from_name: Gregory Maxwell

references:
<e692861c0610011437ydb0f8f1yd39e62e79a988fdc@mail.gmail.com>
	<HCEBJHBGLNDEFMFPMHPNGEPHCPAA.plugwash@p10link.net>
	<e692861c0610011739t4d1acd5at4b6012141d2dfc05@mail.gmail.com>
	<452157E7.5020808@pobox.com>

body:
On 10/2/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Cortado (which is used in Michael's work) is claimed to work on the old MS VM.
> If you have access to a computer with this limitation, can you please test and
> confirm?

Last I checked it worked without sound in javasound less VMs.  I don't
personally have access to anything with that VM

> > 2) As a contributor I would be upset that users are being given a poor
> > quality version of my contribution rather than being asked to install
> > improved software.
>
> Well, that's pretty silly.

I don't think so.

I've been aggravated, and I think rightfully so, when someone
complained about an image I spent hours getting right being low
quality when it really was just an artifact of our image handling.
This happens all the time due JPEG artifacts, which are often visible
even on the image page depending on the users's display... or the
image appearing being blurry because straight filtered downsampling
can be unflattering.

It is perfectly reasonable to adapt to the users environment to an
extent, but it can be carried too far:  For example, we could 'help'
uses with browsers without image support by converting images to text
using [[AAlib]].

I think t we'd be helping users more by spending our efforts on:
1) Having a really good set of instructions for one click installation
of support software.
2) Encouraging browser vendors to ship support with their browsers.
(The reference Theora and Vorbis codecs are BSD licensed, so there
shouldn't be too much of a license-political issue there).

... instead of dishing out a hacked up player that will have a much
lower audio quality on their system than the flash based sites.

Some food for thought:

Latest stats (from the last days logs) from the toolserver java audio
player (linked from enwiki and other places):
27,828 unique IPs loaded the PHP page
23,327 unique IPs loaded the JAR          16% have no java enabled.
17,789 unique IPs loaded an Ogg           19% have Java but it failed
Overall it worked for about 64% of the IPs.

As far as I know, lack of javasound API (i.e. old MS JVM) is the only
significant cause of loaded but failed right now.

These numbers are a bit different from when I first introduced the
player.. Perhaps client side caching is influencing the results.  ...
It also could be because folks without Java have either installed it,
or they have learned not to try the player.

Hm. The above numbers to make a greater argument for extending support
to uses with the old JVM.


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding Ogg Theora and its file extension;
	should it be changed on the commons?

body:
Gregory, thanks for the reply.

On 10/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. OGM files are used for MPEG4 video (patented) + Vorbis wrapped in OGG.

Are you sure about this?  I've not seen this in the wild as of yet.

> The better solution for this, esp for video, is Michael Dales inline
> player for Mediawiki.

Does this player work well?  Could you offer a link?  I've not see it
in action yet.

> For the purposes of usability going half-way just doesn't provide the benefits.

Agreed, but I thought something had to be done.  Thus, this discussion.

Maybe this discussion will lead to something else: another solution,
an improved solution, or probably one more solution.

Regards,
Ivo Emanuel Gon?alves


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] A little problem

body:
Fyi

Whilst I was away, my computer chose to again get sick. Apparently, fix
up in july did not fix the right thing...

Things are worse this time, since the computer does not restart at all
any more.

And of course, my last back up was 3 weeks ago :-)
Which means that I have no back up of all the emails I got between
roughly 3 weeks ago, and 5 days ago (these are still on the server).
Actually, right now, I have no access to any mails but the last recent
ones, since I first need to install my back-up on my husband laptop.

Which basically means

* Limited internet access planned for the next week to 10 days at least.
If I do not answer to your emails, well, ask yourself if someone else
could help you

* No access to a whole bunch of documents or emails, eg, approval of the
new languages subcom. Or documents to prepare the board retreat. Or
datafeed contractual agreement.

So, thank you in advance for your patience :-)

ant


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] A little problem


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
006/10/2, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com>:

> This seems quite out of character. Your account hasn't been hacked?

Then you don't know my character... I can be rather explosive at times.

> Discussion of concerns has always been a strongpoint for Wikipedia. In
> my personal experience, although things can get heated, flames are few
> and far between.

Well, I don't know which Wikipedia you are on... Sure, discussion is a
strongpoint, but mostly they just function by giving the side who
happens to be in favor of the status quo a reason to revert everything
the other side does for not following due process and flaming over
such actions.

The current issue is that apparently on the Dutch Wikipedia proposing
that some page should be deleted is enough to be flamed at. Definitely
flaming *all* such people at once on the village pump seems to be
acceptable behavior. Well, as said, I am of the opinion that there are
things that don't belong on Wikipedia. But I seem to be in the
minority. Rather than eating up myself and get flamed, I prefer to
step out.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: Evgeny Fadeev

subject: [Wikitech-l] basic php debugging for writing mediawiki extension

body:
Hi,

I am trying to create an extension for the mediawiki
and found that when my extension does not compile wiki
just hangs and i get bank  screen in the browser.

Is it possible to somehow enable printing php
compilation errors to the browser scren for debugging
purposes?

Thank you!

Evgeny.

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subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
2006/10/2, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net>:

> He sometimes gets a bit tempered and than this happens. It happens on
> nl.wikipedia sometimes as well. Speaking for myself in an answer to
> Andre's question .... no Andre I do not hate you and I cannot imagine
> anyone hating you really.

You would if you really knew me.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


list: wikien-l

from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
"Stephen Bain" wrote

> A TOS doesn't necessarily have to be dense.

I'm having a dense case of TOS - TLA Overload Syndrome - quietly in a corner over here.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: David Mestel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
I think people may perhaps be misunderstanding what I'm saying.  I'm
not saying that we shouldn't let people do anything that's outside
process - that would be ridiculous; all I'm suggesting is that things
that become common practice, they should be described on policy pages,
so that everyone knows what's going on.

--
David

On 02/10/06, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > One thing to remember is that deletions can be undone.  Deleting an
> > article is really no big deal.
> >
>
> Okay. Given that line, I cannot resist the following. (so sue me, some
> straight lines really need to be punched on)
>
> Please (pretty please, with cherry on top) go on the record saying
> that undeletion is no big deal. I dare you, I double dare you.
>
> Glossing on...  (you may want to disregard the following, the point is
> all above, what follows is just driving it into the ground; pounding a
> dead horse, choose your
> metaphor for explicating things plain as pikestaffs)
>
> Just because one *can* do something (or in this case _undo_) it does
> not mean that doing that is easy/costless/(or likely to happen in any
> significant majority of cases).
>
> Undeleting articles does happen, but it does not make deleting
> articles a trivial act. "Big deal" really needs to be deprecated
> around wikipedia, as a term in general. Because it gives out the
> appearances that wikipedia is still a Ben&Jerry operation, when
> clearly it is not. (And yes, I could go on and on on this subject, but
> I think the point is made.)
>
>
> --
> Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/10/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think people may perhaps be misunderstanding what I'm saying.  I'm
> not saying that we shouldn't let people do anything that's outside
> process - that would be ridiculous; all I'm suggesting is that things
> that become common practice, they should be described on policy pages,
> so that everyone knows what's going on.

Guideline pages with "common practice as of [present month]", perhaps?

- d.


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Now, now. Tag with {{fact}} and move the unsourced ones
> to talk. Be
> hardarsed about letting anything back in without sources.

That makes sense.  I think I'd combine that with the delete
suggestion.  I.e., cut and paste all the unsourced ones to
a talk section immediately.  Provides something to check
against when unsourced entries are once again added.
Asking to {{fact}} all that when almost all of it already
has sat there unsourced for well over a week and then wait
only to move most of it to talk a week later seems like a
waste of time and effort.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Porchesia

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>I have posted this to foundation, but for those who do not know--
>
>Today I deleted the article [[Porchesia]], which was created on November  23,
>2005, i.e., 10 months ago. The article described an island off the coast of
>Lebanon with a population of over 300,000. The languages are Arabic, Greek,
>and  English.
>
>I will gladly restore the article when someone finds me one source  verifying
>the facts of this article. You might start by finding Porchesia on a  map.
>
The population statistics, making it Lebanon's third largest city, and
the claim that the population almost tripled since 1982 makes me wonder
how much of that population can be attributed to elephants. :-)

Ec


from_name: ROSC Club Director

subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership

body:
The Resources of Sheboygan Club (ROSC) is having their 2006 Fall Membership Drive.

