from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Hillman's arguments

body:
On 7/27/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> Jesse W wrote:
> >I just replaced the content of my user page with the following.  I
> >thought I would mention this on the list, also, as the resulting
> >discussion might be useful.
> >
> Hmm, didn't you just a couple days ago dismiss my
> observations in the same vein with a "go make your own fork"?
>
> To some extent, Hillman is overreacting; out of curiosity I
> spot-checked some of his articles, and other people's edits I saw
> since he stopped working on them a year ago were to fix typos,
> update template usage, and the like, the text itself being
> carefully preserved. It seems that even the vandals are
> intimidated by his contributions. :-)
>
> Even so, many of his observations are spot on, and we always need
> to be thinking about whether our social structure is actually
> serving the overall goal, or just keeping us busy.

I think he's become an important and effective critic, but his
criticisms have the overgeneralization flaw.

One of the overgeneralizations is failure to separate Wikipedia
article evolution from Wikipedia's evolution and status as a whole,
including the organizational and social aspects.  There is nothing
contradictory in having a social group organized in any particular
manner, whose fundamental common goal is to write neutral,
encyclopedic, fact-based and referenced encyclopedia articles.  The
social group organization being chatty won't necessarily change
typical article tone or writing standards.

If there is a linkage there, then it needs to be documented and argued
for, rather than just asserted.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] Wolf Mountain MediaWiki Appliances Released

body:
Hoi,
In the past encyclopedias have played a certain role. They explained how
things are. They did this with quite some disregard to what the powers that
be thought about this. When information is filtered from Wikipedia, you
explicitly allow people to be blindsighted because of an intentional lack of
information.

Statistics show that kids who are exposed to sexual education, in an
atmosphere where the functionality of sexuality is not a taboo subject are
less likely to get prematurely pregnant. They are also less likely to get
venereal deseases.

Indeed the GFDL allows you to do this "service" to your communities. It is
as they say: the law is an ass.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 7/27/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> >Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I simply provide filtering mechanisms they can use to filter the
> >>dumps. That's up to the users, not me. I personally don't care
> >>what's in it.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >I find this deeply problematic.  Are you providing your audience
> >with a product that says "this is Wikipedia" and where the edit
> >history for an article says "this part was written by user:LA2"
> >but where the stuff I wrote might be filtered out?
> >
> >
> That's what the GFDL is all about **ANYONE** may edit. This also means
> **ANYONE** can edit or filter out materials.
>
>


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV fork anyone? (coca cola)

body:
ScottL wrote:
>
> I was about to do this but one look at this query:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?as_q=%22Criticism+of%22&num=100&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=en.wikipedia.org&as_rights=&safe=images
>
> and I realized it would take a very long time.  Looks like there may be
> hundreds of these.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/Criticism_of

Not that many; I count 33 excluding redirects.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:05:26PM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 08:53:23PM -0700, mboverload wrote:
> > On 7/26/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Too bad MediaWiki isn't Java-based!
> >
> > *mboverload stabs Ben repeatedly in the chest*
>
>  /me hands mboverload more scissors, knives, and sharpened chopsticks to
> continue the good work.

Anyone got some more popcorn?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	Fanfic: read enough, and you'll loose your mind.  --me


subject: [Wikitech-l] OT: What language would *you* have done it in, and why?

body:
On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:05:57AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Please don't construe this statement as a veiled snipe at PHP (or Java, or
> > any other language). It's just an observation of fact.
>
> I should help stab someone for choosing PHP, too, for that matter -- but
> we work with what we've got.

Unthreaded: in a clear field, Chad, what *would* you have implemented
MediaWiki in?  And why?

(Thread-kill is your friendi, folks...)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	Fanfic: read enough, and you'll loose your mind.  --me


from_name: Erik Garrison

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pageview counters

body:
On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 04:33:33PM +0200, Platonides wrote:
> It's a good thing. But instead of discussing on [[en:Wikipedia:Pageviews]]it
> should be done in [[meta:Pageviews]]
>

Cool.  I'll move it.

> You should also check the work already done by LeonWeber. It's live in de:
> The JS code is in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Pagecounter.js
> The tool is running on the toolserver. http://pgcount.wikimedia.de/ is an
> alias.
>

I've heard about this.

> You can see the top100 queries at
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/pageview/temp.php
> It's beta but will be released in the next days. He'll implement it for
> other wikis... after vactions.
>

I was thinking that it would be very useful and interesting if:
1) This data was kept in a WM databases, so it could be
accessed on any page's "history".
2) For admins and (perhaps) logged-in users other tools were available
that would rank search queries, category listings, etc. by page ranking.

Not *trivial*.   But doable.

> Only showing top doesn't reveal lees seen pages (and remember that seen !=
> watched)
>

Exactly.  It would be nice to see it on a page-by-page basis.  However,
it looks like past the top 100 the resolution is pretty low (small
quantities can't carry much information).  Would it be worthwhile to
count a larger percentage of the pageviews so that we can see the
minor differences between page rank #1000 and page rank #10,000?  Could this method scale up to 5% of pageviews, 10%, etc.?

> Another problem could be avoiding spamming the view list.
>

I'm not clear what you mean by this.

-Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project
 boring to death

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
>>fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
>>we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
>>copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
>>christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
>>important.
>>
>>
>Fair use is an extremely important exemption to copyright law. There
>are good reasons to prohibit it e.g. in the User: space, and to
>require users to upload their own works as free content. But there is
>no single good reason why a photo that is important to Wikipedia's
>history, and that cannot easily be obtained as free content, wouldn't
>qualify as fair use in the Wikipedia: namespace.
>
>It's dogmatic thinking about these issues that is dangerous. But
>"quietly ignoring" doesn't solve the problem -- it only means that
>sooner or later it will come up again, either in this case or in
>another similar one. Not quietly ignoring it, but talking about it, to
>me demonstrates a greater sense of responsibility and empathy.
>
>With that said: I think that our memorial page at
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ADeceased_Wikipedians
>demonstrates that there are a lot of people who do care about how we
>preserve the memory of Wikipedians who have passed on. Caring about
>knowledge, ultimately, is always caring about people. Because
>knowledge is nothing without the human beings who collect, derive, and
>use it -- and who, in doing so, always build upon the works of the
>generations who came before them. To honor the members of our own
>community therefore is a natural expression of the love of knowledge,
>and the love of humanity.
>
I share these sentiments.  Sometimes obeying the rules as they are
written simply does not make sense.  The text of the law may be in black
and white, but it should not be read so as to prop up the illusion of
certainty.

It's difficult to estimate how many deceased Wikipedians there really
are, but I suspect there are far more than are represented on the cited
page.  We profit a lot from the imminently dying Wikipedians, the ones
with long degenerative and terminal illnesses who at some point quietly
stop editing for no apparent reason.  Perhaps they are undergoing
gruelling courses of chemotherapy or feeling the ravages of AIDS.  To
complain publicly would be a blow to their pride.  Their health will not
allow them a "real job".  Maybe, for a while, they have one good hour
each day and they want to feel useful rather than to spend that hour
watching yet another mindless rerun on TV.  So they edit a Wiki, and for
doing that the reward is the feeling that they have done something
useful.  Conveniently, I just read this morning in Kenzaburo Oe's novel
"Somersault": "When a person thinks about death or is actually facing
death,if he's convinced that his life and death are fine the way they
are, isn't he saved?"

When there are those for whom editing a Wiki is such a profoundly
personal act, aren't we being a little too disrespectful when we start
whining about the copyright minutiae that they overlooked when they were
editing.

Ec


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikiwyg (was Re:  New SVN user)

body:
On Wed, 2006-26-07 at 19:27 -0400, Edward Z. Yang wrote:

> Even WikiWYG concedes that it's highly unlikely that it will get
> integrated into the official MediaWiki codebase.

I think there's a grave naming problem going on, since there's a very
good Javascript toolkit called wikiwyg that is slowly on its way into
MediaWiki in some capacity:

        http://www.wikiwyg.net/

I think its the biggest hope for getting wysiwyg editing features into
MediaWiki. I think there are very high acceptance criteria for having it
installed on Wikimedia -- being bug-compatible with every crazy hack
that people do with Wikitext -- but I don't think they're insuperable.

