subject: [WikiEN-l] Funky tricks on de

body:
Agreed, let's double check all that before continuuing.
By the way, it wasn't lupins popups -- I cannot get this to work when
I am logged in!

On 9/23/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be good to make sure it works on all major browsers, first,
> or at least fails gracefully/unnoticeably. Though I certainly support
> a Wikipedia which doesn't dumb down to the lowest common technological
> denominator on its default skin, I think it's important to remember
> that many of our users (esp. those at schools and libraries) may not
> be using very new technology (and there's no reason to construct a
> technological/economic hurdle). This of course applies in general, not
> just this to instance.
>
> (I'm aware they could change the skin settings, but for the *default*
> skin, I think this sort of thing needs to be taken into consideration
> explicitly with all "neat tricks")
>
>
> FF
>
> On 9/22/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's really cool. Is there any reason we shouldn't be bold and implement it?
> >
> > On 9/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That is nifty! It seems to be a relatively straigtforward change to
> > > monobook.js, and then use a version of the
> > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Navigationsleiste_ohne_Bild (that
> > > might lead to some heavy transclusion though).
> > >
> > > --gkhan
> > >
> > > PS. I'm crap at these things really, so please someone else comment :P
> > >
> > > On 9/22/05, Worldtraveller <wikipedia at world-traveller.org> wrote:
> > > > On the German Wikipedia, I've noticed they've got a nifty trick with
> > > > templates whereby you can include a button to hide an infobox, in the same
> > > > way as you can hide a contents box.  See an example down at the bottom of
> > > > this page:
> > > >
> > > > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thematische_Navigation_Deutschsprachige_L%C3%A4nder
> > > >
> > > > I don't know of any templates to do the same thing on en:, and when I
> > > > tried to replicate the code on the German templates it didn't work.  Does
> > > > anyone know how one might get something similar working on en:?
> > > >
> > > > WT
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fl Celloguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia legal threat (forwarded email now sent)

body:
Oops, seems like the forwarded message didn't get sent by the system. Here
it is:

----
From: JackSarfatti <sarfatti AT pacbell DOT net>
To: Flcelloguy <---->
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 01:23:58 GMT

I am starting legal action against Wiki this Monday with IRS
Attorney General & Registry of Charitable Trusts in Florida to
have tax exemption of Wiki removed because it is a vehicle for
domestic terrorists (invoke Patriot Act). I consider Chris Hillman such a
terrorist. At this point it will be up to FBI et-al to decide that. His
repeated vicious smearing of me at this particular moment in time suggests
he is a terrorist because of other stuff happening with me right now you
are, I assume, not involved with. Rita may delay me a few days if Florida is
hit hard.

Reply to sarfatti at pacbell.net directly

-----
Thanks!

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

Flcelloguy
>From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia.

_________________________________________________________________
On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to
get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] {{fullurl:}} and {{fullurle:}}

body:
{{localurl:}} and {{localurle:}} were originally intended for use only
in the HTML sections of the language files. But since they were
introduced, they've become popular in wikitext, for example to generate
an edit URL for an arbitrary page, the title of which is specified in a
template parameter. Unfortunately, they're poorly suited for this use,
since wikitext requires absolute URLs. It doesn't understand local URLs,
like anchor tags in HTML do. The standard workaround is to use this:

{{SERVER}}{{localurl:page}}

but as Mormegil pointed out to me on IRC, that breaks if page is an
interwiki link. Interwiki URLs are always absolute. The standard
solution used in the MediaWiki API is to use the Title::getFullURL()
function. Accordingly, I've implemented an interface to this function,
{{fullurl:}}. So instead of the above, you can use:

{{fullurl:page}}

For completeness, I also implemented {{fullurle:}}, but it has no
practical applications that I can think of. Please use {{fullurl:}} and
{{localurl:}} in wikitext, not the escaped counterparts. Escaped URLs
only work in wikitext because of an ugly backwards-compatibility hack.

-- Tim Starling


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
On 23/09/05, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/23/05, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Actually, Andrew was closer: it's en-gb, because RFC 3066 defines it
> > as an ISO 639 language code (en for English) plus an ISO 3166 country
> > code (GB meaning, confusingly, the UK; I'm glad the IANA ignored this
> > and gave us .uk for our domains)
>
> To be somewhat more pedantic, it should be "en-GB", since IIRC the
> second ISO code is supposed to be written in uppercase.  This is
> actually the system used for localization of Firefox in foreign
> languages (e.g. fr-CA and fr-FR for the French of Canada and France,
> respectively).

Funnily enough, in my skim-reading of the RFC earlier I spotted this part:

   All tags are to be treated as case insensitive; there exist
   conventions for capitalization of some of them, but these should not
   be taken to carry meaning.  For instance, [ISO 3166] recommends that
   country codes are capitalized (MN Mongolia), while [ISO 639]
   recommends that language codes are written in lower case (mn
   Mongolian).
[http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3066.txt, section 2.1]

So, yes and no; if you needed to canonicalise a set of them, it might
make sense to do it to "aa-AA" format, but neither "AA-AA", "aa-aa",
nor any other combination should actually be considered incorrect. [Or
that's how I'd read it, anyway]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Equality

body:
Zephram Stark wrote:
<snip>
> The above is a bold statement that would require considerable risk to
> implement, but it is exactly the same concept that the founders of my
> country pledged their "Lives," "Fortunes," and "sacred Honor" to
> protect.  I submit that my nation, the United States of America, is a
> success because they did so.
>

I submit that trolls who have been banned from Wikipedia have no place
on the mailing list, either.

