from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > Perhaps the italian wikipedia might be interested by
> > this article ?
> > But were they told ? I saw no sign of it anyway.
>
> This is a good idea, but how to tell them?

Drop the text into the appropriate page on that wiki, with a comment
"someone put this on the English wiki, please fix it up"... Is not so
hard. :D

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: textbook-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sanford Forte

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 1:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook
Project

> Sanford Forte wrote:
> >This has become an untenable situation, because private publishers
> >control content. Even GNU will not keep private publishers form
> >competing with freely available GNU licensed content, and driving up
> >the prices again.
>
> Competition drives *down* prices.  Economics 101.
--------
See my other posts. Economics 101 is economic 'theory'. Try Economics 202
(microeconomics) to see how markets work, 'in reality'.

> > If *anything*, what you are proposing is that states buy
> > GNU-licensed content that will be "taken over" by commercial
> > publishers (who will realize great economies from your free
> > content), and take even *larger* profits as they compete for state
> > business.
>
> I hope they do realize larger profits, because then our success is
> ensured all the more.
-----------
Larger profits mean higher prices. See my other posts. I've been there
Jimbo, you haven't.

> > Sure, the commercial publishers won't be able to "charge-up" for the
> > content - do you think they'll care? Do you think that the very low
> > rent publishers who do ultra-cheap print versions of these books
> > will stand a snowballs chance in hell to get their books adopted?
> > Think again. I've been there.
>
> If the state of California accepts a pilot text produced by the
> Wikimedia Foundation into the curriculum (and why wouldn't they?),
> then *anyone* could produce that book, and the license would guarantee
> it.  At that point we'd have price competition to produce those books
> -- now a commodity -- and the best possible outcome.
---------
And who is going to show California the finished product, in colour, with
teacher's manuals, supplementary materials, overheads, etc? Who is going to
be present at the meetings to 'sell' the state - and districts the books?

It's not as simple as dumping open source content into a bin, having someone
'like' it, and then hiring a rock-bottom publisher.

Yes, *some* materail will get into the curriculum this way, but if you want
a curriculum and content revolution to happen, it will take a lot longer
your way.

> If you're going to say that for political reasons (bribes?) the
> standards committee will never approve a 'free' textbook, then
> *that's* where you need to focus your lobbying efforts, to ensure that
> the process of getting acceptance is fair and open.
---------------
I'm doing that. However, there is no incentive for State Boards to act
otherwise. I could be wrong about other states, btw,. There may be more
results to be had with the small states, to begin with.

> > Please, Jimbo, don't come back with ad hominums about how I don't
> > understand economics. From a *microeconomic* standpoint (we can get
> > into the fine points of disequilibriums caused by imperfect
> > competition, if you like) that inefficiencies are created in this
> > system.
>
> >From a *microeconomic* point of view, competition among printers is
> the best way to ensure inexpensive texts.
>
> > Again, has competition in this sector led to lower textbook costs?
>
> Go back to the drawing board and think about the difference between
> commodity texts and proprietary texts.
-------------------
You're mixing apples and oranges.  If you're talking about a textbook,
you're talking about "someone of last resort" to *service* the book. Who, at
wickipedia, will do this? I can tell you that there will be lots of argument
coming from the state curriculum departments about "what happens when we
need *instant* customer service around a textbook issue (supply, revision,
where do suggestions go[and will the state personnel go with that?]), etc,
etc. There is a whole substructure to supporting curriculum production -
including books - that you're overlooking.

Let's talk commodity texts. wickipedia publishes, a state likes the book,
and a commercial printer publishes. Great. Some books will make it in this
way. The model will probably, over time result in a slight reduction of
prices. There will even be market behavior multiplier effects (economics
301) that impact the behavior of current commercial publishers, making them
more efficient, and forcing them to keep prices stable, etc. etc.

You have a simple, pure, "publish open source, and distribute" model in
place. That's great, and I'm all for it. Let's do it. All I'm saying is that
your assumptions, based on nothing more than guesses about what the system
currently demands (and how it works) is somehow going to revolutionize
textbook publishing. I don't agree.

> > I can walk into Barnes and Noble today and purchase a trade version
> > of a geometry text for $25. The very same (or similar) content in a
> > commercial textbook will cost *three to four times* that amount. Soo
> > where's your commercial 'efficiency'?
>
> My commercial efficiency is demonstrated *right there*, in your hands,
> that $25 book, as opposed to the $75-$100 book produced by a
> politicized and *proprietary* process.
----------------
Wrong. It proves that there is oligopolistic, cartel-like pricing going on
in the industry. You're completely missing the point of what needs to be
done to meet the *process, as it currently exists, on the ground, in
reality*, head on...find a way to merge with it, tactically explore how to
turn little steps into big ones, and then make something really big, and
permanent, happen. That thing (goal) is open source textbooks, not owned by
anyone, free to all who want to use them.

> > You ar completely misunderstanding my proposition. Would you like to
> > turn over the highways to private enterprise? How about medical care
> > (look what a great job private enterprise has done there)? How about
> > pharma (there's a really cool example of private enterprise creating
> > something that only the wealthy can afford).
>
> Yes, I think that all of those things should be privatized.  Next
> question?
-------------
Well, health care is already privatized, so where's all the advantage from
the marketplace?

What amuses me about this, is the seeming naivte about the 'purity' of
economic stance that's taken here, with no sense of how private markets
really work - on the ground. In a way, what you're proposing is very
socialistic, only you don't see it that way. There appears to be a sense
that if open source puts up the content, and the private sector is allowed
to compete (using that content), that the most perfect scenario arises,
relative to pricing that content. Are you a betting man? It ain't gonna work
that way. Human beings don't *behave* with perfect efficiency (Economics
401 - Consumer Behavior). Markets are messy.

> > What I am saying, is that we will see (counterintuitively), some
> > price inefficiencies rising from that.
>
> Which is why you propose a state takeover of the textbook business.
>
> You say that you don't, but then you turn around and say that you do.
--------
Read my posts. Take my (experienced, been there, done that) word for it, or
not.

It's unfortunate that you're portraying what I've done as 'socialistic',
'stupid', horrific', etc.

> > Now, there might be ways to deal with those inefficiencies. Maybe we
> > help the adopting states by finding our own publishers, who are
> > willing to state (via contract) up front that they will not charge
> > over a certain raw cost percentage of the content. There are many
> > (hypothetical, at present) ways to deal with this.
>
> Why do we need to do that, it doesn't make any sense to do that.
>
> I don't think you've thought this through very well at all.
-----------
Frankly Jimbo, all evidence to the contrary appears to indicate that you're
more guilty of that, than I.
I'm really sorry that you continue to portray things that way.

> Consider: we create a textbook, call it "Wikimedia: 9th Grade American
> History".  We get it accepted, as a paper text, by the committee.  If
> the committee is corrupt (bribed) or whatever, and refuses to consider
> it, then that's a big problem, and your lobbying should focus strongly
> on that.
>
> But once it's accepted, then the "Wikimedia: 9th Grade American
> History" will easily outcompete all the other textbooks on price,
> because it can and will be produced by highly competitive low cost
> printers.  We've removed the proprietary 'edge'.  And if those
> low cost printers make big profits, all the better!
--------------
I said it above, I'll say it again. There *has* to be a superstructure, an
*organization* that *services* the content, and the problems around the
physical production and distribution of the books. That what COSTP proposes
the states do.

> > With due respect (and I mean that), you are illustrating a complete
> > ignorance of the textbook publishing business. The "print" side of the
> > business is very competitive, because the barriers to entry are very low
> > (more economics).
>
> Right, that's what I've been trying to explain to you.
------------
Again, read what I've written. It's not *just* about price. It's about who
can produce the 'best' material, service that material (on demand),
continually improve that material (on demand, open source could handle
this), and get the material in front of prospective districts to promote it
for use. The open source community can't do all these things.

> > The content side is *not* competitive, because there is essentially
> > a private content publishing cartel, owned by just a few publishing
> > giants.
>
> Right, and that's where we come in.
-----------
We agree.

> You see, I do understand this business, and I understand what open
> source can do for it, better than you think.
>
> I just don't think you've thought through the implications of what
> you're advocating.
--------
I have thought this through, in the kind of detail that has overcome
objections form legislators, education busreaucreats, private printers, and
others. I've worked the system hard (with no laudits, or compensation, I
don't care about those things in thhis endeavor).

Many people within the state, and within the open source community agree
with what I've proposed. Private philanthrpists are looking into funding a
pilot.

COSTP has been thought through from the ground, up - by someone(s) [me, and
others who have 'been there'] who know what will work, what's practical
(practical being defined as what will work once the curriculum is
published), and how all this can be put together to have the largest impact,
rather than a small, marginalized effort that makes a few hits, and misses,
failing to take hold because it's working from a stance that's *outside* and
*contrary to* the 'way things work'. There's probably the combined total of
50 years of intellectual capital in this thing, coming from people who are
expert on all sides of the issue, including the open source community.

We can help each other. It's up to you if you want to continue.

Sanford

> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


body:
Thank you Tomasz. It's really hard to understand why this is, but it *is*.
It's a byproduct of the imperfect competition that has been created by
education groups giving over the control of content production to private
enterprise, with *no* public oversight. The public interest has not been
served.

