body:
On 5/15/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems a sort of per-user patrolling. I'd add to the list accept edits by
> X users i select as auto-Okeyed

Yeah, that would be cool - I can imagine it would be very handy for
vandal patrols.

Steve


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> Could it be done in the ALT tag? It seems to me that there is a
>> mismatch between those who want attribution to be readily available,
>> and what people actually want when they click on the image. I think if
>> people actually want to know who created the image, it's pretty easy
>> to find out. But honestly, have you ever wondered who made an image
>> that you clicked on somewhere on the web? Why would you care?

>I do not believe an alt tag would be sufficient.

>We frequently receive requests from commercial publishers for image
>copyright information, even with how easily it is currently provided.
It's publicly available. They can ask if they are unsure or doesn't trust on
wikis. What's the problem?

>On *articles* I believe our behavior is ideal in almost all cases
because we do exactly what is expected: we provide an enlarged copy of
the image.  Most commercial news sites have the same behavior.

We have a good system for images but we also wanna images for other things!
Would be better a JS popup saying "What did you want? a) See the article b)
See the image" ??

>As far as I can tell, the problem is limited to the main page and
potentially the portals. Do you agree?

I disagree. It's only going to be used there but it could be used anywhere.
We must be aware of that.

>We can't require people to 'go out of their way to look for it'. We
>need to provided attribution in roughly the same manner as we do for
>the articles, and we need to make it reasonably accessible.
Is really people going to care? They often say "uploaded from english
wikipedia X" and X is an article!! Having one or two steps won't be a
difference for them. They're used to right-click and catch. Those who care
will find it easy :)

>There are people who argue that our current behavior is insufficient
>and whom want an inline byline.  But providing one runs the risk of
>just creating a greater mess (article authors don't get inline
>bylines, multiple editor images, and the requirements to provide
>historical data on GFDLed images).  Hiding it further is just not
>going to fly.

>> Magnus' suggestion would actually be the most visible, especially if
>> the attribution information was displayed directly on the page.
>>
>> Australia
>> (You clicked on [Australian flag.svg], created by Jim Smith)
>> Australia is a great country...
>> etc. The real problem is that we don't actually have attribution data
>> in a readily packaged form.

>Should read 'one of the problems with that proposal'.  :)
>What we currently do is fine, there is no great need to have an easily
>machine readable copyright holder with our current framework.

That's not the system. I was talking about a link *to the real image page*.
It's like articles when disambiguation is on "title (disambiguation)".
It makes no sense showing "image by John", when John only added a
transparent background of an image uploaded by Mike. And it doesn't make
sens showing "image by Mike" because he uploaded it from X wikipedia. An on
that wikipedia it was uploaded from Susan, who got it from the NASA webpage
an so it's on the public domain :D


list: wikien-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> That's an understatement. The most potent criticism of Jimbo's
> actions here is that he hasn't been decisive enough in simply
> resolving the issue himself instead of waiting on the community.

I have some sympathy with that view.  Being told "All your base are
going to get belong to us some day, unless you destroy them first"
does rather create ambiguity and uncertainty. But ultimately probably
less damaging than "Userboxes must die today'.

Steve


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Yury Tarasievich

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict re:Belarusan WP

body:
On 15/05/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
...
> Me thinks that we should really stop to even mention BE:wiki as such, and
> confront ourselves with a strictly technical problem, regarding all
...

Okay, I guess... as long as this specific problem, too, gets addressed
in foreseeable future... :)

-regards


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another notch in the wall ...

body:
I see that Alexa has just nudged WP to #16 in its global list.  This makes
WP one below Microsoft's site, and two below Amazon.  That's some company to
be keeping ...

Oddly the numbers have been dropping just over the past few days.  If this
rise is sustainable it will be because the hardware position is much
improved (kudos to all concerned).

Another interesting comparison: if comScore says that WP's global audience
is around 140 million, I read in my newspaper today that  BBC World Service
has 160 million.  I don't know whether these numbers are credible,
naturally.

Charles


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [[Piss_Christ]]
> > [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]]
> > [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]]
> > [[Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars]] has a tendancy to be inflammatory
> >
> > [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct]] is a case where being
> > inflammatory appears to have been built into policy (RFC on articles
> > ok RFC on people.. less so)
> >
> > People seem to find our copyright policies inflammatory.
> >
> > [[Alan S. Chartock]] is either heading in the dirrection of WP:OFFICE
> > or in the dirrection of being inflammatory posebly both (see some of
> > the history to understand why).
> >
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
> I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a
> HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions
> or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and
> posting inflammatory statements on your userpage!
>I can't even begin
> to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an
> asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable
> cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
>

Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be inflamitory?

How about [[User:Cyde/Weird pictures]] (seriously not safe for work)?

> Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then
> ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the
> facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many
> people it offends.

Of course. Now think about how that effects our editor pool.
>
> So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses!
> It's not the same thing!
>
> --Oskar

I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly
framed argument. The problem is that if you try to reframe the
argument to get around the obvious problem it runs into a whole load
of new ones.

--
geni


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] [WikiEN-l] Tearing down the Chinese Firewall

body:
On 5/15/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So IMO the real problem is how the users could go around the block and reach
> > us (having been living under the wall for so long, they already know how).
> > Instead, it is how we could bring the knowledge, and more importantly the
> > culture and the spirits of wikimedia, to the people (which is our goal,
> > no?), and sadly, I don't think we could do that when the government says no.
>
> I think you're right - the Chinese Wikipedia will remain a niche
> phenomenon in mainland China unless and until the political situation
> changes. Of course, it's still a very important niche. As for directly
> effecting that political change, that truly is outside the scope of
> Wikimedia, though I very much hope that wiki tools and processes will
> play a part.
>
> Erik

Fixing the bug in Mediawiki where blocking a user blocks everyone
using an IP address that user tries to edit, would be a step in the
right direction, though.

Anthony


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Piss_Christ]]
> [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]]
> [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]]
> [[Wikipedia:Lamest edit wars]] has a tendancy to be inflammatory
>
> [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct]] is a case where being
> inflammatory appears to have been built into policy (RFC on articles
> ok RFC on people.. less so)
>
> People seem to find our copyright policies inflammatory.
>
> [[Alan S. Chartock]] is either heading in the dirrection of WP:OFFICE
> or in the dirrection of being inflammatory posebly both (see some of
> the history to understand why).
>
>
> --
> geni

I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a
HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions
or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and
posting inflammatory statements on your userpage! I can't even begin
to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an
asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable
cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.

Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then
ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the
facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many
people it offends.

So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses!
It's not the same thing!

--Oskar


subject: [Wikitech-l] references request

body:
Hi,
  It would be nice if this worked:

some <ref name="foo"/>text
more <ref name="foo">foo.com </ref> text

<references />

That is, naming references before they're actually defined. It's a bit
awkward at the moment when you want to use a reference before the
first time you'd previously used it. You have to locate it, copy it
etc. If you're doing section editing, it's even more inconvenient.

Just thought I'd mention it.

:)

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
On 5/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no problem, really. The point I was making is that we don't
> want to make it any *less* accessable because it can be shown that the
> people who want and need the information already have some difficulity
> finding it. It's not exactly obvious that the image is clickable at
> all. In any case, we can not hide the attribution information.

Heh, ok, so people who are looking to follow the link to another
article click and get the wrong behaviour. People actually looking for
the image info don't think of clicking. Everyone loses!

Would it be possible, on each and every page, to have a "Image
credits" link which would provide links to the attribution page of
every image used on that page, no matter how it was used? Then
professionals would know to always click on that same "Image credits"
link placed in the bottom corner, for example.

> A feature that lets people hide the attribution page and as a result
> violate our image licensing obligations can not be accepted, we must
> be aware of that.

Ahem, everyone, including us, violates our licenses left, right and centre.

> We need to know all the expected use cases so that we can produce a
> solution which preserves our obligations, avoids causing attribution
> problems elsewhere, and meets our needs.   So please detail where you
> can see 'linkable images' being used outside of the main page.

Already did. I'm sure there are other uses too.

> I'm not following you.  If we fail to provide attribution in a clear,
> consistent, and accessable manner then we have no right to distribute
> the image at all.

> Our current system covers the situation you've proposed just fine.
> The problem of lacking concise machine readable attribution is only a
> problem for the proposal that makes the image look like a redirect.

It'd also be handy for doing user image galleries. Currently all
uploads are treated as belong to you.

> The reason I tried to split out the 'main/portal' page cases is
> because another possible solution would be to create an image tag flag
> which allowed you to specify a link target for the image but placed a
> small 'image credits' link right below the image which takes you to
> the image page.

Yep, that's feasible.

> We could achieve something like that by using an image caption, but
> captions are realestate intensive.

Make them short then :)  "cred"? "IMG" ?