--
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \


from_name: Jack & Naree

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Wikipedia English English

body:
Mark,
 I'm going to respond to you, because I think you're crying out for help
(...and because I want to try to adhere to Wikipedia ettiquette and repair
any damage).
 You don't sound remotely calm or considered.
I think you ought to re-read this post to me, and think about it.
It's no surprise that you decide to focus on the fact that I submit "teh" as
"the" without correcting it; it strikes me you do it to feel better about
yourself.
That is an example of troll behaviour. If you were interested in debating
properly you wouldn't pump out such childish shit. I'm at fault for
responding to it similarly, out of annoyance.
 I have read what I've sent. I have made errors. I have conceded,
apologised, and corrected myself.
 You have simply had an air of a superiority complex right from the first
reply.
 The things you've just ranted about "American English is ugly" - where did
say that? I didn't.
"...Americanised" - I made a case for it, not refuted.
"..spell better.." - Wrong again, I never said or suggested that, more of
your consistent bollocks.
 ...and no, (to add to the list of things I also never said) I didn't say
it's not OK for you to call me xyz, several others said that. Frankly, you
should know better.
 I'm not impulsive in calling you an impulsive, petulant, self-important
twat. I've thought about it; I've read your crap; and you are definitely all
of those things, and you're proving it now, and I'd be happy to scibble it
all over your face.
 You're regularly being impulsive with your hurried replies making
accusations you haven't checked the facts of, and it shows in your frantic
style of writing; you're being petulant because of your frantic desperation
to prove yourself right and "win", in addition to your general unreasoned,
un-backed-up hostility right from the kick off; you're self-importance shows
in the way you constantly write and mock as though you believe you are an
ultimate authority, e.g.: "When Mark Wiliamson calls you a troll, you must
be one, I think" - I bet you wrote the book on self-importance; it all adds
up to being a twat, and your comebacks are hopeless.
 As far as "nettiquette" goes, there's one rule I know: "Don't say anything
you're not prepared to say to someone's face." I doubt very much you and or
chums have a cock and balls between you, except your boyfriend's.
  I am not the only person who feels dissatisfied with the Americanisation
of Wikipedia. Someone else proposed this, I merely support it.
  Aubergine, as you must know, unless you're a complete fuckwit, is merely
an example of one of the kinds of unintelligibility and linguistic
preference problems. There are Wiki pages already listing unintellibilities
between the two dialects, which are nowhere near completed; they will get
much longer.
 The fact that we are having a heated row about this is no evidence of
intelligibility; it may actually turn out to be evidence of the opposite. Do
you actually know what evidence is?
The instance I gave my encounter with an American over "What's Up"
illustrates how identical vocab, grammar, and syntax does not equal
identical semantics, it can be unintelligible.
Do you remember what you responded with? I doubt it - too busy patting
yourself on the back for your "witty" Trollish quips.
 The idea that American-English is an offshoot of English is actually a
semantic issue.
I am stating that the name "English" has already been used (like a domain
name), and I'm talking about the written word as standardised in England, so
arguing the toss over dialects inside England, and in people's living rooms
is a red herring. You can argue that the term "English" be reappointed to
name a genus of dialects, but I'm arguing that that particular name applies
most aptly to the dialect that has developed in the same geographical place,
among the same ethnolinguistic group where it autochthonously evolved from
Anglo-Saxon into what we know today.
That particular debate is over what names apply to what. Americans call what
we speak "British English", but if you go to the wiki article, you'll see
that that term is not accepted in Britain or England; people feel, and in my
view, rightly, that the prefix is unwarranted. It's a result of having a
country made up of countries.
I've never said my English is better than yours; I've said that too much of
the stuff called English in Wikipedia is not recognisable English in England
and plenty of other places.
 The main part of what pisses me (and others) off, is the fact that most of
the English is American, and non-English speakers are going to read articles
written in American, and think that that is the standard form. I want them
to know that it isn't; that it's the standard form for a dialect of English
called American English - that's what the OED calls it, so should Wikipedia,
in the name of accuracy, accessibility, inclusivity and fairness.
.
 Finally, no, I'm calling you a bully and an ostracist.
Your silly absolutist playground statements like "nobody agrees with you
about xyz" are fluent trollish; plenty of people here are intelligent enough
to pick and choose for themselves what they do and don't agree with, without
your rather de-legitimised recommendations.
 You can't even respond positively to any constructive comments, you have to
run for the cover of your "innernet buddies".
 How anyone as ridiculous as you can call me anything is beyond
comprehension.
 On 23/09/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > What seems clear is that Mark has been consistently argumentative,
> > facetious, and fallacious; and even more so since this post.
>
> Hah.
>
> > Not satisfied with trying to start a "row", he wants to ban me for not
> > agreeing with him.
>
> Ban you? No, that was someone else. I just want you to leave
> peacefully, or quit being a troll.
>
> > I think he is coming across as needlessly aggressive and pompous.
>
> Likewise. Have you read any of your own e-mails? To say that you don't
> like reading American English words, and that it troubles you, is one
> thing, but to go around saying that American English is wrong, ugly,
> etc, etc, etc, and then to call all non-Americans who agree with
> current policy "Americanised", is nothing less than trolling for
> suckers.
>
> > However wrong or stupid anyone thinks my posts are, vomiting bile
> through
> > the keyboard is out of order.
>
> Maybe, before saying such things, you should take your own advice?
>
> > Mark clearly didn't check his facts before digging his troll-hole, and
> now
> > looks silly, that's not my fault. I apologise for using caps, I did it
> to
> > distinguish my text from his, not for any other reason, Mark's drivel
> didn't
> > get me remotely excited or annoyed - clearly you can't tell teh
> emotional
> > content of everything in text form.
>
> Before criticising teh other variants of teh English, perhaps you
> should take a look at your own English? Don't tell teh Americans how
> they misspell things when your own spelling isn't perfect. Teh teh teh
> teh teh. Now, there is a time and a place for teh, as in "teh
> internets", or "teh intarweb", or "teh website".
>
> I will put up with misspellings from most people, as they're perfectly
> natural. But for a pompous, stuck-up person like you, who insists that
> they can spell better than a nation of over 300 million people, I am
> willing to make an exception.
>
> > Anyway, You can't just label everyone you disagree with a troll or make
> > trollish statements like "x is so obviously trolling us" and not expect
> a
> > negative response, if you don't understand what a troll is, search
> > wikipedia.
>
> Have I labelled everyone I disagree with a troll? I have disagreed
> with people such as Fuzheado, Wouter Steenbeek, Walter van Kalken,
> Lars Aronsson, and many others. At times, it has gotten quite ugly. I
> have been called a troll before, and I've also seen some noteworthy
> praise. But you are the first person _I've_ ever called a troll. And
> for good reason.
>
> When Mark Williamson calls you a troll, you must really be one, I
> think. Especially if Jimbo Wales agrees.
>
> > I came here not to spend time arguing with impulsive, petulent,
> > self-important twats like Mark, but to try and get a change that someone
> > else proposed, in fact.
>
> Ahh, so it's not OK for me to call you a troll and tell you you're
> barking mad, but it IS aux quay for you to call me an impulsive,
> petulant, self-important twat? Wow, Jack, you are really an impulsive,
> petulant, self-important twat.
>
> > If you look trough Wikipedia, there is stuff on Commonwealth English,
> and
> > on the differences.
>
> There are differences. Nobody disputes that. You just seem to be the
> only person to think that they're significant enough to merit a
> separate Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia has hundreds of thousands of
> articles. All of them should be easily comprehensible to all English
> speakers.
>
> Aubergine/eggplant might be a problem. But it's one article.
>
> If you can link a few articles which you can't understand, then
> perhaps people will be more receptive to your tro... err... ideas.
>
> > What's abundantly clear is that the language of the USA is markedly
> > different to that of the British Isles. In Grammar, vocabulary,
> spelling,
> > and semantics; and this means that it can make it unintelligible to
> non-US
> > English speakers. It IS legitimate and accurate to call it a foreign
> > language from the perspective of an English speaker from England and the
> > British Isles in general, because a large amount of commonly used vocab,
> > grammar, syntax and semantics are both unintelligible (to varying
> degrees);
> > and simply not accepted as the way to speak the language (more than just
> > spelling).
>
> Occasionally unintelligible. But the very fact that you, a Scotsman
> (or, perhaps, a Commonwealther), and I, an American, are having a
> heated exchange of insulting e-mails is proof enough for me that
> American and British English are mutually intelligible enough so as to
> NOT warrant separate Wikipedias.
>
> > Evidence has been posted (not by me) on this list (see the Wiktionary
> posts)
> > that AmE and BrE (OED terms) have distinct orthographies.
>
> No kidding!?
>
> > Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct
> dialect
> > of English? It would appear not.
>
> Yes, but then, many people here are also arguing that BrE is a
> distinct dialect of English. You, on the other hand, seem to feel that
> one is a dialect of the other, which is a linguistic impossibility.
>
> > These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
> > Wikipedia.
>
> Such have been considered carefully on a case-by-case basis, and in
> such cases there was a consensus of ALL native users of that variety
> that there should be a separate Wikipedia. So far, the vast number of
> Brits to disagree with you has shown that this is not the case here.
>
> > Whether "British English" gets it's own Wiki is up to British people
> > contributing.
>
> Yes. And besides you, nobody really seems to want that. Ahh, and Mr
> My-English-is-better-than-yours, it's "its" (as a posessive).
>
> > Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
> > worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
> > Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".
>
> So, are you calling Jimbo Wales a bully and an ostracist?
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dictionary of National Biography

body:
People may be interested to note that the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography is doing an open-access weekend; the entire online
version is free to use (with a quick registration) for the next couple
of days.

This may be pretty useful for those who've written articles on obscure
people and want to factcheck...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dictionary of National Biography

body:
On 23/09/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> People may be interested to note that the Oxford Dictionary of
> National Biography is doing an open-access weekend; the entire online
> version is free to use (with a quick registration) for the next couple
> of days.
>
> This may be pretty useful for those who've written articles on obscure
> people and want to factcheck...

I am, it should be noted at this point, a prat - I forgot the link!

http://www.oxforddnb.com/

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


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > People may be interested to note that the Oxford Dictionary of
> > National Biography is doing an open-access weekend; the entire online
> > version is free to use (with a quick registration) for the next couple
> > of days.
> >
> > This may be pretty useful for those who've written articles on obscure
> > people and want to factcheck...
>
> I am, it should be noted at this point, a prat - I forgot the link!
>
> http://www.oxforddnb.com/

Well (apart from being a prat) let me say thanks for the heads up! For those
who aren't aware, the ODNB contains 50,000+ bios of various people connected
with the British Isles. I had access for a bit a while ago, and I found a
number of entries on relatively obscure British cryptographers and GCHQ people,
and that the biographies contained a lot of information that hadn't been
published elsewhere.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" abuse on user pages

body:
On 9/24/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps
> I'll propose this on one of those bot-related pages, see if one of the
> existing bot scripts could be adapted by someone knowledgeable in the
> art of bots...
>
> FF

Could be done in theory but there is no way you are going to get
support for a bot able to delete images. There is at the current time
one bot on wikipedia that uses admin powers and that one only gets
away with it because we were out of other options.
--
geni


list: foundation-l

from_name: Roberto Frangi

subject: [Foundation-l] Proposal for a new project: Wikisomething

body:
I want to propose "something completely different": Wikisomethingelse!
For all the multilingual something else, that is outside the scope of
Wikisomething.

cordially,
Snowdog

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.
> Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual somethings of all
> different sorts, therefore it spares us the need to found any new
> different projects for speficic things. Moreover, we could also
> integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.
>
> Please vote for wikisomething on Meta-Wiki and lend the new project
> your support:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikisomething
>
> cordially,
> Elian
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Poe, Marshall

body:
Thanks very much, Robert, for your good comments. They are very apt.

I was the proposer of Wikimemory, and you are right about my experience, and I suspect those of other proposers.  While I would not say that comments on Foundation-l were exactly hostile, they were not for the most part friendly, supportive, encouraging, numerous, or helpful.  A one line reply like "I think this project should be on wikicities" is really not very satisfying. I, for one, would like an explanation of the various POVs shared.  I tried to offer such explanations, at length, and with a certain amount of reflection and thought.  With one or two exceptions, I rec'd nothing of a similar character.  I'm new to Wikimedia, but my experience has made me wonder just how serious the "new projects" initiative is.  This is a shame, because, as you say, well-meaning people with possibly good ideas are being neglected or even frightened away.  In the end, if you want to attract serious people, you have to be serious.

