subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
>
> http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
>
> I can translate it:
>
> "Israel, a palce where jews live.

Perhaps they meant to define Ghetto.

> In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.

Puts the complaints about americanocentricism into context doesn't it?

> Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> world says that in a country called Israel some
> Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
>

Well at least an attempt a NPOV (en.wikipedia just goes ahead and
accepts it as a country). The sides could be better defined and it
doesn't quite get the position of the "English speaking world" right
but a start.

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again)

body:
On 7/13/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Where is the evidence that a lot of people want to know about him?
> >
> Do you dispute this?  I think it's pretty clear by looking at the
> google hits and the Snopes page.
>
Ah, here's some good evidence:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=%22brian+peppers%22%2C%22john+merrick%22%2C%22joseph+merrick%22%2C%22jimmy+wales%22&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all

Anthony


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Oldak Quill wrote:
>
>
>>Not at all. The best way to improve the site would be to work with
>>other langauge Wikipedias and within Wikimedia. Are you being active
>>in seeking members?
>>
>>
>Yes, I am, however, our culture is alien to the Wikipedia culture and
>there are going to be issues
>with the way the site operates.  So far every Cherokee who has edited on
>WP has gotten banned
>or scrutinized to the point they leave.  We have a concept of respecting
>the space of a person who is working on something.
>
I guess this is a question of what you mean by Wikipedia culture.  The
concept of respect is a big part of it.  The English Wikipedia just has
a lot of ravens running around trying to impose it.

>WP 's policies allow a 16 year old with a computer to come in and
>disrupt someone else's work and this
>doesn;t work for us.  Our culture is based on mutual respect, and I
>believe WP and Wales operate on the
>premise people on WP should be the same way.  This has not been the
>course followed.  I think WP should
>continue and we can do hat we need with the content -- off site where
>our cultural issues can coexist peacefully.
>
Mutual respect is not a function of an editor's age.  There can just as
easily be wise youth as there can be foolish elders.

>You wont get many native people editing here due to the way the site is
>organized -- respect for others is
>lacking in the way articles are edited.  It's ok though, we can still
>both be successful if we figure out a way
>to create dual environments where folks can be successful.
>
I'm sure it's not the only reason they stay away.  But the reason that
you cite for the absence of first nations people can just as easily
apply to people from other cultures, including ones whose only language
is English.

>I am meeting with the tribal council of the Ute, Shoshone, and Unita
>Nations on July 18, at 1:30 in Fort Duschene
>on the machine translations for their Wikipedia, so I am making
>excellent progress.  They also expressed a desire
>to host their content off Wikipedia due to their review of the issues
>with how the site works -- its alien to most native
>cultures.
>
I guess this depends on what you mean by "how the site works".  I would
certainly not encourage machine translations; the results are often
something that makes native speakers laugh.  Although technical material
about how the site works is probably best translated, beyond that each
language Wikipedia (or other project) develops its own culture.

>The Ute's believe their language is sacred and they don't
>want non speakers working on it for religious
>reasons.  You are going to find this is a prevalent attitude among
>Native Peoples.  The ute's did not even allow their
>langauge to be written down until the mid 1970's due to their religious
>beliefs, so this is a big step for them.
>
I have no basis for making comments specific to the Utes, but the
linkage between language and culture is a well known one.  This kind of
connection where language was a part of the introduction to a culture's
mysteries is even a common theme in European cultures.  If it's meant to
be the Ute material will come in its own time.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
On 7/13/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> We don't benefit because he's a very minor figure, arguably not
> someone who should have an article in the first place, and it wasn't a
> good article anyway. So for the sake of upholding some unwritten
> principle of completeness (i.e. for the sake of ideology), we're
> prepared to harm an individual's real life, someone who has done
> nothing to any of us, to ensure that this incident will continue to
> haunt him, whereas he thought he had put it behind him.
>

Technicaly an untrue claim (wikipedians include UK tax payers)

I we are to right about someone it should be as complete as posible.
Lord Levy would not be complete without mentioning in connection to
the "cash for peerages" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police. It would
also be imcomplete if we failed to mention his charity fundraising

> My argument is that it's neither fair nor rational to do that, and we
> ought always to be both fair and rational when dealing with people who
> are, in a very real sense, at Wikipedia's mercy.
>
> Sarah

Fair means we include both the good and the bad. Exclude either and we
are both unfair to the subject and unfair to our readers.

--
geni


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Foundation-l] Israel article (was: Quran in Sitenotice)

body:
Hi all.

(I apologise this won't show up in threading - I've only just
subscribed and I'm reading old mesages through the archives)

Heema Khan:

> On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> I can translate it:
> "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> world says that in a country called Israel some
> Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
>
> This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.

In this specific case, if my reading of the page is right, this
article has had a grand total of 21 edits, the ten most recent of them
in a single three-day period in June. Every single bit of the content
has been contributed by one single registered user; all anon edits
have been vandalism (well, one was pageblanking, that might count as
justified!) No discussion page, of course.

On the whole, while it's still a pretty terrible article, it scares me
less once I know that it's the work of one guy and it's just that
no-one sane has managed to look at it yet...

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


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:17:10 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
wrote:

>I wasn't claiming they were equivalent.  You had suggested that, for
>humanitarian reasons, we shouldn't have articles on people notable
>solely for deformities or ridicule.  I was asking if there's some level
>of "notable" above which the notability outweighs those concerns.  It
>appears from your response that there is---you believe Merrick is
>sufficiently notable to outweigh any humanitarian concerns.

But he was not notable solely for deformities or ridicule.  His story
is much wider than that.

The "media coverage" of peppers is approximately zero.  I don't recall
a single news story being posted about him, even local news.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:05:53 +0100, David Boothroyd
<david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>The legal issues relating to Gregory Lauder-Frost have all been
>considered and there is nothing which would prevent a suitable,
>balanced, neutral, sourced and factual article being written. In
>order to be fully comprehensive, it would have to mention, in its
>proper context, the fact of his 1992 conviction.

According to his fan-club, that would violate the Rehabilitation of
Offenders Act.  That is the entire basis of their legal threats, that
the disclosure of the conviction is motivated by malice and is
therefore proscribed.  This is, of course, complete bollocks in as
much as I would not know Lauder-Frost from a hole in the ground, and
the editor who did most of the work on the conviction, including
paying for a Lexis-Nexis search, is not even British.

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


body:
On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> (I apologise this won't show up in threading - I've only just
> subscribed and I'm reading old mesages through the archives)
>
> Heema Khan:
>
> > On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> > http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> > I can translate it:
> > "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> > countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> > Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> > is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> > a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> > by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> > world says that in a country called Israel some
> > Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
> >
> > This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.
>
> In this specific case, if my reading of the page is right, this
> article has had a grand total of 21 edits, the ten most recent of them
> in a single three-day period in June. Every single bit of the content
> has been contributed by one single registered user; all anon edits
> have been vandalism (well, one was pageblanking, that might count as
> justified!) No discussion page, of course.
>
> On the whole, while it's still a pretty terrible article, it scares me
> less once I know that it's the work of one guy and it's just that
> no-one sane has managed to look at it yet...
>

No one sane?

It has been edited by:
http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%B1

One of the buracrats on that wikipedia.

It was created by:

http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%B3%DB%8C%D9%81_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%DB%81

The admin we have contected over the sitenotice issue.

--
geni


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] PLEASE HELP the Welcome log

body:
Please, only welcome *real* users, people which contribute.

"Brianna Laugher"
> On 12/07/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email)
> <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > The bot only welcomes new users after they have made at least one edit
>> > or one upload.
>>
>> Can we ask the operator of the bot to check the New User Log instead?
>
> Do you want the bot to welcome all users who register even if they
> don't ever edit or contribute? Seems unnecessary to me... what is the
> benefit?
>
> IIRC 200-300 users register each day, around 90 are welcomed by
> Orgullobot each day (so presumably made their first edit/upload that
> day).
>
> Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:25:38 -0500, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
wrote:

>The difference between Clinton's saxaphone playing and this situation
>is that the mention of the former is not harmful to Clinton; and the
>difference between a politician whose career is ruined by a scandal is
>that it'll have attached itself to his name, whereas in GLF's case,
>that appears not to be the case.

>Wikipedia doesn't benefit from including the information about GLF,
>but he will be harmed if we do. Therefore, we ought not to. Fairness
>is as important as accuracy when writing about living people, if not
>more so.

He left the Monday Club after being convicted of theft from a health
authority.  Without that information his leaving makes no sense.

Not only that, precedent for mentioning the case is already there -
GLF's fan club included it, albeit with a lie about his having been
cleared on appeal.

