its own right?

(This is helpful given the topic of the site I was collecting the photos I
originally asked about for.)

Matt


from_name: Alex R.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Hijack, cont'd.

body:
From: "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> >
> >> A photograph of public property is copyrightable of course, but, at
> >> least in Canada, taking a picture of an permanently placed building or
> >> outdoor statue is not a breach of copyright, even if you intend to
> >> publish the photograph.
> >
> > Oh really! That's very interesting. Even if the statue is still new
enough
> > to be under copyright in its own right?
> >
> > (This is helpful given the topic of the site I was collecting the photos
I
> > originally asked about for.)
> >
> > Matt
>
> You can imagine a number of different fact situations with images of
> creative works, a statue still in the artist's workshop, in a private
home,
> but on public display the situation is pretty clear, not a problem; a copy
> of a statue is a whole other matter, perhaps a hologram would be a
> significant fact change.
>
> Fred

If the it was necessary to get copyright clearance of everything displayed
in public then no one could ever satisfy such a burden and it would be
impossible to create images of public places.  Of course there are privacy
rights
issues when dealing with people not engaged in newsworthy activities,
but otherwise documenting something in public is not a problem (though
using an image of something that is owned even in public for some
promotional
or commercial purpose might be a problem in some fact patterns).

Once again, doesn't this discussion belong on Wikilegal-L? I am cross
posting
my reply there.

Alex756


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

body:
On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Example:
>http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/user:maveric149
>
>Would it be possible to have backup dumps of just pages in the article
>namespace with footers that have all the attribution/license stuff we
>require? That would make third party use of our content more clean.

If they have pages from all namespaces, it seems that they are
web-mirroring the site (and reformatting it), instead of using the backup
dumps.

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Web space request

body:
Hello,
for a while I've been generating html dumps of Wikipedia, that I would
like now to make public (since similar things are popping up left and
right, and it seems that it would be useful for legitimate mirroring).

Unfortunately, I lack the web space/bandwidth to host it myself. The
complete, compressed dump of the English wikipedia is around 750MB,
including all images. Adding the other languages (the ones using MediaWiki
software) it's about 1 GB. Removing images it goes down to maybe 200
megabytes.

Is there anyone with a suitable hosting? It needs aboud 1GB of space (and
growing a bit week after week :-), and reasonable bandwidth. Also, should
the dump include images or copyright issues are still unresolved?

Ciao,
Alfio