The fashion in which new projects are vetted at Wikimeida is unprofessional. I mean this with no disrespect. Perhaps it is impossible for an organization such as Wikimedia to be held to such a high standard.  Wikimedia does many things very well (I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia).  But professionalism just might not be in the cards, and perhaps it shouldn't be.  Critics (and I guess I'm one of them) will say that Wikimedia's new proposals initiative fails exactly because it lacks the standard incentives and disincentives built into any real business, that is, a strong devotion to the mission, strong incentives to pursue said mission, and stong dissincentives against unprofessional behavior.  In a successful enterprise, if you don't do your job well, there are consequences.  In this aspect of Wikimedia, there seem to be none.  And perhaps there can be none, because we are all uncompensated volunteers.  Again, critics will say that this once again demonstrates that undisciplined organizations just don't perform very well.  When everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible.

The question, I guess, is this: can people act professionally when they have no motivation other than that they should?  My experience suggests the answer is no, at least in this narrow instance.

I'm withdrawing Wikimemory from consideration as a new project, and am pursuing othere means of realizing it (see memoirbank.com).  I believe in it, and hope I can find others who do to.  Perhaps someday we can begin discussion of something like Wikimemory again, after the idea has matured.  I would welcome that.

I will, of course, continue to be a huge fan of Wikimedia, and will participate in this and other discussions of its future.  Wikimedia can become something truely great, and I'd like to help.  It's up to us.

Good luck with everything.

Best, Marshall Poe

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org on behalf of Robert Scott Horning
Sent: Fri 9/23/2005 6:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: [Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a newproject: Wikisomething)

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.
> Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual somethings of all
> different sorts, therefore it spares us the need to found any new
> different projects for speficic things. Moreover, we could also
> integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.
>
> cordially,
> Elian

I know this was in jest, but I would like to know if people on this
mailing are fed up with all of these sort of proposals or if they need
to be encouraged more.  I've been vocal about this in the past, but my
impression is that no new major project will ever be started.  Period.
 If you take a look at the "No" votes for Wikiversity, for example

(see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote )

the #1 reason I find credible is that there are some technical issues
that seem to be preventing new projects from being started.  What are
those incredible technical issues that are going to force any new
project from starting for more than a year from now?  Is there any
reason at all to even encourage anybody to start a new project of any
kind?  Is a general concensus that new proposals should not even be
brought up on Foundation-l?

I do believe that at the very least there needs to be a few more steps
in the development process of a new project proposal before it gets to
Foundation-l.  I've been a regular contributor to this mailing list now
for close to a year, and I've seen a dozen or so new project proposals
get posted, most by very well-meaning people and some of them are very
well thought out.  There are some proposals that are "not ready for
prime-time" and perhaps they should be more thought out before they come
up here.  For most new project ideas, Foundation-l is the very last
place that anything will be heard about the idea, not the first.

Another related issue is more along the lines of how to publicize the
kernel of an idea that may be useful but needs a bit more work, such as
the Wikimemory proposal that has been debated recently.  Requesting help
for such proposals on this mailing list is throwing the idea before a
very hostile audience, perhaps unwittingly and certainly without the
knowledge of new Wikimedia users who happen to come across this mailing
list as suggested by the New Project Policy.  Perhaps instead of
announcing the formal new project proposal here, there should be some
development effort at some Wikiproject or some other sub-community of
Wikimedia users that are much more receptive of the idea, and can give
some depth to the idea before it comes here.

At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on new sister
projects, please make that official policy on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board and get that stated on the New Project page, and
perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well.  On the other hand, if
the board does intend to allow some new projects to be started if they
are well thought out and have a support community behind them, there
should be an official policy to silence the critics who seem to speak in
a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board (even though I know they
are not board members).

If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
screaming about.  Get technical and don't sugar coat it either, and if
possible give hard examples.  If the concern is purely social and
getting the new project community organized, that may be a legitimate
concern.  I don't think it is in as many cases as the critics seems to
believe it may be, and most new projects tend to recruit more people
than would normally be participating with Wikipedia alone, so I don't
think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from volunteers.  This is
also an issue I would be more than willing to debate as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a
	newproject: Wikisomething)


from_name: Dan Grey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a new
	project: Wikisomething)

body:
On 23/09/05, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>  If you take a look at the "No" votes for Wikiversity, for example
>
> (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote )
>
> the #1 reason I find credible is that there are some technical issues
> that seem to be preventing new projects from being started.  What are
> those incredible technical issues that are going to force any new
> project from starting for more than a year from now?

<snip>
> If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
> starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
> would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
> screaming about.

Can you show me where developers have objected?

Dan


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Default Groups created users are assigned to

body:
John Ky wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is it possible to configure mediawiki so that any new users that are
> created will automatically be assigned to one or more groups?

Actually no. All user accounts are assigned the 'user' group permissions
for which you can add / remove rights.

Adding in your localsettings.php:
 $wgGroupPermissions['user']['delete'] = true;

Would let logged in users delete pages.

In User.php User::loadFromDatabase , near the end of the method, the
following line seems to determine the group membership:

$effectiveGroups = array_merge( array( '*', 'user' ), $this->mGroups );

You can probably add groups there ;)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No more new Wikipedias !

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Arbeo M wrote:
>
>
>I've stated my position on new language wikis, and we've been through
>all the arguments before. Just because I'm no longer interested in
>arguing every case, or putting my name on the oppose votes, doesn't mean
>I've changed my mind.
>
It's sad that a tech savvy person can't devise a bot to automatically
place a no vote whenever any of these questions come up. :-)

>The problem with voting on the matter is that it is a vote to expand the
>community. It should come as no surprise that those people who are on
>the outside are voting to be on the inside. As I've previously said, we
>should judge the value of a wiki by the number of readers, and by the
>information it brings to those readers, not by the number of editors.
>
An interesting and important point!  That some action will drive away
editors is a classic argument around here.  Certainly some who
consistently lose votes will be driven away.  (Is that so bad?)  Whether
that harms the overall project is a matter of speculation, since no-one
has over provided evidence to back that up.

>I tired of the
>repetitive debate long ago, so I'm happy to consider the current set of
>languages sufficient. Hopefully if there's any really important
>languages that we've missed, a Board member will let me know.
>
If we spend all our time making sure that we have expressed ourselves on
every vote nothing else would be accomplished.  Therein lies the biggest
problem in any voting process.

>>I was just wondering if somebody
>>has an idea how we could remedy this situation and
>>maybe have, like, one new WP per month (so we don't
>>lose too many potential new contributors)?
>>
The way some people around here read rules that would soon be taken as
meaning that one new WP per month would be mandatory.

>If those potential new contributors only want to write articles in some
>little-known conlang, I won't shed any tears if they stay away.
>
>
There will be very few wet eyes in the crowd.

Ec


from_name: John Ky

subject: [Wikitech-l] Default Groups created users are assigned to

body:
Hello,

Is it possible to configure mediawiki so that any new users that are
created will automatically be assigned to one or more groups?

Thanks

-John


body:
Fastfission wrote:

>Just as a note: I created a sub-page at WP:WPFU,
>[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use/Explaining fair use]], for the
>purposes of exploring ideas and coordinating human resources towards
>creating easy to understand resources to explain fair use and
>copyright law as it applies to Wikipedia. As I currently see it, the
>goal of such a project would be as follows:
>
>
>>Wikipedia users on the whole do not know much about U.S. copyright law, and are thus generally not very empowered to make reasoned decisions about whether something is "fair use" or not. This often leads to rather bitter arguments between users, which generally collapse as one party notes that the other is not a lawyer and thus not an authority on the topic.
>>
>>
>>It would be more ideal if there were easy, straightforward references which one could refer users on Wikipedia to which would explain the notion of copyright, "fair use", and their applications to Wikipedia in a manner which would not require any experience in legal reasoning or a large time commitment.
>>
>>
>It's of course very underdeveloped at this point, but anyone
>interested in such a thing should stop on by. Some current ideas I
>listed were graphical explanations, checklists, flowcharts, a
>Wikibook, improved descriptions on the relevant policy pages, etc., as
>well as some links I find useful in thinking about "fair use" (which
>are still a bit too technical for the average Wikipedia user, but
>closer to what I am imagining we need than a simple quotation of the
>"fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law).
>
This is probably better placed on Meta since copyright law affects all
projects.

While I support the intent of what you are trying to do, the main
problem will remain the unwillingness of editors to familiarise
themselves with the law.  Whatever you may write about the subjec, will
anybody read it.  As a result we find many unsupported radical positions
at both ends of the scale.

Sometimes I think that the IANAL argument or even more the YANAL
argument sonds like an old lawyer trick to stop a discussion that nobody
wants to face.  Although we now consider references very important in
articles about most subjects, we do not take it so far as to say that
the person to whom we refer must always be speaking the truth.  We
recognise that he is expressing a Point of View; a Point of View from a
position of expertise is still a Point of View.  We do not idolize the
source, but see it in a broader perspective.  We refer not defer.