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


from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
Ever Article suffers from Original Research.

But Jayjg:
Do you consider replacing the title of "Holocaust"
with "Jewish-Aryan conflict" as neutral as well?

What are the criteria there?

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:02:00 -0400
jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Wow.  Did you come up with "2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon" as a
> > > "neutral" name?
> >
> > At least I'm trying.
> >
> > -Stevertigo
>
> If you're going to argue for neutrality, it would be helpful if you
> made more neutral suggestions.  The current article name, [[2006
> Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict]], is at least neutral, although it
> suffers from being unwieldy and a Wikipedia invention (i.e. original
> research).
>
> Jay.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 13/07/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > (I apologise this won't show up in threading - I've only just
> > subscribed and I'm reading old mesages through the archives)
> >
> > Heema Khan:
> >
> > > On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> > > http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> > > I can translate it:
> > > "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> > > countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> > > Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> > > is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> > > a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> > > by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> > > world says that in a country called Israel some
> > > Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
> > >
> > > This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.
> >
> > In this specific case, if my reading of the page is right, this
> > article has had a grand total of 21 edits, the ten most recent of them
> > in a single three-day period in June. Every single bit of the content
> > has been contributed by one single registered user; all anon edits
> > have been vandalism (well, one was pageblanking, that might count as
> > justified!) No discussion page, of course.
> >
> > On the whole, while it's still a pretty terrible article, it scares me
> > less once I know that it's the work of one guy and it's just that
> > no-one sane has managed to look at it yet...
>
> No one sane?

I apologise - I seem to have misread a bit.

Created by original user, in a one-sentence stub, edited by "main
user". Moved by a third user, lots of edits, then the most recent two
are cosmetic (I think) edits by a fourth.

Otherwise, all content - including what appears to be the offending
paragraph - is by our friend the main user. We have one registered
user who's edited the page at all since the POV stuff went in. I
wouldn't be crying "collapse of Urdu wiki" yet.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [15589] trunk/extensions/Cite

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

Rob Church, please calm down. It's not good to edit war over software,
because unlike Wikis, you can't tack on a "Disputed" tag. ;-)

The internationalization is quite welcome, but perhaps the extension
developers should agree on a I18N scheme and mandate it for all
extensions? (Or, even better, have a lead developer lay down the law of
the land.)

Looking at the code, I do somewhat agree with Church's assertion.
Ideally speaking, messages should only be parsed (and defined) when they
are needed. However, they really shouldn't pollute the global namespace
(although I'm not precisely sure how you would get around that. The
MediaWiki core messages are also added to the global namespace.)

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFEtwRyqTO+fYacSNoRArjtAJ9vx5XesIm5zcBQXU0YO0lxoUwqOgCeJ/ZL
cvAUV+Q3jJJH8ri6Ll2uqB4=
=HCdD
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Being a small wiki, with few contributors and little articles, wiki
licensing could be switched to a dual license like GFDL-Cc-by-sa.
Cc-by-sa is very similar to the GFDL terms, but license text is not
required.
You would need to contact with all contributors to get their agreement to
publish their previous work under cc-by-sa too. Changing the licensing
informationg would make the future ones. And a strong community consensus
required :)

Be aware that contributions previous to the switching will be GFDL-only so
you couldn't publich it under the second one. This may not apply to trivial
information (e.g. like those ips usually give).
Unrelicensable texts could either:
-Be deleted (the strict way)
-Tag them with a template saying 'some parts of this may not be available
under CC ' (the easier way)

Platonides


from_name: mboverload

subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
Thanks guys!

On 7/13/06, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> (possible duplicate posting)
> Try:
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page
>
> It is slow at times.
>
> xaosflux
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "mboverload" <mboverload at gmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:08 PM
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?
>
>
> > I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't
> > find
> > the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password
> > right?
> >
> > mboverload
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
They gave it a name.  Lets not reinvent the wheel here.

On 7/13/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Fastfission wrote:
> > This has come up a few times. Here was what I thought the most
> > reasonable solution was: if the operation name is obviously meant to
> > influence your opinion about the validity/success of the operation
> > itself, it should not be used as the article title, and instead
> > something more neutral and descriptive should be used.
> >
> > So "Operation Barbarossa" -- no problem. "Operation Crossroads" -- no
> > problem. "Operation Just Cause" -- should be "United States invasion
> > of Panama" (which it is). "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- should be
> > something more neutral (it is currently "Iraq War", which I find a
> > little too ambiguous, personally, since there have been many Iraq
> > Wars, but anyway, anything is better than the operation name).
> >
> <snip>
>
> Personally I like "Gulf War II".
>
> --
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
Or, we do what's sensible and look what, for example, the
NY Times calls it, instead of making (possibly) POV names up.

Let's see what we've got just on the title page

- Israel attacks (several times)
- Israeli incursion (I like the sound of that)

On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:46:57 -0600
Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

>
> On Jul 13, 2006, at 2:44 PM, stevertigo wrote:
>
> > --- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> >
> >> I think this is unavoidable. We have no way to know what history
> >> books will call it.
> >>
> >
> > To the contrary - we might know before they do.
> >
> > -Stevertigo
>
> Obviously, clever naming on our part will settle the matter.
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Oldak Quill

references:
<b80736c80607121417n16029132r327bf8b73aaad163@mail.gmail.com>
	<44B56F8A.1050003@wikia.com>
	<vdtab2tc0ps68ikh8397u85f73ikbp68tc@4ax.com>
	<44B576C1.3000901@hackish.org>
	<3qkcb2p1kb5aq74rv9crdf1r8vklnuma9l@4ax.com>
	<44B67F09.6010701@hackish.org>
	<7f2db21pjknore6aq1hckq24rgerffd9tg@4ax.com>
	<44B68E26.9030000@hackish.org>
	<esddb2hnppje1lsn70mohrjp1gr5n458mq@4ax.com>

body:
I did a Google News search earlier and absolutely nothing came up
(apart from an article referencing him on a joke site).

On 13/07/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:17:10 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> wrote:
>
> >I wasn't claiming they were equivalent.  You had suggested that, for
> >humanitarian reasons, we shouldn't have articles on people notable
> >solely for deformities or ridicule.  I was asking if there's some level
> >of "notable" above which the notability outweighs those concerns.  It
> >appears from your response that there is---you believe Merrick is
> >sufficiently notable to outweigh any humanitarian concerns.
>
> But he was not notable solely for deformities or ridicule.  His story
> is much wider than that.
>
> The "media coverage" of peppers is approximately zero.  I don't recall
> a single news story being posted about him, even local news.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
> The problem is that our article is also about the Hezbollah raid, and
> about Hezbollah rocket attacks into Israel, so needs some more generic
> name.  An article at something like [[July 2006 Israeli incursion into
> Lebanon]] would imply that it were only about, well, the Israeli
> incursion into Lebanon.
>
> -Mark

Solution: Two separate articles, one about the Hezbollah kidnappings
that sparked the whole thing, one about the "Israeli incursion".
Makes a lot of things easier and keeps stuff tidy.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
On 7/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't find
> the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password right?

Shhh.. Don't foil my evil plot to intercept the passwords of all
admins at Wikimania. ;)


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Radical proposal

body:
On 13/07/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I find it very disappointing that folks here don't find human driven
> presentation of content to be valuable.  Will we now be deleting the
> commons main page and simply redirecting it to a category?
>
> This will force projects to build their own true gallery pages rather
> than build them on commons.  Because of the difficulty of building
> truly multilingual things on commons the incentive to avoid working on
> commons already exists... this will just increase it further. :(

I wouldn't worry too much. I expect... um... MS Windows to be released
under the GPL before an implementable solution to this problem is
found.

As I said on the Village pump, anyone who is seriously thinking of
implementing some new solution absolutely must make the system
multilingual. That challenge should be enough to keep anyone busy
until the Microsoft-FSF alliance.

Brianna


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Campaigns Wikia

body:
On Jul 10, 2006, at 9:47 PM, rose.parks at att.net wrote:
> Thank you, Andre.
>      The message I posted was purposely written with the intention of
> saying nothing either positive or negative. And, the main reason for
> that is that I am not familiar with the site and have formed no
> opinions about it.
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Andre Engels" <andreengels at gmail.com>
>> 2006/7/10, Pawe?? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>:
>>>> If you have not visited the site yet, be prepared for Google Ads,
>>>> POV entries, and - oh yes - an occassional Wikipedian.
>>>> Apologies if this is old news...
>>> So? It's not a Wikimedia project, but a private wiki. Not every wiki
>>> has to be NPOV and without ads (and wikia is a commercial wiki
>>> provider, so they're bound to have ads).
>> So? So nothing. Ruth is just warning people who expect to get to some
>> kind of Wikipedia as to what to actually expect.

