from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/17/06, Dschwen <lists at schwen.de> wrote:
> > The point is: suppose someone wanted to buy $100,000,000 of existing
> > copyrighted material and set it free.  What should it be?
>
> Geographical data!
>
> Right now there os only a very limited amount of free geodata available. The
> US is a positive example, but in Europe most of the data to generate useful
> maps is copyrighted and sold to companies like TeleAtlas.

There is far more free geographical data in existence than you might guess.

For example, in the US most local municipalities create their own
coverages including high resolution orthophotography (or rather,
contract for the creation of them)... In most cases the data is
available for free or at a low cost, but you have to know who to ask.

The huge problem after that is the data isn't uniform.. it's not all
in the same datum, nor is necessarily documented what datum its in!

The fact that there is lots of cleanup work needed isn't bad news for
us: we're good at that.  The fact that the cleanup requires
specialized knowledge isn't good, because we've not proven ourselves
good at that sort of work.

There is also the little question of software...  We don't have
anything for displaying this sort of data ourselves ... and version
controlled collaborative editing of geodata beyond single points is an
unsolved problem.

If we were going to set a budget ... I'd say for geodata we would budget for:
1) Creation of map display software like Wikimapia which pulls point
data from Wikipedia.
2) Obtaining cover data (country/state outlines) and orthophotography
to use as a basemap for above.

And then focus on adding good point data to our articles, vs building
a comprehensive geoinformation system.  I'd invision the cover data
money being spent more to pay someone to track down geodata from free
sources rather than buy them commercially (by all means, if we are
able.. But I don't think anyone in that business will sell us their
data just so we can turn around and give it away).


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" wrote

> If a tv show is released on DVD or has books published on them, they should
> probably be the preferred sources.

Low on my list of concerns, but, yes, a book reference should be good.

Don't anyone even think of touching "House MD" ...

Charles

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


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] kid safe

body:
On 10/17/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/10/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's actually just a very out of date mirror of Wikipedia (July 2003
> > according to their [[current events]] page). They don't appear to have
> > changed anything to make it "child-friendly".
>
>
> They removed [[snowballing]] after enough people laughed at it that
> someone told them.

Now it's time to make fun of [[rimming]] on there. :)


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Semi-Protecting User Talk Pages

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> Perhaps what we need is something like Ipblocklist, but to show
> protected pages. VoABot keeps WP:PP updated well enough, but a special
> page would be a better solution.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2171

--Ligulem


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] good example of overuse of {{fact}}

body:
On 10/17/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
> >On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Oct 16, 2006, at 6:12 PM, jayjg wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>People keep claiming that it's hard to source "obvious facts";
> >>>however, in practice that's almost never the case. Obvious facts are
> >>>generally extremely easy to source.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>A better and more important issue is that it's a waste of time to
> >>source obvious facts.
> >>
> >>
> >Not really. Once they're sourced, they're sourced forever ...
> >
> I'm glad to see you say that.
>
> Jefferson had an 8-year presidency during which a lot of things
> happened.  An article about any one of those things can quite easily
> have a reference to "third president Thomas Jefferson"  It follows from
> what you say that a source will not be needed in any of those articles,
> but a link to [[Thoma Jefferson]] will be sufficient.

No, that doesn't follow from what I say. Wikipedia doesn't use itself
as a reference, as you have no idea what might be in that [[Thomas
Jefferson]] article when any individual happens to click on it.

Jay.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/17/06, Roger Luethi <collector at hellgate.ch> wrote:
[snip]
> I don't think that is their official position, because the idea that works
> written hundreds of years ago are still under copyright is entirely and
> obviously without merit (not counting special cases like Crown copyright).

Those who have experienced the cost, time, and creativity which goes
into the restoring and digitizing required for a high quality
reproduction do not find this position shocking.

Nor is it weakly established.  Bridgeman v. Corel was a surprising
outcome considering established practices, and I expect future cases
will substantially restrain the expansive application of that ruling.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
P. Birken wrote:

> Classical music recordings are what I would call the classical
>
>copyright nightmare. It might be possible to get solo pieces under a
>free licence, but orchestra pieces... I talked to a Conductor of the
>local university orchestra about putting some of their recordings
>under a free license. You have to get forty people (the recorders) to
>put this under a free licence. The next part is that while the music
>is free, orchestras usually rent the notes from some music publishing
>company (because it's too expensive to buy a complete set of notes for
>every piece). These companies in turn put demands on your use of their
>notes, most often fees for commercial use, which would in a way apply
>if you put this under the GNU-FDL or CC-by-SA.
>
>Nevertheless, it sounds like a good idea to fund a piano player to
>record the major Bach, Beethoven and Mozart piano pieces.
>
I think that a lot of this material has already been recorded.  Much of
this is already in the public domain in better versions than we could
ever hope to produce cheaply.  We would do better to research this
thoroughly before we start commissioning piano players.

I don't really want to carry on at length about copyrights in the music
industry, but the residual payments that orchestra members receive for
this sort of thing are pitiful.  Well established symphony musicians
would count themselves lucky to get $100 a year for all their musical
rights combined.  This is all to the advantage of the music industry,
and not the artists, not the management of small local orchestras.  I'm
sure that the industry is aware of how difficult it would be to get 40
musicians to agree to anything that would put the industry's "rights" in
danger.  They are not above taking advantage of musicians' ignorance of
copyright law.

The concept of "renting the notes" strikes me as preposterous.  I
suspect that the material is not copyrightable, but could not verify
that without significant further research.  If the material is not
copyrightable it is more likely that the mentioned restrictions are
solely a product of contracts where the orchestra agrees to conditions
that could have been ignored but for the contract.

Going ahead.  Based on what you say it might be more worthwhile to "Free
the notes."  If, for whatever reason, small symphony orchestras can't
afford to buy complete sets of notes our efforts might be better spent
in providing scores that these orchestras can use at no cost beyond the
expense of running a printer.

By making these scores musically editable we could spawn an endless
number of fully GFDL "Wiki-variations on a theme by Bach."

The other point to be made is "Do your research."  It would be a great
waste of money to set about freeing what is already free.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Kristian Menchaca]] - link to video

body:
On 10/17/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed. Moreover, even if they're not faked, they can still be
> misinterpreted. J Random Website may identify a photo or video as
> showing something that it doesn't actually show.
>

Due you had better get busy. You have rather a lot of media to delete
on that basis.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/17/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Please, please tell me that you are not meaning to
> imply that en.WP's preferences should be factor in
> deciding if development resources are allocated
> towards a fucntionality for the Wikisource projects.
>

No it would be fairly trivial to have something switched on for
wikisource and switched off for wikipedia.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...


body:
On 10/17/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bryan, I don't know that the Ogrish link was being used for in this
> case, but in general our understanding of what's "reliable" involves a
> degree of editorial oversight, such as fact-checking, legal scrutiny,
> and so on. I believe the Ogrish site posts video and images from
> anyone who sends them in, regardless of whether they're authentic or
> staged;

So do we. Commons is close to 1 million images. Looks like you have a
lot of deleting to do.
--
geni


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Roger Luethi wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 12:19:13 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Right.  So one of the things I am hearing loud and clear is that our
>> community would generally like to see more money spent on lobbying
>> efforts for copyright reform.  That is a point very well taken.
>
> It is not so much about copyright reform as it is about investing money
> rather than spending it, and this is a rare opportunity to talk about that.
>
> Another example, unrelated to copyright reform: Wikipedia editors need
> access to primary sources, particularly academic journals. The fate of
> current ventures in Open Access journals largely determines whether most
> potential Wikipedia editors will have easy access to the sources they need
> in the years to come, and funding for these journals (or lack thereof) will
> be a major factor.
>

Right. There are journal archives around with stuff going back hundreds
of years, but they claim copyright on all their materials; if we could
free that which already qualifies for PD-old, it would be a major step
in the right direction.

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20061017/e1d4851f/attachment.pgp


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject:
[Foundation-l] Special projects committee public meeting today
	19:00 UTC

body:
Hi all,

Just to advise everyone of a public meeting today for anyone
interested in the Special projects committee and its work. This will
take place on irc.freenode: #wikimedia-spcomm @ 19:00 UTC. Please note
that the meeting had originally been scheduled and announced for
tomorrow (ie the 18th) - apologies for all those this may have
inconvenienced.

