from_name: Alphax

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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 10/22/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>>One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
>>>thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
>>>problem with
>>>that either.
>>>Anthony
>>
>>The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
>>contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
>>
>>Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
>>(they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
>>percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
>>derive from good (though uncited) sources.
>
>
>
> If anything I think that only makes my point stronger. If we have the
> resources to maintain an article on virtually every U.S. city, then surely
> we have the resources to maintain an article on a tiny fraction of the
> garage bands in the world.
>

Except that we actually have data that the subjects of the Rambot
articles existed (censuses and the like). We have no way of verifying
the existence of many garage bands.

I have two or three reasons for deleting things: violates [[WP:NOT]]
(eg. dicdef, spam, advertisment), violates [[WP:NOR]] (eg. lacks
references, terminal POV problems), or is a CSD. Lately I've tried to
work out where "article makes no claim of notability" and "article is
unverifiable" - I think NOR covers these, but there's probably some
overlap with WP:NOT as well.

> Comparing Rambot articles to other topic classes is perfectly fine as long
> as you limit your comparison to the proper aspects. Frankly, I think the
> uniformity in style, content, and quality is a bad thing, but that wasn't
> related to the thread I was making the comparison in.

I don't. Uniformity in articles in a certain topic area is a Good Thing,
because it lets readers (and editors) know what the article /should/ be
like. We have the Manual of Style so that articles are presented in a
logical manner; David Gerard has made much better arguments than I ever
could about why we need a uniform and concise writing style.

I think the whole style, content and scope debate is best summed up as:
articles in Wikipedia should be Sane, Safe and Consensual.

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy on breaches of bans

body:
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Lisa Thurston wrote:
> On the topic of Skyring...
>
> I think I've had my IP address blocked too many times because it is
> dynamically allocated to me by Agile and someone using that IP before me has
> vandalised WP. It used to be frustrating to always have to email the admin
> to get unblocked. Now I worked out a new method though. I simply reset the
> internet connection and the IP gets changed quickly, so I'm sure it's no
> difficulty for Skyring to do the same.
>
> I remember once asking Internode (Agile) if they'd do anything about someone
> using a specific IP to misbehave on Wikipedia. They said not without a
> request (or subpoena) from local police! If Wikipedia wants to rule with an
> iron fist then it would have to make agreements with local authorities. But
> I don't think this would really be a good thing for Wikipedia in the end.
> I'm certain their are other approaches to managing bad faith edits.
>

As we found out, it seems that half of Internode ends up going through
the same proxy. Unfortunately, this applies to their home, business, and
corporate (eg. State Library, TAFE) users as well...

> The problem seems to actually be the use short term sockpuppets by
> experienced vandals.
>

And the IP editors who can wreak havoc at will because they know the
huge collatoral damage that blocking their IPs will cause.

> I'm not sure if I like the idea that one of us suggested (that users gain
> "experience points" like in a MUD) because it is just another way for
> newbies to be discriminated against even for good faith edits. But perhaps a
> "edit faith quality level" could be maintained for each user and it would
> take only say 5 days with at least 5 good faith edits or 50 good faith edits
> for a new user to be ramped up to 100%.
>

We also have our fair share of clueless newbies; such a meta-moderation
system would inevitably disadvantage them, and it would be very easy for
experienced "problem users" to game the system.

> Presumably it would be easy to profile the behaviour of an experienced user
> who creates a sockpuppet vs an inexperienced user who creates a new account
> for the first time. And based on matching this profile, the software would
> delay the increase of "edit faith level". This might delay legitimate good
> faith sockpuppets for a few more days or so before their "faith quality
> level" would reach 100%, but would help keep control on shortterm
> sockpuppets created specifically to be used for bad faith edits.
>

Show me a program that can work out if a given program will terminate or
not and I will show you a program to detect and block trolls, vandals
and sockpuppets :)

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: 2002/58/CE (was: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Privacy concerns)

body:
Well, you're talking about the European Directive 2002/58/CE on Privacy
related

For everybody's concern, the text of the Directive is here :

http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexdoc!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=32002L0058&model=guicheti

> As a fist answer (actully problem in answering to this question) is
> that there *NOT* exists a UE law on privacy, UE has approvved a law
> about that but it is not a law in the strict sense. Every state of UE
> has approved its own law about that basing that on the rights
> explained in the UE decisions (yes, I know it is a very difficult
> thing, very difficult to understand).

Well there is a European Directive and it has been adapted in mostly
every european countries. But even countries that did not adapt it yet
can already apply it directly. So there is a law actually... Following
this Directive is the best way to comply with national legislations.

> 1) you should inform people when you are gathering peronal information
> (note that the law is about personal data only of people, there is no
> protection on data of society, bussiness firm and so on) and who is
> managing the data, in what matter and why and the instruction to use
> their right about their data
> 2)You should give the right to people (and give them instruction on
> how to obtian them) to know what datas you hold about them and to
> required them to be delete on request. (Note that this rights are not
> respect even by public and statal organization with the excuse of
> being in duties of keeping datas by some other laws).
> 3) You should inform if datas will be keept on the state or if they
> are going to be transitted abroad

These are the guidelines of 2002/58/CE. You must inform users and give
them the right to access/modify/delete/ the information gathered on them.

> Point 2 could be a little be problematic. Can we delete some datas if
> people request it?

> But the law is difficult to interpret and to understand what does it
> mean. What really does personal information rellay mean?

Personal information means anything that can allow you to identify
someone, even indirectly. For example, dates of birth and names are
personal information. But even dates and nicknames or IP are also
personal information. A database can very well be anonymous and contain
personal information at the same time.

> It is my opinion (but it just just this) that IP numbers are not a
> personal informations (since they are just  numbers.

IP numbers are personal information because you can cross them with
other databases in order to identify people.

> But the important and very difficult part to understand is about the
> limit of the law about the geographic position. Are people outside EU
> in the need to respect this law? If someone access to some personal
> data on a server in EU (or Italy) from a different state is this a
> trasfert of personal data. A tipical example of data trasfert is if
> someone collect persoanl data in one state (say for exaple Italy) and
> then send them to a society abroad to have them statistically analyzed
> or for using them as a mailing lists address. In these example the
> collector actively send the whole of the datas aborad. But is
> accessing to some data from abroad the same thing or not? If data are
> kept on a server in the same state and someone access to this server
> from abroad can this be qualified as an abroad transfert or not?

Well data transfers is authorized to the US since a EU decision of
2000/07/26.

> But a crucial point is if gathering data about access to server is or
> not a personal data (keep in mind that law is about only to personal
> data, thing such knowing that the user who accessed the web server
> today is the same of yesterday without knowing who the user is (e.g.
> with a cooky) is *IN MY opinion* not compleately qualifing as personal
> data)

Actually cookies are personal information. They are even explicitely
mentionned by 2002/58/CE at point 25 :

"such devices, for instance so-called "cookies", [...] their use should
be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise
information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of
cookies or similar devices [...]"

> On the other hands I strongly see the need that an editor of a page is
> *STRONGLY* informed that everifing he/she send to the wiki... will
> became immediately visible by every people accessing to the page and
> so he/she should do it only if accept this (in particular, but not
> limited to, personal data). I have found some people (even if I put
> many rilevant note on that) send story on the Italian wikinews giving
> their persoanl data (such as real name, mobile phone number and so on)
> acting us they belive that the message will be only visible by the
> "journalist" (like when you send a letter to a newspaper)

sounds good to me... :)

>> I would also like to propose that any person with access to server logs
>> (which include IP addresses), including people with access to the
>> checkuser tool, should sign a legal agreement of some sort with the
>> Wikimedia Foundation concerning non-disclosure of this information.
> The more important part is not about disclusure, but that they act on
> personal data in respect on the people's legal right and use them just
> for the porpuse stated in the information given to people.

Exactly, but concluding an agreement about it could help to better
inform them on this point.

> This European squid server are a particular case. I do not know how
> the legislation will consider it. The log on the squid about the squid
> are surelly pertinent to UE, but what about the datas that just
> transit on the squid to be delivered to the Florida server? People
> belive that data are just sent to the wikipedia server well actually I
> do not know where people belive it is)

Actually european law protects european citizens and it does not really
matter whether the data is collected within or outside Europe, the
court's decision would simply be difficult to apply abroad, but it would
get full effect within the EU.

I don't think the foundation would enjoyed being banned of EU...


