subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [OT] Top posting

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 11, 2005 at 06:24:27PM -0700, Matt Brown wrote:
>
>>The problem with top-posting is not so much the top-posting itself, it is
>>what it generally goes along with: copying the entire text of the article
>>being replied to, and not being specific about what you're replying to.
>
>
> Full-quoting is really annoying for those of us who read mailing lists
> in digest mode:  it means that we have to page through reams of repeated
> text in order to read the new messages.  Since digest mode is a useful
> and supported feature of the list, it makes sense to discourage people
> from gratuitously breaking it by full-quoting.
>

I might add that this was one of the reasons I switched to
single-message mode - that and getting several digests in a row where
*every single message* was on the same topic. Hurt the eyes and the hip
pocket.

--
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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Michael Turley wrote:
> I suggest we consider adding an optional "hidden from casual browsers"
> flag to Wikipedia article records, so that we would have a two level
> deletion system: complete crap gets speedied, bad articles get deleted
> as usual, good articles get kept as usual, and questionable articles
> are shuffled off to limbo where they can be further developed before
> being put back into the main articlespace.  (I'm not even sure how
> much I like this idea myself, but thought I'd throw it out there.)
>

TINC.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
<snip>
> I'm sure it won't be this simple, but:
> - People nominating for VfD should be forced to explain why the article
>   must be deleted, else the VfD subpage itself should be speedied and a
>   note posted on the nominator's talkpage.
> - There should be a notice on every VfD page and subpage explaining
>   that:
> -- a nomination is not a reflection on the contributor
> -- "unencyclopaedic" doesn't mean "unimportant"
> -- all discussion must be kept civil
>
> Should help a little, surely?
>

Indeed. I've pointed this out a few times (both on people's talk pages
and the mailing list). I think that is what most of the
mor^H^Heatpuppets from Livejournal failed to notice everytime they came
and vote-stacked a V/AFD.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 9/10/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>So you don't think that any articles need to be deleted (outside of
>>candidates for speedy deletion), ever?
>
>
> Extreme lesbian support.
>

Which way?

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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

body:
On 9/13/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> "ROUGE ADMINS" = a Commie conspiracy? :-)
>
> Ec

Many a true word spoken in jest...

Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] *Sigh*, AFD is a discussion.

body:
On 9/13/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> the afd *page* should be a discussion. That fragmented it.

If we are talking about an AfD discussion that goes on over multiple
pages, then it is, I guess, OK to break it up a little.  This should
be done by an uninvolved user, preferably an admin with a mind to
closing the debate themselves.  But this was hardly necessary in this
instance.

Sam


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Far

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New request for Cantonese Wikipedia: vote at 29-6

body:
>Hi Ffarr,

>It's nice to see you've subscribed to Wikipedia-l.

>Although it's a little bit off-topic, I'd like to ask you what you
>think of the Traditional-Simplified conversion system in its current
>form.

>Obviously, it's not perfect, but do you find it satisfactory? Or do
>you think it has a long way to go still before it can be accepted?

>Mark

hello Mark:

Although  Traditional-Simplified conversion system is not perfect and we often have to try  to solve some problems, I think it  satisfacory and will gradually become better and better. I think it is because that  although Mandarin Chinese in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hongkong, Singapore etc. are different in some vocabularies and writing system, they are all the same language and people using them can communicate easily with each other. ?I have heard Someone suggesting Mandarin -Cantonese conversion, I think it is too hard for two different languages with a lot of vocabulary  and even some grammer differences .)

ffaarr


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Anyone is encouraged to vote in Articles for Deletion. I am one of the
regulars on the Articles for Deletion. One of the issues that has been
ignored in this debate is that many articles have been improved beyond
recognition as a result of the Articles for Deletion process. For many
users, there a number of articles in which they have an intereste nominated
on one day and none the day after.

We should be encouraging users to participate in the process not
discouraging them with artificial limits. It seems that many people who
don't participate in the process are the most vocal about its supposed
deficiencies. It's a bit like complaining about the quality of the
politicians that are running the country while you don't vote.

Keith

aka User: Capitalistroadster

On 9/13/05, William M Connolley <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 12 Sep 2005, Bryan Derksen wrote:
> > Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved it
> > to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of people
> > who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in Wikipedia. The
> > small, obscure articles don't get many people from outside the VfD
> > regulars to consider the matter.
>
> How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?
>
> -W.
>
> William M Connolley | wmc at bas.ac.uk | http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc/
> Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | (01223) 221479
> If I haven't seen further, it's because giants were standing on my
> shoulders
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
User pages have no copyright exemption. We should root out and destroy any
such examples, regardless of whether it'll piss people off (although we
should, obviously, try and be nice about it - in most cases, people aren't
trying to deliberately cause a problem).

There has been 'de facto' tolerance of unfree-with-permission images on user
pages; I think this should go, too. If you're not comfortable with putting
pictures of yourself, your family, your dog et al. under GFDL or another
compatible license, don't put them on Wikipedia even for your userpage.
After all, you could say 'Go to my personal web site for more info about
me', or something - links are perfectly fine.

-Matt


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
One of the other difficulties is that I'm not sure how one establishes
oneself as trustworthy on commons. On Wikipedia there are plenty of
opportunities to see how users interact with one another, to see their
general attitudes, to see what they're about, based on how they edit
articles and deal with the inevitable conflicts and disagreements that come
up.

On commons... I've uploaded a lot of things to commons, and I've even
created some categories and written some sort "collection" pages up. But
these are usually, at most, one sentence here, one sentence there.

What else can one do? I've nominated a bunch of things for deletion which
clearly weren't free, and gotten back all sorts of nasty responses from
people who seem to think deleting things from commons with suspicious or
nonexistant licenses is a bad idea (I suspect much of this comes from either
language barriers or an understandable lack of knowledge about U.S.
copyright laws).

I don't think it's unreasonable that being an admin in good standing on
another Wiki should be a major ticket to being an admin on Commons. One
possible approach could be as follows: A Wikipedia admin self-nominates
themselves for Commons admin on their own Wiki (i.e., in the same place
they'd normally be nominated for admin). If it is approved, THEN it goes
over to Commons and some sort of small confirmation process is held (at the
moment, I don't know how this would work, but it wouldn't be an open vote,
since those people likely know nothing about the candidate in question).

FF

On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/14/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Exactly. Commons supports all projects.
> >
>
> By providing anouther avinue for vandals and makeing life diffiult for
> those who are trying to prevent it?
>
> > Yes.
>
> slighly odd those if you consider what adminship is ment to mean.
> Clearly these users can be trusted.
>
> > It does no harm to prove themselves on the project concerned. If they
> > are indeed trustworthy, it shouldn't be hard.
>
> takes time out their primary objective.
>
> > Well, they're not.
> >
> >
> > Dan
>
> and people wounder why there is that backlog at now commons.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which,
> incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade
> shears").
>
> I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the
> built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?

Considering it pops a Google search box in whenever the search function has
been disabled, the code for this must already be out there.

The only problem I have with Wiki-via-Google is that Google also indexes
redirect pages. Not the end of the world, but it always looks a little
sloppy, but it's not really Google's fault.

I'm not sure what the effect would be of having redirects add a meta robots
noindex tag to them, but it might be worth thinking about.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
referencing "safe harbor" laws.)

In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright violations
on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of course not".

Boy, wouldn't it be fun to start enforcing this! Anybody in the mood to
become "most hated user, especially among the young and brittle"? If the
answer is definitely "no exceptions", it would be nice to have a quote from
Jimbo Wales with his thoughts on this to use as a reference, since a lot of
people have strong proprietary feelings about their user pages.