You can list your attendance or items for the agenda at:
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/Meetings#October_17_2006>

Hope to see you then,

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I will not pretend to really understand this stuff.
>>> However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has marked
>>> Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently unsafe.
>>> But if the Wikitex thing is really something different
>>> please forgive my confusion.
>> The current status, as I understand it, is that Peter Danenberg is
>> coming up with a new security model for WikiTeX. He has tentatively
>> stated that he wants to be done by December 1. Then the WMF tech team
>> can take another stab at reviewing it (and its components) for
>> integration.
>>
>> As you know, I strongly believe we need this and other extension-based
>> functionality; we just need a general security model for it that makes
>> sense.
>
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing pages even more
> incomprehensible.
>

We manage to handle EasyTimelines in articles quite well - we put them
in templates. Why not do the same with WikiTex blocks?

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20061017/8712b7ee/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I will not pretend to really understand this stuff.
>>> However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has marked
>>> Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently unsafe.
>>> But if the Wikitex thing is really something different
>>> please forgive my confusion.
>> The current status, as I understand it, is that Peter Danenberg is
>> coming up with a new security model for WikiTeX. He has tentatively
>> stated that he wants to be done by December 1. Then the WMF tech team
>> can take another stab at reviewing it (and its components) for
>> integration.
>>
>> As you know, I strongly believe we need this and other extension-based
>> functionality; we just need a general security model for it that makes
>> sense.
>
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing pages even more
> incomprehensible.
>

We manage to handle EasyTimelines in articles quite well - we put them
in templates. Why not do the same with WikiTex blocks?

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20061017/8712b7ee/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I will not pretend to really understand this stuff.
>>> However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has marked
>>> Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently unsafe.
>>> But if the Wikitex thing is really something different
>>> please forgive my confusion.
>> The current status, as I understand it, is that Peter Danenberg is
>> coming up with a new security model for WikiTeX. He has tentatively
>> stated that he wants to be done by December 1. Then the WMF tech team
>> can take another stab at reviewing it (and its components) for
>> integration.
>>
>> As you know, I strongly believe we need this and other extension-based
>> functionality; we just need a general security model for it that makes
>> sense.
>
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing pages even more
> incomprehensible.
>

We manage to handle EasyTimelines in articles quite well - we put them
in templates. Why not do the same with WikiTex blocks?

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20061017/8712b7ee/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Dream a little...

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> On 10/16/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> I will not pretend to really understand this stuff.
>>> However Wikitex uses Lillypond and brion has marked
>>> Lillypond "wontfix"  because it is inherently unsafe.
>>> But if the Wikitex thing is really something different
>>> please forgive my confusion.
>> The current status, as I understand it, is that Peter Danenberg is
>> coming up with a new security model for WikiTeX. He has tentatively
>> stated that he wants to be done by December 1. Then the WMF tech team
>> can take another stab at reviewing it (and its components) for
>> integration.
>>
>> As you know, I strongly believe we need this and other extension-based
>> functionality; we just need a general security model for it that makes
>> sense.
>
> While this might be useful on wikisource on en it would have the
> problem of making the code shown on the editing pages even more
> incomprehensible.
>

We manage to handle EasyTimelines in articles quite well - we put them
in templates. Why not do the same with WikiTex blocks?

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20061017/8712b7ee/attachment-0001.pgp>


body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I deleted the link completely.
>>
>>
>
> Why? We went through this with [[Nick Berg]]. The conclusion was that
> the link should stay.
>

Wikipedia is not a shock site.

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20061017/44c61452/attachment.pgp


body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> Original research.
>
> Since a film is a series of images it fall under the photo exception.

... and images can be faked. J. Random Website is not a Reliable Source.

> Nice try but I'm probably not the best person to try rule lawyering
> against.
>

If that's an admission of rules lawyering, you're headed for bannination.

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20061017/1f8ad793/attachment.pgp


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
Books and television episodes are often the most detailed sources for plot
details, but other stuff like criticism still needs to be sourced with other
sources. Without primary sources plot details of books, films, or tv series
would never be as detailed as they should be.

If a tv show is released on DVD or has books published on them, they should
probably be the preferred sources.

Mgm

On 10/17/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>
> Oldak Quill wrote:
> > On 17/10/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Sorry, I'm new to mailing lists, so bear with me. I am user Ccool2ax
> >> on English WIkipedia (too lazy to link), and I've noticed in the past
> >> that many "Episode summaries", plot summaries of TV shows, have
> >> absolutely no sources. They are completely OR. Family Guy, the
> >> Simpsons, Lost, all of them have no sources! Every time I bring up
> >> discussion I get "The episode is teh reference!" as a reply. I'm here
> >> to ask you guys what we should do about these thousands and thousands
> >> of OR articles? So far, all there is is WP:EPISODE (again too lazy to
> >> link), a small essay saying that episode summaries need sources. What
> >> should we do?
> >
> >
> > The episode is a source, the problem is whether we should be using
> primary
> > sources like this.
>
>   "Like this"?  He has described a behavior that is vague enough that
> it could be totally appropriate use of the episode as a source or not.
> Shows like books are perfectly good sources for the facts of the events
> they contain.  The problem is when we wonder into the area of literary
> criticism, in that case the episode or book is not a valid source for
> the simple fact that it does not verify the criticism.
>
> SKL
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 10/17/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> You, we don't. Commons routinely deletes things which are being used as
> "original research". Please stop your trolling.
>

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stroudwater_Canal_Bridge.JPG

The caption is original reaseach (it is also wrong but that is do to
someone removeing so called POV from the original)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pulsatrix_perspicillata01.jpg

original research

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pulsatrix_perspicillata.jpg

original reasearch

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Toepfe_fcm.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Herrenchiemsee.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Reichsburg_Cochem_9.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Arnold101.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Taxidermied_grey_fox_face.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:U-Bahnhof_Hohenzollernplatz.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:NewZealandCadetCorps.JPG

original reasearch
--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Hoi,
There are two issues.
* What/ is/ the code for the moment
* Get recognition for Latgalian as a language.

People have considered languages like Min-Nan and Yue as a dialect of
Chinese for a long time. They HAD to use codes like zh-min-nan because
this was necessary to comply with the standards. At this moment we have
7602 languages that are recognised in ISO-639-3. This is a big
improvement over what was in ISO-639-2. The ISO-639-3 codes will become
part of how languages are seen in the near future on the Internet. I am
afraid that Latgalian is at this moment considered a dialect of Latvian.
I am also sure that there are many other "languages/dialects" that are
in a similar situation. Either because people are afronted because what
it considers a language they consider a dialect or the other way around.
There are also many people who consider something a dialect of for
instance Italian while everybody knows that Italian was constructed
after the unification of Italy and, that Italian is based on Florentine.
The point I am making here there is a lot of confusion and there is a
lot of posturing based on bad information. Having to base the code for
Latgalian on Latvian is the best for the moment.

When you consider Latgalian a language, there are processes open to us
to have this considered by organisations like Ethnologue and ISO. We
have contacts that may help us achieve this. In order to get to that
stage, it is necessary to jump through certain hoops. One of these is to
demonstrate that there is indeed this difference that warrants Latgalian
to be considered a language. Aspects of this are also showing literature
and current use of the language. One of the first resources would be a
Swadesh list where both Latvian and Latgalian can be compared.

FYI I am from an area of the Netherlands; Westfriesland where they used
to speak a language; Westfries. It has a literature; it has a grammar it
is not understood by people who speak Dutch. There are dialects of
Westfries there are dictionaries of Westfries and there are revival
societies that give cabaret performances in Westfries. At some stage I
am sure that someone will ask for a Wikipedia in Westfries. I would not
stop them. I KNOW that it takes relatively little effort to make the
case for Westfries. In WiktionaryZ I would welcome dictionaries in
Westfries or Latgalian... NB Westfries is not West Frisian .. which imho
is a complete misnomer.