  Membership is free and open to everyone. And those who donate 5 or more Box Tops to the Club, we will donate $2 to www.wikinews.org.

  You can sign up by visiting: http://www.roscfriends.tripod.com/rosc/application.html

  Yours Truly,
      Club Director & Founder
      The Resources of Sheboygan Club
      (920) 547-4934
      www.roscfriends.tripod.com

---------------------------------
Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com.  Check it out.


subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership


from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 10/1/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/1/06, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > WikiMedia isn't only WikiPedia. I'm on wikibreak in anothers wikis and
> now
> > edit only in Wikisource. I can't find any problem with encyclopedic
> articles
> > because my home wiki is intended to host only primary sources.
> > English Wikipedia have your on mailing list and wikipedia-l is intended
> to
> > be a mailing list for global issues on Wikipedia projects. The
> > question of credibility
> > is relevant to all Wikimedia projects, but attempts in talk about
> > encyclopedia credibility is not relevant to all Wikimedia projects.
>
> It's funny that you'd effectively accuse the person who is probably
> the #1 human contributor to enWiksource (Danny) of having project
> tunnel vision.

I didn't accused, my reply is original placed at the top of message. This
reply, in a small piece of your message, Gregory, is a vestige of a reply to
your specific message.

This list have lots and lots and lots and lots of subjects not directly
related to Foundation, but lots and lots and lots and lots of subjects
related to English Wikipedia or Wikipedia in general. This is the point. If
I need to read/write something related to a Wikipedia project, I do it in
another mailing list.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> You're right, we can't stop bad people from being bad, but that
> doesn't mean that we can't keep employ measures to encourage the
> honest people to stay honest.
>
> Or are you also opposed to doors that lock?  ... with the exception of
> high security doors, a locked door actually does fairly little to
> prevent a determined attacker from getting inside, and yet locked
> doors have been demonstrated over and over again to be effective.
>
> Or another way of looking at it:   One of the more clearly stated
> arguments against us running advertising on Wikipedia ourselves is the
> potential creation of bias, or at least the creation of the appearance
> of bias.   It strikes me as odd that people will scream so loudly
> against the introduction of advertising which would bring us lots of
> useful money without a definite introduction of bias, and yet folks
> are not willing to take maximal measures against the abuse of
> Wikipedia as an astroturfed advertising medium... when the latter does
> create a clear bias in our content.

Sorry if I *do* contradict you. You are one of the most reasonable
people on wikipedia, so I would hope that you would take my
contradiction of what you said above in the same spirit. I wish to
reason with the unreasonable statements in the paragraph above.

Advertisements are *not* useful money. They detract from our mission,
and the value that is added to our content by people who do not feel
advertisements are useful. I *will* argue the point if needed. But I
think I have argued that already in another place.

--
--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia atonement

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>

> >
> > In any case, I pointed out how I sincerely believe
> > that this example
> > is important for all our projects, although it
> > happened to be one that
> > happened on our largest project.
> >
> > It seems to me that we can best address issues of
> > "en.WP dominance" by
> > communicating and being sensitive to and aware of
> > the challenges that
> > participants in each project face... I don't see
> how
> > silencing
> > discussion is going to further that goal.

I have been thinking about this alot today.  I badly
mishandled this disscussion.  Although I cannot say
that I believe I was wrong on any particular point, it
was not handled well.  The fact that you have
misinterpted my intentions to such a degree proves
this.  I will try to atone for this by giving the
disscussion I believe you would like to have another
chance.  So every one please add more information
about the problems and soulutions as well as sharing
your own expeirence in these things from your home
project.

THE PROBLEM
*Wiki's inherently lend themselves to vandalasim and a
subset of this is hoaxs.

*On a open wiki there is little or no efferot to
prevent such things, but rather many people working to
fix these things afterwards.

*Once a hoax survives a week or so it will likely be
around indefinately

SOULTION PATROLLERS

*People who care that the wiki does not fill up with
hoaxes patrol recent changes and new pages with the
goal to immediately remove such material.  They use
numerous tool to do this as efficiently as possible
including bots, rss feeds, and software features like
"patrolled edits" ( anyone know of other tools?)

**Pro: Problems are removed quickly

**Pro: With the right tools this can be amazingly
efficient

**Con: Requires a large amount of manpower

**Con: Tools are not centrally distrubuted some
require uncommon technical skills to use

**Con: On the rare occasion a problem is missed or
fools the patrollers it is around indefinately

**Con: Depending on the which tools are used (and
especially when using a combination of uncomplimetary
tools) it is possible several people may patroll one
"good" edit/article which is a waste of effort.  This
is because only "bad" pages are guranteed to be
visibly marked.

SOLUTION VISiBLY APPROVED

This solution involves pages being examined more
closely than is done by patrollers and being somehow
marked as approved which may or may not involved
limiting further edits.

**Pro: Pages being closely examined means no hoaxes
will get "approved"

**Pro: Approval is very very slow process (when
thinking of ALL pages)

**Pro: Since "good" pages are visibly marked there is
no wasted effort

**Con: options which include limitations on future
edits may prevent further improvents.  (This can
largly be addressed by the development of more subtle
means of "limiting future edits")

**Con: Since "good" pages are visibly marked the
"approvers" are in effect a more visible subset of the
population than patrollers are (since anyone nominate
a "bad" page for deletion).  This can be a particular
problem in wiki's where there is a large amount of
distrust amoung the population.

SOULTION PERIODIC REVIEW

Periodic reveiw of all -pages. Either all at once or
in  a rotating basis (Jan #-C, Feb D-F, etc.)

**Pro: Every page is eventually review (Nothing slips
through)

**Con: Very very labor intensive

**Con: Slow process.  Hoaxes could exist for as longer
as a year depending on how fast the rotations or how
long periodic is.

**Con: Wasted of effort.  "Good" pages that have bee
previously review and have little or no changes
recieves the same amount of attention as pages that
are a high-risk to be a hoax.

**Con: Such a large task means that at some point
pages will only recieve a cursoury review.

BIRGITTE SB EXPERIENCE

Ok I will now share my own experience with these
methods at en.WS.  Firrst I need to explain that we do
not have the manpower to approach any of these
solutions in a serious comprehensive manner.  What I
mean by that it is I believe there to be a vandalism
and maybe even hoax on en.WS right now.  There is not
a directed effort to combat these thisngs at en.WS.  I
know several people, including myself, try to keep an
eye on it, but I am sure you all can imagine the
results "trying to keep and eye on it" brings.

*Patrolling
en.WS has patrolled edits enabled.  I am unsure if
anyone besides my self makes use of this feature,
although I suspect Zhalshadar does.  There is no
effort to patrol *every* edit.  I particularly try to
patrol the edits of IP's.  If use Recents changes to
hide all logged in users and to hide patrolled edits,
and after marking a significant number of IP edits
patroled I can manage to display a weeks worth.  So I
try to do this about once a week but I know there are
gaps . . .  I do not know if anyone makes a particular
effort to patrol New Pages or New Users.

We also have pgkbot and an vandalism IRC channel.  At
many times there is someone keeping an eye on this
channel but not at all times . . .

Many editors at en.WS (by which I mean 6-10) regularly
 make a cusoury checks of Recent Changes for anything
suspicous looking whenever they are working on the
site.  Some of these people work on the site daily,
others much less often.

Watchlists are barely useful for vandalism.  There are
too few people watching.  However they are useful for
the few vandal magnets we have.  Like "Macbeth"

In all en.WS does not have the manpower availble to
allow the "Patroller" solution to be effective.

*Visbly marked approved pages

Because en.WS cannot manage to patrol against
vandalism, we rely on this method.  All proofread
pages may be nominated for protection under our text
integrity policy.  This is obviously successful, but
has the downside of completely preventing future edits
including interwiki links.  This is not so bad as it
seems because of two things.  One Wikisource
inherently deals with a large amount of static
material, so there is littler that anyone would want
to add to a proofread page.  Two this paolicy was in
force before the lang subdomiain split so people from
other languages are usually aware in the event thaty
want to add an interwiki and they know to just request
it be added on the talk page.  I imagine many people
will be upset at the thought of a wiki protecting
pages, but proofreading would be pointless without
this or some other similar method (section protection
requested nine months ago or the likely scenario that
the community will agree to use stable versions).
Please realize that proofreading far more labor
intensive than even fact checking is at a WP project.
No one really likes that pages are protected it is
simply the lesser of two evils.  The outstandingly
strong support that was gathered for section
protection is evidence that WS is simply making do
until a more subtle method is developed.  And that is
out of our hands.