FF


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for ASL/English

body:
An ASL/English Wikipedia is a bad idea, because it'd be basically a
fork with outdated articles. It should either consist of some written
form of ASL or be temporarily an English Wikipedia project like Spoken
Wikipedia until we have the appropriate software for writing ASL. We
could move them to a separate wiki when it is created.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for ASL/English

body:
By the way, to compare it with another recent discussion, an
ASL/English wiki would be like a Wikipedia written in standard
Chinese, with copies of the Chinese Wikipedia articles, and only sound
files in Cantonese instead of a Cantonese Wikipedia.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> What might be a little more practical than 3 votes per day would be a
> minimum 15 minute wait between votes.  This would give the person time
> to think between votes.
>
> Ec
Forcing people to think through their view wouldn't be such a bad
idea, but 5 minutes of thinking for one article should suffice
especially when you can base your vote on clear policy as  WPINAD and
the like.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
While I appreciate people are trying to think of ways to improve a process
which they perceive as deficient, that process and others not involving a
central process open to all users would end up working very inconsistently
with articles being deleted or not at the whim of which admin comes through
at a particular time.

Let us look at an article about a person who is notable in Australia but not
elsewhere (for example) which is in a poor state. Editor A comes and tags
the article for deletion. Editor B comes through and deletes it. Neither
editor is aware of the significance of the person in Australia and the
article is deleted.

If it was listed on articles for deletion, an editor or editors from
Australia could argue for its retention and improve it meaning we have a
better article.

Apart from that, I suspect that the undeletion process will become unclogged
with many accusations of editors/admins acting in bad faith.

I will flag now that I will not vote for any proposal unless that I am
pretty sure that it will improve the system. I will not vote for any
proposal which removes the deletion process from the scrutiny of ordinary
users.

Keith

aka Capitalistroadster

On 9/13/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
>
> So how about scrapping afd/vfd and replacing with a system whereby an
> editor may tag an article with a 'candidate for deletion' tag and provide
> a rationale. Admins can patrol the resulting category, assess each case,
> delete as necessary. If someone disagrees with the deletion, they can
> either contact the admin who deleted to ask them to review their decision,
> or if they want wider community input there's vfu (which could be renamed
> afu?)
>
> This seems to me to have the following advantages:
> 1. It would de-centralise the process if people mainly contact the
> deleting admin to query deletions. This would avoid a giant page of bad
> feeling.
> 2. An article on vfd might only attract 4-5 votes, which is not enough to
> really determine community consensus and so much is kept that probably
> should be deleted when things end with 'no consensus'. However, if things
> were deleted more quickly and restorations requested on vfu, the vfu
> decision would result in restoration if there was a clear consensus to
> include. If an article does not attract sufficient community input to
> determine consensus then it would remain deleted.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> WT
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed handling of cumbersome "disambiguation"

body:
Disambiguations are there to make it easier for people to find the
article they're looking for and have a similar name to the article
they end up at. Shortening to a regular "For other uses see Foo
(disambiguation)" seems better than hiding them at the bottom, which
defies the entire point of having them.

Only expand such top dab notices for stuff that's searched for really often.

--Mgm

On 9/13/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There has been a dislikable tendency to use large
> notes -- often dealing with superficial aspects of the
> name -- as disambiguation headers.
>
> As a solution, I suggest using the footnote tags
> {{fn|1}} (top) {{fnb|1}} (bottom), under a == Notes ==
> section, to move such things down as footnotes rather
> than hatnotes. Hatnotes should be substantial and as
> brief as possible, not links to punk bands, or any
> other thing other than disambiguation, or exactly
> similar titles.
>
> In some cases, using a Disambiguation section (after
> links) seems a better compromise than even creating a
> disambiguation page.
>
> SV
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
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>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Allow one-word editing

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

This was proposed at the village pump (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#Correcting_Misspellings_.28One-word_Edits.29
) and I think it's a great idea. The idea is this: with a combination of
Javascript and server side tools, it should be feasible to double-click
any word on a page and then edit that single word. This is especially
useful for correcting spelling errors that you would be too lazy to wade
through an entire section to get to.

Considering how to determine what a word is may be a tricky task
though... is this feasible? How about enabling it for anonymous accounts?

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
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Xsz3ltcSgp6dtVx73yAoPAo=
=flK4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: SirJective

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: XML dump not well-formed because of unicode

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I wrote:
>
>> When I tried to parse the current German XML dump I discovered the
>> following malformed sequence (in [[de:India]]):
>
>
> You can remove the errors with a little perl script - only
> a workaround for the current dump:

For me this worked fine: Replace every "&#" with "&#" so the XML
parser won't see the entity (first I used sed, now my program does the
replacement before giving the stream to the parser). Of course the
program using the data will have to care about it.

de:SirJective


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] My Compliments

body:
>
> Editors: You see, we are appreciated. POV, AFD, and indef blocks
> notwithstanding, all of us are somehow contributing to the greatest
> collection of knowledge found in the modern times, and perhaps
> throughout
> history.
>

Well, that's probably an exaggeration - but at least put it this way -

We have a greatest articles in the world on Ashlee Simpson and her
first album!!!!!111four

*ducks*

Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
> area can outvote the people who actually know something. WP only
> works because 99% of the time the ignorant are willing to defer to
> the knowledgeable; but VfD process works in the opposite way -
> the knowledgeable are made to do extra work to overcome the
> objections of the ignorant.
>
> Stan
>
VFD is part of Wikipedia, why would it work the opposite way from the
rest of the wiki. It takes me just a minute to substantiate proof
something is worth of an entry. Yes, it takes some time, but it's time
well spent. That's exactly why AFD needs knowledgeable people.

Mgm


list: commons-l

from_name: Jon Harald Søby

subject: [Commons-l] Trademarks

body:
Remove all flags? That would be a pain in the arse, to put it mildly...

On 9/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The core goal of Commons is maximal reuse.  Commercial logos are
> frequently under _both_ trademark _and_ copyright.
>
> Felipe Micaroni Lalli wrote:
> >     Short version: Trademarks are very different from copyright. They are
> >     more like "other laws which restrict the free use" of (any) content and
> >     Commons does already allow seals, flags, coats of arms, Olympic symbols,
> >     the Red Cross and Crescent (all of which are protected quite like
> >     "commercial" trademarks) as well as Nazi symbols (the use of which is
> >     extremly restricted in some legislations such as DE, AT, HU).
>
> I would recommend removing all of those.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
If you are interested, I now have 50 invites for Gmail


subject: [WikiEN-l] My Compliments

body:
On Tuesday, September 13, 2005, at 03:28  PM,
<J_Laventure-Johnston at Dell.com> wrote:

>
> I just wanted to compliment the entire wikipedia team on a truly
> remarkable contribution to our entire world.
>
> An encyclopedia of this magnitude made free to anyone with internet
> access, in multiple languages, is in my opinion the greatest gift of
> knowledge ever given to much of the worlds less fortunate.
>
> Thank you very much, I use it all the time, and plan to donate what I
> can regularly.
>

Seriously though thanks for the complements :). I think its pretty neat
myself :).

Ryan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > VFD is part of Wikipedia, why would it work the opposite way from the
> > rest of the wiki. It takes me just a minute to substantiate proof
> > something is worth of an entry. Yes, it takes some time, but it's time
> > well spent. That's exactly why AFD needs knowledgeable people.
>
> And if you come up with proof of relevance, your work will still be
> for naught if the howling boeotians refuse to recant their delete
> votes.  And any admin who dares disregard a numerical consensus to
> delete when the minority side has a valid argument to keep will be
> wikisued: ask Tony Sidaway about this.
>
> There's a lot of editors and admins who've given up on VFD/AFD
> precisely because of the problems Stan is talking about, including
> many of Wikipedia's best editors.
>
> Kelly
>
I've closed a VFD on a number of articles where the concensus was to
delete. The article was rewritten right before the end and didn't
resemble the original nominated article even remotely, so I based my
closure on the votes made after the rewrite. I've yet to hear someone
complain.

Such cases are exactly the ones you can bring to VFU. Drop the
evidence on the doormat and see what happens. If anyone wants to call
the AFD valid if reliable evidence is presented, I'd be happy to turn
controversial.

(Sorry for the duplicate Kelly, I sent the message just to you instead
of the full list.)