I'm not sure what the probability of that Ajax-y MW code migrating to
the core is, though.

~Evan

________________________________________________________________________
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>
http://evan.prodromou.name/


subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>
>>
>>>mboverload wrote:
>>>[fixed top posting]
>>>
>>>
>>>>On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
>>>>>>episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
>>>>>>Friends).
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>An article about an episode that cites nothing but the episode itself
>>>>>is a poor article. It amounts to an article about the Mona Lisa simply
>>>>>putting a high resolution copy of the image and saying "you can see
>>>>>for yourself". In order not to violate NOR, we could say very little
>>>>>about the episode. We couldn't say if it was good or bad. We couldn't
>>>>>say what fans thought about it. We couldn't say if the jokes were
>>>>>funny. We couldn't say it was the first time Rachael kissed Ross.
>>>>>
>>>>>We could say "The episode lasted 23 minutes". We could offer a plot
>>>>>summary. We could describe some of the gags. How boring.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for episodes.
>>>>Who's it going to hurt?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Ultimately, it will hurt the rest of Wikipedia; instead of doing
>>>*useful* editing, people will be adding /every single detail/ about
>>>/every single episode/ of /every single TV show that ever was/, instead
>>>of focussing on areas where we have no information, very little
>>>information, or information that is inaccurate or doesn't make sense.
>>>
>>>
>>This is pure speculation
>>
>>
>It's based on experience.
>
When did we start accepting asnecdotal personal experience as evidence?
I am willing to concede that something of the sort may have occasionally
happened, but I would avoid generalizing from it.

>>>There's the entirely seperate issue of approaching copyright
>>>infringement (Wikipedia, your source of TV and movie scripts on teh
>>>intarwebs!), but I suspect that the point will be lost on you.
>>>
>>>
>>Completely irrelevant.  Summarizing the plot is about the content, and
>>not about the detailed expression in the script.  No-one has suggested
>>that we include entire scripts.
>>
>>
>If we include every single detail, we end up with a script.
>
Maybe at the extreme, but it would be a completely original script, and
therefore not a copyvio.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: mboverload

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
Why are you signing as Jimbo?

On 7/27/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> The reason for the over-representation of female leaders (in comparison to
> their overall numbers)?  C'mon - we all know the reason!  Blokes are bloody
> hopeless, that's why!  Those of us who have had the misfortune of living in
> all-male accomodation will be able to confirm my thesis.  Interestingly,
> even in a tiny project like the Sicilian wikipedia, the average (and thesis)
> holds true.  One of the 5 "Capi" is female - but we would be absolutely lost
> without her.
>   pippu d'a
>
>
> It is my anecdotal sense based on wikipedia meetups and interactions
> online that about 80% of Wikipedians are male, that this number is
> better than most free software projects, but worse than I think most of
> us would like, and that the leadership of the projects tends to be much
> more heavily female than the averages would suggest.
>
> We have many strong female leaders in various projects. I leave it to
> others to speculate why this might be. :)
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
>
>
>
> Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
> http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override
> the
> > backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the previous"
> > page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?
> >
> > OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.
>
> Somehow Gmail gets the "back" functionality exactly right. No idea how it
> works.
>
> Steve

Well the sidebar and header is static, they use the email area as some sort
of frame.

That's just my best guess.


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 7/27/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > > Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override
> > the
> > > backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the
> > previous"
> > > page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?
> > >
> > > OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.
> >
> > Somehow Gmail gets the "back" functionality exactly right. No idea how
> > it works.
> >
> > Steve
>
>
> Well the sidebar and header is static, they use the email area as some
> sort of frame.
>
> That's just my best guess.
>

Nevermind, the sidebar and header are only static in some operations I
guess.


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
> stop
> > buying servers?
> >
> IANAA but
>
> Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position
> is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers
> and related products as quickly as posible.

Layman explanation as to why?

mboverload


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we block unregistered AOL users?

body:
On 7/27/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
> Angela wrote:
> > I've just had confirmation that this should be working. From AOL this
> morning:
> >
> >>I have just now added all the domains you have listed below to our
> >>config to get XFF headers. You should see them sometime later today when
> >>the process is finished updating all of our web proxies.
>
> We still seem to be getting edits from some AOL proxies, at least in the
> 195.93.21.*, 152.163.100.* and 207.200.116.* ranges.  Maybe some of the
> proxies are still not providing the headers, or perhaps they're missing
> from our trusted XFF list?
>
> Given that the XFF setup doesn't seem to work perfectly, the question
> remains whether we should apply anon-only range blocks to those proxies.

If you look at my history of me and AOL users...I think AOL is a shithole
that should be banned from accessing any website.

However, it's much easier to ban an IP address for vandalism than a
username.  People get bitchy.  No one cares about blocking IP users, and I
want to keep it that way for ease of blocking.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
He wrote a quote wrong.

The section below "Pippu d'a" was all a quote.

Mark

On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why are you signing as Jimbo?
>
> On 7/27/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> >
> > The reason for the over-representation of female leaders (in comparison to
> > their overall numbers)?  C'mon - we all know the reason!  Blokes are bloody
> > hopeless, that's why!  Those of us who have had the misfortune of living in
> > all-male accomodation will be able to confirm my thesis.  Interestingly,
> > even in a tiny project like the Sicilian wikipedia, the average (and thesis)
> > holds true.  One of the 5 "Capi" is female - but we would be absolutely lost
> > without her.
> >   pippu d'a
> >
> >
> > It is my anecdotal sense based on wikipedia meetups and interactions
> > online that about 80% of Wikipedians are male, that this number is
> > better than most free software projects, but worse than I think most of
> > us would like, and that the leadership of the projects tends to be much
> > more heavily female than the averages would suggest.
> >
> > We have many strong female leaders in various projects. I leave it to
> > others to speculate why this might be. :)
> >
> > --Jimbo
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
> > http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Ben Garney

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override
> the
> > backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the previous"
> > page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?
> >
> > OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.
>
> Somehow Gmail gets the "back" functionality exactly right. No idea how it
> works.

Google Web Toolkit has all this functionality and is the core tech that
Google Calendar, GMail, etc. use. Maybe someone should do some research on
how it could apply to MW? :)

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
Ah ok =D

mboverload

On 7/27/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> He wrote a quote wrong.
>
> The section below "Pippu d'a" was all a quote.
>
> Mark
>
> On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why are you signing as Jimbo?
> >
> > On 7/27/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> > >
> > > The reason for the over-representation of female leaders (in
> comparison to
> > > their overall numbers)?  C'mon - we all know the reason!  Blokes are
> bloody
> > > hopeless, that's why!  Those of us who have had the misfortune of
> living in
> > > all-male accomodation will be able to confirm my
> thesis.  Interestingly,
> > > even in a tiny project like the Sicilian wikipedia, the average (and
> thesis)
> > > holds true.  One of the 5 "Capi" is female - but we would be
> absolutely lost
> > > without her.
> > >   pippu d'a
> > >
> > >
> > > It is my anecdotal sense based on wikipedia meetups and interactions
> > > online that about 80% of Wikipedians are male, that this number is
> > > better than most free software projects, but worse than I think most
> of
> > > us would like, and that the leadership of the projects tends to be
> much
> > > more heavily female than the averages would suggest.
> > >
> > > We have many strong female leaders in various projects. I leave it to
> > > others to speculate why this might be. :)
> > >
> > > --Jimbo
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
> > > http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
Yeah, gmail makes this nifty header, as you can see below

- mboverload

On 7/27/06, Filip Maljkovic <dungodung at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ole Andersen wrote:
> > On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Why are you signing as Jimbo?
> >>
> >
> > He didn't. He top-posted, which is worse. So did you, btw.
> >
> > -Palnatoke
> I don't see anything wrong with top-posting. Not separating quoted text
> from the normal one is the thing that bothers me.
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem linking to an anchor

body:
I put this:

[[Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#prod_tag_deletion.3F__Oh_noes.]]

However, it came out like this in the destination URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser#prod_tag_deletion.3F_Oh_noes
.