*Review of All Pages

en.WS has no intention of doing this periodically.
However we effectively went throught this method when
we adopted a header template to be placed on all
pages.  Over 20,000 pages have been "handled" with
only the dregs of around 1,500 pages to be done.  Of
course many pages only got a cursory look, but we did
take care of many problems with this method.
Vandalism, hoaxs, as well as copyvios (which is a more
significant problem a WS projects)

AS I said above I am sure that en.WS has existing
vandalism right now.  And it will sit there until
someone finds it.  Here I suppose my expectations are
properly adjusted to reality.  en.WS simply does not
have the manpower to comprehensively deal with the
vandalism it recieves.  Currently I am happy to ensure
to work of proofreaders is secure and the the rest of
the site will eventually be taken care of.  If one of
our readers finds something we have missed I would
hope they would alert of to it so we may fix it.

Birgitte SB

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subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia atonement


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 10/1/06, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>WikiMedia isn't only WikiPedia. I'm on wikibreak in anothers wikis and now
>>edit only in Wikisource. I can't find any problem with encyclopedic articles
>>because my home wiki is intended to host only primary sources.
>>English Wikipedia have your on mailing list and wikipedia-l is intended to
>>be a mailing list for global issues on Wikipedia projects. The
>>question of credibility
>>is relevant to all Wikimedia projects, but attempts in talk about
>>encyclopedia credibility is not relevant to all Wikimedia projects.
>>
>>
>
>It's funny that you'd effectively accuse the person who is probably
>the #1 human contributor to enWiksource (Danny) of having project
>tunnel vision.
>
Get off it!  I see no implicit accusation of anybody in Luiz's
comments.  There are valid arguments for and against, in deciding the
list on which this thread belongs.  For one person to disagree with
another on this kind of thing does not imply accusation.  Assume good faith.

>The fact of the matter is that the problems discussed in this thread
>are a real concern for all of our projects, including Wikisource.
>
>Any solution which would help us keep imaginary islands out of
>Wikisource would also likely help us keep imaginary primary sources
>out of Wikisource.
>
Sources of any kind, not just primary ones.  Erik's "source" for
[[Porchesia]] might have kept the island there even longer than no
source at all.  Too bad for our hoaxer that he didn't think of that.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 10/1/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Quick clarification. I am certainly not the most active editor on en
>>wikisource. There are plenty of great people there with more edits than me, with
>>special shoutouts to Pathoschild, BirgitteSB, Jude, Zhaladshar, Shanel, and many
>>others to numerous to mention.
>>
>>
>Zhaladshar is the only non-bot account with more edits than you on
>enwikisource, Danny.
>
I can't be bothered to look at the statistics for this.  I guess Danny
is more interested in the substance of his edits than his edit count.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
But what if that hypothetical hotel chain wrote an article about their  hotel
in the area, complete with amenities, prices for rooms, and a phone number
for booking. Would that be worthy of inclusion?

In a message dated 10/2/2006 4:49:33 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
lars at aronsson.se writes:

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> I am currently reading the Terms of  Service of Myspace. [...]
> Forbidden thing 11 is:
> displaying an  advertisement on your profile, or accepting
> payment or anything of  value from a third person in exchange for
> your performing any  commercial activity on or through the
> MySpace Services on behalf of  that person,

The Wikipedia community's background in free software is  different
from this.  The reason why you cannot use your personal  Myspace
account for selling advertising is not that Myspace wants to be
ad-free, but because Myspace wants to sell that advertising
themselves.  On the other hand, if some company wants some
functionality added to Linux or to the Mediawiki software (for
example, to adopt to the company's file format or hardware), they
are  free to pay somebody to do this, and release the modifications
under the  same GPL license.

If a hotel chain wants to promote tourism in their  area, they are
(and should be) free to pay somebody to write good articles  for
Wikipedia about places, sights and monuments in that area.  Of
course, the articles must be NPOV and contain verifiable facts,
describe notable objects, the contents must not violate any
copyrights  and it must be released under the GFDL.  But the
commercial purpose  is not forbidden, and the WMF doesn't need a
cut from the money that went  into the authoring of this contents.

If the hotel chain went and talked  to Myspace, I assume that
Myspace could allow them to set up a  non-personal (commercial)
account for a fee with different terms of  service.  I don't use
Myspace and I don't know if they sell such  accounts, but I guess
it could be a good business to do so.

--
Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
Aronsson Datateknik -  http://aronsson.se
_______________________________________________
foundation-l  mailing  list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>
> Could some people deal with this list?
>
> Kim
> --
> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

On related news: Category:Banned books was disbanded today


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of war criminals

body:
On 10/2/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Speaking of dubious lists, we also have:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_criminals
>
> The list currently contains people belonging to these categories:
>
> 1) people who were convicted for war crimes
> 2) people who were charged but not convicted
> 3) people who were never charged due to political reasons, but
> the consensus is that they were involved in war crimes
> 4) people whose involvement in war crimes is unclear or a matter
> of debate.
>
> On the top of the list, it writes that:
>
> "This is a list of formally charged and/or convicted war criminals"
>
> which means 1) and 2). What about people who were formally charged,
> but later found not guilty? They would be included by the current
> criteria.
>
> What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair
> mock trial in a country under a dictatorship?
> Should we list them, too?

It also seems to include people like Gerhard Wagner, who would
presumably have been charged with crimes against humanity, rather than
war crimes.

Maybe changing it to [[List of people convicted of war crimes]] would
be better, even if that meant people who died before a trial/verdict
wouldn't be listed.

(The show trial issue is one I doubt would come up too much in
practice, incidentally; those things tended to go for charges like
treason or anti-whateverist conspiracy than for things like war
crimes.)

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Liz Kim

subject: [Wikitech-l] Permenantly remove images and history

body:
Hi,
I am trying ti wipe out the images and other uploaded files from my wiki
system.
I have tried to delete is manually from the web browser and then clearing
out the archive table but that did not seem to work.
Although this deletes the image, there is still a link available from the
uploaded file log....
I've tried wiping out these tables: images, imageslink, oldimages but that
did not seem to work either..
I have about 500 files and it would be nice if there is a way to clean this
out for privacy purposes..
Thanks for your help,
Liz Kim


from_name: oscar

subject: [Foundation-l] A little problem

body:
dear anthere,

thank you for letting us know. may your computer get well soon after the
"operations" that are necessary now...

all the best,
oscar

On 10/2/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Fyi
>
> Whilst I was away, my computer chose to again get sick. Apparently, fix
> up in july did not fix the right thing...
>
> Things are worse this time, since the computer does not restart at all
> any more.
>
> And of course, my last back up was 3 weeks ago :-)
> Which means that I have no back up of all the emails I got between
> roughly 3 weeks ago, and 5 days ago (these are still on the server).
> Actually, right now, I have no access to any mails but the last recent
> ones, since I first need to install my back-up on my husband laptop.
>
> Which basically means
>
> * Limited internet access planned for the next week to 10 days at least.
> If I do not answer to your emails, well, ask yourself if someone else
> could help you
>
> * No access to a whole bunch of documents or emails, eg, approval of the
> new languages subcom. Or documents to prepare the board retreat. Or
> datafeed contractual agreement.
>
> So, thank you in advance for your patience :-)
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] A little problem


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Alison Wheeler wrote:

>Whilst I love the fact that our projects are "open" the massive growth we
>haev experienced has clearly led to problems with commercial cruft in a
>few - which will no doubt expand to the others in time - and this might
>well be the right way to go. I would support something of this nature.
>
>
I guess I don't see how this in any way helps that goal.  How is a
"terms of service" any more useful than the existing Wikipedia
policies?  We can already ban anyone we want and ask them not to come
back, and don't need any sort of legal terms of service to do that.  We
aren't offering a paid service, so don't need a legal terms of service
as a way of terminating anyone's right to use our service, since we
never sold any such right in the first place.

-Mark


from_name: Casey Bisson

subject: [Wikitech-l] building a search API

body:
Short question:

I'm getting inconsistent 403 forbidden errors when trying to read
wikipedia.org content via PHP's file_get_contents().

I believe I'm operating within the limits and terms identified here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Wikipedia:Database_download#Please_do_not_use_a_web_crawler

Am I being blocked (inconsistently)? How would I find out?

Background:

Notwithstanding traditional librarian concerns about the authority of
Wikipedia, I'm working on ways to use Wikipedia data in the library
context.

