from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Our Featured Article of the Day Contains Probable
 Copyright Violations

body:
John Lee wrote:

>
>Then again, I suppose this does reflect the condition of how fair use
>and copyright law are blatantly ignored/misunderstood by most
>Wikipedians...for further information, see [[Wikipedia:Fair use
>review]], which has a fuller description of what's going on.
>
Or that the problem is hard, and has had more people throwing rocks
than working on scalable solutions. I've put out several ideas for
process improvement in the past couple of days, and have had almost
no substantive response, either positive or negative. I find it hard
to take complaints seriously when the issue is ignored for months
at a time, then there a paroxysm of righteous indignation, then it
goes back to being ignored. We need X number of people who are going
to work on this steadily for Y hours per week, exact values to be
determined by the efficiency of the processes we develop.

Stan


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia on iPod (Encyclopodia) available now

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 3/2/06, Jim <trodel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>The only way the high quality can be assured, and wikipedia can stay
>>reputable (with the press penchant for negative stories) is to clearly
>>identify what is the original source "wikimedia foundation"
>>data/information/articles and what is not.
>>
>>
>
>But the information in question *is* original source wikimedia
>foundation data/information/articles.  However, the Wikimedia
>trademarks, at least in theory (IANAL), disallow someone from making
>that clear.
>
>
I think it's more the logo that's problematic.  Factual attributions,
like "This is a distribution of Wikipedia content as of [x date],
selected in [y manner], packaged for the iPod" would be hard to
prosecute under trademark laws, just like Brittanica hasn't sued us for
having taglines at the bottom of some articles stating "This article
incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, a publication
in the public domain.".

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] Serbian Wikipedia is in four standard variants

body:
Thanks to Zhengzu, Brane, Nikerabbit and Brion, Serbian Wikipedia is
now in Cyrillic, Latin, Ekavian and Iyekavian variant. This is the
great news! We have a lot of work now. I am going to write
documentation and bots :)


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Serbian Wikipedia is in four standard variants


list: wikien-l

body:
John Lee wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>>John Lee wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Then again, I suppose this does reflect the condition of how fair use
>>>and copyright law are blatantly ignored/misunderstood by most
>>>Wikipedians...for further information, see [[Wikipedia:Fair use
>>>review]], which has a fuller description of what's going on.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Or that the problem is hard, and has had more people throwing rocks
>>than working on scalable solutions. I've put out several ideas for
>>process improvement in the past couple of days, and have had almost
>>no substantive response, either positive or negative. I find it hard
>>to take complaints seriously when the issue is ignored for months
>>at a time, then there a paroxysm of righteous indignation, then it
>>goes back to being ignored. We need X number of people who are going
>>to work on this steadily for Y hours per week, exact values to be
>>determined by the efficiency of the processes we develop.
>>
>>Stan
>>
>>
>>
>Where? Not to be obnoxious, but I haven't seen any of your proposals.
>Ever since I became properly acquainted with fair use, I've tried to
>ensure images I upload at least comply with the American law. The
>problem is that when I stumble across obviously not fair use pictures
>uploaded by others, there's no good process for handling them.
>
Talk pages of Fair use review, WikiProject Fair use, and TBSDY's
proposal page Fair use criteria/Amendment. Logical places, or so
I thought... :-)

Stan


from_name: Ben Lowe

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jordanhill railway station Commemoration

body:
At least it's a train station and not a bridge: we don't have to worry about
trolls.

On 3/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 13:06:07 +1100, you wrote:
>
> >I fear that the plaque would be promptly vandalised...
>
> Anonymously or would they tag it first?
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ilya N.

body:
my first response was 'hey, cool new project!'

although it doesn't work on 5G :(

On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> Daniel Mayer (maveric149 at yahoo.com) [060301 12:18]:
>
> > Please don't feel assaulted since that is not my intent. I simply want
> to make sure that your
> > great use of Wikipedia content does not jeopardize Wikimedia-held
> trademarks. Trademarks *must* be
> > proactively protected or they could be lost.
>
>
> It did however strike me as churlish that the very first responses on the
> list to a cool new project were not "hey, cool new project!" but "CEASE,
> VIOLATOR. OR SUSPECTED VIOLATOR, ANYWAY."
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Apeksha Bhambhani

subject: [WikiEN-l] To develop a plug-in for Wikipedia

body:
Hii all ,
  We have developed a web mapping application . And would like to integrate it with Wikipedia . Our mapping application uses MapServer,Php/Mapscript , as the scripting language and MySql as the database. Our application accepts user clicks on the image provided by us .And points are plotted .We have developed a Php file to accomplish this. Could anybody tell us how to go about for creating a plug-in for Wikipedia ?

  Thanks a lot for your help,
  Apeksha

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail
Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] press contact

body:
Hello,

We need more press contacts in spanish and portuguese. Are they more
volunteers ? (so that I know where to redirect journalists...)

Thanks

ant


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

body:
On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 00:56:21 +0000, you wrote:

>I don't think it's even remotely correct to state that the article
>comprises 35% of all our coverage of Powell.  Besides the Scout
>movement itself, Baden-Powell is most famous in Britain for his
>masterly defense of Mafeking, a garrison which, outnumbered 4:1, he
>held against the Boers for over 200 days with the help of a home made
>howitzer, a great quantity of non-existent barbed wire, some fake
>landmines and a biscuit tin.  And if you think that sounds like
>something out of Black Adder, maybe you'll understand the brilliance
>of the tactician.  The Boers gave up because they concluded that the
>garrison was too heavily defended.

Tony, I know this.  I am both English and a former Scout :-)

But on a quick and dirty word count the total in BP and BP sexual
orientation devoted to this speculation is about the same as the total
in BP on scouting and military career.  It seems excessive given that
these are, after all, only two of the many, many books written on BP -
and it is still speculation.  What's in the BP article itself looks to
me to be sufficient.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 13:06:07 +1100, you wrote:

>I fear that the plaque would be promptly vandalised...

Anonymously or would they tag it first?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection of the Today's FA

body:
On Thu, 02 Mar 2006 21:46:47 -0500, you wrote:

>That policy makes no sense.  I agree that protection should be avoided
>if at all possible on visible articles but the policy is taken way too
>literally at times and there are times when protection of an FA is a
>good idea.

Isn't this what semi-protection is for?  I really don't see the
problem with that.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
On 3/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> But shifting the issue onto the result, which is microscopic at the margin,
> is a way of not addressing what is going on.  (This was the warm-up example,
> too.)

Sorry, Charles, your examples are going to have to get hotter than
that one. :-)  An anon IP making a drive-by deletion isn't going to be
affected by the contents of V.  We need a concrete example of where V
or NOR are causing the deletion of unsourced edits that are otherwise
known to be accurate.

The other thing I've many times asked for an example of is one of
these well-known, undisputed facts that apparently no-one can find a
source for.

Sarah


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
On 3/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>
> Yes.  But it is unlikely to defame someone, to suggest they went to a
> fairly
> good school.  So I say this edit was close to vandalism.

How do we know it is a good school?  Maybe he went to a school that was
actually a traditional rival of this school, and someone is having a bit of
fun at his expense?  And how damaging is it really not to list the school
they went to?

Jay.


from_name: guru brahma

subject: [WikiEN-l] Commemoration of the millionth article

body:
Well,

  I don't know if the article on Jordanhill railway station will make it to FA anytime soon, but my own commemoration was to put it on the DYK section in mainpage (and btw, the process was duly followed with the suggestion made at the template talk etc.). Does any one want to try for a featured pic or selected anniversary pertaining to Jordanhill railway station? That would be more fitting than a plaque, imo.

  Regards,
  Gurubrahma

  p.s. This is my first post on the mailing list, so [[WP:BITE]] applies ;-)

---------------------------------
 Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket
Yahoo! Messenger Mobile Stay in touch with your buddies all the time.


from_name: Peter Mackay

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Nicholas Moreau

> It has been expressed by many users that the Wikimedia
> Foundation should contact the authorities in control of the
> Jordanhill railway station, and request a plaque be placed at
> the station, in commemoration of the 1 millionth English article.
>
> If you agree with this concept in principle, you may put your
> username here.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jordanhill_railway_station/C
> ommemoration
>
> You must be logged in to a valid user account, with at least
> 5 unreverted mainspace edits, at the time of signing.

I fear that the plaque would be promptly vandalised...

I have no doubt that we could get the wording right, the plaque designed and
paid for, just by the enthusiastic Wikipedians who are (like me) chuffed at
reaching a million articles and then having the article promptly expanded
and polished and illustrated by a team of volunteers. This is all great
stuff. It can even be a good media story, with Jimbo and ScotRail MD Mary
Dickson standing together to unveil the plaque before the crowd of
television reporters and curious commuters.

But I have to wonder about the reaction of the railway administration and
whether they might think we are taking ourselves a bit too seriously. It's
only a website, after all.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject:
[Foundation-l] Creative Commons and Access plan to create PD
	catalog like WM Commons

body:
Just found this press release (
http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=582837),
the second of the paragraphs that I've quoted is the most important...

