body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Jimbo removed the information added by Yann, and I will ask you not to
>> add things which are rumors from the Internet, but will appear
>> official as soon as WE report them.
>
>
> How are they rumors?  The information removed was reported on the
> official Wikipedia Foundation mailing list, which is public.

Does not make it less a rumor necessarily.

>....
  and the fact
> that Google has tentatively agreed to give access to servers and
> bandwidth was reported by mav [2].

I would not like to sound impolite in any way, but Mav did not see the
google proposal.

> -Mark


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers to
	Wikipedia


list: foundation-l

from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation
> activities until this is resolved.  In particular, multiple reverts with
> no edit summaries from Jimbo, and locking pages after removing
> information is no way to run a Wiki.  Meta is a place where any user may
> place information---you guys can censor wikimediafoundation.org if you
> want, but please don't fuck up meta.

*I* protected that page some time before Jimbo's first edit to it. The reason
was vandalism from Slashdot trolls. This page is also being referred to by news
agencies as an 'official statement' by the foundation. It is therefore *very*
appropriate for rumors and even for known but sensitive info (that probably
should not be public) to be removed from it.

--mav

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


from_name: Joe

subject: [Foundation-l] Shavian Wikis

body:
On 2/11/05 5:50 PM, "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> For those not familiar with Shavian:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavian_alphabet
>
> It's a phonetic (well, phonemic ;) alphabet for the English language,
> developed in response to a contest specified for in George Bernard
> Shaw's will.

Thanks for clarifying.  I didn't think to mention this earlier. ^_^;

> While a very neat thing, it's needless to say not in common use for
> writing English.

I suppose that depends on how you define "common".  There are a number of
people currently using it in the shawalphabet Yahoo! Group and on the
Ikonboard at shavian.org.  I also had a pen pal who I wrote in Shavian
(insignificant, yes :), but he seems to have dropped off the face of the
Earth.

> Since it's not even a language unto itself, and only a small handful of
> hobbyists use it at all, it's very unlikely that any Wikimedia projects
> will be established using Shavian writing. You might ask Wikicities --
> http://www.wikicities.com/ -- which is where the Toki Pona wiki got
> moved. (Toki Pona is a hobbyist conlang.)

I had the same concern about how to implement Shavian since it isn't really
a language.  I've wondered if there's a way to offer a single Wiki in
multiple scripts, but this may be the product of an over-imaginative mind.
I'll be checking out Wikicities (never been there before) if this still
doesn't sound reasonable.

> Tok Pisin is a creole language which is spoken natively by actual
> people. The 'Simple English' Wikipedia was created long, long ago and to
> this day it's unclear what its intended mission is.

If the English loanwords in Tok Pisin were spelled the same as their English
origins, much of it would be mutually intelligible.  Besides the slight
difference in grammar and various words from other languages, the biggest
difference is in spelling.  This isn't meant to be an exact match,
though--just an example.  I recognize the difference.

I can't say I really understand the purpose of the "Simple English"
Wikipedia either.  It sounds like a good idea though, perhaps for use by
children or ESL students?.  There's been talk of merging it with the en:
Wikipedia, which could be described more accurately as simply removing it.
Perhaps if there were a Shavian Wiki, it would face the same fate.

Regards,
Joe


subject: [Foundation-l] Shavian Wikis


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Toki Pona

body:
*cough*

heh. Yes, there is a Toki Pona Wikipedia. But it's not at Wikipedia.
It's at wikicities.

This is the first time somebody asked about a conlang Wikipedia where
we could say "already got it".

Mark

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 01:44:53 -0500, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> I'm not looking to launch a Toki Pona Wikipedia (yet), but all this
> discussion of various languages, their (non)widespread use, and so on
> has raised in my mind some questions.  First off, I was wondering if
> anyone has any experience or data that gives an idea of how widespread
> Toki Pona use is, and secondly, I was wondering if there would be any
> particular opposition to a Toki Pona Wikipedia if (as a purely
> hypothetical example) five or six fluent speakers raised the issue here.
>
> Again, I stress that I do not intend to pursue the notion of setting up
> a Toki Pona Wikipedia in the forseeable future.  I'm interested in the
> language, though, and have recently begun the very odd task of learning
> it.  Idle curiosity about how it fits into the Wikipedia realm is the
> natural (for me) consequence of these circumstances.
>
> --
> Chad
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 11:19:08 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> No - this is just as stupid as the current templates. There *is* no talk page
> the great majority of our mirrors.
>
> More self-referential crap that I will delete on sight.
>
> -- mav
>

Ah yes, our delightful mirrors. Hadn't thought of that. Although it's
a disaster anyways with their snapshots grabbing all kinds of junk
from us that can't be fixed until their next general update.

Actually, I'm not convinced that's a valid objection to geni's
suggestion. There is a problem anyway if a mirror grabs a
below-average version of an article.

If only one template is used, noting a previously observed problem
(Major flaw, serious issue, below average-ness) that is surely enough
for a reader to be helped in their judgement of the article. If they
are on a mirror and can't find out what the problem is (cause of no
talk page) then tough cookie, they should have gone to Wikipedia or a
better mirror.

The point is that the current templates are often instructions to editors.

Zoney
--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
> No - this is just as stupid as the current templates. There *is* no talk page
> the great majority of our mirrors.
>
> More self-referential crap that I will delete on sight.
>
> -- mav

So? Most of our mirrors run various bots to remove stuff so I wont be
a problem for them to remove this. There is also the issue that our
mirrors have very different aims to us.

I suspose we could go for blantent honesty:

"this page as you can see has serious problems and does not meet our
usal standards however the odds of anyone caring enough to fix in any
time frame you would describe as resonable are pretty much zlich to
you had better get used to it."


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Pissed off

body:
I am getting pissed off with the automatic blockbot the Japanese
wikipedia uses. Japanese wikipedia has pre-emptively blocked whole
ranges of IP - addresses. Including the ones Thailands biggest provider
uses (a couple of 100.000 potential wikipedians). Every time I need to
make a change on Japanese wikipedia I need to ask them to unblock that
specific IP. Note these are pre-emptive blocks. So no vandalism was done
from these addresses. I find this totally anti-wikipedia and an
extremely big nuisance. Every time I am busy doing interwiki it shows
up. And what pisses me off even more is that it doesn't show up when
editing .... but at the moment I save the page.

Bloody pissed Waerth/Walter van Kalken


subject: [Foundation-l] Pissed off


list: wikitech-l

from_name: RedWolf

subject: [Wikitech-l] what happened to en db download?

body: The download db site was updated on February 9 but en is not listed. What gives?


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
Hello Felix

Out of curiosity, do we know how many editors would currently actively
work on the cantonese langage ?

Ant

Felix Wan a ?crit:
> On Fri, February 11, 2005 9:41 am, Andre Engels said:
>
>>As far as I understand, the current Wikipedia is supposed to be a
>>_Chinese_ one, not a _Mandarin_ one.
>>
>>Andre Engels
>>
>>
>>>Further argument against: there is no natural reason why someone whose
>>>interest is captured by a Cantonese wikipedia should be forced to work
>>>on a Mandarin one first.
>>
>
> Long story...
>
> Suggested readings:
> [[en:Chinese language]]
> [[en:Chinese written language]]
> [[en:Vernacular Chinese]]
> [[en:Cantonese (linguistics)]]
>
> In short, "standard written Chinese" has always been based on the Mandarin
> vernacular.  Now there is a request to set up an encyclopedia based on the
> Cantonese vernacular.  Although the latter has no official status, it has
> a de facto writing system popular among Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong,
> and is gaining popularity in Guangdong.
>
> It is not possible to mix Cantonese and Mandarin writing in zh: like
> American and British English in en: because those two regional speeches
> of China do not enjoy equal status.  Written Cantonese will be considered
> as substandard and corrected to conform with the vocabulary and grammar
> of Mandarin, which some people call "standard and proper Chinese".
>
> Even though I support the creation of a Cantonese Wikipedia, I will oppose
> writing Cantonese in zh: for the obvious pragmatic reason: every literate
> Cantonese speaker can read written Mandarin (standard Chinese), but the
> reverse is not true.  Unfair, but that is the fact of life.
>
> My primary concern is that everyone here understand the facts before
> making the decision.  We live in a real world.  We may deny Cantonese
> Wikipedia due to political, public relation, or pragmatic reasons, but
> let's be honest and state the reason.  If we pretend that it is just
> because the two writing systems are the same, people will come again and
> again to demonstrate that they are different.
>
> Felix Wan


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Toki Pona

body:
I'm not looking to launch a Toki Pona Wikipedia (yet), but all this
discussion of various languages, their (non)widespread use, and so on
has raised in my mind some questions.  First off, I was wondering if
anyone has any experience or data that gives an idea of how widespread
Toki Pona use is, and secondly, I was wondering if there would be any
particular opposition to a Toki Pona Wikipedia if (as a purely
hypothetical example) five or six fluent speakers raised the issue here.

Again, I stress that I do not intend to pursue the notion of setting up
a Toki Pona Wikipedia in the forseeable future.  I'm interested in the
language, though, and have recently begun the very odd task of learning
it.  Idle curiosity about how it fits into the Wikipedia realm is the
natural (for me) consequence of these circumstances.