If I go to google.com, I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to wiki.org I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to twiki.org I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to emacswiki.org I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to pbwiki.com I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to wiki.x.org I do not expect the wikipedia.
If I go to wikia.com I do not expect the wikipedia.

Wiki != wikipedia. (NOT(!) equal to (=) wikipedia, for those  who don't
know this code syntax)

I have no idea why andre thinks  he knows "what to actually expect"
from yet another wiki idea... Looks like after viewing the 708 million
hits on google for 'wiki', he has concluded that 1,500 wikis out of
708,000,000 hits determine the future of wikipedia.

Perhaps I should ask for stock tips?

-Bop
--
4245 NE Alberta Ct.
Portland, OR 97218
503-282-1370


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
On 7/13/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:05:53 +0100, David Boothroyd
> <david at election.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >The legal issues relating to Gregory Lauder-Frost have all been
> >considered and there is nothing which would prevent a suitable,
> >balanced, neutral, sourced and factual article being written. In
> >order to be fully comprehensive, it would have to mention, in its
> >proper context, the fact of his 1992 conviction.
>
> According to his fan-club, that would violate the Rehabilitation of
> Offenders Act.  That is the entire basis of their legal threats, that
> the disclosure of the conviction is motivated by malice and is
> therefore proscribed.  This is, of course, complete bollocks in as
> much as I would not know Lauder-Frost from a hole in the ground, and
> the editor who did most of the work on the conviction, including
> paying for a Lexis-Nexis search, is not even British.

It may be in English wikipedians best interests to not contribute to
the article if there's any doubt about the legal implications.  I am
sure we can find non-British editors willing to deal with it.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] re  GFDL publisher credit

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>>Robert Scott Horning
>>>
>>>The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL
>>>violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the
>>>WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia
>>>content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be
>>>legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an
>>>individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that
>>>you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each
>>>seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.
>>>
>>>
>>Being agent should permit WMF to act.  The potential complications if
>>the individuals had to do everything themselves boggle the mind.  There
>>is also the question that registration of a copyright is a prerequisite
>>for prosecuting any infringers.  Whose responsibility is it to ensure
>>that all needed registrations happen?
>>
>>
>Registration is certainly nice in GFDL and most copyleft enforcement
>because it sets up a minimum statutory penalty if you can prove
>copyright infringement.  Otherwise you can only seek actual damages.
> Note that the registration must take place before the infringement
>occurs.  This is something I've discussed at length on this mailing list
>before, with many individuals on this list quite against formal
>registration, and deliberate obfuscation of user information that would
>make such registration difficult to impossible.
>
>All I'm pointing out is that the situation right now is exactly up to
>individual contributors, and you are correct, it boggles the mind to
>think what is really necessary to do this enforcement.
>
The problem with actual damages is that they are measured in monetary
terms and need to be proven.  Since we all give our services for free
there is no damage to be proven.  Only statutory damages make sense.  Of
course anyone with a copyright interest in a work should be legally
entitled to file a registration.  Those with more radical views about
the nature of free content should have no business preventing others
from protecting their own rights.  If they want to remain anonymous that
would still be their choice.  The material that should be registered
could be in the form of a data dump onto CD(s) that are sent monthly or
on some other regular basis.

>>>Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
>>>the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
>>>decision to not claim copyright was done.  The liability instead rests
>>>on the individual contributors.  Each time you add some content to
>>>Wikimedia projects, particularly if you use the same account for each
>>>contribution and are prominent in the "community", you put yourself into
>>>harm's way legally speaking.  You can be held responsible for the
>>>content that you added, or even failed to edit out when you made a minor
>>>change to a page.  In other words, this approach to playing it safe
>>>really is just transfering liability from the WMF to individual users.
>>>
>>>That really should be motivation to being a major contributor to
>>>Wikimedia projects, isn't it?
>>>
>>>
>>I have no problem with the idea of WMF being "safe", and that uploaders
>>should be legally responsible for the material they add.  I really don't
>>agree that a person who has acted as a mere grammatical editor has
>>published anything substantive.  Such an editor bases his entire effort
>>on what is there in front of him; the research needed to establish the
>>legality of the substance is beyond his frame of reference.
>>
>I'm not saying that a person who adds some minor edit to a Wikipedia
>article that is then brought up in a libel lawsuit is necessarily going
>to be completely held responsible for everything in that article, but
>liability is certainly there to an extent and it wouldn't surprise me if
>your name was brought up in a formal lawsuit that simply decided to go
>after every contributor in the history of the article, even if all you
>did was revert blatant vandalism at one point acting in good faith.
> That would still take some time to explain even what reverting
>vandalism is to a judge, who has no clue about MediaWiki software and
>wouldn't even really understand the role of admins or vandalism patrols
>in Wikimedia projects.  I'm sure such a judge in a lawsuit like that
>would learn real fast, but you would have to get a lawyer and defend
>yourself first.  As the John Siegenthaler situation suggests, there may
>be some individuals who really get bent out of shape for what content is
>in Wikipedia and don't care to seek redress from within the Wikimedia
>community of users and editors.  And if you reverted one form of
>vandalism, the question would be raised as to why you let other
>blatantly wrong facts about a person or company go unchecked.
>
>I hope that nobody really has to deal with these issues, and I'm also
>sure that if there was a problem that a "legal defense fund" could be
>set up very quickly to help out Wikimedia users who through no fault of
>their own got tied up with these issues.
>
>I was involved briefly with the DVD de-CSS software and "dodged the
>bullet" when my involvement was only peripheral to the lawsuits that
>were thrown around by the MPAA and the DVD Fourm for cracking the
>encryption used on DVD-Video discs.  And this was GPL'd software that
>the only justification for filing the lawsuit was a violation of a trade
>secret by somebody who did reverse engineering of software and didn't
>have any affiliation with any company producing DVD software.  I do know
>some of the people who were dragged into court over that issue, and it
>was a pain to try and deal with.  With the technical books that are on
>Wikibooks, I don't see a reason why that sort of situation might not
>repeat itself again but with written publications instead.... even if
>the situation turns out to be perfectly legal.  And the liability would
>indeed rest on the contributors in this situation.
>
I'm not one to go around stiffled by the fear of lawsuits.  I don't add
anything that I would not be willing to defend if the situation arose.
I had never heard of Seigenthaler before he became a Wikipedia issue.
If I had I would have been unlikely to enter into a detailed search for
corroborating evidence because I would not have been sufficiently
interested in the subject.  On the other hand, I could imagine myself
making minor grammatical and spelling changes.  I already do a bit of
that when I'm otherwise just reading the article for information.

I'm also one of those people who would prefer to fight his own case
without hiring lawyers   Whether someone would be so impractical as to
sue everybody on the author list remains to be seen, but it could be
fun. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Not at all. The best way to improve the site would be to work with
>>>other langauge Wikipedias and within Wikimedia. Are you being active
>>>in seeking members?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yes, I am, however, our culture is alien to the Wikipedia culture and
>>there are going to be issues
>>with the way the site operates.  So far every Cherokee who has edited on
>>WP has gotten banned
>>or scrutinized to the point they leave.  We have a concept of respecting
>>the space of a person who is working on something.
>>
>>
>>
>I guess this is a question of what you mean by Wikipedia culture.  The
>concept of respect is a big part of it.  The English Wikipedia just has
>a lot of ravens running around trying to impose it.
>
>
More like swift birds of prey, not intellectual ravens, I've got several
sets of talon marks on my
keyboard from WP experiences to show. :-)

>
>
>>WP 's policies allow a 16 year old with a computer to come in and
>>disrupt someone else's work and this
>>doesn;t work for us.  Our culture is based on mutual respect, and I
>>believe WP and Wales operate on the
>>premise people on WP should be the same way.  This has not been the
>>course followed.  I think WP should
>>continue and we can do hat we need with the content -- off site where
>>our cultural issues can coexist peacefully.
>>
>>
>>
>Mutual respect is not a function of an editor's age.  There can just as
>easily be wise youth as there can be foolish elders.
>
The whole power admin thing is out of hand on the site. I think the energy
of peoples karma can come home to roost, good and bad. WP is a lot like
the trading floor of
the New York Stock Exchange when folks get going. Sound like someone we
all know and love? :-)

>
>
>
>
>>You wont get many native people editing here due to the way the site is
>>organized -- respect for others is
>>lacking in the way articles are edited.  It's ok though, we can still
>>both be successful if we figure out a way
>>to create dual environments where folks can be successful.
>>
>>
>>
>I'm sure it's not the only reason they stay away.  But the reason that
>you cite for the absence of first nations people can just as easily
>apply to people from other cultures, including ones whose only language
>is English.
>
>
One main reason is a lot of them are disinterested and don't have the
resources. There are also
political and religous issues as well for a lot of our folks.