----

Access Copyright and Creative Commons Canada Announce Public Domain Registry

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(CCNMatthews - March 3, 2006) -

Ground-breaking project will feature globally searchable catalogue of
Canadian culture

Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency and Creative
Commons Canada, in partnership with Creative Commons Corporation in the US,
today announced the development of a Canadian public domain registry. The
ground-breaking project - the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada -
will create an online, globally searchable catalogue of published works that
are in the Canadian public domain.
...
The innovative registry's backbone will be Access Copyright's Rights
Management System, the largest database of copyright information in Canada.
The Wikimedia Foundation, developers of the popular online encyclopedia
Wikipedia, will supply software that will allow the public to contribute
information to the registry. Individuals will be able to use the registry to
determine whether a published work is in the public domain. The registry
will also link to digital versions of the work, and provide information
about where a paper copy of the work can be purchased.

----

This sounds like we're in partnership with the Creative Commons, which, to
my knowledge (as a member of the Communications Committee), we're not.

I'd love if we were, and they could just upload the content to Wikimedia
Commons, but they're not. It's rather deceptive.

Nick


from_name: SCZenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Marvel.com have a wiki

body:
Claiming copyright on Wikipedia material would be a violation of GFDL.  If
they claim copyright on everything on their site, and they copy our stuff
onto their site, then we can send them a letter they've violated GFDL and
asking them to stop.  That's all there is to it.

SCZenz

On 3/3/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Marvel have set up their own wiki, http://www.marvel.com/
>
> They're claiming copyright on all contributions, and asking stuff be
> referenced in issues or movies, it's vetted by editors, but I see a
> couple of problems.  Is there a point where some of our material gets
> copied over, and if so what happens re the GFDL, and is there a
> possibility they could claim copyright infringement on Wikipedia's part
> for articles on their properties?
>
> Steve block
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/273 - Release Date: 02/03/06
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection of the Today's FA

references:
<BAY113-F3003728E76F54245FFF7BEB4EA0@phx.gbl>
	<4407AE17.7000301@wordzen.net>
	<btbg021eigjkds0g67b3l1sql7r7saqjfs@4ax.com>

body:
On 3/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >That policy makes no sense.  I agree that protection should be avoided
> >if at all possible on visible articles but the policy is taken way too
> >literally at times and there are times when protection of an FA is a
> >good idea.
>
> Isn't this what semi-protection is for?  I really don't see the
> problem with that.

Semi-protection of a main-page FA is almost as bad - it stops
newcomers being able to edit the first article they see. So either
should only be used in cases of sustained high-level vandalism.

Steve


from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 02/03/06, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> To be blunt, which bit of saying that every bit of info must be supported
> by a verifiable and reputable source is unclear?
>
>   In this instance, the information is clearly unverifiable, so it
> shouldn't be added.
>
>   Jon
>
>
>
Why shouldn't unverifiable information be added? Most of the content on
Wikipedia is unverified.

Are people going to go and remove it all?

It's pretty POV to just pick and choose the stuff you don't like, and remove
it because of it being "unverifiable".

I'll point out that I think it's most sensible to rely only on verified
information, but Wikipedia has not in the past seriously implemented such
theoretical ideals. If people are going to start doing so, do it across the
board please. I don't doubt the encyclopaedia would be a vast amount smaller
and less broad if only verified information is left in it! Wikipedia has not
succeeded at even beginning to conform to its ideals.

Zoney

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jorge S�nchez Seijo

subject: [Wikitech-l] Permanenttly assing skins to pages

body:
Hi all

Is there a way to permanently assign skins to pages. I know I can do a
work-around using the attribute "useskin" in links but that's not what I
need.

Thanks in advance

Jorge


subject: [WikiEN-l] Who policies images on Commons? (speaking of fair use...)

body:
The reason I ask is that an image was deleted on Wikipedia as lacking
source/copyright information, but the offender just linked to the article
from an identical image on Commons (the article is Katharine Hepburn).  The
image has been tagged on commons as lacking source info since Feb. 10.

k


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
"Fastfission" wrote

> This kind of stuff is actually a big concern within studies about the
> writing of history (historiography) and the philosophy and sociology
> of science -- what kinds of sources become part of "the archive", what
> sorts of systemic biases are imposed by certain "standards of rigor",
> how demarcation boundaries are really ways of imposing certain
> "regimes of truth", and so forth.

I made this sort of point a while back.  Yes, there's a tension between
being hardcore about verifiability, and the wish to eliminate systemic bias.
I would rather reach out, try to fix up the systemic issues, and fuss about
sources later.  I'm not exactly happy about the subtexts, like
'verifiability means anglophone sources', which do come up (e.g. the Rajput
case on the ArbCom).

We still need 'be bold!', in fact.  Consider that there are legal problems;
but that they are likely to come from the rich.  We should certainly be
tougher on articles about living Americans than for living Liberians, for
example.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
On 3/3/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Or editors who remove references they don't like from articles then
> > nominate them for deletion as unverifiable. When bailed up on it, they
> say
> > "but the sources are crap." What can practically be done about this?
>
> Beat them with a very large clue-stick?
>
> References SHOULD NEVER BE REMOVED unless alternative references for
> the referenced facts are found or the information those references
> support is removed from the article.  To do otherwise is completely
> against the spirit of our verifiability and sourcing policies and
> practise.

On the other hand, if the information and reference are garbage, there's no
issue with removing both of them, at least to the Talk: page.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection of the Today's FA

body:
On 3/3/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I agree. Way too many vandalisms from IPs and new users vs the *VERY* little to any improvement
> those user classes make to the article while it is a TFA. All the many reverts do is take time
> away from fighting other vandalism and pollute the history page with anon edit followed by revert
> times 50 to a 100 for any TFA. TFA is supposed to showcase our very best work, not a page whose
> only content for several minutes is 'I like farts'.

I don't think we expect to get much improvement to the front page FA
from anons. We just want to prove that they can edit.

>
> We needn't hype the editability fact so much given that we get many edits, have so many editors,
> and that readers outnumber editors by at least 200 to 1. The vast, vast majority of people

We don't need to encourage people to edit because we have 200 times as
many readers as editors? I disagree.

> come to Wikipedia expect to see quality content not fart jokes. Because of that, vandalism is
> becoming increasingly less and less tolerable in my mind; even when it only is in the top edit for
> less than a minute given that one or more readers may have loaded that page in that time.

However I agree with this, because...

> Ideally I would like to see the saving of *all* edits by anons and new users to be delayed until
> they are OKd by a trusted user (to be defined) or a clock runs out (default could be 5 minutes and
> admins could increase that time on a per article basis).

...I totally agree with this. I suspect it would be somewhat tricky to
implement, but yes, this would help a great deal with vandalism. I
don't think it's "unfair" on anon users that their edits are delayed
for a while, and I think it would have a deterrent effect on vandals
as well. ("What? My fart joke isn't even going to get its 1 minute of
fame?")

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiPolitics in the news

body:
Here: http://tinyurl.com/nwyss

"An American expatriate called 'Calton' apparently doesn't like the
political userboxes.
'Kill them, kill them with fire, nuke them from orbit, salt the earth
behind them,' he wrote on one deletion-review page.
Then 'Misza13' of Poland cried foul on 'Calton': 'I'd like to note
that, in my humble opinion, your vote ('Kill them ... ') is an example
of Wikihate. Please, don't hate.''

Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rumours of my death are mildly exaggerated.

body:
Well, set your heart at rest, David: [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill commemoration]]
was launched this morning.  Now all we need is a "This user does not support
trains, Scotland, or the number 1,000,000" userbox, and we'll be on our way.

On 3/3/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <Snowspinner> Glad you're not dead.
> <DavidGerard> i'm glad too!
> <DavidGerard> i've just come back to irc and see a zillion talk
> messages and a pile of channels with my name dropped
> <DavidGerard> all about wikipedia battles to the death for insanely
> low stakes ...
> <DavidGerard> makes me want to start a sock just to write articles
> <Snowspinner> lol
> <Snowspinner> We have articles now?
> <DavidGerard> i think so. someone said there were a million of them.
> <Snowspinner> WTF?
> <Snowspinner> I thought we just had policy pages and userboxes.
> <DavidGerard> I can't find [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill railway station]]
> anywhere
> <DavidGerard> or [[Template:Jordanhill railway station]]
> <DavidGerard> I think {{user Jordanhill railway station}} doesn't exist
> either
> <DavidGerard> what sort of pissant project is this? that press release
> will make a laughingstock of our adherence to process
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/3/06, Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll point out that I think it's most sensible to rely only on verified
> information, but Wikipedia has not in the past seriously implemented such
> theoretical ideals. If people are going to start doing so, do it across the
> board please. I don't doubt the encyclopaedia would be a vast amount smaller
> and less broad if only verified information is left in it! Wikipedia has not
> succeeded at even beginning to conform to its ideals.

You're confusing "verified" and "verifiable". All Wikipedia requires
is that information actually has been published or is otherwise
verifiable. We don't do fact checking, per se.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection of the Today's FA

body:
On 3/3/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I don't think we expect to get much improvement to the front page FA
> > from anons. We just want to prove that they can edit.
>
> What? TFA is not a sandbox.