Longer question:

My app uses the all_titles_in_ns0 export. If the search matches one
of those titles it fetches that page from en.wikipedia.org to
generate a summary and cache the result (future searches are returned
from cache).

In trying to sidestep the 403 forbidden errors (and eliminate any
complaints about scraping wikipedia.org), I've attempted to bring up
a private copy of en.wikipedia.org based on MediaWIki and the pages-
articles.xml export. This should work, as MWDumper seems to import
the contents okay, but the results leave me with a huge number of
missing pages.

So, at the end of the day, my question is: how can I either more
reliably fetch pages from wikipedia.org _or_ more reliably create a
duplicate wiki that I can scrape.

(Those who are interested can contact me privately for URLs to see
this at work. I'd rather not make them public in developmental form.)

Thank you,

Casey Bisson
__________________________________________

e-Learning Application Developer
Plymouth State University
Plymouth, New Hampshire
http://oz.plymouth.edu/~cbisson/
ph: 603-535-2256


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

body:
On 10/2/06, valdelli at bluemail.ch <valdelli at bluemail.ch> wrote:
>
> To go in Taipei or in Boston or in Sidney is very expensive for a
> wikipedian, and most of all wikipedians are students with a little
> bit of money.

"For a Wikipedian"? I presume you meant to say "for a Wikipedian in
Europe". There are plenty of contributors in other parts of the world,
including an emergent community across Asia for whom Taipei is a
highly accessible location.

It's expensive both ways to travel long distances, remember, so
choosing location based on population is a surefire way to guarantee
that huge numbers of Wikimedians will never attend a Wikimania.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership

body:
Look,

  For every new member ROSC gets, we donate $2 to www.wikinews.org.

  Last I know, no other club did that for wiki.

Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Look Rosc

This list is NOT an advertisment roll.
PLEASE, do not spam us.

You stop that NOW.

Thanks

Ant

ROSC Club Director wrote:
> The Resources of Sheboygan Club (ROSC) is having their 2006 Fall Membership Drive.
>
> Membership is free and open to everyone. And those who donate 5 or more Box Tops to the Club, we will donate $2 to www.wikinews.org.
>
> You can sign up by visiting: http://www.roscfriends.tripod.com/rosc/application.html
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
> Club Director & Founder
> The Resources of Sheboygan Club
> (920) 547-4934
> www.roscfriends.tripod.com
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com. Check it out.

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

Yours Truly,
        Club Volunteer
        The Resources of Sheboygan Club
        Phone:   (920) 547-4939
        EMail:   resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com
        Web:     www.rosc.znn.com

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership


subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership

body:
Look,

  For every new member ROSC gets, we donate $2 to www.wikinews.org.

  Last I know, no other club did that for wiki.

Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Look Rosc

This list is NOT an advertisment roll.
PLEASE, do not spam us.

You stop that NOW.

Thanks

Ant

ROSC Club Director wrote:
> The Resources of Sheboygan Club (ROSC) is having their 2006 Fall Membership Drive.
>
> Membership is free and open to everyone. And those who donate 5 or more Box Tops to the Club, we will donate $2 to www.wikinews.org.
>
> You can sign up by visiting: http://www.roscfriends.tripod.com/rosc/application.html
>
>
>
> Yours Truly,
> Club Director & Founder
> The Resources of Sheboygan Club
> (920) 547-4934
> www.roscfriends.tripod.com
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com. Check it out.

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

---------------------------------
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subject: [Foundation-l] Club Membership


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Commons-l] Ogg Theora is too hard to play.
	WeneedYouTube-styleFlash streaming video.

body:
On 10/2/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> I get that *exactly location* no file appended to it.
> I went to http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/H?nh:SCA_approach.ogg as per Minh
> Nguyen mail,
> there i followed teh link so i arrived to
>http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Filepath/SCA_approach.ogg

The vi folks are aparently using the player in entirely the wrong way,
and based on that I'd be shocked if it worked for any file. This is
what happens when people set things up without talking to others. :)

Try the play in browser from any audio example on enwiki.
There are some here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassoon#Audio_examples

[snip]
> As jcraft works, it's not it. I'm not using msjvm neither.

The jcraft plugin on the jcraft is signed and thus can reach third
party servers. Signed applets however add an additional layer of
failure (and require that you have a signing certificate, etc). Also,
the Special:Filepath/ method of calling it will not work for a mixture
of commons/local media.

All of that is why the tool on toolserver works entirely differently
than the stock jcraft stuff. It (mostly) works for a mixture of local
and commons content, and does not need to be signed.

> Seems i misunderstood.
> I find references to "continually improved", "if it doesn't work try in a
> few days" a
> bit frustrating. But hell, this may be me ;-)

Why would it tell you how to call it?  The calling conventions are
embodied in the enwiki templates that use it (at the moment).  Since I
don't consider this a long term solution (I consider it just a toy to
lear about things like java compatibility) I have not made an effort
to get it spread to other wikis. If people would like to set it up on
otherwiks, thats fine.. but don't complain to me if you call it wrong
and it doesn't work as a result. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Listen  for an example.

> Setting the console output to 5 (all) it seems the error may came because
> your
> applet is unsigned and thus JavaSound is directly denied?

Nope.  That it's not signed only prevents connections to outside webservers,

> I was waiting to catch you on irc, easier to explain and feedback, instead
> of filling a long bug on the ml,
> but well... here you have it.

I've been really busy. You won't have much luck catching me on IRC.

> PS: I was going to propose filling a bug into hemlock's bugzilla but it
> seems it disappeared / is unreachable.

Close: Notabug/Wontfix
:)


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Porchesia

body:
Stan Shebs wrote
> On a more serious note, this was an article created by a new user, with
> no links from anywhere (so no watchlists to be triggered).

You find these hoax things, often enough, lurking at the 'far end' of a Google search.

Charles

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from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You're right, we can't stop bad people from being bad, but that
> doesn't mean that we can't keep employ measures to encourage the
> honest people to stay honest.
>
> Or are you also opposed to doors that lock?  ... with the exception of
> high security doors, a locked door actually does fairly little to
> prevent a determined attacker from getting inside, and yet locked
> doors have been demonstrated over and over again to be effective.
>
This isn't a door lock.  It's a tiny little sign above the door which
says "don't break in".

> Or another way of looking at it:   One of the more clearly stated
> arguments against us running advertising on Wikipedia ourselves is the
> potential creation of bias, or at least the creation of the appearance
> of bias.   It strikes me as odd that people will scream so loudly
> against the introduction of advertising which would bring us lots of
> useful money without a definite introduction of bias, and yet folks
> are not willing to take maximal measures against the abuse of
> Wikipedia as an astroturfed advertising medium... when the latter does
> create a clear bias in our content.

Wikipedia runs perfectly fine without advertising, though.  To "take
maximal measures" against others using Wikipedia for advertising would
require virtually shutting down the wiki.  It also has nothing to do
with the current proposal, which is to take a measure which will, it's
being argued, accomplish nothing at all.

All that said, I really don't care that much about the terms of
service, so long as it's not phrased horribly obscenely.  One thing I
think would be horribly obscene is to say that Wikipedia Services "are
for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection
with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically
endorsed or approved by [the Wikimedia Foundation]".  Of course, even
then, it's not like anyone reads or cares about terms of service.

Anthony


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [Wikitech-l] general filter

body:
Say, I made this template,
[[Category:{{{1}}}]][{{fullurl:Category:{{{1}}}}} {{{1}}}]
( http://radioscanningtw.jidanni.org/index.php?title=Template:C )
as I want categories clickable right where I mention them on a page.

And my site has a thousand categories that have members but no text,
and should stay that way, hence the fullurl to avoid the action=edit.

Of course the categories are repeated again at the bottom of each
page, but there is no __NO_CATEGORY_LIST__ to turn that off.

I suppose my template is OK. Can't think of a better way.

I suppose what I really want is something like the ISBN detection code
that one can set up to match certain regexps and do certain things so
one wouldn't need to use a template at all. And in the rare case when
one doesn't want a match, one could use <nowiki>.

Yes, a general perl style filter that would do things on the wiki text
mediawiki sees without changing what the user sees.

And all in one or two Local_Settings variables.

(Hmmm, probably just increasing the house of cards risks to the system.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Kim van der Linde wrote

> That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as unsourced........

Unsourced is not the same as unverifiable, naturally.

Charles

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce?
Have them remove any uncited crap.
If ALA 2000 is a specific list with set entries, remove anything that
shouldn't be there.
Be bold!