Why should it be so different when we speak of lawyers?  To make matters
worse we aren't even deferring to the Point of View of some particularly
renowned or scholarly lawyer, but to lawyers in general.  It really
comes down to how we as a group accept responsibility for our actions.
Fair use does not excuse reckless irresponsibility.  It is a right which
needs to be used responsibly.

There is also a pecular trend in some of these discussions: We often end
up discussing it in terms of the copyright on images.  This is certainly
important, but the fundamentals of copyright law reside in the copyright
of texts.  With a solid understanding of how copyright and fair use
apply to texts it is much easier to migrate that understanding to images
and other modern media.

It makes sense that we should first consider this issue in terms of U.
S. law; it originated there.  As the discussion matures there will be a
need to expand it to be able to co-ordinate with similar laws (or lack
thereof) in other countries.

Let me speculate a little further.  Would there be enough material about
fair use to have it serve as the basis for a Wikiversity course? 8-)

Ec


body:
Arbeo M wrote:

>--- Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> schrieb:
>
>
>>Who else agrees that he's a troll?
>>
>>
>Troll or not, that's just semantics. But it's a matter
>of fact that it's extremely impolite towards the other
>members of the mailing list to bombard them with 20 or
>more messages on the same subject.
>
>Please remember: some people here might have a life,
>too.
>
>
The label is not important, and somewhat inflamatory.

It's clear that Jack would not have defended his position with such
enthusiasm if no one had answered.

Most keyboards have a feature which is consistent with having a life.
It's the delete button.  Some of us are even so advanced that we can
delete several messages at once. :-)

Ec


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Jim Breen

body:
[Andrew Dunbar ([Wiktionary-l] Re: English orthographies) writes:]
>> On 9/22/05, Jim Breen <Jim.Breen at infotech.monash.edu.au> wrote:
>> > Yes, in fact it is the frowning on redirects that led me to looking at
>> > the UW proposals. I was looking at the Wiktionary structure to see if it
>> > would be a suitable environment for my Japanese-Multilingual dictionary
>> > database. I ran into a number of problems, one of which was the "no
>> > redirects" policy, and someone suggested I look at UW.
>>
>> The "frowning on redirects" policy is largely due to the fact that we have many
>> languages in one "namespace". When a particular English spelling variant or
>> even a plural happens to coincide with the spelling of another word in another
>> language then we have to have two pages anyway. This is not uncommon.
>> We then decided it was better to try for some consistency rather than having
>> some shared pages and some redirects. The other major issue was what to
>> do when a dictionary is created for both the British (colour, centre) market
>> and the American (color, center) market without us trying to force upon anyone
>> which is the "standard" and which is the "variant", which redirects lead to.

This second problem goes away if a search for an entry can be made on more
than one "headword". In fact single headwords is a limitation of paper
dictionaries that never needed to be propagated into electronic
dictionaries.

>> > Provided:
>> > (a) the essential information (senses, POS, etymology, etc.) only has to
>> > be entered once, and remains the same for all the spelling and
>> > orthographical variants;
>>
>> Sometimes some of these will be different. In British and the Commonwealth
>> except Canada "tire" only means "become tired". In US and Canadian English
>> it also means "tyre", the rubber ring on the outside of a wheel. But these are
>> homonyms rather than senses though many non-lexography savvy people
>> don't realise the difference.

Of course they are homonyms. With a relatively small set of phonemes,
Japanese is riddled with homonyms; there are cases of more than 20 different
words with the same pronunciation. You'd go (and be) crazy if you tried
to treat them as the one "word".

>> > (b) the user, on entering either form, gets the one collection of
>> > information which shows all the alternative forms of the word, then
>> > I really have no objection. I can't understand why they are in different
>> > database records, and in the case of my own JMdict (XML) they aren't,
>> > but then I don't use SynTrans, etc.
>>
>> Basically it's an arbitrary database design issue. UW is going for more
>> granularity. In this way it's probably more object-oriented since it breaks
>> things down into more, smaller objects. There is nothing intrinsic right or
>> wrong about either approach.

Provided the design doesn't intrude into the operation (creation,
maintenance, lookup, etc.)

>> > Not really. I don't know about the languages I don't speak (i.e.
>> > everything apart from English, Japanese, French and a little Latin), but
>> > in general the spelling has little or nothing to do with the etymology.
>>
>> Sometimes one spelling is definitely known to be derived from another
>> and both remain in use in various places. For instance the Spanish word
>> for "peanut" was borrowed from Nahuatl in Mexico as "cacahuate" but
>> when it was later borrwed into Spain itself it became "cacahuete". It would
>> be a shame to not have a way to record such things in the cases we do
>> know them.

I was really referring to the centre/center, colour/color situations. I
should have said "minor spelling differences".

Cheers

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


subject: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies

body:
[GerardM (Re: [Wiktionary-l] English orthographies) writes:]
>> In the UW, an etymology is not related directly to a spelling. Typically an
>> etymology is linked to a "lemma". Lemmas are typically considered the
>> combination of a meaning and a word.

Well, a set of words, in that in  English "sing", "sang" and "sung" are
the one lemma.

>> You wrote that you are interested in UW because of a multi language database
>> that you have particularly for/with Japanese. I do not what you want to
>> achieve, but if your interest is in an analysis of the possibility to import
>> your data in UW, then I would love to have a look at your data design. If
>> you consider importing the content under the GFDL, I would be even more
>> happy.

A good place to start is
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/j_jmdict.html   There is an HTMLized
sample entry at:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/jmdict_sample.html

>> One lesson that I will learn, is if I have all the features to include a
>> Japanese dictionary.

For a number of reasons, Japanese is a good language to test a
dictionary design against because it is very different animal to
a typical Indo-European language. Then you have to consider languages
like Chinese, or Arabic/Hebrew/etc. Semitic languages, as they bring in
other challenges.

Cheers

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


body:
[Andrew Dunbar ([Wiktionary-l] Re: English orthographies) writes:]
>>
>> I don't agree with the "authority" concept. Or maybe it's just the chosen name
>> for the concept I find unsettling.

Maybe the latter. While it can happily mean "the verifiable source that
the xxxx spelling exists", it can also be taken to mean some sanctioning
body.

>> I would have chosen "orthography" before
>> reading Jim's comments on orthography vs. spelling. For instance I would've
>> thought in the case of German that "the pre-1998 German orthography" would
>> be a valid concept. If I substituted the word "spelling" in this
>> phrase it sounds
>> like it refers to a specific word rather than the whole language.
>> Maybe "spelling
>> standard" works better for Jim?

It does. When I think of German orthography the image of pre-war Gothic
scripts vs modern Carolignian uncials (or whatever they are) comees to
mind, but I agree that things like o_umlaut/oe are probably more
orthography than spelling because they are operating across the board at
a language level rather than at a word variance level.

Cheers

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Tim, we're not talking about dead languages or conlangs.

We're talking about languages that are spoken by real, tangible people
as their everyday native language, and which have at least 5
supporters, native speaker support, and no oposition at all.

Specifically, now people are waiting for Ladino, Waray-Waray, and
Neapolitan. You can look any of them up on Ethnologue if you like.
Waray-Waray and Neapolitan have millions of speakers; Ladino has at
least tens of thousands but might have more.

These requests have many supporters, native speaker support
(especially in the case of Ladino and Neapolitan, where heaps of
native speakers dropped by to show their support), and no opposition.

Mark

On 24/09/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Arbeo M wrote:
> > ... at least not for the past three months or so.
> >
> > In the past you only had to drop the name of some
> > language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
> > language was created right away. This surely wasn't a
> > very intelligent approach, for it left us with quite a
> > number of inactive Wikipedias.
> >
> > Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are heaps
> > of requests that have been discussed very thoroughly
> > by the community (cf.
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages).
> > Some of them are pretty well-qualified and supported
> > by numerous native speakers willing to contribute.
> > However, not a single new Wikipedia has been set up
> > for quite a while now.
> >
> > Some time ago there had been a remark that it was hard
> > for our developers to recognize which new language
> > proposals can be considered as accepeted by the
> > community (and therefore created). That's why I made a
> > separate page intended to list languages that
> > unambiguously qualify for a new wiki (cf.
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages).
> > Since this can be a controversial question I only
> > placed those cases there that are 100 % unequivocal
> > (at least 5 supporters, at least 2 native speakers,
> > ISO code, no objections, etc.).
> >
>
> I've stated my position on new language wikis, and we've been through
> all the arguments before. Just because I'm no longer interested in
> arguing every case, or putting my name on the oppose votes, doesn't mean
> I've changed my mind.
>
> I created 5 new Wikipedias in June because I received a request from a
> Wikimedia Board member. If I receive another such specific request, I'll
> carry it out. I do that out of loyalty to them, not because I think it
> contributes to our mission.
>
> The problem with voting on the matter is that it is a vote to expand the
> community. It should come as no surprise that those people who are on
> the outside are voting to be on the inside. As I've previously said, we
> should judge the value of a wiki by the number of readers, and by the
> information it brings to those readers, not by the number of editors. A
> Wikipedia in Anglo Saxon is a failure regardless of how many articles or
> editors it has. I know Anglo Saxon is an extreme case, but I'm not
> prepared to argue about every point in between, especially not when a
> certain annoying person dominates every discussion. I tired of the
> repetitive debate long ago, so I'm happy to consider the current set of
> languages sufficient. Hopefully if there's any really important
> languages that we've missed, a Board member will let me know.
>
> > [...]
> > Before any misunderstandings might arise: I know that
> > our developers are extremely busy (and AFAIK unpaid,
> > too - good gosh...). I was just wondering if somebody
> > has an idea how we could remedy this situation and
> > maybe have, like, one new WP per month (so we don't
> > lose too many potential new contributors)?
>
> If those potential new contributors only want to write articles in some
> little-known conlang, I won't shed any tears if they stay away.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


body:
[Muke Tever (Re: [Wiktionary-l] Re: English orthographies) writes:]
>>
>> Yes, and sometimes the etymology is ignored in the reckoning of correct spelling,
>> thus "island" and not "iland" and "thumb" rather than "thum". Etymology is never a
>> proof of spelling, though it is one of the factors that influences it.