Steve


body:
On 5/15/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
|> Another interesting comparison: if comScore says that WP's global audience
> is around 140 million, I read in my newspaper today that  BBC World Service
> has 160 million.  I don't know whether these numbers are credible,
> naturally.

Audience is a weird word. During the olympic games, they claim a
television audience of 2 billion. I think that means that 2 billion
people live in areas broadcast to by companies that may occasionally
show some olympics. But most of them probably don't even have TVs...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Anyone reading your messages in this thread would get the impression
> that I unilaterally banned userboxes by secret decree, over ruling the
> wishes of the community in a fit of autocratic tyranny.
>
You're a moron, Jimbo.  I was the one arguing that you *didn't*
unilaterally ban userboxes by secret decree.

Rob Church is the one who claimed that CSD T1 was decreed from above.
At first I entertained the possibility that he might have been telling
the truth, but a short while later I came to the conclusion that he
was mistaken.

Anthony


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 15/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 15/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 5/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
> > > >
> > > > >That doens't make them official.
> > > >
> > > > It implies a degree of endorsement.
> > >
> > > To who?
> >
> > To readers and new editors, who don't know the ropes. Let's not forget that.
>
> How do readers know about namespaces?

They don't necessarily, although they could have encountered them from
another wiki running MediaWiki or wiki software which supports them,
or something similar. Your response intensifies my argument; readers
who *don't* will assume it's all part of the main site content.

Rob Church


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Is this a bug (strikethrough doesn't carry onto
	lists)

body:
On 15/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems like in this sort of text:
>
> <s>some struck out text
> *a
> *list
> *that should
> *also be
> struck out </s>

The parser sees the * and starts a new <ul> container. Since tags
can't overlap in XHTML, the <s> container must be closed before the
<ul>.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Watchlist/contributions enhancement (round #2)

body:
On 5/15/06, Robert Rapplean <mythobeast at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree. This would be very helpful.  Although it's possible to get an email
> alert the first time someone changes something you're watching, it's a bit
> cumbersome to use your inbox as a todolist for change checking.  This would
> make things much easier.

Yeah, and you can do something similar with "My contributions", but it
doesn't help distinguish between the first change made (which was ok)
and the second and subsequent changes (which may not be).

Steve


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
I just wanted to state here that I was infact accused of violating
policy when I added userbox to my userpage stating that I was against
the war in Iraq. I was was informed that anti-American bigotry was not
tolerated by the concerned administrator as a result of which I was in
violation of policy. I'm still not sure this accusation was
justified-can anyone tell me if it was.


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a
> > HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions
> > or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and
> > posting inflammatory statements on your userpage!
> >I can't even begin
> > to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an
> > asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable
> > cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.
> >
>
>
> Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be inflamitory?
>
> How about [[User:Cyde/Weird pictures]] (seriously not safe for work)?

Is it so nuts to think that people shouldn't do try to do inflammatory
things, just to be inflammatory? Is it really ok to piss people off,
*just to piss people off*. I'm going to come out and say no, you
shouldn't be inflammatory just for it's own sake. You should be civil
to your fellow wikipedians. We have a policy on that, it's called
WP:CIVIL.

So yeah, having inflammatory webpages is against policy.

As a side note, User:Cyde really has behaved very badly lately (see
[[Template:User christian]]), and he justified defaming the crucifix
for fun by saying "Hey, since we piss muslims off by haveing the
mohammad picture, that must mean we have free license to behave like
jack-asses just for fun!"

Let's just say that, for me, I'm fine with invoking "evidence to the
contrary"-clause of WP:AGF.

> > Look, if an article is needlessly POV-style inflammatory, then
> > ofcourse that should be fixed. But if an article presents just the
> > facts in an NPOV fashion, then it's a good article, no matter how many
> > people it offends.
>
> Of course. Now think about how that effects our editor pool.
> >
> > So stop using the cartoons controversy to justify behaving like asses!
> > It's not the same thing!
> >
> > --Oskar
>
> I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly
> framed argument. The problem is that if you try to reframe the
> argument to get around the obvious problem it runs into a whole load
> of new ones.
>
> --
> geni

I don't really see these problems. Here's how I see it:

"Don't be dicks. Be civil. Don't insult people just for the hell of
it. And write good neutral articles, presenting the facts in a neutral
way."

Why is this so hard?

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Baidupedia (the downside to free content?)

body:
On 5/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> >I don't know how chinese copyright law works and international
> >copyright law tends to get very complex very fast.
> >
> >
> Answers.com is an American company.  If Baidu is listed on nasdaq that
> may be enough for US jurisdiction and US copyright law to apply.  If the
> individual authors are left to their own devices than individual authors
> should start peppering these unrepentant violators with large quantities
> of DMCA takedown orders.  If you are a significant author in 1,000
> articles you could send them 1,000 takedown orders.

So you send 1000 takedown orders, and they ignore them all, then what?

> This could be more
> easily done by US Wikipedians because of their easier access to US
> courts in every judicial district if it ever gets to that.  Proving
> damages would be difficult, but accepting the minimum statutory penalty
> of $200 for each separate violation could have an interesting effect.
>
Don't you have to register the copyright in order to get statutory
damages?  If so, then you're out $30 a pop.  (I looked it up, not only
do you have to register to get statutory damages, you have to register
within 3 months of publication or before the infringement takes
place.)  http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000412----000-.html

Then you get your judgement, for $200 a pop.  Now how exactly do you
plan on collecting that $200 per violation?

In my opinion copyleft licenses are most useful when used defensively.
 If Baidu sues me, you can be sure I'll countersue.  But short of
that...

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

body:
On 5/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to me that the most plausible place in which someone could
> use the GFDL in suing is if you re-used improperly re-used material.
>
> For example: Company X downloads GFDL material from Wikipedia but does
> not correctly comply with the terms of the GFDL. Company Y knows
> Company X's material is GFDL and re-uses it themselves. Company X sues
> Company Y; Company Y pulls out the GFDL, proves the material was
> originally licensed under it, counter-sues Company X for having
> claimed they had copyright control over something they they did not.
>
Is it illegal to claim you have copyright control over something you
do not?  I'm sure there are plently of laws against claiming you
*wrote* something you didn't, but if you properly attribute the
authors but tack on a false claim of copyright, I don't see how that
can be illegal.

Anthony


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should Wikipedia make it clear to users that it is
	not censored for minors?

body:
On 15/05/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia has followed a policy whereby it's content is not censored
> > for children. Having said that would it be useful to put a
> > warning/advisory on the website to make it clear to users that though
> > it is legal for them to enter the site, they should be aware that
> > Wikipedia's content is not censored for minors and the latter may come
> > across some sexual or other adult material so it is advisable for them
> > to be careful what they view?
>
> The existing disclaimers (which are linked to from the bottom of every
> single page on the entire wiki) pretty much cover it, but then again
> noone seems to read the disclaimers.

Their own problem.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

body:
On 5/15/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Is it illegal to claim you have copyright control over something you
> > do not?  I'm sure there are plently of laws against claiming you
> > *wrote* something you didn't, but if you properly attribute the
> > authors but tack on a false claim of copyright, I don't see how that
> > can be illegal.
>
> I'm not sure what you're meaning here - are you talking about falsely
> claiming that you own the copyright on the material, but attributing
> the authorship correctly?
>
> -Matt

I'm referring to the situation which I quoted directly above my question.

Anthony


body:
On 15/05/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> As far as I understand, a block element (<ul>) cannot be included in an
> inline element (<s>).

That's the one I was angling for. Sorry, completely and utterly
misexplained it the first time round.

Rob Church


from_name: Theresa Knott

body:
On 5/15/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Their own problem.
> >
> >
> > Rob Church
>
> Be that as it may, don't we still have an ethical responsibility to do
> what we can to deter kids from coming across adult-meterial?

No. That is thier parents job. Parents will do it lovingly and
responsibly. We would make a complete arse of it.

Theresa


body:
On 15/05/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Their own problem.
> >
> >
> > Rob Church
>
> Be that as it may, don't we still have an ethical responsibility to do
> what we can to deter kids from coming across adult-meterial?

What I define as "adult" is not going to show up on Wikipedia outside
of an educational context. Kids are naturally curious. I'd sooner they
got the giggles over someone's penis on a web site and had the
opportunity to learn something about their own bodies from a
probably-accurate source than browsed porn sites and learned something
about the profits that can be had from exploiting people.

Rob Church


body:
On 15/05/06, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 15/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Their own problem.
> > >
> > >
> > > Rob Church
> >
> > Be that as it may, don't we still have an ethical responsibility to do
> > what we can to deter kids from coming across adult-meterial?
>
> No. That is thier parents job. Parents will do it lovingly and
> responsibly. We would make a complete arse of it.

Agree completely.