--
Chad


subject: [Wikipedia-l] NYTimes.com: Google may host encyclopedia project

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> As Avriette said,
>
> "Since the entire content of the wikipedia is available for download
> already, there's no reason they couldn't host their own wikipedia
> content, pull it from us, and do whatever indexing they want to do
> with it. If they have some altruistic goal, they should instead just
> donate money. They've certainly got the spare cash."
>
> If Google has no ulterior motives, they can donate $$$.
>
> I somehow doubt that Google, a publicly-traded company with very
> secretive management, wants to do this because they feel it's their
> duty.
>
> What worries me is that the final say rests with a small-but-trusted
> group of individuals, not with the community. This is the trouble of
> our switch from a complete democracy to a not-so-representative
> democracy (only two of the board members were elected) - we have to
> trust that these people will be gentle with our future.
>
> Not that I don't trust these people. It's just that this is a very big
> thing here, and even some of the best people have been swayed by the
> power of the almighty monetary unit.
>
> Mark
>

While I'm not precisely a part of the "inner circle", or anything like
that, I believe I have some idea what I'm talking about when I say that
it is highly unlikely the almighty dollar is going to sway the board on
grounds of personal gain.  Seriously.  It just doesn't fit with the
circumstances of the Foundation, though I'm not sure I know how to
articulate my feelings in the matter.

I guess I'll just say this, for now:  I have faith that whether the
decision that is made is right or wrong, it will be made for the right
reasons in this case.

--
Chad


body:
Felix Wan a ?crit:

> You may also want to review the thread "Wikipedia in Chinese dialects",
> where I proposed writing 3 good articles of medium length and 20 good
> stubs in any new language.  They will also serve to test the hypothesis
> that written Mandarin and written Cantonese are the same, or are too
> similar to deserve a separate project.
>
> People may still disagree, but at least that will be better than arguments
> without any backup.
>
> Felix Wan

This seems an interesting idea to me...


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers
	to	Wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Jimbo removed the information added by Yann, and I will ask you not to
> add things which are rumors from the Internet, but will appear
> official as soon as WE report them.

I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation
activities until this is resolved.  In particular, multiple reverts with
no edit summaries from Jimbo, and locking pages after removing
information is no way to run a Wiki.  Meta is a place where any user may
place information---you guys can censor wikimediafoundation.org if you
want, but please don't fuck up meta.

-Mark


list: commons-l

from_name: David Blomstrom

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Image Permission (Location Maps)

body:
OK, thanks. I have one more question. I have no problem offering the
proper credit; I just don't want to post a bunch of extra text by every
single image. I'd rather have a clean design, like on the Wikipedia
pages (which don't mention the University of Texas. :)

Therefore, would I be allowed to simply add the word "Credits," linked
to a page that offers all the credit information, including the names of
the individuals you cited in your e-mail, the University of Texas, etc.?

Thank you.

Josh Gerdes wrote:

> Yes, you must include the proper credits, at least for those who
> modified the pictures from the public domain original. According to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:U.S._county_map, those images
> were created by Eric Pierce
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wapcaplet) and James D. Forrester
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester). I believe that in this
> case, crediting the two authors and linking to the Wikipedia article
> should be sufficient. It would also be polite, though not legally
> necessary, to credit the creator of the original public domain image,
> The General Libraries of The University of Texas at Austin
> (http://www.lib.utexas.edu). However, you should probably read
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27_rights_and_obligations
>
> for more details.
>
> Josh Gerdes
> [[en:User:JoshG]]
>
> David Blomstrom wrote:
>
>> Wikipedia uses a series of location maps on articles about the
>> states, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming - the the map on
>> the right side of the page, just below the state flag and seal.
>>
>> It sounds like I'm allowed to use these images on my website as long
>> as I include the proper credit. The only problem is the credits are
>> awfully long for images this small; I don't want to insert a big
>> credit on each page.
>>
>> So I wanted to ask if these maps belong to Wikipedia in the first
>> place...or are they public domain?
>>
>> Incidentally, I will be linking my pags to Wikipedia; in fact, I
>> already have.
>>
>> Thank you.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
 "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote

... the two most common ways I see third party users do this is to replace
> every instance of 'Wikipedia' with their site's name or they just don't
display
> any templates.

My own working assumption is that writing 'Wikipedia' in Wiki-en's main name
space is only acceptable if replacing it anywhere it occurs by 'this
encyclopedia' makes good sense.

What do others feel about this?  This issue is perhaps overdue a definitive
resolution.

Charles


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 12:03:45 -0800 (PST), Felix Wan
<felixwiki at earthsphere.org> wrote:
>
> Even though I support the creation of a Cantonese Wikipedia, I will oppose
> writing Cantonese in zh: for the obvious pragmatic reason: every literate
> Cantonese speaker can read written Mandarin (standard Chinese), but the
> reverse is not true.  Unfair, but that is the fact of life.
>
> My primary concern is that everyone here understand the facts before
> making the decision.  We live in a real world.  We may deny Cantonese
> Wikipedia due to political, public relation, or pragmatic reasons, but
> let's be honest and state the reason.  If we pretend that it is just
> because the two writing systems are the same, people will come again and
> again to demonstrate that they are different.

The community should nurture folks starting a new Wikipedia in a
different dialect/language, as long as there is a critical mass of
people, articles and interface translation. Again, my main concern has
always been that a wiki with one person can be a lonely place. For
example around SE Asia, I've been evangelizing for the smaller
Wikipedias. Some have been successful, such as Malay, but sadly others
have not, like Khmer (Cambodia).

Let's reframe this discussion not as the desire to "deny" a Wikipedia,
but rather a way to be good stewards of new Wikipedias and launch them
in good stead. The problem I have is in language enthusiasts (ie.
Mark) encouraging the creation of new Wikipedias left-and-right just
to get another notch on the post without regard to sustainability.
Remember this is not an either/or proposition - folks can work on zh:
and work on a dialect-specific version as well.

The honest dialogue is welcome given the bizarre sensational comments
such as "eventually under increasing pressure from linguistic
imperialists like Andrew, local Chinese vernaculars will be gone
completely."

As there are five Chinese dialects represented among my immediate
relatives, I got a chuckle out of it.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Jocelyn Raterta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
Hi! I'm Jaco, from the Philippines. I want to request a wikipedia in the Ivatan language. It is spoken in Batanes, the northernmost province in the Phils and personally I speak it. I could help you if you want to.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'


body:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 14:31:09 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> So this means you believe a Cantonese Wikipedia will have no users and
> will not be sustainable?
>
> You're sure changing your tune fast. A minute ago, it was "My pet
> project will lose resources!!!", but when you saw that didn't go over
> too well with anybody you change it to "I feel deeply for these
> people, and my primary concern is that they'll be lonely and I think
> their minds are being controlled by Mark."

As usual, wild exaggerations by Mark. Please find a quote or a pointer
to anything I've said that resembles "My pet project will lose
resources!!!"  It's getting tired.

> If I recall correctly, zh.wikipedia's history does not involve having
> the interface translated and a critical mass of people and articles
> /before/ the creation of the subdomain, and even when articles started
> to be created this was hardly true at first.

I think it was a pretty safe bet that the language of 1 billion
speakers would be started sooner than later. Also, zh: was started in
October 2002 by Mountain who drove the development of Unicode support
in Wikipedia. So this is beyond critical mass - it was leadership in
the whole WP project.

> And just because you have relatives who speak five Chinese dialects
> doesn't mean you can't be a linguistic imperialist.

<groan>

> Stalin, the master of linguistic imperialism, came from a
> Georgian-speaking family.

You're on the verge of realizing Godwin's Law.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Toki Pona

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>> I'm not looking to launch a Toki Pona Wikipedia (yet), but all this
>> discussion of various languages, their (non)widespread use, and so on
>> has raised in my mind some questions.  First off, I was wondering if
>> anyone has any experience or data that gives an idea of how widespread
>> Toki Pona use is, and secondly, I was wondering if there would be any
>> particular opposition to a Toki Pona Wikipedia if (as a purely
>> hypothetical example) five or six fluent speakers raised the issue here.
>
>
> I assume you're new here; a Toki Pona Wikipedia was established last
> year, and after some months and much discussion was moved to Wikicities:
> http://tokipona.wikicities.com/

Holy cow.  Amazing.

Err, yes.  I'm new here.  Mea culpa, and thanks for the info.

--
Chad


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Anyone can accidently get caught up in the 3-revert net as it is now
written. Best to take it as an opportunity to take a brief vacation. The
general prevalence of edit wars in certain areas was what brought this
rather rough cut rule on. It occasionally catches up the unwary and the
innocent. No sense of blame or guilt is appropriate.