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Brian Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] AfD should be Arguments for Deletion

body:
Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
From: Timwi

> VfD was renamed to AfD because it was supposed to be less about voting.
>
.......
>
> Discuss. :)

>>#'''Keep'''. ~~~~ (reasoning not included)

>>Just kidding, I never get involved with AFD at the moment as a >>kind of
>>silent protest at the silly way it functions. I do think the idea, or >>some
>>variant of it is great, and will go a long way to fixing this. However, >>I think the "Uncontested deletions"
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions
>>is good too, some hybrid of the two ideas may be a really good >>solution.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

I think the uncontested deletions proposal has a lot of potential as a stand alone way to funnel off easy and obvious deletion canidates from AFD. I'd like to hear more opinions about it on it's talk page..

Brian


subject: [WikiEN-l] What Readers Say on Inclusion

body:
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 10/22/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>>I think you're wrong about the intent of most contributors, though. And
>>
>>if
>>
>>>keeping one article on an unremarkable band would set a precedent, and
>>
>>bring
>>
>>>more articles on bands, I see that as a good precedent, not a bad one.
>>>
>>>One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
>>>thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a problem
>>
>>with
>>
>>>that either.
>>>Anthony
>>
>>Even crap need mentaining we just don't have the rescources to mentian
>>a million articles millionth rate bands.
>>
>>--
>>geni
>
>
>  Who's going to create these million articles on garage bands? With 100,000
> new garage band fans creating them we'll have no problem maintaining a
> million articles on garage bands. I think realistically it'll be at least a
> couple orders of magnitude smaller in both figures, but as long as we don't
> allow automated creation of these articles the resources to maintain the
> articles will scale right along with the creation of them.

We will have eternal POV, verifiablity and credibility problems.

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from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Link formatting suggestion

body:
G'day Ilya,

> Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link by doing
>
> a { color: #000000; text-decoration: none; }
> a: hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }
>
> I don't think you can assign properties to a based on a div:hover
> pseudoelement

You can do it with JavaScript, I think.  Onmouseover, call something
like this:

function makeLinks() {
   pL = document.getElementsByTagName('A');
   for (var i = 0; i < pL.length; i++) {
     pL[i].style.color = "blue";
     pL[i].style.textDecoration = "underline";
   }
}

This breaks visited/unvisited link colours, is utterly unnecessary and
unintuitive, and rankles for ideological reasons.  However, it's
technically possible.

> Personally I do this:
>
> a { text-decoration: none; }
> a: hover { text-decoration: hover; }
>
> it makes pages a lot cleaner

That's good.  Personally I prefer having the links there, however, if'n
you've a preferred way it's great that you're using your own CSS file to
do it.

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.4/146 - Release Date: 21/10/2005


subject: [WikiEN-l] Link formatting suggestion

body:
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Timwi wrote:
>
>> Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight
>> wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
>
>
> Well this gave me an idea.
>
> As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely
> invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse
> cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
>
> In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you
> finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if
> there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text
> and all links go blue and underlined.
>

div a { text-decoration: none; color: #000000; }
div:hover a { text-decoration: underline; color: #0000FF; }

Unfortunately, AFAIK only Gecko (and possibly KHTML) based browsers will
accept the hover pseudo-class on anything other than anchor elements. I
hope I'm wrong about that.

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from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject:
Privacy Protection for Users (was: Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Privacy concerns)

body:
On 10/23/05 1:20 PM, "Jean-Baptiste Soufron" <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Well you can argue that they are wrong, but from a legal point of view,
> IP numbers are personal data. I just wrote a piece of paper about all of
> this :
>
> http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=103
>
> That may surprise most wikipedians, but from a legal point of view, it?s
> impossible to pretend that IP numbers are not personal data. This point
> is addressed by point 25 and 26 of 2002/58/CE stating that :
>
> "The data relating to subscribers processed within electronic
> communications networks to establish connections and to transmit
> information contain information on the private life of natural persons
> and concern the right to respect for their correspondence or concern the
> legitimate interests of legal persons."
>
>
>

IP addresses are not personal data, they identify a machine and in most
cases identify a machine leased to that address on a temporary basis.  I
would posit that IP addresses are in fact extremely less private than a
phone number is.  I can get someone's phone number and use any number of
means to use that to get someone's name and address.  I cannot use an IP
address to do the same thing UNLESS the entity that is leasing that
information provides it.

This is specifically addressed in the point, on its face it plainly says
"data relating to subscribers".  Clearly this point is intended for ISP's
regarding their conduct in protecting a subscriber's right to privacy.  You
can't jump from a right to privacy a user has with an ISP and then apply
that to each and every entity that person contacts.

For instance, if some person decides to access my website and he posts
something I don't like I can't go to his ISP and demand his information.
However, if the same person sends an email to Jacque Chirac about how he is
going to bomb the Eiffel Tower you can guarantee his ISP would be handing
over his information as that clearly falls outside of "legitimate
interests".

However, the mere fact that I know that a certain IP posted something I
didn't like on my website doesn't breech his privacy.  I can then, in turn,
determine I wish to ban his address from my website because I don't like
him, I own the site and that is my right.  He chose to visit my website and
thus make some information available to me in doing so.

If you were right, what's next in the EU, you can't take down the license
number of someone who ran you off the road because that's invading his
privacy?

--Guy


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mark Williamson's fonts

body:
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John Platt wrote:
> On 10/21/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>Do you happen to have that ZIPped? I'm working on Windows here, and I
>>wouldn't have a clue how to get into a Debian package even if it weren't
>>likely to get me ejected from here with maximal force :-)
>>
> Having grown up with Red Hat I've always extracted deb packages with ar
> then untarred them (tar -xvzf). Even in Windows I tend to use the djgpp
> packages, though Cigwyn probably has ar and tar. In fact, I caught myself
> doing that with Knoppix the other day and of course Knoppix does have the
> apt package to install software.

MSYS has tar w/ gzip and bzip2, so I'm certain that Cygwin would.
7-zip/WinRar/some new versions of WinZip can handle these as well.

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar

body:
Mihai Floran wrote:

>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikigrammar
>
>
>>The wordbook that the previous commenter is proposing already exists: Wiktionary. Each Wiktionary edition contains entries for words in many different ?languages, and each of those pages contain translations into many different languages. For example, the English Wiktionary has an entry on the German word Abnahme, which is translated to abatement, whose entry lists translations in Finnish, French, German, and other languages. The entry on abatement also links to the abatement entry at the Italian Wiktionary, which translates the word as "ribasso."
>> ? Minh Nguy?n (talk, blog) 03:11, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
>>
>>
>The connexion from one language to another in words is not the idea of this project. The primary idea is to create a multilingual and multigramatical gramatic workbook. The dictionary part is normal to be liked out to Wiktionary.
>
>Wiktionary also contains a begining of learning languages. This can be moved to Wikigrammar but is not the primary functionality again. We don't have - as far as I know - a collection of grammars, not even the English one in one place, structurated by chapters (like in school) which can help us. I will (I don't know when I have time) try to start an example of what I mean by creating the structure of one language's grammar.
>
>
There were a few guides to grammar and learning languages in the
earliest days of Wiktionary.  These were moved to Wikibooks.  I am not
convinced that there is a need for a whole new project.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Link formatting suggestion

body:
Ilya N. wrote:
> Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link [...]

I wouldn't have made the claim if I didn't have enough competency in CSS
to know what I'm talking about. Furthermore, I tested it before posting
(albeit only in Firefox).

Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar

body:
Mihai Floran wrote:

>>>It's simple... this cannot be like a book in which in
>>>
>>>
>>>one page is presented all to the reader. Every thing
>>>
>>>
>>>must have it's own page (adjective, noun, etc.) which
>>>
>>>
>>>can treate in good manner that problem. How about a
>>>5000 characters long page about Masculine gender. This
>>>
>>>
>>>can be useful!
>>>
>>>
>>It definetly cannot be like a book. It must have
>>enough space. This is a complex idea of project which
>>can take a lot of time. We must have persons which
>>know what are they writing about, else can be created
>>confusion.This is like in any other Wikimedia project. If we stop persons to contribute we cannot call this Wikimedia project and open source and all the other things..
>>
Have you tried to put together anything in Wikibooks, or are you just
guessing?

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikigrammar


body:
Brian Haws wrote:

>Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Just kidding, I never get involved with AFD at the moment as a >>kind of
>>>silent protest at the silly way it functions. I do think the idea, or >>some
>>>variant of it is great, and will go a long way to fixing this. However, >>I think the "Uncontested deletions"
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions
>>>is good too, some hybrid of the two ideas may be a really good >>solution.
>>>
>>>
>I think the uncontested deletions proposal has a lot of potential as a stand alone way to funnel off easy and obvious deletion canidates from AFD. I'd like to hear more opinions about it on it's talk page..
>
>
It will clearly be more efficient.  AFD fails because it broadcasts the
fact that an article is proposed for deletion.  By confining the
deletion discussion to the page itself (and its talk page, of course) it
will limit interference by inclusionists who do not recognize the value
of removing cruft from Wikipedia.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Upload URL/filesystem restructuring

body:
> It would make caching much easier if the file at a given URL was
> immutable; that is, if a replacement image has a different URL from the
> old one.