>
>
>>I am meeting with the tribal council of the Ute, Shoshone, and Unita
>>Nations on July 18, at 1:30 in Fort Duschene
>>on the machine translations for their Wikipedia, so I am making
>>excellent progress.  They also expressed a desire
>>to host their content off Wikipedia due to their review of the issues
>>with how the site works -- its alien to most native
>>cultures.
>>
>>
>>
>I guess this depends on what you mean by "how the site works".  I would
>certainly not encourage machine translations; the results are often
>something that makes native speakers laugh.  Although technical material
>about how the site works is probably best translated, beyond that each
>language Wikipedia (or other project) develops its own culture.
>
>
>
Well, this machine translation and the software is being done by a
Native speaker, and since the template is my brain for how the
translations are done in software, one could say I translated them with
a machine assist due to volume, so I guess one could say they
were done by a Native Speaker and member of the culture. Once they have
a large volume of content to edit, I think we are ok.

There have been a few words I've had to adapt to. I use a link parser
for english decomposition then take the decomposed strings
of morphemes and remap and tense them into Cherokee. Cherokee has a
rigid structure so this makes it a lot easier to do. I do proofread and
the latest run is now at 98% completeness and accuracy. I am shooting
for 100% by the end of the summer.

>>The Ute's believe their language is sacred and they don't
>>want non speakers working on it for religious
>>reasons.  You are going to find this is a prevalent attitude among
>>Native Peoples.  The ute's did not even allow their
>>langauge to be written down until the mid 1970's due to their religious
>>beliefs, so this is a big step for them.
>>
>>
>>
>I have no basis for making comments specific to the Utes, but the
>linkage between language and culture is a well known one.  This kind of
>connection where language was a part of the introduction to a culture's
>mysteries is even a common theme in European cultures.  If it's meant to
>be the Ute material will come in its own time.
>
>
Correct. Not my call. I expect some of their own ambitious folks will
drive that to happen. We just need to
give them the space to come to that conclusion on their own.

Jeff

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


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
On 7/13/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't find
> the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password right?
>
> mboverload

Well, there are some solutions here. Generally in the anonymity class-
I2P might work for you (most TOR proxies are blocked, but I don't
believe we've gotten around to the I2P proxies yet), and there are
various services like anonymizer.com
Of course, you could just  go for a free shell account and use SSH to
log in, which would encrypt your traffic (an example of such an
account provider being [[Super Dimension Fortress]]).

None of this actually answers your question, but it might help.

~maru


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
What about translations from other wikipedias? That text is highly likely to
the GFDL-only, and I suppose it should also be redistributed as GFDL (i.e.
printing the whole text of the licence)

Marco (Cruccone)

On 7/13/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
>
>
> We have a template shown on all pages already. Basically I guess we could
> simply point readers to a "Wikipedia:Licensing" page, where we would state
> that content published before <licence switch date> is available under
> GFDL
> only, and invite distributors to use the "history" tool to verify what's
> the
> situation for each page. If they need to publish GFDL-licensed material we
> will discuss the question with the contributors and eventually place an
> add
> on that page that completely switches it to CC. It looks a lot easier than
> having to hand-tag 1.200 articles.
>
> B?rto
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
> "Which, no doubt, is what people will next recommend; anything to
> divorce Israel's actions from the context in which they are taken."
>
> No sooner said, than done.
>
> Jay.

"The Lebanese government wanted a ceasefire calling for the two
captured soldiers to be returned to Israel."

Here's my take on it:

If a bunch of stray israelis attacked Lebanon without authorization
of the israeli government in retaliation of a bunch of lebanese
without authorization of the lebanese government attacking Israel,
one could talk of an "incident" or "crisis".

If the proper israeli army attacks lebanon territories in retaliation
of Lebanese troops attacking Israeli territories, one could talk
of a "conflict" or, when the whole thing takes a long time, "war".

If the proper israeli army attacks lebanon in retaliation of a bunch
of lebanese without the authorization of the lebanese government,
one talks of an "attack" or "incursion".
(This might change to conflict or war if the lebanese would start
to fight back)

As former US DoD chief McNamara said, "Always keep a sense of proportions"


from_name: xaosflux

subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
Try:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page

----- Original Message -----
From: "mboverload" <mboverload at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:08 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

> I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't
> find
> the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password
> right?
>
> mboverload
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

body:
(possible duplicate posting)
Try:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Main_Page

It is slow at times.

xaosflux

----- Original Message -----
From: "mboverload" <mboverload at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:08 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] The secure server?

> I'm forced to use an unsecure wireless connection for a bit and I can't
> find
> the address of the wikipedia secure server - it encrypts the password
> right?
>
> mboverload
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

> You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone
> knows that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this
> not fuel a perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous?

This would be a concern if Wikipedia had used the CC-NH (Creative
Commons, Non-humorous use only) license.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-14

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 409 of 426 tests (96.01%) FAILED!


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 13/07/06, rotem at svn.leuksman.com <rotem at svn.leuksman.com> wrote:
> * Using "internationalisation" instead of "internationalization", for Rob Church.

There aren't really many responses to that I can make apart from the
following. And given that I've had just about enough, I think I'll
make it, and to hell with the consequences. I will absolutely not
allow a third person to start abusing me and get away with it
unscathed.

You. Fucking. Wanker.

Now, let me rationalise. The current method of adding i18n for
extensions is better than what we had before, but it sucks a little
bit still. It sucks 'cause people downloading the extensions still
have to download a load of shit that they aren't interested it.

You broke backwards compatibility with extensions before and you're
doing it again. Granted you aren't the only one, but your
implementation is a mess. I'm sorry to say it, but it's the bloody
truth.

How dare you start making snide remarks because I happen to use
British English spelling? How bloody dare you?

I've had enough of this, I'm going on a 3 month break.

Rob Church


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 14/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/14/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > While working on something completely different, I came across the page for
> > > [[Eric_the_Midget]].
> >
> > You could call this "Sterncruft" (SCNR). There's a lot of it on WP. Of
> > course, the crucial difference to Peppers is that Peppers did not
> > choose to become the object of ridicule and humiliation.
>
> The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony
> (and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat
> of force).  Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers
> is not an innocent victim.

It is, of course, possible to be guilty of one thing and not guilty of
another. I know a chap who was convicted for a particularly farcical
robbery attempt; he's guilty, no doubt, and it wasn't a victimless
crime. But if I wandered around this evening and kicked him in the
face, he'd be pretty justified in considering himself an innocent
victim of my mindless assault.

I don't see how Peppers being convicted of something means we should
help people kick *him* in the face because they feel like it.

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Peppers either tried to force himself onto a child or lied under oath
> about doing so.

No. The charge suggests that the victem was an adult. This was in the article.

--
geni


body:
geni wrote:

> Well wiki is suposed to come from fast. Pedia probably comes
> from the greek for something like "general education". So the
> direct translation into english would be something like "fast
> general education"

The intellectual equivalent of fast food?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 7/14/06, Sue Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> While working on something completely different, I came across the page for
> [[Eric_the_Midget]].

You could call this "Sterncruft" (SCNR). There's a lot of it on WP. Of
course, the crucial difference to Peppers is that Peppers did not
choose to become the object of ridicule and humiliation. Some Internet
idiots chose to make him theirs.

That being said, if Peppers did indeed become notable (and the book
Anthony pointed to might be one example of increasing notability),
then we should try our best to write an NPOV article about him. I
think Jimmy made a reasonable general proposal earlier in this thread:

> I personally think, and would vote this way if I were voting, that
> factors like:
>
> ...does the borderline notable subject ask not to have a bio? (Angela)
> ...does a mature respect for human dignity of a borderline notable
> person suggest that a bio is not needed? (Brian Peppers)
> ...is Wikipedia horribly naval-gazing at times? (Jeremy Rosenfeld, Brian
>Chase)
> ...can and should all matter, and be taken into account by people
> commenting at AfD.

When a person stops being borderline and becomes obviously notable,
these principles no longer apply. Whether it is or isn't a borderline
case is for us to figure out on a case by case basis -- perhaps we can
eventually come up with some reasonable general principles (e.g. "only
known on the Internet", "only known by a clearly identifiable group of
people", etc.).