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
G'day Dan,

<snip />

> Worldtraveller's ideas have been proposed in several forms before, but
> AfD  zealots always reject the idea as it would make their past-time
> harder (they'd have to go and edit talk pages, rather than edit all
> the votes on one big AfD page).
>
> This is why I said it's impossible to get any sort of consensus for
> replacing AfD - the people who hang out there don't want it changed,
> and will (and have) vociferously oppose any proposals.

When you're quite finished assuming bad faith, the people discussing how
to improve AfD are meeting over ========================> there.

In fact, there's even somebody by the name of "Dan Grey" who's submitted
the odd reasonable post.  I assume, from what you've written above, that
he's actually an imposter of some kind.

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.23/99 - Release Date: 12/09/2005


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
Wow.

Editors put in thousands of free hours of labor here,
I don't think the permission to put up a picture of
their dog or kids is such an outrageous thing to allow
them.

-Gamaliel

Matt Brown morven at gmail.com:

"There has been 'de facto' tolerance of
unfree-with-permission images on user
pages; I think this should go, too. If you're not
comfortable with putting
pictures of yourself, your family, your dog et al.
under GFDL or another
compatible license, don't put them on Wikipedia even
for your userpage.
After all, you could say 'Go to my personal web site
for more info about
me', or something - links are perfectly fine."

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


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Templates: id="toc" conflicts with article TOC

body:
Message box id="toc" conflicts with TOC

The basic problem is that any message box with an
id="toc" in it will keep the TOC open and not allow it
to be closed.

Changing the id="toc" to class="infobox" seems to do
the trick.

SV

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
Actually, add on to this another question: What about "limited licensed"
images on user pages? For example, "A picture of me and my dog. For use on
my user page on Wikipedia only." Obviously this wouldn't work on any article
page, but do we care if such images are used on user pages?

I'd tend to lead towards "no", simply because user pages must follow
Wikipedia license guidelines, I'd assume.

FF

On 9/13/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
>
> In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright
> violations on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of
> course not".
>
> Boy, wouldn't it be fun to start enforcing this! Anybody in the mood to
> become "most hated user, especially among the young and brittle"? If the
> answer is definitely "no exceptions", it would be nice to have a quote from
> Jimbo Wales with his thoughts on this to use as a reference, since a lot of
> people have strong proprietary feelings about their user pages.
>
> FF
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
G'day Kelly,
> On 9/13/05, William M Connolley <wmc at bas.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>>How about only permitting people 3 votes per day in total?
>
> How do you propose to enforce that?

Well, we could have people continually monitor AfD, making sure nobody
steps over the line.

We'll just have to hope they're not tempted to vote while they're there ...

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

--
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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.23/99 - Release Date: 12/09/2005


subject: [WikiEN-l] Indefinite Bans with No Oversight

body:
Thanks to sarah for doing a fantastic job on the wikipedia (and being
one of my favorite admins too!!).

Ryan (User:RN)


body:
SV wrote:
> At [[Terrorism]], he inserted a bunch of made-up and
> bizarre definitions of terrorism,

The diff is below - it doesnt seem to be too out of
line. Its certainly not in a good style of
organization for an intro, and certainly reinstating
it as if he owned the place was a disruption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Terrorism&diff=21668376&oldid=21667884

> (the consensus version, as he called it)

Whatever.

> the trolling continued on the talk page, with him
> holding forth, organizing polls, insulting people
etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Zephram_Stark

RFC seems to be just as "toxic" (ie. rumor mill) as
IRC, so that alone isnt impressive. The charge of
insulting and trolling seems quite well established
though.

> "This place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had
> possibilities before all
> you fucking Jews came along ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=22814466&oldid=22814157

Um, yeah. That particular comment doesnt typically
make friends and influence uncles.

> That's about it, but it's hopefully enough.

Nice work. Send to Arbcom to formalize.

SV

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
Jakob Voss wrote:
> Maybe diffs are not the most important performance issue but surely they
> can be speed up.

Yes, it would certainly a useful project if anyone wants to work on it.
The gains would be comparable to any other performance project on this
scale. The C++ module could do with some optimisation, and the PHP
equivalent will continue to be used by external users if not by
Wikimedia. And they would be useful projects for standardisation and
submission to PECL and PEAR, IMHO.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/13/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Editors put in thousands of free hours of labor here,
> I don't think the permission to put up a picture of
> their dog or kids is such an outrageous thing to allow
> them.
>

Who's denying them the permission to put up pictures of them, their dogs or
their kids? They can make the images PD, Creative Commons, GFDL ...

But if they want to put up restricted-license images, that's a step too far,
IMO. Your userpage isn't the same as your personal homepage, and if you care
so much about those image licenses, keep them there.

Given that unscrupulous mirrors will probably suck up the whole contents
anyway, it's not smart.

I've put in probably thousands of hours of free labor too, and I'm sure most
of us have, so that's a cheap shot.

-Matt


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] My Compliments

body:
Well, thank you very much. You make the time we spend worthwhile. We do try
our best :).

Editors: You see, we are appreciated. POV, AFD, and indef blocks
notwithstanding, all of us are somehow contributing to the greatest
collection of knowledge found in the modern times, and perhaps throughout
history.

--[[en:User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 9/13/05, J_Laventure-Johnston at dell.com <J_Laventure-Johnston at dell.com>
wrote:
>
>
> I just wanted to compliment the entire wikipedia team on a truly
> remarkable contribution to our entire world.
>
> An encyclopedia of this magnitude made free to anyone with internet
> access, in multiple languages, is in my opinion the greatest gift of
> knowledge ever given to much of the worlds less fortunate.
>
> Thank you very much, I use it all the time, and plan to donate what I
> can regularly.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Jeffrey Laventure-Johnston
>
> jbowski at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Phroziac

body:
But, currently, protecting images on commons still allows vandalism
here, by uploading it here. And I doubt it'll be fixed any time soon.
If it actually worked, then I would support giving commons adminship
to a few admins of other projects, for this.


body:
On 9/13/05, steve v <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> In that sense, having Disambiguation sections might be
> a hindrance, but its at least more definitive and
> organized than hatnotes, which just obstruct from the
> article.
>
> SV
By hatnotes, do you mean the notes at the top of pages that
disambiguate? If so, I really see no problem with these, other then
sometimes the primary disambiguation is set up stupid. (Imagine band
called USA, and someone decided to give them primary disambiguation
over the country...). I think a disambiguation section would be much
worse. If there's more then one other thing the name could be, and the
article has primary disambiguation, and *really* should have it, then
there should be a link to the disambiguation on the top of the page.

I happen to like our current disambiguation setup.


list: textbook-l

from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Textbook-l] Taking a wikibreak

body:
Because of something known as real-life, I'd figure that I would
announce that I'm taking a small Wikibreak from Wikibooks.  Although
I will occasionally return as time permits, any changes I make would
either be to my two "pet books" ([[Pok?mon]] and [[MegaMan Battle
Network]]), or will likely be minor in nature.

Reflecting on the time at Wikibooks so far, we've seen a lot of
changes.  Bookshelf reorganization ([[Wikibooks:Bookshelves]]) and
title page policy ([[Wikibooks:Title pages]]) are among the two
things I'm proud to have spearheaded as a Wikibookian.  While I'd
like to see a few more things fleshed out, it seems that the work of
others have left me by the wayside, and it will be a while before I
jump into the mix again.

The main personal goals of the past few months have almost been
fulfilled - doing a quick transwiki to other projects for pages in
other languages is almost a reality, and it should leave us with pure
English pages for the most part.  Admins are now reacting quicker
since there are more active ones now than before.  Vandalism no
longer spreads as wild as before, and Wikibooks appears to begin to
adopt common standards for all books ([[WB:NC]]).  Although policy
decisions remain largely a unilateral decision, a small community is
emerging to put their opinions into a hat to try and get some
consensus, even if agressive action was needed to get people involved.