It kind of almost is. And it always has enough people watching it to
clean up the mess. But yeah it's a pity that we can't actually delay
anon edits.

> > We don't need to encourage people to edit because we have 200 times as
> > many readers as editors? I disagree.
>
> Very few people create information yet we all consume it. That is a fact of life.

I mean, I find the logic that the shortage of editors means we don't
need more editors a bit strange.
> There will be a minor undesirable side effect of denying anons and new users the instant
> gratification of having their valid fix or addition delayed. But that is greatly mitigated by

5 minutes would be nearly "instant". And it would be great if it was a
per-page setting that could be tweaked, so 5 minutes for the main FA,
6 hours for less-watched but equally target pages like Abortion or
something, and maybe even 0 by default?

the
> much, much longer time their edits will be viewable by all and the fact that getting rid of the
> delay is something that only takes a bit of time and effort on their part (becoming an editor in
> good standing ; should be auto-determined based on age of account and number of non-reverted
> edits).

I would be happy for all logged in editors to be exempt, which would
be in line with similar policies.

Steve


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
> Well, set your heart at rest, David: [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill commemoration]]
> was launched this morning.

I tell you, if I lived in Scotland I would be bold and epoxy some
kind of homemade plaque to a wall in that station myself.


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of SJ

> > But I have to wonder about the reaction of the railway
> administration
> > and whether they might think we are taking ourselves a bit too
> > seriously. It's only a website, after all.
>
> And the Library of Congress is only a building...
>
> ...with 118 million items and 500 miles of shelf space.

I take your point, but really it is up to ScotRail to approve a plaque. They
may think it just as good an idea as I do, but if they say "Huh?" we should
not be too disheartened. People who make trains run on time may not be
travelling along the same intellectual tracks as we are.

Besides, my experience with things of this nature is that although they
attract great anticipation in advance and excitement when they occur, a few
days later the fires of enthusiasm burn low. I cannot say that the media
coverage has been as jubilant as one might wish for, and it is not a story
with "legs", not unless the article becomes the subject of bitter sectarian
conflict or something, which prospect seems remote at this juncture.

I advise caution, but if the outside world shows interest, then we should
send our most silver-tongued representative to make a pitch for a brass
plaque.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Ben Lowe

body:
<Taking you more seriously than you probably intended>If it's developed
online, then yes, I suppose it is.</tymstypi>  The plaque proposal has
evolved slowly through the day and now looks like -- guess what, everybody!
-- a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration>*
userbox <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration>.*
Old wiki habits, I guess.  I think I preferred the original design, which
said "This plaque hereby proclaims that Jordanhill station is pwnd by Jimbo
Wales."

On 3/3/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Steve Summit wrote:
> >> Well, set your heart at rest, David: [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill
> commemoration]]
> >> was launched this morning.
> >
> > I tell you, if I lived in Scotland I would be bold and epoxy some
> > kind of homemade plaque to a wall in that station myself.
>
> Would the plaque be released under the GDFL?  If so, could I add one to
> my house? :)
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/273 - Release Date: 02/03/06
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
A  couple of combative columnists, [[Johann Hari]] and [[Mark Steyn]].

I'll take Johann Hari first, since the issues are entry-level.

User:81.157.14.152 thought that his secondary schooling was not verifiable,
and cut it out (20 February); no edit summary, let alone discussion.  One of
the schools in question is [[John Lyon School]]. The information that Hari
went there was added on 17 February by User:Epitome1, who had the same day
edited the page, [[John Lyon School]]. And then immediately gone on to add
the fat that Hari was an alumnus.

Reasonable presumption would take it that User:Epitome1 has a close enough
connection to John Lyon School; perhaps even was a pupil there with Hari, or
teaches there.  Nothing to raise the slightest suspicion, anyway.

So User:81.157.14.152 cuts out this and another school.  Objections from
User:Felix-felix, who puts it back in.  Talk page discussion:
User:81.157.14.152 emails Hari to check, and comes back satisfied on the
John Lyon School, at least.

But under [[Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons]], of course, we cannot
accept this information, on the basis of a supposed email exchange.

Further, if someone actually was at school with Hari, we cannot accept that
testimony, at least until they point to a published school list (which in
effect displaces them as witness).

The article can get by, without the school information.  But it is not
without interest: Hari went to Cambridge, and has had a spectacular career
while still young, from a background which was probably too poor to be
considered very middle class.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Protection of FA and Daniel Mayer's views

body:
Hi all,

  I found Daniel Mayer's views about delayed updation interesting. In this connection, interested people may want to look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Defense_of_content, where discussion is happening on similar lines. Admittedly, it is still raw in places and needs further work but it is worth a dekko.

  Warm regards,
  Gurubrahma.

---------------------------------
 Jiyo cricket on Yahoo! India cricket
Yahoo! Messenger Mobile Stay in touch with your buddies all the time.


body:
Bel Lowe wrote:
> The plaque proposal has
> evolved slowly through the day and now looks like -- guess what, everybody!
> -- a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration>

Well, the best suggestion there (by [[User:Cherry blossom tree]])
has been to put up, not an engraved plaque with the wording,
but a chalkboard...


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> I'd question this given Kim and Gmaxwell's numbers showing almost all
> articles on Wikipedia aren't contentious at all and consensus works fine.
> The pathological articles are the bits you hear about, not the majority.

I'm not talking about articles here.  I'm talking about community and
policy.  Evidence is quite clear that consensus works on individual
articles most of the time.  However, evidence is also quite clear that
consensus as a mechanism to craft broader policy for the encyclopedia
and for the community does not work.

Adopting parliamentarianism as a guiding principle for the community
does not mean that article editing would not continue to be governed
by consensus.  It's just that our unreasonable love of "consensus" as
a governing principle has led us into an increasingly bad situation --
just as it did for the House of Lords oh so many decades ago.

Kelly


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer (maveric149 at yahoo.com) [060301 12:18]:
> >
> > > Please don't feel assaulted since that is not my intent. I simply want to make sure that
> your
> > > great use of Wikipedia content does not jeopardize Wikimedia-held trademarks. Trademarks
> *must* be
> > > proactively protected or they could be lost.
> >
> >
> > It did however strike me as churlish that the very first responses on the
> > list to a cool new project were not "hey, cool new project!" but "CEASE,
> > VIOLATOR. OR SUSPECTED VIOLATOR, ANYWAY."
>
> Your memory is faulty.

Also my first email about this was offlist and started with a compliment on how cool I thought the
whole thing was.

-- mav

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


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer (maveric149 at yahoo.com) [060301 12:18]:
>
> > Please don't feel assaulted since that is not my intent. I simply want to make sure that your
> > great use of Wikipedia content does not jeopardize Wikimedia-held trademarks. Trademarks *must* be
> > proactively protected or they could be lost.
>
>
> It did however strike me as churlish that the very first responses on the
> list to a cool new project were not "hey, cool new project!" but "CEASE,
> VIOLATOR. OR SUSPECTED VIOLATOR, ANYWAY."

Your memory is faulty.

>From me, the very first response:
"This is great. Would you please add a copyright notice about Wikipedia
to the copyright notice on your page? E.g. ..."

>From Anthere:
"Before anything, Robert, Wikipedia on ipod looks wonderful.
I do not have an ipod myself, so I can not *test*, but the very idea is
great.
Thank you for taking care of this.

Now, far from being willing to annoy you, I regret to tell you that Mav
is correct in his questions. ...."


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiPolitics in the news

body:
On 3/3/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here: http://tinyurl.com/nwyss
>
> "An American expatriate called 'Calton' apparently doesn't like the
> political userboxes.
> 'Kill them, kill them with fire, nuke them from orbit, salt the earth
> behind them,' he wrote on one deletion-review page.
> Then 'Misza13' of Poland cried foul on 'Calton': 'I'd like to note
> that, in my humble opinion, your vote ('Kill them ... ') is an example
> of Wikihate. Please, don't hate.''

Great... and the countervandalism unit gets a mention, too.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
Slim Virgin wrote

> Correct. Wikipedia editors are not journalists and have no access to
> the kind of fact-checking process that reporters have. This is why we
> publish only what reliable sources have already published.
>
> However, even though the e-mail exchange is not acceptable as a
> source, there is likely to be some other way of obtaining the
> information e.g. from a school magazine or local newspaper. It'll just
> require a bit of extra digging.

Well, you're assuming here that the problem is actual _verification_.

No one seriously believes that schooling information in London would not be
verifiable.

My interest here is rather in people's behaviour.  The user who cut the
information has, in my view, made numerous mistakes.  Since the
Verifiability policy will not in any case prevent the making of mistakes,
here's the question to the class.

User:81.157.14.152 didn't follow best practice here.  Enumerate the ways in
which best practice was not followed.