On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>
> Could some people deal with this list?
>
> Kim
> --
> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>

I would not be suprised to find that the bible has been banned at some
point in histoty.

> Could some people deal with this list?
>
> Kim

Could be interesting I'll have a look.

--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 02/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 02/10/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>
>
>
>>>Nevermind, a block won't help either. I'll just get more fucked up.
>>>Sorry to bother you.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>
>>This seems quite out of character. Your account hasn't been hacked?
>>Discussion of concerns has always been a strongpoint for Wikipedia. In
>>my personal experience, although things can get heated, flames are few
>>and far between.
>>
>>
>
>
>You do realise of course that Mailman believes whatever the "From:"
>header tells it.
>
>
This is Andre,

He sometimes gets a bit tempered and than this happens. It happens on
nl.wikipedia sometimes as well. Speaking for myself in an answer to
Andre's question .... no Andre I do not hate you and I cannot imagine
anyone hating you really.

Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] dev blog to announce new features

body:
Just an idea

http://blog.netvibes.com/

A blog to announce new and pending features. As well as to update on big
network changes. Or new hardware.

Audience: public at large.

Would not that be cool ?

Ant


subject: [Wikitech-l] dev blog to announce new features


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!

body:
>The current issue is that apparently on the Dutch Wikipedia proposing
>that some page should be deleted is enough to be flamed at. Definitely
>flaming *all* such people at once on the village pump seems to be
>acceptable behavior. Well, as said, I am of the opinion that there are
>things that don't belong on Wikipedia. But I seem to be in the
>minority. Rather than eating up myself and get flamed, I prefer to
>step out.
>
>
>
Well Andre ..... both of us have tried to stop many many many times. But
each time we come back. I guess both of us are to addicted to well and
truly leave, after some time we always come back it is either that or we
just like self flagellation to much.

Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] FUCK OFF!


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hm. The above numbers to make a greater argument for extending support
> to uses with the old JVM.

Perhaps a note with why they're getting crappy sound. "You can improve
your sound by installing software - either a media player that plays
Ogg Vorbis (e.g. [[VLC]]) or a later version of Java." Or something.
Or something. Then there's not only something they want, there's the
seductive offer of a software install to make their dancing pigs dance
even better.

- d.


body:
On 02/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Just an idea
> http://blog.netvibes.com/
> A blog to announce new and pending features. As well as to update on big
> network changes. Or new hardware.
> Audience: public at large.
> Would not that be cool ?

http://wikitech.livejournal.com/

Has been updated, er, twice in the last six months ... but it's there
and listed on the blogs list on Meta! [[m:Wikipedians who blog]]

Perhaps it needs a revival ...

[cc: to wikitech-l]

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] dev blog to announce new features


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 02/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:

> > The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> > challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
> > many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
> > the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
> > they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> > rational holds, the bible is banned book).
> > Could some people deal with this list?

> If you want to go the bad-ass evil & sneaky route, simply tag all of
> the unsourced items with {{fact}} (an edit which, granted, would take
> some time), let them be for a week and then summarily remove them. If
> it is as bad as you say (which I don't doubt, after a quick look at
> it), raze and rebuild from the ground up is a very sensible option.

Now, now. Tag with {{fact}} and move the unsourced ones to talk. Be
hardarsed about letting anything back in without sources.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia

body:
On 10/1/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Erik's point here is completely valid.
>
> The problem in this case is not really "no sources".  The problem should
> be viewed as more general.  "It is possible to hoax wikipedia by writing
> something that sounds plausible."
>
Solving that problem, without decimating the encyclopedia, would be
such an enormous undertaking.  Given a reasonably literal
interpretation it's talking about not just matching the accuracy of
the New York Times or Britannica (for instance), but blowing it away.

In other words, I love it.  And I see now how it *is* a Foundation
issue.  Not just because it potentially affects multiple projects,
which it does, but also because it requires a different type of
thinking from that of making incremental changes to something that
already works fairly well.

I hope the members of the Foundation are aware of how big of an
undertaking this is.  I hope that the planning can be conducted in a
very open fashion, and not just thrust upon the community in an
announcment that X was decided/created/whatever.  I hope this because
if it isn't conducted in this manner, it probably isn't going to work.

Anthony

> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > On 9/30/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Let's mkae a new speedy criterion: if there's no sources, nuke it. With
> >> fire.
> >
> > '''Porchesia''' is an island off the coast of [[Syria]] and
> > [[Lebanon]].  It is ruled by Lebanese government.  [1]
> >
> > [1] Cassidy, Daniel. Porchesia: History of a Little-Known Island. Los
> > Angeles: Cambridge and Boston Press, 2005.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
There's also a fact checker wiki project. You can have them have a go at
referencing the thing...

On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
> That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as
> unsourced........
>
> Kim
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce?
> > Have them remove any uncited crap.
> > If ALA 2000 is a specific list with set entries, remove anything that
> > shouldn't be there.
> > Be bold!
> >
> >
> > On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> >> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> >> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up
> with
> >> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made
> it
> >> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book
> that
> >> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> >> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
> >>
> >> Could some people deal with this list?
> >>
> >> Kim
> >> --
> >> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> --
> http://www.kimvdlinde.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, now. Tag with {{fact}} and move the unsourced ones to talk. Be
> hardarsed about letting anything back in without sources.
>
>
> - d.

Well yes I could of done that but I feel that in this case a more
extream aproach is needed.
--
geni


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up with
> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made it
> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book that
> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>
> Could some people deal with this list?
>
> Kim

If you want to go the bad-ass evil & sneaky route, simply tag all of
the unsourced items with {{fact}} (an edit which, granted, would take
some time), let them be for a week and then summarily remove them. If
it is as bad as you say (which I don't doubt, after a quick look at
it), raze and rebuild from the ground up is a very sensible option.

--Oskar


body:
On 10/2/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
[snip]
> In MediaWiki, we can detect the file type on upload and store it in the
> DB. Then we can use that information in the DB to output the appropriate
> HTML, if indeed a different player is required. But there is a clear
> benefit to the ability to distinguish audio from video, after the user
> downloads the file to their computer. In fact, I'm surprised .ogg is
> used for video so widely given the obvious benefit of a discriminated
> type, in this environment. Even if you use the same player for both
> audio and video, it's nice to know what's what when you're looking at a
> big list of files.

Well there are tens of thousands of permutations of things that can go
inside an ogg container..

Any combination of any number of streams made from:
Theora (compressed video)
Tarkin (compressed video)
Dirac (compressed video)
UVS (YUV 4:2:2 uncompressed video)
Vorbis (lossily compressed audio (up to 256 channels))
Speex (lossily compressed audio, tuned for speech)
Flac (losslessly compressed audio)
PCM (uncompressed audio)
Writ (efficient subtitles)
Annodex (realtime XML stream)
MIDI

Plus a number of less supported things
MPEG4 (via xvid, often called OGM)
MP3
AAC
DTS

Ogg can multiplex any number of these streams in any mixture. A proper
player is able to play only the streams it understands and skip the
rest (although quite a few explicitly catch that case and abort... but
the reference libogg stuff does the right thing).

So, would you propose that each permutation get its own extension?
Which subset?

Proper desktop systems have been doing the right thing for ages now,
for example the Gnome file manager doohicky (nautilus) correctly shows
a thumbnail and movie strip views on video files, while it shows a
music icon on audio files.

Even Windows Vista can happily differentiate files with file magic...

Extensions are just too inflexible to match up with reality... Ogg
isn't at all the only container to give up on that.. for example, what
extension does a PDF of layed out ascii have? A PDF of scanned pages?
A PDF of postscript algorithms that computes fractals?


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] URL to force sidebar language

body:
"Angela" wrote:
> On 10/1/06, Dan Jacobson wrote:
>> How can I link to a wikimedia page to get its sidebar etc. in zh-tw
>> instead of en without having the user first get an account and
>> register preferences? I am talking about linking from outside
>> wikimedia.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pressed_flowers?uselang=zh-tw
>
> Angela

You need to make an external link. Either with the syntax Angela gave you or
the index.php?title= you already knew. There's no way to achieve it with
[[...]] syntax


from_name: Gay Muslim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this really permissible behavior by an admin?

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:ScienoSitter

Step 1: Naconkantari blocks the user indefinitely, claiming it is a
"vandalism only" account.
A quick look through the user's contributions shows that this is absolutely
not the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/ScienoSitter

Step 2: The user requests an unblock. Naconkantari responds by HIMSELF
removing the unblock template.
Step 3: The user requests an unblock. A user who the user was involved in a
content dispute with (by the username of OmicronPersei8) REMOVES THE UNBLOCK
REQUEST.