As you can see, the double underscore was removed and the link doesn't work
anymore.  It still has the double underscore in the wikisource, but not the
generated HTML.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mboverload#Prod_tags  - click the
"here" link

- mboverload


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
What's wrong with top-posting? I absolutely love it!

On 27/07/06, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why are you signing as Jimbo?
>
> He didn't. He top-posted, which is worse. So did you, btw.
>
> -Palnatoke
>
> --
> http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
> * CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
> h:+45 61 91 48 88 w: +45 35 45 44 29
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Uploading images should be a privilige, not a right

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>On 7/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
><snip>
>
>
>>>Today, we grab free images from sites like Flikr and don't even
>>>contact the photographer... What a tremendous opportunity to bring in
>>>more photographers. But it seems that, as a whole, Wikipedia is not
>>>that interested in attracting photographers.
>>>
>>>
>>Whenever I use a photographer's work from Flickr or anywhere else
>>(CC-licensed, etc) I try and leave a comment on their photo.
>>Generally it's much appreciated.
>>
>>I think a big mistake in our Flickr-sifting efforts is that we provide
>>no feedback to those whose photos we use.  Perhaps just because it's
>>easier not to or something, but comments are encouragement, and people
>>who free-license stuff generally like to hear that stuff is
>>appreciated.
>>
>>
>What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
>licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
>the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
>CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
>viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
>worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
>Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
>that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to Commons.
>
This all comes down to a question of proof.  One needs to assume if the
use of the photograph was legal at the time that it was used that use
and all downstream uses that derive from it will continue to be legal.
The downstream user will probably need to establish the chain of
provenance in the event of a legal dispute.  It would be his
responsibility to trace up the food chain to establish the freeness of
the material.

For us, we probably need to be a bit more thorough in documenting our
usage, particularly noting the date and time the material was taken.
This may require archiving a download of a status file from Flickr.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
We need Wikipedia to be as fast in changing pages as Google.  Shit, maybe
they might even donate some engineer time to help implement it.

- mboverload

On 7/27/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/27/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > > Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override
> > the
> > > backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the
> previous"
> > > page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?
> > >
> > > OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.
> >
> > Somehow Gmail gets the "back" functionality exactly right. No idea how
> it
> > works.
>
>
> Google Web Toolkit has all this functionality and is the core tech that
> Google Calendar, GMail, etc. use. Maybe someone should do some research on
> how it could apply to MW? :)
>
> --
> Ben Garney
> Torque Technologies Director
> GarageGames.Com, Inc.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
The reason for the over-representation of female leaders (in comparison to their overall numbers)?  C'mon - we all know the reason!  Blokes are bloody hopeless, that's why!  Those of us who have had the misfortune of living in all-male accomodation will be able to confirm my thesis.  Interestingly, even in a tiny project like the Sicilian wikipedia, the average (and thesis) holds true.  One of the 5 "Capi" is female - but we would be absolutely lost without her.
  pippu d'a

It is my anecdotal sense based on wikipedia meetups and interactions
online that about 80% of Wikipedians are male, that this number is
better than most free software projects, but worse than I think most of
us would like, and that the leadership of the projects tends to be much
more heavily female than the averages would suggest.

We have many strong female leaders in various projects. I leave it to
others to speculate why this might be. :)

--Jimbo

 Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop
buying servers?

On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >On 7/25/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>James Hare wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Good luck with the raising of the $60,000!
> >>>
> >>>
> >>We have that sum in the bank. So do not worry :-)
> >>
> >>The last purchase was done in february :
> >>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Hardware_Purchase_Feb-06
> >>
> >>ant
> >>
> >>
> >Someone needs to suggest Resolution Stop Acquiring So Many Assets,
> >considering all the legal issues that still aren't resolved.
> >
> You've just suggested it!   :-)   Great!
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Frederik Eaton

subject: [Wikitech-l] tpl files

body:
Hi again,

I think other things are out of sync as well. Is there an easy way to
re-initialize the messages part of the database from Messages.php, or
do I just have to edit the pages by hand?

Frederik

On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:53:20PM +0100, Frederik Eaton wrote:
> Ah, thanks.
>
> Frederik
>
> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 11:50:55PM +0200, Jan-Paul K?ster wrote:
> > Edit the [[Mediawiki:Sidebar]] page on your wiki.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > JP
> >
> >
> > Frederik Eaton wrote:
> > >Hi,
> > >
> > >I'm trying to add a link to the sidebar in a modified version of
> > >MediaWiki. I changed 'sidebar' in Messages.php but the change is not
> > >reflected in the browser. Do I need to compile skins/MonoBook.php into
> > >skins/MonoBook.tpl or something? (and if so, how?)
> > >
> > >Thanks,
> > >
> > >Frederik

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dead wikipedians and how to really make a project
	boring to death

body:
On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 7/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> > > > fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules
> that
> > > > we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring
> the
> > > > copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> > > > christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> > > > important.
> > > >
> > > > --Oskar
> > >
> > > I don't see why it's such a special unique case.  Wikipedia's
> > > copyright policies are flawed, and this is one example of it.
> > >
> > > By the way, isn't there a rule that fair use only applies in articles?
> > >
> >
> > Am I missing something here? The image in the fr-wikipedia is under
> > CreativeCommons, and this was made by the owner of the copyright,
> Treanna
> > himself [
> >
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Norbert3.jpg&diff=2396051&oldid=701771
> ].
> > Doesn't mean that the image on en-wikipedia also counts as
> CreativeCommons?
> >
> >
> > (that's diving right back into the process part of this whole thing,
> though)
> >
> > --DP
>
>
> ND NoDerivs. Not a free enough lisence for wikipedia.
>

Ah, yes, looking at the rest of the text in the image in the French page
makes it clear. This leads to another question. What do we do when we can't
get the original contributor's permission, apart from contacting his estate?
I have to agree with Anthere in that this seems a little heartless. It's not
like the Deceased Wikipedians page is meant for the encyclopedia, but
rather, it's meant for the community.


subject: [Wikitech-l] tpl files

body:
Oh dear, sorry for that.

php rebuildMessages.php --rebuild

seems to work fine.

> Hi again,
>
> I think other things are out of sync as well. Is there an easy way to
> re-initialize the messages part of the database from Messages.php, or
> do I just have to edit the pages by hand?
>
> Frederik

--
http://ofb.net/~frederik/


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Silas Snider wrote:
> >Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
> >legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
> >right to even host the image.
> >
> It would be nice if people who put up these claims about protecting us
> had half a clue about what they are saying.  Such legal proceedings are
> always possible no matter what we do.  So too is winning the big prize
> in a national lottery.  If you sign a binding agreement to donate 50% of
> that prize to WMF when you win it, I would suggest that the Board not
> make that eventuality a prominent part of its future plans.

Of course, it's always possible to be sued no matter what we do...
thus we should not do anything to decrease the probability of lawsuit!
  It's all so simple!

On a more serious note...
It does make sense to permit some things which will never be a risk or
a problem.  The problem is that with thousands of users, for any
instance there is someone who doesn't see a problem with it. My
favorite, although old, example is Raul654 arguing that a cover
recording of [[Alanis Morissette]]s Ironic [[Ironic (song)]] was
public domain.

As a result, we can't simple accept all members of the community
carrying the ability to make exceptions.   To me this seems like a
hard problem.

I oppose this image being claimed as fair use on English Wikipedia in
the Wikipedia: namespace. I'd rather a {{Because Erik Said So}}
template be created, if we're going to grant Erik the ability to
unilateral ignore our requirements for image in the Wikipedia
namespace.  It is important that in the process of allowing exceptions
for obviously harmless things that we do not undo the work of others
who have worked so hard to keep unacceptable material out.  The unfree
image of Tim Starling we hosted on his user page easily caused months
of additional work in reducing unfree images in userspace because it
was frequently cited as a counter example, prolonging uncomfortable
disagreements.

Of course this is not a matter of legal peril... it is, rather, a
matter of commitment to our goal of free content.  I hope that when I
die no one insults my contribution to Wikipedia by increasing the
number of non-free images we have by uploading non-free images of me
to all our projects, especially ones where my only interactions were
interlanguage links.


body:
Angela wrote:
> I've just had confirmation that this should be working. From AOL this morning:
>
>>I have just now added all the domains you have listed below to our
>>config to get XFF headers. You should see them sometime later today when
>>the process is finished updating all of our web proxies.