Rob Church


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
Prasad J wrote:
> But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a subjective
> one? A userbox which seems inflammatory/divise to one user may not
> appear that way to another. An example of such a scenario would be
> when a user named Anwar Saadat declared, using such a template,  his
> opinion that Kashmir should be granted independence. Clearly, this did
> not seem divisive/inflammatory to Saadat who was of the view that he
> was merely expressing his personal feelings on that issue. However a
> Wikipedian named Bhadani took this matter very seriously and accused
> Saadat of committing "treason" against India. Here it is apparent that
> Bhadani (being an Indian and hence, presumably, opposed to the
> separatist movement in Kashmir) obviously considered the userbox to be
> a a divisive/inflammatory one. So the aforementioned adjectives are
> themselves subject to ambguity.

It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a crucial
and necessary one) that contributors should leave their political
opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to divide the
editing community into political factions can be seen as unhelpful.

Frankly it sounds like everyone in the case you mention above needs a
good sound slapping.

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tearing down the Chinese Firewall

body:
"Raphael Wegmann"  wrote
>> The main purpose of Wikipedia can be defined as a (new) kind of
>> publishing,
>> namely putting high quality and informative and neutral, factual articles
>> into the public domain, under the GFDL.  That is what we do.  This is not
>> propaganda.
>
> That's what Wikipedia pretends to do according to the policies.
> I've believed that myself until I've found out, that administrators
> block editors they disagree with.

This might be considered an application of 'falsus in uno falsus in omnibus'
([[List of Latin phrases (F-O)]]), to argue that if you could find anything
propagandistic in the English Wikipedia, that makes all 1130000 pages
propagandistic.  Of course that misunderstands.  It is quite understandable,
psychologically, why such arguments are brought up (this is hardly the first
time).  Someone with a specialised interest scrutinises our coverage, and
sees something they reckon is flawed.

But that is not an argument on the purpose of the encyclopedia.  It merely
says that it is not finished.  We know that.

Charles


from_name: Plyd

body:
Excellent idea!

On 5/15/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems a sort of per-user patrolling. I'd add to the list accept edits by
> X users i select as auto-Okeyed

I would add a three-state tag:
- not seen yet
- seen (hide from your watchlist/RC)
- approved (hide from your watchlist, your RC list, but also from
every user watchlist/RC lists who selected you as auto-Okey user)

this way, this would help team fighting for vandalism

Plyd


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Wikitech-l] "Image Credits" proposal to allow images to link
	to pages

body:
On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Provide the list of the 20 contributors with the most diffs, plus the
> originator. You'll almost certainly have the top 5 in there somewhere.

Only true in the majority of cases because the overwhelming majority
(86%) of articles have fewer unique contributors than that.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Articles_distinct.png)

Edit counts are a horrible metric in general... Edit analysis shows
that people who add lots of content tend to do it in single large
bursts.

Plenty of articles that fall out of the group with <20 distinct
contribs would be completely misrepresented by the 'top 20
contributors'.


from_name: Raphael Wegmann

body:
charles matthews wrote:
> Prasad J wrote
>
>
>> As, I said by allowing Chinese Wikipedians (who are probably just kids
>> who aren't aware of what exactly their government does to
>> "dissidents") will do them more harm than good. You wouldn't be
>> breaking any laws, you would just be getting some Chinese teenager
>> shot for being a "traitor". America tried to bring democracy to Iraq
>> and only succeeded in instigating a civil war.Americans were not put
>> on this planet for the express purpose of preserving democracy-why
>> don't you give it a rest for a while?
>
> There are good reasons why this list is dedicated to improving the English
> Wikipedia.  Rather than the world situation in general.
>
> The main purpose of Wikipedia can be defined as a (new) kind of publishing,
> namely putting high quality and informative and neutral, factual articles
> into the public domain, under the GFDL.  That is what we do.  This is not
> propaganda.

That's what Wikipedia pretends to do according to the policies.
I've believed that myself until I've found out, that administrators
block editors they disagree with.

--
Raphael


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
Maybe the simplest idea would be to add, at the end of the history,
the list of all pictures included in the article, with their info,
licence, author etc.
I don't think this could be a problem to make, and I find it quite
logic to see all authors at the same place (Why pictures authors
should be separated from text authors?)

Plyd

On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> I understand you're problem, and I understand you are not talking
> about what I'm talking about. I am talking about free icons, the
> ICONS that are used as, well, icons - look up icons on the very
> 'wikipedia' we're discussing; they are meant to represent something.
> When you click the 'harddrive' icon on you're computer, you expect to
> open you're harddrive, not view information about  the harddrive
> icon. I don't think that normal images should use this feature, or
> perhaps even have the option - maybe we need a new Icon: namespace
> just for free-domain-released icons like the crystal ones, that can
> be substituted, and LINKED WITH. I don't care what license the icons
> in the crystal pack have, and I'm sure no users do either - they just
> want to get to their destination. I know you would get pissed if
> you're beautiful picture or drawing of X were just passed on by,
> without any attribution - fine. That sort of thing shouldn't be
> linked ever for any reason that I see - I'm talking about images
> BUILT for the PURPOSE of acting as an ICON representing and pointing
> to something else. Right?
>
> On May 15, 2006, at 8:58 AM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
> > On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> >> Reply from me, I BELIEVE I have a O.K. solution to this that we can
> >> all agree with.
> >>
> >> There are already a multitude of 'tags' that  go on the image tag,
> >> such as making it a thumb, the pixel width, an alt tag, things like
> >> that - why not add a 'link tag'? If you supply, say,
> >> [[Image:Chicago_icon|48px|:Chicago]] - then the image
> >> Image:Chicago_icon would appear, liked to [[Chicago]]. To parse it,
> >> just catch any line starting with a colon (just prefix main-namespace
> >> links in this format with a single colon, as you do for
> >> transclusion). Does anybody see the logic in this? And, for links of
> >> this format, do something similar to the redirect - put a notice
> >> where redirects go that this image pointed you *here*, go *HERE*
> >> instead for information about this image.
> >
> > I find the redirect notice notion highly distasteful. Any other site
> > with a behavior like that would get a takedown notice from me
> > explaining that the attribution was effectively hidden.
> >
> > A small 'image credit' or 'image details' link below (or in an
> > adjustable position) would, however, be acceptable.
> >
> >> Also, perhaps put the attribution in the alt-tag for images so linked
> >> - we could make attribution a separate field on the upload screen -
> >> that would also even help with the proposed upload-to-commons thing!
> >
> > Alt text will goof up people using screen readers because they expect
> > the alt text to be an alternative to the image (i.e. a description of
> > the image) as per the HTML standards. In the past it has also been
> > suggested that the longdesc attribute be set to the image page, but no
> > browsers that I'm aware of make longdesc available in any case.
> >
> >> Even if not the attribution thing, I really think a link-to option
> >> would really simplify things for users.
> >
> > Yes it would be useful. So lets figure out how to make something that
> > everyone will find acceptable.
> >
> > For a little more fodder for the discussion is that several of the
> > non-english wikipedias (fr for their portals icons and de for their
> > featured article image) already fail to provide attribution for a few
> > their free images on their main page.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 12:23:50PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 06:27:18PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > Heh, ok, so people who are looking to follow the link to another
> > article click and get the wrong behaviour. People actually looking for
> > the image info don't think of clicking. Everyone loses!
> >
> > Would it be possible, on each and every page, to have a "Image
> > credits" link which would provide links to the attribution page of
> > every image used on that page, no matter how it was used? Then
> > professionals would know to always click on that same "Image credits"
> > link placed in the bottom corner, for example.
>
> I've been following this thread with some interest, both as a
> photographer (who has actually contributed original work to WP) and as
> a usability guy, who understands that icons should behave the way icons
> *behave*...
>
> and I like Steve's suggestion here a *lot*; I think it's probably the
> best balance between people getting credit for their work, and websites
> working as websites are -- these days -- expected to work.
>
> I've unthreaded this, so this proposal doesn't get lost in the noise.
>
> Comments, all?

An "image credits"-link below an icon will look very odd. Especially
when there are 8 project icons next to each other, like at the
bottom of the en:Main_Page.

For the WM project icons, we could perhaps have an Icon: namespace. But
this would not solve the problem of the featured article thumbnails
not working like thumbnails on other news websites.

We could show a fancy menu when hovering over the image, having a link
to the image info page and a link to the article. That would still be
- unexpected for most users
- not friendly to users browsing with user agents that are not
  CSS or JS ready (depending on implementation)
- ugly to code when many browsers should be supported.
Fallback would be the current behaviour.

I'm not yet convinced that this would be a good solution, though.

Regards,

	JeLuF


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 5/15/06, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
> An "image credits"-link below an icon will look very odd. Especially
> when there are 8 project icons next to each other, like at the
> bottom of the en:Main_Page.

If I understood the suggestion correctly, it is to essentially have
something like

[[Special:Credits/Galileo_Galilei]]

which would then display all the image description pages of images
used on [[Galileo Galilei]], and to embed a single link to this
special page somewhere in the skin for all articles, e.g. an "image
credits" tab.