Step 4: The users requests an unblock. Naconkantari AGAIN removes the
unblock template himself.

Step 5: An admin by the name of "Mr. Lefty" locks the user's talk page for
"template abuse". Note that up to this point, all the user has done is put
back a template wrongfully removed by (a) the blocking admin who was also
involved in the dispute and (b) a non-admin user who not only was ALSO
involved in the dispute, but has no right to remove the template.

Result? Naconkantari's abuse of power successfully hidden, user completely
deprived of their right to a fair and impartial look at the circumstances of
Naconkantari's abusive indefinite block.

This isn't the first time Naconkantari's acted like this, either. User
Xvidme is blocked as a "sockpuppet of NoLongerScieno" even though
NoLongerScieno's block is "indefinite" because Naconkantari thinks it
violates the username standards.

Isn't it great how admins get away with this all the time? You wonder why
people think there's a cabal? THIS KIND OF SHIT IS WHY.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citationgate: expertise and verifiability

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> "Laura Scudder" wrote
>
>> I'm am very pro-citation when it helps us build a better
>> encyclopedia, but I'm anti-"let's footnote everything even though
>> it appears in any textbook on the subject and is totally
>> uncontroversial, just to satisfy a process decision".
>
> I think it's a horrid idea to have any policy on this which would
> allow people to spam us with inline references, for example, to their
> version of The Great American Calculus Text.
>
> Those books _all_ follow the pattern set down by Thomas of MIT in the
> 1950s. They are alike as two peas in a pod. They are written for
> money, and contain material that has all been known for 150 years.
>

/me thinks we might need a "list of reputable textbooks which can be
used as inline references" somewhere in Wikipedia: space...

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

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:

> To go in Taipei or in Boston or in Sidney is very expensive for
> a wikipedian, and most of all wikipedians are students with a
> little bit of money.
>
> To have a Wikimania in each continent could be good to offer an
> opportunity to all wikipedians without claims.

On the other hand, all wikipedians have an Internet connection and
many wikipedians have *good* Internet connections through their
universities.  The conclusion must be that *online participation*
should be facilitated as far as possible.  Two-way video
participation in workshops, video broadcast of presentations,
direct chat, still photos, transcriptions and written summaries,
translations, etc.  Some don't have enough bandwidth to use
streaming video, but for those who can, it is more affordable than
visiting in person.

In fact, we don't have to wait until Wikimania.  Regular local
meetings of wikipedians could be shared over the Internet.  Has
anybody tried this already?  I don't mean simple IRC sessions, but
something like a video link between two local Wikipedia meet-ups?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/2/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> Geni, why did you remove all my {{fact}} tags?
>

Umm I removed rather a lot of the article. Most of it was cruft.

--
geni


from_name: James Hare

body:
Perhaps the B.R.I.O.N.s could be crossposted onto the blog?

On 10/2/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/3/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Just an idea
> >
> > http://blog.netvibes.com/
> >
> > A blog to announce new and pending features. As well as to update on big
> > network changes. Or new hardware.
>
> That would be great, but only if there is anyone willing to write it.
> The closest thing we have currently is the weekly technology report on
> the English Wikipedia's Signpost:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-09-18/Technology_report
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> I am currently reading the Terms of Service of Myspace. [...]
> Forbidden thing 11 is:
> displaying an advertisement on your profile, or accepting
> payment or anything of value from a third person in exchange for
> your performing any commercial activity on or through the
> MySpace Services on behalf of that person,

The Wikipedia community's background in free software is different
from this.  The reason why you cannot use your personal Myspace
account for selling advertising is not that Myspace wants to be
ad-free, but because Myspace wants to sell that advertising
themselves.  On the other hand, if some company wants some
functionality added to Linux or to the Mediawiki software (for
example, to adopt to the company's file format or hardware), they
are free to pay somebody to do this, and release the modifications
under the same GPL license.

If a hotel chain wants to promote tourism in their area, they are
(and should be) free to pay somebody to write good articles for
Wikipedia about places, sights and monuments in that area.  Of
course, the articles must be NPOV and contain verifiable facts,
describe notable objects, the contents must not violate any
copyrights and it must be released under the GFDL.  But the
commercial purpose is not forbidden, and the WMF doesn't need a
cut from the money that went into the authoring of this contents.

If the hotel chain went and talked to Myspace, I assume that
Myspace could allow them to set up a non-personal (commercial)
account for a fee with different terms of service.  I don't use
Myspace and I don't know if they sell such accounts, but I guess
it could be a good business to do so.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


body:
"Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
escribi? en el mensaje
news:e692861c0610011437ydb0f8f1yd39e62e79a988fdc at mail.gmail.com...
> On 10/1/06, Platonides
> <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So at last it is here? Congratulations!
>>
>> However...
>> *It doesn't work for me (start & stop buttons do nothing).
>> *I can't find how the applet gets the file to play. I guess the above
>> problem has to do with the applet may need to get passed the file
>> location
>> on jorbis.player.play.0 instead of
>> http://tools.wikimedia.de/media/wikipedia//d/d4/
>
> That is the file location: Unsigned java applets can only build
> connections to the server which sourced them, so toolserver runs a
> proxy which makes all the media available under that directory.
>
> What is the file you are attempting to play?  I've had a few cases
> where bizarre characters were breaking the MD5 generation.. although I
> believe most of them have been solved.

I get that *exactly location* no file appended to it.
I went to http://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/H?nh:SCA_approach.ogg as per Minh
Nguyen mail,
there i followed teh link so i arrived to
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Filepath/SCA_approach.ogg

Page source is:
<applet code="JOrbisPlayer.class"
        codebase="http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/"
        archive="JOrbisPlayer.jar"
        width="600" height="35" align="baseline">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.play.0"
VALUE="http://tools.wikimedia.de/media/wikipedia//d/d4/">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.icestats" VALUE="no">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.playonstartup" VALUE="yes">
</applet>Then i tried url
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Monteverdi_-_non_si_levav%27ancor.ogg(the
day's featured multimedia)Page source has:<applet code="JOrbisPlayer.class"
        codebase="http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/"
        archive="JOrbisPlayer.jar"
        width="600" height="35" align="baseline">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.play.0"
VALUE="http://tools.wikimedia.de/media/wikipedia//d/d4/">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.icestats" VALUE="no">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.playonstartup" VALUE="yes">
</applet>...and no
soundhttp://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fb%2Fb5%2FMonteverdi_-_non_si_levav%2527ancor.oggproduces
equal output and silence.If i call simply the .php
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.phpit is<applet
code="JOrbisPlayer.class"
        codebase="http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/"
        archive="JOrbisPlayer.jar"
        width="600" height="35" align="baseline">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.play.0"
VALUE="http://tools.wikimedia.de/media/wikipedia//d/d4/">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.icestats" VALUE="no">
        <PARAM NAME="jorbis.player.playonstartup" VALUE="yes">
</applet>i.e. the ?play= parameter is being clearly ignored. I tried to
check if it was indeed the correct parameter, but as i said, there's no doc
reference to it.There isn't any a text on the java console.It is not a Java
problem as on the jcraft page the same works after two warnings:
'Application will run without usual security restrictions' and 'certificate
has expired'.

http://www.jcraft.com/jorbis/player/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fb%2Fb5%2FMonteverdi_-_non_si_levav%2527ancor.ogg
works fine (not
www.jcraft.com/jorbis/player/JOrbisPlayer.php?play=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Monteverdi_-_non_si_levav%27ancor.ogg
 )

> The single most common cause of failure to play is that around 20% of
> the users whom have Java have a version of java which is so old that
> it doesn't have JavaSound ....
As jcraft works, it's not it. I'm not using msjvm neither.

(......)
> Hm. I missed that the media page is a redirect, but it makes no
> difference... Please read rather than skim: "f you are unable to use
> this player you will need to install a program to play Ogg format
> audio. Please see the Wikipedia directions at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_help"
>
> I.e. if this doesn't work for you, you'll have to install a local
> player.   I don't think it would be wise of us to instruct people on
> how to install a newer version of Java for three reasons:

Well, it's a better aproach, but there's nowhere saying "You can point users
to this, it works like that". I was expecting docs about the java, not about
how
to install an ogg player. Seems i misunderstood.
I find references to "continually improved", "if it doesn't work try in a
few days" a
bit frustrating. But hell, this may be me ;-)

> In any case, the player has been used successfully by tens of
> thousands of people. I'm aware of no standing cases where it does not
> work so long as you meet the basic requirement of a new enough java
> implimentation.
How did they do? :-)

I am using Versi?n 1.5.0 (build 1.5.0_06-b05) by Sun.