Charles


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this worth requesting?

body:
"Mark Gallagher"
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote in
message news:440861A5.1000005 at student.canberra.edu.au...
[snip]
> Anybody with sysop privs can see a person's deleted edits by looking at
> deleted pages known to have been edited by that user.  Assuming that the
> current policy of admins being allowed to see deleted edits is one we
> want to keep, then what's wrong with allowing admins to see a user's
> deleted contribs through the Contributions page rather than the Undelete
> edits page?

If the new system is to be used for all deletions, then nothing. Under the
present deletion system, quite a lot.

At present, revision of deleted pages are actually moved to a separate
table, and it would be a lot of work to recover them simply for a
contributions list.

If however Brion's new feature
(<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bitfields_for_rev_deleted>) gets working, it
would be feasible to do all deletions the same way, in which case those
revisions would become accessible.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Jay Converse

body:
Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, what?  Aren't we going a little overboard
here?  This is like putting a plaque in a New York subway station saying
"The 500th episode of Law and Order was filmed in this station."

On 3/3/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> Bel Lowe wrote:
> > The plaque proposal has
> > evolved slowly through the day and now looks like -- guess what,
> everybody!
> > -- a <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Jordanhill_commemoration>
>
> Well, the best suggestion there (by [[User:Cherry blossom tree]])
> has been to put up, not an engraved plaque with the wording,
> but a chalkboard...
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Jay Converse
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
Ok, I'm not trying to be argumentative, but if it's clear, then
presumably my questions have straightforward answers answered by the
policy.

But yeah, probably better for me to work directly on the policy rather
than just whinging about it here :)

Steve

On 3/3/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Seems pretty clear to me.  The only people who I can see having questions
> about what these points mean are those actively looking to find them.
>
> k


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
Slim Virgin wrote

> I'm not sure I see the point of this, Charles, because each situation
> is different, depending on whether the editors know each other, how
> potentially harmful the unsourced edit is, and so on.

Well, I thought that's what the case study method is about.  Get down to a
concrete case.  People on this list were asking for examples, were they not?

>But in this
> case, I would look for a source myself online.

Well, I would ask the editor who added it three days before, first.

> If I couldn't find one,
> I'd request one on talk. For a harmless edit like this, I'd probably
> wait for a couple of weeks,  then go back and delete it.

Yes, asking on talk is good.  In fact it is basic.  Because if you don't,
others can't help on the issue, and if this turns out to be something more
major, there has been no alert, no documentation.  If there _is_ a problem,
then how can you keep something off  the page, permanently?

> If I cared
> about the subject, I'd try to track down an offline source myself. If
> the edit was potentially more damaging that where someone went to
> school, I'd add the {{fact}} template. If it was more damaging than
> that, I'd remove it (moving damaging edits to talk is not a good idea,
> because they're still cached by Google).

Yes.  But it is unlikely to defame someone, to suggest they went to a fairly
good school.  So I say this edit was close to vandalism.

> But WP:V can't give endless examples like this. We have to assume,
> even if flying in the face of all the evidence, that most editors have
> a degree of common sense.

Indeed.  But then that is the drawback of the policy documents,
collectively.

Charles


body:
"Ben Lowe" <ben.lowe at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:e45d88050603030837w4d3ba99dof213f588de326101 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 3/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG
> <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 13:06:07 +1100, you wrote:
>> >I fear that the plaque would be promptly vandalised...
>> Anonymously or would they tag it first?
> At least it's a train station and not a bridge: we don't have to worry
> about trolls.

You think a troll in an anorak is any less dangerous? They do have bridges
at railway stations, you know :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] 13 wikipedia awaiting to create

body:
Andrew, your opposition to a Cantonese Wikipedia is seemingly
illogical and, in addition, tiring.

If some people want to create an encyclopaedia in written Cantonese,
why can't you let them? It's not as if it marks a significant decrease
in potential editors for zhwp, and it's not as if all Cantonese
speakers are going to be "forced" to use a Cantonese Wikipedia
"instead".

I opposed a "Dutch Low Saxon" Wikipedia for a long time, and I still
do oppose the idea of one, but after a while I accepted the fact that
if some people really wanted to create a Wikipedia, even if I believed
it wasn't even a real language, there was no harm in letting them --
either the project will fail and they will be sad, or it will succeed
and the entire community will ultimately benefit.

As many people have said, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I
think a Cantonese Wikipedia would be interesting to the press in the
Chinese-speaking world, and by extension that would draw attention to
the Wikipedia in BHW.

Also, although you've tried to invalidate the vote, you still haven't
said much about it that was really significant -- sure, maybe some
people abstained from the vote in protest, but I doubt it could've
been enough people to tip a 52-20 vote in your favour. And while you
try to use the meetup (5 or 6 people IIRC) as "proof" the the majority
does not support a Cantonese WP, it is clear that the majority does in
fact support a Cantonese WP -- look at how many of the people who
voted are in Hong Kong, a couple from Macau...

It seems to me to be an inevitability that a Cantonese Wikipedia and a
Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia will be created. No matter how much either
of us tries to prevent it.

Mark

On 01/03/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please don't create the Cantonese language Wikipedia based simply on
> that vote. It's very old and has been the root of much contention on
> these lists.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
> On 3/1/06, Henry Li <henrysyli at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Dear developers,
> >
> > Please create the following 13 wikipedia stated in
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
> >
> >     * Dutch Low Saxon
> >     * Vlax Romany
> >     * Ligurian
> >     * Samogitian
> >     * Banyumasan
> >     * Ripuarian
> >     * Pennsylvania German (prototype)
> >     * West Flemish
> >     * Norman
> >     * Franco-Proven?al/Arpitan
> >     * Cantonese
> >     * Tetum
> >     * Kalmyk
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Henry Li
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Email confirmation - IMPORTANT

body:
"Ilya N." <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:af9c32bf0603030830idd28568pbc7d4371004161a6 at mail.gmail.com...
> I'm wondering if this could be a step to *something* bigger.

You mean [looks over shoulder] <whisper>single-login</whisper>?

There have certainly been rumblings, and it can't come too soon :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> But how will you feel about it if that's the result anyway?

Process should be followed until it is clear that it does not work.
And then it should be changed, modified, have exceptions added to it,
etc. in order to fix whatever wasn't working. I don't think that's a
very radical idea.

One clarification: I am fine with enshrining the idea that process as
a rule is a better way of managing behavior on a large scale. I am not
fine with enshrining any particular processes (i.e., our current fair
use policy, our current speedy deletion policy), but rather the idea
of processes in general. In this sense, the only individual process
which needs to be guaranteed is the possibility of changing other
processes if needed.

In the end, I am more worried about the collateral damage which
results from making big changes against policy without open discussion
-- leading to accusations, suspicion, curt language, frustrated users,
angry posts, etc. -- than I am about the idea that asking questions
about policy violations will cause more people to look to policy
before acting unilaterally.

If we are not free to inquire in good faith about violations of
policies then we might as well not even have them. And I don't think
that's an approach which has shown itself to work too well,
personally, either on the Wiki or elsewhere.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
 "John Lee" wrote

>I  think this is a rather good point being made -- consensus isn't scaling,
> at least when it comes to policy matters and meta issues, like wheel
> warring. On nearly everything else -- hell, even AfD (as a once-regular
> AfD closer now taking a break, I think much of the problems with it are
> overhyped) -- consensus is working great. But on policy, things are
> moving at a glacially slow pace.

A non-scaling idea of consensus is what we call 'not a consensus'.

There used to be a fairly relaxed view of policy.  That is, there was the
newbie version, which was fairly aspirational, and the 'old lags' version,
which tested the limits, but took various good things like 'be bold' and
'assume good faith' and 'ignore all rules' (when the situation warranted it)
as central - rather than assuming there was a theory test and manual of
style handed out as you came in.

Have things moved on?  Yes.  We (metaphorically) shot the Old Bolsheviks, by
banning User:Wik and annoying User:RickK and busting User:Ed Poor so far
back into the ranks that his eyes watered.  There may be one or two OBs
left, but not many.  It's a newish world out there.

And we now have to plan for 'The Eight-Figure enWP'.

When?  Four years from now.  That's compound growth of 1.2% per week,
extrapolated.

Policy is going to be tighter.  Wonkery is here to stay.  Exegesis of policy
is going to matter (I've just sent a Verifiability case study around, which
was of course not aimed at SlimVirgin, who knows all this.)  'Unexpected
consequences' bedevil us.  For example, make people log in to create pages,
and you get more logged in users, wondering about ... userboxes.  Hah.

Glacial is about right (geese, golden eggs).  Remembering that 2005, which
the media are delighted to call a tough time for WP, was in fact a
breakthrough year of huge achievement with a few blemishes on the face of
things.  Must have been WP's adolescence.

As they say, though not always of wikis - so cute when they're young, shame
they have to grow up.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
On 3/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Correct. Wikipedia editors are not journalists and have no access to
> the kind of fact-checking process that reporters have. This is why we
> publish only what reliable sources have already published.

Sorry to keep picking on you, but according to the policy, we can
include the information if, as you say, it's already been published.
We don't actually have to find
>
> However, even though the e-mail exchange is not acceptable as a
> source, there is likely to be some other way of obtaining the
> information e.g. from a school magazine or local newspaper. It'll just
> require a bit of extra digging.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
"jayjg" wrote

> How do we know it is a good school?