Erik


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>geni wrote:
>
>
>>I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly
>>framed argument.
>>
>>
>?  Bringing up a completely irrlevant and rather obvious red herring
>does nothing to knock out the fact that our community has repeatedly and
>constantly rejected the notion that behaving in a divisive and
>inflammatory fashion is bad.
>
>
I trust that Jimmy managed to lose himself in the hazy world of multiple
negatives and intended the opposite of what this statement would
literally mean. Behaving in a divisive and inflammatory fashion is bad.
The community recognizes that principle, even if it's sometimes a little
slow to cast out the offenders.

--Michael Snow


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > I wasn't makeing a dirrect comparision. Just knocking out a poorly
> > framed argument.
>
> ?  Bringing up a completely irrlevant and rather obvious red herring
> does nothing to knock out the fact that our community has repeatedly and
> constantly rejected the notion that behaving in a divisive and
> inflammatory fashion is bad.

Could you clarrify this. Did you really mean to say that you think
ther community thinks it is fine to behave in divisive and
inflammatory fashion?

--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

>2006/5/15, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org>:
>
>
>
>>I was thinking about this.  Now I know there are tons of mirrors of
>>the English Wikipedia, but what about the Chinese one?  I guess I
>>could just do my own study, but if someone happens to know already
>>that'd be easier :).
>>
>>
>
>I did a small search, and could only find one:
>http://wikimiki.us/zh/%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5
>
>My methods weren't nearly perfect though, so if anyone else thinks
>they can find other ones, I think they might well be right.
>
>
>

Why don't we advise the program Torpark to our Chinese friends. The Thai
government is also very heavily censoring the internet and all sites
that have anti government statements get blocked and from time to time
all of geocities. A friend of mine recommended Torpark and it works
perfectly no more redirects to the Thai policesite if you are surfing to
blocked sites! :)

Waerth


body:
Maybe it could be simulated...
The parser could add <s></s> tags inside the <ul><li> list.
In fact the user doesn't expect the <s> tag to be broken by the list.

Plyd

On 5/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/05/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> > As far as I understand, a block element (<ul>) cannot be included in an
> > inline element (<s>).
>
> That's the one I was angling for. Sorry, completely and utterly
> misexplained it the first time round.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> So yeah, having inflammatory webpages is against policy.

That page is hardly unique ( you find them when cheacking to make sure
than no fair use images appear on userpages).

--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/15/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> I would add a three-state tag:
> - not seen yet
> - seen (hide from your watchlist/RC)
> - approved (hide from your watchlist, your RC list, but also from
> every user watchlist/RC lists who selected you as auto-Okey user)
>
> this way, this would help team fighting for vandalism

Good, but trickier from a GUI perspective.

Steve


body:
On 5/15/06, Rotem Liss <mail at rotemliss.com> wrote:
> As far as I understand, a block element (<ul>) cannot be included in an
> inline element (<s>).

Ok, that makes sense. Ideally mediawiki would generate two tags and
all that, but it's such a minor thing, there are lots more important
to worry about.

It was just noticeable when I wanted to strike out a whole paragraph
with bullet points.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> Oh, really not a bad idea! I think it should be added to the
> contributors section thing - just take the uploader of the latest
> version of the image, and add it to the current 'credits' section of
> the footer.

Giving the uploader credit could be very misleading, especially if all
they've done is move an image from de to commons, for example.

Steve


body:
On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> Well, just a credits link - not a tab, a link in the footer. And the
> special credits wouldn't only have image credits, so perhaps a link
> called 'Article and image credits'.
>
> I must be dumb, cause I don't see why so much importance and thought
> is put into the relatively un-important images. I could stand a
> wikipedia with 0 images at all just fine, I go there for the text -
> yet there isn't all this hullabaloo over content copyrights ^^/

Actually a credits tab would make an awful lot of sense from a GFDL
compliance point of view. It would provide full credits of text (top 5
contributors, plus list of others) and images (all contributors with
licence details for each image).

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> > Oh, really not a bad idea! I think it should be added to the
> > contributors section thing - just take the uploader of the latest
> > version of the image, and add it to the current 'credits' section of
> > the footer.
>
> Giving the uploader credit could be very misleading, especially if all
> they've done is move an image from de to commons, for example.
>
The idea was to put the whole description the uploader gave (licence,
photographer, etc.) as well as it's given on the image page, maybe
smaller, or not.

Plyd


from_name: Rotem Liss

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Is this a bug (strikethrough doesn't carry onto
 lists)

body:
As far as I understand, a block element (<ul>) cannot be included in an
inline element (<s>).

Chad Perrin wrote:

>On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 06:43:08PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
>
>
>>On 15/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Seems like in this sort of text:
>>>
>>><s>some struck out text
>>>*a
>>>*list
>>>*that should
>>>*also be
>>>struck out </s>
>>>
>>>
>>The parser sees the * and starts a new <ul> container. Since tags
>>can't overlap in XHTML, the <s> container must be closed before the
>><ul>.
>>
>>
>
>Tags can nest, though, so if the unordered list is entirely inside the
>strikethrough, it should technically work.
>
>
>

--
#define Name RotemLiss
#define Mail mailSTRUDELrotemlissDOTcom
#define Site www.rotemliss.com


body:
On 5/15/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> Maybe it could be simulated...
> The parser could add <s></s> tags inside the <ul><li> list.
> In fact the user doesn't expect the <s> tag to be broken by the list.

That's what I mean, it could be done, but is it worth it? Does it
affect other tags?

Steve


body:
charles matthews wrote:
> "Raphael Wegmann"  wrote
>>> The main purpose of Wikipedia can be defined as a (new) kind of
>>> publishing,
>>> namely putting high quality and informative and neutral, factual articles
>>> into the public domain, under the GFDL.  That is what we do.  This is not
>>> propaganda.
>> That's what Wikipedia pretends to do according to the policies.
>> I've believed that myself until I've found out, that administrators
>> block editors they disagree with.
>
> This might be considered an application of 'falsus in uno falsus in omnibus'
> ([[List of Latin phrases (F-O)]]), to argue that if you could find anything
> propagandistic in the English Wikipedia, that makes all 1130000 pages
> propagandistic.  Of course that misunderstands.  It is quite understandable,
> psychologically, why such arguments are brought up (this is hardly the first
> time).  Someone with a specialised interest scrutinises our coverage, and
> sees something they reckon is flawed.
>
> But that is not an argument on the purpose of the encyclopedia.  It merely
> says that it is not finished.  We know that.
>

I think, that you missunderstand me. I'm not claiming, that I've
found an article, which is propagandistic. That would indeed only
prove, that Wikipedia is not finished. What I've found is, that
administrators abuse their priviledges to have a final say in
content disputes. This is a systematic flaw in the Wikipedia,
which is excused by accusing the opposition of Wikilaywering
or by claiming to follow the policies "in spirit". The policies
are great, but there is not seperation of powers in Wikipedia,
and power corrupts even in reputed "open" systems like Wikipedia.

--
Raphael


from_name: Angela

body:
On 5/15/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was thinking about this.  Now I know there are tons of mirrors of
> > the English Wikipedia, but what about the Chinese one?  I guess I
> > could just do my own study, but if someone happens to know already
> > that'd be easier :).

> 2006/5/15, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org>:
> I did a small search, and could only find one:
> http://wikimiki.us/zh/%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5

There's also Qwika:
Chinese mirror: http://wikipedia.qwika.com/zh/
Machine translation of the English Wikipedia into Chinese:
http://wikipedia.qwika.com/en2zh/Wikipedia

Angela


body:
On 15/05/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/14/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia has followed a policy whereby it's content is not censored
> > for children. Having said that would it be useful to put a
> > warning/advisory on the website to make it clear to users that though
> > it is legal for them to enter the site, they should be aware that
> > Wikipedia's content is not censored for minors and the latter may come
> > across some sexual or other adult material so it is advisable for them
> > to be careful what they view?
>
> Perhaps Wikipedia needs something like the entry page on
> http://www.bigtits.com ?

I vote for pink on black though.

Rob Church


from_name: Petr Kadlec

body:
Hi!

On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> > Maybe it could be simulated...
> > The parser could add <s></s> tags inside the

 list.
> > In fact the user doesn't expect the <s> tag to be broken by the list.
>
> That's what I mean, it could be done, but is it worth it? Does it
> affect other tags?

I don't think it would be worth it. If you need it (I think it is
quite a rare need), you might instead of <s> </s> write

 and
 (or, write a
template for it (if there is not such one yet), of course).

HTH,
-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Chinese character rendering (was Re: Baidupedia (the
	downside to free content?))

body:
On 5/15/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Try installing the [[Code2000]] font and setting it as the default
> font for your web browser.  It's not the best-looking font in the
> world, but it's got a very wide range of characters.

That worked - I didn't even need to set it as default font. In total
irony, the first page I checked was Hong Kong, and for the first time
I noticed a warning down the bottom about East Asian characters. No
idea if for some reason that didn't appear before or I just didn't
notice it...