I thought I had suggested this a long time ago already. :)

In my opinion, you should redesign the image/oldimage table structure in
the same way that cur/old was changed into page/revision. Each image
revision, whether "current" or not, should have a numerical ID for a
primary key. You can then use that integer in your unique URLs. (I am
against the idea of timestamps because they are never unique. ;-) ) This
has the added bonus side-effect that (a) when an image gets overwritten
by a new version, the old image's URL is still the same; (b) reverting
to an older image revision allows you to just revert to the old URL
instead of creating a new one, thereby somewhat helping caching. You
could even use MD5/SHA1/whatever checksums to detect duplicate uploads
and re-use the already-existing image revision with its already-existing
URL.

LiveJournal did the same originally with their user picture URLs. I
realise they ran into the concern that it would allow people to
enumerate all user pictures, giving an easy way to write a good-faith
script that would kill the servers. As a counter-measure, they added the
numerical ID of the user the image belongs to to the URL as well. Since
that never changes either, you still have the nice 'permanent URLs' effect.

So we will have to think about whether we have the same concern. If we
do, we can add the numerical user ID of the image's uploader to its URL,
or (as we do already) part of a checksum. We currently checksum the
image's filename, however, which I strongly object to, because it makes
it harder to code an image-renaming feature. If we're going to redesign
this anyway, we might as well make it so that this feature will be
easier to code in the future.

Note also that the most commonly requested image-related feature is the
ability to undelete an image, thereby removing the last bit of
irreversibility in an admin's toolset.

Timwi


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] The issue of existance of the Moldovan language
	Wikipedia

body:
I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.

Also, as you will find on many websites, many rural peasants in
Moldova proper are literate only in Cyrillic. True, they are not
likely to have access to computers, but in the distant future they may
have use for a print edition (perhaps distributed for free or for very
cheap by a not-for-profit organisation).

I feel it should also be noted that it's not entirely accurate to say
that all Moldovans and Romanians have opposed this Wikipedia so far.

Dmitriid and Vertaler, two Moldovans living in Moldova, have supported
the existance of this Wikipedia.

So far, the only opposition has come from people living outside of
Moldova, although some of them are Moldovans in nationality. Most of
the opposition is still in Romania.

In the past, there was already a vote on the future of that Wikipedia,
and by a wide margin people voted to keep it.

Let me give a brief list of the supporters and opposers of this
Wikipedia and their national origin and current residence where they
are different.

Opposers:
1) Goie, Romania
2) Duca, Romania
3) Mihaitza, Romania
4) Alexandru, Romanian living in America
5) Landroni, Moldovan in France
6) Jeorjika, Moldovan living abroad (didn't specify country)
7) Oleg Alexandrov, Moldovan living in America
8) Anittas, Romanian living in America

Supporters:
1) Ronline, Romania
2) Dmitriid, Moldova
3) Vertaler, Moldova
4) Gabix, Belarus
5) myself

Now this is not an exhaustive list, rather, it is a list of the people
that I can remember have been part of this.

Also, I feel it's worth noting that:

Jeorjika, Duca, Goie, Landroni, and Mihaitza only very recently joined
to Wikipedia, the first four specifically because of the Moldovan WP.
Vertaler and Dmitriid too. Ronline, Gabix, myself, Oleg, Anittas, and
Alexandru are all previous users.

Mark

On 23/10/05, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu> wrote:
> I know that this issue has come up one or two times this list
> before, but from what I saw in the archives the discussion
> attracted only a small audience, while the issue itself does not
> show any signs of going way. I post this now hoping that there
> will be a bigger discussion, hopefully followed by a resolution
> of the matter.
>
> The background of the issue and some comments on it are
> available at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28policy%29#Moldovan_Wikipedia
>
> and more information is at
>
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
>
> In short, http://mo.wikipedia.org/ is a version of Wikipedia
> written in Romanian with Cyrillic characters. This combination is
> used nowhere in the world except in Transnistria which is a
> breakaway region of Republic of Moldova without international
> recognition and with a rather dubious regime. It is a relic from
> Soviet times, when in Republic of Moldova people used Cyrillic.
>
> There are two views on this matter. Some people think that
> nothing is wrong with having Wikipedia in all languages/character
> sets possible. The number of potential readers and editors of
> this particular version of Wikipedia is very small, but it still
> could be useful. And deleting a language version of Wikipedia
> would be against the Wiki spirit, would make Wikipedia
> politicized, etc.
>
> The other view is mostly reflected by people in Republic of
> Moldova itself and neighboring Romania (again, we are talking
> about the Romanian language here, the issue is the set of
> characters - in Romania proper they use the Latin alphabet). To
> us (I am from Republic of Moldova) writing our language in
> Cyrillic is a symbol of what was wrong with the Soviet Union, a
> totalitarian regime which did not give us even the choice of how
> to write our own language, and of all the tragedies which
> happened after Republic of Moldova was annexed to the Soviet
> Union in 1940 and then again in 1945.
>
> The discussion of this issue has been going on since June; see
> again
>
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
>
> Neither side of course has any power to do anything about it (an
> administrator is not enough to close it down, for example).  I
> would like to again express my hope that this discussion will
> attract a wide audience, and that the issue of existence of this
> Wikipedia will eventually be settled.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Oleg Alexandrov
> CAM assistant professor, UCLA
> aoleg at math.ucla.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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from_name: Richard Austin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Creating Buginese Wikipedia

body:
muhammad zaid zainuddin <zaidpjd at ...> writes:

>
> Dear wikitech's,
>
> I'm not sure about the next procedures and I'm not sure whether I'm doing
> the right thing. I ask some people at IRC wikimedia and they said that I
> should email wikitech.
>
> My proposal of buginese language receives consensus from the wikis and me
> and my friends (wikimedia username:Riyanz) agreed to join and work on this
> buginese wikipedia (both of us are native to the buginese.) This proposal
> also receives enough support from other wikis. Therefore, I am asking
> wikitech's help to set up a new wikipedia in buginese.
>
> The wikipedia of buginese as discussed will be using lontara (buginese
> script) and roman alphabet.
>
> Below is the link to the proposal template
>
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/Buginese>
>
> And should I remove my proposal to the approved language site?
>
> Thank you
>
> Muhammad Zaid Zainuddin
>
> p/s: If this is not the right procedure, can wikitech explain to me what
> should I do now, whom the request should be forward to etc.
>

Hi again!
Buginese (code bug - ISO 639-2) has now been moved to the "approved requests"
page, along with Norfolk (code pih - ISO 639-3). So there are now 7 wikipedias
waiting to be created.

Also, the Banyumasan team of contributors has said they would prefer the code
bms, so "map-bms" would be preferred over "qbn", if that is possible. (They
would also be happy with "banyu".)

If you have any concerns or questions about any of these requests, please feel
free to ask, including any problems with codes for any of these languages. I
understand that this has held up some requests in the past, and recognise that
it is important to have appropriate codes.

We appreciate all the work you've put in to make wikipedia what it is today, and
look for to some new language versions in the near future.

Richard


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

references:
<djg8kr$2se$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<71cd4dd90510231014x7cdace4cp42aa19940ef5add5@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0510231129x257307c0wefa5b68d2f3265a9@mail.gmail.com>

body:
One of the problems with the current voting system is that people
don't feel obligated to respond to arguments that are "obviously
wrong".

I've seen a lot of AfD arguments where a clueless newbie comes in and
says, "This page isn't hurting anyone and I spent a lot of time on
it".  It would be easy to post a reply, with quick pointers to
[[WP:Verifiability]] and [[WP:NOT]], but half the time no one bothers.
 It's easier to just type " '''Delete''' nn -- ~~~~ ", after all.  So
the user is left with the impression that the decision process is
arbitrary and mean.

I've been running into the other side of this on CfD.  Someone
nominated a bunch of categories that people were using on their
userpages, including some sandbox pages of mine.  I've asked several
times why the pages are harmful, but people seem less interested in
discussion when they're already winning the vote, and simply say that
userpage organization "isn't what categories are for".

Should "no one addressed my argument" be a valid reason to not close a
deletion request?  I'm starting to think so -- most of the traditional
arguments could be addressed with a quick wikilink, and anything that
couldn't be handled that way should probably get talked about.

-- User:Creidieki


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rambot city articles vs. other topics

body:
Anthony says there is a problem with verifiable garage bands as to what do
with them. Garage bands in the sense that he presumably means the term are
unsigned bands practising in garages and playing gigs at the local pub if
thet're lucky are usually unverifiable. Third parties who provide
verification such as the media and reference sources such as
Allmusic.com<http://Allmusic.com>arent interested in writing anything
about them at this stage.