We still seem to be getting edits from some AOL proxies, at least in the
195.93.21.*, 152.163.100.* and 207.200.116.* ranges.  Maybe some of the
proxies are still not providing the headers, or perhaps they're missing
from our trusted XFF list?

Given that the XFF setup doesn't seem to work perfectly, the question
remains whether we should apply anon-only range blocks to those proxies.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ah, yes, looking at the rest of the text in the image in the French page
> > makes it clear. This leads to another question. What do we do when we
> can't
> > get the original contributor's permission, apart from contacting his
> estate?
>
> It is unlikely that the situation will arise very often.
>
> > I have to agree with Anthere in that this seems a little heartless. It's
> not
> > like the Deceased Wikipedians page is meant for the encyclopedia, but
> > rather, it's meant for the community.
>
> A seperate wikimedia memorial project would seem to be the logical answer.
>

A decent idea, though such a memorial project would (hopefully) be small,
confined to just a few pages.


from_name: Kat Walsh

body:
On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Silas Snider wrote:
>
> >Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
> >legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
> >right to even host the image.
> >
> It would be nice if people who put up these claims about protecting us
> had half a clue about what they are saying.  Such legal proceedings are
> always possible no matter what we do.  So too is winning the big prize
> in a national lottery.  If you sign a binding agreement to donate 50% of
> that prize to WMF when you win it, I would suggest that the Board not
> make that eventuality a prominent part of its future plans.
>
> Ec

I'd like to think I have at least half a clue, having seen loads of
"you are using my copyrighted material, take it down or else"
messages. (And then many more "hey, I wrote this press release, and
you guys called me a copyright violator, take that down immediately."
You just can't win.)

Most of them are just angry and will never actually go to the trouble
of a lawsuit, sure. Some of them might. Considering the volume, not
many of them would have to for it to be a huge waste of the limited
resources of WMF. It's *possible* for people to attempt to sue us for
all sorts of frivolous things even if we take as much care as
possible, yes, but it's not the wisest course of action to invite it
where we don't need to by failing to be responsible.

However:

In this case, there must be some sort of special case. Purist though I
generally am, surely there must be some way to hang on to a few
pictures of deceased editors and tag them appropriately to make their
status clear. Considering all the copyright issues on the project, it
would be a happy day if this were the most pressing of them. I would
be loath for this to be some sort of precedent so that everyone and
his dog wants an excuse to be a special case, but, well, really, I am
OK with this particular image.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Common sense exceptions to our copyright policy.

body:
They copyright policy adopted by the contributors to Wikipedia is more
restrictive than strictly required by law.  This is a good thing for
two primary reasons: The first is that we have a commitment to Free
Content where the law has no objection to us distributing content with
outrageous restrictions, and the second is that a restrictive policy
removes grey areas which make enforcement difficult.

The existence of a strict policy encourages people to create free
images where they are possible and has greatly increased the number of
free images available to the world. An easy example is the articles on
automobile models on enwiki... in the last year substantial progress
has been made in creating and using free images and in many places
this progress was directly driven by editors refusing to accept unfree
images in the articles.

However, there are a number of cases such as the recent thread on the
image of Treanna where common sense would tell us to permit the
image... that it represents no compromise of our goals and no legal
threat.  There have been quite a few examples that I've run into...

The challenge is that if we permit this sort of decision making we
find that for almost any image there is someone who will find
inclusion reasonable.  This is substantiated by the fact that we
delete over 30,000 images per month on enwiki... after all, at least
the *uploader* thought it was reasonable to inclued the image. A
widespread permission to heed the 'common sense' of individual
contributors in these matters would simply result in chaos and  likely
a massive regression in the overall freeness of our content.

I would like to propose a solution:

We should appoint or elect someone to make exceptions to our policy.

Ideally this person would carry a strong commitment to keeping our
content maximally free...  but my view is that even if we appointed
someone with poor judgement that the bad calls of one person are
highly preferable to the bad calls of all our contributors.

Much like the arbcom acts as a consensus tool to help us achieve
consensus on bans and other such methods, a person in this position
would help us achieve consensus for exceptions to our image use
policy.  They would not exist to make determinations on matters of
policy, but only to permit things which are legally permissible,
obviously non-harmful to our goals, but clearly against our policy.

In this manner the strict 'bright lines' policy can remain, preserving
the sanity of those who work to keep our content free, but we do not
suffer the harm of rejecting material which would be permitted by
common sense.

Thoughts?


from_name: geni

body:
On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> fair use or not?

Me

>Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> copyright issue in this very special unique case.

Ah PUI would be another option. Or I could just point out is has't
been in an article for 5 days and speedy it. However there are several
tens of thousands of other copyvios in wikipedia. This one can wait.

> We are people, for christs sake, not automatons!

And what has that got to do with anything?

> Sometimes, process is not that important.
>
> --Oskar

Nothing to do with process. If you want to create a memorial it might
be better to start a seperate project with different rules simply to
handle the multinational aspect.

--
geni


body:
On 7/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> > > fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> > > we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> > > copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> > > christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> > > important.
> > >
> > > --Oskar
> >
> > I don't see why it's such a special unique case.  Wikipedia's
> > copyright policies are flawed, and this is one example of it.
> >
> > By the way, isn't there a rule that fair use only applies in articles?
> >
>
> Am I missing something here? The image in the fr-wikipedia is under
> CreativeCommons, and this was made by the owner of the copyright, Treanna
> himself [
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Norbert3.jpg&diff=2396051&oldid=701771].
> Doesn't mean that the image on en-wikipedia also counts as CreativeCommons?
>
>
> (that's diving right back into the process part of this whole thing, though)
>
> --DP

ND NoDerivs. Not a free enough lisence for wikipedia.

--
geni


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV fork anyone? (coca cola)

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

Erik Moeller stated for the record:
> If Microsoft had a corporate approval
> rating, I doubt it would be very high ...

They do.  It's called "stock price."

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Save the whales! Trade them for valuable prizes.
 sean at epoptic.com |
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEyT9bMAt1wyd9d+URAn/eAJ42AWthJLn9DxE7LERrJdp76DFmKQCfX3EK
x6bG+jh9rpQH0DeZ7QEM5Sc=
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiWYSIWYG (was: Re:  New SVN user)

body:
On 7/27/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> For some reason that link is not working for me: I get what looks like HTML
> or XML source code.

Still good for me. What browser? Have you got JavaScript enabled?

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
Are we sure it's a processing problem and not a bandwidth problem?  It seems
to me that they need some more bandwidth, with new servers being second to
that.

On 7/27/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
> > > stop
> > > > buying servers?
> > > >
> > > IANAA but
> > >
> > > Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position
> > > is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers
> > > and related products as quickly as posible.
> >
> > Layman explanation as to why?
> >
> > mboverload
>
> I'm really not sure what geni was trying to say, but the two main
> reasons I think Wikimedia should try to limit its assets are 1) to
> increase board accountability and 2) to avoid being a good target for
> lawsuits.
>
> The first reason I suppose is the more important one.  Right now three
> of the five Wikimedia board members are not elected.  The board is
> accountable to the public largely because it relies on donations from
> the community.  As the foundation acquires more and more assets, they
> become less and less accountable to the public.  Sure, there need to
> be reserves in place, but in the budgets that were released before
> Wikimedia started hiding them from the public a very large portion
> (something like 75%) was being spent on capital expenditures.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Mark Wagner

body:
On 7/27/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> We shouldn't rely on the completely clueless when determining rules and
> actions with regard to copyright.

We shouldn't?  Then why do we give everyone an upload button and
encourage them to use it?

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jul 26, 2006 at 10:15:00AM -0600, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>>
>>> Making WP more pervasive also means
>>> accomodating folks who have differing views and values.
>>>
>> That's what NPOV was supposed to do. Ut oh!
>>
>
> NPOV, used properly, makes life bearable for a broad spectrum of *editors*.
>
> NPOV does nothing to help someone who has decided that an image of a
> penis will scar their children for life.
Hoi,
Would that someone have only daughters ? And is she a woman ?
Thanks,
  GerardM


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pageview counters

body:
It's a good thing. But instead of discussing on [[en:Wikipedia:Pageviews]]it
should be done in [[meta:Pageviews]]

You should also check the work already done by LeonWeber. It's live in de:
The JS code is in http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Pagecounter.js
The tool is running on the toolserver. http://pgcount.wikimedia.de/ is an
alias.