Still, I would have liked to see more people involved.  [[WB:CCO]]
was (and still is) a great idea, but it appears to have stagnated.
In some places we are running in circles with regards to policy.
Policy enforcement have ended up in major debates on how books should
be named.  Little efforts are made to merge together works that have
been forked.  We still lack community arbitration on how we mediate
forking disputes, bookshelf disputes, category use disputes, etc.
And the MediaWiki software isn't nearly good enough to give you
features that are beneficial to wikibooks (list all categories
belonging to a book, book-specific RC, intra-book link syntax).

Oh well, if I can't help out now, I will try and come back later to
help out.  Rest assured that Wikibooks and the Wikibooks community
will remain in my heart wherever I go.  But for now, my work is done.


body:
Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?

On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well we don't despite what some people think have unlimited hard drive
> space.


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Michael Turley wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Michael Turley wrote:
>>
>>>I suggest we consider adding an optional "hidden from casual browsers"
>>>flag to Wikipedia article records, so that we would have a two level
>>>deletion system: complete crap gets speedied, bad articles get deleted
>>>as usual, good articles get kept as usual, and questionable articles
>>>are shuffled off to limbo where they can be further developed before
>>>being put back into the main articlespace.  (I'm not even sure how
>>>much I like this idea myself, but thought I'd throw it out there.)
>>>
>>
>>TINC.
>
>
> I don't see how that applies here.  Please explain what you mean.
>

How do we decide what is visible to which editors? Should they be
visible only to sysops, or only to logged in editors? Or only editors
with a certain number of edits? Or accounts which are not in the newest
1% (a la page moves)?

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from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 13/09/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> I did not "demand" adminship on the commons.  I asked politely and was
> turned down, based on my lack of involvement at commons.  Commons has
> its own wikipolitics, which should be unsurprising.  The "official"
> criteria is 100 uploads or other edits.  Sometimes this is enforced,
> sometimes not.  As is the case on en, commons adminship requirements
> appear to have become more demanding with time.

It's not "wikipolitics". You had made two edits to the Commons beyond
your user pages before you applied for adminship. Not suprising you
were turned down, is it?

>
> The point is that vandalism on commons affects en.wikipedia, and such
> vandalism is likely to become a growing problem as more images get
> migrated.  For technical reasons alone it is harder for en admins to
> track such vandalism, because it does not appear in recentchanges on
> en, or in the "related changes" pages.  The fact that vandalism, once
> identified, cannot be properly addressed by en. admins (at least in
> cases where page protection or a block is appropriate), makes matters
> even more difficult.

Anyone can fight vandalism on the Commons (one-click revert is
available to any logged-in user). If you want someone blocked, ask in
#wikimedia.commons. If you want to be able to block users yourself,
establish a good track-record, then apply for adminship yourself.

>
> If commons is a completely independent of en.wikipedia, perhaps we
> should reconsider our present drive to move images to commons.  I don't
> think that would be wise.  The original intent of commons was to create
> a project that would serve all wikipedias rather than to create a
> freestanding media archive unrelated to any of them.

Yes, the Commons is a repository of Free media, that can be used by
any project. What's that got to do with adminship?

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> Anyone is encouraged to vote in Articles for Deletion. I am one of the
> regulars on the Articles for Deletion. One of the issues that has been
> ignored in this debate is that many articles have been improved beyond
> recognition as a result of the Articles for Deletion process. For many
> users, there a number of articles in which they have an intereste nominated
> on one day and none the day after.
>
> We should be encouraging users to participate in the process not
> discouraging them with artificial limits. It seems that many people who
> don't participate in the process are the most vocal about its supposed
> deficiencies. It's a bit like complaining about the quality of the
> politicians that are running the country while you don't vote.
>
> Keith
>
> aka User: Capitalistroadster
>

Now there's a familiar face! I agree, there have been many articles
which (at the time they were nominated) could probably have been
speedied, but instead, they went to V/AFD and were improved to the point
of valid stubs (or beyond). Not everyone who votes "delete" does so on
every AFD page; not everyone who votes "keep" does so on every AFD page.

I think the biggest problem with AFD is the "Us and Them" mentality of
the AIW and the ADW, playing a zero-sum game.

PROPOSAL: Delete these pages from meta straight away, notify all former
members, and ban anyone who mentions them ever again...

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body:
On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
> keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.

Does it? How?

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletion suggestion

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> While I appreciate people are trying to think of ways to improve a process
> which they perceive as deficient, that process and others not involving a
> central process open to all users would end up working very inconsistently
> with articles being deleted or not at the whim of which admin comes through
> at a particular time.
>
> Let us look at an article about a person who is notable in Australia but not
> elsewhere (for example) which is in a poor state. Editor A comes and tags
> the article for deletion. Editor B comes through and deletes it. Neither
> editor is aware of the significance of the person in Australia and the
> article is deleted.
>
> If it was listed on articles for deletion, an editor or editors from
> Australia could argue for its retention and improve it meaning we have a
> better article.
>

This is why I proposed splitting AFD by topic, and look where it got
me... I remember when I was more active on the [[WP:AWNB]] that we had a
section for "Australia-related articles on VFD", sometimes we would keep
these out of mainstream VFD, and we would perform the same courtesy to
other regional noticeboards.

> Apart from that, I suspect that the undeletion process will become unclogged
> with many accusations of editors/admins acting in bad faith.
>

I concur. Under PWDS there is too much room to assume bad faith. Either
people will leave over month-long revert wars, or we will have groups of
sysops running around protecting and unprotecting articles in order to
try and "keep" or "delete" them.

> I will flag now that I will not vote for any proposal unless that I am
> pretty sure that it will improve the system. I will not vote for any
> proposal which removes the deletion process from the scrutiny of ordinary
> users.
>

Indeed. Hence my scepticism of the "hidden semi-deleted pages" option.

Damn, I feel like being bold and just going and...

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
JAY JG wrote:
>> From: Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca>
>>
>> Hear hear. Instead of moving VfD to AfD, we might as well have moved
>> it to "Wikiproject Deletion." The last thing we need is a group of
>> people who _specialize_ in deciding what articles are allowed in
>> Wikipedia. The small, obscure articles don't get many people from
>> outside the VfD regulars to consider the matter.
>
>
> The last thing we need is a group of specialists who actually care about
> what kinds of articles are encyclopedic, and fall within Wikipedia's
> mandate and policies, and what kinds are not?  Who aren't actually
> emotionally tied up in the subject matter, but instead are able to view
> the topic with dispassionate reason?  Instead we should leave decisions
> about these things to one-off partisans who create articles on their
> narrow areas of interest (e.g. the band they just founded, or flags
> which are red white and blue and have stars on them)?
>

But they're not allowed to have a Union Jack on them, belong to a
country formerly ruled by Spain, or be in any way derived from the Flag
of the United States?

Yep, I think I'll go make [[List of countries which are not the United
States of America or one of it's allies]] right now.

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body:
On 9/13/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
> >
> > Kelly
>
> It might if stuff was kep undeleted forever.

Huh? I'll assume you mean in the undelete archive. We keep stuff in
there as long as we can, I think it was last purged in 2002. Check the
top of [[WP:VFU]] if you care.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On 9/13/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It is not usually my nature to bring others into my problems, but I think this has gone too far.  People are effectively being banned indefinitely without any oversight, in order to associate their misdeeds with me.

Zephram Stark is trolling and everyone's tired of him, except for his
many anonymous fans around the world who instinctively know when to
turn up to revert to his preferred version.