Erik


body:
(sorry for duplicate, Anthony)

On 14/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> > It is, of course, possible to be guilty of one thing and not guilty of
> > another. I know a chap who was convicted for a particularly farcical
> > robbery attempt; he's guilty, no doubt, and it wasn't a victimless
> > crime. But if I wandered around this evening and kicked him in the
> > face, he'd be pretty justified in considering himself an innocent
> > victim of my mindless assault.
> >
> > I don't see how Peppers being convicted of something means we should
> > help people kick *him* in the face because they feel like it.
> >
> I'm not advocating that we kick Peppers in the face, I'm advocating
> that we provide information about him in Wikipedia.

...why? Wikipedia is not a registry of sex offenders. We're an
*encyclopedia*. Being convicted of a crime was not, last I checked,
even remotely near any sensible threshold for inclusion...

Yes, we have "more of a right" to provide information about him than
about some other people... but that doesn't mean we need to, or that
anyone would be well-served by us doing so.

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


body:
On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Peppers either tried to force himself onto a child or lied under oath
> > > about doing so.
> >
> > No. The charge suggests that the victem was an adult. This was in the article.
> >
> Then why does the offender details page
> (http://www.esorn.ag.state.oh.us/Secured/p23.aspx?oid=13753) say
> "Victim(s): Child Female"?  This should also be in the article.
>

because I made a mistake and that page appears to conflict with:

http://commissioners.co.lucas.oh.us/ClerkDockets/Docket.asp?selCaseType=CR&NumberSearchCriteria=199802668

Btw has any noticed how much the snopes article has grown?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/14/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> While the text is very short and not very well-written, one must
> bear in mind that ur.wikipedia.org has a total of 1490 articles
> and that every language of Wikipedia had short and bad articles at
> that early stage.

The problem is who it is writen by. Not by some random IP but by a buracrat.

> If you speak Urdu (which I don't), by all means, help to improve
> the articles, and help to write more stubs.  After 10,000 articles
> are created, start a WikiProject to identify and weed out stubs.
> But just like a gardener, you cannot start weeding before the crop
> has started to grow.

The question was prompted by rumors I had heard about ar.wikipedia. Of
course I can't read that either.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi!

> Being a small wiki, with few contributors and little articles, wiki
> licensing could be switched to a dual license like GFDL-Cc-by-sa.
> Cc-by-sa is very similar to the GFDL terms, but license text is not
> required.
> You would need to contact with all contributors to get their agreement to
> publish their previous work under cc-by-sa too. Changing the licensing
> informationg would make the future ones. And a strong community consensus
> required :)
>
> Be aware that contributions previous to the switching will be GFDL-only so
> you couldn't publich it under the second one. This may not apply to
trivial
> information (e.g. like those ips usually give).
> Unrelicensable texts could either:
> -Be deleted (the strict way)
> -Tag them with a template saying 'some parts of this may not be available
> under CC ' (the easier way)

We have a template shown on all pages already. Basically I guess we could
simply point readers to a "Wikipedia:Licensing" page, where we would state
that content published before <licence switch date> is available under GFDL
only, and invite distributors to use the "history" tool to verify what's the
situation for each page. If they need to publish GFDL-licensed material we
will discuss the question with the contributors and eventually place an add
on that page that completely switches it to CC. It looks a lot easier than
having to hand-tag 1.200 articles.

B?rto


from_name: Heema Khan

body:
I can definitely do that. If you provide me the exact text.
But it seems that a steward already contacted an administrator yesterday

http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:%D8%B3%DB%8C%D9%81_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%DB%81#MediaWiki:Sitenotice

There is a new discussion, where it is a
general agreement to remove the Qur'anic verse
from the Sitenotice but to display it on the main
page in any case. There is still an argument going on
in favour and against this new proposition.

--heema

----- Original Message ----
From: Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com>
To: Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com>; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, July 14, 2006 10:13:21 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Israel article (was: Quran in Sitenotice)

So, are we okay to post one of those notices? Heema, are you willing
to translate and post both? I think we need to at least open
discussion on the wiki as we're just repeating ourselves here on the
list, it seems.

On 13/07/06, Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> To: andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:20:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Israel article (was: Quran in Sitenotice)
>
> >No one sane?
>
> >It has been edited by:
> >http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%B1
>
> >One of the buracrats on that wikipedia.
>
> this guy argued that if you are against Qur'anic verses in the Sitenotice
>  means you are against Qur'an.
>
> >It was created by:
> >http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%B3%DB%8C%D9%81_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%DB%81
>
> >The admin we have contected over the sitenotice issue.
>
> Doesn't surprise me, because he added the Quranic verse into the Sitenotice
> in the first place.
>
> --heema
>
> On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > (I apologise this won't show up in threading - I've only just
> > subscribed and I'm reading old mesages through the archives)
> >
> > Heema Khan:
> >
> > > On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> > > http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> > > I can translate it:
> > > "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> > > countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> > > Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> > > is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> > > a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> > > by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> > > world says that in a country called Israel some
> > > Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
> > >
> > > This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.
> >
> > In this specific case, if my reading of the page is right, this
> > article has had a grand total of 21 edits, the ten most recent of them
> > in a single three-day period in June. Every single bit of the content
> > has been contributed by one single registered user; all anon edits
> > have been vandalism (well, one was pageblanking, that might count as
> > justified!) No discussion page, of course.
> >
> > On the whole, while it's still a pretty terrible article, it scares me
> > less once I know that it's the work of one guy and it's just that
> > no-one sane has managed to look at it yet...
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
    ?Xyrael
        sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
Wikipedia isn't populist. We don't have articles because "a lot of
people want to know about [the subject]".

On 14/07/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > (sorry for duplicate, Anthony)
> > >
> > > On 14/07/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > > > It is, of course, possible to be guilty of one thing and not guilty
> > of
> > > > > another. I know a chap who was convicted for a particularly farcical
> > > > > robbery attempt; he's guilty, no doubt, and it wasn't a victimless
> > > > > crime. But if I wandered around this evening and kicked him in the
> > > > > face, he'd be pretty justified in considering himself an innocent
> > > > > victim of my mindless assault.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't see how Peppers being convicted of something means we should
> > > > > help people kick *him* in the face because they feel like it.
> > > > >
> > > > I'm not advocating that we kick Peppers in the face, I'm advocating
> > > > that we provide information about him in Wikipedia.
> > >
> > > ...why? Wikipedia is not a registry of sex offenders. We're an
> > > *encyclopedia*. Being convicted of a crime was not, last I checked,
> > > even remotely near any sensible threshold for inclusion...
> > >
> > > Yes, we have "more of a right" to provide information about him than
> > > about some other people... but that doesn't mean we need to, or that
> > > anyone would be well-served by us doing so.
> > >
> > The simplest answer to why is that there are a lot of people who want
> > to know about him.  Also, there is a lot of misinformation going
> > around.
> >
> > Frankly, I thought the answer to "why" was obvious, which is why my
> > message above focussed on why I think it's OK.
> >
> > Anthony
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> Where is the evidence that a lot of people want to know about him?
>
> How many reliable sources do we have on him?
>
> Some people on a website have decided to mock him. I don't think that we
> should have an article on every person who has ever committed an offence
> especially when there are so few reliable sources of information about him.
>
> Regards
>
>
> *Keith Old*
>
> Keith Old
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:53:22 -0400
jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> This was an official Hezbollah operation. Hezbollah is *part* of the
> Lebanese government. There are Hezbollah *ministers* in the
> government.

An official Hezbollah operation? Who is Hezbollah? A political
party in Lebanon that is currently in power, or any lebanese people
that perform terrorist acts against Israel?

Did Hezbollah publish the announcement to capture israeli military
on their website? their blog? Did the civilian government of
Lebanon authorize commando actions against israel? Did they
maybe make a radio speech? Did they vote on those kidnappings or what?

Or was it a small group of terrorists that acted on their own,
when by now every anti-israel-lebanese calls himself "Hezbollah"?

Ever heard of Al-Quaida, this little CIA-backed group lead
by the late Osama Bin Laden? Yet almost every anti-american
terrorist group claims, at least to have links to Al-Quaida.

Its just [[namedropping]]. "We're angry Bob and rabid Robert and
we take responsibility for these acts of terrorism, which, well,
mount up to pointing a gun at a lone guy and telling him
to follow us", just doesn't sound that impressive, does it?

Jayjg, come to your senses.

Israel is attacking a country whos government has condemned
the very attacks that are now being held against it.