You can see the top100 queries at
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~leon/stats/pageview/temp.php
It's beta but will be released in the next days. He'll implement it for
other wikis... after vactions.

Only showing top doesn't reveal lees seen pages (and remember that seen !=
watched)

Another problem could be avoiding spamming the view list.


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for
processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.

On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/28/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Are we sure it's a processing problem and not a bandwidth problem?  It
> seems
> > to me that they need some more bandwidth, with new servers being second
> to
> > that.
> >
>
> I think it is fairly safe to say the devs know where the problem is.
> Certianly they reacted fast enough when we did exceed our bandwidth.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category redlinks

body:
On 26/07/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, but there are many problems like (eg, pages that aren't linked
> to, pages that don't link to anything, pages that aren't categorised)
> that best dealt with through "special pages". "Category has no
> super-category" does not seem an appropriate reason for the category
> to be a redlink - especially since it's easy to have a category with
> no super category that *isn't* a redlink.

I would say that for a category to be considered to "exist" it needs
to be related to other categories (and, via these, the rest of the
category tree). So to exist it needs to be categorised (contain the
text "[[Category:Foo]]"), and so be no longer red. Therefore,
redcategories typically indicate unlinked (and unuseful) categories.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop
> buying servers?

I seriously think they should look into leasing them instead.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


body:
On 7/27/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
> >licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
> >the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
> >CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
> >viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
> >worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
> >Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
> >that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to Commons.
> >
> This all comes down to a question of proof.  One needs to assume if the
> use of the photograph was legal at the time that it was used that use
> and all downstream uses that derive from it will continue to be legal.
> The downstream user will probably need to establish the chain of
> provenance in the event of a legal dispute.  It would be his
> responsibility to trace up the food chain to establish the freeness of
> the material.
>
> For us, we probably need to be a bit more thorough in documenting our
> usage, particularly noting the date and time the material was taken.
> This may require archiving a download of a status file from Flickr.
>
I seriously doubt proof is going to help in a situation like this.
There are so many other factors involved.  Was the person who uploaded
the file to Flickr actually the copyright holder?  Who was the license
granted to?  Can the license be revoked?  Was the uploader of legal
age to grant the license?

If someone releases something under a free license and then changes
his or her mind later, 99 times out of 100 the best solution is to
just find replacement content.  It's just too much of a grey area
legally.

Anthony


body:
On 7/27/06, Silas Snider <swsnider at gmail.com> wrote:
> Except when process protects us from (potentially lenghty and costly)
> legal proceedings. Without a tag, it is not clear whether we have the
> right to even host the image.
>

Legaly? Fine can't host modifications of it which causes the problem.

--
geni


body:
On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> > fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> > we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> > copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> > christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> > important.
>
> Fair use is an extremely important exemption to copyright law. There
> are good reasons to prohibit it e.g. in the User: space, and to
> require users to upload their own works as free content. But there is
> no single good reason why a photo that is important to Wikipedia's
> history, and that cannot easily be obtained as free content, wouldn't
> qualify as fair use in the Wikipedia: namespace.
>
You make these comments as though they are obvious, but I for one
don't understand what you're referring to.

What are the good reasons to "prohibit fair use" in the User namespace
that don't apply to the Wikipedia namespace?  If the photo of Bernard
was on my User namespace, would that be inappropriate?

Personally I don't see the problem with allowing ND licenses
throughout the user namespace and the Wikipedia namespace, and even in
the article namespace in situations where a more free license is not
available.  Anything under an ND license is pretty much automatically
fair use.

Anthony


body:
On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip, out of order]
> In my view, establishing clear ground rules for votes to change policy
> is a better way to deal with the problem than delegation of authority.
> It allows for community consensus processes (and indeed requires them
> to be tried first), brings out as many arguments and solutions as
> possible, and enables everyone to share the responsibility, credit and
> blame for the result.

The current image use policy reflects the position of the active
editing base and is result of a fairly strong consensus, not merely
the mob rule of a majority wins vote.  There is no substantial desire
to change our policy.

The challenge is that only a bright line policy can protect us against
a "slow and often intensely frustrating process" for each of tens of
thousands of images per month. But a bright line policy will exclude
things which common sense would permit.  I'd like to discuss ways we
can accept such exceptions without breaking the well functioning
policy and without creating a slow and intensely frustrating process.

Voting is currently used as part of our image process... but because
it's such a niche area, deletions tend to be virtually uncontested or
the vote turns into a contest of who can inject more friends.

> Elected or appointed expert committees are one way to deal with this
> problem, and they may often work quite well. However, if we accept an
> expert committee as a method to achieve consensus about policy
[snip]

I have not proposed an expert based solution. This is a role which
practically any established Wikipedian would be qualified for.

> "But," I hear some people say, "you can't let ordinary people vote on
> these complex issues. They do not understand! That's why we need to
> have smart people to make these decisions for us. Through enlightened,
> reasoned debate, surely they will find the solution that is best for
> us all." I'm not sure that's true.

I'm glad you're not sure it's true, because I haven't suggested it..
and I haven't seen anyone else here suggest it.

There isn't any group of people appointed to be experts on enwiki, and
as far as I'm aware there has been no serious advocacy of such a
system any time recently.

> There are good votes and there are
> bad votes. A good vote is one where voters are presented with a
> concise summary of the different arguments that have come up in a
> discussion that preceded the vote, where the _options_ in the vote
> have been developed through consensus, and where there is a strong
> culture that pressures voters to read and understand all arguments
> before voting. A bad vote is one that is done ad hoc, out of process,
> with poor methodology and no clear prerequisites.

It's not clear that the facts support your position. Perhaps on
dewiki?   Experimentation on Enwiki has demonstrated that the majority
of the participants in at least some of our voting process do not read
evidence presented preceding or included in the debate (measured by
placing external links in intros and in individual votes).  Instead it
would appear that many voters make their decision based on initial
impression and a passing glance at the standing votes.

While it may be true that acceptable results can be achieved through
good votes, where the participants consist of informed parties, it is
not clear if such votes ever actually happen on enwiki.

I'm not sure if you're aware of [[Dunbar's number]]....

Experience on Enwiki seems to support that and related research.

On single articles (over 99% of which have less than that dunbar upper
bound on community size) decisions are often quickly and supported
made via consensus which is so clear that a poll is unneeded.

These decisions are not merely tolerated with indifference but supported.

In many voting areas and on many policy pages, where we have
substantially more than Dunbar's number of participants, new proposals
are treated with either icy indifference or extreme factionalization.
It sometimes appears that the vote has become nothing more than a
contest to measure which subgroup can draw in the most members. This
is also supported by the overwhelming clustering that happens with
some votes.

I believe that without the control feedback of a functioning social
group our users are too unwilling to engage in the mixture of
compromise and consideration which are required to have a 'good vote'
and instead their behavior appears to be determined more by a desire
to assert their authority (by fighting against something rather than
working with it).

This matter appears to be made substantially worse because partisan
social groups form (i.e. inclusionist vs deletionists) which include
participating in votes as part of their social activity.   So rather
than having  a big social group which includes people of all
perspectives encouraging their members to work for the good of the
project,  we get fights between smaller social groups which include
more myopic subsets who socially reinforce unthinking 'mob like'
behavior. :(   ... then we reward this behavior by allowing the count
of people to impact our decisions.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category redlinks

body:
On 7/27/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would say that for a category to be considered to "exist" it needs
> to be related to other categories (and, via these, the rest of the
> category tree). So to exist it needs to be categorised (contain the
> text "[[Category:Foo]]"), and so be no longer red. Therefore,
> redcategories typically indicate unlinked (and unuseful) categories.

Honestly, category relations aren't particularly useful in MediaWiki
at the moment. Since there's no category math, and there's no way of
seeing all items in all subcategories on one page, intercategory links
are no more useful -- for the time being -- than normal interpage
links.