Fred

> From: "Bill Konrad" <bkonrad123 at sbcglobal.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 10:04:51 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] More thoughts on the 3-revert rule
>
> I was blocked yesterday for violating the 3RR. I don't fault Geni for doing
> this, as it was within the letter of the 3RR. However, I have questions
> about what the intent of the rule is. Is the rule intended as punishment of
> any technical violation of 3RR, even where the conflict causing the reverts
> has been resolved? Or is it supposed to be a mechanism for putting an end
> (or at least a cease-fire) to active edit wars?
>
> Here's the short version, from my perspective. Some users figured out a way
> to use templates to produce a table of contents for categories. At Wikipedia
> talk:Categorization, this was generally seen as a very good thing for
> navigating large categories (and indeed may minimize some of the rationale
> for creating certain types of sub-categories merely to reduce the size of
> the parent category). Netoholic took it upon himself to "improve" the
> templates without much in the way of explanation about what he was doing. I
> reverted his changes as he seemed to be the only person who saw any problem
> and and a few other persons also questioned the changes he was attempting to
> impose. It was only after a few set of reversions that it finally came out
> that there are dramatic difference in the way that IE and Firefox display
> the templates. After understanding just how dramatic the differences are, I
> withdrew my objections to Netoholic's change. This was at 19:58, Feb 11,
> 2005. The last reversion I made was at 15:45, Feb 11, 2005.
>
> However, before this, at 16:17, Feb 11, 2005, Netoholic had filed a
> complaint about me on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. I don't
> dispute that I reverted four times to the same version (while Netoholic
> reverted twice on two separate times to somewhat different versions). Since
> I generally avoid making multiple reversions, I simply was not paying that
> close attention to the revert rule and the timing of my reverts -- I was
> reacting to what appeared to be Netoholic unilaterally imposing changes,
> without adequately explaining the rationale and despite questions and
> opposition to his changes. Basically, it looked as though Netoholic was the
> only person who saw a problem with the templates and was not especially
> effective in explaining what he saw as the problem. I and others saw
> Netoholic's changes as clearly inferior (and indeed the second set of
> changes made the template nearly unusable in Firefox), so I do not feel any
> compunction about reverting these changes. Once it became clear just how
> dramatic the differences between IE and Firefox were, I agreed that one of
> Netoholic's earlier versions was the best choice as being least problematic
> in both browsers. So that was the end of the reversions. No more edit war.
>
> However, the block was not imposed until 02:23, 12 Feb 2005, some several
> hours after the end of any disagreement between me and Netoholic.
>
> So to my mind, this raises some questions -- Should the current state of the
> "edit war" be taken into account when imposing a block for violation of 3RR?
> If whatever dispute was at the root of the reversion has been resolved, does
> it make sense to impose a block as punishment for earlier violations (and
> especially as this was not a case of a repeat edit warrior who perhaps might
> need a slap on the hands as a reminder)? I mean, I certainly don't see
> myself as an edit warrior, and I'd be very surprised if anyone else saw me
> as such.
>
> Bkonrad
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons transfer script

body:
Magnus Manske schrieb:
> What follows is the script asked for on [1]. Well, mostly. As this is my
> very first Python script that actually performs a useful function, I
> couldn't get it to work as a logged-in user. Maybe someone else has
> better luck. I'm too tired now.

Well, reinventing the wheel seems to be a common problem. :) You might
just head over to the pywikipedia bot project at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/ and use the
imagetransfer.py bot for this task...

Ciao, Michael.


from_name: Bill Konrad

subject: [WikiEN-l] More thoughts on the 3-revert rule

body:
I was blocked yesterday for violating the 3RR. I don't fault Geni for doing
this, as it was within the letter of the 3RR. However, I have questions
about what the intent of the rule is. Is the rule intended as punishment of
any technical violation of 3RR, even where the conflict causing the reverts
has been resolved? Or is it supposed to be a mechanism for putting an end
(or at least a cease-fire) to active edit wars?

Here's the short version, from my perspective. Some users figured out a way
to use templates to produce a table of contents for categories. At Wikipedia
talk:Categorization, this was generally seen as a very good thing for
navigating large categories (and indeed may minimize some of the rationale
for creating certain types of sub-categories merely to reduce the size of
the parent category). Netoholic took it upon himself to "improve" the
templates without much in the way of explanation about what he was doing. I
reverted his changes as he seemed to be the only person who saw any problem
and and a few other persons also questioned the changes he was attempting to
impose. It was only after a few set of reversions that it finally came out
that there are dramatic difference in the way that IE and Firefox display
the templates. After understanding just how dramatic the differences are, I
withdrew my objections to Netoholic's change. This was at 19:58, Feb 11,
2005. The last reversion I made was at 15:45, Feb 11, 2005.

However, before this, at 16:17, Feb 11, 2005, Netoholic had filed a
complaint about me on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR. I don't
dispute that I reverted four times to the same version (while Netoholic
reverted twice on two separate times to somewhat different versions). Since
I generally avoid making multiple reversions, I simply was not paying that
close attention to the revert rule and the timing of my reverts -- I was
reacting to what appeared to be Netoholic unilaterally imposing changes,
without adequately explaining the rationale and despite questions and
opposition to his changes. Basically, it looked as though Netoholic was the
only person who saw a problem with the templates and was not especially
effective in explaining what he saw as the problem. I and others saw
Netoholic's changes as clearly inferior (and indeed the second set of
changes made the template nearly unusable in Firefox), so I do not feel any
compunction about reverting these changes. Once it became clear just how
dramatic the differences between IE and Firefox were, I agreed that one of
Netoholic's earlier versions was the best choice as being least problematic
in both browsers. So that was the end of the reversions. No more edit war.

However, the block was not imposed until 02:23, 12 Feb 2005, some several
hours after the end of any disagreement between me and Netoholic.

So to my mind, this raises some questions -- Should the current state of the
"edit war" be taken into account when imposing a block for violation of 3RR?
If whatever dispute was at the root of the reversion has been resolved, does
it make sense to impose a block as punishment for earlier violations (and
especially as this was not a case of a repeat edit warrior who perhaps might
need a slap on the hands as a reminder)? I mean, I certainly don't see
myself as an edit warrior, and I'd be very surprised if anyone else saw me
as such.

Bkonrad


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked ISP proxy

body:
RickK has blocked 62.255.64.9, a major UK ISP web proxy (NTL), because of
vandalism.  I can't edit, and cannot contact RickK by email.  He's in
California anyway so I suspect he's sleeping.
Could someone please unblock this proxy to see if the vandal has given up?
 I'll monitor it, and if he comes back I'll report it to
[[Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]].


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [[ Image + Wikilink ]] - how to link both an image and
 a text to the wiki text page ?

body:
A small image and a text ....
HOW-TO  link both to the text page and not to the small image page ?

I want to write in wikisyntax something equivalent to
* foo1text
so that a small image and a text are both linked to the text page and
not to the small image page.

When I write

* [[Image:foo2.png]] [[foo1|foo1text]]  it does not work, because I got
two different links, one to the image wiki page, one to foo1.

More logical would be

* [[ foo1 | [[Image:foo2.png]] foo1text ]]

the image link seen as part of the alternate text for the page foo1,
which is the target, but this doesn't work either.

Please can anyone assist ?
Tom


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked ISP proxy

body:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 10:37:05 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> RickK has blocked 62.255.64.9, a major UK ISP web proxy (NTL), because of
> vandalism.

This is now unblocked, and the user talk page has
{{Template:Sharedip|[[NTL]]}} to warn other admins of the consequences
of blocking the IP.

Angela.


from_name: Hannes Delago

subject: AW: [Wikitech-l] what happened to en db download?

body:
Brion wrote >>  The download page script is a little quirky and paranoid and doesn't listed them because they don't appear in the
checksum file. <<

Brion, any chance to include the imagelinks table into the dump script, too?

Regards
  Hannes.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
At 07:58 PM 2/11/2005 -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The point is that the current templates are often instructions to editors.
>
>That is what talk pages and edit comments are for.

Hear hear. Wikimedia has tons of wonderful features for assisting editors,
but the actual text of the article that we're using them to write is
intended primarily for _readers'_ benefit IMO. The "meta" stuff should be
hidden behind-the-scenes wherever humanly possible.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.7 - Release Date: 2/10/2005


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Commons transfer script

body:
Actually, for the current issue, the bot to use from the
pywikipediabot-project would be upload.py with the -wiki option. For
example:
"upload.py -lang:commons -wiki:en Imagename.png"

imagetransfer.py is meant in case you have not yet found the image,
but have an article to which you want to add the image which does have
interwiki-links. It then looks for an image in the interwiki-linked
pages.

Andre Engels

> Well, reinventing the wheel seems to be a common problem. :) You might
> just head over to the pywikipedia bot project at
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/ and use the
> imagetransfer.py bot for this task...


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked ISP proxy

body:
I'm very sorry.  Is there somebody who can put together a list of all of these major proxies?

RickK

Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
RickK has blocked 62.255.64.9, a major UK ISP web proxy (NTL), because of
vandalism. I can't edit, and cannot contact RickK by email. He's in
California anyway so I suspect he's sleeping.
Could someone please unblock this proxy to see if the vandal has given up?
I'll monitor it, and if he comes back I'll report it to
[[Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress]].

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] I can't get into Wikipedia.

body:
Every attempt gives me the IE page which says, "The page cannot be displayed".

Coming in via www.wikipedia.org lets me come up with the international page, but clicking on English doesn't help, and the Wikipedia logo doesn't display.

Any explanation as to what is going on?

RickK

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


from_name: NSK

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [[ Image + Wikilink ]] - how to link both an image
	and a text to the wiki text page ?

body:
On Saturday 12 February 2005 11:42, Thomas Gries wrote:
> A small image and a text ....
> HOW-TO  link both to the text page and not to the small image page ?

I would use this syntax:

[http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron
http://www.wikinerds.org/img/amd/amd.jpg]<br />[http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron
Click here to learn about the greatest CPU ever created]

If you encounter any problems please let us know.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rumours

body:
I have just moved one 'rumour' of a proof off [[Riemann hypothesis]].

I'm not sure quite what the treatment should be - say by analogy with [[cold
fusion]]. This is not really a NPOV difficulty, but about encyclopedic
nature.  I suppose I have tended to duck this sort of issue in the past.