Steve


body:
On 5/15/06, Petr Kadlec <petr.kadlec at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think it would be worth it. If you need it (I think it is
> quite a rare need), you might instead of <s> </s> write
> <div style="text-decoration: line-through"> and </div> (or, write a
> template for it (if there is not such one yet), of course).

I agree, not worth it. But good reminder about text-decoration...

Incidentally, is there a general template (on en) for doing div tags?
Might look something like {{div|text|style string}}...

Steve


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

body:
On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Is it illegal to claim you have copyright control over something you
> do not?  I'm sure there are plently of laws against claiming you
> *wrote* something you didn't, but if you properly attribute the
> authors but tack on a false claim of copyright, I don't see how that
> can be illegal.

As I understand it (again, I am not in any way a lawyer), the relevant
parts of U.S. copyright law are:

   (c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with
    fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or
    words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or
    who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for
    public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that
    such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.
     (d) Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice. - Any person who,
    with fraudulent intent, removes or alters any notice of copyright
    appearing on a copy of a copyrighted work shall be fined not more
    than $2,500.
      (e) False Representation. - Any person who knowingly makes a
    false representation of a material fact in the application for
    copyright registration provided for by section 409, or in any
    written statement filed in connection with the application, shall
    be fined not more than $2,500.

>From http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/chapters/5/sections/section%5F506.html

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

body:
On 5/15/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> If it's illegal to claim copyright over something to which you have no
> right, then I know a lot of museums, galleries and libraries that will
> soon find themselves in very hot water indeed.
>
> Perhaps Anthony meant *knowingly false* claims (i.e. claims made in bad
> faith)?

It is indeed knowingly false claims. Which of course gives a lot of wiggle room.

FF


body:
On 15/05/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Please, remember that wiki has a patrolling feature, to mark changes as
> > 'patrolled' or not. It's simply not enabled on (most) wikimedia projects.
>
>
> Is this currently functional? In theory I have it enabled on my MW instance,
> but all I see are occasional, intermittent patrol links that don't seem to
> obey any obvious set of rules, or do much of anything... :)

It works as far as it's supposed to, but the built-in patrol support
is quite shit, to be frank.

Rob Church


list: foundation-l

from_name: Nicolas Weeger (Laposte)

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia CH formally established

body:
> This (May 14th) afternoon, Wikimedia CH has been officially
> established at a meeting with 12 people present at Olten. The legally
> binding record of the Founding Assembly will follow but I'll already
> enclose some information:

Congratulations!

Nicolas

------------------------
Wikim?dia France
http://www.wikimedia.fr


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deterioration

body:
For a nice example of how articles can gradually deteriorate when the
vandals overwhelm the vandal-fighters, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Network_topology&curid=41413&action=history

I particularly love how, after a vandal had replaced a section with the
sentence "The topology system was originally invented by Robbie Cowan",
someone comes along and tags the statement with "citation needed"...

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Lorenzarius

body:
Hi, I'm a zh: contributor from Hong Kong, where the people can enjoy the
freedom of expression and press. Thank you guys so much for your care of
this situation. There really aren't a lot mirrors of zh:, but there are tons
of sites that copied our database to start their own wiki sites, though I
believe the number of these sites has decreased since the block.

Currently the majority of our contributors from Mainland China are using
proxy servers or the https provided by wikimedia
(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/zh/wiki/) to go around the
Great Firewall. (Actually we have a page talking about
the different ways to break through the block:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E8%AE%BF%E9%97%AE%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91.)
But even if a user knows how to visit zh:, I doubt he would have
enough
motivation to write on a site prohibited by the government... (who knows
whether the government is watching).

So IMO the real problem is how the users could go around the block and reach
us (having been living under the wall for so long, they already know how).
Instead, it is how we could bring the knowledge, and more importantly the
culture and the spirits of wikimedia, to the people (which is our goal,
no?), and sadly, I don't think we could do that when the government says no.

Cheers
zh:User:Lorenzarius


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
Plyd wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>> On 5/15/06, Elliott F. Cable wrote:
>> > Oh, really not a bad idea! I think it should be added to the
>> > contributors section thing - just take the uploader of the latest
>> > version of the image, and add it to the current 'credits' section of
>> > the footer.
>>
>> Giving the uploader credit could be very misleading, especially if all
>> they've done is move an image from de to commons, for example.
>>
> The idea was to put the whole description the uploader gave (licence,
> photographer, etc.) as well as it's given on the image page, maybe
> smaller, or not.
>
> Plyd

We could have at the bottom of the history page: The folllowing images are
used ont his page. Please refer to its description page for seeing its
author and license.

We're neither showing the templates authors nor to the guy who created that
category. Attribution is given per-object. Then you could have a program to
show them all with all the authors (there's some that does that, don't
remember where, perhaps Magnus's?


body:
On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 10:30:56AM -0800, Elliott F. Cable wrote:
> Well, just a credits link - not a tab, a link in the footer. And the
> special credits wouldn't only have image credits, so perhaps a link
> called 'Article and image credits'.
>
> I must be dumb, cause I don't see why so much importance and thought
> is put into the relatively un-important images. I could stand a
> wikipedia with 0 images at all just fine, I go there for the text -
> yet there isn't all this hullabaloo over content copyrights ^^/

The number of requests for image deletions or permission to use
an image from Wikipedia received at info at wikipedia.org is
relatively high. There are many people who are interested in
images and copyrights.

jens


body:
On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 08:47:14PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> Actually a credits tab would make an awful lot of sense from a GFDL
> compliance point of view. It would provide full credits of text (top 5
> contributors, plus list of others) and images (all contributors with
> licence details for each image).

How do you find the 5 top contributours? Lines of changes? I don't
believe in a technical way to find the "top" contributours.

Regards,

jens


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] nofollow in user: space

body:
On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 01:38:34PM +0900, Evan Martin wrote:
>
> Certainly, it's not wikipedia's responsibility to make the problem of
> web search easier.  But part of the goal was also to let webmasters
> help remove the incentive for spamming.  On random blogs, spam is
> mostly just annoying to the owner of the blog and its readers; on
> wikipedia, spam lowers the quality of the content.

I have news for you: on a blog, it can be more than just a mild
annoyance as well.  It can substantively reduce content quality, eat up
the blogger's time with moderation tasks, and so on.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] One for the POV squad...

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Viewing_Timeline - user Huntley
Troth wants a more neutral moderator - i.e. one who does not see
remote viewing as pseudoscience.  Obviously it is necessary to accept
bizarre claims in order to be neutral...

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On Tue, 16 May 2006, Peter Mackay wrote:

>> It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my view, a
>> crucial and necessary one) that contributors should leave their
>> political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any actions designed to
>> divide the editing community into political factions can be seen as
>> unhelpful.
>
> Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on
> different points of view, including political opinions, being given space
> consistent with their level of support.

Consistent with their level of support in the world, yes. Consistent with
their level of support among the Wikipedia editing community, no. There is
a crucial difference.

> People are free to express their political opinions so long as it is
> done in a civil and non-inflammatory manner.

They may be free to express them, but my point is that they aren't free to
inflict them on articles.

Jimbo's word on the matter:

   The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a Republican,
   a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are Wikipedians, which
   means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.

(<URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category%3AWikipedians_by_politics&diff=33156588&oldid=32840056>)

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3456
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


subject: [WikiEN-l] (fwd) Wikipedia e-mail

body:
The following forwarded from a user.  The article is up for deletion
(again) and I supported deletion so I'm not sure why I've been singled
out.  Previously it was danielatts himself who wrote the (deleted)
article.

On Mon, 15 May 2006 19:15:57 GMT, Danielatts <danielatts at hotmail.com>
wrote:

My name is Daniel Attenborough.  You need to act more responsibly if
you are to continue as a moderator.  This is primarily because you
have allowed liabellous material to be produced under the page 'Daniel
Attenborough'.  I am a singer/songwriter and have a am signed to
Warner Brothers music.  I am not a comedian as has been suggested.
This latter claim is made my one individual (sometimes goes by the
name of 'Pablo180' on Wikepedia) who has a personal grudge against me.
If you do not either delete this page or restore it to the correct
content, I will be seeking legal advice on this issue.  You will be
held partly responsibly by vicarious liability.  So do the right thing
and ideally ban the individual who is peddling rumours that I am a
mildly homosexual, lecherous comedian, please.  I do not want to take
this matter further, but will not hesitate to do so if necessary.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> So that brought me to my current working idea, which is just a vmware
> player virtual machine [*] which hosts a Chinese Wikipedia mirror on
> https.

Could be useful - then again, aggressively pushing SSL as a method to
circumvent censorship will likely lead to the authorities taking a
closer look at methods to block it.

If there is indeed a shortage of Chinese mirrors, generating a fresh
static HTML dump + free images and advertising it a bit would probably
lead to hundreds of copies within weeks.