In some cases, e.g. modern Japanese, the spelling, i.e. the kana
representation, has been aligned entirely with pronunciation, thus
blowing away many etymological influences. This was fought over for 50
years, but finally the radicals triumphed over the conservatives. The
old kana system was even more dysfunctional than English spelling.

Jim

--
Jim Breen                                http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,               Tel: +61 3 9905 9554
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia                  Fax: +61 3 9905 5146
(Monash Provider No. 00008C)                ???????@??????


body:
You did indeed miss something.

Jimbo said "The valid point that Jack and Naree would be making if
they weren't so obviously trolling us".

Now, while some might argue that you can be trolling without being a
_troll_, I think it's generally agreed that anybody who trolls for
suckers is a troll.

Mark

On 24/09/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > When Mark Williamson calls you a troll, you must really be one, I
> > think. Especially if Jimbo Wales agrees.
>
> > >  Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
> > > worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
> > > Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".
> >
> > So, are you calling Jimbo Wales a bully and an ostracist?
>
> I don't think Jimbo Wales called anyone a troll. He wrote:
> > But inflammatory and patently false claims are likely to be taken as _trolling_
>
> That is not calling someone a troll. Or did I miss something?
>
> Gerrit.
>
> --
> Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
> | Current temperature   05-09-24 12:59:57   11.9 degrees Celsius ( 53.4F) |
> --
> Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Just as a note: I created a sub-page at WP:WPFU,
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use/Explaining fair use]], for the
purposes of exploring ideas and coordinating human resources towards
creating easy to understand resources to explain fair use and
copyright law as it applies to Wikipedia. As I currently see it, the
goal of such a project would be as follows:

> Wikipedia users on the whole do not know much about U.S. copyright law, and are thus generally not very empowered to make reasoned decisions about whether something is "fair use" or not. This often leads to rather bitter arguments between users, which generally collapse as one party notes that the other is not a lawyer and thus not an authority on the topic.

> It would be more ideal if there were easy, straightforward references which one could refer users on Wikipedia to which would explain the notion of copyright, "fair use", and their applications to Wikipedia in a manner which would not require any experience in legal reasoning or a large time commitment.

It's of course very underdeveloped at this point, but anyone
interested in such a thing should stop on by. Some current ideas I
listed were graphical explanations, checklists, flowcharts, a
Wikibook, improved descriptions on the relevant policy pages, etc., as
well as some links I find useful in thinking about "fair use" (which
are still a bit too technical for the average Wikipedia user, but
closer to what I am imagining we need than a simple quotation of the
"fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law).

FF

On 9/22/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I was actually thinking to create a flowchart for people to easily determine
> the copyright status of images, but lacking the legal know-how, I haven't
> done it.
>
> Not only would such an aid in determining image status be helpful to people
> who are new to legal issues on this, it could also be used as an argument to
> not allow images that don't get through this process for being a copyright
> infringement or faulty fair use claim.
>
> We should also have a page saying how we should only have limited fair use
> images on articles (and not on userpages) where there's no other
> alternatives or 1 such image in an article when it explains a lot (again, if
> there's no other choice).
>
> --Mgm
>
> On 9/23/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I agree completely. Last time I checked, the deletion policy is very
> much
> > > so
> > > biased toward keeping everything by requiring a supermajority to delete.
> > > It
> > > should be the other way around whenever a fair use claim is made.
> > >
> >
> > Remember that a fair use claim would come under the Copyright policy,
> which
> > being a key policy takes precedence over the deletion policy.
> >
> > In short, if someone makes a fair use claim they should need a consensus
> to
> > support it if anything.
> >
> > Under deletion policy, the rule is "if in doubt, don't delete." The
> > copyright policy should adopt the reverse approach. Wikipedia is known for
> > the quality of its product. Let's not ever risk it being known as a
> > purloiner of other people's hard work.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Gerrit Holl

body:
Jack & Naree wrote:
> Would anybody on this list disagree that AmE is a clearly distinct dialect
> of English? It would appear not.
> These two factors alone seem to be enough for other dialects to get a
> Wikipedia.

I disagree with this one. Yes, there are differences between "British
English" and "American English". But I think those differences are
smaller than the differences between any two existing Wikipedia's. Those
are languages that have own Wiikpedia's; not dialects.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-24 10:19:54    9.8 degrees Celsius ( 49.7F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> When Mark Williamson calls you a troll, you must really be one, I
> think. Especially if Jimbo Wales agrees.

> >  Rowan's suggestion of a machine translation solution to the problem is
> > worth looking at to satisfy Wikipedia "Unionists", but the needs of
> > Wikipedia "Nationalists"can't be bullied and ostracised as "trolls".
>
> So, are you calling Jimbo Wales a bully and an ostracist?

I don't think Jimbo Wales called anyone a troll. He wrote:
> But inflammatory and patently false claims are likely to be taken as _trolling_

That is not calling someone a troll. Or did I miss something?

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-24 12:59:57   11.9 degrees Celsius ( 53.4F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] excessive posting

body:
> With the enormous output of mails some participants
> produce here and the impossibility of reading all of
> them, important arguments can be overlooked easily. On
> top of that, the arguments of members who don't have
> the time to write a dozen or more e-mails per day are
> sometimes drowned out by an overly productive
> minority.

It's called "skimming". You skim an e-mail to see if you care at all.
If you don't, just delete it and move on. While it may not be possible
to read all the e-mails, it's certainly possible to skim all of them.

And, if you've gotten tired of a particular thread or person, you can
just stop all of those particular e-mails.

> I've sure heard about that delete button but I think
> it can't replace a sound culture of discussion. In an
> oral conversation you can't talk 80% of the time.
> Here, I sometimes get the impression that some people
> believe the more (and the longer) e-mails they write,
> the more right they are.

And who might that be? I think it has more with a desire to respond to
ALL the messages on a topic, rather than a belief that more e-mails
makes you more right, which it obviously does not.

Mark

PS

Geritt said something earlier, presumably jokingly, about an all-caps
signature. The purpose of that is that miniscule letters were not used
in ancient Rome. Thus, "QVANTUM" in my signature rather than
"Quantum". I'm pretty sure that in situations like that (ie,
sociolinguistic authenticity), all-caps are considered acceptable by
the general public.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a
	newproject: Wikisomething--repost)

body:
(Sorry, I reposted this because the formatting was a
mess; should be easier to read now. MP

Thanks very much, Robert, for your good comments. They
are very apt.

I was the proposer of Wikimemory, and you are right
about my experience, and I suspect those of other
proposers.  While I would not say that comments on
Foundation-l were exactly hostile, they were not for
the most part friendly, supportive, encouraging,
numerous, or helpful.  A one line reply like "I think
this project should be on wikicities" is really not
very satisfying. I, for one, would like an explanation
of the various POVs shared.  I tried to offer such
explanations, at length, and with a certain amount of
reflection and thought.  With one or two exceptions, I
rec'd nothing of a similar character.  I'm new to
Wikimedia, but my experience has made me wonder just
how serious the "new projects" initiative is.  This is
a shame, because, as you say, well-meaning people with
 possibly good ideas are being neglected or even
frightened away.  In the end, if you want to attract
serious people, you have to be serious.

The fashion in which new projects are vetted at
Wikimeida is unprofessional. I mean this with no
disrespect. Perhaps it is impossible for an
organization such as Wikimedia to be held to such a
high standard.  Wikimedia does many things very well
(I'm a huge fan of Wikipedia).  But professionalism
just might not be in the cards, and perhaps it
shouldn't be.  Critics (and I guess I'm one of them)
will say that Wikimedia's new proposals initiative
fails exactly because it lacks the standard incentives
and disincentives built into any real business, that
is, a strong devotion to the mission, strong incentives
to pursue said mission, and stong dissincentives
against unprofessional behavior.  In a successful
enterprise, if you don't do your job well, there are
consequences.  In this aspect of Wikimedia, there seem
to be none.  And perhaps there can be none, because we
are all uncompensated volunteers.  Again, critics will
say that this once again demonstrates that
undisciplined organizations just don't perform very
well.  When everybody is responsible, nobody is
responsible.