Well, reading the page, it's a good school, even 'exclusive'.

How do we verify that?  Whoa, infinite regress ahead.  Let's say that having
a school page that is misleading would call for more immediate editing?

>Maybe he went to a school that was
> actually a traditional rival of this school, and someone is having a bit
> of
> fun at his expense?  And how damaging is it really not to list the school
> they went to?

As I pointed out, he got to Cambridge.  This is not easy: one in 200 of his
cohort manage it, at most.

I wouldn't go to the trouble of having an edit war over this, myself.
Better ways to spend my time.

But shifting the issue onto the result, which is microscopic at the margin,
is a way of not addressing what is going on.  (This was the warm-up example,
too.)

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
On 3/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > But shifting the issue onto the result, which is microscopic at the margin,
> > is a way of not addressing what is going on.  (This was the warm-up example,
> > too.)
>
> Sorry, Charles, your examples are going to have to get hotter than
> that one. :-)  An anon IP making a drive-by deletion isn't going to be
> affected by the contents of V.  We need a concrete example of where V
> or NOR are causing the deletion of unsourced edits that are otherwise
> known to be accurate.

Here ya go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_Gambling_Prohibition_Act&diff=41851755&oldid=41851730


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Who policies images on Commons? (speaking of fair
	use...)

body:
Commons has their own admins, though not as many of them, and many of
them (myself included) are not on Commons nearly as much time as they
are on Wikis (there isn't as much to talk about on Commons, less
reason to check it regularly, psychologically speaking).

In any event... if it is a specific case, one can always nominate it
for deletion on Commons and be done with it, and it will get culled
fairly quickly. In a general sense, Commons does need better automated
deletion, but I don't know how to go about getting that (it would be
great to have a trans-wiki OrphanBot).

In this particular case, I took care of it, though I know that's not a
long-term solution. It might be worth sending an e-mail to the Commons
mailing list.

FF

On 3/3/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> The reason I ask is that an image was deleted on Wikipedia as lacking
> source/copyright information, but the offender just linked to the article
> from an identical image on Commons (the article is Katharine Hepburn).  The
> image has been tagged on commons as lacking source info since Feb. 10.
>
> k
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
 "Steve Bennett"

> As the policy stands, I would argue for leaving it in
> the article, regardless of whether we can actually track down a source
> or not.

Well, I'm arguing that _asking the editor who inserted it_ is a kind of due
diligence here.  Like, go to User Talk, write 'Hi, interested to know how
you researched Hari's schooling'.  Before editing it out, after all of 72
hours.  How much effort is that?  Well, you have to look at the Page
History.

My list of mistakes:

-Not assuming good faith (i.e. leaping to conclusions about a possible
fabrication of a banal fact)
-Not doing the collective things one does, to edit as a team on an article
of common interest
-Being too reactive, and lack of sense of proportion
-No edit summaries
-No use of article Talk
-No use of User Talk
-Probable ignorance of the use of the Page History, leading to a narrow view
of one's responsibilities in editing
-Misapprehension of Verifiability policy and its modalities
-Ignorance of policy on biographies, leading to a wild goose chase.

Now, some of these are _newbie mistakes_, and the User has not been bitten
(perhaps a bit scratched - see interchanges on Talk:Johann Hari, with
cattiness from Felix^2).   I would argue that just this isolation of 'thou
may cut the unsourced' is a newbie-ism.  It's the 'other things being equal'
context that lacks.

I hope our newbies actually move up the learning curve from there.  But it
is much better to take WP:V as applying to one's own edits, to begin with.
That could be said.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
On 3/3/06, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > If I couldn't find one,
> > I'd request one on talk. For a harmless edit like this, I'd probably
> > wait for a couple of weeks,  then go back and delete it.
...
> > But WP:V can't give endless examples like this. We have to assume,
> > even if flying in the face of all the evidence, that most editors have
> > a degree of common sense.
>
> Indeed.  But then that is the drawback of the policy documents,
> collectively.

Trouble is, my common sense, combined with policy, leads to a
different result. We've assumed the factoid is true. We've assumed it
is verifiable. As the policy stands, I would argue for leaving it in
the article, regardless of whether we can actually track down a source
or not. The policy doesn't say all info must have sources - it simply
says all info must be verifiable, and there is enough information
there to determine whether it's true or not (unlike the case of
unattributed quotations, for example).

Common sense does not support removing true, verifiable, harmless information.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
Crap, I actually sent this? My apologies, I meant to discard it. :)

Steve

On 3/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/3/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Correct. Wikipedia editors are not journalists and have no access to
> > the kind of fact-checking process that reporters have. This is why we
> > publish only what reliable sources have already published.
>
> Sorry to keep picking on you, but according to the policy, we can
> include the information if, as you say, it's already been published.
> We don't actually have to find
> >
> > However, even though the e-mail exchange is not acceptable as a
> > source, there is likely to be some other way of obtaining the
> > information e.g. from a school magazine or local newspaper. It'll just
> > require a bit of extra digging.
> >
> > Sarah
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


references:
<20060303015516.80920.qmail@web26910.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
	<20060303020606.DIRE16720.omta01sl.mx.bigpond.com@skyringstudy>
	<rrbg02lejdk2bl7el2lne2s9c3ej2fih04@4ax.com>
	<e45d88050603030837w4d3ba99dof213f588de326101@mail.gmail.com>
	<du9td1$duf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 3/3/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> You think a troll in an anorak is any less dangerous? They do have bridges
> at railway stations, you know :-)

According to [[Jordanhill railway station]], there is both a railway
bridge and a pedestrian bridge over the railway.

Hey, that article has proven handy already!

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability - Case Study I

body:
Slim Virgiin wrote

> Sorry, Charles, your examples are going to have to get hotter than
> that one. :-)  An anon IP making a drive-by deletion isn't going to be
> affected by the contents of V.  We need a concrete example of where V
> or NOR are causing the deletion of unsourced edits that are otherwise
> known to be accurate.

Talk:Johann Hari is worth reading (how do we know that Hari claims that the
Dalai Lama called him 'fat'?).

This is said justification:

"The reason I deleted the schools list is because I couldn't see any proof
for it; I have now e-mailed Hari and he has given me a list of his schools,
so hopefully we now have consensus on that."

This is at least 50% wrong, as we know.  What I say is that the lack of the
basic 'due diligence' taken on 'proof' makes it in the region of 80% wrong.

I will make an effort to send something more confusing, next, as this is so
trite to the experts.  My years in academia did suggest starting at the
beginning.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
1) More work at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Verifiability/Proposed_revision
:

What, you ask, is verifiable information? [[Wikipedia:Use common
sense|Use common sense]], but if you're unsure or are involved in a
dispute, read [[Wikipedia:No original research]], [[Wikipedia:Reliable
sources]], and [[Wikipedia:Try to verify]].

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Try_to_verify is evolving
based on edits and comments on the listserv.

3) A problem I've noticed is that [[Wikipedia:Citing sources]] is
morphing from a style guide to a policy guide. The "When to cite
sources" and "Why sources should be cited" are not style guide
sections, but rehashes of [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] and such -- I've
copied over the "When to cite sources" section to [[Wikipedia:Try to
verify]] which tackles just that issue (in a hortatory manner).


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
On Sat, 4 Mar 2006 05:04:11 +1100, you wrote:

>Or editors who remove references they don't like from articles then
>nominate them for deletion as unverifiable. When bailed up on it, they say
>"but the sources are crap." What can practically be done about this?

Cite better sources? ;-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Escaping the GFDL -- can it be done?

body:
On 3/2/06, Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.org> wrote:
>
> Philip is correct.  The only way to escape the GDFL is to rewrite the
> entire encyclopedia under a different license - or get every single
> contributor to agree to reassign the content.  Good luck with that.
>
> The first approach actually seems viable to me - see
> http://www.panopedia.org  :-)

Why did they choose Attribution-No Derivative Works? What an awful license.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 02/03/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:

> "Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this
> document under the Gnu Free Documentation License, version 1.2 or any
> later version published by the Free Software Foundation"
>
> This means that if GFDL 2.0 comes out as a verbatim copy of the
> Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution Share-Alike license, then all of
> Wikipedia is effectively dual-licensed under GFDL 1.2 and CC-BY-SA
> 2.5, and anyone re-using the content can pick whichever license they
> want.

I'm not sure about that.

http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html - section ten, first paragraph

>> The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised
>> versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from
>> time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit
>> to the present version, but may differ in detail to address
>> new problems or concerns.

I think you could make a case, based on the "similar in spirit"
clause, that this hypothetical version 1.3 was *not* a revised version
of the GFDL, but rather a new license which shared a name with the old
one - it didn't comply with the terms set out in earlier versions to
define what a later revision would consist of.

I wouldn't want to pay for your lawyers, mind, but it's not a
frivolous argument.

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


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pity the admin....