Thanks,
   GerardM

Zordsdavini iz Litvy wrote:
> latgalian has long tradition of writing system. It was in 1918-1944 second
> official language. Considering of dialect status is political. And there are
> very active people which are working on latgalian language life. It's
> dialect like neopolitanian or venecian. We say it's the language.
>
> Arns
>
> 2006/10/17, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hoi,
>> The code bat is a "collective code" for Baltic (other). Latgalian however
>> is
>> considered a dialect of Latvian and therefore it is not "other".
>>
>> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
>> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bat
>> Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>> On 10/17/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/17/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hoi,
>>>> According to Ethnologue Latgalian is a dialect of Latvian. From my
>>>>
>> point
>>
>>> of
>>>
>>>> view, there is not even a proposed code to be used for your proposed
>>>> Wikipedia that would be acceptable. Acceptable would be something like
>>>> "lv-latg" or "lav-latg" ..
>>>>
>>> There's a test wiki at http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
>>> The code bat-ltv has been suggested.
>>>
>>> Angela


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
On 10/17/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> I'd say nuke anything like that from orbit, along with any
> critic-esque writing that claims to describe the hidden allegorical
> meaning of a film, painting, book, music video/song lyrics, etc.,
> without providing a reference from the director, artist, author or
> other creator of the item in question.

Or from notable critics, academics, etc.  Creators aren't the only
notable source of such things.  Also, in some cases, a commonly
accepted urban legend, even unconfirmed, becomes so common as to be
worth noting; then, it will probably have appeared in writings
discussing the urban legend.

-Matt


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Business Week: Alexa numbers are rubbish,
	and the others are worse

body:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_43/b4006095.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

- d.


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reminder

body:
On 10/17/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> I saw this on BBC News today:
>
>    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6059726.stm
>
> Made me think. I suspect I'm not the only one on this list to have
> encountered
> some pretty disturbed and angry people on Wikipedia. I know you all know
> this
> already, but a reminder: it's a good idea to ensure your physical address
> (at
> the very least) is not public if you plan to tangle with nutcases online.
>
> -- Matt
>
>
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
> Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

People have been afraid of this stuff since online discussions started in
the 1970s.  It's easy to become paranoid about it, but that extreme stuff
doesn't happen very often.  Among other things, the people who get very
aggressive online are usually not physically aggressive in person.  I've
only known one exception in 20+ years.

If there is any way for anyone to figure out who you are from your online
presence, then your address and phone number are out there in so many public
databases that "hiding" is rather pointless.  Either keep your pseudonym
completely divorced from all identifying information, or accept that this is
another minor risk in life and move on.

Almost everyone I know has had their addresses online, associated with
vanity domain names, for 10-15 years (in some cases, longer).  So far,
nobody has had anything more than occational snail mail spam.

As I have said elsewhere, though it's currently Wikifashionable to stay
pseudonymous, in the long term I expect that people will accept this and get
over it, and start using real names more consistently.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour

body:
> > Page 13, the "[Edit]" links are too far up from the horizontal line
> > that marks a new section (thus leading new users to think they are
> > for the section above, not the section below).
> >
> > Tried adding:
> > ----------------
> > div.editsection { vertical-align: bottom; }
> > ----------------
> > to main.css ; that made no difference (in Firefox). Any CSS guru want
> > to indicate whether it's possible to do this (move the "[Edit]" text
> > down closer to the horizontal new section line), and if so maybe how
> > ?
>
> Why don't you just copy the JavaScript from the German Wikipedia? (Look
> at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.js under "BEGIN
> Mooving of the editsection links" (and yes, they really did misspell
> "moving" -- I'm not an admin there so I can't fix it! :) )
>
> Timwi

If I understand correctly, I think the current plan for this ( a.k.a. http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4525 ) is to :

* Reapply http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=16962
* Reapply http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki?view=rev&revision=16963
* Apply something like this: http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wikibits-right-click-diff.txt
* One last remaining problem is that right-clicking on the "[edit]" link will jump into edit mode (if you have the
edit-on-right-click option enabled in your Preferences), instead of doing the usual right-click context stuff (e.g. show context
menu with: Copy link location, Open in new window, etc) as it does at the moment. This is because the edit mode starts on right
click on the h2/h3 header, and the span for the "[edit]" is now inside that header. It may be that another span is required around
the actual h2/h3 header text, and the enter-edit-mode JavaScript needs to be activated on right-clicking that.
* Bump the $wgStyleVersion in includes/DefaultSettings.php
* Update the expected results in maintenance/parserTests.txt to reflect the above changes.

This has the following benefits:
* Should work even if you have JavaScript turned off.
* Should work if you're on a device which doesn't have JavaScript, but which has CSS (if such a thing exists).
* Rather than sending a DOM and then runtime patching it with JavaScript (as per DE), it's sending the right thing first time
around, so it aesthetically feels cleaner.
* Strictly personal preference, but as a general rule I feel that if something can be done either through straight HTML+CSS, or
through JavaScript, that HTML+CSS is generally the preferable option.

Current state-of-play I suspect is that the person in the driver's seat for this (Simetrical) is possibly trying to weigh up whether
the benefits are worth the transition costs.

All the best,
Nick.


body:
On 10/17/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Stroudwater_Canal_Bridge.JPG
> >
> > The caption is original reaseach (it is also wrong but that is do to
> > someone removeing so called POV from the original)
> >
>
> How so?
>

Well it could be a stroudwater canal bridge but I'm not the only one
who thinks it seems to resemble one end of the Sapperton Tunnel on the
Thames and Severn Canal. Of course this is original research.

> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pulsatrix_perspicillata01.jpg
> >
> > original research
> >
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Pulsatrix_perspicillata.jpg
> >
> > original reasearch
> >
>
> How so? And please note that you're accusing an en: Arbitrator of
> "original research", so you'd better be damned sure you want to make
> that claim.
>

I don't see a reference and the image does not appear to have been
published elsewhere prior to appearing on wikipedia. In short a
collection of coloured dots has been identified as an object that it
has not previously been identified as. This is why we apply a slightly
different NOR policy to images.

> You're wrong, as usual. "Primary source image" isn't the same as
> "original research". An example of something that /is/ "original
> research" and was deleted as such is
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Image:Img052.jpg
>

Very good. You accept NOR in it's purest form doesn't work for images.
So lets see how wikipedia modifies this:

"Pictures have enjoyed a broad exception from this policy, in that
Wikipedia editors are encouraged to take photographs or draw pictures
and upload them, releasing them under the GFDL or another free
license, to illustrate articles. This is welcomed because images
generally do not propose unpublished ideas or arguments, the core
reason behind the NOR policy."

The key line appears to be " images generally do not propose
unpublished ideas or arguments"

So do our two videos propose unpublished ideas or arguments?

Well first to the nick berg one. There are no shortage of reports that
the video esists and various reports (rather a lot really due to
ceritan conspiracy theories) on it's contents Assumeing the video
doesn't contradict these it would appear not to propose unpublished
ideas or arguments.

Moveing on to Kristian Menchaca I've yet to see any evidence that it
is proposeing unpublished ideas or arguments

> I'll ask you again, for the second time, to stop your trolling,

I'm not trolling. Simply applying reductio ad absurdum to certian arguments.

> or, as
> you call it, "rules lawyering". If you're so proud of being a rules
> lawyer, you'd better remember that the lawyers will be first against the
> wall when the revolution comes. And believe me, the revolution is coming
> sooner than you think.
>

Thomas Jefferson would have tended to dissagree I think

--
geni


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Planned change to default IP blocking behavior

body:
A few months ago the ability was added to limit IP blocks to allow
logged-in contributions to continue. This allowed finer-grained blocking
of troublemakers on shared IPs (schools, AOL etc).

There's some suggestion to make this the default mode. I wanted to
announce this ahead of time since it will change what happens when
admins make a block without manually clicking something extra.

If there's no serious objection, we'll go ahead and change this in a few
days.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Planned change to default IP blocking behavior


subject: [Wikitech-l] Planned change to default IP blocking behavior


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] And in other news...

body:
On 10/17/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> And a few stats:
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Commons_stats_October_2006.svg
>
> We are probably the world's largest site for free wallpapers: the median
> of the distribution looks like it's 800 kpixels, which is 1024x768.