The question, I guess, is this: can people act
professionally when they have no motivation other than
that they should?  My experience suggests the answer is
no, at least in this narrow instance.

I'm withdrawing Wikimemory from consideration as a new
project, and am pursuing othere means of realizing it
(see memoirbank.com).  I believe in it, and hope I can
find others who do to.  Perhaps someday we can begin
discussion of something like Wikimemory again, after
the idea has matured.  I would welcome that.

I will, of course, continue to be a huge fan of
Wikimedia, and will participate in this and other
discussions of its future.  Wikimedia can become
something truely great, and I'd like to help.  It's up
to us.

Good luck with everything.

Best, Marshall Poe

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org on behalf of Robert Scott Horning
Sent: Fri 9/23/2005 6:43 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: [Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a newproject: Wikisomething)

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> I want to propose a new idea for a new project: Wikisomething.
> Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual somethings of all
> different sorts, therefore it spares us the need to found any new
> different projects for speficic things. Moreover, we could also
> integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.
>
> cordially,
> Elian

I know this was in jest, but I would like to know if people on this
mailing are fed up with all of these sort of proposals or if they need
to be encouraged more.  I've been vocal about this in the past, but my
impression is that no new major project will ever be started.  Period.
 If you take a look at the "No" votes for Wikiversity, for example

(see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote )

the #1 reason I find credible is that there are some technical issues
that seem to be preventing new projects from being started.  What are
those incredible technical issues that are going to force any new
project from starting for more than a year from now?  Is there any
reason at all to even encourage anybody to start a new project of any
kind?  Is a general concensus that new proposals should not even be
brought up on Foundation-l?

I do believe that at the very least there needs to be a few more steps
in the development process of a new project proposal before it gets to
Foundation-l.  I've been a regular contributor to this mailing list now
for close to a year, and I've seen a dozen or so new project proposals
get posted, most by very well-meaning people and some of them are very
well thought out.  There are some proposals that are "not ready for
prime-time" and perhaps they should be more thought out before they come
up here.  For most new project ideas, Foundation-l is the very last
place that anything will be heard about the idea, not the first.

Another related issue is more along the lines of how to publicize the
kernel of an idea that may be useful but needs a bit more work, such as
the Wikimemory proposal that has been debated recently.  Requesting help
for such proposals on this mailing list is throwing the idea before a
very hostile audience, perhaps unwittingly and certainly without the
knowledge of new Wikimedia users who happen to come across this mailing
list as suggested by the New Project Policy.  Perhaps instead of
announcing the formal new project proposal here, there should be some
development effort at some Wikiproject or some other sub-community of
Wikimedia users that are much more receptive of the idea, and can give
some depth to the idea before it comes here.

At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on new sister
projects, please make that official policy on the part of the Wikimedia
Foundation Board and get that stated on the New Project page, and
perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well.  On the other hand, if
the board does intend to allow some new projects to be started if they
are well thought out and have a support community behind them, there
should be an official policy to silence the critics who seem to speak in
a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board (even though I know they
are not board members).

If there are genuine technical issues that need to be addressed so that
starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than to.wikibooks.org, I
would like to know what those issues are that developers seem to be
screaming about.  Get technical and don't sugar coat it either, and if
possible give hard examples.  If the concern is purely social and
getting the new project community organized, that may be a legitimate
concern.  I don't think it is in as many cases as the critics seems to
believe it may be, and most new projects tend to recruit more people
than would normally be participating with Wikipedia alone, so I don't
think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from volunteers.  This is
also an issue I would be more than willing to debate as well.

--
Robert Scott Horning

_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
Whether people will read it or not, having a set of concrete resources
can aid in discussions with obstinate users as well. Resources can be
forms of authority in and of themselves -- "Look at this, it says you
are wrong."

I don't participate in Meta, and I don't know what the gameplan is
there. And though copyright law applies to all of the Wiki projects,
it applies to them in different ways varying by their content. Commons
is exclusively about image and sound media; Wikisource is about
wholesale textual media; Wikiquote is about what degree of quotation
is copyrightable; etc. So I think having resources tailored to
individual projects makes sense, in the same sense that Wikiquote
ought to have its own Copyrights page distinct from Wikipedia's (which
it now does).

The goal of the resources I'm proposing is to focus on simplicity,
ease, and low-investment (of time, energy, brain, etc.) on the part of
the user. Whether some users refuse to make any use of it, I still
think on the whole it's not a bad idea and could be quite useful. But
it's just one of many such things.

FF

On 9/24/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Fastfission wrote:
>
> >Just as a note: I created a sub-page at WP:WPFU,
> >[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fair use/Explaining fair use]], for the
> >purposes of exploring ideas and coordinating human resources towards
> >creating easy to understand resources to explain fair use and
> >copyright law as it applies to Wikipedia. As I currently see it, the
> >goal of such a project would be as follows:
> >
> >
> >>Wikipedia users on the whole do not know much about U.S. copyright law, and are thus generally not very empowered to make reasoned decisions about whether something is "fair use" or not. This often leads to rather bitter arguments between users, which generally collapse as one party notes that the other is not a lawyer and thus not an authority on the topic.
> >>
> >>
> >>It would be more ideal if there were easy, straightforward references which one could refer users on Wikipedia to which would explain the notion of copyright, "fair use", and their applications to Wikipedia in a manner which would not require any experience in legal reasoning or a large time commitment.
> >>
> >>
> >It's of course very underdeveloped at this point, but anyone
> >interested in such a thing should stop on by. Some current ideas I
> >listed were graphical explanations, checklists, flowcharts, a
> >Wikibook, improved descriptions on the relevant policy pages, etc., as
> >well as some links I find useful in thinking about "fair use" (which
> >are still a bit too technical for the average Wikipedia user, but
> >closer to what I am imagining we need than a simple quotation of the
> >"fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law).
> >
> This is probably better placed on Meta since copyright law affects all
> projects.
>
> While I support the intent of what you are trying to do, the main
> problem will remain the unwillingness of editors to familiarise
> themselves with the law.  Whatever you may write about the subjec, will
> anybody read it.  As a result we find many unsupported radical positions
> at both ends of the scale.
>
> Sometimes I think that the IANAL argument or even more the YANAL
> argument sonds like an old lawyer trick to stop a discussion that nobody
> wants to face.  Although we now consider references very important in
> articles about most subjects, we do not take it so far as to say that
> the person to whom we refer must always be speaking the truth.  We
> recognise that he is expressing a Point of View; a Point of View from a
> position of expertise is still a Point of View.  We do not idolize the
> source, but see it in a broader perspective.  We refer not defer.
>
> Why should it be so different when we speak of lawyers?  To make matters
> worse we aren't even deferring to the Point of View of some particularly
> renowned or scholarly lawyer, but to lawyers in general.  It really
> comes down to how we as a group accept responsibility for our actions.
> Fair use does not excuse reckless irresponsibility.  It is a right which
> needs to be used responsibly.
>
> There is also a pecular trend in some of these discussions: We often end
> up discussing it in terms of the copyright on images.  This is certainly
> important, but the fundamentals of copyright law reside in the copyright
> of texts.  With a solid understanding of how copyright and fair use
> apply to texts it is much easier to migrate that understanding to images
> and other modern media.
>
> It makes sense that we should first consider this issue in terms of U.
> S. law; it originated there.  As the discussion matures there will be a
> need to expand it to be able to co-ordinate with similar laws (or lack
> thereof) in other countries.
>
> Let me speculate a little further.  Would there be enough material about
> fair use to have it serve as the basis for a Wikiversity course? 8-)
>
> Ec
>
>


body:
A just to reply to two things I didn't really get to in the last one...

On 9/24/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> There is also a pecular trend in some of these discussions: We often end
> up discussing it in terms of the copyright on images.  This is certainly
> important, but the fundamentals of copyright law reside in the copyright
> of texts.  With a solid understanding of how copyright and fair use
> apply to texts it is much easier to migrate that understanding to images
> and other modern media.

I think it is a bit incorrect to give texts a privileged place in this
-- images of all sorts, as well as texts, have been components of
copyright law since their very origins, and the chief reason images
occupy so much attention on our project is that copyright law affects
different media differently. It is very easy to take any textual
information and, for the purposes of the encyclopedia, make it
entirely safe and sanitary. The use of attributed brief quotations and
summaries is a well-established part of academic critique and "fair
use" even before there was a "fair use" clause. Graphical media though
is more difficult to transform -- a redrawing of a famous painting
would still be considered derivative in the eyes of the law (though to
the varying extents depending on the specifics). Photographs,
especially of historical events (which by their definition cannot be
repeated), cannot be easily "freed" unless their copyrights expire
(which for things post-1922 has not happened for a long time and will
not likely happen for a long time) or they are specifically
re-licensed or put into the public domain (and more likely the rights
are just sold to Corbis for a nominal fee, who then puts ridiculous
commercial restrictions on their licensing).