"Hezbollah" is not a homogenous group, nor do they have a strong
hierarchy. Terrorists organizations especially cannot afford
strong hierarchies because it would be too easy to take them out.

What you can criticise about Lebanon and its Government, is that
their police do not seem to delight helping Israel getting their
citicens back. But you can probably guess why that is.

Pretending that the Israeli atrocities against Lebanese civilians
are the just and proportionate answer to the kidnapping of Israelis
by Lebanese criminals is horribly POV and, bluntly, batshit insane.

Please reconsider your own position.


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Heema Khan wrote:
> On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> I can translate it:

While the text is very short and not very well-written, one must
bear in mind that ur.wikipedia.org has a total of 1490 articles
and that every language of Wikipedia had short and bad articles at
that early stage.  After submitting an article to such a small and
young wiki site, the main frustration is not spelling errors,
factual errors, slanted point of view or poor organization, but
the fact that all wikilinks are red and not blue.  (In the case of
ur:Israel, there are no links in the main wikitext, so the article
still needs to be wikified.) The main "WikiProjects" at that stage
are typically to establish stubs for every country of the world
and for every day in the calendar.  At around 10 or 20 thousand
articles, the WikiProjects are the years in the calendar and
taxonomies for all mammals and birds.  At between 50 and 100
thousand articles, newspapers begin to write comparisons between
Wikipedia and traditional printed encyclopedias in the same
language.

Somewhere along the road, adhering to NPOV and phasing out stubs
becomes more of a concern.  But it would probably miss the target
to make a big fuzz about the Urdu Wikipedia's viewpoint on Israel
(or other controversial topics) at this early stage.  And I think
the same goes for this fuzz about the sitenotice.  You don't need
to call the fire brigade to put out a single candle.  And this
time, the house is not really on fire.

If you speak Urdu (which I don't), by all means, help to improve
the articles, and help to write more stubs.  After 10,000 articles
are created, start a WikiProject to identify and weed out stubs.
But just like a gardener, you cannot start weeding before the crop
has started to grow.

The Swedish Wikipedia was initially very enthusiastic about the
chance to copy articles from an old out-of-copyright encyclopedia
(very similar to the 1911 Britannica). It took quite some time
before the problems became apparent: Negroes were described as an
inferior race, almost like animals, and old Swedish kings were
attributed god-like virtues.  You can't really write that today.
Fortunately, this sorted itself out long before the newspapers
started to compare the Swedish Wikipedia to contemporary printed
encyclopedias.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiFilter

body:
Might be worth mentioning that the code is pretty unportable looking
Win32 C++.  It's setup to serve out pages, acting like a superlight
weight read only mediawiki install.. Doesn't appear to be really
useful for generating html dumps. :-(

On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has just been brought to my attention by some friends in India,
> who are considering to use it to create a DVD version of Wikipedia:
>
> http://wikifilter.sourceforge.net/
>
> >From the description: "WikiFilter is both a wiki text parser and a web
> filter. It converts wiki text stored in a wiki data-base (dump) file
> into html text, and sends the html text to the web browser." The
> program is written in C. There's also an indexing component. I haven't
> tested it, but it looks like it could be a useful module for a DVD
> edition; the parser component might also be interesting for other
> purposes.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On Jul 13, 2006, at 10:11 PM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>> So "Operation Barbarossa" -- no problem. "Operation Crossroads" -- no
>> problem. "Operation Just Cause" -- should be "United States invasion
>> of Panama" (which it is). "Operation Iraqi Freedom" -- should be
>> something more neutral (it is currently "Iraq War", which I find a
>> little too ambiguous, personally, since there have been many Iraq
>> Wars, but anyway, anything is better than the operation name).
>>
> <snip>
>
> Personally I like "Gulf War II".

Actually, it's the third Persian Gulf War, the first being the Iran-
Iraq War.

Then again, there were five or six world wars before World War I, so
who cares?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiFilter

body:
This has just been brought to my attention by some friends in India,
who are considering to use it to create a DVD version of Wikipedia:

http://wikifilter.sourceforge.net/

>From the description: "WikiFilter is both a wiki text parser and a web
filter. It converts wiki text stored in a wiki data-base (dump) file
into html text, and sends the html text to the web browser." The
program is written in C. There's also an indexing component. I haven't
tested it, but it looks like it could be a useful module for a DVD
edition; the parser component might also be interesting for other
purposes.

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi!

>What about translations from other wikipedias? That text is highly likely
to
>the GFDL-only, and I suppose it should also be redistributed as GFDL (i.e.
>printing the whole text of the licence)

Well, if this *is* a problem, then it makes no sense to switch licences at
all. It's much more practical to revert to the old solution of having a
short text published that will satisfy the cops enough to get rid of the
whole matter. We need a marketing tool, not a lawyers' mind game.

Is this really *that* relevant? And if it is, then how many wikies are
actually "stealing" content from each other?

I can read pretty much the same stuff from all interwiki links, and never
ever noticed anyone having a foreign link in their histories... neither did
I see templates stating that text "Goofy loves Mickey" was originally
translated from xxx.wiki, while "Walt Dysney was an american of ukrainian
origin" came from ttt.wiki. So what about quoting sources and giving a
pointer to the original(s)?

It's impossible to do it, unless you want to have articles look like
trashbins. I use sources in... 20-25 languages, sometimes I get to read 5
editions to check a single voice, should I quote them all? Now this *really*
would turn any text into an unreadable mess.

B?rto


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 7/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:34:47 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> wrote:
>
> >> How many articles do we have on people known only for their
> >> deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.
>
> >I have no idea how many.  I also don't think it's accurate to say that
> >Peppers is known *only* for his deformities.  There are plenty of
> >people more deformed than Peppers, after all.
>
> Really?  So what else is he famous for?  Apart from people laughing at
> his deformities?  The extent of them is not relevant to this question,
> obviously.
>
I've actually never heard someone laugh at his deformities.  I'm just
saying if the only reason Peppers is know is because of his
deformities, there would likely be a lot more people of equal fame.
Show me someone else with the level of google searches as peppers.
Looking at Google trends I see the number of searches for his name
since 2005 are roughly equal to the number of searches for "stephen
hawking".  Surely his deformities alone have not been the only factor
in this.  If they were, then he wouldn't be the only one.

> >> Ahem - that's *attempted* gross sexual imposition (which specifically
> >> excludes actual sexual contact).  The man is by all accounts disabled
> >> and his address is a nursing home.
>
> >Snopes says "registered due to a conviction for Gross Sexual
> >Imposition in Lucas County, Ohio, in 1998".  It doesn't say
> >"attempted".  Maybe Snopes is wrong.  And maybe if Wikipedia had an
> >article on Peppers it would be easier to find out if Snopes is wrong.
>
> The conviction record does say attempted.  This illustrates quite
> powerfully the entire problem with an article on Peppers: there is so
> little to go on that without original research there is virtually
> nothing that can be said.  We don't even have contemporaneous news
> reports.
>
First of all, looking at the info, you're right.  He pled guilty to
two counts of attempted gross sexual imposition.  And going back to
the topic which brought that up, I still don't think it's in the realm
of reality to call attempted gross sexual imposition "a minor
technical offence".

In any case, I'd say the fact that Snopes is wrong on this illustrates
quite powerfully one of the reasons Wikipedia *should* have an article
on Peppers.

Anthony


body:
On 7/14/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:40:06 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> wrote:
>
> >The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony
> >(and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat
> >of force).  Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers
> >is not an innocent victim.
>
> All the indications are that this was a technical offence.  It has
> been suggested that he touched his nurse inappropriately while trying
> to gain her attention.  We don't know, because there is virtually no
> source material to work on, and that is why we should not have an
> article.
>
What indication is there, other than your unsourced "suggestion" which
contradicts all the other evidence, that this was a technical offence?
 If Peppers accidently "touched his nurse inappropriately while trying
to gain her attention", then he is not guilty of the offense, and this
story is even more important.

Yes, right now we can't find any source material to definitively
determine exactly what happened.  The same could be said of a large
number of articles.  But unlike your suggestion, there is plenty of
source material to create a short article on what we *do* know.

Anthony


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats

body:
On 7/14/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > How does Wikipedia not benefit from including the information?  If
> > Wikipedia biographies are to be accurate articles, they should not
> > selectively exclude facts deemed inconvenient.
> >
> We don't benefit because he's a very minor figure, arguably not
> someone who should have an article in the first place, and it wasn't a
> good article anyway. So for the sake of upholding some unwritten
> principle of completeness (i.e. for the sake of ideology), we're
> prepared to harm an individual's real life, someone who has done
> nothing to any of us, to ensure that this incident will continue to
> haunt him, whereas he thought he had put it behind him.
>
> My argument is that it's neither fair nor rational to do that, and we
> ought always to be both fair and rational when dealing with people who
> are, in a very real sense, at Wikipedia's mercy.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

We should always give due consideration to the impact on someone's private
life versus the competing consideration of having a balanced article on the
person. In this particular case, there are arguments running both ways.