At [[Terrorism]], he inserted a bunch of made-up and bizarre
definitions of terrorism, claiming he'd been working on that version
(the consensus version, as he called it) for over a month with other
editors, none of whom he could name; and when he was reverted, used
several sockpuppet accounts and about a dozen open proxies to keep
reverting, which he then cited as evidence that ordinary readers from
around the planet supported him. Jpgordon protected the page, but the
trolling continued on the talk page,  with him holding forth,
organizing polls, insulting people etc. He was opposed by Carbonite,
Commodore Sloat, Jayjg, Calton, Humus Sapiens, Brandon Yusuf Toropov,
Smyth, and others, and Smyth filed an RFC about him, which 17 editors
have certified or endorsed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Zephram_Stark

Ed blocked him twice on Sept 4 and 5 for personal attacks and legal
threats, then I blocked him on Sept 8 for three hours for disruption,
after which he made an edit to his talk page with the summary: "This
place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had possibilities before all
you fucking Jews came along ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=22814466&oldid=22814157
Trilobite blocked him for 48 hours for that comment. During the block,
Zeph created [[User:Go Cowboys]], who starting posting the same
nonsense at [[Talk:Terrorism]], so I blocked that account indefinitely
and extended Zeph's block by 48 hours for block evasion. Then
[[user:Felice L'Angleterre]] turned up on several pages, including
[[Talk:Terrorism]], claiming to be a major publisher and the editor of
two newspapers which were investigating Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ATerrorism&diff=23063599&oldid=23031192
It was clearly Zeph, so Felice got blocked too. Zeph's block was
extended by another 48 hours, and I've told him if he does it again,
I'll block him indefinitely.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=23073044&oldid=23061910

That's about it, but it's hopefully enough.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article deletion (proposed 1 month hiatus)

body:
On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >>As one possible alternative, the "pure wiki deletion" method of simply
> >>blanking pages would make it a lot easier to double-check and revert by
> >>non-admins.
> >
> >See WP:CP for why that isn't even legal.
>
> We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
> completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
> the relevance or connection between the two.

...And WP:CP could still take use of the admin deletion features...


from_name: geni

body:
> Anyone can fight vandalism on the Commons (one-click revert is
> available to any logged-in user). If you want someone blocked, ask in
> #wikimedia.commons. If you want to be able to block users yourself,
> establish a good track-record, then apply for adminship yourself.
>

Not every can use IRC

> Yes, the Commons is a repository of Free media, that can be used by
> any project. What's that got to do with adminship?
>
>
> Dan

Nothing if we reupload everything localy. However if we don't you have
become part of wikipedia thus it is legitimate to expect that admins
should have the smae abilities there as long as they limit themselves
to wikipedia only matters.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 13/09/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, AfD doesn't have "discussions", it has simple majority votes. PWDS
> > would force *discussion* over voting, as the power to delete/undelete
> > would belong to everyone, therefore everyone would have to agree on a
> > course of action :-).
>
> AfD emphatically _does_ have discussions.  They are _not_ majority
> votes.  If they are being closed as such by some, then fry those who
> are closing incorrectly.  Wikipedia works by consensus.  Moving the
> discussion to the talk page does precisely nothing to alter that.  AfD
> is _not_ a majority vote.  (Incidentally, just to dispel a popular
> myth, in the English language, vote != majority vote.  I do
> distinguish between them.)

Even if you say it twice, it doesn't change reality - AfD is a voting page.

> > > So I ask this:
> > >
> > > 1) What do we hope to gain by introducing PWDS?
> > > 2) How do we handle the vandals who will blank a page (as many already
> > > do for vandalism) then to claim "but I was deleting the article"?
> >
> > 1.See everything I've written and the above link
> > 2. Any deletion blanking would still have to be justified on the talk
> > page as per the Deletion policy, and also indicated in the edit
> > summary - if not, it would simply be reverted as vandalism.
>
> 2.  OK, I'll take a slightly different tack.  Administrators are given
> the power to delete articles because they are trusted.  People know
> that they will not go and delete a little out-of-the-way page.  But
> what is to stop a vandal or a troll from doing that?  We are given no
> level of safety against this behaviour.

And that's different from vandals blanking pages as they already do, how?

Dan


body:
On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
>
> Does it? How?
>
>
> Dan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Well we don't despite what some people think have unlimited hard drive
space. It ups the number of artilces that need to be watched for
vandalism without giveing any worthwhile return. It risks increase
systemic bias even further and it means effort is being put towards
something wikipedia is not.

--
geni


body:
Abigail Brady wrote:
> On 13/09/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> In my opinion, an admin can ignore AFD "consensus" when following
>>> it would harm the encyclopedia.
>>>
>>> Kelly
>>
>>
>> Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't
>> get delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
>
>
> Original hoaxes. (not speedyable)
>

I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and call [[WP:NOR]] - but that's not
a speedy criteria, because an article is no longer original research as
soon as references are added.

The proposal of "speedy or nothing" seems to be an attempt to move
towards writing a bot that will detecting CSDs and act appropriately. It
will never work. I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm
quite capable of judging for myself what I do and don't want to be on
Wikipedia. I don't need a bot or a set of rules saying "anything can
stay unless it's X, Y, or Z" to decide for me.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
I saw Sam Korn enforcing that one time, dunno how far he went with it though...
Yes, it is copyright infringement. No, the law doesn't care. The law
has absolutely no regard for anything but the people with better
lawyers.

On 9/14/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
>
> In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright violations
> on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of course not".
>
>
> Boy, wouldn't it be fun to start enforcing this! Anybody in the mood to
> become "most hated user, especially among the young and brittle"? If the
> answer is definitely "no exceptions", it would be nice to have a quote from
> Jimbo Wales with his thoughts on this to use as a reference, since a lot of
> people have strong proprietary feelings about their user pages.
>
> FF
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> David Benbennick wrote:
>
>
>>How about the reverse?  Are we prepared to grand EN adminship to all
>>Commons admins?
>
>
> I'm confused.  Does vandalism on EN affect commons?
>

Nope.

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body:
On 13/09/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> It's becoming clearer to me that, for better or worse, commons sees
> itself as a separate entity that does not have close ties to Wikipedia.

Exactly. Commons supports all projects.

>  In that light, it is unsuprising that people's history and involvement
> at en.Wikipedia, or meta, or on other sister projects isn't much of a
> consideration in granting or denial of adminship at commons.

Yes.

>
> I do want to make it very clear that I'm not bringing this up here on
> the mailing list in an effort to try to get adminship for myself on
> commons.  That is not my goal.  My goal, instead, is to address the
> much broader matter of coordination and shared trust between projects.
> I realize that commons policies are not identical to en. policies, and
> that the projects despite their overlap do each have their own
> decisionmaking.
>
> On the other hand, I believe that the en admins (and the de and fr
> admins, and those of other large wikipedias) are trustworthy,
> responsible people who are familiar with wikis and respect the rules.
> En (and de and fr) admins, in the course of dealing with vandalism, are
> likely to encounter it on commons images.  If there is a shared goal
> between the projects, and shared trust, there is no reason that I can
> see to refrain from granting adminship on some sort of reciprocal
> basis.

It does no harm to prove themselves on the project concerned. If they
are indeed  trustworthy, it shouldn't be hard.

>
> I don't think that it's fair or appropriate to insist that admins from
> these large projects leave a message for someone from commons when they
> need to protect an image.  They should be empowered to do so themselves.

Well, they're not.

Dan


body:
On 13/09/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> But, currently, protecting images on commons still allows vandalism
> here, by uploading it here. And I doubt it'll be fixed any time soon.

Actually, I heard that Brion had fixed this, but I've not tested
it/had it confirmed.

Dan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Pure wiki"

body:
Ral315 wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 13/09/05, dpbsmith at verizon.net <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>>
>>> 3) What is the evidence that a "pure" wiki system will work
>>> better?
>>
>> As far as I know, there is none. Sounds like a good reason to put
>> it live and see what happens :-).
>>
>>
>> Dan
>>
>
> The problem is, I could blank a lot of articles in
> [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], and even if someone noticed, they probably
> couldn't prove I did it with malice. I was simply "deleting
> unnecessary articles".
>

I can write a script that will blank any article I edit. Should I put it
live as soon as PWDS is approved?

--
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from_name: Michal Migurski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
>> Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality without
>> requiring screen-scraping?
>
> No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
> pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.

I'll look into it... though Python isn't really an option for now.
I'm using PHP.