There are also cases where categories do not need to belong to another
category to be "useful", like "1911 Encyclopaedia" or "Pages needing
cleanup" or whatever. They can be made *even more useful* by
categorising, but that's not saying much...

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
On 7/27/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/27/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation
> > stop
> > > buying servers?
> > >
> > IANAA but
> >
> > Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position
> > is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers
> > and related products as quickly as posible.
>
> Layman explanation as to why?
>
> mboverload

I'm really not sure what geni was trying to say, but the two main
reasons I think Wikimedia should try to limit its assets are 1) to
increase board accountability and 2) to avoid being a good target for
lawsuits.

The first reason I suppose is the more important one.  Right now three
of the five Wikimedia board members are not elected.  The board is
accountable to the public largely because it relies on donations from
the community.  As the foundation acquires more and more assets, they
become less and less accountable to the public.  Sure, there need to
be reserves in place, but in the budgets that were released before
Wikimedia started hiding them from the public a very large portion
(something like 75%) was being spent on capital expenditures.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
>
>>>Whatever AJAX enhancements are made, let's try to stay clear of stuff
>>>that changes the appearance of the page with every single keystroke.
>>>Please.
>
>>Well, about the edit preview, don't worry about. Our Parser is
>>complicated enough that anything like that isn't happening soon.
>
> It already has:
> http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/

Can I comment on this? It has one problem that peeves me on other AJAX
sites too... :-) The problem is when people overuse AJAX when it is
inappropriate. In this case, clicking an "edit" link is one such case.
It completely changes the appearance of the screen, therefore the user
understands it as a separate page, therefore the user expects to be able
to go back by clicking the browser's "back" button. Using AJAX to change
the page removes this functionality and makes it a frustrating
experience ("It won't let me go back! Help!").

Timwi


subject:
[Wikitech-l] OT: What language would *you* have done it in,
	and why?

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2006 at 12:05:57AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>>>Please don't construe this statement as a veiled snipe at PHP (or Java, or
>>>any other language). It's just an observation of fact.
>>
>>I should help stab someone for choosing PHP, too, for that matter -- but
>>we work with what we've got.
>
> Unthreaded: in a clear field, Chad, what *would* you have implemented
> MediaWiki in?  And why?

I can't speak for other people, but I would do the parser in C (using
lex/yacc) and the rest in Perl.

For the parser, I'm sure the "why" is self-evident. For the rest, the
answer to "why" unfortunately includes "I don't know any Python or
Ruby". All I know is that PHP is unsuitable for anything larger than a
quick hack.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] more fancruft

body:
On 26/07/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg
>
> Its back.
>
> SV

This image was uploaded to Commons so is a Commons issue.
--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 7/27/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you are all missing Antheres point. Who cares whether it's
> fair use or not? Do we really have to be so anal about the rules that
> we will infact bring this to IfD, instead of just quietly ignoring the
> copyright issue in this very special unique case. We are people, for
> christs sake, not automatons! Sometimes, process is not that
> important.

Fair use is an extremely important exemption to copyright law. There
are good reasons to prohibit it e.g. in the User: space, and to
require users to upload their own works as free content. But there is
no single good reason why a photo that is important to Wikipedia's
history, and that cannot easily be obtained as free content, wouldn't
qualify as fair use in the Wikipedia: namespace.

It's dogmatic thinking about these issues that is dangerous. But
"quietly ignoring" doesn't solve the problem -- it only means that
sooner or later it will come up again, either in this case or in
another similar one. Not quietly ignoring it, but talking about it, to
me demonstrates a greater sense of responsibility and empathy.

With that said: I think that our memorial page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ADeceased_Wikipedians
demonstrates that there are a lot of people who do care about how we
preserve the memory of Wikipedians who have passed on. Caring about
knowledge, ultimately, is always caring about people. Because
knowledge is nothing without the human beings who collect, derive, and
use it -- and who, in doing so, always build upon the works of the
generations who came before them. To honor the members of our own
community therefore is a natural expression of the love of knowledge,
and the love of humanity.

Erik


from_name: ScottL

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
   I don't mind top posting (did this conversation not happen recently?)
so long as people do not alternate between top and bottom posting in a
single thread so that you have no idea who said what then.  Its like the
use of British and American English in article.  Whoever got there first
(top poster or bottom poster) should have their convention respected.

Dalf

Mark Williamson wrote:
> What's wrong with top-posting? I absolutely love it!
>
> On 27/07/06, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Why are you signing as Jimbo?
>> He didn't. He top-posted, which is worse. So did you, btw.
>>
>> -Palnatoke
>>
>> --
>> http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
>> * CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
>> h:+45 61 91 48 88 w: +45 35 45 44 29
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>
>


body:
On 7/27/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/27/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snip, out of order]
> > In my view, establishing clear ground rules for votes to change policy
> > is a better way to deal with the problem than delegation of authority.
> > It allows for community consensus processes (and indeed requires them
> > to be tried first), brings out as many arguments and solutions as
> > possible, and enables everyone to share the responsibility, credit and
> > blame for the result.
>
> The current image use policy reflects the position of the active
> editing base and is result of a fairly strong consensus, not merely
> the mob rule of a majority wins vote.  There is no substantial desire
> to change our policy.
>
> The challenge is that only a bright line policy can protect us against
> a "slow and often intensely frustrating process" for each of tens of
> thousands of images per month. But a bright line policy will exclude
> things which common sense would permit.  I'd like to discuss ways we
> can accept such exceptions without breaking the well functioning
> policy and without creating a slow and intensely frustrating process.
>
Where is it that you see the current image use policy as ambiguous?
I'd actually say it's fairly clear.

I could see the benefit of having a relatively small number of people
decide what the policy says about a particular image, as it's a much
more efficient than voting, but I wouldn't want to give them the power
to make exceptions.

Policies should reflect common sense.  If common sense tells us to
permit an image but policies tell us not to, then the policies should
be fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Fair_use&diff=23405949&oldid=23358627

Looks like policy was fine until September 2005.  It should probably
be noted that the explanation of the policy change ("Because "fair
use" images are only not copyright infringement on Wikipedia when used
for strictly encyclopedic reasons, their use in other contexts on
Wikipedia is most likely copyright infringement.") is blatantly
incorrect.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Everyone _did_ see the article in The Onion?

body:
I don't read the whole mailing list all the time so this may have
already been discussed to death... but everyone _did_ see the IMHO
hysterically funny article in The Onion,

"Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence?"

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50902

"Subheadings include 'Origins Of Colonial Discontent,' 'Some Famous
Guys In Wigs And Three-Cornered Hats,' and 'Christmastime In
Gettysburg.' It also features detailed maps of the original colonies?
including Narnia." ... "Founder Wales, a closeted homosexual and hot-
dog freak, according to his user-edited bio on the site..."

"On July 25, 1256, delegates gathered at Comerica Park to sign the
Declaration Of Independence, which rejected the rule of the British
over its 15 coastal North American colonies," reads an excerpt from
the entry. "Little did such founding fathers as George Washington,
George Jefferson, and ***ERIC IS A FAG*** know that their small,
querulous republic would later become the most powerful and
prosperous nation in history, the Unified States Of America."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories for deletion/discussion issues

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Scott,
>
>>    I have for a very long time loved this page: http://www.popvssoda.com/
>>
>> It has a map showing the geographic distribution of pop vs soda vs coke
>> vs. other (usually soft drink).
>
> That map of the world seems smaller than it ought to be (it's missing
> the bits on the edges that most maps of its kind mark "here be dragons").

   As I understand it the contentiousness of these different terms is
almost exclusive to American English.  At least that what [[Soft drink]]
seems to indicate.

Dalf


subject:
[WikiEN-l] somewhat OFFTOPIC (was Re: Common sense exceptions to
	our copyright policy.)

body:
On 7/27/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Take for example [[Nicole Kidman]]. One fair use image to illustrate who
> we're talking about is okay. Having an entire gallery isn't.

Not to nitpick, but the Nicole Kidman article has a *free* image,
which should be enough to illustrate who we're talking about.