On a higher level, we need to make sure that our policies on sourcing are
particularly rigorous when it comes to biographies especially of living
people.

Our article on the late Red Buttons (as of today) contained a claim that his
third wife had had an affair. There was no source provided for the claim. I
have removed it with a note on the talk page not to restore it unless we
have information from a reliable source confirming it.

Wikipedia is arguably the leading source of biographical information
available over the Internet. That gives us an extra responsibility to make
sure we get it right.

Regards

Keith Old


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On Jul 14, 2006, at 7:02 AM, Dabljuh wrote:

> Jay"Superturbozionistdeluxe"Jg

No. You can't habitually break off polite discussion and make attacks.

Fred


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject:
[Foundation-l] Requests to use the foundations'
	trademarks/logos.

body:
Having just met with the Library of Congress two days ago, please forward it
to me directly.

-Brad

On 7/14/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/14/06, Jack <jackdt at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The USA Library of Congress has requested permission to include
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict> in their collection of
> > Internet material concerning the crisis in Darfur.
> >
> > They wish to
> > 1. archive the page at regular intervals, and
> > 2. publish it on their publicly accessible web site.
> >
> > They completely reproduce pages for archival purposes: capturing all
> > identifying site documentation, including URL, trademark, copyright
> > statement, ownership, publication date
> > <http://www.loc.gov/webcapture/faq.html>; so the GFDL requirements are
> > met, but what about the trademark/logo? Who needs to give permission
> > or refuse?
> >
> > WikiMedia OTRS ticket: 2006071110012086
> > LC Reference: Darfur 88979 CD
>
> I remember a similar request from 2004 during the Tsunami (okay, the
> actual request should have been from january-february 2005) from the
> US LOC for a collection about this.  Maybe someone is able to find the
> ticket and how we reacted to this. As far as I am concerned, their
> request is fine and I consider it a shame that libraries are requested
> to ask for this to preserve the cultural heritage, no matter if it is
> on dead trees or on a DVD.
> _______________________________________________
> 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


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 18:34:47 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>> How many articles do we have on people known only for their
>> deformities?  The only one I can think of is Joseph Merrick.

>I have no idea how many.  I also don't think it's accurate to say that
>Peppers is known *only* for his deformities.  There are plenty of
>people more deformed than Peppers, after all.

Really?  So what else is he famous for?  Apart from people laughing at
his deformities?  The extent of them is not relevant to this question,
obviously.

>> Ahem - that's *attempted* gross sexual imposition (which specifically
>> excludes actual sexual contact).  The man is by all accounts disabled
>> and his address is a nursing home.

>Snopes says "registered due to a conviction for Gross Sexual
>Imposition in Lucas County, Ohio, in 1998".  It doesn't say
>"attempted".  Maybe Snopes is wrong.  And maybe if Wikipedia had an
>article on Peppers it would be easier to find out if Snopes is wrong.

The conviction record does say attempted.  This illustrates quite
powerfully the entire problem with an article on Peppers: there is so
little to go on that without original research there is virtually
nothing that can be said.  We don't even have contemporaneous news
reports.

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


body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 19:40:06 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>The other crucial difference is that Peppers is convicted of a felony
>(and not a victimless felony either, but one involving force or threat
>of force).  Unless the Ohio government seriously screwed up, Peppers
>is not an innocent victim.

All the indications are that this was a technical offence.  It has
been suggested that he touched his nurse inappropriately while trying
to gain her attention.  We don't know, because there is virtually no
source material to work on, and that is why we should not have an
article.

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


body:
On Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:10:34 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
wrote:

>Then why does the offender details page
>(http://www.esorn.ag.state.oh.us/Secured/p23.aspx?oid=13753) say
>"Victim(s): Child Female"?  This should also be in the article.

Hard to say, but it is not listed as a child in the docket
http://commissioners.co.lucas.oh.us/ClerkDockets/Docket.asp?selCaseType=CR&NumberSearchCriteria=199802668
or on Snopes or on the sex offenders list
http://www.co.lucas.oh.us/sheriff/sexoffenderlist.pdf

Again, we have so little data that we don't know.  Where are the
reliable secondary sources?

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


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>Registration is certainly nice in GFDL and most copyleft enforcement
>>because it sets up a minimum statutory penalty if you can prove
>>copyright infringement.  Otherwise you can only seek actual damages.
>>Note that the registration must take place before the infringement
>>occurs.  This is something I've discussed at length on this mailing list
>>before, with many individuals on this list quite against formal
>>registration, and deliberate obfuscation of user information that would
>>make such registration difficult to impossible.
>>
>>All I'm pointing out is that the situation right now is exactly up to
>>individual contributors, and you are correct, it boggles the mind to
>>think what is really necessary to do this enforcement.
>>
>>
>>
>The problem with actual damages is that they are measured in monetary
>terms and need to be proven.  Since we all give our services for free
>there is no damage to be proven.  Only statutory damages make sense.  Of
>course anyone with a copyright interest in a work should be legally
>entitled to file a registration.  Those with more radical views about
>the nature of free content should have no business preventing others
>from protecting their own rights.  If they want to remain anonymous that
>would still be their choice.  The material that should be registered
>could be in the form of a data dump onto CD(s) that are sent monthly or
>on some other regular basis.
>
>Ec
>
>
One of the requirements for formal registration of copyright require
that you document the nationality and residence (the name of the country
you live in is sufficient) of all copyright claimants.  The purpose of
this is to know what laws actually protect the content, as international
copyright conventions do apply and nationality does have some impact on
copyright protection.

I made a request almost a year ago that Wikimedia projects allow
voluntary declaration of this information (I don't think it should ever
be compelled), together with your real legal name for this purpose.  The
proposal was mainly that such information could be put into the user
preferences section where you also put your sig and some other personal
details like e-mail address.  Even asking for voluntary declarations of
information like this was met with incredible hostility and accusations
that I didn't understand the WMF privacy policy.  The purpose of
collecting this information was specifically so I could file formal
copyright registration on behalf of Wikibooks users including myself.

BTW, the Library of Congress does not have a maximum limit of only 5
copyright claimants, but since the GFDL suggests the number of 5 people
listed, most people assume that is the most that you are permitted to
list as authors.  It is not, and I don't see a problem with listing 20
or more people, as can happen with some Wikimedia projects.  For
Wikibooks, that can be 20 different people with significant
contributions.  My reading of the GFDL is that it suggests that you
should list at least five different people if there were that many
contributors, and that meets the minimum terms of the GFDL, and not
necessarily even the minimum requirements for copyright law.

For the Wikijunior books and for some of the other Wikibooks, this
information is being collected more informally in "author" pages where
this information is being listed.  It is also assumed that when a
Wikibook is published, that this information will also be used (at least
the author's names) as credit for who helped put together the content.
 Again, this is all voluntary and some people have removed their names
from these author pages as well for various reasons.  Even these pages
have been controvercial, with some cries to have them all deleted and
banned by policy.  This is why I say that the WMF is encouraging
deliberate obfusaction of user information preventing copyright
registration.

At the moment, however, I don't know of any specific content for any
Wikimedia project that has had formal copyright registration occur.  And
you are correct that trying to prove damages that a free project like
this would be difficult at best for any monitary amount, although I
think a judge could still come up with at least some modest amount just
to prove a point that copyright violations are wrong to do, even for
free content.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Ideas for faster MediaWiki startup

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The general idea is to slash the number of lines of code loaded on
> startup to a tiny fraction of what it is now.

Sounds like a good idea.

Tim Starling wrote:
> Profiling on Wikimedia currently gives 47ms for startup, including at
>  least 8ms for extensions. This is too slow.

Hmm... it would be a little nicer if we knew precisely what was causing
that slowdown inside the startup. I know that MediaWiki has built in
profiling calls, but have you tried a PHP-level profiler like APD yet?

Tim Starling wrote:
> Pervasive lazy initialisation. Remove $wgUser, $wgLang and
> $wgContLang, replace them with wfGetUser(), wfGetLang() and
> wfGetContLang(). This brings them into line with the successful
> wfGetDB() interface. Simply returning the variable would be done by
> those functions, if it doesn't exist, then execution would pass to
> the relevant autoloaded module for initialisation. The same can be
> done for $wgTitle, $wgParser, $wgOut, $wgMessageCache... pretty much
> all the object globals. A version-independent accessor would be put
> in ExtensionFunctions.php, to support multi-version extensions. By
> deferring everything, we allow lightweight requests to get by without
> ever initialising a user object, or loading a language file.