>> Failing  *that*,
>> does documentation exist that explains MW's DB schema so I  can
>> begin to
>> write my own?
>
> Oh, so you want to rewrite it in some other language? Have fun, the
> documentation is in tables.sql.

Thanks.

Not so much another language, but I am looking for a way to access
the information in a slightly more "encapsulated" way. From my
research so far, it seems that MW makes heavy use of many globals &
singletons ($wgUser, $wgArticle, etc.), so keeping track of each
function's side effects is ... challenging. :)

Trying not to reinvent too much of the wheel here.

>> I'm using the current-stable version, 1.4.9, if that matters.
>
> You should probably upgrade to 1.5, 1.4.x will be obsolete soon.

Will do.

----------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
                  415.558.1610


body:
On 9/14/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly. Commons supports all projects.
>

By providing anouther avinue for vandals and makeing life diffiult for
those who are trying to prevent it?

> Yes.

slighly odd those if you consider what adminship is ment to mean.
Clearly these users can be trusted.

> It does no harm to prove themselves on the project concerned. If they
> are indeed  trustworthy, it shouldn't be hard.

takes time out their primary objective.

> Well, they're not.
>
>
> Dan

and people wounder why there is that backlog at now commons.

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] XML dump not well-formed because of unicode

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Now filed as http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=76095
>>
>> Will see about fixing...
>
> Have submitted a patch. The next dump should be correct.

Patch accepted into Mono subversion repository. These guys are fast. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
On 9/14/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
>
> Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
>
> Kelly

It might if stuff was kep undeleted forever.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
That wasn't a cheap shot.  Now *this* was a cheap
shot, but I laughed anyway.
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-September/028547.html

It was an honest statement of my opinion, and I don't
know why you seem to have interpreted it as an attack
or an attempt at debate oneupsmanship or whatever. I'm
sorry if you were offended.

I think we can let these rules slide for user pages
because editors contribute to the project and the
project can't exist without their hard work, so we can
allow them little insignificant perks like this.  To
tell an editor "you can contribute your hard labor to
this project for free but you can't put up a pic of
your kids unless you release the copyright" strikes me
as - and again, no personal offense intended here - an
incredibly petty act.

I really don't understand how the occasional non-free
userpage pic will clog up anything.  Of far more
concern to me is the endless number of "fair use" pics
in articles whose sole fair use justification seems to
be "I want this".

Matt Brown morven at gmail.com:

Who's denying them the permission to put up pictures
of them, their dogs or
their kids? They can make the images PD, Creative
Commons, GFDL ...

But if they want to put up restricted-license images,
that's a step too far,
IMO. Your userpage isn't the same as your personal
homepage, and if you care
so much about those image licenses, keep them there.

Given that unscrupulous mirrors will probably suck up
the whole contents
anyway, it's not smart.

I've put in probably thousands of hours of free labor
too, and I'm sure most
of us have, so that's a cheap shot.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Pure wiki"

body:
Phroziac wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ral315 wrote:
>>> The problem is, I could blank a lot of articles in
>>> [[Wikipedia:Cleanup]], and even if someone noticed, they probably
>>>  couldn't prove I did it with malice. I was simply "deleting
>>> unnecessary articles".
>>>
>>
>> I can write a script that will blank any article I edit. Should I
>> put it live as soon as PWDS is approved?
>>
>
> Why would this be any different then what Willy on Wheels would do?
> Why can't you do it now? And, I suggest you name the script "Billy on
> Rails".
>

I can do it now, it's just that I value my sanity :) And I've seen a
script which *does* auto-move pages (to an extent). If you're lucky I'll
tell on #cabal.wikipedia.

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body:
geni wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>Oh please no. Name anything that could harm wikipedia that doean't get
>>>delt with as a speedy or a copyvio.
>>
>>Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia.  Just because a
>>"consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article or
>>another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic.  See
>>Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
>>
>
> So instead you want to give more power to admins? Wikipedia descisions
> are not made by professional professional deletionists. Most seem to
> be made by random peopel who just happened to find out about the
> deleteion listing. As for your claim "Deleting encyclopedic articles
> harms the encyclopedia" it can only be true if you assume that
> survival of the fitest type evolution does not apply to wikis.

I concur. There are too many people shouting "OMG ROUGE ADMIN" already.

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from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>>See WP:CP for why that isn't even legal.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
>>completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
>>the relevance or connection between the two.
>>
>>
>
>Really? you don't see how PWD would affect something that has to do
>with deletion?
>
>
>
If PWD was being proposed as a way of dealing with copyright violations,
then yes, of course there would be a major problem there.

But it's _not_ being proposed. We don't have to use the same approach to
deletion in every single circumstance where things "need to be removed
from Wikipedia". PWD is being proposed as an alternative to the
administrative deletion that's currently being used by the VfD/AfD
process. I haven't proposed using it to deal with copyright violations,
and as far as I'm aware nobody else has either (until you did just now,
that is). Have you seen a proposal along those lines that I've missed?


body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/14/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
>>>
>>>completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
>>>the relevance or connection between the two.
>>>
>>>
>>...And WP:CP could still take use of the admin deletion features...
>>
>>
>>
>not if you are aiming for PWD.
>
>
>
He just said that he's not, at least when it comes to dealing with
copyright problems. You're the only one I've seen in this thread who's
suggesting that PWD would be used that way. Why can't VfD and CP use
different ways of deleting pages?


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
I'm not sure if the focus of this discussion is clear to everyone. As I
understand it, the primary concern is with preventing vandalism of
prominently placed images, such as those on the Main Page. This is
handled by protecting the images. I take it that this is the only
administrative function UninvitedCompany (and others who would like
Commons to adopt more liberal adminship policies) proposes to use there.
Nobody is going to be going on blocking or deleting sprees.

This would be a good candidate for a technical solution, specifically
using the MediaWiki feature of user access levels. If the only adminship
function you need on Commons is protection, for the purpose of
protecting another project from vandalism, then it should be routine to
grant (only) that function to anyone who's an admin on said project. It
might even be possible to make this automatically part of adminship once
single login is implemented, but at that point I feel like I'm wandering
into pipe dream territory.

--Michael Snow


body:
Yes, those hatnote disambigs are stupid.

On 9/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> steve v wrote:
> > Fair enough, but I was responding more to an apparent
> > trend to use disambiguations as hatnotes - above
> > article notes which say things like 'this article is
> > about the bar with the fubbly fub, know as foo. For
> > the fub with the bubbly bar, see [[Barfoo]].' etc.
> >
> > A short 'for other uses, see [[Foo (disambiguation)]]
> > should always suffice, and if there is only one thing
> > to link to, then that should be in a section. It costs
> > an extra click, but spares us article clutter, which I
> > really dislike.
> >
>
> I concur. It's just like top posting on mailing lists. You have to read
> too much crap to work out the context.
>
> --
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> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
The problem overlaps somewhat with the problem of including images in
templates, when those images are not truly free in every sense. For
instance, consider the popular user boxes that are cropping up all over
the place (for some examples, see [[User:NSR/userboxes]]). Many of these
include images that are tagged as fair use.

When images first started being used in templates, the images were all
freely licensed or public domain. Because people editing a template do
not control how other people will use it, I do not think it is
appropriate to add a "fair use" image to any template. Since
legitimately claiming fair use depends on considering the nature of each
use separately, I find it virtually impossible that they could say with
any confidence that all of the resulting uses qualify as fair.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia page protection report

body:
On 14/09/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> Across languages, possibly with the exception of Japanese, the German
> Wikipedia is alone in the pattern of locking down controversial articles
> for months.

>From [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]] -

"Edit wars are stongly frowned upon. Articles may be protected as a
result of an edit war that consists of just three or four edits.
Protected pages will not be unprotected unless someone explicitly
requests it."

I suspect that last part is the key here.

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


from_name: Claus Färber

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Trademarks

body:
Felipe Micaroni Lalli <micaroni at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> The system is free but the Gnome logo isn't under free license. Try create a
> System with this logo. You can't.