It is when their career starts making progress that they become verifiable.
They start touring, getting signed and making records which occasionally
chart. It is at that stage that they become verifiable. It is also at this
stage that they normally qualify for an article under WP:music.

Our music policy provides:

There are a lot of bands, singers and other
musicians<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musician>and musical
ensembles <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_ensemble> with articles in
the Wikipedia (see
category:Musicians<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Musicians>
).

A musician or ensemble (note that this includes a *band*, *singer*, *rapper*,
*orchestra*, *hip hop crew*, *dj* etc) is notable if it meets any one of the
following criteria:

   1. Has had a Top 100 hit on any national music chart, in a large or
   medium-sized country* <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:music#Note>
   2. Has gone on an international concert tour, or a national concert
   tour in a large or medium-sized
country*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:music#Note>
   3. Has released two or more albums on a major label or one of the more
   important indie labels (i.e. an independent label with a history of
   more than a few years and a roster of performers, many of which are notable)
   4. Has been prominently featured in any major music
media<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Music_magazines>
   5. Contains at least one member who was once a part of or later joined
   a band that is otherwise extremely notable; note that it is often most
   appropriate to use
redirects<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirects>in place of
articles on side projects, early bands and such
   6. Has become the most prominent representative of a notable style or
   the local scene of a city (or both, as in British hip
hop<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_hip_hop>);
   note that the subject must still meet all ordinary Wikipedia standards,
   including verifiability<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability>
   .
   7. Has won a major music award, such as a Grammy, Juno or Mercury
   Music Award

By the time, verifiable information is available about an act, one or more
of these criterion have usually been met.

Regards

Keith

On 10/23/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/22/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA256
> >
> > Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > > On 10/22/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >>>One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
> > >>>thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
> > >>>problem with
> > >>>that either.
> > >>>Anthony
> > >>
> > >>The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
> > >>contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
> > >>
> > >>Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
> > >>(they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
> > >>percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
> > >>derive from good (though uncited) sources.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > If anything I think that only makes my point stronger. If we have the
> > > resources to maintain an article on virtually every U.S. city, then
> > surely
> > > we have the resources to maintain an article on a tiny fraction of the
> > > garage bands in the world.
> > >
> >
> > Except that we actually have data that the subjects of the Rambot
> > articles existed (censuses and the like). We have no way of verifying
> > the existence of many garage bands.
>
>
> I don't know why this agument keeps coming up because there's pretty much
> no
> one who's arguing that we should keep articles on unverifiable garage
> bands.
> The disagreement is over what to do with verifiable articles on garage
> bands.
>
> I have two or three reasons for deleting things: violates [[WP:NOT]]
> > (eg. dicdef, spam, advertisment), violates [[WP:NOR]] (eg. lacks
> > references, terminal POV problems), or is a CSD. Lately I've tried to
> > work out where "article makes no claim of notability" and "article is
> > unverifiable" - I think NOR covers these, but there's probably some
> > overlap with WP:NOT as well.
> >
> > > Comparing Rambot articles to other topic classes is perfectly fine as
> > long
> > > as you limit your comparison to the proper aspects. Frankly, I think
> the
> > > uniformity in style, content, and quality is a bad thing, but that
> > wasn't
> > > related to the thread I was making the comparison in.
> >
> > I don't. Uniformity in articles in a certain topic area is a Good Thing,
> > because it lets readers (and editors) know what the article /should/ be
> > like. We have the Manual of Style so that articles are presented in a
> > logical manner; David Gerard has made much better arguments than I ever
> > could about why we need a uniform and concise writing style.
>
>
> Take a look at the unedited Rambot articles then take a look at the ones
> which have been heavily edited. Now tell me which you think the articles
> *should* be like.
>
> I think the whole style, content and scope debate is best summed up as:
> > articles in Wikipedia should be Sane, Safe and Consensual.
> >
> > - --
> > Alphax | /"\
> > Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> > OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> > http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
It is possible, but it's not 1-to-1.

There are many Romanian letters that have multiple counterparts in
Moldovan Cyrillic.

For example, the "i" in "pierdut" is written differently than the "i"
in "eie"; the "i" in "avetzi" is written differently than the "i" in
"domnului".

Romanian also has the tendency to preserve the internationally
recognised Latin spellings of foreign names rather than changing them
to fit Romanian sounds. Moldovan, on the other hand, being written in
Cyrillic as it is, usually writes foreign names phonetically, with the
exception of those names whose native language is Cyrillic, the
spelling of which it often preserves (for example, Romanian
"gorbaciov" is written as "gorbacev" or "gorbacYOv" in Moldovan).

Also, unlike other communities where conversion has already been
discussed, for the Romanian Wikipedia to have Cyrillic conversion
would be a nightmare -- many users would leave because of it, and the
readership would decrease drastically when it got out that the
Romanian Wikipedia can be viewed with one click in Moldovan-Cyrillic.

The general Romanian dislike for anything perceived as Russian,
including the Cyrillic alphabet, can also be seen on Wikipedia: even
in their logo, they replaced the Cyrillic letter on the globe with a
Romanian-Latin alphabet letter, something which no other Wikipedia has
done. When they first did this, the font was really messed up for the
text, so I just uploaded a new Romanian logo with the Cyrillic letter.
That caused a lot of upset, though, and it ended up at the old logo.
Now, imagine the upset if the entire WP had a button on-site to
convert it into Cyrillic.

Mark

On 23/10/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/23/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.
>
> Mark, an idle curiosity on my part: What is the potential for good
> machine translation between these languages? Is it purely a character
> set difference?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Attack

body:
WikiTikiTavi attacks occured on many Wikipedias, as a matter of fact.

Mark

On 23/10/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/23/05, admin Yellowikis <yellowikis at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I seem to have some sort of spam attack that is adding the following
> > tag to multiple pages.
> >
> > Anyone know what it might do?
> >
> >

>
> This is the wrong mailing list. Please see mediawiki-l, where the
> issue has already been reported. The spam started with
 id="wikitikitavi...", but now is using other ID names, mostly starting
> with

> <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/mediawiki-l/2005-October/007400.html>
>
> Using $wgSpamRegex to block
 it myself yet.
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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from_name: Kelly Anderson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Spam Attack

body:
It would appear to be the first step to something else...

The height:1px means that the text it inserted would be nearly invisible.

The only thing I can think of is that they'll come back later, and
put a link to a site inside the
 to up their reference count in
an attempt to get higher placement in a Google search.

Of course, it could be something entirely different. But you won't
SEE anything.

-Kelly

At 02:40 PM 10/23/2005, you wrote:

>I seem to have some sort of spam attack that is adding the following
>tag to multiple pages.
>
>Anyone know what it might do?
>
>

>
>Paul
>--
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from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Our exponentially increasing costs

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Dan Grey wrote:
>
>
>>Is it reasonable to believe that donations will increase in line with
>>readers? Has anyone analysed the available data to see if this is
>>happening?
>>
>>
>I think it is reasonable _to an extent_, yes.  It is far from certain.
>Mav can perhaps give you some statistics on this, but I believe he is
>more pessimistic than I am about this.
>
I would add that the correlation between readership and donations is
more apparent during the periods when we are explicitly having a
fundraiser. We may be able to support the sites to a large extent that
way for now, but having fundraisers too frequently will desensitize
people to them. Getting into a position where we have to run intrusive
sitewide notices every other month would lead to a vicious cycle of
diminishing donations leading to declining performance.

Mav can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure routine donations
during non-fundraising periods are nowhere near enough to maintain
normal operations. We need to do a lot more to establish ongoing revenue
streams, whether it's through this partnership or others. I've passed
along and pushed for a few ideas in that regard. It would be nice to
have more people doing that, and then we could more easily dispense with
those to which people end up raising objections.

Volunteer to help Danny finding grants and preparing applications. Get
the Wikimedia Foundation added to your employer's matching program for
charitable donations if you have one. Do some research and come up with
other ideas to produce income. Just because we're a nonprofit doesn't
mean we can disregard the importance of money.

--Michael Snow


body:
VfD was renamed to AfD because it was supposed to be less about voting.

Yet people still vote.

People should instead bring forward arguments; some pro-keep and some
pro-delete. Someone who has several arguments for or against a
particular article, should mention them all. Someone who just agrees
with an already-posted argument should not post because they wouldn't be
adding anything.

Example:

Someone nominating an article might write:

	== [[Dr. Norma Nated]] ==
	=== Arguments for deletion ===
	* The article is badly written.
	* The article does not establish notability.
	=== Arguments against deletion ===

Someone else may come across the article and think it should stay. They
should be made to think about why they think it should stay, example:

	=== Arguments against deletion ===
	* Dr. Norma Nated has published scientific papers [1] as well as
	  at least one book [2], which establishes her notability.