Well, if we have Wikinews, scientific rumours can be news.  After some
length of time, a rumour of some breakthrough that gets no further support
becomes stale and ... well, and what?

Options are

-just to drop rumours after a few months
-not to feature them in the first place
-create separate 'rumours' pages where there seems to be a need.

I feel the first, if vague, is probably best.. If there was a sound basis in
the first place for mentioning it, a rumour can be moved to a talk page when
it becomes more apparent that it was optimistically slanted.

Not reporting any unconfirmed stuff looks too rigid to me.  If the criterion
were publication in a refereed journal, that could take forever, in
wikitime.

The trouble with separate pages is that attention-seekers will pick up on
them, and self-promoting rumours are the bane of academic life.

Charles

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rumours

body:
Charles Matthews said:
> Options are
>
> -just to drop rumours after a few months
> -not to feature them in the first place
> -create separate 'rumours' pages where there seems to be a need.

In mathematics, ignore rumors.  Mathematics cranks are ten-a-penny.  If a
prominent mathematician (tenured professor, say) says ''he'' has
personally seen and checked a proof, that is encyclopedic.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya language request

body:
Jocelyn Raterta said:
> Hi! I'm Jaco, from the Philippines. I want to request a wikipedia in
> the Ivatan language. It is spoken in Batanes, the northernmost province
> in the Phils and personally I speak it. I could help you if you want
> to.

How many fellow-speakers have volunteered to help you to produce this
Wikipedia in the Ivatan language?


body:
Delirium wrote:
> I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation
> activities until this is resolved.  In particular, multiple reverts with
> no edit summaries from Jimbo

Jimbo made one revert and I explained to Yann by email why the page was locked.

> and locking pages after removing information is no way to run a Wiki.

The page was locked before that, and was done for reasons of vandalism.

Anthere  wrote:

> However, the article posted on meta
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_hosting) is not an official
> statement by the board in any way. Angela very likely posted it to
> clarify questions asked by editors on the irc channels.

I wrote it after it was being asked about on the mailing list. I
thought it was a better idea to have something there as opposed to
nothing but rumors on IRC. The page basically says nothing that wasn't
already on the mailing list.

> I personally discovered the page only
> the next day, following the link from the /. article.

The page was mentioned on this mailing list before it was on Slashdot.

> The fact
> that a board member can post something casually on meta to inform
> editors, and this post is considered a board official announcement...

I believe the fact that a board member did it is irrelevant. Nowhere
this page is reported mentions that it was written by me. In fact,
off-IRC, this is the first time it's been said that I wrote the page.
I doubt, therefore, that the reporters thinking of it as official are
basing this view on who wrote it. Most people wouldn't know to check
the page history. It wouldn't surprise me if they'd have seen any page
on meta as official, regardless of authorship.

> - Did the board wish to make a public announcement ?

No. It would have been phrased as an announcement if that had been the case.

> - If it had done so, would it have been done on meta ?

No. Official things should go on the foundation wiki.

> - Is there a difference between family talk on irc only available on
> editors logs, and statement on a wiki page which can be linked by
> everyone in the world ?

No. Much of the information reported on the mailing list and Slashdot
came from IRC anyway.

> - Does an official non official public statement hurt the likelihood of
> the deal or not ?

Perhaps Jimbo can answer that since he's been in contact with them
since the Slashdot article.

> - Now that most editors consider it official, what if the other board
> members do not fully agree with it ?

What exactly do you not agree with?

> - Now that bloggers and newspapers consider it official, does the
> Foundation have a right to "control" what appears to be official
> statement by itself ?

Perhaps adding a "this is not official" notice would be better?

> All what is above is only my opinion, not an official statement by the
> Foundation :-)

Ditto.

Angela.


from_name: Anthere

body:
Mark,

I understand extremely well what you are saying. And I fully understand
your concerns with regards to the freedom any editor should benefit on
meta. I fully support this view as well.

Allow me to explain to you a little bit more the current situation.

First, Wikimedia Foundation is discussing the possibility of a deal with
Google. However, the exact terms of the "current" proposal have not been
publicly disclosed. There has been no official statement with regards
exact terms either by WMF, nor by Google.

Second, since we, editors of Wikimedia projects as well as Jimbo
himself, tend to discuss things a lot together, as we work very hard to
reach consensus and keep the community informed, basic information was
provided to editors and developers. Hence, there was a trend to inform
editors of the existence of the discussion and of the plan to meet
Google representatives.

Third, while it is obvious to us, wikipedians, that any individual wiki
edit does involve only the responsability and opinion of its author,
unless otherwise mentionned, it is clearly not obvious at all for people
outside our little circle.
As is, the board report posted here by Angela is clearly an official
report from the board
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-February/002187.html).
However, the article posted on meta
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Google_hosting) is not an official
statement by the board in any way. Angela very likely posted it to
clarify questions asked by editors on the irc channels. There is
absolutely nothing wrong in this. I personally discovered the page only
the next day, following the link from the /. article. So I read this
page after most bloggers.

Does it matter ?
Well, we actually face something entirely new for Wikipedia. The fact
that a board member can post something casually on meta to inform
editors, and this post is considered a board official announcement, and
relayed by many bloggers or newspapers as an official statement.

The issue is basically not whether the content is accurate or not, or
complete or not.

The issues are rather :
- Did the board wish to make a public announcement ?
- If it had done so, would it have been done on meta ?
- Is there a difference between family talk on irc only available on
editors logs, and statement on a wiki page which can be linked by
everyone in the world ?
- Does an official non official public statement hurt the likelyhood of
the deal or not ?
- Now that most editors consider it official, what if the other board
members do not fully agree with it ?

And mostly :

- Now that bloggers and newspapers consider it official, does the
Foundation have a right to "control" what appears to be official
statement by itself ?

To the last question, I definitly answer yes. And I support Mav
protecting the page in question.

And last point

- How are such events where casual discussions are reported as official
by public worldwide media gonna impact the future transparency of
decision making which "could be" a little bit sensible ?

So... please Mark, before complaining of censorship (you may absolutely
open a parallel page and comment on the talk page), I will ask you to
carefully consider whether you think it proper that a page called by a
dozen of major newspapers or blogs and presented as an official page,
may be edited by anyone.

Someone suggested that I redirect the page to wikimediafoundation.org,
but if I had done so, the talk page would not have been available any
more. So, I discarded that proposition.

I'll also remind that Jimbo, Angela and I are also individuals, and that
in most cases, what we say reflect our own opinion, rather than the
collective opinion of the board.

All what is above is only my opinion, not an official statement by the
Foundation :-)

Anthere

Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Jimbo removed the information added by Yann, and I will ask you not to
>> add things which are rumors from the Internet, but will appear
>> official as soon as WE report them.
>
>
> I'm not sure I will continue to participate in Wikimedia Foundation
> activities until this is resolved.  In particular, multiple reverts with
> no edit summaries from Jimbo, and locking pages after removing
> information is no way to run a Wiki.  Meta is a place where any user may
> place information---you guys can censor wikimediafoundation.org if you
> want, but please don't fuck up meta.
>
> -Mark


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 12:22:49 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 12 February 2005 11:42, Thomas Gries wrote:
> > A small image and a text ....
> > HOW-TO  link both to the text page and not to the small image page ?
>
> I would use this syntax:
>
> [http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron
> http://www.wikinerds.org/img/amd/amd.jpg]<br />[http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron
> Click here to learn about the greatest CPU ever created]

Note that this only works with the option to display image URLs as
inline images switched on ($wgAllowExternalImages=true, I think). This
is a common way of using images in small wikis, but was superceded by
the upload-and-use-internally system on Wikipedia because there are
obviously increased risks of vandalism and copyright issues if images
from any source can be used.

Linking the image to somewhere other than the description page is bug
539 [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=539], for which I
made a rough patch ages ago, but was then stalled by the complication
that some link to the description page was [arguably] still needed.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
--- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> At 07:58 PM 2/11/2005 -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> >That is what talk pages and edit comments are for.
>
> Hear hear. Wikimedia has tons of wonderful features for assisting editors,
> but the actual text of the article that we're using them to write is
> intended primarily for _readers'_ benefit IMO. The "meta" stuff should be
> hidden behind-the-scenes wherever humanly possible.

Then could you or anybody else who cares about this go to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Moving_tags_to_talk_pages.3F
and comment?

My moving campaign has brought this to a head and may result in a policy one
way or the other.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?

body:
NSK wrote:

>On Friday 11 February 2005 02:37, Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>Showing ads for, for example, anti-patent groups, gives the idea that
>>Wikipedia supports these groups.
>>
>>
>There are anti-smoking, education, science/math or anti-discrimination ads,
>too. I think it would be safe to show these ads.
>
Even in this "safe" group there could be difficulties.  Surely, there
must be some smokers in the membership.  Others may have problems with
the role of commercial enterprises in education.  The gay marriage issue
has two sides that look at discrimination in very different issues.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ivatan ISO 639: ivv

body:
Jocelyn Raterta wrote:

>Hi! I'm Jaco, from the Philippines. I want to request a wikipedia in the Ivatan language. It is spoken in Batanes, the northernmost province in the Phils and personally I speak it. I could help you if you want to.
>
To my utter amazement I find somethng in the Re: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya
language request threat something that is of intrest. Ivatan has a
ISO-639 code of ivv. It is in the to published part. As mentioned
earlier, this is a code that will only be used for the Ivatan language.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] More template madness - input needed

body:
A general policy discussion has started about the use of self-referential
templates in the main namespace (such as {{expand}} or {{cleanup}}).
Specifically, we are talking about whether or not the use of HTML comments
and/or talk pages are a better place for that since these types of messages are
directed primarily toward writers not readers (also, using too many of these
templates makes our content harder for third parties to use).