It's a worldwide phenomoenon, even in Poland. Thanks for comfirming, in
Poland, what I know to be true here in the US.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tomasz Wegrzanowski" <taw at users.sourceforge.net>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 1:52 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook
Project

> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 01:02:01PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Sanford Forte wrote:
> > >This has become an untenable situation, because private publishers
> > >control content. Even GNU will not keep private publishers form
> > >competing with freely available GNU licensed content, and driving up
> > >the prices again.
> >
> > Competition drives *down* prices.  Economics 101.
>
> In this case it doesn't work that way.
>
> Textbook publishing in Poland is horrible too. While making it all private
> really improved quality of textbooks, it certainly didn't managed to drive
> prices down - they're insanely inflated.
>
> Bussiness model for textbook publishing is something like:
> * spring : make a textbook
> * early summer : use any means possible to get as many teachers as
possible
> choose your textbook. teachers don't care much how much it will
> cost and often don't really know either at this point
> * late summer : print like crazy
> * semtember : sell at grossly inflated prices. risk is huge, as you must
>     sell everything in just about two weeks or you will have to wait whole
year
>     with capital being frozen in books (if you manage to sell it next year
at all that is),
>     so you must keep margins very high
>
> * next years : make a new version of textbook, incompatible enough
>     to discourage reuse, but similar enough to keep teacherbase
>
> Eliminating that risk could really drive costs down.
> Easy solutions include having different regions start terms at different
time,
> or having copyrights abolished. As we can't get the former, we may try
> with the latter.
>
> Side note:
> To get teachers in Poland use GNU textbooks, getting certification by
ministry
> of education could help a lot. That's not free but probably not that
expensive
> either (not that I ever tried to get one).
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: MaklooN LagooN

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Installing language...

body:
Hello out there. Quick question.
How do you configure wikipedia to run using one of the languages?
I've installed wikipedia succesfully but now I'd like to change the language.
I tried simply renaming the LanguagueEs.php to Languague.php unsuccesfully. It seems that Languague.php contains certain variables necessary for the whole thing to work.

Please Advice :)

El pinCHE MaklooN
---------------------

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special pages

body:
On Mon, 14 Jul 2003, Thomas Luft wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
> > Would it be feasible to set up a cron job that updates them
> > automatically during off-peak hours (say once every 24 hours)? (Sorry
> > for asking this again, but I didn't receive a reply to the previous
> > time I asked :-p)
>
> I second the idea to set up a cron job updateing the special pages which
> are quite crucient to use the Wikipedia. At least the Special:ShortPages
> and Special:WantedPages should be updated every 24 hours by a cron job
> on *all* Wikipedias.

Actually, as far as I know it only needs to be done on en: and de:, because
only on those languages the functions have been switched off.

Andre Engels


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: There is also an english wikipedia available

body:
--- Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote in
>
news:20030714202149.67013.qmail at web41704.mail.yahoo.com:
>
> > To quote Walter...
> >
> > Could editors on the various international
> wikipedia
> > and english wikipedia (that is the correct
> > denomination I guess)
>
> That is not I find but if you use something
> different people will not
> understand what you mean. I can live whit it.

I agree with you Walter of course :-)

> > think of *offering* to the
> > proper wikipedia, any relevant article that landed
> by
> > mistake in a wrong language on their wikipedia ?
> > such as
> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenic_plant
> >
> > written in italian on the en wikipedia
> >
> > whose content was first blanked, then proposed for
> > deletion, and finally googled translated.
>
> I find it normal that a article in the wrong
> language is deleted. But what
> a Wikipedia does whit that type of "articles" is
> their business. No need to
> involve the source-wikipedia.

no, you did not understand, but I see the explanation
was given

> > Perhaps the italian wikipedia might be interested
> by
> > this article ?
>
> Why should the?

I know the field concerned. I was trained in that
field, and I worked in that field. Hence, I can say
the article is worth (the translation is awful :-))

Now, the good news : the article *landed well* on the
italian wiki. It is now separated in three articles.

I hope they will be phase III soon.

cheers

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: Correction! Re: [Wikipedia-l] Vacation

body:
At 09:11 AM 7/14/2003 -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I'm off for a few days.  Brion is empowered to do whatever is
> > necessary in case of an emergency to restore the peace, following of
> > course our usual principles.
>
>Uh, I see that Brion is away, too.  So I empower Magnus to do whatever
>is necessary in case of an emergency to restore the peace, etc., etc.

Hm... how many people have to "disappear" before I get to be in charge of
Wikipedia myself? And what are their addresses? :)
-------------- next part --------------

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from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: Correction! Re: [Wikipedia-l] Vacation

body:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 09:11:19AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I'm off for a few days.  Brion is empowered to do whatever is
[...]
>
> Uh, I see that Brion is away, too.  So I empower Magnus to do whatever
[...]

Okay, now, Magnus, where do you go for holiday now? ;-)

<g>

ps: restore any peace? we could use him to solve the world's problems. :-)


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] Jimmy vs Sanford

body:
Jimmy, if I didn't know better, I might think that you
weren't giving Mr Forte the benefit of the doubt as to his
personal experience, or not listening with empathy, or
something.

Probably just having a bad day ... :-)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook Project

body:
It's rather disturbing to see the Wikimedia/COSTP collaboration
in danger of being torn apart, before it begins, over ideology.

If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
then let the State of CA print it in a state-run publishing company.
(One already exists, BTW -- the University of California Press.)
Jimbo can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
then he won't try.

If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
then let private publishing companies compete to print it.
Sanford can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
then he won't try.

To be sure, Jimbo may lobby CA to stay out of the publishing business
(or rather to get out of it -- it already prints quite a few items),
and Sanford may lobby CA to print more material of civic use,
and on this matter they will doubtless be bitter enemies.
But in creating the content to begin with, they can be great friends.

Let us all be friends.  Let us create the textbooks in collaboration,
setting aside the issue of who in the end will mass-print them --
because we can't stop the wrong guy from doing it anyway!

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Freedom works.

Amen to that!

-- Toby


body:
Toby,

Brilliant! The UN needs you.

Sanford

----- Original Message -----
From: "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook
Project

> It's rather disturbing to see the Wikimedia/COSTP collaboration
> in danger of being torn apart, before it begins, over ideology.
>
> If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
> then let the State of CA print it in a state-run publishing company.
> (One already exists, BTW -- the University of California Press.)
> Jimbo can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
> then he won't try.
>
> If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
> then let private publishing companies compete to print it.
> Sanford can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
> then he won't try.
>
> To be sure, Jimbo may lobby CA to stay out of the publishing business
> (or rather to get out of it -- it already prints quite a few items),
> and Sanford may lobby CA to print more material of civic use,
> and on this matter they will doubtless be bitter enemies.
> But in creating the content to begin with, they can be great friends.
>
> Let us all be friends.  Let us create the textbooks in collaboration,
> setting aside the issue of who in the end will mass-print them --
> because we can't stop the wrong guy from doing it anyway!
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Freedom works.
>
> Amen to that!
>
>
> -- Toby
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


body:
Toby,

Brilliant! The UN needs you. ;)
Sanford
----- Original Message -----
From: "Toby Bartels" <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: [Textbook-l] Introduction - California Open Source Textbook
Project

> It's rather disturbing to see the Wikimedia/COSTP collaboration
> in danger of being torn apart, before it begins, over ideology.
>
> If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
> then let the State of CA print it in a state-run publishing company.
> (One already exists, BTW -- the University of California Press.)
> Jimbo can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
> then he won't try.
>
> If Wikimedia produces a free textbook geared towards CA schools,
> then let private publishing companies compete to print it.
> Sanford can't stop them, and if he loves the GNU notion of freedom,
> then he won't try.
>
> To be sure, Jimbo may lobby CA to stay out of the publishing business
> (or rather to get out of it -- it already prints quite a few items),
> and Sanford may lobby CA to print more material of civic use,
> and on this matter they will doubtless be bitter enemies.
> But in creating the content to begin with, they can be great friends.
>
> Let us all be friends.  Let us create the textbooks in collaboration,
> setting aside the issue of who in the end will mass-print them --
> because we can't stop the wrong guy from doing it anyway!
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Freedom works.
>
> Amen to that!
>
>
> -- Toby
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 01:02:01PM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Sanford Forte wrote:
> >This has become an untenable situation, because private publishers
> >control content. Even GNU will not keep private publishers form
> >competing with freely available GNU licensed content, and driving up
> >the prices again.
>
> Competition drives *down* prices.  Economics 101.

In this case it doesn't work that way.

Textbook publishing in Poland is horrible too. While making it all private
really improved quality of textbooks, it certainly didn't managed to drive
prices down - they're insanely inflated.

Bussiness model for textbook publishing is something like:
* spring : make a textbook
* early summer : use any means possible to get as many teachers as possible
		 choose your textbook. teachers don't care much how much it will
		 cost and often don't really know either at this point
* late summer : print like crazy
* semtember : sell at grossly inflated prices. risk is huge, as you must
    sell everything in just about two weeks or you will have to wait whole year
    with capital being frozen in books (if you manage to sell it next year at all that is),
    so you must keep margins very high

* next years : make a new version of textbook, incompatible enough
    to discourage reuse, but similar enough to keep teacherbase

Eliminating that risk could really drive costs down.
Easy solutions include having different regions start terms at different time,
or having copyrights abolished. As we can't get the former, we may try
with the latter.