Another person might discover an argument as being fallacious. They
should move it to a new section:

	== [[Dr. Norma Nated]] ==
	=== Arguments for deletion ===
	* The article does not establish notability.
	=== Arguments against deletion ===
	* Dr. Norma Nated has published scientific papers [1] as well as
	  at least one book [2], which establishes her notability.
	=== Fallacious arguments ===
	* (for) The article is badly written.
	** Can be improved, thus not a criterion for deletion.

Arguments why I think this system is better:

* Voting merely expresses a single individual's opinion, but AfD should
   establish the community concensus.

* It is more wiki-like. In the same way as nobody "owns" an article,
   nobody should embody an argument (but people do embody an opinion and
   hence a vote). Everybody should be able to edit every argument, such
   that the valid ones remain.

* You can disagree with the sentiment to keep or to delete, but to do
   so, you have to explain why (by bringing forward a counter-argument).

* You can't just disagree with a valid argument; you have to expose a
   fallacy in it, or provide a valid counter-argument.

* AfD items no longer need to be "closed". The article can be deleted if
   after five days there are good arguments to delete, but if after 10
   days a new argument comes along (e.g. the article has been improved
   and referenced in the meantime, the person has suddenly gained
   notability, etc.) the same discussion can be resumed (and "previously
   deleted as per AfD" would not work as a pro-deletion argument,
   thereby increasing focus on content and decreasing focus on process).

* It reduces workload because you don't need to do anything in order to
   show you agree.

* It reduces workload because you have to put more effort into a
   nomination, reducing the amount of nominations.

Discuss. :)
Timwi


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] The listing of redirects on [[WP:SFD]]

body:
On 10/23/05, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Bike-stub has now been protected
> blank because I was recreating it as a redirect to {{cycling-stub}}. I
> ask again - what the fuck is wrong with people?

I've come to the conclusion that most of these sorts of instruction
creep and "consensus" enforcement are teenagers and twenty-somethings
trying their hand at rule making.

I'm not sure how to get them to drop their ideas of pressing their
wills onto the wiki regardless of the damage they're doing, other than
statements from prominent Wikipedia members about how such behavior is
improper and not in the spirit of the wiki.

I don't know what else to do either, but it's a very serious problem.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
What I don't like about this is that it'd most likely end in edit
warring to move arguments in and out of different sections.  A section
at the top containing a summary of arguments for and against
deletion/keep/merge, etc could be created by any wikipedian in any
AfD, and might make closing easier, but I think the straw poll format
is still pretty useful.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I would add that the correlation between readership and donations is
> more apparent during the periods when we are explicitly having a
> fundraiser. We may be able to support the sites to a large extent that
> way for now, but having fundraisers too frequently will desensitize
> people to them. Getting into a position where we have to run intrusive
> sitewide notices every other month would lead to a vicious cycle of
> diminishing donations leading to declining performance.

Having monthly fund drives would be very bad for the reasons you give. But a
week or two each quarter should be fine. So far our fund drives have been a bit
on the long side. I'd like to maximize giving in shorter periods of time to
lessen that (a 3 week long drive is 1 to 2 weeks too long, IMO).

> Mav can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure routine donations
> during non-fundraising periods are nowhere near enough to maintain
> normal operations.

You are absolutely correct. But we can also do a few small things to help
maximize day-to-day donation rates (mostly feeback-related).

> We need to do a lot more to establish ongoing revenue
> streams, whether it's through this partnership or others. I've passed
> along and pushed for a few ideas in that regard. It would be nice to
> have more people doing that, and then we could more easily dispense with
> those to which people end up raising objections.

Yep - I saw your email about the eBay thing. Just haven't had time to look it
over closely yet.

> Volunteer to help Danny finding grants and preparing applications. Get
> the Wikimedia Foundation added to your employer's matching program for
> charitable donations if you have one. Do some research and come up with
> other ideas to produce income. Just because we're a nonprofit doesn't
> mean we can disregard the importance of money.

This is all planned to happen.

-- mav

__________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page!
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


body:
--- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> I just wanted to note that in the past month, I have registered us with
> several major corporations, including Microsoft, American Express, and Sara
> Lee  (the ones that make cake) for matching donation programs. Many large
> corporations in the US and elsewhere having matching gift programs. If anyone
>  here works at a company that does, I encourage you to look into it.

Will do. But to reduce duplicated effort, could you create a page on meta that
tracks this?

-- mav

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


body:
I refer to ASCAP's guidelines which state " ASCAP members are individuals
who make their living writing music. As a society of composers, songwriters,
lyricists and music publishers, we know very well that there are many steps
between creation and compensation; months, if not years, can pass between
the creation of a song, its recording, its release, its performance, and the
day when the revenues due to the writer actually arrive. A music creator is
like a small business, and ASCAP exists to ensure that music creators are
paid promptly when their works are performed publicly."

By the time that a songwriter earns revenue, the song has to be recorded,
released, sold to the public and played on radio and television. By that
stage, the performers would meet WP:music in any event.

I would accept ASCAP listing in voting on AfD articles about a performer.
That performer is very likely to have achieved notability by that stage in
any event but thanks for bringing the resource to my attention.

On 10/23/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/23/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Anthony says there is a problem with verifiable garage bands as to what
> do
> > with them. Garage bands in the sense that he presumably means the term
> are
> > unsigned bands practising in garages and playing gigs at the local pub
> if
> > thet're lucky are usually unverifiable. Third parties who provide
> > verification such as the media and reference sources such as
> > Allmusic.com <http://Allmusic.com> <http://Allmusic.com><
> http://Allmusic.com>arent interested in
> > writing anything
> > about them at this stage.
>
>
> What about ASCAP? If their songs are listed with them, would you consider
> that information to be verifiable? How many individuals/bands do you think
> have songs registered with ASCAP but would fail that list of criteria you
> present?
>
> http://www.ascap.com/ace/search.cfm
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

body:
On 10/23/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> * Voting merely expresses a single individual's opinion, but AfD should
>    establish the community concensus.
>

Nothing to stop you debateing along with voteing. See
[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Yoism]] for an example

> * It is more wiki-like. In the same way as nobody "owns" an article,
>    nobody should embody an argument (but people do embody an opinion and
>    hence a vote). Everybody should be able to edit every argument, such
>    that the valid ones remain.
>

Have fun trying to inforce that one. Particulary have fun trying to define valid

> * You can disagree with the sentiment to keep or to delete, but to do
>    so, you have to explain why (by bringing forward a counter-argument).
>

Nothing exists to stop you bring forward an argument (indeed I'm
currently trying a policy of never voteing and always commenting
(which reminds me we never did sort out the copyright issues at
[[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rochester Community Schools]].

> * You can't just disagree with a valid argument; you have to expose a
>    fallacy in it, or provide a valid counter-argument.

Can't find an SI unit for defineing the level of validness of an argument.

> * AfD items no longer need to be "closed". The article can be deleted if
>    after five days there are good arguments to delete, but if after 10
>    days a new argument comes along (e.g. the article has been improved
>    and referenced in the meantime, the person has suddenly gained
>    notability, etc.) the same discussion can be resumed (and "previously
>    deleted as per AfD" would not work as a pro-deletion argument,
>    thereby increasing focus on content and decreasing focus on process).
>

Can't find an SI unit for measureing goodness. Incerdently if you want
battles that go on forever can I suggest you get involved in areas
related to the middle east conflict
.
> * It reduces workload because you don't need to do anything in order to
>    show you agree.

Huh?

> * It reduces workload because you have to put more effort into a
>    nomination, reducing the amount of nominations.
>

That is ment to be a good thing?

> Discuss. :)
> Timwi

Go and spend ten min doing something useful on wikipedia to make up
for the time I have just wasted responding to you.

--
geni


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> It strikes me as absolutely impossible for *anyone* to exert influence
>> over our content.  Our very development model ensurees that.
>
> Could you clarify this point please?

I think what he meant is that it is absolutely possible for *everyone*
to exert influence over our content. They boil down to the same thing,
just phrased differently.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Robin Shannon

body:
On 10/23/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> This is not an advertising deal. It is one of many partnerships we will need
> to
> enter to help keep everything running.
>

This IS advertising. We are providing a link to a service that we will
get money from. We are not doing this for educational or whatever
reasons like in the external links section of articles, we are doing
it because it will (we hope) generate $$$s.

Three questions;

Surely the number of people who visit this tools page is going to be
miniscule (since most of our visitors, i presume, never leave the
article namespace) so will it actually generate any/much dosh? Are we
just being paid for 1-click tools downloaded via the wikipedia link,
or are we being paid for any 1-click tool used?