I'm not so sure, looking at our top aspect ratios:
 Images Ratio
 201436 1.33
  61803 0.75
  40633 1.00
  37839 1.50
  20991 0.66
  14287 0.62
  12942 1.60
  10734 1.25
  10552 1.49
  10352 0.80
  ~~~~~~~~

I'd be shocked if flickr didn't completely dwarf us in terms of images
with 4:3 and 5:4 aspect.

Since most cameras produce either 4:3 or 3:2, it would be interesting
to answer the question: Are Wikimedians cropping all these images, or
are we just pulling lots of images from outside websites where they
are cropped to fit the layout?


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/15/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I would like to gather from the community some examples of works you
> > would like to see made free, works that we are not doing a good job of
> > generating free replacements for, works that could in theory be
> > purchased and freed.
> >
> > Dream big.  Imagine there existed a budget of $100 million to purchase
> > copyrights to be made available under a free license.  What would you
> > like to see purchased and released under a free license?
>
> Free Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

Catching up.

Don't forget Mary Poppins.

Thanx.

Delphine

--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
On 10/17/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> [de-lurk]
>
> On 17/10/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I somewhat agree, but take a look at a Family Guy episode summary..
> > any one. See the Cultural References section? All facts listed there
> > are entirely OR!
> >
> > >From "Peter's Got Woods":
> > "When Shauna, Brian's love interest introduces herself, there's
> > heavenly singing of the name 'Shauna' in the background. This parodies
> > a scene from Ferris Beuller's Day Off when Jennifer Grey's character
> > tells Charlie Sheen's character 'It's Jean, but most guys call me
> > Shauna.'"
> > -No source, based entirely on editor's personal knowledge! THese
> > things are all over these summaries!
>
> I'd say nuke anything like that from orbit, along with any
> critic-esque writing that claims to describe the hidden allegorical
> meaning of a film, painting, book, music video/song lyrics, etc.,
> without providing a reference from the director, artist, author or
> other creator of the item in question.
>
> Congratulations, you've nuked half of the television-related articles on
wikipedia.

NOR is fine and good, but pop culture references do help people understand
an episode. Instances would be scenes where (for example) the Simpsons rip a
scene directly from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

Now, when is FOX going to publish a definitive list of pop culture
references? How about never. They've got no interest in doing so. I know of
few websites that do so either, especially when the show is less popular
than Simpsons or Seinfeld-level popularity.

But to "nuke it from orbit"? Ouch. As for a source, see if one can be found,
and if necessary just use the two sources side by side as your reference.

Deletionist.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] And in other news...

body:
On 10/17/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >I'd be shocked if flickr didn't completely dwarf us in terms of images
> >with 4:3 and 5:4 aspect.
> >
> "Free" ? As in "free speech" or in "free beer" ?

Touch?

However,
Judging by the popularity of Flickr, Youtube, and the non free
creative commons licenses (which account for 2/3rds of the CC usage)
I'd say that the general public cares not a lick about free content,
so long as it is available to them at no cost and no one is suing them
(i.e. free as in stolen beer is sufficient, since there is no RIAA
going after folks for image copyright violations).

That we have not yet made Freedom a primary concern (even among many
of our own users!) is a substantial failure on our part ...  other
services which play really fast and loose with copyright (thank you
DMCA safe harbor) will always have a broader collection of content as
a result.

Today, commons is a weakly organized pile of images (and some other
media)... We're no better off than youtube, actually.. they offer
ratings, recommendations, and a better search engine.

I think we need to think carefully about our future.   If we are to
continue to provide value beyond a simple image dump for Wikimedia we
must focus on the virtues of our model (demanding free content,
welcoming enhancement and derrivation) compared to sites like Flickr
and Youtube.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> It seems to me like you may be trying to use policies and guidelines to
> support a decision already made for other unrelated reasons. Are you
> actually removing this link on some sort of "human decency" grounds, as
> I recall you've done in other cases in the past?

In this particular case, no.  But I do think such things are relevant.

Now, as to Ogrish, I will add supporting arguments in the next couple of
days.  Please treat this as an ordinary editing discussion among
rational people, not an edict from above.

--Jimbo


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reminder

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

Matt R stated for the record:

> I saw this on BBC News today:
>
>    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6059726.stm
>
> Made me think. I suspect I'm not the only one on this list to have encountered
> some pretty disturbed and angry people on Wikipedia. I know you all know this
> already, but a reminder: it's a good idea to ensure your physical address (at
> the very least) is not public if you plan to tangle with nutcases online.
>
> -- Matt

To quote from the article:

	Det Cons Christopher Creagh, of the Metropolitan Police, said:
	"This is the first instance of a web-rage attack."

/me generally doesn't panic at the first instance.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Therapy is expensive. Popping
 sean at epoptic.com | bubble wrap is cheap. You choose.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFNTfn/SVOiq2uhHMRAu/uAJ4uvyKcWJJydUDzvFnI7dm1/hBeOQCgxWVt
eUHXU0TBCinTpDer3GWMzbs=
=UYHK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jüvä Sullõv

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Latgalian

body:
Dear Angela, Arns, Mark and others,

bat-ltg like proposed in Latgalian test wiki
http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
would be an ideal code for Latgalian Wikipedia.
Like bat-smg is perfect for Samogitian
and fiu-vro is currently perfect for V?ro.

I have long personal contacts with Latgalian language activists and researchers and I
know a bit the history of Latgalian.

Of course Latgalian is not merely a dialect of Latvian. Latgalian has long history of
its own literary language and it has been the second official language of Latvia in
1920-s. Later Latvian nationalist goverment of Ulmanis prohibited any official use of
Latgalian. Latvian authorities still refuse to recognize Latgalian as a separate
language. But it is exactly the same case as with V?ro in Estonia and with Samogitian
in Lithuania, and with many other languages which despite it already have their own
Wikipedia.

Ethnologue (with its location and interests) is too far from us, it just does not know
the real situation of regional languages of the Baltic countries. And maibe Latgalian
activists have been also a bit modest to inform the World about their language.

Actually Latgalian is the only regional or minority language in Latvia that is vital
enough to have its own wikipedia, because the other small language of Latvia (Finno-
Ugric) Livonian is too small and in fact extinct.

Anyway Latgalian can be definitely considered as a language and it deserves and needs
its own Wikipedia.

See more about Latgalian:
http://www.geocities.com/latgalian/

J?v? Sull?v/Sulev Iva
(V?rok from V?ro Wikipedia)

17.10.2006 11:24:41, "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com> kirot':

>It's considered a dialect of Latvian by the Ethnologue.
>
>But they're known to have very unreliable information in many cases.
>They even list Yinglish as a language when it's not even a dialect or
>sociolect, merely a group of code-switching phenomena (mostly. see
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yinglish ), while they neglect to even
>mention Singlish, the creole language spoken natively by most young
>Singaporeans.
>
>Mark
>
>On 17/10/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hoi,
>> The code bat is a "collective code" for Baltic (other). Latgalian however is
>> considered a dialect of Latvian and therefore it is not "other".
>>
>> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
>> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bat
>> Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>> On 10/17/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > On 10/17/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Hoi,
>> > > According to Ethnologue Latgalian is a dialect of Latvian. From my point
>> > of
>> > > view, there is not even a proposed code to be used for your proposed
>> > > Wikipedia that would be acceptable. Acceptable would be something like
>> > > "lv-latg" or "lav-latg" ..
>> >
>> > There's a test wiki at http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
>> > The code bat-ltv has been suggested.
>> >
>> > Angela
>> >
>> > --
>> > Angela Beesley
>> > http://wikia.com | http://a.nge.la
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>> >
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>
>
>--
>Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Hoi,
In the past many things have been done that we should regret. We have on the
one hand Brion who insists that we maintain the RFC to do with indicating
content, on the other hand I advocate to use the ISO-639-3 standard and
engage in the process to get adequate resolution on what is to be considered
a language. Then there are people who consider that it does not make a
difference and that we can do as we like.

Yes, we have several codes that are wrong. Codes that are contrary to the
terms of use of the ISO-639 code. The fact that we have done these things
does not sanction that we continue to do so.

When Samogitian gets the zog code, it means that we should be able to use
that code. From an RFC point of view it seems that we are not allowed to do