For Wikipedia, text is not a big deal. (For Wikiquote and Wikisource,
it is the only deal, of course, as I said before). Images, however,
are a big deal, and on Wikipedia they are, in my opinion, more of a
big deal than they are on Commons (which under more ideal management
would have a strict and simple shoot-on-sight policy to maintain
copyright-purity), because it allows "fair use" images in the first
place. (It is a big deal with Wikinews too, of course, but I think
their shoot-on-sight policy looks pretty good, in theory.)

So anyway. All I'm trying to stress is that copyright *does* affect
certain media differently than others, as does "fair use" (you can use
a few seconds of a sound clip, but using a few pixels of an image
doesn't seem to be quite the same thing, and text you can paraphrase
completely and cite). Sorry to be so pedantic and tedious about it.

FF


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a
	newproject: Wikisomething--repost)

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> I think one of the reasons that new proposals have trouble getting up
> is because most of the new proposal ideas just aren't suitable for
> wikis. Wikis are not the be all and end all of user driven websites.
> There are many, many different paradigms (forums, blogs etc), wikis
> are just one of those paradigms. Just  because wikis worked well for
> the 'pedia doesn't mean they are going to work well for other things.
> I have said it before and i will porbably say it again: we need a
> discussion about the future of wikimedia. Are we in the 'buisness' of
> wikis, or are we in the 'buisness' of making the sum of human
> knowledge avaliable to everyone? If it is the former, we need more
> info on the "propose a new project page" about the limitations of
> wikis. If it is the latter, then we need some more software tools than
> just mediawiki.

Well we already have some projects that are very poorly suited to a wiki
format such as:
* Wiktionary
* Wikiquote
* Wikimedia Commons

and some which would greatly benefit from application-specific workflow,
organization and navigation tools which we don't really have:
* Wikibooks
* Wikisource
* Wikinews

Our software was written for Wikipedia; our development team has
primarily gotten into it from and for Wikipedia, and we haven't really
seen much specialized software development coming from the communities
for these other projects.

There are a few things: a MediaWiki extension for Wikinews which
provides basic support for the category-based, time-sorted article lists
it needs, a couple upload helper apps for Commons. There's a little bit
of code which might one day form part of the support for Ultimate
Wiktionary. But the basic software platform we're running these sites on
isn't tuned for them, and in some cases it's really totally inappropriate.

I would generally recommend against tossing in _yet more_ different new
projects when our existing ones are so poorly supported, without a
better idea of who's going to support them and with what.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> I think one of the reasons that new proposals have trouble getting up
> is because most of the new proposal ideas just aren't suitable for
> wikis. Wikis are not the be all and end all of user driven websites.
> There are many, many different paradigms (forums, blogs etc), wikis
> are just one of those paradigms. Just  because wikis worked well for
> the 'pedia doesn't mean they are going to work well for other things.
> I have said it before and i will porbably say it again: we need a
> discussion about the future of wikimedia. Are we in the 'buisness' of
> wikis, or are we in the 'buisness' of making the sum of human
> knowledge avaliable to everyone? If it is the former, we need more
> info on the "propose a new project page" about the limitations of
> wikis. If it is the latter, then we need some more software tools than
> just mediawiki.

Well we already have some projects that are very poorly suited to a wiki
format such as:
* Wiktionary
* Wikiquote
* Wikimedia Commons

and some which would greatly benefit from application-specific workflow,
organization and navigation tools which we don't really have:
* Wikibooks
* Wikisource
* Wikinews

Our software was written for Wikipedia; our development team has
primarily gotten into it from and for Wikipedia, and we haven't really
seen much specialized software development coming from the communities
for these other projects.

There are a few things: a MediaWiki extension for Wikinews which
provides basic support for the category-based, time-sorted article lists
it needs, a couple upload helper apps for Commons. There's a little bit
of code which might one day form part of the support for Ultimate
Wiktionary. But the basic software platform we're running these sites on
isn't tuned for them, and in some cases it's really totally inappropriate.

I would generally recommend against tossing in _yet more_ different new
projects when our existing ones are so poorly supported, without a
better idea of who's going to support them and with what.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> I think one of the reasons that new proposals have trouble getting up
> is because most of the new proposal ideas just aren't suitable for
> wikis. Wikis are not the be all and end all of user driven websites.
> There are many, many different paradigms (forums, blogs etc), wikis
> are just one of those paradigms. Just  because wikis worked well for
> the 'pedia doesn't mean they are going to work well for other things.
> I have said it before and i will porbably say it again: we need a
> discussion about the future of wikimedia. Are we in the 'buisness' of
> wikis, or are we in the 'buisness' of making the sum of human
> knowledge avaliable to everyone? If it is the former, we need more
> info on the "propose a new project page" about the limitations of
> wikis. If it is the latter, then we need some more software tools than
> just mediawiki.

Well we already have some projects that are very poorly suited to a wiki
format such as:
* Wiktionary
* Wikiquote
* Wikimedia Commons

and some which would greatly benefit from application-specific workflow,
organization and navigation tools which we don't really have:
* Wikibooks
* Wikisource
* Wikinews

Our software was written for Wikipedia; our development team has
primarily gotten into it from and for Wikipedia, and we haven't really
seen much specialized software development coming from the communities
for these other projects.

There are a few things: a MediaWiki extension for Wikinews which
provides basic support for the category-based, time-sorted article lists
it needs, a couple upload helper apps for Commons. There's a little bit
of code which might one day form part of the support for Ultimate
Wiktionary. But the basic software platform we're running these sites on
isn't tuned for them, and in some cases it's really totally inappropriate.

I would generally recommend against tossing in _yet more_ different new
projects when our existing ones are so poorly supported, without a
better idea of who's going to support them and with what.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robin Shannon wrote:
> I think one of the reasons that new proposals have trouble getting up
> is because most of the new proposal ideas just aren't suitable for
> wikis. Wikis are not the be all and end all of user driven websites.
> There are many, many different paradigms (forums, blogs etc), wikis
> are just one of those paradigms. Just  because wikis worked well for
> the 'pedia doesn't mean they are going to work well for other things.
> I have said it before and i will porbably say it again: we need a
> discussion about the future of wikimedia. Are we in the 'buisness' of
> wikis, or are we in the 'buisness' of making the sum of human
> knowledge avaliable to everyone? If it is the former, we need more
> info on the "propose a new project page" about the limitations of
> wikis. If it is the latter, then we need some more software tools than
> just mediawiki.

Well we already have some projects that are very poorly suited to a wiki
format such as:
* Wiktionary
* Wikiquote
* Wikimedia Commons

and some which would greatly benefit from application-specific workflow,
organization and navigation tools which we don't really have:
* Wikibooks
* Wikisource
* Wikinews

Our software was written for Wikipedia; our development team has
primarily gotten into it from and for Wikipedia, and we haven't really
seen much specialized software development coming from the communities
for these other projects.

There are a few things: a MediaWiki extension for Wikinews which
provides basic support for the category-based, time-sorted article lists
it needs, a couple upload helper apps for Commons. There's a little bit
of code which might one day form part of the support for Ultimate
Wiktionary. But the basic software platform we're running these sites on
isn't tuned for them, and in some cases it's really totally inappropriate.

I would generally recommend against tossing in _yet more_ different new
projects when our existing ones are so poorly supported, without a
better idea of who's going to support them and with what.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Angela wrote:
> On 9/24/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>>I created 5 new Wikipedias in June because I received a request from a
>>Wikimedia Board member. If I receive another such specific request, I'll
>>carry it out. I do that out of loyalty to them, not because I think it
>>contributes to our mission.
>
> I doubt you'll get another such request since I've been told that new
> language wikis is not a Board issue and I shouldn't be taking
> decisions on these or asking developers to start them.

Some while ago I stopped creating wikis except by an explicit request
from a board member since several cases have ended up being later
canceled entirely on Jimbo's order (Toki Pona) or at least turned out to
be quite controversial after the fact (dewikiversity). Starting a
weeks-long flamewar on the lists and pissing off contributors by
canceling their wiki months later turns out to be an unproductive and
un-fun use of my time. :)

But if nothing happens without board go-ahead, and the board won't issue
requests, well... nothing happens.

> What people
> fail to realise is that if the Board doesn't take these decisions (and
> perhaps they're right and the Board shouldn't) - then who is going to
> take them? There is increasingly resistance to the Board doing
> anything, but also resistance to them delegating any authority they
> may have had, which is just leading to stagnation. So, who should be
> taking the decision on new language wikis (and also on new projects),
> especially when no
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposed_policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages>
> has ever been agreed upon?

If you board guys could stamp your approval on that policy and
explicitly state I have authority for new-language addition following
those rules as Chief Technical Doohickey, I'd be happy to do it. (Under
those rules it's pretty clear Toki Pona wouldn't have happened due to
the requirement to seek public consensus first; dewikiversity wouldn't
have happened due to it being a separate project and thus not covered by
these rules.)

If not, then I need some marching orders one way or the other.