What is wrong with advertising? Web advertising has come a long way
since wikipedia was first founded. google and yahoo both offer text
adds that could be added somewhere on the page. We could almost
certainly negotiate a VERY good deal with yahoo or google to pay us
above normal price since the kind of content we offer is very suited
to text adds, and (if i understand alexia correctly) we account for a
tenth of a percent (and growing - if current growth continues we could
well soon be 1%) of all web traffic, an amount not to be scoffed at.
We could even provide an option for regular users to turn the adds
off. I agree with dan, that straight forward advertising like this
would be far better than stealth advertising which is what this
1-click deal really amounts to.

Mav, for those of us not involved with finance, what are the costs
assosicated with our growth? Is the only expense that is growing
hardware/hosting etc, or are there other rising costs?

paz y amor,
-rjs.

--
DO NOT SEND ME WORD ATTACHMENTS - I *WILL* BITE!
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/sylvester-response.html>

Hit me: <http://robin.shannon.id.au>
Jab me: <robin.shannon at jabber.org.au>
Upgrade to kubuntu linux: <http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/breezy/>
Faith is under the left nipple. -- Martin Luther


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject:
[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Will the Wikimedia Foundation ever accept money to change the content of
> the articles?  Not as long as I'm alive, ok?  Anyone who thinks
> otherwise should check their premises and remember who I am and what I'm
> doing and how I spend my life.

Forgive my scepticism, but if we start accepting advertising and become
reliant on it, it isn't unknown for the company who is advertising to
pull their adverts, cutting Wikimedia's revenue.

A possibly apocryphal story is of a program on the BBC, I believe it was
a car review program, who gave a bad review to a certain American car
model. The CEO of the company found out about it, was furious and
ordered the advertising team to pull all adverts to punish the TV
station. The advertising team replied "sorry sir, but the BBC don't run
adverts".

A lack of adverts is one of the reasons why Wikipedia can be neutral. If
we become reliant on others for our existence, they can exert influence
over our content. I don't want to see us go down that route.

Chris


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
Our exponentially increasing costs (was Re: [Foundation-l] Re:
	Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New Partnership)

body:
Dan Grey wrote:
> Is it reasonable to believe that donations will increase in line with
> readers? Has anyone analysed the available data to see if this is
> happening?

I think it is reasonable _to an extent_, yes.  It is far from certain.
Mav can perhaps give you some statistics on this, but I believe he is
more pessimistic than I am about this.

> I'd also like to hear from the dev team (Domas? Kate?) as to whether
> our per-user hardware/bandwidth costs go up or down with increased
> readership (ie does it cost more per user to server lots of users
> rather than a few?).

I would like to hear this as well, but I can tell you that with our
current network architecture, I believe that readership/editorship is
more or less linear with traffic... that is, any "economies of scale" to
moving to a large network environment have already been exploited.

To serve twice as many requests, we need twice as much hardware.

--Jimbo


from_name: Dori

body:
On 10/23/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Dori wrote:
> > I did ask the question, what does charter placement mean legally?
>
> It means that we will list their tool on that page in a position of
> prominence.  I think we should list it in a fashion which makes very
> explicit (as a feature, not a bug!) that using the tool brings revenue
> to the Foundation.
>
> > Yes, but when you enter into a legal contract, it's not just you that
> > we have to worry about, it's the other party as well. I really don't
> > think we'll be getting much revenue from this deal to justify the
> > risk, and in general I don't think in the *long term* relying on
> > advertising will keep Wikipedia afloat.
>
> Please tell me more about what risks you see, because perhaps I can
> answer any specific concerns that you might have.  What risks do you see
> to us?

Could they sue the foundation if they deem the placement not to be
"charter" enough? If not them, how about a company purchasing them?

snip...
> > I'd like to see us plateau on the Internet first, and then worry about
> > expanding off-line. Off-line distributions will be a lot more
> > difficult and a lot less useful.
>
> A lot less useful to whom and for what?
>
> Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for
> us.  It's for them.  It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives
> of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
> empowered with the knowledge to do so.

Let me be just as blunt, I think that's a fairy tale and unlikely to
happen.  The vast majority of information on Wikipedia would be next
to useless to them. Wikipedia is no "A Young Lady's Illustrated
Primer" and will not be anywhere near that kind of level for another
20 years assuming things go through best case scenario. By then I
would hope the UN and African countries have moved off their asses to
do something about it. I seriously doubt that it's information holding
back Africa; it's leadership (as in plenty of bad, and little good).
You can have all the knowledge in the World and not be able to do
anything against corruption, greed, and power.

> > On the other hand, there is no reason
> > why we couldn't start on Wikipedia 1.0, and I've yet to see that get
> > off the ground.
>
> Indeed... if we had the resources to do it, we could do it.  But we
> don't, so it keeps getting pushed to the back burner.

I'd much rather see the resources dedicated here, which will actually
make it more useful for people everywhere.

> > I think continuing with large donations from companies and individuals
> > is the way to go. We shouldn't take wholesale offers of course. But I
> > don't think that we've exhausted all the donation avenues yet.
>
> Of course we haven't, and I have at least 4 "big fish on the hook".  It
> takes time to reel them in, of course, and part of the reason is that we
> have to find ways to make sure that the donation and our goals are
> consistent.

That's good to hear.

--
Dori


body:
Dori wrote:
> I did ask the question, what does charter placement mean legally?

It means that we will list their tool on that page in a position of
prominence.  I think we should list it in a fashion which makes very
explicit (as a feature, not a bug!) that using the tool brings revenue
to the Foundation.

> Yes, but when you enter into a legal contract, it's not just you that
> we have to worry about, it's the other party as well. I really don't
> think we'll be getting much revenue from this deal to justify the
> risk, and in general I don't think in the *long term* relying on
> advertising will keep Wikipedia afloat.

Please tell me more about what risks you see, because perhaps I can
answer any specific concerns that you might have.  What risks do you see
to us?

I think in the *long term* it would be extremely easy to rely on
advertising to keep Wikipedia afloat.  My own estimate is that we are
currently turning away at least $1 million per month in revenue by not
having advertisements on the site.

Nonetheless, there are no plans to do that.  What we do want to seek is
a careful balance of support from a number of different sources.

> It's asked in perfectly good faith, and I'm trying to keep the
> conversation civil (though I may have gotten a bit excited there).

Ok, good. :-)

> There are plenty of people who think the end goal of keeping all the
> projects online is the most important thing.

I think "keeping all the projects online" is the *bare minimum*.

> I'd like
> to see the line clearly drawn beforehand. If it came to accepting
> advertising or the projects going off-line/read-only, which way would
> we go?

The projects will not go offline.  The projects will not go read-only.

I do not even expect *that* to be the primary issue.  The primary issue
is how seriously we take our chosen obligations to people in the
developing world who do not have Internet connections.

> I'd like to see us plateau on the Internet first, and then worry about
> expanding off-line. Off-line distributions will be a lot more
> difficult and a lot less useful.

A lot less useful to whom and for what?

Frankly, and let me be blunt, Wikipedia as a readable product is not for
us.  It's for them.  It's for that girl in Africa who can save the lives
of hundreds of thousands of people around her, but only if she's
empowered with the knowledge to do so.

> On the other hand, there is no reason
> why we couldn't start on Wikipedia 1.0, and I've yet to see that get
> off the ground.

Indeed... if we had the resources to do it, we could do it.  But we
don't, so it keeps getting pushed to the back burner.

> I think continuing with large donations from companies and individuals
> is the way to go. We shouldn't take wholesale offers of course. But I
> don't think that we've exhausted all the donation avenues yet.

Of course we haven't, and I have at least 4 "big fish on the hook".  It
takes time to reel them in, of course, and part of the reason is that we
have to find ways to make sure that the donation and our goals are
consistent.

This is what "diversity of income" is all about... if we are getting
some revenue from Answers.com's 1-click tool, and especially if that
revenue ends up being substantial in 2 years time, then we can approach
those donors from a position of strength.

> Whatever happened to the Google deal?

I'm still talking to Google... and a lot of other people.

--Jimbo


body:
Dan Grey wrote:
> I'm really quite confused.
>
> Angela said we don't need this money to pay for servers, yet Mav is
> apparently saying this.
>
> Which is correct?

I don't want to speak for either of them, but Angela was asked whether
this was due to a budget shortfall, and she said no.  That's correct.

Mav is talking about longterm strategy and planning, and he's also correct.

There is no emergency at the present time.  There are big opportunity
costs if we start to fail next year if we don't plan ahead effectively.