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>
>>On Thu, 2 Mar 2006 16:08:27 +0000, you wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>This article would be, I dare say, of intense interest to
>>>members of the American and Canadian scout movement who are involved
>>>in this controversy.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Ah, so it's useful in furthering a political agenda.  That explains
>>the massive pile-on in AfD, anyway.  I guess it's like Christianity:
>>Jesus is dead so we can all make a living pretending we alone know
>>what he thought :-)
>>
>
> If Jesus was writing under GFDL, no one should object to Matthew, Mark,
> Luke and John (and even Paul) doing a little commercialization. :-)
>

For 1600 years Rome claimed that they had exclusive rights... :)

--
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 555 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060303/67b4eb67/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [060304 09:15]:
> > On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> > > But how will you feel about it if that's the result anyway?
>
> > Process should be followed until it is clear that it does not work.
>
>
> How clear is clear?

If the discussion closely resembles the last panel of [[The Garden of
Earthly Delights]], it might be a sign that process has failed ;-)

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: David Gerard

body:
<Snowspinner> Glad you're not dead.
<DavidGerard> i'm glad too!
<DavidGerard> i've just come back to irc and see a zillion talk
messages and a pile of channels with my name dropped
<DavidGerard> all about wikipedia battles to the death for insanely
low stakes ...
<DavidGerard> makes me want to start a sock just to write articles
<Snowspinner> lol
<Snowspinner> We have articles now?
<DavidGerard> i think so. someone said there were a million of them.
<Snowspinner> WTF?
<Snowspinner> I thought we just had policy pages and userboxes.
<DavidGerard> I can't find [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill railway station]] anywhere
<DavidGerard> or [[Template:Jordanhill railway station]]
<DavidGerard> I think {{user Jordanhill railway station}} doesn't exist either
<DavidGerard> what sort of pissant project is this? that press release
will make a laughingstock of our adherence to process

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/2/06, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> The problem I'm facing at the moment with Ethiopian articles is that last
> November Meles Zenawi closed down the media in his country, following riots
> over the election results. (There's some disagreement over who started these
> riots: whether it the opposition parties who called for demonstrations
> or the police who were told to "keep order".) As a result, I'm finding that
> if I want to write adequately detailed articles, I'm faced with using
> unacceptible sources -- namely Weblogs & web forums. For every event that
> a reputable source like the BBC publishes, there are about 5 more that
> I end up learning about in other ways.

Just so you know, I'm an editor that thinks taht weblogs and web
forums are acceptable sources.

I think providing a source is a lot more important than trying to
ensure its reliability--let the reader provide their own determination
of the weight to give to the source.

I trust readers more than I trust journalists, frankly.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem is something of a slippery slope one -- i.e. whereas
> newspapers etc. are extremely controlled, blogs are extremely
> uncontrolled, and both lack for accountability and reliability for
> different reasons. But at least we have a historical understanding of
> the fallibility of traditional media, and fewer people understand the
> strengths and weaknesses of blogs/websites/electronic-only media.

Indeed.  However, any study of newspapers soon shows they are able to
publish, at times, utter tripe, devoid of an ounce of accuracy.  While
on the other hand there are some blogs that are extremely accurate and
prime sources in their particular field.

The one advantage newspapers have here is that, being hardcopy, it's
easier to be sure that the one you're reading is the same one the
original author read and used as a source.  Most blogs, like most
websites, have little sense of history - articles are revised with
little or no notation to inform the reader, and often older,
pre-revision versions are inaccessible.

Also, most newspapers have been around for long enough that their
likelihood for bias and inaccuracy is well understood, and the
relative rankings of newspapers are reasonably well known.  Most
people in the United States know well enough to trust the New York
Times over the New York Post, for instance, and both over the National
Enquirer - and most realise that all three could be wrong.

> But a lot of the bias against blogs is, in my opinion, simply the
> classic problem of trying to make Wikipedia resemble traditional
> encyclopedias. People forget that Wiki is not paper.

People forget that Wiki is not paper in the less obvious ways.

-Matt


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?

references:
<dua4g1$blb$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<009401c63ef9$8b197cc0$0500000a@nahore> <dua6ik$jh2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Use the pipe trick. [[en:lemna|]] should hide the prefix.

Rob Church

On 03/03/06, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> Li-sung schrieb:
> > What is output of  "[[en:lemna|lemma]]" ?
> >
>
> I know *g* I have to write things twice like that, when using interwiki
> links in mediawiki. But thats not "wiki" quick enough for me.
>
> Heinz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Heinz

body:
I would like to know how i can hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?

When writing e.g. "[[en:lemna]]" the output is "en:lemna". i would like
to get just "lemna" (not showing the interwiki-link).

thx, heinz


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] The new verifiability policy

body:
On 3/3/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> References SHOULD NEVER BE REMOVED unless alternative references for
> the referenced facts are found or the information those references
> support is removed from the article.  To do otherwise is completely
> against the spirit of our verifiability and sourcing policies and
> practise.

...or the references are genuinely bogus. Not as in, "exists but is no
good", but is in, "made it up to support my cause". (yes I've seen
this)

Steve


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Steve Summit wrote:
>> Well, set your heart at rest, David: [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill commemoration]]
>> was launched this morning.
>
> I tell you, if I lived in Scotland I would be bold and epoxy some
> kind of homemade plaque to a wall in that station myself.

Would the plaque be released under the GDFL?  If so, could I add one to
my house? :)

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/273 - Release Date: 02/03/06


body:
Heinz schrieb:
> I would like to know how i can hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?
>
> When writing e.g. "[[en:lemna]]" the output is "en:lemna". i would like
> to get just "lemna" (not showing the interwiki-link).
>
> thx, heinz

sorry one fault: i mean "[[:en:lemna]]" & ":en:lemna" (forgot ':' )

heinz


from_name: Li-sung

body:
What is output of  "[[en:lemna|lemma]]" ?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heinz" <h-j.luecking at t-online.de>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 8:15 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] How to hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?

> I would like to know how i can hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?
>
> When writing e.g. "[[en:lemna]]" the output is "en:lemna". i would like
> to get just "lemna" (not showing the interwiki-link).
>
> thx, heinz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Li-sung schrieb:
> What is output of  "[[en:lemna|lemma]]" ?
>

I know *g* I have to write things twice like that, when using interwiki
links in mediawiki. But thats not "wiki" quick enough for me.

Heinz


body:
So just "[[:en:lemna|]]"

Li-sung

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heinz" <h-j.luecking at t-online.de>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] How to hide Interwikilinks in Outputs?

> Li-sung schrieb:
> > What is output of  "[[en:lemna|lemma]]" ?
> >
>
> I know *g* I have to write things twice like that, when using interwiki
> links in mediawiki. But thats not "wiki" quick enough for me.
>
> Heinz
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Rob Church schrieb:
> Use the pipe trick. [[en:lemna|]] should hide the prefix.
>

thx. that's good! Where is that trick documented?

Heinz


references:
<dua4g1$blb$1@sea.gmane.org>	<009401c63ef9$8b197cc0$0500000a@nahore>	<dua6ik$jh2$1@sea.gmane.org>	<e92136380603031155xe077a78t@mail.gmail.com>
	<dua7in$n3l$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Heinz schrieb:
> Rob Church schrieb:
>> Use the pipe trick. [[en:lemna|]] should hide the prefix.
>>
>
> thx. that's good! Where is that trick documented?
>
> Heinz

*ggrrrr* But i get an endless list in the left navigation box!!

Heinz


subject: [WikiEN-l] Marvel.com have a wiki

body:
Marvel have set up their own wiki, http://www.marvel.com/

They're claiming copyright on all contributions, and asking stuff be
referenced in issues or movies, it's vetted by editors, but I see a
couple of problems.  Is there a point where some of our material gets
copied over, and if so what happens re the GFDL, and is there a
possibility they could claim copyright infringement on Wikipedia's part
for articles on their properties?

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/273 - Release Date: 02/03/06


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body: The thing will obviously be rejected as plaque spam.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/3/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just so you know, I'm an editor that thinks taht weblogs and web
> > forums are acceptable sources.
> >
> > I think providing a source is a lot more important than trying to
> > ensure its reliability--let the reader provide their own determination
> > of the weight to give to the source.
> >
> > I trust readers more than I trust journalists, frankly.
>
> That's an excellent point. Since we're providing the source, and since
> weblogs are typically easily accessible, doesn't a rule against
> weblogs fly in the face of "Wikipedia does not strive for truth, but
> verifiability"? Sure, if you had even better sources, you might not
> want to clog your article up with stuff drawn from weblogs...but if
> you're directly quoting from a blog, where's the problem?

The problem is something of a slippery slope one -- i.e. whereas
newspapers etc. are extremely controlled, blogs are extremely
uncontrolled, and both lack for accountability and reliability for
different reasons. But at least we have a historical understanding of
the fallibility of traditional media, and fewer people understand the
strengths and weaknesses of blogs/websites/electronic-only media.

But a lot of the bias against blogs is, in my opinion, simply the
classic problem of trying to make Wikipedia resemble traditional
encyclopedias. People forget that Wiki is not paper.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> > Process should be followed until it is clear that it does not work.
>
> How clear is clear?