Side note:
To get teachers in Poland use GNU textbooks, getting certification by ministry
of education could help a lot. That's not free but probably not that expensive
either (not that I ever tried to get one).


subject: [Textbook-l] a great slashdot discussion on funding open source


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote in
news:20030714202149.67013.qmail at web41704.mail.yahoo.com:

> To quote Walter...
>
> Could editors on the various international wikipedia
> and english wikipedia (that is the correct
> denomination I guess)

That is not I find but if you use something different people will not
understand what you mean. I can live whit it.

> think of *offering* to the
> proper wikipedia, any relevant article that landed by
> mistake in a wrong language on their wikipedia ?
> such as http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenic_plant
>
> written in italian on the en wikipedia
>
> whose content was first blanked, then proposed for
> deletion, and finally googled translated.

I find it normal that a article in the wrong language is deleted. But what
a Wikipedia does whit that type of "articles" is their business. No need to
involve the source-wikipedia.

> Perhaps the italian wikipedia might be interested by
> this article ?

Why should the?
Why should the Italian Wikipedia care for a article on the Engelish
Wikipedia that is a google-translated article from the Italian Wikipedia?

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


subject: [Textbook-l] legal counsel on copyright issues

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Karl Wick wrote:

>>>(My textbook plans dont include using much from the WP anyway).

>>Now there's a thought ... what if each textbook project
>>decides for itself depending on its own estimation of its needs?
>>If a project decides wrongly, then only it has to start over.
>>Sitewide policy can be submitted to the public domain,
>>or kept under GFDL for copying from Wikipedia.

>I think that it would be very unpractical. Keeping everything GFDL
>makes us bidirectionally compatibe with Wikipedia. Changing license
>to something else breaks that link.

I think that it's even more impractical to force a decision early.
Does your textbook project plan to use material from Wikipedia?
Then you want the GNU FDL (you'll /need/ it for your plan).
But Karl's doesn't.  I doubt that I'd want it either.

Encyclopaedias and textbooks have a quite different style,
and I'd argue that any text that isn't completely rewritten is a mistake.
But I don't have to force my opinion on your textbook project!
Please don't force your opinion on mine (if there is one) or Karl's.

A simple course of action for right now
would be to see what licences we find acceptable
(so far, we have the GNU FDL and Creative Commons BY-SA),
then release material under a disjunction of these.
When a textbook project decides that it wants material
that's previously appeared under a specific one of these,
then it can do so, and restrict its licence appropriately.

-- Toby


from_name: Michael Becker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki API in Python project

body:
I (and current 5 other people) are planning on writing an API for
wiki[pedia] in Python, and I was wondering if I could enlist anyone on
this list's help in getting the project off of the ground? First of all,
I would like to request developer access for myself personally on the
sourceforge project (my username is mdbecker).  I would like to get more
intimate with the code, and possibly contribute to it in the near
future. Secondly, I was wondering if one of the current sourceforge
developers could make this a sub-project, or help me make it a separate
project? Also, I would like to know if anyone would like to join the
project.  We will be starting by programming some simple scripts to
automate some tasks (such as greeting new users.)  Once we feel
comfortable with interacting with the wiki through scripts, we will
outline the API, and start work on it. Additionally, LDC offered in the
past the use of a test server.  Could he, or someone else who is in the
know, inform me as to how to use that machine? Since I don't expect all
of the developers to have access to a UNIX system (which will probably
be our primary dev env), we will also be looking for a place to actually
test run out scripts.  I hear sourceforge has "computing farms."  Is it
hard to get access to these?  Are they UNIX systems?

Thanks for your help

--
Michael Becker


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
Toby wrote:
>....
>Let us all be friends.  Let us create the textbooks
>in collaboration, setting aside the issue of who in
>the end will mass-print them -- because we can't
>stop the wrong guy from doing it anyway!
>....

Thank you Toby! By the time we have our first set of textbooks at 1.0 status
the whole issue might be moot due to advances in digital paper.

At this point the /last/ thing we need to concern ourselves with is how
exactly our content is going to be physically put in front of students. It is
/far/ more important to worry about establishing the framework needed to
create that content in the first place (with an eye toward following
government-set content standards). The beauty of the GNU FDL is that anybody
can republish it.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Toby wrote:
>....
>Encyclopaedias and textbooks have a quite
>different style, and I'd argue that any text that
>isn't completely rewritten is a mistake.
>...

The difference in style is primarily organizational and related to focus. That
means that a great many sections of Wikipedia articles can used in a
textbook. To abandon the GFDL and thus ignore the largest open content text
resource in the world is a grave mistake.

I've already mentioned /several/ times now that our long-term goal should be
to work with the writers of the various copyleft viral licenses to make them
compatible with each other whereever possible. For example, all that would be
needed from the GNU and Creative Common people to make their respective
copyleft viral licenses compatible would be for both of them to make new
versions that explicitly state that text from the other corresponding
copyleft viral license is compatible. That would make it possible for GNU FDL
text to be incorporated into Creative Commons Share Alike text and vice
versa.

Until then we are stuck with the GNU FDL (and I have yet to see a compelling
argument to abandon that).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Hi Krzysztof,

Textbooks can be written in many ways. Some books are created by committee,
others by a single author. The primary difference for textbooks (just K-12,
not university textbooks) is that one must pay attention to the frameworks.

Really, this makes the author's job (whether solo, or as part of a
committee) a lot easier, as there is little guesswork involved as regards
what "has" to be in the book. The creative part is then free to innovate on
the 'framework theme'.

Of course, if an author is determined to do a book solo, there should be no
problem in that. He/she just says so.

One real advantage in this is that there can be many open source approaches
to the same frameworks. For instance, it would be interesting (eventually)
to see multiple open source treatments of world History, Algebra, Home
Economics, English, German, Chemistry, Language Development, etc. This is a
real opportunity to get very creative pedagogical approaches intoduced to
K-12 curriculum materials, because the current commercial approach is very,
very conservative; it goes for the lowest common denominator, attempting to
please everyone.

Note that there's no reason why open source publishing couldn't create one
of those "lowest common denominator" classics - one that gets widely adopted
by states and districts that want to "play it safe" (in fact, this will
probably be the way that open source texts initially "prove themselves", by
showing that they can be better, at a 'middle-of-the-road' approach to
content than the commercial publishers). However, the real opportunity going
forward is the insinuation of creative approaches to content that open the
eyes of curriculum people at the state and district level. There is a
fantastic renaissance possible here.

Eventually, open source will be *the* way that the bulk of educational
materials are created; I'm convinced of this.

Sanford
----- Original Message -----
From: "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" <kpjas at wikipedia.pl>
To: <textbook-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2003 12:11 AM
Subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook.wikipedia.org and authorship paradigm

> Hi all,
>
> Wikipedia is a great success and its editorial process proved to be
capable
> of producing collaboratively content of good quality.
>
> I wonder if the same paradigm can be extended to writing open source
> textbooks. There are textbooks that were released into open source by
their
> authors/publishers but as far as I know there have never been any attempt
> to write a textbook the wiki way.
>
> Textbooks are mostly written by academics and academics are not very fond
> of Wikipedia. Textbooks are written by one author or one author writes one
> or a few chapters. I don't know if people like Karl Wick would be pleased
> with a crowd of random editors to the text he has already written. It
might
> be counter-productive, time consuming and ineffective for him to discuss,
> explain, or somtimes fight to defend his vision. He probably would be
> grateful for comments and ideas but I'm not so sure about re-writing his
> text and putting in incompatible ideas and frameworks.
>
> I think a cookbook or howto type of books might succeed.
>
> I am not trying to be a critic of the whole idea I would like to discuss
> some of my concerns in the early phase of the project.
>
> Regards,
> Kpjas
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Languages [was: Database design and interwiki links]

body:
Arwel Parry wrote:
>
> In message <bet129$1uf$1 at main.gmane.org>, Timwi
> <timwi=hi6Y0CQ0nG0 at public.gmane.org> writes
>
>>> As an experiment I've just spent half the afternoon translating most
>>> of the English article on Argentina to cy.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yr_Ariannin
>>
>> Shouldn't the text on the map (e.g. "South Atlantic Ocean") also be
>> translated?
>
> Ideally yes, but the same map is used in the English, German, Dutch,
> Polish and Swedish wikipedias, so I'm not going to lose too much sleep
> over it!

Hm. It wasn't me who said "Just because one language Wikipedia does it
this way, doesn't mean all the others have to". ;-)

I'll translate the German one :-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special pages

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Timwi wrote:
>>
>>> Please could a sysop or admin or someone update the following pages?
>>>
>>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages
>>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages
>>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Shortpages
>>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Wantedpages
>>
>> I'm really not wanting to come off as impatient, but why is nobody
>> doing this?
>
> I tried but I just managed to kill the wiki for about 5 minutes

Oh, oops ;-) But thanks for the explanation :-)

However, wouldn't it still be feasible to at least update it once during
an off-peak hour? Just so people can use it now (it's *really* useless
as out of date as it is now) until it has been performance-optimised.

> What use is Special:Lonelypages, for example, if it only goes up to C?

Lonelypages and Shortpages are not very useful, that's true; I only
included them for completeness. I'm particularly fond of the other two;
Longpages to see where I can help split up things when I'm looking for
an easy task, and Wantedpages to see where I can help contribute a new
article when I'm looking for something a little more challenging.

I guess I'll convert this into another programming task, then :-)

Thanks again,
Timwi


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
>sannse wrote

>  The article for "pop punk"  ( http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_punk )
>was
>expanded last week by a new user.  He then realised that his work may have
>copyright implications and asked for it to be deleted.