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request: linkable images

body:
"Gregory Maxwell" wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Platonides
> <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >We frequently receive requests from commercial publishers for image
>> >copyright information, even with how easily it is currently provided.
>> It's publicly available. They can ask if they are unsure or doesn't trust
>> on
>> wikis. What's the problem?
>
> There is no problem, really. The point I was making is that we don't
> want to make it any *less* accessable because it can be shown that the
> people who want and need the information already have some difficulity
> finding it. It's not exactly obvious that the image is clickable at
> all. In any case, we can not hide the attribution information.
We're not hiding it.The link is right there, on the top. But it's not
supposed to be what user wanted when he clicked, so it's not
<strong><blink>.

>> >On *articles* I believe our behavior is ideal in almost all cases
>>> because we do exactly what is expected: we provide an enlarged copy of
>>> the image.  Most commercial news sites have the same behavior.
>>
>> We have a good system for images but we also wanna images for other
>> things!
>> Would be better a JS popup saying "What did you want? a) See the article
>> b)
>> See the image" ??
>
> You're making an argument that makes sense on the main page and
> possibly portals here, but not articles.  And a JS popup?? I hope
> you're joking.
I think your double ?? are as explaining as mine :D

>> >As far as I can tell, the problem is limited to the main page and
>> potentially the portals. Do you agree?
>>
>> I disagree. It's only going to be used there but it could be used
>> anywhere.
>> We must be aware of that.
>
> A feature that lets people hide the attribution page and as a result
> violate our image licensing obligations can not be accepted, we must
> be aware of that.
It's not hiding. You could also say that if i use a redirect on page A to A
(city), i'm violating ? because A has a history so A should say "See history
for a list of those who contributed to A (city) on this name. Now if what
you wanted is the article goto [[A (city)]]."
I don't see anywhere that "our image licensing obligations" say that "images
must be linked to a page where its license is described". Our obligations
are to provide accurate license information.

> We need to know all the expected use cases so that we can produce a
> solution which preserves our obligations, avoids causing attribution
> problems elsewhere, and meets our needs.   So please detail where you
> can see 'linkable images' being used outside of the main page.

It shouldn't be used, but that's a policy issue. Newbie Smith creates and
account and starts tricking with wiki-code. Or i could have my signature
with a thumbnail of my face so whe it's clicked they go to my user page.

>> >We can't require people to 'go out of their way to look for it'. We
>> >need to provided attribution in roughly the same manner as we do for
>> >the articles, and we need to make it reasonably accessible.
>> Is really people going to care? They often say "uploaded from english
>> wikipedia X" and X is an article!! Having one or two steps won't be a
>> difference for them. They're used to right-click and catch. Those who
>> care
>> will find it easy :)
>
> I'm not following you.  If we fail to provide attribution in a clear,
> consistent, and accessable manner then we have no right to distribute
> the image at all.
Well, that it doesn't really matter at all. There're dumbs everywhere. I
think most of the problem is created by ourselves.

>> >Should read 'one of the problems with that proposal'.  :)
>> >What we currently do is fine, there is no great need to have an easily
>> >machine readable copyright holder with our current framework.
>>
>> That's not the system. I was talking about a link *to the real image
>> page*.
>> It's like articles when disambiguation is on "title (disambiguation)".
>> It makes no sense showing "image by John", when John only added a
>> transparent background of an image uploaded by Mike. And it doesn't make
>> sens showing "image by Mike" because he uploaded it from X wikipedia. An
>> on
>> that wikipedia it was uploaded from Susan, who got it from the NASA
>> webpage
>> an so it's on the public domain :D
>
> Our current system covers the situation you've proposed just fine.
> The problem of lacking concise machine readable attribution is only a
> problem for the proposal that makes the image look like a redirect.
> We already have perfectly good attribution for other purposes: the
> image page.

I know. I'm saying that the text should only point to that image page.

> The reason I tried to split out the 'main/portal' page cases is
> because another possible solution would be to create an image tag flag
> which allowed you to specify a link target for the image but placed a
> small 'image credits' link right below the image which takes you to
> the image page.
>
> We could achieve something like that by using an image caption, but
> captions are realestate intensive.
>
> I'm somewhat concerned that by doing so we would make image
> attribution on the main/portal pages more accessable than on the rest
> of the site.

We could more explicity say that on those links below that nobody cares of.
Did you notice that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights
doesn't even say that the image ? for a specific image can be know by going
to its image page, and that you arrivve there if you click on it? Well, we
can change it now so we don't need to add the second part ;)


body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com>
> wrote:
>> I would add a three-state tag:
>> - not seen yet
>> - seen (hide from your watchlist/RC)
>> - approved (hide from your watchlist, your RC list, but also from
>> every user watchlist/RC lists who selected you as auto-Okey user)
>>
>> this way, this would help team fighting for vandalism
>
> Good, but trickier from a GUI perspective.
>
> Steve

Please, remember that wiki has a patrolling feature, to mark changes as
'patrolled' or not. It's simply not enabled on (most) wikimedia projects.


body:
On 5/15/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> So IMO the real problem is how the users could go around the block and reach
> us (having been living under the wall for so long, they already know how).
> Instead, it is how we could bring the knowledge, and more importantly the
> culture and the spirits of wikimedia, to the people (which is our goal,
> no?), and sadly, I don't think we could do that when the government says no.

I think you're right - the Chinese Wikipedia will remain a niche
phenomenon in mainland China unless and until the political situation
changes. Of course, it's still a very important niche. As for directly
effecting that political change, that truly is outside the scope of
Wikimedia, though I very much hope that wiki tools and processes will
play a part.

Erik


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/15/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just wanted to state here that I was infact accused of violating
> policy when I added userbox to my userpage stating that I was against
> the war in Iraq. I was was informed that anti-American bigotry was not
> tolerated by the concerned administrator as a result of which I was in
> violation of policy. I'm still not sure this accusation was
> justified-can anyone tell me if it was.

There is currently no policy about Userboxes in general, save the
heavily debated CSD TX criterion. They were not following community
consensus in telling you that, and as such are doing more harm than
good in the discussion of a possible policy about userboxes.

Peter


body:
Provide the list of the 20 contributors with the most diffs, plus the
originator. You'll almost certainly have the top 5 in there somewhere.

Steve

On 5/15/06, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
> On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 08:47:14PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > Actually a credits tab would make an awful lot of sense from a GFDL
> > compliance point of view. It would provide full credits of text (top 5
> > contributors, plus list of others) and images (all contributors with
> > licence details for each image).
>
> How do you find the 5 top contributours? Lines of changes? I don't
> believe in a technical way to find the "top" contributours.
>
> Regards,
>
> jens
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 5/15/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please, remember that wiki has a patrolling feature, to mark changes as
> 'patrolled' or not. It's simply not enabled on (most) wikimedia projects.

What's being proposed here is quite interesing in that it would be
decentralised, allowing multiple definitions of "patrolled". One group
of users could patrol only spelling for instance, another spam links,
while another might verify accuracy in a given subject area.

No idea about the built in support.

Steve


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a subjective
one? A userbox which seems inflammatory/divise to one user may not
appear that way to another. An example of such a scenario would be
when a user named Anwar Saadat declared, using such a template,  his
opinion that Kashmir should be granted independence. Clearly, this did
not seem divisive/inflammatory to Saadat who was of the view that he
was merely expressing his personal feelings on that issue. However a
Wikipedian named Bhadani took this matter very seriously and accused
Saadat of committing "treason" against India. Here it is apparent that
Bhadani (being an Indian and hence, presumably, opposed to the
separatist movement in Kashmir) obviously considered the userbox to be
a a divisive/inflammatory one. So the aforementioned adjectives are
themselves subject to ambguity.


body:
On 15/05/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Their own problem.
>
>
> Rob Church

Be that as it may, don't we still have an ethical responsibility to do
what we can to deter kids from coming across adult-meterial?


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 15/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Rob Church is the one who claimed that CSD T1 was decreed from above.
> At first I entertained the possibility that he might have been telling
> the truth, but a short while later I came to the conclusion that he
> was mistaken.

I emphasise the "mistaken" since I believed that it was part of the
measures taken to avert the wheel warring in Jan 06. Come to it, it
was likely the short term spark for that whole incident.

I stand corrected.

Rob Church


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-16

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!

Passed 304 of 314 tests (96.82%) FAILED!


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 5/15/06, Prasad J <prasad59 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia has followed a policy whereby it's content is not censored
> for children. Having said that would it be useful to put a
> warning/advisory on the website to make it clear to users that though
> it is legal for them to enter the site, they should be aware that
> Wikipedia's content is not censored for minors and the latter may come
> across some sexual or other adult material so it is advisable for them
> to be careful what they view?