Setting the console output to 5 (all) it seems the error may came because
your
applet is unsigned and thus JavaSound is directly denied?

I paste you the output (spanish output):

basic: Modalidad de receptor registrada
basic: Referencia a cargador de clases: sun.plugin.ClassLoaderInfo at 1dfafd1,
contador de referencia=1
basic: Receptor de progreso agregado: sun.plugin.util.GrayBoxPainter at 998b08
basic: Cargando miniaplicaci?n...
basic: Inicializando miniaplicaci?n...
basic: Iniciando miniaplicaci?n...
network: Conectando
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.jar con proxy=DIRECT
basic: Carga de http://tools.wikimedia.de/~gmaxwell/jorbis/JOrbisPlayer.jar
desde la antememoria
basic: No certificate info, this is unsigned JAR file.

I was waiting to catch you on irc, easier to explain and feedback, instead
of filling a long bug on the ml,
but well... here you have it.

PS: I was going to propose filling a bug into hemlock's bugzilla but it
seems it disappeared / is unreachable.


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service

body:
Pat Gunn schreef:
> Hey all,
> I've started to summarise this list for people who don't want
> to slog through the whole thing (and to make it easy for translators
> to easily make foundation-l transparent to non-English speakers).
> To get the swing of it, I summarised all of September in my first
> go -- please see
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Improv/LSS/foundation-l-archives/2006_9_2430_wo

Nice and useful. I suggest to link not to the mailman archive for the
post but to the post on gmane. That interface is a lot better to read
post then the list archive.

--
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community


subject: [Foundation-l] List Summary Service


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of war criminals

body:
On 02/10/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:

> > What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair
> > mock trial in a country under a dictatorship?
> > Should we list them, too?
>
> It also seems to include people like Gerhard Wagner, who would
> presumably have been charged with crimes against humanity, rather than
> war crimes.
>
> Maybe changing it to [[List of people convicted of war crimes]] would
> be better, even if that meant people who died before a trial/verdict
> wouldn't be listed.

The usual criteria for things like this is "people who were convicted,
or people about whom there is little academic doubt", FWIW.

(The latter case covers people who were tried for something else, or
who died before standing trial, but are generally accepted as having
committed the crimes in question)

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>I don't think that it helps the transparency of the process when someone
>>like Jimbo begins by supporting a bid before the bidding has seriously
>>started.  It's the kind of prejudicial comment that tells everyone else
>>to give up before they even try.  It casts doubt on whether he believes
>>that the community has enough maturity to make good choices.
>>
>>
>Hmm, I seem to have been very misunderstood.  I said "It isn't up to me,
>nor should it be" (or words to that effect, you'd have to look it up).
>I really meant that.
>
>The committee did a great job this year, and next year's committee will
>do a great job too.
>
>I know that my opinions are often viewed as carrying a lot of weight,
>and for that I sincerely apologize.  I just like Italy. :)  It was just
>a personal comment.
>
That's a big problem with theology.  Churches would be a lot poorer if
they didn't consistently misunderstand their God.

In the long run it's not the disclaimer that will be remembered, but the
core comment in that message.  I clearly prefer to assume good faith,
and I recognize that you must often walk on eggshells.  Unfortunately
the weight of your opinions goes well beyond what you anticipate.  I
don't know what the proper solution would be.  Being completely silent
does not seem like a good option either.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/1/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Who says anybody has to do what "we" (whoever you mean by that) want
>>them to do?  What rule was wanked into saying that?
>>
>>
>All of them.
>
>
>>They are volunteers
>>too, and I hope they have enough imagination to do what they want to do.
>>
>>
>And if what they want to do includes orginal research and writeing POV articles?
>
We can't assume that they are doing that.  I would at least hope that
when they do we can enter into a respectful dialogue with them.

Ec


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
I could have done that. Do that myself at times, as when I fixed some
pretty serious errors in the featured article of Sept 24.

Kim

MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> There's also a fact checker wiki project. You can have them have a go at
> referencing the thing...
>
> On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>> That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as
>> unsourced........
>>
>> Kim
>>
>> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>>> Wikipedia:Cleanup Taskforce?
>>> Have them remove any uncited crap.
>>> If ALA 2000 is a specific list with set entries, remove anything that
>>> shouldn't be there.
>>> Be bold!
>>>
>>>
>>> On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>>>> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have added
>>>> challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the clogging up
>> with
>>>> many doubtful entries (just listed without explanations etc) has made
>> it
>>>> the target of creationists who try to get a book listed that a book
>> that
>>>> they claim is banned, but which in fact is far from that (if their
>>>> rational holds, the bible is banned book).
>>>>
>>>> Could some people deal with this list?
>>>>
>>>> Kim
>>>> --
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> Kim van der Linde wrote
>
>> That would amount to deleting around 90% of the article as unsourced........
>
> Unsourced is not the same as unverifiable, naturally.

Just as sourced and verifiable is not the same as factual correct. Sigh.

Kim
--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: Krishna Pagadala

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia mirror

body:
Nick,

   I am using MediaWiki version 1.7 for the Wikipedia mirror. However, when I copied the "essential" extensions Cite.php and
ParserExtensions.php and enabled them both in LocalSettings.php, I am seeing a lot of errors. However, when I disable Cite.php, then the errors disappear, but <ref.../ref> no longer work.

On googling this problem, I find that I am not the only one. How can this issue be resolved?

Thanks.
Krishna

Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:40:32 +1000
From: "Nick Jenkins"
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia mirror
To: "Wikimedia developers"
Message-ID:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

> I have already built a  mirror of en.wikipedia at
> http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/ however some of the
> pages are not rendered properly. For e.g.
> http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/index.php/India
> Any suggestions/advice on how to fix this

Looks like you haven't installed Parser Functions ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions ) or any of the other extensions used on the Wikipedia.
Compare: http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/index.php/Special:Version
To     : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Version
... you want everything under "Parser hooks" to be the same on your wiki as per the Wikipedia, in order to have the best chance of Wikipedia content displaying correctly on your wiki. You can download the extensions you need from http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions , and get documentation for most of the extensions from meta.wikimedia.org (e.g. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cite/Cite.php#How_to_install )

All the best,
Nick.

=====================================
Misinterpreting Copyright by Richard Stallman
"Die Gedanken Sind Frei": Free Software and the Struggle for Free Thought by Eben Moglen mp3 ogg
Free Knowledge blog

.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2?/min or less.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Swapping your points around to deal with them in a logical order:

On 10/2/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> (My point is not that densely-cribbed TOS agreements are
> wonderful or that we should have one, but merely that, depending
> on your enforcement model, they can have value in making your
> enforcements stick.)

A TOS doesn't necessarily have to be dense. Something which conveys
the five pillars (although probably not IAR, here!), with additions
such as something to cover commercial abuse. The simpler the language
the less contestable by problem users and the less
confusing/tedious/odious for good users.

> Well, realistically, there is another potential beneficial side
> effect of "terms of service" agreements like that, even if no one
> has read them, which is that they can -- maybe -- make it easier
> to deal with idiots after they've been discovered.

It might also be easier to deal with people who are astroturfing when
we can say in black-and-white terms that they are breaching our TOS,
rather than saying there was a rough consensus that some guideline
applied in this case, especially since (I would think) breaching a TOS
is more likely to generate negative attention or publicity.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of war criminals

body:
Speaking of dubious lists, we also have:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_criminals

The list currently contains people belonging to these categories:

1) people who were convicted for war crimes
2) people who were charged but not convicted
3) people who were never charged due to political reasons, but
the consensus is that they were involved in war crimes
4) people whose involvement in war crimes is unclear or a matter
of debate.

On the top of the list, it writes that:

"This is a list of formally charged and/or convicted war criminals"

which means 1) and 2). What about people who were formally charged,
but later found not guilty? They would be included by the current
criteria.

What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair
mock trial in a country under a dictatorship?
Should we list them, too?


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-03

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

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

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Alison Wheeler

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On Tue, October 3, 2006 00:08, Delirium wrote:
> I guess I don't see how this in any way helps that goal.  How is a
> "terms of service" any more useful than the existing Wikipedia
> policies?  We can already ban anyone we want and ask them not to come
> back, and don't need any sort of legal terms of service to do that.  We
> aren't offering a paid service, so don't need a legal terms of service
> as a way of terminating anyone's right to use our service, since we
> never sold any such right in the first place.