After all the hazzle over copyright with Michael, DW et al, it is so nice to
hear of new users who want to the right thing, rather than leaving copyright
stuff in situ. Is it too early to nominate him as a sysop? :-)

JT

_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

subject: [Textbook-l] Textbook.wikipedia.org and authorship paradigm

body:
Hi all,

Wikipedia is a great success and its editorial process proved to be capable
of producing collaboratively content of good quality.

I wonder if the same paradigm can be extended to writing open source
textbooks. There are textbooks that were released into open source by their
authors/publishers but as far as I know there have never been any attempt
to write a textbook the wiki way.

Textbooks are mostly written by academics and academics are not very fond
of Wikipedia. Textbooks are written by one author or one author writes one
or a few chapters. I don't know if people like Karl Wick would be pleased
with a crowd of random editors to the text he has already written. It might
be counter-productive, time consuming and ineffective for him to discuss,
explain, or somtimes fight to defend his vision. He probably would be
grateful for comments and ideas but I'm not so sure about re-writing his
text and putting in incompatible ideas and frameworks.

I think a cookbook or howto type of books might succeed.

I am not trying to be a critic of the whole idea I would like to discuss
some of my concerns in the early phase of the project.

Regards,
Kpjas


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Installing language...

body:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 03:13:18PM -0700, MaklooN LagooN wrote:
> > Hello out there. Quick question.
> > How do you configure wikipedia to run using one of the languages?
> > I've installed wikipedia succesfully but now I'd like to change the language.
> > I tried simply renaming the LanguagueEs.php to Languague.php unsuccesfully. It seems that Languague.php contains certain variables necessary for the whole thing to work.
>
> $wgLanguageCode in DefaultSettings.php

Please do *not* change things in DefaultSettings.php. Set them in
LocalSettings.php, which won't be overwritten when you upgrade.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special pages

body:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Timwi wrote:

> Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > Timwi wrote:
> >
> >> Timwi wrote:
> >>
> >>> Please could a sysop or admin or someone update the following pages?
> >>>
> >>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Lonelypages
> >>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Longpages
> >>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Shortpages
> >>> http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Wantedpages
> >>
> >> I'm really not wanting to come off as impatient, but why is nobody
> >> doing this?
> >
> > I tried but I just managed to kill the wiki for about 5 minutes
>
> Oh, oops ;-) But thanks for the explanation :-)
>
> However, wouldn't it still be feasible to at least update it once during
> an off-peak hour? Just so people can use it now (it's *really* useless
> as out of date as it is now) until it has been performance-optimised.

I am on on off-peak hours, so I might try to give it a shot, however I
do not know how to edit these pages. Or do I have to have system developer
access to do so?

Andre Engels


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

body:
Anthere wrote:

>>>think of *offering* to the
>>>proper wikipedia, any relevant article that landed
>>>
>>>
>>by
>>
>>
>>>mistake in a wrong language on their wikipedia ?
>>>such as
>>>
>>>
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgenic_plant
>>
>>
>>>written in italian on the en wikipedia
>>>
>>>whose content was first blanked, then proposed for
>>>deletion, and finally googled translated.
>>>
I've just seen this thread; I've put a reply to this on the talk page,
but to spare people from switching windows; I tried looking around the
Italian wikipedia, then gave up because I don't speak Italian. I was
going to go back to it, but work intruded, and I figured everything was
alright once I saw the Italian link on the page.

>I know the field concerned. I was trained in that
>field, and I worked in that field. Hence, I can say
>the article is worth (the translation is awful :-))
>
>Now, the good news : the article *landed well* on the
>italian wiki. It is now separated in three articles.
>
>I hope they will be phase III soon.
>
>
There have been some attempts to clean up the translation, and the
article looks to have promise as an English language article when done.
I intended to do some more basic cleaning up of the text, but work
intruded; I should be able to get back to it later today. I'll drop you
a note when I've done what I can, maybe you can give it the finishing
touches?

Take care,
Jimmy


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>I've already mentioned /several/ times now that our long-term goal should be
>to work with the writers of the various copyleft viral licenses to make them
>compatible with each other whereever possible.

Please don't think that I'm ignoring this.  I agree wholeheartedly!

>Until then we are stuck with the GNU FDL (and I have yet to see a compelling
>argument to abandon that).

But this is simply false.
You are stuck with the GNU FDL /if/ you use GNU FDL material.
Did you read my proposal about a disjunctive licence?
Such a licence is compatible with the GNU FDL!
And once you use GNU FDL material, then you're stuck with the GNU FDL.
Similarly, once you use Creative Commons SA material,
then you're stuck with the relevant Creative Commons licence.
But not until then.

For examples of disjunctive licences (but for software),
see <http://www.fsf.org/licenses/license-list.html>
and search for the string "disj" (not a whole word).
A disjunctive licence is as free as its freest component
and as strong a copyleft as its weakest component.

If a textbook project that wants to use material from Wikipedia,
then it can make a decision that it wants this material more
than the mere possibility of material under some other licence.
If you have a specific use in mind for a large chunk of text,
then this shouldn't be a very difficult choice to make!
Then this project will use the GNU FDL just like you want.
It will hardly be ignoring Wikipedia as a resource!

-- Toby


body:
Sanford Forte wrote:

>Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

>>[doubts that wiki editing of textbooks would work]

>[assurances that open content writing of textbooks would work]

I don't think that you two are talking about the same things.

For my own reply to Krzysztof:  Let's try it and see if it works!
An open content approach but with a benevolent dicatator making decisions
would probably also work, but that's not what Wikimedia does --
no big deal, since you can still do it anyway if this fails.

-- Toby


body:
Walter Vermeir wrote in part:

>Anthere wrote:

>>Could editors on the various international wikipedia
>>and english wikipedia (that is the correct
>>denomination I guess)

>That is not I find but if you use something different people will not
>understand what you mean. I can live whit it.

I never say "international Wikipedia".
I might say "Wikipedia is an international project.",
but then this /includes/ the English version!

>>Perhaps the italian wikipedia might be interested by
>>this article ?

>Why should they?
>Why should the Italian Wikipedia care for a article on the English
>Wikipedia that is a google-translated article from the Italian Wikipedia?

There is a misunderstanding here.

The article began on [[en:]], and it began in Italian.
It was only Google-translated later on, for [[en:]]'s use.
But [[it:]] might well want the /original/ article,
which they didn't have before.

So it's helpful to [[it:]] if the people on [[en:]],
before deleting (or translating) the article,
send it over to [[it:]], as a matter of courtesy.

-- Toby


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk wrote:

>The question of copyright violations in article histories has come up before. See
>about halfway down http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_and_copyright_issues.
>Isis suggested that we keep copyvios in page history, because:
>
># The page history is an editing tool, not something we "publish"
># It would be good evidence of our procedure in any court case
>
>Is there a list somewhere of legal questions that wikimedia should (eventually) get a
>paid legal opinion on?
>
Not being a lawyer I can't give you that legal opinion, but I'm almost
certain that the page history counts as publishing, since it's something
we're making available online to the general public; all they need to do
is click on the link.  And I'm pretty sure we can't post copyrighted
material we don't have the rights to *anywhere* on the wikipedia.org
server that's available from the web.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wiki upset

body:
I received this recently in my personal email
(I have further comments below):

----- Forwarded message -----
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 22:04:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: _KhlER3L <_khl at heh.ca>
X-X-Sender: _khl at tornado.he.net
To: toby at math.ucr.edu
Subject: wiki upset

Hello toby,

I'm sorry to email this to you since it has nothing to do with you, but
finding contact information for the person I actually want to talk to
seems to be impossible.

This evening, I fell upon Wikipedia for the first time in maybe a year,
and began to make some edits I thought useful.  The first of which was to
add to the [[gay]] definition a note that gay could only be used to
describe androphiles, and not pederasts.  I admit this was a smarmy
entry, but it was not offensive, and it contained links to additional
information.

My next entry was http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILGA_Purges
which attempted to outline, via a chronology, the events which lead upto
the purges of minority groups from the International Gay and Lesbian
Association.  Admittedly, it ended on a bitter note.  However, the bulk of
the entry, some 10 or 15 paragraphs, were neutral and informative.

I then added a page on 'pederast', which said 'A man who is sexually
attracted to boys aged 12-18.'

I then edited the NAMBLA page to remove the name of an individual, as well
as make the wording more neutral.  I went on to read and respond to a
'discuss this page' entry which described NAMBLA as a COINTELPRO operation
of the government in order to discredit the gay movement.

I finally went to edit a user page, _KhlER3L.  When I went to save it, I
found out I was IP banned:

User is blocked

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by Jtdirl. The reason given
is this:
This user is almost certainly DW again. He is revisiting paedophile and
pederast links he added or edited again before his last banning and is
from the same IP as he once used before.

You may contact Jtdirl or one of the other administrators to discuss the
block.

Return to Main Page.

Well, for his/her information, I am not 'DW'
and I do not appreciate being IP banned simply for 'revisting paedophile
and pederast links' (as if it were a crime).  I think that if I feel that
the Wikipedia does not offer the right balance of information on these
topics, then I should be free to add my information.  Apparently Jtdirl
does not appreciate anyone espousing a believe contrary to his/her own
about NAMBLA, pederasty and pedophlia, even though he/she is in no way an
expert on such matters, having a PhD in Irish History.

Maybe in his/her
expert opinion, the NAMBLA information page should be used to attack a
particular individual by name?  I didn't think so, and edited the
name out.  And I also felt that encyclopedic entries should not
contain a totality of anti- views, but also attempt to be somewhat
neutral.