this. This is as foolhardy as insisting on using codes that are patently
wrong and incompatible with what is done in the rest of the world.

ISO is working on codes where dialects are given an official code. When this
happens the position of these codes will become even more untenable. It is
to be prefered to accept the best codes that comply with current practices
and work on amending the practices where needed.

The difference between a language and a dialect is often a problematic one.
Issues are often highly politicized. It is absolutely wrong to "recognize"
what some activists believe for reasons that have nothing to do with
linguistics. Engaging in the process to get the recognition through ISO and
Ethnologue is open to us, let us go that route.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 10/17/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Arns has a really good point. This is based on precedent.
>
> While we do try to follow certain conventions where possible, we do
> have some inconsistencies with standards. But we're not ISOpedia.
> Whether we conform to standards or not is our own choice.
>
> In the past, we have generally had codes in the form of fiu-vro,
> bat-smg, and map-bms.
>
> This is despite the fact that V?ro, Samogitian, and Banyumasan are
> considered by the Ethnologue (and many others) to be dialects of
> Estonian, Lithuanian, and Javanese respectively.
>
> We are not perfect.
>
> Mark
>
> On 17/10/06, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Latgalian is going in the same way as Samogitian. Soon Samogitian will
> have
> > iso. It will be ZOG. For now it use bat-smg. The latgalian will have
> iso,
> > too, I hope because Latgalian have more tradition than Samogitian. When
> > Samogitian wiki was starting we decided to use bat-smg. I think the best
> > code for now is bat-ltg. To write about dictionary differences can
> proposer.
> > I'll tell him.
> >
> > Arns
> >
> > 2006/10/17, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Hoi,
> > > There are two issues.
> > > * What/ is/ the code for the moment
> > > * Get recognition for Latgalian as a language.
> > >
> > > People have considered languages like Min-Nan and Yue as a dialect of
> > > Chinese for a long time. They HAD to use codes like zh-min-nan because
> > > this was necessary to comply with the standards. At this moment we
> have
> > > 7602 languages that are recognised in ISO-639-3. This is a big
> > > improvement over what was in ISO-639-2. The ISO-639-3 codes will
> become
> > > part of how languages are seen in the near future on the Internet. I
> am
> > > afraid that Latgalian is at this moment considered a dialect of
> Latvian.
> > > I am also sure that there are many other "languages/dialects" that are
> > > in a similar situation. Either because people are afronted because
> what
> > > it considers a language they consider a dialect or the other way
> around.
> > > There are also many people who consider something a dialect of for
> > > instance Italian while everybody knows that Italian was constructed
> > > after the unification of Italy and, that Italian is based on
> Florentine.
> > > The point I am making here there is a lot of confusion and there is a
> > > lot of posturing based on bad information. Having to base the code for
> > > Latgalian on Latvian is the best for the moment.
> > >
> > > When you consider Latgalian a language, there are processes open to us
> > > to have this considered by organisations like Ethnologue and ISO. We
> > > have contacts that may help us achieve this. In order to get to that
> > > stage, it is necessary to jump through certain hoops. One of these is
> to
> > > demonstrate that there is indeed this difference that warrants
> Latgalian
> > > to be considered a language. Aspects of this are also showing
> literature
> > > and current use of the language. One of the first resources would be a
> > > Swadesh list where both Latvian and Latgalian can be compared.
> > >
> > > FYI I am from an area of the Netherlands; Westfriesland where they
> used
> > > to speak a language; Westfries. It has a literature; it has a grammar
> it
> > > is not understood by people who speak Dutch. There are dialects of
> > > Westfries there are dictionaries of Westfries and there are revival
> > > societies that give cabaret performances in Westfries. At some stage I
> > > am sure that someone will ask for a Wikipedia in Westfries. I would
> not
> > > stop them. I KNOW that it takes relatively little effort to make the
> > > case for Westfries. In WiktionaryZ I would welcome dictionaries in
> > > Westfries or Latgalian... NB Westfries is not West Frisian .. which
> imho
> > > is a complete misnomer.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >    GerardM
> > >
> > > Zordsdavini iz Litvy wrote:
> > > > latgalian has long tradition of writing system. It was in 1918-1944
> > > second
> > > > official language. Considering of dialect status is political. And
> there
> > > are
> > > > very active people which are working on latgalian language life.
> It's
> > > > dialect like neopolitanian or venecian. We say it's the language.
> > > >
> > > > Arns
> > > >
> > > > 2006/10/17, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > >> Hoi,
> > > >> The code bat is a "collective code" for Baltic (other). Latgalian
> > > however
> > > >> is
> > > >> considered a dialect of Latvian and therefore it is not "other".
> > > >>
> > > >> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
> > > >> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bat
> > > >> Thanks,
> > > >>    GerardM
> > > >>
> > > >> On 10/17/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>> On 10/17/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >>>
> > > >>>> Hoi,
> > > >>>> According to Ethnologue Latgalian is a dialect of Latvian. From
> my
> > > >>>>
> > > >> point
> > > >>
> > > >>> of
> > > >>>
> > > >>>> view, there is not even a proposed code to be used for your
> proposed
> > > >>>> Wikipedia that would be acceptable. Acceptable would be something
> > > like
> > > >>>> "lv-latg" or "lav-latg" ..
> > > >>>>
> > > >>> There's a test wiki at
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
> > > >>> The code bat-ltv has been suggested.
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Angela
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
> > :)
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Zordsdavini iz Litvy

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Latgalian is going in the same way as Samogitian. Soon Samogitian will have
iso. It will be ZOG. For now it use bat-smg. The latgalian will have iso,
too, I hope because Latgalian have more tradition than Samogitian. When
Samogitian wiki was starting we decided to use bat-smg. I think the best
code for now is bat-ltg. To write about dictionary differences can proposer.
I'll tell him.

Arns

2006/10/17, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> There are two issues.
> * What/ is/ the code for the moment
> * Get recognition for Latgalian as a language.
>
> People have considered languages like Min-Nan and Yue as a dialect of
> Chinese for a long time. They HAD to use codes like zh-min-nan because
> this was necessary to comply with the standards. At this moment we have
> 7602 languages that are recognised in ISO-639-3. This is a big
> improvement over what was in ISO-639-2. The ISO-639-3 codes will become
> part of how languages are seen in the near future on the Internet. I am
> afraid that Latgalian is at this moment considered a dialect of Latvian.
> I am also sure that there are many other "languages/dialects" that are
> in a similar situation. Either because people are afronted because what
> it considers a language they consider a dialect or the other way around.
> There are also many people who consider something a dialect of for
> instance Italian while everybody knows that Italian was constructed
> after the unification of Italy and, that Italian is based on Florentine.
> The point I am making here there is a lot of confusion and there is a
> lot of posturing based on bad information. Having to base the code for
> Latgalian on Latvian is the best for the moment.
>
> When you consider Latgalian a language, there are processes open to us
> to have this considered by organisations like Ethnologue and ISO. We
> have contacts that may help us achieve this. In order to get to that
> stage, it is necessary to jump through certain hoops. One of these is to
> demonstrate that there is indeed this difference that warrants Latgalian
> to be considered a language. Aspects of this are also showing literature
> and current use of the language. One of the first resources would be a
> Swadesh list where both Latvian and Latgalian can be compared.
>
> FYI I am from an area of the Netherlands; Westfriesland where they used
> to speak a language; Westfries. It has a literature; it has a grammar it
> is not understood by people who speak Dutch. There are dialects of
> Westfries there are dictionaries of Westfries and there are revival
> societies that give cabaret performances in Westfries. At some stage I
> am sure that someone will ask for a Wikipedia in Westfries. I would not
> stop them. I KNOW that it takes relatively little effort to make the
> case for Westfries. In WiktionaryZ I would welcome dictionaries in
> Westfries or Latgalian... NB Westfries is not West Frisian .. which imho
> is a complete misnomer.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> Zordsdavini iz Litvy wrote:
> > latgalian has long tradition of writing system. It was in 1918-1944
> second
> > official language. Considering of dialect status is political. And there
> are
> > very active people which are working on latgalian language life. It's
> > dialect like neopolitanian or venecian. We say it's the language.
> >
> > Arns
> >
> > 2006/10/17, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> The code bat is a "collective code" for Baltic (other). Latgalian
> however
> >> is
> >> considered a dialect of Latvian and therefore it is not "other".
> >>
> >> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
> >> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bat
> >> Thanks,
> >>    GerardM
> >>
> >> On 10/17/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On 10/17/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hoi,