It's probably a step in the right direction. But maybe it would be a
better idea if we unified all these global object calls into a Registry
object? (Perhaps this would be phasing them out that you described here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Writing_a_new_special_page&diff=375972&oldid=375234
)

Tim Starling wrote:
> Cached module registration.

When you say "module" you mean, "extension", correct? So, essentially,
we're finally going to structure the extensions into a much more orderly
fashion. Sounds good.

Tim Starling wrote:
> [on configuration]

I don't know enough about Wikimedia configuration to pass judgment here,
but that sounds like a lot of code that hasn't been versioned.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
--- Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> First of all, thanks for actually reading my stuffs.

Sure. Ive learned over the years that community consensus can be misplaced at times.

> Regarding my ban: I don't want to go too deeply into the details but in my
> understanding,
> I was removed from Wikipedia by POV warriors in administrative positions for not
> backing down when confronted with their POV. I have written a short essay to this
> list
> "Wikipedia's Administrative System: Corrupted to the core" in reaction to that.
> You furthermore speak of "you people" as if I was of arab descendence or had lebanese
> affiliation. I am not.

I think the point is that they percieve you as generating [[m:more heat than light]]
with your comments. Accusing others of also making heat doesnt *do anything, and
writing up critiques entitled "corrupted to the core", even if its somehow true, doesnt
really make you look like anything but a troll. All I meant to say was that though your
English is good, and people here make all sorts of assumptions based on English
speaking capacity. Its a prejudice, but when you make bigoted or personal comments its
easy to disregard you.

> Our personal views are never besides the point, they are THE point. We are all
> influenced
> by our personal and badly informed opinions. We write what we believe is true into
> these articles of Wikipedia. But the process of coming to believe what is true and
> what
> is not is a long and complex one. And not everyone succeeds: People believe in
> magic, believe in ghosts, believe in deities, some believe in THE TIME CUBE,
> all of which has no basis in science, in my understanding.

No, this is where you are way off base. Its one thing to say that the reality is that
people are biased. So what else is new? Show some civility and do some actual work
instead of trying to be some petty revolutionary. I understand sometimes its
frustrating, and people's comments can get out of line. Thats why there is WP:DR. But
keep your own language clean first.

> Similiarly, one believes for example that the israeli attack on Lebanon is a
> righteous
> and just reaction to something Lebanon did. This as well is, in my personal
> understanding,
> a misjudgement, and is not covered by western humanist secular philosophy. In that
> particular occasion, it is not even supported by the Torah: "Eye for an Eye" exactly
> means that you should not bomb 60 Lebanese civilians to smitherines because some of
> them
> kidnapped 2 and killed 6 more.

See, when you say "not covered by western humanist secular philosophy" it becomes
apparent that you are either trolling, or otherwise just dont know what you are talking
about. POV on any particular issue has nothing to do with "western humanist
secular[ism]" -it has to do with POV.

> So, by pretty much all objective, neutral ethical standards, the Israeli attack on
> Lebanon is a disproportionate injustice that will only work against Israel in the
> long run

I agree with that, but thats just my view.

> by rallying support for more antisemitic sentiments in the region and the entire
> world.

No. Dislike of violence is not antisemitic. Enlightened people dislike violence
regardless of who perpetrates it or what reasons are given for it.

> Of course you can now point out, that this is "but one POV". But unlike certain other
> POVs like "Israel has the right to do whatever it feels" or "Arabs are the innocent
> victims of Zionist supression", I believe, my POV warrants some merit by being
> objective without favoring one side over the other. You could call it, "neutral".
> Consider a judge who sentences someone for murder after his guilt has been proven
> beyond the shadow of a doubt. Is that judge partial to anyone because he condemns
> the murderer?

Yeah, but even if you were some fancy opinion writer from some magazine or somehting
your opinion really isnt the issue. Sorry - we all have opinions, and we all like to
think they are correct and neutral. Understanding this is the basis for civility.
Failing to understand this is called "inflated ego" or something like that.

> The enlightened path for competing nationalism, is to reject all nationalism
> altogether.
> Behind the dehumanizing descriptions such as "Hezbollah Terrorists" or "Zionist
> Nazis"
> there are always people, that are suffering because of the stupidity of others.

Sure.

> But instead going ahead and justifying the israeli attacks on lebanon with small
> time criminals and terrorists, now that is horribly POV. I wanted to point that
> out, and make clear to Jay"Superturbozionistdeluxe"Jg that other people probably are
> more objective and neutral when it comes to judging what the title of the article
> should be, and that he should keep out because all he does is make Wikipedia more
> POV.

I agree. I also occasionally see some rationalization and whitewashing. Mostly what I
see is a lack of the other side. My edits to the Qassam missile article simply quote
someone who puts those in perspective with a similar kind of violence - which is far
out of proportion. Providing counterbalance may occasionally get you called an
"anti-semite," but thats OK - the important thing is Civility - its our formulation of
the Golden Rule. Making personal attacks is not acceptible, regardless of how
outnumbered you feel. Be like Ghandi; now he was a fine Hindu; he even got the British
to leave.

SV

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiFilter

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Might be worth mentioning that the code is pretty unportable looking
> Win32 C++.  It's setup to serve out pages, acting like a superlight
> weight read only mediawiki install.. Doesn't appear to be really
> useful for generating html dumps. :-(

That would probably be a killer, because we'd want any DVD version to
work on Windows, Mac and Linux. That being said, I can't really see a
DVD installing a *web-server* too in order to be read (I mean, it might
not be too bad with something like Lighttpd, but still, that's a lot of
baggage).

(Doesn't have a database dump lying around to do testing)


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiFilter

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> That being said, I can't really see a
> DVD installing a *web-server* too in order to be read

This is how the early Britannica CD sets worked, along with a bunch of
other encyclopedias that I've used ages ago. It's not an uncommon
approach. You don't have to actually install anything -- simply run the
webserver from the DVD/CD directly. The task is made especially easy if
you code your webserver in, say, Python, as you can make things
reasonably cross-platform without too much effort.

I have a hacker trying to see if the parser component can be easily
extracted and used separately.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Sean Whitton

body:
So, are we okay to post one of those notices? Heema, are you willing
to translate and post both? I think we need to at least open
discussion on the wiki as we're just repeating ourselves here on the
list, it seems.

On 13/07/06, Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: geni <geniice at gmail.com>
> To: andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk; Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 11:20:50 PM
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Israel article (was: Quran in Sitenotice)
>
> >No one sane?
>
> >It has been edited by:
> >http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%AE%D8%A7%D9%88%D8%B1
>
> >One of the buracrats on that wikipedia.
>
> this guy argued that if you are against Qur'anic verses in the Sitenotice
>  means you are against Qur'an.
>
> >It was created by:
> >http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%D8%B3%DB%8C%D9%81_%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%84%DB%81
>
> >The admin we have contected over the sitenotice issue.
>
> Doesn't surprise me, because he added the Quranic verse into the Sitenotice
> in the first place.
>
> --heema
>
> On 7/13/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > (I apologise this won't show up in threading - I've only just
> > subscribed and I'm reading old mesages through the archives)
> >
> > Heema Khan:
> >
> > > On Urdu Wikipedia, article on Israel is very short:
> > > http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D8%B3%D8%B1%D8%A7%D8%A6%DB%8C%D9%84
> > > I can translate it:
> > > "Israel, a palce where jews live. In addition to Pakistan there are many other
> > > countries that do not recognize this place of Jews as a country.
> > > Majority of the Urdu speaking public believes that there
> > > is no country by the name of Israel exists. But there is
> > > a country named Palestine, whose some part is captured
> > > by Jews and they call it Israel. And the English speaking
> > > world says that in a country called Israel some
> > > Palestenians want to create a country called Palestine."
> > >
> > > This is the whole article. Quite extraordinary, nothing to add more.
> >
> > In this specific case, if my reading of the page is right, this
> > article has had a grand total of 21 edits, the ten most recent of them
> > in a single three-day period in June. Every single bit of the content
> > has been contributed by one single registered user; all anon edits
> > have been vandalism (well, one was pageblanking, that might count as
> > justified!) No discussion page, of course.
> >
> > On the whole, while it's still a pretty terrible article, it scares me
> > less once I know that it's the work of one guy and it's just that
> > no-one sane has managed to look at it yet...
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net