The existing disclaimers (which are linked to from the bottom of every
single page on the entire wiki) pretty much cover it, but then again
noone seems to read the disclaimers.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Molu

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
Mr. Wales,

  The debate is not over whether editors should be inflammatory and divisive, but over whether expressing personal opinions and (recently) making jokes in the user's own userpage that no one is required to read using pages residing in the Template: namespace is a valid example of behaving in a divisive and inflammatory manner.  I think George W. Bush is a criminal, if you feel offended by that then by all means stay off my userpage, why do you have to go delete templates? Templates are obviously no more official than userpages since any person can create either.

  What's more, some admins even speedy userboxes in the userpage as recreations of deleted content and this has been supported by ArbCom 8-1 or 9-0 (can't remember which) in a famous userbox hearing. So the matter is not even whether one can express personal opinions in template space, but also whether one can express personal opinions in user space. No one is debating whether editors should be divisive and inflammatory, don't make it appear so.

  Molu

  On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:02:46 -0400. Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I have no idea why anyone is talking about decrees. CSD T1 is normal
>policy, created and confirmed in the normal way. It is a very simple
>natural extension of all our other policies which, despite our ongoing
>tolerance of people trolling on the mailing list, *ahem*, have always
>urged people in no uncertain terms not to be divisive and inflammatory.

>--Jimbo

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> So you send 1000 takedown orders, and they ignore them all, then what?
>

Legaly? China steps outside interlectial proptely laws. Under those
conditions further predictions are imposible.

--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Try it with the program I mentioned Torpark it sends the data encrypted
so no big comrade watching. It works in a firefox interface it is a bit
slower but still it is nice :)

Waerth

>Hi, I'm a zh: contributor from Hong Kong, where the people can enjoy the
>freedom of expression and press. Thank you guys so much for your care of
>this situation. There really aren't a lot mirrors of zh:, but there are tons
>of sites that copied our database to start their own wiki sites, though I
>believe the number of these sites has decreased since the block.
>
>Currently the majority of our contributors from Mainland China are using
>proxy servers or the https provided by wikimedia
>(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/zh/wiki/) to go around the
>Great Firewall. (Actually we have a page talking about
>the different ways to break through the block:
>http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E8%AE%BF%E9%97%AE%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E7%99%BE%E7%A7%91.)
>But even if a user knows how to visit zh:, I doubt he would have
>enough
>motivation to write on a site prohibited by the government... (who knows
>whether the government is watching).
>
>So IMO the real problem is how the users could go around the block and reach
>us (having been living under the wall for so long, they already know how).
>Instead, it is how we could bring the knowledge, and more importantly the
>culture and the spirits of wikimedia, to the people (which is our goal,
>no?), and sadly, I don't think we could do that when the government says no.
>
>Cheers
>zh:User:Lorenzarius
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

references:
<e44bmb$nct$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<6rjb62tg22oicfu3tqnlnkmps8bl6fsre9@4ax.com>
	<a1be7e0e0605141338r5453997awf35a46914800f5f6@mail.gmail.com>
	<q9ff62h80p1ao9pvgb8f2p5iqfcppbia3g@4ax.com>
	<f80608430605141818v5e8cd73ck62798d88cd2b7389@mail.gmail.com>
	<vmig62thirki1qgp0pdefvrrmbvbhd8puk@4ax.com>
	<f80608430605150236h1c868f1du63f46bc589b17e3a@mail.gmail.com>
	<h0kg621g31gcmmoffj9u09hdno8ch9d1v9@4ax.com>
	<f80608430605150344i3a45e5a8x792e5edad60e27df@mail.gmail.com>
	<aipg62ph1tpq5afkhc1k8g30irl3pbq3h6@4ax.com>

body:
G'day Guy,

> On Mon, 15 May 2006 11:44:28 +0100, you wrote:
[This has been bothering me for a while.  Do you think you could maybe
change this to refer to the person you're talking to?  Sometimes it's
obvious --- like when you're replying to geni (sorry geni), or Yours
Truly, or a message that has stuck in the brain.  But often I'll have no
idea who said what.]
>> That doens't make them official.
>
> It implies a degree of endorsement.  I don't see any problem with
> emphasising the difference between those things which are encouraged
> as helping the building of an encyclopaedia, from those which are
> tolerated  but recognised as not doing so, and in some cases actively
>  impeding the process.

During the heyday of the userboxen, I saw people --- you may have, as
well --- actually welcoming newbies with "and here are some Wikipedia
templates you can use to decorate your userpage".  Couldn't have been
less subtle if they'd tried to clobber us with one of the damn things.

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.5.6/339 - Release Date: 14/05/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Historical debates

body:
Hi,

  A page has come up called [[Wikipedia:Historical debates]] that seeks
to record the major global disputes that have occurred at and
influenced wikipedia. It also contains a short exposition on the nature of these
disputes. What do you think?

  Molu

---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Historical debates

body:
Better than relying on the memory of old timers.

Fred

On May 16, 2006, at 4:43 AM, Molu wrote:

> Hi,
>
>   A page has come up called [[Wikipedia:Historical debates]] that
> seeks
> to record the major global disputes that have occurred at and
> influenced wikipedia. It also contains a short exposition on the
> nature of these
> disputes. What do you think?
>
>   Molu
>
> ---------------------------------
> New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC
> and save big.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of geni

On 5/15/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [[Piss_Christ]]
> > [[Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy]]...
>
> I hate that people keep bringing examples such as these up. There is a
> HUGE difference between NPOV articles being inflammatory to religions
> or people (such as [[Piss Christ]] and the cartoons thing), and
> posting inflammatory statements on your userpage!
>I can't even begin
> to understand how people can compare putting "I think GWB is an
> asshat" on your userpage with including one of the most notable
> cartoons in history in the encyclopedia.

Hey are you know going to argue that user namespace shouldn't be
inflamitory?

User pages aren't NPOV. The userbox problem is a direct result of this - the
debate is where to draw the line.

And yes, I'm back. I checked into my hostel in Frankfurt and spotted a
leftover Wikimania banner proudly displayed behind the desk. Didn't quite
get to Jordanhill Station, but I inadvertently visited Welshpool.

Pete in Canberra


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to be GFDL compliant

body:
On 5/16/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Right. Section 6: Collection of Documents:
> >>
> > In order to be in compliance with the GFDL you need to be in
> > compliance with the whole thing, not just one section.
> >
>
> What other sections are we not compliant with? I thought that this was
> the big one...
>
It's hard to even apply the GFDL to Wikipedia.  You say it's a
collection of Documents, so what would be an example of a Document, as
it applies to Wikipedia?  Where is the Title Page?  Where is the
section entitled History?  Who is the Publisher?  Is each new version
published as a derivative of the previous under the permission of the
GFDL, or is it a joint work of authorship?  Where are the copyright
notices?

Answer these questions and I can tell you how Wikipedia is not compliant.

> >> The articles themselves are licensed under the GFDL, and Wikipedia is a
> >> collection of articles - so the individual copies are replaced by a
> >> single copy *included in the collection*. IANAL but it's good enough for
> >> me, /and most other contributors/. What's *not* good enough is mirroring
> >> us without even *attempting* GFDL compliance, at least to the same
> >> extent that Wikipedia itself complies with the GFDL.
> >>
> > And how would you suggest they do that?
> >
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GFDL_Compliance
>
That's a list of sites which people believe range in compliance from
low to high.  It doesn't in any way answer my question.

(By the way, I see that Answers.com, the site which Wikimedia is
business partners with, isn't even listed under High compliance.
That's a good example of how ridiculous GFDL compliance with Wikipedia
is.)

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Divisive and Inflammatory Behavior, was  CSD T1

body:
I'm proposing this as part of official Wikipedia policy at
[[Wikipedia:Divisive and inflammatory behavior]] because I think we
need to voice this principle as the basis for a number of other
fundamental Wikipedia policies.

Put simply, we are here to work, not to struggle; actions which lead
us down the path of "fight or flight" are not productive (after
Wilfred Bion). I think making these thoughts explicit will be helpful.

Fred

On May 15, 2006, at 8:59 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Rob Church wrote:
>
>> CSD T1 was decreed from above.
>>
>
> Not decreed, no.  Sannse wrote it, I believe.  It is just a simple
> deduction from all our other policies.  Behaving in a divisive and
> inflammatory way anywhere in Wikipedia is not welcome.
>
> --
> ######################################################################
> #
> #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free
> Knowledge #
> #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free
> world         #
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subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nick Boalch
>
>
> Prasad J wrote:
> > But then again, Mr.Wales, isn't the term "inflammatory" a
> subjective
> > one? ...
>
> It's been a long-standing tenet of Wikipedia (and, in my
> view, a crucial and necessary one) that contributors should
> leave their political opinions at the door. Accordingly, any
> actions designed to divide the editing community into
> political factions can be seen as unhelpful.