Please comment here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages#Moving_templates_to_talk_pages

-- mav

__________________________________
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Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
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from_name: Mark Pellegrini

body:
The three revert rule was not meant to be applied mechanically for every
person who violates the rule - in fact, the phrasing (which I wrote) makes this
clear. Admins are expected to use their discretion when blocking people for
violating it, and SHOULD NOT be blocking every person who reverts three times.

Just my 2 cents.

--Mark


body:
Rowan Collins schrieb:

>[...] Linking the image to somewhere other than the description page is bug
>539 [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=539], for which I
>made a rough patch ages ago, but was then stalled by the complication
>that some link to the description page was [arguably] still needed.
>
Rowan and NSK: thanks for your useful answers.
The http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=539 is exactly what I
want (to read, to have, to know)
Tom (Wikinaut)


body:
Angela a ?crit:

>>I personally discovered the page only
>>the next day, following the link from the /. article.
>
>
> The page was mentioned on this mailing list before it was on Slashdot.

Still, I discovered /. before I read all the mails on the ml :-)
I read the mailing lists through gname, so only from home and not all
the time.
Plus there is a time discrepancy between the moment a mail is posted and
it appears on gname.
So, no sorry, I discovered it through /. :-)
Either way, it does not matter, I just meant to clarify that this was
not an official statement.

>>- Did the board wish to make a public announcement ?
>
>
> No. It would have been phrased as an announcement if that had been the case.
>
>
>>- If it had done so, would it have been done on meta ?
>
>
> No. Official things should go on the foundation wiki.
>
>
>>- Is there a difference between family talk on irc only available on
>>editors logs, and statement on a wiki page which can be linked by
>>everyone in the world ?
>
>
> No. Much of the information reported on the mailing list and Slashdot
> came from IRC anyway.

Yes.
This is exactly what I explained to Mark.

However, this is not what the outside world understand, because they
just do not work as we do.

Look at a few announcements :

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/news/40554.html
"The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates the
Wikipedia project among others, said Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Latest News
about Google has offered to host part of the free encyclopedia's content. "

or

"The foundation posted a short announcement on its Web site, which said
that the terms (as yet undisclosed) were being considered by the
Wikimedia board and that the group would meet with Google sometime in
March."

with a link the page you created.

According to this journalist, what you posted (and that could have been
posted by any of us, or even an anonymous person) was interpretated by
"The foundation posted".

But the Foundation did not posted, you did.

Several bloggers just interpret the page the same way as this journal does.
The page casually created on meta is said an official announcement.
It is not.

I do not say it is critical in any way.

But that mean what any of us say may be interpretated as "official", and
  if this is seen official, then it is logical at least that it is
protected.

Otherwise, it should just be deleted.

>>- Now that most editors consider it official, what if the other board
>>members do not fully agree with it ?
>
>
> What exactly do you not agree with?

I was asked to keep details confidential.

>>- Now that bloggers and newspapers consider it official, does the
>>Foundation have a right to "control" what appears to be official
>>statement by itself ?
>
>
> Perhaps adding a "this is not official" notice would be better?

This is too late I fear :-)
But why not ?

But Angela, in any cases, I think we have to think about this for the
future.

>>All what is above is only my opinion, not an official statement by the
>>Foundation :-)
>
>
> Ditto.
>
> Angela.

I must insist I do not criticize you in any way for setting up that
page. The only points which concerns me in the long term are
1) that meta is used as a source of official news which are not and
2) that non official news transformed in official news should be
protected without being called censorship.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Foundation-l] Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers to Wikipedia

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

Daniel Mayer schrieb:
| --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
|
|>What'd be *really* great is if they also donated a working search
|>feature. =D
|
|
| Only if it is free software.

Well, they *could* feed their normal search service the data from a DB
slave located at the Google farm. That would be (almost) live.

Then, they could let us grab the google search results via SOAP and
display them as our own, with a little "search powered by google" maybe.

Magnus
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: Delirium

body:
Anthere wrote:

> [some stuff]

Thanks for the reply; it does seem reasonable enough.  I'm pretty
uncomfortable with any sort of secrecy, but I'm not going to argue that
it's absolutely unallowable in all cases.  I'm also a bit uncomfortable
with large-budget nonprofit organizations to begin with, especially
those with paid employees, and Wikimedia is starting to creep up into
that range, so there seem to be some basic philosophical differences in
the current direction of the organization and the sort of organization
I'd prefer to support.

-Mark


from_name: Pablo Saratxaga

body:
Kaixo!

On Fri, Feb 11, 2005 at 06:41:41PM +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
> As far as I understand, the current Wikipedia is supposed to be a
> _Chinese_ one, not a _Mandarin_ one.

Just as the Spanish one is supposed to be a Spanish one and not
a Castillian one?
But of course articles in Catalan, Galician or Basque won't be
welcome on es:, despite those are also languages of Spain.
That's fine, as ca:, gl: and eu: do exist.

--
Ki ?a vos v?ye b?n,
Pablo Saratxaga

http://chanae.walon.org/pablo/		PGP Key available, key ID: 0xD9B85466
[you can write me in Walloon, Spanish, French, English, Catalan or Esperanto]
[min povas skribi en valona, esperanta, angla aux latinidaj lingvoj]
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body:
On Saturday 12 February 2005 15:41, Rowan Collins wrote:
> Note that this only works with the option to display image URLs as
> inline images switched on ($wgAllowExternalImages=true, I think). This
> is a common way of using images in small wikis, but was superceded by
> the upload-and-use-internally system on Wikipedia because there are
> obviously increased risks of vandalism and copyright issues if images
> from any source can be used.

I recently had this problem on http://jnana.wikinerds.org and I was trying to
figure out what to do. I want to be able to show inline images stored on my
site, but not from external sites. Is it possible? Could it be implemented on
the Apache level somehow?

> Linking the image to somewhere other than the description page is bug
> 539 [http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=539], for which I
> made a rough patch ages ago, but was then stalled by the complication
> that some link to the description page was [arguably] still needed.

Is it possible to implement this patch as a module/extension, or as a
preference in LocalSettings.php ?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


body:
On Saturday 12 February 2005 16:25, Magnus Manske wrote:
> Well, they *could* feed their normal search service the data from a DB
> slave located at the Google farm. That would be (almost) live.

Perhaps you should ask them to donate you a Google Mini:
http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Stefan Groschupf

subject: [Wikitech-l] java based format parser

body:
Hi there,

may someone know if there is a java based parser for the wikimedia
formating language.
I would love to transform an article into html and transfer for example
[image:xxx] to <img src... etc.
I found the lucene project in the cvs but this only cleanup the strings.

Or may someone can give me a hint where I can found a full
documentation of the allowed annontations since the help pages wasn'
available or at least wasn't complete.

Thanks for any hints.
Stefan


body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia material is GFDL. Wikimedia Foundation can and should employ
> whatever fundraising methods it thinks are optimal.  Anybody who doesn't
> like the methods still gets to use the product on their own fork.  Free as
> in speech.

This is not going to be an issue so long as donations of both money and hosting
keep us running. So far this has been the case - it just looks like we will
have to pay more attention to grants and hosting offers in the future than we
have been.

In fact one of the most remarkable things about Wikipedia and her sister
projects is the fact that they *fully* exist due to the good will and
generosity of the people who use them and the people who just admire them.

But yes - the choice between Wikipedia with ads and no Wikipedia is a
no-brainer for everybody except for the most ardent anti-capitalistic zealots.
Making that choice, however, does not at all seem to be something we need worry
about in the foreseeable future.

-- mav (just talking for himself - as always unless stated otherwise)

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from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo in Ossetian for the new Ossetic Wikipedia

body:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 20:32:25 +0200, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:

> - Why there is still no Ossetian logo in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages. Is it hard task to create a
> logo for a new language Wikipedia? Who will do it?

I've created one, which should be visible on meta: momentarily.

Regards,

Steve


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Saturday, February 12, 2005 10:54 AM, commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org <>
wrote:

[Re-ordered]

> Josh Gerdes wrote:
>
> > David Blomstrom wrote:
> >
> > > Wikipedia uses a series of location maps on articles about the
> > > states, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming - the the map on
> > > the right side of the page, just below the state flag and seal.
> > >
> > > It sounds like I'm allowed to use these images on my website as
> > > long as I include the proper credit. The only problem is the
> > > credits are awfully long for images this small; I don't want to
> > > insert a big credit on each page.
> > >
> > > So I wanted to ask if these maps belong to Wikipedia in the first
> > > place...or are they public domain?
> > >
> > > Incidentally, I will be linking my pags to Wikipedia; in fact, I
> > > already have.
> > >
> > > Thank you.
> >
> > Yes, you must include the proper credits, at least for those who
> > modified the pictures from the public domain original. According to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:U.S._county_map, those
> > images were created by Eric Pierce
> > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wapcaplet) and James D.
> > Forrester (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester). I
> > believe that in this case, crediting the two authors and linking to
> > the Wikipedia article should be sufficient. It would also be
> > polite, though not legally necessary, to credit the creator of the
> > original public domain image, The General Libraries of The
> > University of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu). However,
> > you should probably read
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27_rig
> > hts_and_obligations
> >
> > for more details.
> >
> > Josh Gerdes
> > [[en:User:JoshG]]
>
> OK, thanks. I have one more question. I have no problem offering the
> proper credit; I just don't want to post a bunch of extra
> text by every
> single image. I'd rather have a clean design, like on the Wikipedia
> pages (which don't mention the University of Texas. :)
>
> Therefore, would I be allowed to simply add the word "Credits," linked
> to a page that offers all the credit information, including
> the names of
> the individuals you cited in your e-mail, the University of
> Texas, etc.?
>
> Thank you.
>

BTW, I have released my contributions to the US-State images under the
Creative Commons Attribution and Attribution with Share-Alike licences,
second versions and above, after being asked to by Ram-man. Not sure about
Eric, however, and I really don't have any idea as to which ones I created
and which of them did he, though I did do final touch-ups to all 3300-odd
ones. Thus you can use at least some of them under the CC-BY or CC-BY-SA,
instead of GFDL, if that's easier.