A second one, [[Image:The hours-nicole kidman.jpg]], would probably be
OK too, even though it's not free, if the article talked more about
how Kidman looked in that movie.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] more fancruft

body:
On 7/27/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26/07/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:Autofellatio_2.jpg
> >
> > Its back.
> >
> > SV
>
> This image was uploaded to Commons so is a Commons issue.

But this is wikien-I not commons-l. As long as bad image list contines
to work I don't think it is really something we have to worry about
too much.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
On 7/27/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have to be kidding.  Are you seriously suggesting the Foundation stop
> buying servers?
>
IANAA but

Once you factor in depreciation the logical end point of his position
is probably that the foundation should turn liquid assets into servers
and related products as quickly as posible.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


body:
On 7/27/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ah, yes, looking at the rest of the text in the image in the French page
> makes it clear. This leads to another question. What do we do when we can't
> get the original contributor's permission, apart from contacting his estate?

It is unlikely that the situation will arise very often.

> I have to agree with Anthere in that this seems a little heartless. It's not
> like the Deceased Wikipedians page is meant for the encyclopedia, but
> rather, it's meant for the community.

A seperate wikimedia memorial project would seem to be the logical answer.

--
geni


from_name: mboverload

references:
<20060727160106.GD13295@cgi.jachomes.com>
	<98427ba18c0ccf58e33c9178c17b88fc@biglumber.com>
	<eabq8f$mlu$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Everyone knows that Mediawiki should have been written in Javascript.  The
current implementation is a mess.

=D

On 7/27/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> > [1] As I'm writing this, www.php.net appears to be down.
>
> Down for me too, but the mirrors are working fine. Personally speaking,
> I think that PHP's manual is /a lot/ better than Perl's.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFEyWxVqTO+fYacSNoRAiERAJ9jHW81LqeuYhbLlp3bPsfX65N2QwCfabX9
> FKFUB2CkmFxHmPkYx+pjUkw=
> =LrmK
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 7/27/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What particularly irks me about Flickr is that people can change the
> > licenses on their photos; I came across a Featured Picture on Commons
> > the other day which had been uploaded in December 2005, tagged as
> > CC-BY-SA 2.0, had been uploaded to Flickr in November 2005, but when I
> > viewed the photo in July 2006 the tag on Flickr was CC-NC-ND 2.0. The
> > worst part is that the image on Flickr has no "history" page, and the
> > Internet Archive doesn't have the page, so there's no way I can verify
> > that the image was indeed tagged that way when it was uploaded to
> Commons.
>
> Even more unfortunately, enough people upload stuff with the wrong
> license that we can't just assume the stated license was actually
> correct at upload time, either.
>
> -Matt

Luckily that is often (but not always) quite obvious.

Concerning the more restrictive license. Isn't there a rule in Creative
Commons that you can't change from a more open to a more restricted license?
If so, maybe we or CC should mail flickr and see if we get a response.

Garion


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

references:
<ea87lo$ep0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80607261622i38adda10gebeb531fab105f01@mail.gmail.com>
	<eaatd3$g5c$1@sea.gmane.org>

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

Moin,

On Thursday 27 July 2006 19:33, Timwi wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 7/27/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> >>>Whatever AJAX enhancements are made, let's try to stay clear of stuff
> >>>that changes the appearance of the page with every single keystroke.
> >>>Please.
> >>
> >>Well, about the edit preview, don't worry about. Our Parser is
> >>complicated enough that anything like that isn't happening soon.
> >
> > It already has:
> > http://wikiwyg.org/wysi/
>
> Can I comment on this? It has one problem that peeves me on other AJAX
> sites too... :-) The problem is when people overuse AJAX when it is
> inappropriate. In this case, clicking an "edit" link is one such case.
> It completely changes the appearance of the screen, therefore the user
> understands it as a separate page, therefore the user expects to be able
> to go back by clicking the browser's "back" button. Using AJAX to change
> the page removes this functionality and makes it a frustrating

Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override the
backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the previous"
page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?

OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.

best wishes,

tels

- --
 Signed on Thu Jul 27 20:18:03 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 " ...the Machholz Comet is named after the guy who really discovered it.
 Bob Comet." -- Zathras26 (763537) on 2005-01-01 at /.

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] fancruft

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> mboverload wrote:
>> [fixed top posting]
>>
>>
>>> On 7/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 7/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Not all articles use something as a source for itself (e.g., using an
>>>>> episode of Friends as a source on what happened in an episode of
>>>>> Friends).
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> An article about an episode that cites nothing but the episode itself
>>>> is a poor article. It amounts to an article about the Mona Lisa simply
>>>> putting a high resolution copy of the image and saying "you can see
>>>> for yourself". In order not to violate NOR, we could say very little
>>>> about the episode. We couldn't say if it was good or bad. We couldn't
>>>> say what fans thought about it. We couldn't say if the jokes were
>>>> funny. We couldn't say it was the first time Rachael kissed Ross.
>>>>
>>>> We could say "The episode lasted 23 minutes". We could offer a plot
>>>> summary. We could describe some of the gags. How boring.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> I don't see the problem with bending the rules a bit for episodes.
>>> Who's it going to hurt?
>>>
>>>
>> Ultimately, it will hurt the rest of Wikipedia; instead of doing
>> *useful* editing, people will be adding /every single detail/ about
>> /every single episode/ of /every single TV show that ever was/, instead
>> of focussing on areas where we have no information, very little
>> information, or information that is inaccurate or doesn't make sense.
>>
> This is pure speculation
>

It's based on experience.

>> There's the entirely seperate issue of approaching copyright
>> infringement (Wikipedia, your source of TV and movie scripts on teh
>> intarwebs!), but I suspect that the point will be lost on you.
>>
> Completely irrelevant.  Summarizing the plot is about the content, and
> not about the detailed expression in the script.  No-one has suggested
> that we include entire scripts.
>

If we include every single detail, we end up with a script.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Edward Z. Yang

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Timwi wrote:
> For the parser, I'm sure the "why" is self-evident. For the rest, the
> answer to "why" unfortunately includes "I don't know any Python or
> Ruby". All I know is that PHP is unsuitable for anything larger than a
> quick hack.

Delighted to see that you've called Yahoo! a quick hack. ;-)
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body:
ScottL wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>> On 7/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>>>> (Personally, I don't object to [[Category:Freeways]] any more than I
>>>> would [[Category:Elevators]])
>>> [[Category:Diet sodas]] is an interesting one. Not even all Americans
>>> use it. Someone must have gotten confused.
>>>
>> You can get non-low-calorie sodium compounds?
>
>    I have for a very long time loved this page: http://www.popvssoda.com/
>
> It has a map showing the geographic distribution of pop vs soda vs coke
> vs. other (usually soft drink).
>

Pop? Isn't that what you do to bubble wrap?

Coke? Isn't that a fuel made from heating coal in the absence of air, or
a slang term for cocaine?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
On 7/27/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, there are a number of cases such as the recent thread on the
> image of Treanna where common sense would tell us to permit the
> image... that it represents no compromise of our goals and no legal
> threat.  There have been quite a few examples that I've run into...
>

Where?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Accented characters (was Re: fancruft)

body:
Well Wikipedia is in Unicode...so yeah.

On 7/27/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
> On 26 Jul 2006 at 15:31, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> > mboverload wrote:
> >
> > >I'm not sure why you're mentioning it, but I recently changed every
> mention
> > >of Pokemon to Pok?mon.
>
> [snip]
>
> > A few years ago there was a big debate over whether names should include
> > accents, and I believe that was settled back then.  This doesn't meant
> > that we don't have a few retro-luddites who would still believe that the
> > results should have been different.
>
> I guess whoever programmed the system that produces and distributes
> the digest form of this list is among those "luddites", since the
> digest is done in strict US-ASCII, and the accented letter above
> shows up as a question mark.
>
> --
> == Dan ==
> Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
> Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
> Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
mboverload wrote:
> I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for
> processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.

There's not really such a thing as not having enough bandwidth, for our purposes.

When you hear us talk about bandwidth, the issue under discussion is not whether
we have enough, but simply ensuring that we're getting a good deal for our money
(our money, of course, being donors' money).

That's something that's being actively worked on.

As for processing, we have no difficulties at this time in that regard either,
but that doesn't mean we won't need more machines.