That's trademark law, not copyright. Even if you draw a "confusingly
similar" image, which is not considered a derivate by copyright law and
of which you hold full copyright, you still can't use it to create your
own system. You can't even use the character sequence
"G"-"N"-"O"-"M"-"E", although it is inelegible for copyright.

On the other hand, tradmark law allows you to do whatever you want with
that logo unless you claim to be GNOME Foundation (or your products
theirs or endorsed by them).

> Like the Wikimedia logo.

The Wikimedia logos are actually both trademarked AND copyrighted by
Wikimedia Foundation.

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


subject: [Commons-l] Re: Trademarks

body:
Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> schrieb/wrote:
> One cannot take photographs of many real-world objects or scenes
> without encountering trademarks. Cars bear trademarks (their
> manufacturer's emblems, names, sometimes even shapes or paint
> designs). Streets are covered with trademarks. And so on and so forth.

I think that's a different problem: The question here is whether we care
about the unfreeness of minor elements if they appear on a free photo.
You still can copy, distribute and modify the photo unless you take such
element and distribute it without the rest of the photo.

This is not about trademarks only. It's nearly impossible to take a
photo that does not show something that is copyrighted or protected as a
registered design (US: design patent), eiher.

In effect, that's similar to quotes: You can have them in GFDL'd content
(although the GFDL fails to mention that explicitly) but that does not
mean you can take the quote and distribute it under the GFDL without the
rest of the document.

Claus
--
http://www.faerber.muc.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some people have suggested putting userspace pages under "Wikipedia
> only" licenses by default as a solution to forks and mirrors taking user
> pages and the like. *If* that happened, then "limited license" images
> would be OK on user pages. But that's a mighty big *if*.

Copyrights are evil. Keep it free.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is  a bad idea

body:
MAURICE FRANK wrote:
>Kelly Martin wrote:
>> Deleting encyclopedic articles harms the encyclopedia. Just because
>> a "consensus" of professional deletionists decide that some article
>> or another isn't "notable" doesn't make it unencyclopedic.  See
>> Snowspinner's post that started this iteration of this discussion.
>>
>>
>
> Then exactly the same applies to deletion of links. This proves that
> if there is a well-organised mob opinion claiming to be a consensus,
> that a link isn't notable while an opposing one is, to argue with
> that view and reinstate the link for balance's sake is not "link
> spam" or a blocking offence. Least of all is it grounds for an
> admin-imposed block without any due processes,followed by a permanent
> block for the offence of claiming to have any rights against it.
>
> So Kelly has here proved conclusively that I was abused, and is
> proposing that Wiki's functioning pattern should incorporate that
> proof.
>
>

Hey, I've got this really great idea! Let's make everything static HTML,
and have a 12-step review stage through an academic committee before
anything gets changed! Some sort of New Encyclopedia!

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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Today I decided to analyze in more detail to what extent articles across
Wikipedias remain protected for long periods of time. The report is at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Longest_page_protections%2C_September_2005

(To developers: The script I used is 'logprot.pl' in my home directory.
It may be desirable to make this available as a special page, if someone
can figure out a way to make the query scale.)

It shows all pages in all language Wikipedias that have been protected
for more than 14 days. Note that, by the time you look at it, some of
the pages in it may have been unprotected already.

The Wikipedias with the most such protected pages are (article rank in
parentheses):

German   - 253  (2)
Japanese - 165  (4)
English  - 138  (1)
Italian  - 19   (5)
French   - 15   (3)
Spanish  - 13   (10)

This confirms my intuition that long term page protection is used
excessively on the German Wikipedia. It is quite striking that many,
many controversial articles have been protected for months. For example,
articles about veganism, sex, democracy, abortion, astrology, Karlheinz
Deschner (famous atheist writer), Silvio Gesell (controversial
economist) and his Freiwirtschaft theory, Gorleben (controversial
nuclear waste disposal site), and Egon Krenz (East German politician)
have been protected since July. Articles about child sexual abuse and
pedophilia have been protected since April 2005 and March 2005,
respectively. Notably, in the child sexual abuse case, the article was
also cut down from 54,000 characters to 2,000 before being protected,
making it effectively useless -- a rather drastic measure to deal with
ongoing controversies.

The longest protected articles appear to be related to German student
corporations. The record holder is [[de:Schmiss]], which has been
protected since January after a neutrality dispute.

Perhaps ironically, even the article about Wikipedia itself has been
protected since August 25.

Note that the local policy on protection, at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Seitensperrung and
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administratoren , is not unusal
and recommends only short protections except for very high exposure
pages like the Main Page, or unimportant pages like redirects which are
frequently vandalized. This raises the question why no bold admin has
unprotected these articles yet.

I cannot say anything about the protection patterns on the Japanese
Wikipedia, which is the only one which stands out besides English and
German. The long term protections on the English Wikipedia appear to be
mostly accidental. When someone notices that a page has been protected
for very long, it is generally quickly unprotected.

Across languages, possibly with the exception of Japanese, the German
Wikipedia is alone in the pattern of locking down controversial articles
for months. Protected articles also seem to not be tagged as such, so
that visitors do not see a reason for the protection on the page (a
visible marker might also encourage sysops to unprotect the page).

One immediate effect, besides stagnation, is that sysops become far more
relevant in the power structure, as they are the only ones who can add
information to articles after protection. Instead of being janitors,
they become editors. This, I believe, must have social repercussions
beyond the articles concerned.

I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
complexity:

* limit protections by policy
* add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
the article namespace
* add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks

I am merely reporting this issue and will leave it to others to deal with.

Best,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia page protection report


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: MediaWiki default problems

body:
Although I can't give specific examples (I know, I know), I have seen
bad behaviour of this user as well.

In the situations I've observed, it blanks mainpages or changes them
to some sort of message that says "Mediawiki installation successful!"
or something like that.

Usually, though, I just revert vandalism rather than keep a log of it.
I probably should keep a log of vandalism, because I know that some of
it comes from the same IP over and over, but it'd be a bit of a hassle
(I mean, I don't even log in to revert most of the time, it's already
work enough to wait for pages to load, revert them, etc, especially
when quite a few pages have been vandalised across the over 300
wikimedia wikis I monitor).

Mark

On 13/09/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Arwel Parry wrote:
> >
> > On the cy: wikipedia we have noticed that user "MediaWiki default" (a
> > bot?) seems to run every 6 months or so and repeatedly resets many of
> > the MediaWiki strings either to an older version which has been
> > corrected or (even worse) to English.  I've just had to edit
> > :cy:MediaWiki:Go from "mynd" (travel) to "ewch" (imperative) again!
>
> There was only one edit by "MediaWiki default" that changed "ewch" to
> "mynd" and that was in May 2004. I don't call that "every 6 months". :)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
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ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
That seems excessively antiwiki to me.

Mark

On 13/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 14/09/05, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> > Across languages, possibly with the exception of Japanese, the German
> > Wikipedia is alone in the pattern of locking down controversial articles
> > for months.
>
> >From [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]] -
>
> "Edit wars are stongly frowned upon. Articles may be protected as a
> result of an edit war that consists of just three or four edits.
> Protected pages will not be unprotected unless someone explicitly
> requests it."
>
> I suspect that last part is the key here.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request
	for ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
I'm curious as to what makes it look best to you as far as
intelligibility. Most of the information available about Stokoe is
obviously biased due to the fact that it's actually FROM the
SuttonSignWriting website.

Stokoe and HamNoSys are very easy to write using computers, and can
use fonts and normal text rather than special markup languages.
(clustering "sig" characters in Stokoe present a difficulty, but not
an impossibility, for the average font-founder)

Text in HamNoSys can be used to generate signs in a virtual reality
environment in real time, thus widely increasing the usability scope
(most deaf people can't read in signed languages, but being able to
watch an article, even as it's edited and undergoes drastic changes,
would be a definite plus).

Text in HamNoSys can also be converted on-the-spot to Stokoe or
SignWriting (to Sutton SignWriting would be difficult, but then so is
any programming involving Sutton SignWriting).