--Jimbo


body:
On 10/23/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, but when you enter into a legal contract, it's not just you that
> > we have to worry about, it's the other party as well. I really don't
> > think we'll be getting much revenue from this deal to justify the
> > risk, and in general I don't think in the *long term* relying on
> > advertising will keep Wikipedia afloat.
>
> Er. Not that we'd ever do this unless *absolutely* necessary to keep us online,
> but do you have *any* idea how much advertising revenue would be brought in by
> an Internet top 50 website? At least a couple hundred thousand dollars a month
> for something relatively unobtrusive like Google Ads.

Don't you think for a moment that we would have this kind of traffic
and growth if we had full blown advertising on the site. And my
comment was only in regard to this deal.

<snip...>
> > It would help to keep features from creeping in that
> > require more hardware too. I personally never liked the big use of
> > templates and categories. It's become a lot harder to make sense of
> > what's going on in an articles that use 10 internested templates (some
> > with if-else logic no less), and there is no need for categories when
> > you can just link (and besides I hate the idea of pigeon-holeing an
> > article into a category to begin with).
>
> Dramatic increases in readership, not feature creep, is what is driving
> hardware cost increases. Again, see my other email.
>
> -- mav

I'll let the techs speak to that, but I can't see how additional
traffic coupled with additional load-generating features can help.
Cached traffic I imagine comprises most of the readership, and I doubt
that's what's causing the purchase of more and more hardware.

--
Dori


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Forgive my scepticism, but if we start accepting advertising and become
> reliant on it, it isn't unknown for the company who is advertising to
> pull their adverts, cutting Wikimedia's revenue.

Obviously, this is a danger to be avoided.

> A possibly apocryphal story is of a program on the BBC, I believe it was
> a car review program, who gave a bad review to a certain American car
> model. The CEO of the company found out about it, was furious and
> ordered the advertising team to pull all adverts to punish the TV
> station. The advertising team replied "sorry sir, but the BBC don't run
> adverts".
>
> A lack of adverts is one of the reasons why Wikipedia can be neutral. If
> we become reliant on others for our existence, they can exert influence
> over our content. I don't want to see us go down that route.

It strikes me as absolutely impossible for *anyone* to exert influence
over our content.  Our very development model ensurees that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Martin Richards

body:
From: Timwi

> VfD was renamed to AfD because it was supposed to be less about voting.
>
.......
>
> Discuss. :)

#'''Keep'''. ~~~~ (reasoning not included)

Just kidding, I never get involved with AFD at the moment as a kind of
silent protest at the silly way it functions. I do think the idea, or some
variant of it is great, and will go a long way to fixing this. However, I
think the "Uncontested deletions"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_reform/Proposals/Uncontested_deletions
is good too, some hybrid of the two ideas may be a really good solution.


body:
--- Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> You know, those figures would make a lot more sense if they were done on an
> accrual basis rather than a cash basis. As is the figures completely ignore
> the fact that the expected life of the servers is more than a single
> quarter.

The figures I gave assume that all the hardware we have already bought is still
in operation (which surprisingly is more or less the case).

> If you're using those cash-basis figures that's another problem with the
> model as well :).

Yet the model has closely predicted increased costs for the last year (yeah, to
an extent this is self-fulfilling, but only so much so)...

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/23/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to express that this Wikipedia has over 200 articles.

Mark, an idle curiosity on my part: What is the potential for good
machine translation between these languages? Is it purely a character
set difference?


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
I like the general outline of this idea, but you CANNOT block IPs from
the Wikipedia namespace. It would break the help desk, the reference
desk, the village pump, afd and general complaints, just to name a
few.

--gkhan

On 10/23/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > When thinking about this idea, don't assume what form it would take.
> > Bottom line, if it takes a few days to gain enough power to do  serious
> > vandalism, engaging in serious vandalism would not be fun,  but a stone
> > drag since all the rigamarole (which for a first time  user could
> > possibly take the form of learning about the wiki) will  have to be gone
> > through again. Faster then the first time, but still  time consuming.
> >
>
> Aha, a mentoring approach! The wiki purists will have your head! :)
>
> Actually, this isn't a bad idea. We just need to enable per-namespace
> blocking. All users start out blocked from everything but Talk:, User:,
> User_talk:, and Wikipedia:. IPs would be permanantly restricted to
> (main):, Talk:, and User_talk:. It would also make enforcing arbcom
> rulings like "this user is banned from editing in the Wikipedia
> namespace for six months" trivial to enforce and impossible to break.
>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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> =NLg5
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Timwi wrote:
> Is anyone going to reply to the ACTUAL SUGGESTION?

I don't like it. I'd like to keep links visible and never hidden.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-10-23 18:19:48   -3.0 degrees Celsius ( 26.5F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

body:
>
>From: Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy on breaches of
bans
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
>
><4ed666e60510230918w6e4fca40h54fee2a009fa8c5e at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>I like the general outline of this idea, but you
>CANNOT block IPs from
>the Wikipedia namespace. It would break the help
desk, >the reference
>desk, the village pump, afd and general complaints,
>just to name a
>few.
>
>--gkhan

Glad to hear it recognised as common sense for Wiki's
honesty of functioning, that these things can't be
blocked. Because ---  they already are blocked.
Because user blocks include against these pages.

and permablocks can be imposed by an admin who knows
you intend to use one of these pages upon a finite
block's expiry, and none of Wiki's ruling class will
admit that's logically wrong, as I expect you've seen here.

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Bigger and more corporate?  Can you please define exactly what you mean
>by that?
>
>If you say "I don't really want us to get involved in projects to try to
>expand our work into helping less developed countries.  Merely running
>the website is enough, let the poor people fend for themselves" then
>fine, I think that's a perfectly acceptable position.
>
>
I mean: "increasingly involved in partnerships with for-profit
corporations, for the sole purpose of financial gain".

I also think getting involved in such projects is a bad idea, but that's
a separate matter.  Also, you're putting words in my mouth with the
second sentence---I think there should be an organization trying to
bring Wikipedia to less developed countries, but it should be separate,
organizationally and monetarily, from the project of producing the
encyclopedia in the first place (although the two should certainly
coordinate and discuss mutual needs).  It's the organizational analog of
the "Unix way"---multiple small, efficient organizations each doing one
thing well, rather than one big monolithic organization doing a lot of
things poorly.

-Mark


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
In a message dated 10/23/2005 6:50:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
wikipedia at earthlink.net writes:

Volunteer to help Danny finding grants and preparing applications. Get
the Wikimedia Foundation added to your employer's matching program for
charitable donations if you have one.

I just wanted to note that in the past month, I have registered us with
several major corporations, including Microsoft, American Express, and Sara Lee
(the ones that make cake) for matching donation programs. Many large
corporations in the US and elsewhere having matching gift programs. If anyone  here
works at a company that does, I encourage you to look into it.

Danny


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Explain, exactly, how this snooping would occur?
>
> We can't expect reader donations to carry us indefinitely. We need to diversify
> our income sources. Partnerships like this, along with other funding strategies
> such as grants, are needed to ensure we stay in the black.
>
> BTW, do you have a few extra million dollars laying around to pay for servers
> next year? And what about the special projects we would like to fund but can't?

According to Angela, paying for servers isn't the problem:

" I would like to know: a) Was this change necessitated by a budget
shortfall? b) What will the Board do if Wikipedia users remove the
answers.com link from Wikipedia:Tools or from the sidebar? -- Tim
Starling 20:14, 20 October 2005 (UTC) "

" No, it wasn't necessitated by the budget. I am expecting the revenue
would be regarded as something additional to what is needed to keep the
site running. For example, special projects like the distribution of
content in Africa and so on. As with the Amazon experiment last year,
we've little idea at the moment what the revenue from this will be,
whether it will be worthwhile, and whether it will be regarded as overly
controversial. This is why I insisted on a trial period. We're expecting
the links won't be removed, in the same way normal fundraising drive
notices are not removed. Angela (disclaimer: all of my comments on this
page are just my opinion and not official Board responses) 20:34, 20
October 2005 (UTC) "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers

See the wiki page for my response to this.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Privacy concerns

body:
W. Guy Finley wrote:
> Okay, I have a headache already but I should have known that.  Was listening
> to Adam Curry's "Daily Source Code" a few days ago and his Euro lawyer pal
> started off a conversation saying "the minute you say 'EU' you know that a
> massive headache is about to occur" or something like that.
>
> An IP address cannot in any way, shape, or form be considered to be private
> information and I'm amazed there can be rants back and forth about this.

The term is "personal information", not "private information". It is
personal information, as you can identify a person, in some
circumstances, if you have this information. The same is true of email
addresses.

> It's as simple as this -- you elect to visit Wikipedia, in turn your IP and
> your activity is stored.  This is no different than you calling me and I
> keep your phone number in my caller ID.  The key is that YOU initiated the
> contact and therefore open yourself up to sharing a bit of information as to
> what you were doing and where you were doing it from.