And the Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for pederast, but instead forwards
pederasty to pedophilia, a totally wrong attribution.  My pederast entry
has been removed, probably by Jtdirl.  Why is a truthful, and
to-the-point, no-bullshit entry being deleted?  I think I know the answer.

As well, my ILGA Purges entry, which contained about 15 paragraphs
detailing the build up and aftermath of the ILGA Purges, was deleted
entirely.  Again, I think I know the reason why.

Anyway, this ban goes against the rule of IP blocking which states:

<i>This is meant solely to discourage persistent junk edits. IP banning is
not meant to be used against unpopular opinions.</i>

My contributions were not junk edits, or attempts to disrupt the Wikipedia
service.  They were attempts at rectifying what I view as biased entries
which serve mainly to attack minority groups and organizations without
giving another perspective.

I ask that my IP be unbanned at the earliest possible moment, and that
Jtdirl be reprimanded for unfairly banning a contributer based soley on
the topic of the content he was offering.  Maybe Jtdirl should stop being
the pedophile-content cop and keep to topics he/she has something to
contribute to.

Thank you, Toby, for looking over this.  Please get back to me on whether
or not Wikipedia will be reinstating my access.

Sincerely,
Jason Garrison

_KhlER3L at heh.ca
(514) 495-1421
Montreal, Quebec
http://heh.ca/
----- End forwarded message -----

Note that both <heh.ca> and <tornado.he.net> (also in Received: headers)
are in the 64.62.xxx.xxx IP range, the same range as the blocked IP.
This IP edited a few articles, some with prior POV problems;
and some of his edits introduced further POV problems.
But this is understandable if the user is new, and correctable.
Thus the question is whether Jtdirl's identification of him as DW is fair.
I'm not very familiar with DW, so I'm not a good judge of this;
I ask other users that are familiar with DW to review the case.

I sent _KhlER3L a reply briefly explaining the situation with DW,
and assuring him that Jtdirl's actions were motivated by those problems,
not by any desire to be "the pedophile-content cop".
I can post this email and _KhlER3L's further replies if you like.

-- Toby


body:
Toby wrote:
>...
>If a textbook project that wants to use material
>from Wikipedia, then it can make a decision that
>it wants this material more than the mere
>possibility of material under some other licence.

And where exactly is the material from this other
license at? That type of long term planning is also
really bizarre in the wiki world - where are the
crystal balls we should use in order to find out what
license this magical text will be under? However, what
we have /right now/ is a HUGE open content resource
that will almost certainly be ENORMOUS in a couple
years. This is a prediction we can bank on.

>If you have a specific use in mind for a large
>chunk of text, then this shouldn't be a very
>difficult choice to make!

Yep - use Wikipedia and public domain text as your
primary resources (it is gotten us this far!). I still
would like to know of /any/ other body of open content
text at all comparable to Wikipedia that we could use
for textbooks. Mixing and matching licenses will
prevent the free exchange of text to and from
Wikipedia and most madenly from between our textbooks!
It is best to work with what we have right now and
continually work with the copyleft viral license
makers to make their licenses compatible with each
other.

PLEASE let's not fork the project before it even
starts.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wiki upset

body:
Re: user contributing information on pedophilia that was deleted upon
identification as "DW"

I saw most of this last night, and was somewhat confused by the delete
of [[ILGA Purges]], because it struck me as mostly factual and
encyclopedic information that should've been kept, with fairly minor and
fixable POV problems.  I didn't say anything because I'm completely
unfamiliar with the situation with DW.  But in any case, perhaps that
article should be undeleted and NPOV'ed rather than simply removed.
Most of the other articles aren't particularly interesting though
([[pederast]] is a dictionary definition, for example).

Perhaps this discussion should continue on the wiki somewhere?

-Mark


body:
On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 09:11:31AM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Wikipedia is a great success and its editorial process proved to be capable
> of producing collaboratively content of good quality.
>
> I wonder if the same paradigm can be extended to writing open source
> textbooks. There are textbooks that were released into open source by their
> authors/publishers but as far as I know there have never been any attempt
> to write a textbook the wiki way.
>
> Textbooks are mostly written by academics and academics are not very fond
> of Wikipedia. Textbooks are written by one author or one author writes one
> or a few chapters. I don't know if people like Karl Wick would be pleased
> with a crowd of random editors to the text he has already written. It might
> be counter-productive, time consuming and ineffective for him to discuss,
> explain, or somtimes fight to defend his vision. He probably would be
> grateful for comments and ideas but I'm not so sure about re-writing his
> text and putting in incompatible ideas and frameworks.
>
> I think a cookbook or howto type of books might succeed.
>
> I am not trying to be a critic of the whole idea I would like to discuss
> some of my concerns in the early phase of the project.

It may be hard to make good university-level textbooks the wiki way,
but I think we can do things like:
* language courses
* computer-related books
* elementary and high school level textbooks for almost everything


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: Textbook.wikipedia.org and authorship paradigm

body:
Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
>I don't know if people like Karl Wick would be pleased
>with a crowd of random editors to the text he has already
>written.

I have no problem with this, in fact it should take some of
the work off my shoulders. However I imagine that there are
others who would prefer autonomy and would be dissuaded
from contributing to a wiki even if they wanted to release
their work into the public domain .. there is no shortage
of hubis in academia.

>There are textbooks that were released into open source by
>their authors/publishers

If you know where I could get my hands on some of these
textbooks please tell me. That would be a great starting
point for further work.

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>It may be hard to make good university-level textbooks the
>wiki way,

I'd like to prove the contrary.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [Textbook-l] different open content licenses

body:
How can we in a practical way go about changing the current
open source licenses so that they allow interoperability
(especially between GNU FDL and some of the Creative
Commons ones) ? Who do we talk to or where do we go to make
this happen ?

Jimmy, you seem to be already in touch with appropriate
persons. Have you discussed this with Larry Lessig of the
Creative Commons ? .. who could we talk to on the GNU side
? RMS ? Might he be open to this idea ? I'd like to see
this happen !

-Karl

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
--- sannse <sannse at delphiforums.com> wrote:
> JT wrote:
>
>
> > After all the hazzle over copyright with Michael,
> DW et al, it is so nice
> to
> > hear of new users who want to the right thing,
> rather than leaving
> copyright
> > stuff in situ. Is it too early to nominate him as
> a sysop? :-)
>
> Heh.  Perhaps one week logged in is a /little/ too
> early ;)
>
> But I hope sie* comes back to us after hir vacation
> - potentially a good
> contributor :)
>
> Regards,
>
> sannse
>
> *I have been presuming male gender and just realised
> I had no reason to.
> Anthere is right - we do that too often.  And I
> should know better!

German is a great language in that respect.

You a woman Sannse ?

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Thomas Luft

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special pages

references: <beqd4g$squ$1@main.gmane.org> <bet1md$4l4$1@main.gmane.org> <3F121E3D.7040803@hotmail.com> <bevtbr$t8u$1@main.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Lonelypages and Shortpages are not very useful, that's true;

I disagree about that. Maybe Lonelypages are useless, but Shortpages are
very useful if you are a sysop who is doing some clean-up. There are
several articles which are quite short and consist only of one sentence
which should be extended. To search these the Shortpages page is IMHO
useful!
Regards

Thomas


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special pages

references: <beqd4g$squ$1@main.gmane.org> <bet1md$4l4$1@main.gmane.org> <3F121E3D.7040803@hotmail.com> <bevtbr$t8u$1@main.gmane.org> <3F13FE2F.5020907@web.de>

body:
On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 03:14:23PM +0200, Thomas Luft wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
> >Lonelypages and Shortpages are not very useful, that's true;
>
> I disagree about that. Maybe Lonelypages are useless, but Shortpages are
> very useful if you are a sysop who is doing some clean-up. There are
> several articles which are quite short and consist only of one sentence
> which should be extended. To search these the Shortpages page is IMHO
> useful!
> Regards

Lonelypages are very useful - article that's unreachable is almost an
article that doesn't exist.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
Erik wrote:
>Vicki-
>> Can someone ban user 205.188.xx.xx; it's Michael
>> again and he's going after Hephaestos.
>
>Michael's edits should be auto-reverted when they are

>identified. I hard-banned a previous incarnation
>because he started moving pages around, which is more

>difficult to revert. But if he only makes edits, it
>is more efficient for us to stick to
>reverting/deleting all edits made under
>one pseudonym than to always have to figure out his
>account du jour.

But we have been doing this for months already - he
simply will not get the point! It is high time we
complained to AOL about this person. If that doesn't
work after a couple of trys then the whole IP range
that he uses should be blocked (and we should warn AOL
that this might happen). We should, however, allow
approved singed-in user accounts to edit from that IP
range (such as User:Danny who uses the same IP block
and anybody new who asks).

On the block notice we can give the AOL abuse email
address to direct complaints in the right direction.
We have already lost Zoe to this *@%! and now he is
going after Hephestos and others by moving their user
pages to "User:Bastard" and similar oh-so-clever
insults. Oh and Michael is already under a HarBan
(meaning all his edits are fair game for reverting and
we ask other users not to resurrect those edits).