> >>>> According to Ethnologue Latgalian is a dialect of Latvian. From my
> >>>>
> >> point
> >>
> >>> of
> >>>
> >>>> view, there is not even a proposed code to be used for your proposed
> >>>> Wikipedia that would be acceptable. Acceptable would be something
> like
> >>>> "lv-latg" or "lav-latg" ..
> >>>>
> >>> There's a test wiki at http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
> >>> The code bat-ltv has been suggested.
> >>>
> >>> Angela
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
:)


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 10/17/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 10/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >> Original research.
> >
> > Since a film is a series of images it fall under the photo exception.
>
> ... and images can be faked. J. Random Website is not a Reliable Source.

Indeed. Moreover, even if they're not faked, they can still be
misinterpreted. J Random Website may identify a photo or video as
showing something that it doesn't actually show.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
On 10/17/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/16/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Temporarily, it can be useful, but admins tend to forget to unprotect it;
> > look at my user page for an example. While my userpage isn't a talk page
> > (and it doesn't matter enough to me to get it unprotected), it's an
> > example
> > of something that an admin protected from vandalism then completely forgot
> > about and never unprotected.
> >
>
> I was gone, but this one's piqued my interest, so here's what I have to say
> on the matter:
>
> Our backend code is stupid.
>
> Protection should not be "forever until it is turned off." Instead, like
> blocking any just about anything else, it should have a duration after which
> it automatically expires.
>
> We've got some article pages that have been "Protected" for weeks or longer,
> with no edit and next to no discussions on the talk pages, because either
> some admin is too damn lazy to remove the protection or enjoys keeping it
> protected because they feel they own the article that way.

There's been a feature request for this for some time:

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4133

Implementing this would probably require a fairly extensive change to
the database schema, so I don't know how willing the devs would be to
implement it, considering it's only really a feature request and not a
critical problem.

Perhaps what we need is something like Ipblocklist, but to show
protected pages. VoABot keeps WP:PP updated well enough, but a special
page would be a better solution.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Semi-Protecting User Talk Pages


from_name: dbenzhuser

body:
> I've
> already dropped a line at the dewiki MediaWiki talk for Monobook.js,
> which is about all I could think of to inform scripters.

The script (which is used at frwiki, too) shouldn't make any problems.
It searches for divs of the editsection class, if it can't find any, it
just does nothing. As the new version uses span instead of div the
script reacts as if there where no headings in the page.


from_name: dan harp

subject: [Foundation-l] Closing inactive Wikinewses

body:
my vote would be 12 weeks.... it just seems that
adding an extra month would be good.

--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>
wrote:

> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> >I suggest the following policy:
> >
> >When a Wikinews edition has seen no new stories for
> 8 weeks, the wiki
> >is locked and a site notice is added: "This
> Wikinews edition is
> >currently inactive. If you are interested in
> working on it, please
> >indicate so on [[m:Wikinews/Reactivate an
> edition]]." (In the correct
> >language, of course.) Instead of just 5 votes, you
> would need 10
> >Wikimedians to sign the reactivation pledge.
> >
> >
> >
> <*snip*>
>
> >Does this policy proposal sound reasonable?
> >
> >
> >
> I am curious about what the rationale is for trying
> to increase the
> threshold for reactivating an older edition rather
> than establishing a
> brand-new language edition.  It seems to me that it
> ought to be the
> other way around, where if a language edition
> already exists (presumably
> with some substantial content already) that the
> threshold for support to
> reactive ought to be lower than creating yet another
> new language.  This
> could even be just for maintainence of the existing
> content alone.
>
> I would, however, also put an additional restriction
> that the 5 or 10
> (or whatever) votes that are needed for reactivation
> should happen
> within a specified period of time, like 2-3 months
> at most.  The purpose
> of this is to demonstrate that there is an active
> community of people
> who would be willing to keep a sustained effort
> going once it is
> reactivated, which seems like the point of the whole
> exercise.
>  Proposals to reactivate that languish longer than
> this specified period
> of time will simply be archived although a new
> proposal can certainly be
> made almost immediately (with new votes) if there is
> still a small group
> willing to participate.  I have seen some of these
> proposals for things
> like this go on and on for years at a time... just
> look at the new
> project proposals page on Meta as an example of some
> proposals that are
> more than 2 years old, some as old as Meta itself
> seemingly.
>
> I'm still not exactly sure what the threshold ought
> to be in terms of
> time to declare a Wikinews language edition
> "inactive", but the main
> goal ought to be to give the community who speaks
> that language the
> benefit of the doubt.  In addition, I would strongly
> recommend that if a
> Wikinews language edition is to be closed down, then
> the related "sister
> projects" of the same langauge ought to have a
> notification put in the
> Village Pump pages (even if in English... with an
> appeal for
> translation) that "their" language edition of
> Wikinews is being shut
> down due to inactivity.  Perhaps also a notification
> of any related
> mailing list that is specific to that language, if
> it is listed as an
> "official" Wikimedia mailing list.  I know that this
> seems like a lot of
> work, but the point here is to try and give a final
> effort to simply let
> speakers of that language know that Wikinews is even
> something that they
> could participate with.
>
> We might be surprised and get a few people to turn
> out without having to
> shut the project down in the first place.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Foundation-l] Where to propose new features for MediaWiki?

body: Is there a place (other than here, I guess)? Does Meta have a page for this?


from_name: Roger Luethi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:00:05 -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > I wonder if content acquired within the restrictions you mentioned (pick
> > any of the good suggestions made by others) could be used as a lever in
> > some dual-licensing scheme (as used by several major open source software
> > companies). As long as the content is under a free license but not in the
> > public domain (e.g. GFDL or CC-BY-SA), we'd have a bargaining chip that we
> > could parlay into access to other works. -- We can't do that for Wikipedia
> > itself (because there is no single copyright owner), but if we owned a
> > significant piece of desirable content, things might be different.
>
> Now you're talking!  Can we explore this more?  Is there a
> sustainability model here?  Can we use $X to leverage the
> content-freedom of $10X worth of good stuff?

I believe so -- it's certainly worth a shot. I will sketch out the reasons
below.

A little introduction to dual-licensing, because I noticed some confusion
elsewhere in this thread: some open source companies (e.g. Trolltech and
MySQL) give their software away under a copyleft license (e.g. GNU GPL).
The software is free to use, modify, and distribute as long as all
derivative works remain under that license (that's essentially what
copyleft means). Some users of the software, however, would like to
distribute proprietary derivates, and they pay real money for the privilege
of getting to use the very same code under a traditional, proprietary
license.

In a nutshell, dual-licensing is about offering products gratis to those
agreeing to share alike and having those in the proprietary business pay
for their use.

The only area with fairly solid evidence on this form of dual-licensing is
software, and that's a different industry with a distinct set of
attributes. The key for us would be a good idea of derivative works and
copyleft licenses as they apply to text, images, or any other content we
might own.

Basically, the question boils down to this: do we have to give the new
content into the public domain, or can we use a free but copyleft license?
And what do the copyleft restrictions _really_ mean for the type of content
we acquire? (the latter question preferably answered by some experienced
lawyers)

So why hasn't this been done before, besides software? -- I suspect that
there aren't many content owners a) willing to use their property to
enlarge the commons and b) large enough themselves to get noticed.
Wikipedia (available only under a copyleft license) could have been one of
very few candidates if it wasn't for the fact that dual-licensing requires
a single entity that can negotiate on behalf of all copyright owners.

Your $100 million dream machine could create the critical mass in one go.
To prospective creators of derivative works we could offer free use if they
are willing to share alike. For proprietary derivative works, we could
negotiate payment in cash or in works that _they_ would put under a free
license in return.

Roger


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/17/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's anecdotal evidence for this happening for images. The
> Wikimedia enquiry address gets a lot of requests to discuss licensing
> for an image, generally assuming we're the copyright holder (but
> sometimes asking directly for the author); money is certainly in the
> air on some occasions, though I suspect most end up as "Sure, use it,
> can you put my name on the flyleaf?"