No, it's not that simple. Just because I give you my email address, for
example, doesn't mean you can then go and sell it to anyone. In your
example, yes, I did initiate the contact, but I didn't give you
permission to do anything you like with the information I gave you.

> Make admins sign NDA's about log info?  Unbelievable.  There is NOTHING
> personally identifying there and I would be very interested for someone to
> demonstrate what malicious intent could be subscribed to someone reviewing
> one's activity in the logs.  "Oooooh, look, I got his IP, now I can get a
> bunch of credit cards in his name."  Umm....no.

Whether or not you agree that an IP address is personal information is
unfortunately not relevant. What is relevant is whether a judge or MEP
in the EU thinks it is personal information, and the answer is, they do.

The potential for malice, given the personal information, is not
relevant to the situation.

> Secondly, it's sort of saying that if you come over to my house I'm not
> allowed to tell anyone what you did or how long you were here because that
> would be personal information.  Again, hogwash.

Your analogy is unfortunately flawed. On the whole, analogies do not
work well in legal situations due to the preciseness of terminology.
This analogy is flawed as you are allowed to reveal information about
visitors, just not personal information. You can say anything you like
as long as it cannot be calculated from that information exactly who you
are referring to.

Please take a look at European Union law and the European Commission's
website on data protection:
  --> http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/fsj/privacy/index_en.htm

Chris


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Privacy concerns


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
I'm really quite confused.

Angela said we don't need this money to pay for servers, yet Mav is
apparently saying this.

Which is correct?

Dan


body:
Is it reasonable to believe that donations will increase in line with
readers? Has anyone analysed the available data to see if this is
happening?

I'd also like to hear from the dev team (Domas? Kate?) as to whether
our per-user hardware/bandwidth costs go up or down with increased
readership (ie does it cost more per user to server lots of users
rather than a few?).

Dan


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/23/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, but when you enter into a legal contract, it's not just you that
> > we have to worry about, it's the other party as well. I really don't
> > think we'll be getting much revenue from this deal to justify the
> > risk, and in general I don't think in the *long term* relying on
> > advertising will keep Wikipedia afloat.
>
> Er. Not that we'd ever do this unless *absolutely* necessary to keep us
> online,
> but do you have *any* idea how much advertising revenue would be brought
> in by
> an Internet top 50 website? At least a couple hundred thousand dollars a
> month
> for something relatively unobtrusive like Google Ads.

It boggles my mind that this isn't being done. Seems to me like a totally
irrational fear that Wikimedia would somehow start catering to the
advertisers. It's almost as though Wikipedians are afraid of money or
something.

> I'd like to see us plateau on the Internet first, and then worry about
> > expanding off-line.
>
> We have been waiting for this mystical plateau for years now. The slowest
> I
> imagine we will ever grow is to just keep pace with the Internet's growth,
> which, btw, is also exponential but not nearly as strongly exponential as
> our
> current growth. So we would need to wait for the whole Internet to plateau
> in
> growth, which is still decades in the future. We can't wait for that.
>
> > Off-line distributions will be a lot more
> > difficult and a lot less useful. On the other hand, there is no reason
> > why we couldn't start on Wikipedia 1.0, and I've yet to see that get
> > off the ground.
>
> There is no reason why we can't do both in parallel. One will benefit the
> other.
>
> > I can't believe that we would need to keep growing at 1-2 million
> > dollar hardware acquisitions every year. You can't go much higher at
> > some point.
>
> Er - we will need to spend at least $2M next year and a lot more the year
> after
> that if our growth curve holds. See my email about our *exponentially*
> growing
> costs.

I seriously doubt there's a *need* to spend $2 million next year. At the
very least, you could be leasing servers rather than buying them. Buying
servers doesn't really make that much sense at this point in the growth
curve, unless you're going to take out some loans. You could even look into
outsourcing the whole thing, because one employee simply isn't enough to run
a multi-million dollar server farm. There are people who can do this more
efficiently than you. Hire them or outsource the job to someone who will.

In the longer term, there's always the ability to go with a more distributed
system, with volunteers hosting the content via a P2P type network. Not pure
P2P, of course, more like a BitTorrent type system. In the past when this
was brought up the answer given was that it wasn't necessary, originally the
answer was "Jimbo's paying for the bandwidth anyway". Well, now it sounds
like it's getting to the point of necessity.

Ultimately I think there are only two real solutions: build a truly
distributed network or get some sort of sponsorship (or as the cynics like
to call it, advertising). The other possibility, grant money and donations,
probably isn't going to come in big enough numbers to run such a big website
without some restrictions on its use. And this is a good thing. We shouldn't
be pouring money from donations into running a website just because we're
too scared or proud or whatever to put a little text acknowledgement of our
sponsors at the bottom of our pages. Grant money and donations should go
toward creating new things, not maintaining the status quo.

> It would help to keep features from creeping in that
> > require more hardware too. I personally never liked the big use of
> > templates and categories. It's become a lot harder to make sense of
> > what's going on in an articles that use 10 internested templates (some
> > with if-else logic no less), and there is no need for categories when
> > you can just link (and besides I hate the idea of pigeon-holeing an
> > article into a category to begin with).
>
> Dramatic increases in readership, not feature creep, is what is driving
> hardware cost increases. Again, see my other email.
>
> -- mav

As someone else said, surely the features aren't helping. But with good
design, you can have features and efficiency. I'll admit that there has been
some progress in this regard in the past year, but there are still some
major design flaws in the mediawiki software and the overall architecture of
the system which are causing the hardware costs to be much more than they
should be. This might have been reasonable in the past when the cost of
hardware was low, but those days are over. At least there's a CTO now,
though his user page curiously says he's "On WikiBreak". And considering
that I don't recall there ever being a period where Wikimedia advertised
that it was hiring this position I have my doubts that they can be so sure
he's the most qualified person for the position.

Anthony


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
Privacy Protection for Users (was: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Privacy
	concerns)

body:
Well you can argue that they are wrong, but from a legal point of view,
IP numbers are personal data. I just wrote a piece of paper about all of
this :

http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=103

That may surprise most wikipedians, but from a legal point of view, it?s
impossible to pretend that IP numbers are not personal data. This point
is addressed by point 25 and 26 of 2002/58/CE stating that :

"The data relating to subscribers processed within electronic
communications networks to establish connections and to transmit
information contain information on the private life of natural persons
and concern the right to respect for their correspondence or concern the
legitimate interests of legal persons."

> An IP address cannot in any way, shape, or form be considered to be private
> information and I'm amazed there can be rants back and forth about this.
>
> It's as simple as this -- you elect to visit Wikipedia, in turn your IP and
> your activity is stored.  This is no different than you calling me and I
> keep your phone number in my caller ID.  The key is that YOU initiated the
> contact and therefore open yourself up to sharing a bit of information as to
> what you were doing and where you were doing it from.
>
> Make admins sign NDA's about log info?  Unbelievable.  There is NOTHING
> personally identifying there and I would be very interested for someone to
> demonstrate what malicious intent could be subscribed to someone reviewing
> one's activity in the logs.  "Oooooh, look, I got his IP, now I can get a
> bunch of credit cards in his name."  Umm....no.
>
> Secondly, it's sort of saying that if you come over to my house I'm not
> allowed to tell anyone what you did or how long you were here because that
> would be personal information.  Again, hogwash.


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Giving reasons in AfD

body:
> I support the idea of forcing people to actually argue their view, but
> I see a lot of problems with the current idea.
> 1) The decision of the closing admin is always going to be questioned.
> 2) Having only arguments doesn't show how many people actually endorse
> these views.
> 3) Debates on schools and roads will probably have an equal amount of
> delete and keep arguments of which the validness is impossible to
> establish as both "sides" think the other side is wrong and end up in
> endless counter aguments.
>
> And if we were to force actual arguments we should also find a way to
> make people actually read an article and vote based on its merit and
> not a view on the general category of articles.
>
> --Mgm

I'm not sure how you can "force" people to argue their view beyond
lip-service and gaming the system. If people won't take the trouble
to give a good reason, they won't. It's discourteous, and that's a
shame, but I don't know how to enforce courtesy.

At one time, the boilerplate text at the top of VfD specifically
directed discussants to give a reason for their vote. It doesn't any
more. I don't know why not. But it didn't really matter, because
people frequently cast votes without making the effort to explain
their rationale, then as now.

At one time, someone decided it would be a good idea to review VfD
nominations and make judgements as to whether the nominator's
rationale for deletion accorded with policy, and to mark those
nominations which he judged to be invalid with cheerful little pastel-
colored nastygrams. It turned out not to be a good idea.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/