I really do not see any other way to deal with this
mental case.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: steve vertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
>The Maveric reasoned:   On the block notice we can
give the AOL abuse email
> address to direct complaints in the right direction.
> We have already lost Zoe to this *@%! and now he is
> going after Hephestos and others by moving their
> user
> pages to "User:Bastard" and similar oh-so-clever
> insults. Oh and Michael is already under a HarBan
> (meaning all his edits are fair game for reverting
> and
> we ask other users not to resurrect those edits).
>
> I really do not see any other way to deal with this
> mental case.

I @#$%! second the motion...
whos doing the calling/mailing?

-S-

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


body:
Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
>...
>I also would like to point out the recent Debian
>decision to consider the GFDL as a non-free license.
>This has been debated for months on debian-legal. You

>can read the archives here:
>http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/

Side note: They only consider GFDLd text to be
"non-free" when "Invariant Sections", "Cover Texts",
"Acknowledgements", and/or "Dedications" (all GFDL
options) are used. We don't use any of those so our
text is free content.

:>Lessig:.. The one thing the FDL has failed to do, as

:>has the GPL, is to enable a semantic web-like
:>architecture that encourages machine-readable
:>expressions of freedoms. That=A2s the core
:>commitment of the Creative Commons.

Heh? What is a "machine-readable expression of
freedom" and why is that an important thing to have? I
guess I'll have to do some more reading....

>I think it would be a confusing thing to create a
>licensing difference between the Wikipedia
>Encyclopedia and the Wikimedia Textbook Project
>now.

Amen to that!

>The discussion between FSF and Creative Commons and
>some other license authors can, and probably will, be

>time consuming. I don't think the Textbook Project
>needs to wait for a solution in order to advance.

Yep - I completely agree.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
http://sbc.yahoo.com


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

body:
On Mon, Jul 14, 2003 at 03:13:18PM -0700, MaklooN LagooN wrote:
> Hello out there. Quick question.
> How do you configure wikipedia to run using one of the languages?
> I've installed wikipedia succesfully but now I'd like to change the language.
> I tried simply renaming the LanguagueEs.php to Languague.php unsuccesfully. It seems that Languague.php contains certain variables necessary for the whole thing to work.

$wgLanguageCode in DefaultSettings.php

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	         Bonsai - http://bonsaiwiki.tomk32.de
   / \              http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com


from_name: Vicki Rosenzweig

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Michael again

body:
Can someone ban user 205.188.xx.xx; it's Michael again and he's going
after Hephaestos.

Thanks.
--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
The question of copyright violations in article histories has come up before. See
about halfway down http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_and_copyright_issues.
Isis suggested that we keep copyvios in page history, because:

# The page history is an editing tool, not something we "publish"
# It would be good evidence of our procedure in any court case

Is there a list somewhere of legal questions that wikimedia should (eventually) get a
paid legal opinion on?
-Martin "MyRedDice" Harper


from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
Toby wrote:

> If the new user is worried about our own liability,
> then we shouldn't have to do anything for now.
> If the new user is worried that people will revert to their old material,
> then the talk page should be enough to discourage this.
> If the new user is demanding removal on behalf of the copyright holder,
> then they're not going about it properly per the DMCA --
> but I don't think that this is what's going on. ^_^

As I understand it, his concern was purely to do the right thing.  His use
of copyrighted material was a genuine mistake and he wanted to set it
right - nice to see :)

> Potentially, the article history in this case
> could be dealt with rather easily on the talk page.
> Say what anonymous ID created the text and when;
> say what user wikified it and when,
> and the entire relevant history has been described.
> But in general, it'd be better if a developer deleted the revisions.

Thanks for the advice.  It should have it's time on VfD, and then maybe one
of the developers will do the selective deletion for us.

Thanks again

sannse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Partial deletion

body:
JT wrote:

> After all the hazzle over copyright with Michael, DW et al, it is so nice
to
> hear of new users who want to the right thing, rather than leaving
copyright
> stuff in situ. Is it too early to nominate him as a sysop? :-)

Heh.  Perhaps one week logged in is a /little/ too early ;)

But I hope sie* comes back to us after hir vacation - potentially a good
contributor :)

Regards,

sannse

*I have been presuming male gender and just realised I had no reason to.
Anthere is right - we do that too often.  And I should know better!


from_name: Oualmakran Youssef

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Languages [was: Database design and interwiki
 links]

body:
Hello,

I think that we need more free translation tools :
*[[Dictionary]]
*[[Translation memory]]
*[[Engine translation]]

I think that memory trnaslation and engine translation are
hard to implement for texts with long sentences. But, I
think it is very useful for some cases, and that our
wiki-developpers can (easily) develop tools for at least
pne case: dates.

Most data in years/months pages are very short sentences.
For example, the deaths/births sections should fairly easily
be translated by a program with human help.
For examples:
*president of the United States--> Pr?sident des ?tats-Unis (French)
*American actor--> acteur am?ricain.

We should store that kind of data in a translation memory since the
translation does not change with context.

Regards,
Youssef aka youssefsan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
Erik wrote:
>Daniel-
> > But we have been doing this for months already - he
> > simply will not get the point! It is high time we
> > complained to AOL about this person. If that doesn't
> > work after a couple of trys then the whole IP range
> > that he uses should be blocked
>
>This might mean all of AOL. I don't think that's an acceptable option. But
>if you beg me a little, I'll hack our IP blocking code to
>- make IP blocks auto-expire after a while (unless no limit is set), so
>that we can use them more effectively
>- allow sysops to ban newly created accounts for the first 4 weeks or so
>and retrieve the IP address under which they were created.

I'm begging. Please, please purdy please! Although just the thought of banning
all of AOL does tickle my Evil (TM) bone....

And if what you propose doesn't work then we can think about the, well
unthinkable, solution I mentioned.

--- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia down

body:
On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 04:39, Tim Starling wrote:
> Wikipedia is down, returning
>
> Could not connect to DB on 130.94.122.197
> Host 'larousse.wikipedia.org' is blocked because of many connection errors.
> Unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts'

Should be back up now (I've been a bit inactive lately, but the wikidown
address is still attached to my pager).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Israeli-Palestinian neutrality

body:
It strikes me as increasingly obvious that some concerted effort to be
as NPOV as possible on the Israeli-Palestinian issue is necessary, as
it's starting to be one of the more frequent edit wars, and distributed
throughout the wiki, even in places you might not expect.

Two issues in particular that have come up lately, one from each side:

1. [[User:BL]] is mass-adding the contents of palestineremembered.com --
massive lists with hundreds of subpages comprising every village
(defined as 10 or more people) destroyed in the 1948 war, every
"massacre" (defined as 10 or more people) committed or purportedly
committed during that war (little effort is made to distinguish), and a
whole host of other information that's difficult if not impossible to
verify.

Even if it weren't for the difficulty in verifying this information, it
strikes me as somewhat odd that we'd have 300 pages dedicated to Arabs
killed in 1948, and only a single page dedicated to the Armenian
genocide, or the Pontian Genocide, or the Hutu-Tutsi genocide, and so
on.  I don't think it'd be a good idea to add 10,000 pages or so, one
for each village ("village" defined as 10 people or more) destroyed in
each of those conflicts.  And if we're going to have a separate page for
every instance of civilian deaths during a war, WW2 alone would be
another 10,000 pages or so.

2. [[User:RK]] is, as is probably obvious, somewhat of a pro-Israeli
activist, and is becoming difficult to clean up.  The latest thing I've
noticed is him adding 2-paragraph-long attacks on Arab anti-Semitism to
articles such as [[George Washington]] and [[Benjamin Franklin]], in the
guise of "defending" their "tarnished" reputations against charges of
anti-Semitism stemming from little-known fabricated quotes.

Not to single out these two users in particular; they're the two that
come to mind at first.  And these two issues in particular are also
being dealt with on talk pages.  But it's becoming clear that it will be
very difficult to catch all of these, so perhaps some more concerted
effort is needed.  I'm not sure exactly what to propose, but it seems as
a minimum we need a group of several people who are not particularly
partial to either side -- but who are knowledgeable about the issues --
to essentially police (hopefully in as unconfrontational a way as
possible) this sort of stuff.  The problem is that those most
knowledgeable and interested in spending a great deal of time writing
articles on these topics are often those who are most partisan to one
side or the other.

Suggestions?

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
At 03:42 AM 7/16/03 +0200, Erik wrote:
>Daniel-
> > But we have been doing this for months already - he
> > simply will not get the point! It is high time we
> > complained to AOL about this person. If that doesn't
> > work after a couple of trys then the whole IP range
> > that he uses should be blocked
>
>This might mean all of AOL. I don't think that's an acceptable option. But
>if you beg me a little, I'll hack our IP blocking code to
>- make IP blocks auto-expire after a while (unless no limit is set), so
>that we can use them more effectively
>- allow sysops to ban newly created accounts for the first 4 weeks or so
>and retrieve the IP address under which they were created.

This would be a very useful pair of tools. I wanted to just block the
newest account, but couldn't.

--
Vicki Rosenzweig
vr at redbird.org
http://www.redbird.org


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Erik wrote:
> >Vicki-
> >> Can someone ban user 205.188.xx.xx; it's Michael
> >> again and he's going after Hephaestos.
> >
> >Michael's edits should be auto-reverted when they are
>
> >identified. I hard-banned a previous incarnation
> >because he started moving pages around, which is more
>
> >difficult to revert. But if he only makes edits, it
> >is more efficient for us to stick to
> >reverting/deleting all edits made under
> >one pseudonym than to always have to figure out his
> >account du jour.
>
> But we have been doing this for months already - he
> simply will not get the point! It is high time we
> complained to AOL about this person. If that doesn't
> work after a couple of trys then the whole IP range
> that he uses should be blocked (and we should warn AOL
> that this might happen). We should, however, allow
> approved singed-in user accounts to edit from that IP
> range (such as User:Danny who uses the same IP block
> and anybody new who asks).
>
It's past time that we contact AOL about Michael. I'd do
it, but I doubt signing myself ``Geoff Burling, Wikipedia
contributor" would provide much clout: if one of the
sysops or developers could tackle this, I'd be much
obligied.