We're simply always balancing these factors:

* Increased load from growth in use of the site
* Decreased load from improvements to the efficiency of the software
* Decreased load from obtaining additional hardware

There's no problem per se; it's simply a natural consequence of growth in usage
that we require more resources over time. A newspaper company would need to buy
more printing presses and rent more delivery trucks as circulation increased;
for us it's no different.

Of course in a for-profit business that ran on subscriptions or ad revenue,
there would (hopefully!) be a direct correlation between additional page views
and additional income; for us it's less direct, but hopefully more eyeballs will
continue to mean more donors until the foundation comes up with another business
plan. ;)

Hopefully, we can continue to keep ahead of the curve a little bit, rather than
allowing hardware bottlenecks to become a visible problem as they have several
times in the past.

Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to
keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic,
and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school
traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
mboverload wrote:
> I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for
> processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.

There's not really such a thing as not having enough bandwidth, for our purposes.

When you hear us talk about bandwidth, the issue under discussion is not whether
we have enough, but simply ensuring that we're getting a good deal for our money
(our money, of course, being donors' money).

That's something that's being actively worked on.

As for processing, we have no difficulties at this time in that regard either,
but that doesn't mean we won't need more machines.

We're simply always balancing these factors:

* Increased load from growth in use of the site
* Decreased load from improvements to the efficiency of the software
* Decreased load from obtaining additional hardware

There's no problem per se; it's simply a natural consequence of growth in usage
that we require more resources over time. A newspaper company would need to buy
more printing presses and rent more delivery trucks as circulation increased;
for us it's no different.

Of course in a for-profit business that ran on subscriptions or ad revenue,
there would (hopefully!) be a direct correlation between additional page views
and additional income; for us it's less direct, but hopefully more eyeballs will
continue to mean more donors until the foundation comes up with another business
plan. ;)

Hopefully, we can continue to keep ahead of the curve a little bit, rather than
allowing hardware bottlenecks to become a visible problem as they have several
times in the past.

Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to
keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic,
and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school
traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
mboverload wrote:
> I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for
> processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.

There's not really such a thing as not having enough bandwidth, for our purposes.

When you hear us talk about bandwidth, the issue under discussion is not whether
we have enough, but simply ensuring that we're getting a good deal for our money
(our money, of course, being donors' money).

That's something that's being actively worked on.

As for processing, we have no difficulties at this time in that regard either,
but that doesn't mean we won't need more machines.

We're simply always balancing these factors:

* Increased load from growth in use of the site
* Decreased load from improvements to the efficiency of the software
* Decreased load from obtaining additional hardware

There's no problem per se; it's simply a natural consequence of growth in usage
that we require more resources over time. A newspaper company would need to buy
more printing presses and rent more delivery trucks as circulation increased;
for us it's no different.

Of course in a for-profit business that ran on subscriptions or ad revenue,
there would (hopefully!) be a direct correlation between additional page views
and additional income; for us it's less direct, but hopefully more eyeballs will
continue to mean more donors until the foundation comes up with another business
plan. ;)

Hopefully, we can continue to keep ahead of the curve a little bit, rather than
allowing hardware bottlenecks to become a visible problem as they have several
times in the past.

Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to
keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic,
and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school
traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
mboverload wrote:
> I just talked to the developers, they said they're fine right now for
> processing AND bandwidth, bandwidth has not been a problem.

There's not really such a thing as not having enough bandwidth, for our purposes.

When you hear us talk about bandwidth, the issue under discussion is not whether
we have enough, but simply ensuring that we're getting a good deal for our money
(our money, of course, being donors' money).

That's something that's being actively worked on.

As for processing, we have no difficulties at this time in that regard either,
but that doesn't mean we won't need more machines.

We're simply always balancing these factors:

* Increased load from growth in use of the site
* Decreased load from improvements to the efficiency of the software
* Decreased load from obtaining additional hardware

There's no problem per se; it's simply a natural consequence of growth in usage
that we require more resources over time. A newspaper company would need to buy
more printing presses and rent more delivery trucks as circulation increased;
for us it's no different.

Of course in a for-profit business that ran on subscriptions or ad revenue,
there would (hopefully!) be a direct correlation between additional page views
and additional income; for us it's less direct, but hopefully more eyeballs will
continue to mean more donors until the foundation comes up with another business
plan. ;)

Hopefully, we can continue to keep ahead of the curve a little bit, rather than
allowing hardware bottlenecks to become a visible problem as they have several
times in the past.

Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential to
keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image traffic,
and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school
traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions

body:
On 7/27/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> Our next purchase is additional caching proxy servers; these are essential
> to
> keeping pages flowing since they handle most of the visitor and image
> traffic,
> and the current ones are expected to start dragging as the back-to-school
> traffic peak comes at the end of the summer.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

Not sure if this is related, but I have seen more squid errors than I've
gotten before.


subject: [Foundation-l] Latest board resolutions


body:
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Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> [1] As I'm writing this, www.php.net appears to be down.

Down for me too, but the mirrors are working fine. Personally speaking,
I think that PHP's manual is /a lot/ better than Perl's.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN user

body:
On 7/27/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Is there something that prevents the AJAX (aka javascript) to override the
> backbutton so when the user clicks it, they get "!back to the previous"
> page, aka what it looked like before clicking edit?
>
> OTOH, w/o JS and ajax etc this page wouldn't be possible at all.

Somehow Gmail gets the "back" functionality exactly right. No idea how it works.

Steve


from_name: Ole Andersen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why are you signing as Jimbo?

He didn't. He top-posted, which is worse. So did you, btw.

-Palnatoke

--
http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
* CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
h:+45 61 91 48 88 w: +45 35 45 44 29


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 7/27/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I agree that allowing fair use in user space would be risky.
> Allowing ND or NC seems much less risky. And is a provision many people
> would feel like imposing on self-pictures.

NC and ND don't actually do what half the people who say they want
them think they do. What is 'commercial use'? What is a derivative
work?  How does the page that includes the image not manage to be a
derivative work, etc.

The simple fact that so many users would love to use such licenses for
their own work without considering the consequences is why we can not
permit them.


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
Ole Andersen wrote:
> On 27/07/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Why are you signing as Jimbo?
>>
>
> He didn't. He top-posted, which is worse. So did you, btw.
>
> -Palnatoke
I don't see anything wrong with top-posting. Not separating quoted text
from the normal one is the thing that bothers me.

Filip


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Sorry if this has been discussed before.  I just noticed
that [[Abdominal thrusts]] gives detailed advice on how to
perform a medical procedure.  Maybe there are other such
articles too.  Given the fashionable practice of filing
suit whenever a medical procedure fails to work, it seems
to me that this is rather dangerous for Wikipedia.
Wouldn't it be legally safer (and more likely to be
medically correct) if the actual procedure in such articles
was presented as a direct quotation from a named medical
authority?   With permission, of course.  Maybe there should
also be a disclaimer.

Zero.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 80/20

body:
On 27/07/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> What's wrong with top-posting? I absolutely love it!

[[en:Top-posting]] explains it fairly well, I think.

-Palnatoke

--
http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
* CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
h:+45 61 91 48 88 w: +45 35 45 44 29


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 7/27/06, Garion96 <garion96 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Luckily that is often (but not always) quite obvious.
>
> Concerning the more restrictive license. Isn't there a rule in Creative
> Commons that you can't change from a more open to a more restricted license?
> If so, maybe we or CC should mail flickr and see if we get a response.
>
> Garion

I'm unclear who the "you" is here. If the you is the original
copyright holder (remember, except in PD cases, licensing out your
work under CC licenses and such does not strip you of your copyright),
then they certainly can do that, relicense as what they like. Ex. you
could relicense all your Wikipedia GFDL edits to whatever the cool
GFDL-compatible CC alphabet soup license is ''du jour'', or to a BSD
license. And then the next day you could decide to simply go public
domain. People can still still your edits as GFDL from when they were
GFDL and so on.
If it's someone else, well, that depends on the license. Take BSD
again; it famously allows proprietary forks, taking code to a more
restrictive license. Such a possibility is open for derivative works
under certain CC licenses AFAIK.

~maru