Stokoe has no copyright.

HamNoSys might be copyrighted, I'm not sure.

SuttonSignWriting is definitely copyrighted. Even though they allow
for it to be used free of charge, it's not a "free" writing system and
I think that it wouldn't be very Wikimedia-like to use it as the
primary writing system for any Wikipedia.

Now, I have said the thing regarding on-the-spot signed language
generation in at least 4 separate e-mails to this list. Nobody has
responded to any of them. People continue to draft proposals or ask
questions which would easily be answered by reading my e-mails.

Now, I know that some people have blocked my address; that's their
problem, even though they're wasting everybody's time by asking
questions which have already been answered or drafting proposals
without seeing mine first. But quite a few of the people in this
thread have responded to other e-mails by me quite recently, and in
the most recent case, somebody actually responded to my response to
their e-mail, in which I told them I'd answered all of their questions
earlier.

This is one of those cases where it would save everybody time, energy,
and inbox space to read all of the e-mails in any thread to which they
intend to contribute.

Mark

On 14/09/05, Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:
> Scr?obh Phil Boswell:
>
> >I wondered whether it could be possible to create a SignWriting extension
> to
> >Mediawiki, along the same lines as WikiHiero, which used SWML as the
> source.
> >This would at the very least allow us to display the signs in articles
> about
> >them, and might provide some sort of kick-start for more extensive usage.
>
> SignWriting looks like the best system as far as intelligibility goes, but
> isn't it copyrighted?  I mean, I know that the creator has made it free for
> use and all (see http://signwriting.org/about/questions/quest0004.html ),
> but doesn't that still make it ineligible for use in a Wikimedia project?
> It would be like using a special copyrighted ortography for English, or a
> copyrighted conlang (Toki Pona, anyone?).
>
> Yet another issue that must be addressed, I suppose.
>
> Cheers,
> - Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]
>
>
> -------------------
> Craig Franklin
> PO Box 764
> Ashgrove, Q, 4060
> Australia
> http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
> and Culture.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Terry Bader

subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
I would be against this however making it the First in the tab ordering would be great.  Tab once and its there and ready to start searching.

~Terry

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Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 12:07:25 +0200
From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Site search
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We also get continued requests, now even through the info-en
mailinglist for the cursor to be automatically put in the search box.

Personally, I don't like it, but maybe it can be made optional?

--Mgm
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
--- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
>
> In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright violations
> on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of course not".

Copyright violations are one thing and should be removed. Far more sticky are
other types of images that would not be copyright violations per se but are
still against our general policies on image use. A great example are images
under a non-commercial or used with permission license. The reason why we don?t
allow such images in articles is to keep the encyclopedia as free as possible.
But user pages are *not* part of the encyclopedia, thus having those type of
images there does not really hamper third party use of our content.

So, IMO, we should be far more lax on what we allow on user pages. Mid to long
term, what we *really* need is to offer downloads of content that strip out all
pages in the Wikipedia and user namespace (sic: everything that is
Wikipedia-specific). This would require more extensive use of the help
namespace for things like the multimedia help page and spoiler warning though.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >>As one possible alternative, the "pure wiki deletion" method of simply
> >>blanking pages would make it a lot easier to double-check and revert by
> >>non-admins.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >See WP:CP for why that isn't even legal.
> >
> >
> We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
> completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
> the relevance or connection between the two.

Really? you don't see how PWD would affect something that has to do
with deletion?

--
geni


body:
On 9/14/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> >
> > >>As one possible alternative, the "pure wiki deletion" method of simply
> > >>blanking pages would make it a lot easier to double-check and revert by
> > >>non-admins.
> > >
> > >See WP:CP for why that isn't even legal.
> >
> > We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
> > completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
> > the relevance or connection between the two.
>
> ...And WP:CP could still take use of the admin deletion features...
>
not if you are aiming for PWD.

--
geni


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 02:16:15PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> > Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality without
> > requiring screen-scraping?
>
> No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
> pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.

If you feel like operating a bot,
you may also want to try tawbot's code.
https://taw.pl.eu.org/svn/src/tawbot/

It has a lot of nifty features that pywikipediabot lacks, like
mass banning users (used for open proxy banning), or reverting
a change somewhere deep in the history (simple merge3),
and it's written in a saner language (Perl instead of Python),
so it should be much easier to adapt to your needs.


body:
On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 9/14/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> We're discussing an alternative to VfD/AfD. Copyright problems is a
> >>>
> >>>completely different matter, handled by a different process. I don't see
> >>>the relevance or connection between the two.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>...And WP:CP could still take use of the admin deletion features...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >not if you are aiming for PWD.
> >
> >
> >
> He just said that he's not, at least when it comes to dealing with
> copyright problems. You're the only one I've seen in this thread who's
> suggesting that PWD would be used that way. Why can't VfD and CP use
> different ways of deleting pages?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Because accuseing something of being a copyvio will become a lot more
common rather than being a tectic of last resort.

--
geni


body:
agreed.

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Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea
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>From: Dan Grey
>
>On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote: But
> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
>
>Does it? How?

It reduces the credibility of the project.

Jay.

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from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do we have an official policy on images on user pages? Correct me if I'm
> > wrong, but wouldn't the use of copyrighted materials there in a way which
> > did not qualify as "fair use" simply be copyright infringement, in the same
> > way it would in the article namespace? Does the law make the namespace
> > distinction? (That sounds like a silly question in a way, but I suppose I'm
> > referencing "safe harbor" laws.)
> >
> > In the end, I think this comes down to "should we allow copyright violations
> > on user pages?" which sounds to me like the answer would be "of course not".
>
> Copyright violations are one thing and should be removed. Far more sticky are
> other types of images that would not be copyright violations per se but are
> still against our general policies on image use. A great example are images
> under a non-commercial or used with permission license. The reason why we don't
> allow such images in articles is to keep the encyclopedia as free as possible.
> But user pages are *not* part of the encyclopedia, thus having those type of
> images there does not really hamper third party use of our content.
>
> So, IMO, we should be far more lax on what we allow on user pages. Mid to long
> term, what we *really* need is to offer downloads of content that strip out all
> pages in the Wikipedia and user namespace (sic: everything that is
> Wikipedia-specific). This would require more extensive use of the help
> namespace for things like the multimedia help page and spoiler warning though.

Didn't we already discuss this when Pioneer-12 wanted to retain
copyright to his user and talk page postings?  Didn't we already
decide that anything more restrictive than GFDL on Wikipedia would be
license hell and not worth the trouble to administer?  Didn't we
already decide that the submit button was equivalent to a digital
signature agreeing to the terms and conditions of submission?

I thought we already did.  I hold the view that the allowable licenses
should be consistent across the entire Wikipedia site, and that people
should know and follow the rules in all Wikipedia locations.  This
includes user pages, and certainly includes images submitted as well.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 11:44:41AM +0200, Jakob Voss wrote:
> >MediaWiki's diff code was mostly written by Geoffrey Dairiki, for
> >PhpWiki. It was imported into MediaWiki by Magnus and has since been
> >modified by a few MediaWiki developers. It's a lowest-common subsequence
> >(LCS) algorithm, and is "mostly lifted" from a Perl module by Ned Konz,
> >now called Algorithm::DiffOld. It's called DiffOld because the new
> >Algorithm::Diff is faster. Maybe if someone's feeling ambitious, they
> >could port the new perl module. I was wondering if those string
> >comparisons were the slow part, and it seems the author of the new
> >Algorithm::Diff package found they were.
>
> As far as I could see Algorithm::Diff uses the classic longest-common
> subsequence algorithm by Dan Hirschberg with O(n*m) where n and m is the
> length of each text and linear space:
> http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/161/960229.html

Quick field report:

I tried to use Algorithm::Diff on split("",$str)'ed contents of 2 revisions,
and for bigger (like 30kB) pages it takes a few minutes. This is weird.

How is MediaWiki doing it ? Does it try to find longest common subsequence
of lines or characters ?