And if they forward all complaints about Michael to
/dev/null (for the non-techies, that means, roughly, that
they delete our email before reading), we should ask
Jimbo to make an attempt to approach them either via
email or through commercial connections. (I'd assume
that one of Boomis' salespeople must know a salesperson at
AOL who can refer us to the right person.)

And if we are forced to block AOL's block of IP addresses,
I'd suggest that we make the decision as public as possible:
posting to any relevant Usenet groups, web news sites
like Slashdot, & The Observer, etc. And give AOL enough
lead time to deal with Michael first -- even if they
only deal with this due to bad publicity.

But all of my talk ``let's do that if this doesn't work"
is just so many recycled electrons unless we make an
attempt to approach AOL about one of their users violating
their Terms Of Service; unless AOL is truly interested in
confirming their reputation as the toilet of the Internet,
it might take only one email from us for AOL to drop the
boom on this jerk.

Geoff


body:
On 15-07-2003, Karl Wick wrote thusly :
> Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> >I don't know if people like Karl Wick would be pleased
> >with a crowd of random editors to the text he has already
> >written.
>
> I have no problem with this, in fact it should take some of
> the work off my shoulders. However I imagine that there are
> others who would prefer autonomy and would be dissuaded
> from contributing to a wiki even if they wanted to release
> their work into the public domain .. there is no shortage
> of hubis in academia.
OK. You are pioneering in Wikimedia with a new kind of project
with the idea, established concepts and substantial amount of
content that seems to be more or less complete.

I am excited and looking forward to seeing how other textbook-from-scratch projects will fare. Written not by one author but by hundreds.
Commited but not necessarily with teaching experience.

Encylopedia is in a way fragmented into autonomous entities that do not
have to create continuity (although they can). I think that a good textbook
in most fields needs some master plan and methods to lead students
through material, building their knowledge.
I think pedagogical background and methodology is vital to writing a
sensible textbook. No need to say personality of the author plays a very
important role ;-)

I suppose that a large computer program can't be written in a Wiki way
and we'll see if textbooks can.

> >There are textbooks that were released into open source by
> >their authors/publishers
>
> If you know where I could get my hands on some of these
> textbooks please tell me. That would be a great starting
> point for further work.
Not in organic chemistry that I know of but
a book on programming in Ruby programming languge
http://www.rubycentral.com/book/ and I think several other computing books
published by O'Reilly.
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >It may be hard to make good university-level textbooks the
> >wiki way,
> I'd like to prove the contrary.

Regards,
Kpjas.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wiki upset

body:
Toby-
> I'm sorry to email this to you since it has nothing to do with you, but
> finding contact information for the person I actually want to talk to
> seems to be impossible.

I have unblocked the user and restored some of his edits. There was not
enough evidence that he is DW to block him. I have also sent him a mail
asking him to create a user account.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Thomas Corell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Special pages

body:
Thomas Corell wrote:
> Nevertheless they are not working as announced:
> Try between 02:00 and 14:00 UTC (Current Server Time 04:51:25 UTC).
>
> Because Brion is away, someone please can take a look and at least fix
> this?
>
> Have Erik and Magnus now the rights, to take a look after?

Magnus (Manske) fixed it. Thanks.

--
Smurf

smurf at AdamAnt.mud.de
-------------------------  Anthill inside! ---------------------------


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Special pages

body:
> I am on on off-peak hours, so I might try to give it a shot, however I
> do not know how to edit these pages. Or do I have to have system developer
> access to do so?
>
> Andre Engels

There are no quiet hours. If there were I'd have access to them since I live
in Australia. Wikipedia's quietest time is about 7pm here, but it's only
about 1/3 quieter than the busiest time.

-- Tim Starling.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Michael again

body:
Vicki-
> Can someone ban user 205.188.xx.xx; it's Michael again and he's going
> after Hephaestos.

Michael's edits should be auto-reverted when they are identified. I hard-
banned a previous incarnation because he started moving pages around,
which is more difficult to revert. But if he only makes edits, it is more
efficient for us to stick to reverting/deleting all edits made under one
pseudonym than to always have to figure out his account du jour.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

body:
Hi,

In march, George Siemens, me and a few people of the blogging community,
started open-education.org, an open content in education advocacy
initiative. So I'm very excited to see that Wikipedia starts a project
in the same direction.

The interaction between GFDL and Creative Commons share-Alike is bugging
me too. In an interview with open-education.org, we asked Lessig about
it:

----
Open Education: How the Creative Commons Share-Alike license relate to
the GNU Free Documentation License? The FDL has been used for large
projects like wikipedia, planetmath.org. Is it possible for Share-Alike
content to be used in a similar FDL licensed project?

Lessig: The Free Documentation License is similar in some ways, and we
think it?s a good license for functional works. We?ve been developing
licenses that are more directly focused on regular literary works and
other creative work, not directly functional. We have license options
which have similar copyleft functionality in them, but I think the key
is to multiply the number of licenses out there that enable
machine-readable expressions of freedom. The one thing the FDL has
failed to do, as has the GPL, is to enable a semantic web-like
architecture that encourages machine-readable expressions of freedoms.
That?s the core commitment of the Creative Commons.
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/lessig.htm
-----

I also would like to point out the recent Debian decision to consider
the GFDL as a non-free license. This has been debated for months on
debian-legal. You can read the archives here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/

A summary of the Debian criticism on the FDL:
"Why You Shouldn't Use the GNU FDL"
http://home.twcny.rr.com/nerode/neroden/fdl.html

The compatibility issues arise with all strong copyleft licenses
like the Design Science License, Open Publication License, Share-Alike,
... For a longer list of free and semi-free license, see my webpage at
http://www.opencursus.be/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=115

Also Wikipedia is not the only GFDL-using open content project, albeit
the largest, compatibility with other projects is also something to keep
in mind.

As a sidenote, I think the FDL is a better license for a textbook
project, then for encyclopedia items. The FDL explicitly mentions
software documentation and textbooks as it main use.

I believe the FDL is not as perfect for
textbooks/documentation/reference works as the GPL is for software.
Creating the ideal open content license is a long term work.
Recently David Whiley closed down Opencontent.org and joined the
Creative Commons initiative to work on educational (but semi-free)
licenses.

I think it would be a confusing thing to create a licensing difference
between the Wikipedia Encyclopedia and the Wikimedia Textbook Project
now. The discussion between FSF and Creative Commons and some other
license authors can, and probably will, be time consuming. I don't think
the Textbook Project needs to wait for a solution in order to advance.

And if there is a solution eventually, it might probably as well affect
the Encyclopedia too, not just the Textbook project. So I think this
could be best handled at the the Wikimedia Foundation level, instead of
at the level of one of its subprojects.

Wouter Vanden Hove
http://www.opencursus.be [Flemish Open Course portal]
http://www.open-education.org [Open Content in Education Advocacy]

Op di 15-07-2003, om 22:58 schreef Karl Wick:
> How can we in a practical way go about changing the current
> open source licenses so that they allow interoperability
> (especially between GNU FDL and some of the Creative
> Commons ones) ? Who do we talk to or where do we go to make
> this happen ?
>
> Jimmy, you seem to be already in touch with appropriate
> persons. Have you discussed this with Larry Lessig of the
> Creative Commons ? .. who could we talk to on the GNU side
> ? RMS ? Might he be open to this idea ? I'd like to see
> this happen !
>
> -Karl

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] update LanguageHe.php on Hebrew wiki

body:
On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 11:30:49AM +0200, Rotem Dan wrote:
> Hi, since I can't nag Brion, can some developer update this:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageHe.php to this:
> http://he.wikipedia.org/ . Thanks
>
> BTW, the Hebrew Wikipedia was started on 9 July 2003 and already has ~70
> articles. (about 60 of them created today ;-) after it was published in
> an open-source related blog)..

Yeah, Brion's away, so let's forget all that CVS crap ;)
New file installed on http://he.wikipedia.org/. Now as I can't read a letter
in Hebrew (can't you people write left-to-right like the rest of the world ?),
let alone understand anything, I have no idea what it could have broken.
At least http://he.wikipedia.org/ works, so it can't be that bad.

If anything breaks:
$ cp /apache/htdocs-he/LanguageHe.php-old /apache/htdocs-he/LanguageHe.php

OK, someone will have to upload it to CVS now ;)


body:
On Tue, Jul 15, 2003 at 05:46:14PM -0700, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
> >...
> >I also would like to point out the recent Debian
> >decision to consider the GFDL as a non-free license.
> >This has been debated for months on debian-legal. You
>
> >can read the archives here:
> >http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
>
> Side note: They only consider GFDLd text to be
> "non-free" when "Invariant Sections", "Cover Texts",
> "Acknowledgements", and/or "Dedications" (all GFDL
> options) are used. We don't use any of those so our
> text is free content.