Um.  I've made a non-trivial amount of money relicensing my images to
folks who found them via Wikimedia projects... not enough to pay for
my equipment yet, but within a few years perhaps. ... but I'm just one
person with only a few commercially interesting images.

I certainly would believe that a large high-quality GFDLed collection
could generate real income by charging for releases under licenses
which are more comforting and standard to various industries.  I doubt
that the income would be enough to offset the substantial cost of
digitizing and collecting such works.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
On 10/17/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> On 17/10/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Congratulations, you've nuked half of the television-related articles
> on
> > wikipedia.
> >
> > NOR is fine and good, but pop culture references do help people
> understand
> > an episode. Instances would be scenes where (for example) the Simpsons
> rip a
> > scene directly from a Quentin Tarantino movie.
> >
> > ...
> >
> > But to "nuke it from orbit"? Ouch. As for a source, see if one can be
> found,
> > and if necessary just use the two sources side by side as your
> reference.
>
> Maybe I should have been more specific - I'm certainly not advocating
> the removal of /all/ pop-culture references.

Ok, you needed to be more specific then.

The original example
> quoted was:
>
> > > "When Shauna, Brian's love interest introduces herself, there's
> > > heavenly singing of the name 'Shauna' in the background. This parodies
> > > a scene from Ferris Beuller's Day Off when Jennifer Grey's character
> > > tells Charlie Sheen's character 'It's Jean, but most guys call me
> > > Shauna.'"
>
> That, to me, is not obvious.

Perhaps not, and perhaps that's a good candidate for calling for a source
on.

A scene ripped direct from a Tarantino
> movie is definitely a cultural reference, but "singing of the name
> 'Shauna' in the background" doesn't, to my eye, appear to have any
> relation to the quoted scene from Ferris Bueller's Day Off at all, and
> smells strongly of a fan getting a little too enthusiastic.

Quite possibly; "one for the talkpage" would be my reaction. Put the
question there, see if anyone can source anything to justify it.

There are also cases of repeated cultural references/running jokes in
> shows that only become clear after a longer period of watching (for
> example [[1729 (number)]] in Futurama). These might seem harder to
> prove but are still an order of magnitude better to include than
> /hidden allegorical meanings/, which was the main point of my post.

That's also a good point, and again: a lot of time, series in-jokes don't
get mention in publications or otherwise until there's some exhaustive
end-all book about the series (which will only happen for serious cult
favorites/major popular series, which is perhaps 5% of all series in
totality), but they do have meaning and are worth mentioning.

For example, suggesting that the "Alien" series of movies are actually
> allegories for the state of American politics, which I actually read
> in a print publication once.
>

Pot Smoker Monthly?

But seriously, I've seen those movies, and to say they're allegorical for
anything other than bloodbaths is just silly.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:35:22 -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
[snipping an informative post]

> As far as dual licensing, the GFDL and CC-By-SA  are not compatible.

This statement is a bit confusing. Yes, the GFDL and the CC-BY-SA seem to
be incompatible (meaning you can't simply copy stuff published under one
license into a work created under the other license).

However, as you note later on, there is nothing to stop you from licensing
the same work at the same time under two, incompatible licenses.

But this is not what I had been talking about in the first place. Dual
licensing as it is used as a business model in the software industry
combines a copyleft license with a proprietary license. You can get the
software under a copyleft license for free, or you can pay for a
traditional, proprietary license of the very same source code (allowing
proprietary derivative works).

Roger


subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
I forward proposer letter:
============================
Hello,
The question about Latgalian being a dialect or a language is still a topic
for endless public and also academic discussions.

Researches made by linguistics professors (Breidaks, Leikuma, Stafecka,
Toporov etc.) have shown that Latgalian and Latvian may be considered
separate languages in terms of all structural levels of the languages
(phonetics, morphology, vocabulary, syntax).

Consequently, this is a problem of Latvian majority being ready or not to
accept use of Latgalian as a regional language. Some of the facts described
below show that Latgalian has more features of a languages than those of a
dialect.

Latgalian was taught as a separate language in schools of Latvia (until
1934, before authoritarian regime) and in Russia (until 1937, before mass
exterminations of intelectuals of minority nations).  Nowadays, Latgalian is
taught at schools as an optional course, however, Association of Latgalian
Teachers make regular efforts to obtain support from the government for
teaching Latgalian.

Three Universities (University of Latvia, Daugavpils University and Rezekne
Higher education istitutions) offer an optional course of Latgalian language
and literature.

The Latgalian literary tradition has started in early 18 century. Total
number of books published in Latgalian language reaches approx. 2000.  About
150 Latgalian books were published in Latgalian since 1988, when the
cultural revival movement started (i. e., after Soviet era)

Latgalian Radio ("Latgolys radeja") currently broadcasts in Latgalian
language only.

There are 2 community portals in Latgalian only (www.latgola.lv,
www.atzolys.lv) and a few more in both Latvian and Latgalian.

I would like to emphasize that a dialect in linguistics means a variety of
language which exists, first of all, in its free spoken form, which is not
standardized . Latgalians, however, use the written standard, which has a
long history and is being revised and confirmed by Latgalian Language
Commission on regular basis.

Furthermore, the code "bat-ltg" was assigned to test version of Latgalian
about a year ago, and I think, there should be a consistency in decisions
concerning the community of Latgalian Wkipedia. Thank you.

Regards,
Armands
(Stiernits from Latgalian Wikipedia)

2006/10/17, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> In the past many things have been done that we should regret. We have on
> the
> one hand Brion who insists that we maintain the RFC to do with indicating
> content, on the other hand I advocate to use the ISO-639-3 standard and
> engage in the process to get adequate resolution on what is to be
> considered
> a language. Then there are people who consider that it does not make a
> difference and that we can do as we like.
>
> Yes, we have several codes that are wrong. Codes that are contrary to the
> terms of use of the ISO-639 code. The fact that we have done these things
> does not sanction that we continue to do so.
>
> When Samogitian gets the zog code, it means that we should be able to use
> that code. From an RFC point of view it seems that we are not allowed to
> do
> this. This is as foolhardy as insisting on using codes that are patently
> wrong and incompatible with what is done in the rest of the world.
>
> ISO is working on codes where dialects are given an official code. When
> this
> happens the position of these codes will become even more untenable. It is
> to be prefered to accept the best codes that comply with current practices
> and work on amending the practices where needed.
>
> The difference between a language and a dialect is often a problematic
> one.
> Issues are often highly politicized. It is absolutely wrong to "recognize"
> what some activists believe for reasons that have nothing to do with
> linguistics. Engaging in the process to get the recognition through ISO
> and
> Ethnologue is open to us, let us go that route.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> On 10/17/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Arns has a really good point. This is based on precedent.
> >
> > While we do try to follow certain conventions where possible, we do
> > have some inconsistencies with standards. But we're not ISOpedia.
> > Whether we conform to standards or not is our own choice.
> >
> > In the past, we have generally had codes in the form of fiu-vro,
> > bat-smg, and map-bms.
> >
> > This is despite the fact that V?ro, Samogitian, and Banyumasan are
> > considered by the Ethnologue (and many others) to be dialects of
> > Estonian, Lithuanian, and Javanese respectively.
> >
> > We are not perfect.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 17/10/06, Zordsdavini iz Litvy <zordsdavini at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Latgalian is going in the same way as Samogitian. Soon Samogitian will
> > have
> > > iso. It will be ZOG. For now it use bat-smg. The latgalian will have
> > iso,
> > > too, I hope because Latgalian have more tradition than Samogitian.
> When
> > > Samogitian wiki was starting we decided to use bat-smg. I think the
> best
> > > code for now is bat-ltg. To write about dictionary differences can
> > proposer.
> > > I'll tell him.
> > >
> > > Arns
> > >
> > > 2006/10/17, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > > >
> > > > Hoi,
> > > > There are two issues.
> > > > * What/ is/ the code for the moment
> > > > * Get recognition for Latgalian as a language.
> > > >
> > > > People have considered languages like Min-Nan and Yue as a dialect
> of
> > > > Chinese for a long time. They HAD to use codes like zh-min-nan
> because
> > > > this was necessary to comply with the standards. At this moment we
> > have
> > > > 7602 languages that are recognised in ISO-639-3. This is a big
> > > > improvement over what was in ISO-639-2. The ISO-639-3 codes will
> > become
> > > > part of how languages are seen in the near future on the Internet. I
> > am
> > > > afraid that Latgalian is at this moment considered a dialect of
> > Latvian.