Surely there's no generalizable or exact answer for this. What's your
point, in this? To point out that some aspects of this can be
difficult, hard to put a finger on, or complicated? I agree
completely, if so.

FF


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Steve Summit wrote:

>>Well, set your heart at rest, David: [[Wikipedia:Jordanhill commemoration]]
>>was launched this morning.
>>
>>
>I tell you, if I lived in Scotland I would be bold and epoxy some
>kind of homemade plaque to a wall in that station myself.
>
>
Now, now, what with all our complaints about vandalism on Wikipedia, we
can't be encouraging people to put stuff up in the real world without
authorization.

--Michael Snow


body:
Technically, they did agree to that -- part of the GFDL is its ability
to be updated (by the FSF, not us). But I agree that people would
probably feel uncomfortable about it if it changed radically in any
substantial way, which is a major element to watch out for in a
project like this which relies upon community enthusiasm.

FF

On 3/3/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can't suddenly change the agreement by which things were licensed.
> If we were to change the GFDL to become PD, lots of people will want to
> retract edits it applies to, because that's not what they agreed to when
> they edited it at the time.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 3/2/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/2/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> > > On Mar 2, 2006, at 9:19 AM, Fastfission wrote:
> > >
> > > > It is just a thought I had -- the only one I could come up with which
> > > > seems really plausible, aside from the possibility of the FSF being
> > > > convinced to make updates to the GFDL (which I suspect they would be
> > > > very dubious about, especially if the edits were primarily to benefit
> > > > Wikipedia).
> > >
> > > A revised version of the GFDL wouldn't help us because Wikipedia
> > > would still be licensed under the old version.
> >
> > Wikipedia is licensed under all versions of the GFDL starting with
> > version 1.2.  From [[Wikipedia:Copyrights]]:
> >
> > "Permission is granted to copy, distribute, and/or modify this
> > document under the Gnu Free Documentation License, version 1.2 or any
> > later version published by the Free Software Foundation"
> >
> > This means that if GFDL 2.0 comes out as a verbatim copy of the
> > Creative Commons 2.5 Attribution Share-Alike license, then all of
> > Wikipedia is effectively dual-licensed under GFDL 1.2 and CC-BY-SA
> > 2.5, and anyone re-using the content can pick whichever license they
> > want.
> >
> > --
> > Mark
> > [[User:Carnildo]]
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipodia

body:
Just got sent this:
http://www.lifehacker.com/software/ipod/put-wikipedia-on-your-ipod-157398.php

see:
http://encyclopodia.sourceforge.net/en/index.html

Paul

--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


body:
On 3/3/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> AFAICT the Panopedia believes very strongly in article ownership; most
> obviously because as soon as you edit someone else's article, you create
> a derivative work of it (the original author is allowed to do so because
> they own full copyright), which violates the CC-BY-ND-2.5 license.

Sounds rather like Everything2, in which individual pieces were
copyrighted by the authors with no rights to create derivative works
unless specifically authorized.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Escaping the GDFL -- can it be done?

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> And now... for something completely different.
>
<snip>
> The idea of multi-licensing has been pursued on the project at
> different times, whereby contributions are indicates as being
> licenseable under the GFDL or another, similarly "free" license (i.e.,
> CC-BY-SA or CC-SA). There was also the big push, awhile ago, to get
> users to put templates on their user pages indicating that their
> present, future, and, I think, *past* contributions were
> multi-licensed as well -- I believe it had to do with making certain
> articles compatible with WikiCities' license. The basic idea was to
> run a bot to find all of the "authors" the articles in question and
> see if they would agree to this. I don't know how this worked out, but
> it was an interesting idea.
>

It initially started with the Rambot articles, so that WikiTravel could
use them.

> Based on this principle: can one really ask users to
> re-(multi)-license their PAST contributions? That is, can I say, "All
> those contributions I said were under the GFDL? Well, now I want them
> to also be GFDL or CC-BY-SA." Legally, I'm suspicious, but I'm also
> not a lawyer.
>

Um, Stallman says CC is bad, because people assume that all Creative
Commons licenses are the same without understanding the consequences -
so people don't understand why cc-by-nd-nc isn't a Free license. "But
it's Creative Commons!" they protest. "You use /that/ stuff which is
Creative Commons, so why not mine?"

> If this principle works -- couldn't we change the terms of use? That
> is, instead of every edit being licenseable under the GFDL, couldn't
> we change it to say that "this contribution, and any other
> contribution I have previously made, is licenseable under the GFDL or
> any other similarly 'free' license"? It wouldn't necessarily get *all*
> of the content out of the GFDL but, if we assume that many of the
> editors now were editors previously, it would potentially "free up" a
> very large amount of content. If an individual editor objected to this
> for some reason (I can't imagine why, but let's just say they did),
> then they'd be prohibited from editing, the same way we do when people
> suddenly claim that the intent to retain copyright on their edits.
>

Well, you'd need to define "similarly free" first...

Supposing that this was put into place, all that would change from an
editor's point of view would be the edit page - instead of "Content must
not violate any copyright and must be verifiable. You agree to license
your contributions under the GFDL", it would have the name of the other
license/complex licensing conditions.

Speaking of people objecting to our current licensing, check out
[[Talk:Bruce Perens]]. Apparantly he objects to us having an article on
him, because he has issues with the license we are using... oh, and
apparantly we're neither a Free Software project *or* an Open Source
project. Hrm.

--
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 555 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060303/aff18389/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] Marvel.com have a wiki

body:
On 3/3/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Claiming copyright on Wikipedia material would be a violation of GFDL.  If
> they claim copyright on everything on their site, and they copy our stuff
> onto their site, then we can send them a letter they've violated GFDL and
> asking them to stop.  That's all there is to it.

It's not even just a violation of GFDL, it's just a normal copyright
violation. The copyright to our articles is held by the contributors
of those articles. If they copy them, well, they're breaching our
individual copyrights.

Steve


from_name: John Lee

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Our Featured Article of the Day Contains Probable
	Copyright Violations

body:
[[Triumph of the Will]] has a gallery of fair use pictures. The gallery
itself violates fair use under American law, which requires that the
subject of the images be critically discussed by the article using those
images. As if that were not enough, the images are *high-resolution*. It
has been suggested that the images are public domain, but this has not
been conclusively proven, and the images are currently marked with a
copyright of 2005 by the uploader, who also wrote much of the article.
It would be bad enough if this is any ordinary article, but...

   1. It's a featured article, which means it's the best we have to offer
   2. It's on the frickin' main page right now

Then again, I suppose this does reflect the condition of how fair use
and copyright law are blatantly ignored/misunderstood by most
Wikipedians...for further information, see [[Wikipedia:Fair use
review]], which has a fuller description of what's going on.

John


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 3 Mar 2006, at 22:54, Fastfission wrote:

> Commons has their own admins, though not as many of them, and many of
> them (myself included) are not on Commons nearly as much time as they
> are on Wikis (there isn't as much to talk about on Commons, less
> reason to check it regularly, psychologically speaking).
>
> In any event... if it is a specific case, one can always nominate it
> for deletion on Commons and be done with it, and it will get culled
> fairly quickly. In a general sense, Commons does need better automated
> deletion, but I don't know how to go about getting that (it would be
> great to have a trans-wiki OrphanBot).
>
> In this particular case, I took care of it, though I know that's not a
> long-term solution. It might be worth sending an e-mail to the Commons
> mailing list.

It can be slow - uncourced stuff etc goes quickly but stuff uploaded as
free can take months. Often it does have the problem of bouncing between
wikis - if all the free stuff was on commons life would be much easier.

Can we just implement single sign in and start to move towards this?

Justinc


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Linker.php, 1.73,
 1.74 Parser.php, 1.596, 1.597

body:
Lupin wrote:
> Log Message:
> (bug 4855) Section edit links now have the section name in the title attribute

Neat! A couple notes:

First, since this changes the HTML output of section headings this has broken
several of the parser test cases. When changing parser behavior it's a really
good idea to run the parser tests before and after.

If anything's stopped working, you should determine whether it's because the new
code is broken or because the output has legitimately changed; if it's broken,
fix it. :) If it's a legitimate change, fix the test case output in
parserTests.txt so it runs clean.

Also, it's best to put in some test cases for the behavior you're changing if
they aren't already there. This can ensure that you've coded the new feature
correctly and that any future regressions will be caught.

Offhand I tried tossing some examples of markup and other non-plaintext into
headers to see what the output would be; things appear to be getting
double-escaped. (eg, "<" turns into "&lt;" in the HTML, showing "<" in
the mouseover popup) It might be good to de-escape here. (There should be a
method on Sanitizer to intepret HTML entities into plaintext.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060303/f185668e/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Ricky Reno

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Mistake

body:
I believe I've been mistakenly blocked for violating the 3rr. I'm hoping
that Hall Monitor and the rest of administration can clear this up.
Siddhartha21   I.P. 151.213.167.25.