That's right wrt Debian. Now that's a real shame that
GFDL has such options at all - they're all plain non-free.


subject: [Textbook-l] Database of Free Textbooks

body:
Op di 15-07-2003, om 22:47 schreef Karl Wick:
> Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
> >There are textbooks that were released into open source by
> >their authors/publishers
>
> If you know where I could get my hands on some of these
> textbooks please tell me. That would be a great starting
> point for further work.

Absolutely. I have been collecting Freely licensed textbooks (and some
semi-free) in part for that purpose at http://www.opencursus.be/ since a
year.

The default page shows the links, there is a category of open content
projects with around 100 links. Previously there was mentioned that
there where no Free textbook projects that used a wiki. Well, there is a
least a small project at
http://www.renaissoft.com/april/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

Here is my collection of 150 courses/textbooks:
http://www.opencursus.be/modules.php?name=Downloads
The blurps of text are dutch, but almost all link-descriptions are
english, and could be useful for English Readers. The green or yellow
buttons are acronyms of the licenses. If authors use other strong
copyleft licenses, I'm sure they would agree to dual-license their
material to include GFDL.

Wouter Vanden Hove

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body:
Op wo 16-07-2003, om 02:46 schreef Daniel Mayer:
> Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
> >...
> >I also would like to point out the recent Debian
> >decision to consider the GFDL as a non-free license.
> >This has been debated for months on debian-legal. You
>
> >can read the archives here:
> >http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
>
> Side note: They only consider GFDLd text to be
> "non-free" when "Invariant Sections", "Cover Texts",
> "Acknowledgements", and/or "Dedications" (all GFDL
> options) are used. We don't use any of those so our
> text is free content.

There was talk about moving all FDL-content to non-free or do a
relicensing to GPL. I'm not sure whether they'll go through with that.

> Heh? What is a "machine-readable expression of
> freedom" and why is that an important thing to have? I
> guess I'll have to do some more reading....

Machine-readable means the RDF-code embedded in the html-document. Just
look at the rdf-tags in the html-source at creativecommons.org.
In a later stage they will make a search engine that automatically
returns results restricted to your wanted license type.

Wouter

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body:
On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 03:14:45AM +0200, Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
> Op wo 16-07-2003, om 02:46 schreef Daniel Mayer:
> > Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:
> > >...
> > >I also would like to point out the recent Debian
> > >decision to consider the GFDL as a non-free license.
> > >This has been debated for months on debian-legal. You
> >
> > >can read the archives here:
> > >http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
> >
> > Side note: They only consider GFDLd text to be
> > "non-free" when "Invariant Sections", "Cover Texts",
> > "Acknowledgements", and/or "Dedications" (all GFDL
> > options) are used. We don't use any of those so our
> > text is free content.
>
> There was talk about moving all FDL-content to non-free or do a
> relicensing to GPL. I'm not sure whether they'll go through with that.

Correctment: moving all FDL-content with options (usually "invariant sections")
to non-free. I see nothing that would stop Debian from doing it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Michael again

body:
Daniel-
> But we have been doing this for months already - he
> simply will not get the point! It is high time we
> complained to AOL about this person. If that doesn't
> work after a couple of trys then the whole IP range
> that he uses should be blocked

This might mean all of AOL. I don't think that's an acceptable option. But
if you beg me a little, I'll hack our IP blocking code to
- make IP blocks auto-expire after a while (unless no limit is set), so
that we can use them more effectively
- allow sysops to ban newly created accounts for the first 4 weeks or so
and retrieve the IP address under which they were created.

That should make it easier to get rid of new Michael incarnations as they
appear, and to keep track of the IP addresses he uses.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: wiki upset

body:
re-last night's blocking, I have since been in contact via email with Jason.

The problem arose because by a twist of fate, Jason was given an IP
previously used by DW and then went straight to edit articles which some of
DW's incarnations had edited in a rather controversial manner. It seemed at
the time rather too much of a coincidence. I and others were highly
suspicious. However even strange coincidences such that these evidently do
occur. The blocking had nothing to do with the opinions being expressed but
were simply because of a previous DW IP going straight of articles
associated with DW, or rather one of his person? with had added in the past
in various places added references that were, or could be interpreted as,
supportive of paedophilia.  (Some comments made at that time were rather
disturbing. If I remember correctly I asked about wiki having any
downloadable images of children. It was presumed at the time that DW, having
been banned for the umptheenth time, had decided to get revenge by trying to
damage wiki by creating the impression to visitors that wiki could be of use
to, or was being used by,  paedophiles.)

It was in view of this, and the apparently suspicious coincidence of /that/
IP going to /those/ pages that a block was imposed and all changes which
were presumed to be DW's work, reverted or deleted.

The block has since been removed and some of the changes made reverted.
(Those who made the revertions decided not to reinsert all of Jason's
additions.) I have explained what happened and how it happened to Jason.

I hope that clears up the mystery.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikitech-l] From the Japanese list -- I think this qualifies as spam

body:
--- DO NOT REPLY
<testmail at fdpresearch.com.wikipedia.org> wrote:
> From: "DO NOT REPLY"
> <testmail at fdpresearch.com.wikipedia.org>
> To: wikija-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiJA-l] LCD Manufacturers List ( 2 of
> 133 )
> Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 16:26:32 +0800
>

---------------------------------

 GLOBAL             FPD (Flat Panel Display)
MANUFACTURERS LIST
              July 2003

INDEX
      Manufacturers             of TFT products.
(Listed alphabetically)

              Manufacturers of LCD modules. (Listed
alphabetically)
                Manufacturers             of TFT
products          TOP

     PHILIPS                          ELECTRONICS

      Philips Electronics is a global leader in color
television sets, lighting,      electric shavers,
medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, and
     one-chip TV products.

SHARP                      ELECTRONICS CORP.

                  Sharp                  LCD Video
Monitors features high brightness with long-life
           fluorescent backlight. With high resolution
and a flicker-free,                  full color (16.7
million) TFT active matrix LCD, these monitors
         display crisp pictures enhanced by a
non-glare screen and wide                  viewing
angle.

                                 SHENZHEN
          SCOPE CO., LTD (China)

                    SHENZHEN                    SCOPE
SCIENTIFIC & TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT CO., LTD.
established                    in 1993, is a company
specialized in manufacturing Monitors,
   Multi-media LCD project and PC series products. At
present                    the company is mainly
engaged in "SCOPE" monitors                    and
"SCOPE" computer research and manufacturing.
         Till 2000, the company has form a annual
manufacturing scale                    of 0.5 million
monitors and 0.1 million PCs

             TECGOO                      INDUSTRIAL
LIMITED (China)

                  Tecgoo                  Industrial
Limited is a professional manufacturer and exporter
              of computer display products in China.
Tecgoo Industrial Limited                  are now
supplying satisfactory display products: computer CRT
                monitors and LCD monitors to the
world.

                                               YINKE
                   COMPUTER CO., LTD (China)
                  YinKe                  Computer
Manufacturing Co.Ltd was established in 1998 ,Ocupying
                 Area of more than 7000 Sqare meters
and Own Many Years Hi-Tech                  Monitor
production experience ? Now Possess of 350 staff and
               Thirty more Engineer and Technicals

                                  ZHUANGZHENG
            ELECTRONIC CO., LTD (China)
      Shenzhen Zhuangzheng Electronic Technology Co.,
Ltd, a legal manufacturer      of color monitor, is
integrating R&D, production and selling of computer
  software and hardware.

              Manufacturers                of LCD
modules                TOP

CRYSTALFONTZ                          AMERICA INC.
(USA)
                      Crystalfontz
 designs, manufactures, and sells high-quality LCD
modules.                      Our technical expertise,
innovative designs, and direct
distribution allow us to offer the highest quality
LCDs                      at the lowest cost.

FORDATA                          ELECTRONIC CO., LTD
(China)
                      FORDATA                      is
engaged in designing, developing and mass-producing
                  a broad range of standard Character
and Graphic dot matrix                      LCD module
in SMT, COB and COG type. Custom LCD modules
           for specialized applications are also
available

HANTRONIX,                          Inc. (USA)
                      Hantronix
offers a complete line of standard character and
graphic                      modules, notebook
displays that are very dependable and
    cost competitive. We have also produced many
customs LCD's,                      and offer the best
of customer support.

OCULAR                          INC. (USA)
                      Ocular,
Inc. proudly presents its knowledge and capability of
designing                      and manufacturing a
broad selection of LCD and LCM technologies
          including #8220;chip on glass#8221; and
#8220;chip on                      film#8221; to meet
your requirements for any application.

OPTREX                          AMERICA INC. (USA)

        Optrex is the world leader in manufacture and
marketing of O.E.M. Liquid        Crystal Displays for
an expanding line of products that ranges from
Instruments,        to handheld equipment, to
automotive displays.

                                             SPACE
                   LCD CO.,LTD. (Korea)

      Space LCD Co., LTD. produces top-quality LCD
with our 20-year know-how      and experience. Our LCD
Module,equipped with TAB & COG Ass'y line,
imports LCD panels and manufactures products with our
own equipment.

TRULY                          SEMICONDUCTORS LTD
(HongKong)
                      Truly
Semiconductors can deliver highest quality of TN and
STN                      LCD panels, Electrical
Controlled Birefringence "ECB" color,
    FSTN color ,256 or above color STN and Color TN
With Black                      Mask LCDs ; modules
assembled in COB, COG and TAB;and Touch
      Panels solutions according to customer's needs.

_______________________________________________WikiJA-l
mailing
listWikiJA-l at wikipedia.orghttp://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikija-l

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