This isn't about what we've sold or not sold, but about the effects of
time. At the moment if we discover something that is, in essence,
commercial cruft we might find that our current <process> demands it goes
for AFD rather than get speedied. That gives a delay, during which time
the advertiser (for that is basically what they are) gets free use of our
services, is able to take screenshots and use them in their advertising
(has happened), and will get mirrored to other sites.

We should be removing commercially-based 'listings' as soon as they are
discovered, and one way to stop the people placing these 'adverts' (be
they the company concerned, their PR team, or someone they've especially
employed for the task) is to make it explicit to them in terms they
undersstand (ie *legal*) that we will delete it without further notice and
without further delay. At the moment it is problematic to deal with this
stuff in that way without someone popping up and shouting that you've
abused <process>.

Doesn't stop some of us, I know, but we should formalise the solution
before the problem gets even further out of hand, not just on en: but
everywhere else too.

Alison Wheeler


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] terms

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
>>As I said, I sincerely doubt most (any) Myspace members have read the  Terms
>>of Service, I can assure you that they are far more substantial  than our own
>>Terms of Service. Personally, I hope that the Board rectifies  this.
>>
>>Danny

I am not aware we really have any terms of service...
At best, when we click on "save", we agree to put our content under gfdl.

Is there anything else ?

> I think this would be impossible. I signed up, like many, to certain
> ''terms of service'' and now all of a sudden they would get changed
> after 3+ years of actively participating.

What and where did you sign ?

I feel that you would open up
> a Pandora's box if you did that. I am not a lawyer but I could see that
> my edits which I contributed under the previous term of service I would
> now actually have to give you permission again to keep them on the site
> or else I would be able to have them withdrawn, because I wouldn't agree
> to you using them under the new terms of service. Can you imagine the
> chaos from this?

Frankly no.
Afaik, the only thing we have now is you agreeing to put your content
under GFDL. There is no reason that this should change.

> Also you say you sincerely doubt that people read the terms of service
> ...... that is true most probably because they are to long and written
> in legalish. A language only known to a few people and not to poor
> Englishspeakers like myself.

Privacy policy is translated and imho, not difficult to understand.
So, why could not we do it for terms of service ?

So what would be the use of new terms of
> service that no-one would read and if they read it they wouldn't
> understand it anyway. Leaving the board in a position to do what they
> want when they want it. I am sure many including myself didn't get
> involved on the projects just to start having a big brother being able
> to yank us of at will and still use our years of sweat we put into this.
> Speaking for myself if such a thing would happen I would pursue every
> legal way possible to get all of my edits removed from the projects.

Why all that negativism and bad vibes toward the board ?
Have you no faith and trust in us ?

Have you considered that "terms of use" does not only mean "the
editorship must obey to rules defined by the host provider", but rather
be a contractual document binding the Foundation and the editors
together ? Not only a document where editors are requested to respect
certain rules, but also a document where the Foundation engage itself to
ALWAYS respect certain things.

Example, as an editor, I would like the Foundation to engage itself to
ALWAYS provide dumps of project for free. This is not a requirement of
the licence. Right now, the place where the Foundation promises to
provide the content for free is the bylaws. But it does not clarify
whether the content provided for free will be article per article (ie,
on the website) or in a more gathered fashion (such as in global dumps
or dumps per categories).

There are other things I would like to see the Foundation always respect
in the future.

These things could indeed be clarified in the bylaws. But bylaws may be
changed much more easily than terms, and mostly, bylaws only require
board input to be changed. Whilst terms can not be changed without all
parties agreeing.

Ant

> Waerth


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Wikimedia promotion committee

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/1/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:

>> == Visual identity guidelines ==
>>
>> The committee works on developing visual identity guidelines for the
>> projects. In the absence of project specific guidelines, the guidelines
>> for the Wikimedia logo are valid:
>> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_visual_identity_guidelines
>>
>> If you design promotion stuff for your project, please follow them as
>> closely as possible (or we'll come and hunt you at night ;-)
>
> Well I would but in the interests of not breaking copyright law I
> think the "do not use foundation or project logos" route is somewhat
> safer.

No. If a project community wants to advertise their project in the
outside world, they _should_ use the project logo.

And not use a fake one for fear of breaking copyright. The wrongest
thing you could do is to design a Wikipedia flyer using
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:AnimationWIKIPEDIA001.gif

>> == Production of promotion material ==
>>
>> It's obvious that two people can't do all the necessary design work for
>> all the projects in the different languages. Currently, we focus on
>> creating a basic set of necessary things:
>> * Brochure (threefold, DIN A4), see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leaflet
>
> Can you fid the person who included the phrase "Our editors range in
> age from seven to
> seventy" and tell them that the projects are quite able to shoot
> themselves in the foot without foundation help? Or do you really want
> to advertise the posibility that we have 7 year olds editing something
> as solidly adult in content as wikipedia?

The text is here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Leaflet/en - feel free
to rewrite and improve it ;-)

As a non-native speaker I have to rely on the help of volunteers.

>> == Logos ==
>>
>> The promotion subcom will act as intermediate institution between
>> community and board in the process of choosing new project logos. It
>> will check if community chosen project logos fullfill the necessary
>> requirements (format specification, copyright situation etc., see
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logos) to become official project logos
>> and submit them with a recommendation to the board for approval.

> [[m:Instruction creep]]

Of course. A little story for you:
<rant>
Two days before the start of Wikimania 2005, in the organizers' office.
Elian is layouting the press kit, searching for highresolution versions
of all project logos. The wikibooks logo was available only as Wiki.png.

Scaled to print resolution, it was 10x12 mm which looked a bit small on
an DIN A4 page.

Brion had redrawn the wikibooks logo for a convention, unfortunately the
file was lost on a broken hard disk. No problem, let's just take a
digital camera, take a photo from the printout he still had, do a little
bit of filtering in gimp... So we used a photo of a bitmap graphic and,
at least for my part, are using it till today.

Shall I tell you the story of the t-shirt producer, too, who wanted to
print the wikipedia logo as a serigraph?

And all this because nobody thought - when the logos were chosen - that
logos are not just for the upper left corner of a mediawiki installation
but are needed in suitable versions for print as well.
</rant>

greetings,
elian


from_name: Jimmy Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l]basic php debugging for writing mediawiki extension

body:
Hi,

set in your php.ini

error_reporting  =  E_ALL
display_errors = On

Cheers, Jimmy

> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: fadeev at princeton.edu, Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Gesendet: 03.10.06 00:41:27
> An: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Betreff: [Wikitech-l] basic php debugging for writing mediawiki extension

> Hi,
>
> I am trying to create an extension for the mediawiki
> and found that when my extension does not compile wiki
> just hangs and i get bank  screen in the browser.
>
> Is it possible to somehow enable printing php
> compilation errors to the browser scren for debugging
> purposes?
>
> Thank you!
>
> Evgeny.
>
> __________________________________________________
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from_name: dvr at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de

subject: [Wikitech-l] out of office / Abwesenheitsnotiz

body:
Sorry, I am on vacation until Thursday.

denny


body:
valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:

>I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
>one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
>
>The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
>but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
>Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
>
>Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.
>
>
I have no objections to these regional meetups in addition to one big
worldwide event.  Having people meet internationally is very good for
getting to know each other.  There are several countries in Asia which
could handle the conference.  Australia too has several capable cities,
as does South America.

As for Africa and the digital divide it could be a humbling experience
for those of us from developed countries to go to a conference there.
We could have first hand experience of the difficulties in bringing
knowledge to the people of that continent.

Ec


from_name: henna

subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia atonement

body:
On 10/3/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
>
>
>
> BIRGITTE SB EXPERIENCE
>
> Ok I will now share my own experience with these
> methods at en.WS.  Firrst I need to explain that we do

just for information, a description of how nl.wp deals with anonymous
edits is located at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/RC_patrol_on_nl.wikipedia

henna

--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


subject: [Foundation-l] Porchesia atonement


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/3/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> Which segues into my question: what Services can we possibly set the Terms for?
> What are we willing to come out and say we are providing?
>
> "The privilege of contributing to our encyclopedia?" Sounds like a one-sided
> contract.
>
> Or are we actually going to come right out and say: "in exchange for getting
> your company's name on the whatever'th most popular website..."

No need to overcomplicate things. The service is the ability to edit the wiki.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com