HTH.

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Bill Konrad wrote

>Or is it supposed to be a mechanism for putting an end
> (or at least a cease-fire) to active edit wars?

3RR is there because the community (in the end) came to support it.  Edit
warring 'for its own sake' is disliked.  The fact that it may sometimes
catch up people who then are compelled to have a time out is not, I think,
considered a major disadvantage.  It lends itself to getting a little
perspective.  In your case, your degree of perspective can't seriously be
faulted, so it might well seem superfluous.

Charles


from_name: Sulev Iva

body:
Dear friends,

- Why there is still no Ossetian logo in http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages. Is it hard task to create a
logo for a new language Wikipedia? Who will do it?
- Who knows when the Ossetian Wikipedia will be created?

Sulev

6.02.2005 16:57:07, "V. Ivanov" <amikeco at gmail.com> kirot':

>Hi all,
>
>Could someone create the standard logo for the new Ossetian/Ossetic
>Wikipedia to be created?
>
>The text is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_in_other_languages
>already: see Ossetian (os) there. It's mostly Russian Cyrillic with
>ligued "ae" of Dansk (æ).
>
>Sl. Ivanov
>--
>Esperu cxiam!
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] How dated is that Stormfront conversation?

body:
Hi Arno, it was posted on a number of white supremacist websites, not
just Stormfront, and quite recently: a couple of postings I'm aware of
were around Feb 2.

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 09:21:12 +0600, Arno M <redgum46 at lycos.com> wrote:
> It does raise one question - how dated is that entire Stormfront chat page?


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autofellatio - NO to that image

body:
Arno M wrote:
> That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.

Indeed.

The primary reason I'm not deleting it outright is that I trust the
community to make the right decision here.  But the right decision is
clear, and I don't consider this even remotely close to a borderline
case.

The real issue here is *not* about prudishness, nor about censorship.
I am neither a prude nor a censor.  The real issue here is about
*editorial quality*.  The picture is just awful, aesthetically awful,
with far more "shock value" than educational value (of which it has
close to zero).

Furthermore, since it is almost certainly a copyright violation, it
needs to go away on those grounds alone.

(Before anyone says "fair use" remember that I insist that we only use
fair use images in some fairly limited circumstances.  This case clear
does not rise to that level.)

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
sannse wrote:
> More opinions would be welcome at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autofellatio#Poll:_Should_the_image_be_shown_inline.2C_or_as_a_link.3F

I have contributed to this debate by removing the image from the page
for now, and posting a comment as to why I did it.

"Note: I have removed the image from the page, and I suggest that it
remain so for now. This poll should continue to run in order to allow
for full expression of opinion on this complex topic, but in the
meantime showing such a photo absent overwhelming community support is
unhelpful. I invite people to think carefully about this photo in the
context of an overall view of our charitable, humanitarian,
educational mission, and not be distracted by arguments about
censorship and prudishness, which are very much beside the point
here. --Jimbo Wales 05:24, 13 Feb 2005 (UTC)"

In my opinion, the community has unfortunately allowed itself to be
trolled.  The photo is terrible.

We went through this with 'clitoris'.  We used to have a photo there
which was terrible and in poor taste.  Now we have an image which is
educational in style.

We Do NoT AlLoW PeOpLe To TyPe LiKe ThIs in wikipedia.  It hurts the
eyes on purely aesthetic and editorial grounds which have nothing to
do with prudishness or censorship.

The poll (in which I have not voted) is currently 56-42, which tells
me that we are moving in the right direction.  Of course, even when
the image is "shown as a link", it is going to be deleted anyway,
because it's almost certainly a copyvio.

--Jimbo


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject: [Foundation-l] Including an STV voting system with MediaWiki

body:
With the recent votes on the Wikinews logo it occurred to me how much
better it would be if we could do such votes using a proportional
preference voting system like STV (Single Transferable Vote). I had a
look around and noticed that there is at least one web browser-based
STV counting software package out there which is open source and
written in PHP.

It would be interesting to see if we could adapt this for use in
MediaWiki to handle inputs from multiple users over multiple days.

http://www.demochoice.org/

Christiaan


from_name: Thomas Whaples

body:
Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> What worries me is that the final say rests with a small-but-trusted
> group of individuals, not with the community. This is the trouble of
> our switch from a complete democracy to a not-so-representative
> democracy (only two of the board members were elected) - we have to
> trust that these people will be gentle with our future.

I think you're idealizing the 'primeval' state of Wikipedia. Wikipedia, as
a web site (with its attendant collection of computers, DNS registrations,
and other unique features) was never owned or operated by some sort of
collective you could describe as a 'complete democracy'. It was run by
Jimbo Wales, and he had the final say in everything- he was just nice
enough to defer to the community in most matters. If Google had proposed a
deal with Wikipedia before the WMF was founded, then the final say would
rest with him just as much as it currently rests with the Board of
Trustees of the Wikimedia foundation.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Google Donating Bandwidth and Servers to
	Wikipedia

body:
Yann Forget wrote:
> Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing list, not
> "rumors from the Internet".

Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet, no? :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

>
> We went through this with 'clitoris'.  We used to
> have a photo there
> which was terrible and in poor taste.  Now we have
> an image which is
> educational in style.
>

Actually no lessons were learnt from the "clitoris"
experience other than to embolden those who wish to
promote the use of such explicit material (hence the
circus over the autofellatio pic). Had the pronciples
been decided then and there, there would have been no
repeat performance. The picture on the [[Clitoris]]
page is of the [[Vulva]] and shows only the area of
location of the glans clitoris, but not the external
part of the clitoris at all. There is already a pic of
the vulva on the [[Vulva]] page so what pray tell is
the educational value of this pic in the context of
the clitoris?

Robert

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from_name: blankfaze

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 09:30:00 +0600, Arno M <redgum46 at lycos.com> wrote:
> I'd like to put my reply to sannse's e-mail here.
>
> That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.
>
> People have the right to go through this wikipedia without being confronted
> with this kind of pornographic material without warning.
>
> It's like you going down a street and having some idiot expose himself
> to you without warning. Would you like that? How about your kids? Would you like them to see this kind of thing without warning or supervision?
>
> I see nothing here inconsistent with freedom of expression. This kind of
> exhibitionist behaviour is anarchy, NOT freedom.
>
> Oh, and for the record and at the risk of raising the hackles of certain
> wikipedians, I also remain very opposed to links to pornographic sites within wikipedia. Autofellatio also has this, as do certain other pages.
>
> This tells minors where to go looking for such material and again, that's
> not on. This is NOT a pornography website referral centre.

Sir, this was by far the dumbest opinion I've heard in a while.
Reminded me why I have such little faith in humanity.

For the millionth time:
WE ARE AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA
WE PRESENT INFORMATION
(an image of autofellatio is, no matter what any idiot argues, information)
WE DO NOT CENSOR INFORMATION

--
! blankfaze
*the good times
are killing me*


from_name: Olivier Bilodeau

body:
>Tony Sidaway said:
>I think it's four times.  Seriously, I think we should be aiming for
>1RR.

What's the difference? It seems most people can be divided in the
following three groups: those that only revert once (or never), those
that revert as many times (3) as they can before breaking the rule, and
those that don't follow rules. Whether it's 1 or 3 or 10, the end result
will be the same. Lowering the count would just result in more
administrator intervention, which is not necessarily a good thing.

-jag123


subject: [Wikitech-l] java based format parser

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

Stefan Groschupf schrieb:
| Hi there,
|
| may someone know if there is a java based parser for the wikimedia
| formating language.
| I would love to transform an article into html and transfer for example
| [image:xxx] to <img src... etc.
| I found the lucene project in the cvs but this only cleanup the strings.

Try the flexbisonparse module from the CVS. It contains a
mostly-finished Bison-generated C parser that turns wiki text into XML.

<cardealer>
It needs a few minor fixes and a total rework of the HTML part, but
otherwise it's in good shape...
</cardealer>

Be sure to write a *real* parser, not "merely" a converter. We have
plenty of those, half-finished. Wiki syntax is really tricky when it
comes to special cases and syntax combinations.

If you can get a "real" parser to work, please let us know.

| Or may someone can give me a hint where I can found a full documentation
| of the allowed annontations since the help pages wasn' available or at
| least wasn't complete.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page

Magnus
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from_name: Bill Konrad

body:
Tony Sidaway said:
> Seriously, I think we should be aiming for 1RR.