Where is this "long-standing tenet" defined? NPOV, for example, depends on
different points of view, including political opinions, being given space
consistent with their level of support. People are free to express their
political opinions so long as it is done in a civil and non-inflammatory
manner. [[Abortion]] and its associated discussion page is a case in point -
community criticism is directed at those who act in an uncivil manner,
rather than against those who display their opinion on their sleeve.

--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Divisive and Inflammatory Behavior, was CSD T1

body:
I don't think we have a policy which prohibits disruptive behavior in
so many words. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines speaks of
"problematic or disruptive behavior" and there is [[WP:POINT]],
Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Restating
the principle will not make it policy; it is already policy. Stating
the principle just makes it explicit rather than implicit.

Fred

On May 16, 2006, at 7:13 AM, Ryan Delaney wrote:

> On 5/16/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm proposing this as part of official Wikipedia policy at
>> [[Wikipedia:Divisive and inflammatory behavior]] because I think we
>> need to voice this principle as the basis for a number of other
>> fundamental Wikipedia policies.
>>
>> Put simply, we are here to work, not to struggle; actions which lead
>> us down the path of "fight or flight" are not productive (after
>> Wilfred Bion). I think making these thoughts explicit will be
>> helpful.
>>
>> Fred
>>
>
>
> How does this differ from the policy forbidding disruptive
> behavior? Doesn't
> "divisive and infammatory" constitute a subset of "disruptive"?
>
> Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/16/06, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> Peter Mackay wrote:
> >>Jimbo's word on the matter:
> >>
> >>   The point is, we don't act *in Wikipedia* as a Democrat, a
> >>   Republican, a pro-Lifer, a pro-Choicer, or whatever. Here we are
> >>   Wikipedians, which means: thoughtful, loving, neutral.
> >
> > With all due respect to you and Jimbo, that's not the way it happens.
> > Thoughtful, loving, neutral, touchy-feely gets good marks, but editors don't
> > suddenly turn into opinionless automatons. Nor do we want them to. We want
> > Republicans to have input into articles on the Republican Party. We just
> > don't want it to be Republican propaganda.
>
> With all due respect to you, I think you're slightly misinterpreting
> what Jimbo (and I) actually mean. I don't think either of us are
> suggesting that editors should be 'opinionless automatons', just that
> they shouldn't let their opinions influence the way they write articles.
>
I'd say that's pretty much impossible.  If nothing else, what you
believe is going to affect what you know, and that's going to have a
significant influence on the way you write an article.  IMO the way
Wikipedians should produce an NPOV article is through the consensus of
people with multiple points of view.  Templates regarding points of
view can very much support this.

That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think
George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template.  Actually
I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills
needed to work with others.  But "This user is an atheist", or "This
user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only
non-harmful, I think it is helpful.

Again just my opinion, but I don't think there's a consensus on this
matter, and his majesty Jimbo has explicitly stated that he has not
made an edict on the matter, so speedy deletion should be out of the
question.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL lawsuits - who can sue?

body:
Thanks for the link.  I was unaware of this particular law.

The law you point out seems to be written as a law against society,
with the fine going to the government.  Maybe the courts have also
recognized it as a tort, though.

Also, as you mention, the standard (fraudulent intent) is quite high.

Anthony

On 5/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Is it illegal to claim you have copyright control over something you
> > do not?  I'm sure there are plently of laws against claiming you
> > *wrote* something you didn't, but if you properly attribute the
> > authors but tack on a false claim of copyright, I don't see how that
> > can be illegal.
>
> As I understand it (again, I am not in any way a lawyer), the relevant
> parts of U.S. copyright law are:
>
>    (c) Fraudulent Copyright Notice. - Any person who, with
>     fraudulent intent, places on any article a notice of copyright or
>     words of the same purport that such person knows to be false, or
>     who, with fraudulent intent, publicly distributes or imports for
>     public distribution any article bearing such notice or words that
>     such person knows to be false, shall be fined not more than $2,500.
>      (d) Fraudulent Removal of Copyright Notice. - Any person who,
>     with fraudulent intent, removes or alters any notice of copyright
>     appearing on a copy of a copyrighted work shall be fined not more
>     than $2,500.
>       (e) False Representation. - Any person who knowingly makes a
>     false representation of a material fact in the application for
>     copyright registration provided for by section 409, or in any
>     written statement filed in connection with the application, shall
>     be fined not more than $2,500.
>
> >From http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/17/chapters/5/sections/section%5F506.html
>
> FF
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>


subject: [WikiEN-l] CSD T1

body:
On 5/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/16/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > That isn't to say that I think a template which says "This user think
> > George W. Bush is a moron" is an example of such a template.  Actually
> > I'd say a person using such a template is showing a lack of the skills
> > needed to work with others.  But "This user is an atheist", or "This
> > user is a Linux user", on the other hand, I think is not only
> > non-harmful, I think it is helpful.
>
> You're going out on a limb here, any chance you can show us some
> evidence that this actually happens in reality? That is, people
> deliberately contacting people of the opposite persuasion to find some
> middle ground?
>
> Steve

Definitely not right now, which is not to say that I concede that it
hasn't happened, but I definitely don't have time right now to look.
It'd be a hard thing to look for though, and I'm not sure how I'd go
about making such a search.  I probably won't bother to look.

That said, I have occassionally glanced at someone's user page after
seeing them make some strange edits, only to see a userbox which put
the edits into perspective.  In the particular case I'm thinking about
(though I forget the specifics), the user was actually arguing the
opposite point from that expressed in the userbox, and I believe they
were doing so in good faith.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] One for the POV squad...

body:
G'day Guy,

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Viewing_Timeline - user Huntley
> Troth wants a more neutral moderator - i.e. one who does not see
> remote viewing as pseudoscience.  Obviously it is necessary to accept
> bizarre claims in order to be neutral...

   Because of a supposed secret contract between the CIA and highly
   trained Scientologists at the inception of the CIA-initiated remote
   viewing program, events related to Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard that
   led up to the unlikely marriage of CIA and Scientology are included.

   [etc., etc.]

I think it's very clear: we can either have this reviewed by someone
with enough connection to reality to know the article is nonsense well
in advance, or we can try to contact the nearest asylum and request one
of the fellows locked up for their safety and ours to take a look.

Some things are utterly, incontrovertibly, 100% iron-clad bollocks.  I
bring up the old LaRouche cases from ArbCom a lot (strange, 'cos I
wasn't around at the time and am not an arbitres), because I think they
were quite important in establishing that LaRouche is a dangerous
lunatic and Wikipedians are not required to respect any LaRouchite
publications as a source (quite the opposite, in fact).

I think this was a Good Thing, and we should have more liberty to deal
in a similar manner with people even crazier than LaRouche.  Discussion,
consensus, sources, etc., is a wonderful goal, but we shouldn't allow
kooks to scare off good contributors through sheer doggedness and
wiki-lawyering.  If someone is peddling something that is clearly,
unarguably bollocks, they can bloody-well fuck off.  Kooks try the
patience of long-term editors and administrators, they render far too
many pages utterly unusable and untrustworthy, they waste the time of
ArbCom, and they drive actual experts away with their incessant
bullshit.  We're "the free encyclopaedia that anyone can edit", provided
they have the patience to deal with fools who spend all their time
trying to pervert a resource for knowledge into a tool of propagandists.

Saying something along the lines of "you're a twat and you have
forfeited your right to continue to damage our hard work, because we
think you're batshit insane" ought to fit the bill.

(I've spent a decent amount of time this morning deleting embarrassingly
inaccurate articles written by kooks attempting to abuse Wikipedia to
get the word out about their idiotic scientific or spiritual
revelations.  You can tell, can't you?)

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

--
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from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/16/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Provide the list of the 20 contributors with the most diffs, plus the
> > originator. You'll almost certainly have the top 5 in there somewhere.
>
> Only true in the majority of cases because the overwhelming majority
> (86%) of articles have fewer unique contributors than that.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Articles_distinct.png)
>
> Edit counts are a horrible metric in general... Edit analysis shows
> that people who add lots of content tend to do it in single large
> bursts.
>
> Plenty of articles that fall out of the group with <20 distinct
> contribs would be completely misrepresented by the 'top 20
> contributors'.

All I'm claiming is that generally the top 5 contributors would be
found in the top 20 most active. Not always, I warrant. Other than
that, yeah, we're facing an old problem - determining the worth of an
editor's contributions automatically.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] nofollow in user: space

body:
On 5/16/06, Evan Martin <evanm at google.com> wrote:
> Here's a [new] post on the subject from Matt Cutts
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Cutts):
>   http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/quick-comment-on-nofollow/
> Quote: "For example, I've talked to a couple SEOs recently who said
> that they have a full-time person on their staff dedicated to scamming
> links from Wikipedia and wikis."
> Here's a recent thread on the foundation list regarding that subject:
>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation/7047/focus=7079

Well, I basically agree with all that. The benefits of *not* using
nofollow seem minor, ill-defined, and debatable. The benefits of using
it, while not necessarily massive, are clear.

Shall we revote?

Steve