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-04

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 266 of 288 tests (92.36%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:

>I regret my involvement in the userbox situation.
>
>I've been away from Wikipedia for a while now, and have had time to
>reflect on recent affairs.  I've also been doing some reading.  The
>following paragraph jumped out at me from a book I was reading:
>
>Robert was surely aware of the early evolutionary development of
>parliamentary procedure in the English House of Lords resulting in a
>movement from "consensus," in its original sense of unanimous
>agreement, toward a decision by majority vote as we know it today.
>This evolution came about from a recognition that a requirement of
>unanimity or near unanimity can become a form of tyranny in itself. In
>an assembly that tries to make such a requirement the norm, a variety
>of misguided feelings--reluctance to be seen as opposing the
>leadership, a notion that causing controversy will be frowned upon,
>fear of seeming an obstacle to unity--can easily lead to decisions
>being taken with a psuedoconsensus which in reality implies elements
>of default, which satisfies no one, and for which no one really
>assumes responsibility.
>
>This paragraph really describes what I think is going on at Wikipedia.
>
>I think it's time we reconsider whether "consensus" is a valid
>principle of governance in as large and contentious a community as
>this one has become, and whether we need to make more of an effort to
>move to parliamentarianism as a method of governance.
>
>I'm not quite crazy enough to sign Karmafist's manifesto, but I am now
>convinced -- after reading the discussions here and in other places --
>that Wikipedia needs a strict rule prohibiting administrative "wheel
>wars": if an admin performs ANY admin action and any other admin
>objects to it, it MUST be reverted and the matter referred for
>discussion and decision amongst a proper deliberative body.  The
>current methods are yielding "pseudoconsensus" -- or sometimes
>multiple pseudoconsensuses -- and are magnifying disputes instead of
>tempering them.  Until something is done, things will only get worse.
>Continuining on this course cannot be the best thing for Wikipedia.
>
>Kelly
>
>
Am I the only one who thinks it's a shame only geni replied to this? I
think this is a rather good point being made -- consensus isn't scaling,
at least when it comes to policy matters and meta issues, like wheel
warring. On nearly everything else -- hell, even AfD (as a once-regular
AfD closer now taking a break, I think much of the problems with it are
overhyped) -- consensus is working great. But on policy, things are
moving at a glacially slow pace.

One should also bear in mind that Karmafist's proposed legislature will
operate on [[sociocracy]], or consensus, not on the usual idea of a
Parliament.

Anyway, IMO, consensus ain't scaling WRT policy, wheel warring, etc.
It's time to find something better. For now, however, as there appears
to be no prospect of change in the near future, we need to drum it into
people's heads: DON'T WHEEL WAR.

John


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Creative Commons and Access plan to create PD
 catalog like WM Commons

body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:

>Just found this press release (
>http://www.ccnmatthews.com/news/releases/show.jsp?action=showRelease&searchText=false&showText=all&actionFor=582837),
>the second of the paragraphs that I've quoted is the most important...
>
>
>----
>
>Access Copyright and Creative Commons Canada Announce Public Domain Registry
>
>TORONTO, ONTARIO--(CCNMatthews - March 3, 2006) -
>
>Ground-breaking project will feature globally searchable catalogue of
>Canadian culture
>
>Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency and Creative
>Commons Canada, in partnership with Creative Commons Corporation in the US,
>today announced the development of a Canadian public domain registry. The
>ground-breaking project - the most comprehensive of its kind in Canada -
>will create an online, globally searchable catalogue of published works that
>are in the Canadian public domain.
>...
>The innovative registry's backbone will be Access Copyright's Rights
>Management System, the largest database of copyright information in Canada.
>The Wikimedia Foundation, developers of the popular online encyclopedia
>Wikipedia, will supply software that will allow the public to contribute
>information to the registry. Individuals will be able to use the registry to
>determine whether a published work is in the public domain. The registry
>will also link to digital versions of the work, and provide information
>about where a paper copy of the work can be purchased.
>
>----
>
>This sounds like we're in partnership with the Creative Commons, which, to
>my knowledge (as a member of the Communications Committee), we're not.
>
>I'd love if we were, and they could just upload the content to Wikimedia
>Commons, but they're not. It's rather deceptive.
>
It says nothing about bein in partnershi, just that Wikimedia will
supply software.  That software is available for anybody to use.  They
are clearly heading in a favorable directions, so we should be careful
not to look for difficulties.
Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
On 3/4/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [060304 09:15]:
> > On 3/3/06, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> > > But how will you feel about it if that's the result anyway?
>
> > Process should be followed until it is clear that it does not work.
>
>
> How clear is clear?

Indeed.  We have an entire forum, Wikipedia:Deletion_review, which
eschews consensus in favor of numerical quotas and in general sees
itself as solely concerned with determining--not whether the right end
was achieved by the deletion process, but whether the end--right or
wrong--was achieved according to process.  In short, a big thumbs up
for means, and who cares if they end up resurrecting tripe or deleting
good stuff.

We're far gone down the path where process is reified and product is
neglected.  Time to draw back.


body:
On 3/3/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Can we just implement single sign in and start to move towards this?

If the image has been deleted by consensus from English Wikipedia,
maybe getting a developer to put it into the bad images file will stop
the commons image working (depends how the thing is implemented, and
I'm not about to dive into a load of ugly PHP code right now so I'll
leave that up to others).


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/3/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Where? Not to be obnoxious, but I haven't seen any of your proposals.
> Ever since I became properly acquainted with fair use, I've tried to
> ensure images I upload at least comply with the American law. The
> problem is that when I stumble across obviously not fair use pictures
> uploaded by others, there's no good process for handling them.
>
> John

Orphan them. Deal with anyone who disagrees then delete them after a week

--
geni


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this worth requesting?

body:
G'day Steve,

> On 3/1/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I don't think there can be a debate about it really. If deleted edits are
>>publically viewable, then personal information, libelous claims, and
>>copyright violations would be stored forever, for all to see. That's exactly
>>the opposite of what we use deletion for.
>
> Very true. The only case where deleted information could be made
> publicly available would be AfD for NN etc.

Anybody with sysop privs can see a person's deleted edits by looking at
deleted pages known to have been edited by that user.  Assuming that the
current policy of admins being allowed to see deleted edits is one we
want to keep, then what's wrong with allowing admins to see a user's
deleted contribs through the Contributions page rather than the Undelete
edits page?

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.1.1/273 - Release Date: 2/03/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability and Africa

body:
On 3/4/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just so you know, I'm an editor that thinks taht weblogs and web
> forums are acceptable sources.
>
> I think providing a source is a lot more important than trying to
> ensure its reliability--let the reader provide their own determination
> of the weight to give to the source.
>
> I trust readers more than I trust journalists, frankly.

That's an excellent point. Since we're providing the source, and since
weblogs are typically easily accessible, doesn't a rule against
weblogs fly in the face of "Wikipedia does not strive for truth, but
verifiability"? Sure, if you had even better sources, you might not
want to clog your article up with stuff drawn from weblogs...but if
you're directly quoting from a blog, where's the problem?

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Our Featured Article of the Day Contains Probable
 Copyright Violations

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>John Lee wrote:
>
>
>
>>Then again, I suppose this does reflect the condition of how fair use
>>and copyright law are blatantly ignored/misunderstood by most
>>Wikipedians...for further information, see [[Wikipedia:Fair use
>>review]], which has a fuller description of what's going on.
>>
>>
>>
>Or that the problem is hard, and has had more people throwing rocks
>than working on scalable solutions. I've put out several ideas for
>process improvement in the past couple of days, and have had almost
>no substantive response, either positive or negative. I find it hard
>to take complaints seriously when the issue is ignored for months
>at a time, then there a paroxysm of righteous indignation, then it
>goes back to being ignored. We need X number of people who are going
>to work on this steadily for Y hours per week, exact values to be
>determined by the efficiency of the processes we develop.
>
>Stan
>
>
Where? Not to be obnoxious, but I haven't seen any of your proposals.
Ever since I became properly acquainted with fair use, I've tried to
ensure images I upload at least comply with the American law. The
problem is that when I stumble across obviously not fair use pictures
uploaded by others, there's no good process for handling them.

John


from_name: Angela

body:
> The Wikimedia Foundation, developers of the popular online encyclopedia
> Wikipedia, will supply software that will allow the public to contribute
> information to the registry.
> This sounds like we're in partnership with the Creative Commons, which, to
> my knowledge (as a member of the Communications Committee), we're not.

The Board have been discussing the possibility of a partnership with
the Creative Commons for this project, but the press release was
premature. Since it's now out, I'd be interested to know whether
there's any objection to the proposal.

Angela


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia on iPod (Encyclopodia) available now

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149 at yahoo.com) [060301 12:18]:

> Please don't feel assaulted since that is not my intent. I simply want to make sure that your
> great use of Wikipedia content does not jeopardize Wikimedia-held trademarks. Trademarks *must* be
> proactively protected or they could be lost.

It did however strike me as churlish that the very first responses on the
list to a cool new project were not "hey, cool new project!" but "CEASE,
VIOLATOR. OR SUSPECTED VIOLATOR, ANYWAY."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The admin problem

body:
Fastfission (fastfission at gmail.com) [060303 05:47]:

> The point of this is not to enshrine process.

But how will you feel about it if that's the result anyway?

- d.