I supported the 3 revert-rule with the understanding it would be interpreted
in the sense that Mark Pellegrini expressed earlier, and that I think Jimbo
has also indicated. If the 3RR were to come up for reconsideration in its
present form, I do not think I would continue to support it. And that is not
simply because I fell victim to it (although that has motivated me to
express my concerns presently). It appears to me that it has become fodder
for vindictive qualties in editors, and encourages counting reverts and
playing gamesmanship to the brink rather than assuming good faith, engaging
in civil discourse, and trying to reach consensus. Disagreements are a
natural part of the wiki-editing process and we really should not be
surprised that otherwise well-meaning persons sometimes revert an article
more than three times in a day. However, such disagreements do not
necessarily require punitive actions. If discussion is occurring and
progressing, then what is the real harm if the article is reverted a few
times in the course of a day?

Yes, there is an illusion of fairness in having a black and white rule with
an absolute threshold. However, I do not think such a standard is very
wiki-like in spirit. In my case, because Netoholic saw fit to continue in
pursuing punitive actions against me, even though there was no longer any
disagreement between us, I feel very little good will towards him. While he
had been growing in my estimation through doing much good work lately
(despite some controversies early on), at this point I have absolutely no
respect for him whatsoever as a responsible wiki-editor. While I will
certainly be much more cognizent of the number of reverts in encounters with
him from now on, I am less inclined than ever to give even the slightest
accomodation to him in discussions of substantive matters. Is that petty of
me? Yes, but I am human. Could it have been avoided? You bet. Instead of
continuing to pursue punitive action against (of which I was unware by the
way), if he had simply tried talking with me, either on the article
discussion page or my user page, we could have worked out our differences in
a civil manner and he most likely would have gone up in my estimation. I
mean, I think I am a reasonable person. I may be a little prone to making
smart-ass remarks sometimes, but if someone has a good reason for what they
are doing, I am willing to discuss any objections I might have.  However,
the blind application of the 3RR seems to have obliterated whatever good
will may have been possible between us. It will likely take a very long time
for either of us to be able to assume good faith on the part of the other.
Perhaps I am an exception. Perhaps other people will find that the
mechanistic application of the 3RR actually encourages discussion and
promotes the assumption of good faith. I kinda doubt it though.

Bkonrad


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Progress on wikimedia.com?

body:
Anthere wrote:
> >That sounds not very plausible because to my knowledge the US trademark
> >is a pre-condition to apply for registration in the EU according to the
> >Madrid Agreement.
>
> Well, still... according to Jimbo... this is a fact.

The pre-condition is actually an *application* in the US.  I had the same
misconception as akl for a long time.  There's a Madrid Protocol and a
Madrid Agreement, and they are different.

> I am interested by this agreement ... you mean something can't get
> protected unless it is first protected in the USA ???

There's a concept of a "home" country and "other countries".  If you
are registering first in France, then you can use that to get
protection in the US.  That is, it is because we are based in the US
that the US had to be done first.  (Or maybe not, it's all very
confusing, all I really know is how I did it.)  If you were
registering in France, that would have to go first.  (Or maybe EU-wide
first, I really have no clue.)

> Nod. Jimbo promised to do it within the next few days. If not, we need
> to torture him to do so.

:-)

The stuff is on my desk to give all details.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Goodbye

body:
Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted.  I will therefore remove myself from the project.  Now I'll just have to find some other way to spend my time.

Goodbye.

RickK

---------------------------------
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- blankfaze <blankfaze at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 09:30:00 +0600, Arno M <redgum46 at lycos.com> wrote:
> Sir, this was by far the dumbest opinion I've heard in a while.

That is unreasonably rude.

> Reminded me why I have such little faith in humanity.

That would explain the rudeness.

> For the millionth time:
> WE ARE AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA
> WE PRESENT INFORMATION
> (an image of autofellatio is, no matter what any idiot argues, information)
> WE DO NOT CENSOR INFORMATION

For the first and last time:
We are a general encyclopedia with a general readership. If the informative
value of any piece of info or image is outweighed by its shock or arousal
qualities, then a very valid editorial decision is to remove that peice of info
or image.

And since our audience is a general one, we have to consider the fact that many
people may want to read about this topic (or Goatse.cz for that matter) without
having to see an image of it.

For the great majority of things this distinction is meaningless (and we need
not pander to a puritanical minority who may have a taboo against showing
women's feet or whatever), but for issues where the outside world makes a clear
distinction, such as sexual acts, we can make some reasonable guidelines.

Less controversial things, such as clinical photos of naked people's bits and
pieces or famous works of art that depict nakedness, can and should be
displayed inline in an article *where* appropriate and tasteful.  The reason;
their informative aspects outweigh any shock or arousal value.

These are are fairly subjective things that reasonable people can disagree on.
But some common sense and a good long look at our audience and their needs (not
what we think should be forced on them for their own good) will help guide us.

I also imagine that different Wikipedia language versions will come up with
whatever policies best fit them.

-- mav

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Goodbye

body:
--- Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Jimbo has made it clear that my presence in Wikipedia is not wanted.  I will
> therefore remove myself from the project.  Now I'll just have to find some
> other way to spend my time.

Rick - where did you get this idea from? Please don't go - we need more people
in the trenches. You are a bit abrasive sometimes and I'm pretty sure you don't
like me (not that that is a requirement for anything), but I think the good you
do far outweighs any bad.

If you must take a Wikiholiday, then please make the best of it and hurry back.

:)

-- mav

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>
> If those three were enforced harder - particularly
> verifiability - we
> wouldn't be having most of those problems. One of
> the charges agsinst
> Robert the Bruce in the present arbitration case is
> systematic removal of
> information and references - whether that's found to
> be the case, I think
> it indicates this sort of thing will not be regarded
> well by the Wikipedia
> community.
>

Where there are serious differences of POV there is
bound to be controversy over what is or isn't
considered to scientifically supported (and
verifiable) information and a relevant reference.

If and when the neo-nazi onslaught arrives they will
no doubt offer "peer reviewed" information and
"relevant" references and be prepared to defend them
to the death. They will also (like some other single
issue groups) demand the right to have their opinion
heard and stated (as per one interpretation of NPOV).
If they have planned their assault well and have
learnt from other such POV pushers they will know that
numerous subtle changes, (as opposed to large bold
edits) made by four or five regulars who rotate the
strike (so to speak) and get the "game" of tag-team
reverting off pat, will carry the day.

That will leave Wikipedia with the option of having to
"destroy" the articles in order to "save" the
encyclopaedia ? that or ignore the principle of
assuming good faith and start banning people on the
least suspicion of being ?one of them? ? you know
?cultural revolution? stuff.

It is surely not merely the issue of whether
information or references are removed from articles
(as that would be self evident) but rather whether in
each specific instance where it has occurred (by
whomever) it was justified.

Rubenstein  said: ?But sometimes the reverts have to
do with serious differences over content.  I think
this is an important distinction, because in such
cases having a night, a couple of days, even a week to
cool down, will not change things.  Moreover, our
other dispute-resolution mechanisms (mediation,
arbitration) are not well-suited to resolving
conflicts over content.?

And: ?It is the content that concerns me, and my sense
is that our process for resolving conflicts focusses
on behavior rather than content.  I just do not see
this as useful here.  So what if Jalnet2 limits
himself to two reverts a day?  As long as the content
of his edits are wrong, they just have to be deleted.?

Reverts and deletes are a symptom ? address the cause
and the symptoms disappear.

Robert

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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>> Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing
>> list, not "rumors from the Internet".
>
>
> Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet,
> no? :-)

"You can edit this official board announcement right now!"

Side note: I spent all Saturday sitting in a booth in the Southern
California Linux Expo exhibition hall demoing Wikipedia and talking to
people about just what this crazy thing of ours is. Maybe half the
people I talked to who already knew what we were (and that's most of the
people with the courage to talk to me!) asked about the Google thing...
It's kind of frustrating when "big news" breaks at this stage, because I
don't really have any details to give them and have to hem and haw that
it's still at the early offer stages and there's nothing solid. C'est la
vie... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>> Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing
>> list, not "rumors from the Internet".
>
>
> Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet,
> no? :-)

"You can edit this official board announcement right now!"

Side note: I spent all Saturday sitting in a booth in the Southern
California Linux Expo exhibition hall demoing Wikipedia and talking to
people about just what this crazy thing of ours is. Maybe half the
people I talked to who already knew what we were (and that's most of the
people with the courage to talk to me!) asked about the Google thing...
It's kind of frustrating when "big news" breaks at this stage, because I
don't really have any details to give them and have to hem and haw that
it's still at the early offer stages and there's nothing solid. C'est la
vie... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>> Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing
>> list, not "rumors from the Internet".
>
>
> Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet,
> no? :-)

"You can edit this official board announcement right now!"

Side note: I spent all Saturday sitting in a booth in the Southern
California Linux Expo exhibition hall demoing Wikipedia and talking to
people about just what this crazy thing of ours is. Maybe half the
people I talked to who already knew what we were (and that's most of the
people with the courage to talk to me!) asked about the Google thing...
It's kind of frustrating when "big news" breaks at this stage, because I
don't really have any details to give them and have to hem and haw that
it's still at the early offer stages and there's nothing solid. C'est la
vie... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Yann Forget wrote:
>> Anthere, the information i added come from the foundation-l mailing
>> list, not "rumors from the Internet".
>
>
> Well, foundation-l is an unmoderated mailing list on the Internet,
> no? :-)

"You can edit this official board announcement right now!"