-- brion vibber (b4ion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Just as a note:

Just a day after I posted this as at the /Todo page at WP:WPFU, the
amazingly wonderful [[User:JYolkowski]] has gone through them one by
one and has now reported it as completed. The selflessness at which
people will apply themselves to such tasks for the good of a greater
project -- even the most dull and boring -- is really quite stunning
and impressive. Of course, this comes as no surprise on Wikipedia, but
I thought it deserved to be noted once again.

FF

On 9/23/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've started writing that robot, but ran into a problem with the
> pywikipedia framework and [[Category:Fair use images]].  It seems that
> there are more than 200 images in the category indexed under "Upload"
> (due to a now-fixed bug in MediaWiki from last April and May), which
> causes the category enumerator in pywikipedia to loop endlessly.  Once
> I've manually touched enough of the images which are indexed under
> "Upload" to drop that count below 200, the bug will clear and I'll be
> able to use the robot to enumerate the category and do the orphan
> check on a periodic basis.
>
> If you want to help, go to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Fair_use_images&from=Upload
> and make null edits on the images listed therein.  This will cause
> them to be reindexed properly and fix the indexing problem with the
> Category.  There's a lot of them.
>
> Kelly
>


from_name: Ben Garney

references:
<4334AA6A.2090102@timsprint.com> <dh31f6$ihu$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<433521AD.4000003@timsprint.com>

body:
Hi guys,

Maybe unrelated, maybe helpful - I added some code to my MW instance to
allow the requirement of a magic word before people can create an
account. So to create an account there's an additional field where they
have to specify the magic word before it'll let them in. Good for closed
betas and the like where you aren't trying to be secure, just to keep
out casual passers-by.

If people are interested, I can probably make a little patch and post it
up somewhere.

Regards,
Ben Garney

John Ky wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Thanks for replying.
>
> The configuration I want to setup is this:
>
> The wiki is configured to disallow anonymous users from
> viewing pages.
>
> A special user say "Guest" is given two privileges:
>
> * View pages
> * Create users
>
> I can then give people I know the user/password for Guest
> and they can then view pages, or at their option be able to
> create an account that they can use to edit pages.
>
> What is the best way of achieving something like this?
>
> Thanks
>
> -John
>
> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>> Actually no. All user accounts are assigned the 'user' group permissions
>> for which you can add / remove rights.
>>
>> Adding in your localsettings.php:
>> $wgGroupPermissions['user']['delete'] = true;
>>
>> Would let logged in users delete pages.
>>
>> In User.php User::loadFromDatabase , near the end of the method, the
>> following line seems to determine the group membership:
>>
>> $effectiveGroups = array_merge( array( '*', 'user' ), $this->mGroups );
>>
>> You can probably add groups there ;)
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Hi,

Thanks for replying.

The configuration I want to setup is this:

The wiki is configured to disallow anonymous users from
viewing pages.

A special user say "Guest" is given two privileges:

* View pages
* Create users

I can then give people I know the user/password for Guest
and they can then view pages, or at their option be able to
create an account that they can use to edit pages.

What is the best way of achieving something like this?

Thanks

-John

Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

>Actually no. All user accounts are assigned the 'user' group permissions
>for which you can add / remove rights.
>
>Adding in your localsettings.php:
> $wgGroupPermissions['user']['delete'] = true;
>
>Would let logged in users delete pages.
>
>In User.php User::loadFromDatabase , near the end of the method, the
>following line seems to determine the group membership:
>
>$effectiveGroups = array_merge( array( '*', 'user' ), $this->mGroups );
>
>You can probably add groups there ;)
>
>cheers,
>


from_name: Freya

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
I have made several attempts to update/correct articles on Wikipedia,
and have received the following message, or some variation of it:

You have attempted to edit a page, either by clicking the "edit this
page" tab or by following a red link.

Your user name or IP address has been
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>blocked by
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jayjg>Jayjg.

The reason given is this:
massive vandalism from this range from banned
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alberuni>User:Alberuni; we
apologise for the inconvenience

You can <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Emailuser/Jayjg>email
Jayjg or one of the other
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_administrators>administrators
to discuss the block. You may also edit
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mytalk>your user talk page if
you wish. If you believe that our
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy>blocking
policy was violated, you may discuss the block publicly on the
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>WikiEN-l mailing
list. Note that you may not use the "email this user" feature unless
you have a Wikipedia account and a valid email address registered in
your <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences>user preferences.

Your IP address is 4.153.217.166. Please include this address, along
with your username, in any queries you make.

What is interesting, every time I get this message, the IP address
given is different. Also, I don't even know who this jerk Alberuni
is! I don't even have an official Wikipedia name!

I have hunted and hunted and hunted and hunted and hunted for people
to contact, and finally, after numerous e-mails and what seemed like
one big wild goose chase, I received the suggestion that I subscribe
to WikiEN-L. Also, I cannot find any way to contact Jayjg and ask
that this block be removed.

Can anybody get me unblocked? I have made changes to Wikipedia, but
all of them have been positive and good! Besides, during their fund
drive I gave the foundation $20.

- Freya Harris
   Atlanta, GA


from_name: Arbeo M

body:
--- Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> schrieb:

> Who else agrees that he's a troll?

Troll or not, that's just semantics. But it's a matter
of fact that it's extremely impolite towards the other
members of the mailing list to bombard them with 20 or
more messages on the same subject.

Please remember: some people here might have a life,
too.

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: ilooy

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What to do now??? Fwd: Approved requests for new
	languages page listing Ladino

body:
Hi all,
I sent this message and various
others some weeks ago to
Wikitech list which is the place
where one is supposed to send
requests for new language wikis
after these have enough support
for approval.

I also emailed some of the Developers
directly, and have yet to receive any
response. Granted that they have
a heavy workload and they do the
supporting of tech issues as they
are able...

But when the request was made
months ago and when all requirements
seem to have been met, and if there
are other requirements, I'd like to know
so we can keep making progress on
this, something should be done...

What would be the next step after
getting a new language approved and
requesting the help of the developers?

Thanks for your attention.
Jay B.
[[meta:User:ILVI]]
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com>
Date: 19.09.2005 22:49
Subject: Approved requests for new languages page listing Ladino
To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org

Hi,
Now that on Meta the
Approved requests for new languages
page includes the Ladino language
I'd like to request the help of one
of our developers in setting up the
subdomains:
http://lad.wikipedia.org/
and
http://lad.wiktionary.org/

I'd also like to request admin access
as things get underway in those wikis.
Could someone help out with these
tasks.

With much appreciation and many thanks,
Jay B.

[[meta:User:ILVI]]
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com

--
--
ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: tankl

subject: [Wiktionary-l] SET HELP


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Arbeo M wrote:
> >--- Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> schrieb:
> >>Who else agrees that he's a troll?
> >>
> >Troll or not, that's just semantics. But it's a matter
> >of fact that it's extremely impolite towards the other
> >members of the mailing list to bombard them with 20 or
> >more messages on the same subject.

Perhaps. But a troll is a person that sends messages with the *purpose*
of igniting a flamewar. I don't think that was the purpose. But I agree
that he has not been polite either.

> >Please remember: some people here might have a life,
> >too.

I have sometimes heard this remark when I was in the position that I got
a lot of replies, some of which called me a troll. I have often received
the somewhat similar phrase "get a life", but have never been able to
understand what it could possible mean. [[Get a Life]] gives me some
information, but not enough to understand how such a remark is to be
understood.

> It's clear that Jack would not have defended his position with such
> enthusiasm if no one had answered.
>
> Most keyboards have a feature which is consistent with having a life.
> It's the delete button.  Some of us are even so advanced that we can
> delete several messages at once. :-)

Amen.

Don't complain about messages; the subject is clear, you know what
thread it's a part of, and you are very welcome to delete any message
you like.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-09-24 20:49:47    9.2 degrees Celsius ( 48.6F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
schrieb:

> I've stated my position on new language wikis, and
> we've been through
> all the arguments before. Just because I'm no longer
> interested in
> arguing every case, or putting my name on the oppose
> votes, doesn't mean
> I've changed my mind.
>
> I created 5 new Wikipedias in June because I
> received a request from a
> Wikimedia Board member. If I receive another such
> specific request, I'll
> carry it out. I do that out of loyalty to them, not
> because I think it
> contributes to our mission.

Hi Tim!

This is a very definite answer. Thanks for talking
straight!

If this the current attitude of Wikipedia's
decision-makers on the issue I'll accept it, of
course. However, I think the fact that Wikipedias for
new languages are created solely upon requests from
Wikimedia board members needs to be annouced to the
"general public". Because, at the moment, most users
don`t seem to be aware of this fact (at least I wasn't
as yet). Several pages like e. g.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:How_to_start_a_new_Wikipedia
still create a very different impression, i. e. that
you _can_ actually have a new WP in your language if
you request it, find supporters, convince the
community etc. Given the reality you just informed me
about, that's quite misleading. I guess we should
change those pages so they don't cause people to put a
lot of time and effort into projects that don't have a
change of success.

Regards,

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
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