Side note: I spent all Saturday sitting in a booth in the Southern
California Linux Expo exhibition hall demoing Wikipedia and talking to
people about just what this crazy thing of ours is. Maybe half the
people I talked to who already knew what we were (and that's most of the
people with the courage to talk to me!) asked about the Google thing...
It's kind of frustrating when "big news" breaks at this stage, because I
don't really have any details to give them and have to hem and haw that
it's still at the early offer stages and there's nothing solid. C'est la
vie... :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
--- blankfaze <blankfaze at gmail.com> wrote:
> If Wikipedia becomes a place where information is censored, then I
> think a lot of contributors will leave.

We censor the encyclopedia fairly heavily.

Have you ever been on RC patrol? Have you ever tried to bring an article from a
POV essay to an NPOV article? I have. And when I do, I delete and revert utter
crap at a high rate. For subpar content, I censor out the crap and salvage the
good parts.

Editorial standards are very much so a form of censorship. The reason why this
is a good thing, is because Wikipedia is not a social club.

We are here to create a product. The community exists to serve that end. So
loosing some people who contribute crap to the encyclopedia is fine.

> The great thing about
> Wikipedia is that it is not paper. It can have an unlimited amount of
> articles about topics you would never see in a traditional paper
> encyclopedia, including articles like Fuck, Robot fetishism, Dildo,
> and Autofellatio.

Nobody here has arugued that we should not have articles on those subjects.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Copying Mediawiki or creating language files

body:
On the Dutch Wikipedia I currently have a question from another site
using Mediawiki software. They would like to work in Dutch, but
languageNl.php is only partly translated. They could copy everything
into the MediaWiki namespace, but that is an awful lot of work.

Because of that, my question:
* Is there a simpler way to copy the MediaWiki namespace between
projects, or is it being worked on?
* Is there a simpler way to update language files, or is it being worked on?

Of course this would be useful for Wikimedia too - the first could be
used for translations between various projects, the second for people
who use a different language interface.

Andre Engels


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya Language response

body:
> I decided to wait a few days before responding to any of the threads. I've
> read all your comments, and would like to briefly respond.
>
> 1. I am not opposed to Quenya articles in Wikibooks, but how does one even
> go about *that*?

I'm not sure it would be allowed on the English Wikibooks.

> 2. The Tengwar do not need to be used: Tengwar and Quenya are independent of
> one another-- Tengwar is simply the type of script, and is not part of the
> language itself. So any objections to Quenya based on problems associated
> with Tengwar are easily solved by using the Roman alphabet, as many Quenya
> speakers already do.

I don't believe there were any actual objections on the basis of the Tengwar.

> 3. There seem to be two (very opposite!) objections to Quenya: one that it
> would "never grow large", and the other that it would "take up too much
> valuable resource space". These two points of view seem quite contrary to
> me. Either it would take up too much space, or it wouldn't ever take up
> "enough" space. I don't see Quenya language on wikipedia growing huge.
> However, I think there is always too much focus on Wikipedia for largesse
> "We're currently working on 455,000 articles!". An encyclopedia doesn't have
> to have a million articles to *be* an encyclopedia!

I agree on all points. I do not think it would ever grow very large,
but as I have noted in the past I don't think Wikipedia creation
should be limited by such factors.

> 4. Klingon hasn't been a huge success, hmm? But can't that be said of many
> Wikipedia language articles? Aren't there dozens of languages with, say,
> just one article? And since I (and other Quenya contributors; there's
> interest on the 'request for languages' page)  don't speak these languages
> anyway, it's not as if we're holding back these languages because we'd be
> working on Quenya ones. What I mean is, I don't know Alsatian, so I'm not
> ever going to be contributing Alsatian-language articles.

The difference is that Klingon had a huge debate, and it had people
who committed to contributing who apparently gave up because it was
too difficult (!), while most of the languages that lie inactive were
requested by non-fluent speakers at some time in the distant past and
were created without any debate.

Klingon and Gothic are the only two controversial Wikipedias that were
actually created that so far haven't attracted many users. At least
one person has committed to me to add to the Gothic Wikipedia but I'm
not sure I entirely believe that. The Klingon Wikipedia is currently
suffering from the problems resulting from the fact that some people
think they should use Conscript registry codepoints for piqad, while
others think they should use the Roman alphabet.

I, unlike Andrew, don't believe that the "you can't create a new
Wikipedia because it takes your contributions from the Chinese
Wikipedia with its oh-so-measly 20k+ articles" type of argument is
valid.

However, I strongly urge you to think over your request carefully. Is
knowledge of Quenya grammar and vocabulary extensive enough that you
could translate a good, long article on a real-world modern subject?
What would you do when you encoutered words or grammatical structures
that are not known from those writings of Tolkien which are currently
publicly available?

> 5. There is one really strange objection to Quenya language on Wikipedia
> that I *must* address. All the rest of the objections at least made *sense*
> to me, even if I don't hold that point of view. But my puzzlement comes from
> this idea that a Quenya language wiki is somehow an "insult" to another
> language. Without entangling myself in political debates concerning
> Cantonese, if any language was "insulted" because a fictional language made
> it into Wikipedia before a real-world language, I'd expect it was Klingon,
> not Quenya, which caused such "insult". I think the whole idea is fairly
> strange anyway... If Cantonese is sufficiently different than Mandarin,
> perhaps there should be a wikipedia for it, but that has nothing to do with
> my proposal for Quenya.

There was no objection. People were just kidding around with sarcasm
that it would be a bit funny to add a Quenya Wikipedia while at the
same time we deny a Cantonese one, which I must add is true - Quenya
is spoken by hundreds or perhaps thousands, and by nobody as a native
language or language of primary communication, whereas Cantonese is
spoken by millions of people as their native language, the language of
their home and family, etc. and is the third most-widely spoken
Sinitic variety after Mandarin and Wu.

> 6. Someone asked about the abbreviation. My proposed ISO thingy would be qy
> , but I wouldn't object to a change on that, and didn't include one with my
> first post to the list because I think that's the simplest part of the whole
> deal, and the only part that might *not* meet with objection.

The thing is is that ISO codes are not something you propose for this.
ISO codes are preexisting, part of a standard for codes for languages.
Not all languages are represented, for example Aromanian
(roa-rup.wikipedia.org), Voro (proposed fiu-vor.wikipedia.org), and
formerly even Klingon.

I don't believe there is currently one allocated for Quenya, although
using the xxx-xxx nomenclature (general ISO code plus Ethnologue code)
seems feasible.

As there is no Ethnologue code, I propose we use the Linguist List
code (http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/new-website/LL-WorkingDirs/forms/langs/GetListOfConstructedLgs.html),
QYA, thus art-qya as the language code.

Of course, this is if and only if the Wikipedia is created.

 > 7. There is a very large subset of Quenya-speakers amongst Tolkien fans. A
> Quenya language project is not doomed to failure, and in the past two weeks
> there has been seeming interest even on the somewhat obscure 'request for
> languages' page. I can almost guarantee that a Quenya language project would
> quickly eclipse any similar Klingon project.

As far as I know, there are more fluent speakers of Klingon than of Quenya.

Mark


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> >I also imagine that different Wikipedia language versions will come up with
> >whatever policies best fit them.

> That would mean giving up on the idea that there is a neutral point of
> view, and instead succumbing to local cultural biases.

It is not clear to me that NPOV could ever require a _single_ version
of all policies and all articles.  Certainly the concept does push in
the direction of a general sort of consistency, but not every kind of
difference is "succumbing to local cultural biases".

For example, we don't insist that the German wikipedia be written in
English, so as to avoid the local cultural bias of "speaking in
German".

Or, imagine that a particular battle in Europe during World War II had
some unusual but local impact on Japan.  We might quite naturally
imagine that the Japanese article _without bias_ but _with an eye
towards the needs and interests of the local audience_ would have a
different degree of detail on that topic than say en or fr or de.

Similarly, there can be different sorts of lines drawn as to when we
put an image where you have no choice but to look at it in order to
learn about a topic form us, versus place it on a separate page where
you can learn about it if you like.

This is not censorship, and it need not be any more biased than
writing in a local language or focussing on different details of local
interest in general articles.  Neutrality is perfectly consistent with
respecting the preferences and needs of the audience in a great many
cases.

(It isn't necessary to retreat into subjectivism, either, in order to
affirmatively respect the values and needs of the reader.)

---

Separately, I don't think the argument that "Those who want to hide
these images don't trust the audience to be able to handle it" is very
compelling, because the opposite argument could be made just as well.
"Those who want to force the audience to see the image don't trust
them to make up their own minds about what to read."

> Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying offensiveness should not be taken
> into account at all. The "default view" of Wikipedia could hide certain
> images which are considered offensive by the vast majority of editors.
> But our real goal should be to make the decision what is displayed an
> individual one, rather than a community choice that is imposed on the
> reader. We could also, on the request of schools and libraries,
> associate certain IP addresses with certain filter settings. Ideally,
> this would just be a switch in stylesheets and not affect the caching of
> the article pages.

Indeed, this would a good thing.  In the past when content ratings
were suggested, there was a firestorm of criticism as I recall.

But "would be a good thing" doesn't help us much with where we stand
today, I am afraid.

It's a difficult issue.

--Jimbo