> > > > I am also sure that there are many other "languages/dialects" that
> are
> > > > in a similar situation. Either because people are afronted because
> > what
> > > > it considers a language they consider a dialect or the other way
> > around.
> > > > There are also many people who consider something a dialect of for
> > > > instance Italian while everybody knows that Italian was constructed
> > > > after the unification of Italy and, that Italian is based on
> > Florentine.
> > > > The point I am making here there is a lot of confusion and there is
> a
> > > > lot of posturing based on bad information. Having to base the code
> for
> > > > Latgalian on Latvian is the best for the moment.
> > > >
> > > > When you consider Latgalian a language, there are processes open to
> us
> > > > to have this considered by organisations like Ethnologue and ISO. We
> > > > have contacts that may help us achieve this. In order to get to that
> > > > stage, it is necessary to jump through certain hoops. One of these
> is
> > to
> > > > demonstrate that there is indeed this difference that warrants
> > Latgalian
> > > > to be considered a language. Aspects of this are also showing
> > literature
> > > > and current use of the language. One of the first resources would be
> a
> > > > Swadesh list where both Latvian and Latgalian can be compared.
> > > >
> > > > FYI I am from an area of the Netherlands; Westfriesland where they
> > used
> > > > to speak a language; Westfries. It has a literature; it has a
> grammar
> > it
> > > > is not understood by people who speak Dutch. There are dialects of
> > > > Westfries there are dictionaries of Westfries and there are revival
> > > > societies that give cabaret performances in Westfries. At some stage
> I
> > > > am sure that someone will ask for a Wikipedia in Westfries. I would
> > not
> > > > stop them. I KNOW that it takes relatively little effort to make the
> > > > case for Westfries. In WiktionaryZ I would welcome dictionaries in
> > > > Westfries or Latgalian... NB Westfries is not West Frisian .. which
> > imho
> > > > is a complete misnomer.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >    GerardM
> > > >
> > > > Zordsdavini iz Litvy wrote:
> > > > > latgalian has long tradition of writing system. It was in
> 1918-1944
> > > > second
> > > > > official language. Considering of dialect status is political. And
> > there
> > > > are
> > > > > very active people which are working on latgalian language life.
> > It's
> > > > > dialect like neopolitanian or venecian. We say it's the language.
> > > > >
> > > > > Arns
> > > > >
> > > > > 2006/10/17, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > > > >
> > > > >> Hoi,
> > > > >> The code bat is a "collective code" for Baltic (other). Latgalian
> > > > however
> > > > >> is
> > > > >> considered a dialect of Latvian and therefore it is not "other".
> > > > >>
> > > > >> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lav
> > > > >> http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=bat
> > > > >> Thanks,
> > > > >>    GerardM
> > > > >>
> > > > >> On 10/17/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >>
> > > > >>> On 10/17/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>>> Hoi,
> > > > >>>> According to Ethnologue Latgalian is a dialect of Latvian. From
> > my
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >> point
> > > > >>
> > > > >>> of
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>>> view, there is not even a proposed code to be used for your
> > proposed
> > > > >>>> Wikipedia that would be acceptable. Acceptable would be
> something
> > > > like
> > > > >>>> "lv-latg" or "lav-latg" ..
> > > > >>>>
> > > > >>> There's a test wiki at
> > http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/ltg
> > > > >>> The code bat-ltv has been suggested.
> > > > >>>
> > > > >>> Angela
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
> > > :)
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Ok^ ek^ besla ikv Olmok Vzauep^evk
:)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:27:55 +0930, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Right. There are journal archives around with stuff going back hundreds
> of years, but they claim copyright on all their materials; if we could
> free that which already qualifies for PD-old, it would be a major step
> in the right direction.

I'd rather make a $100 million bonfire than paying those who hold for
ransom what is legally in the public domain already.

Roger


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Episode summaries

body:
On Oct 17, 2006, at 12:49 PM, Earle Martin wrote:

>
> I'd say nuke anything like that from orbit, along with any
> critic-esque writing that claims to describe the hidden allegorical
> meaning of a film, painting, book, music video/song lyrics, etc.,
> without providing a reference from the director, artist, author or
> other creator of the item in question.

Well, good for you.

I'd fail you in any of my English classes for being a slave to
authorial intent.

(Which is not to say "Hey, you know what we need, more OR" so much as
"For the love of GOD will people stop assuming they instinctively
know how/what to cite outside of their field?")

-Phil


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 03:49:02 -0400, Patrick Hall wrote:
> * I'd like to see Wikipedia commission or acquire a complete set of
> world maps in SVG (this almost certainly falls under more general
> ideas already covered, but this is one specific detail I'd really like
> to see).

You make me wonder what all the maps and satellite images used for Google
Earth cost. That would be something worth having. But as far as I know this
stuff is so expensive that a more sensible approach might be to ask: what
resolution and age could we get for say $10 million? Not much, I suspect,
because it's expensive enough without a right to sublicense.

Roger


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] kid safe

body:
On 17/10/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> What striked me is the subtitle of this site
> Kids.Net.Au - kids safe search engine for children, parents and teachers.
> I love the idea of a kid safe search engine for children using primarily
> wikipedia :-)
> Now, review and compare
> http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ma/Masturbation
> and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation
> That's the spirit !!!

Our scholarly treatment of the word [[fuck]] is unparalleled.

- d.


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr

body:
Will they be framed, or simple redirected?

On 16/10/06, Friends Club Committee <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I will be setting up 3 domain redirects for Wiki.
>
>  www.wikinews.tk
>  www.wikibooks.tk
>  www.wikiquote.tk
>
>  They should be working by Tuesday for sure.
>
>
> Jon Harald S?by <jhsoby at gmail.com> wrote:
>  .co.nr is a redirect service only, yes. There are seven valid
> subdomains of .nr (see http://cenpac.net.nr/). .co.nr is just a
> redirect service like cjb.net or dot.tk.
>
> On 10/15/06, Lawrence Lo wrote:
> > Hmmm I just checked and it says the domain is not in their database
> > which means that it has not been registered yet? Anyway isn't that a
> > "free" domain redirection service? There are plenty other similar
> > services out there, should we bother with them at all? Interestingly
> > wikipedia.co.nr is banned by the service provider because the
> > registrant broke their term of service.
> >
> > --Lorenzarius
> >
> > On 10/16/06, Friends Club Committee wrote:
> > > I just set-up www.wikimedia.co.nr.
> > >
> > > It should take a day or two to be live.
> > >
> > > Feel free to send feedback!
> > --
> > http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> > Tel: +852 95825791
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Best regards,
> Jon Harald S?by
>
> Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
> Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
> MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
> Skype - jon.harald.soby
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Stay in the know. Pulse on the new Yahoo.com.  Check it out.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


subject: [Foundation-l] www.wikimedia.co.nr


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/17/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/10/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Um.  I've made a non-trivial amount of money relicensing my images to
> > folks who found them via Wikimedia projects... not enough to pay for
> > my equipment yet, but within a few years perhaps. ... but I'm just one
> > person with only a few commercially interesting images.
>
> Really? That's even better than I assumed... I was assuming it wasn't
> much more than paying for an occasional lunch for our regular
> image-creators.

People who have no intention to pay well don't bother contacting
people for license grants... people who do intend to pay well have
already scoured the normal stock photo libraries and have failed to
find any images that meet their needs. ... Soooo....

Plus, commercial stock photography isn't cheap:

Compare
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:FoxBassoon.jpg

and

http://creative.gettyimages.com/source/classes/FrameSet.aspx?s=ImageDetailSearchState|3|5|0|0|15|2|1||0|7|0|1|3|60|2ad3.85c5.03fb.e000.002f.7a30.4ce0.e038.f70b.f9ff.5ffb.13e7|1|0|0|%22bassoon%22||1|0|0&pk=5

You have to log in to see the prices, so I'll just paste them here:
72 dpi - 6"x10" - RGB  	  $ 89.99 USD
300 dpi - 5"x7" - RGB 	  $ 229.99 USD
300 dpi - 9"x12" - RGB 	  $ 299.99 USD

My image is similar in size to their large one (and pretty clear at
that size, since it was downsampled 2:1 from the capture). Their
lighting and pose is a little more attractive, while mine was intended
to be a bit more informative (showing all the keywork, but I got both
sides)..


body:
There is the mediawiki-l mailing list, which would probably be more
appropriate than this one.

S

On 17/10/06, Virgil Ierubino <virgil.ierubino at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there a place (other than here, I guess)? Does Meta have a page for this?
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


body:
It seems like a sensible idea; I particularly agree that Wikinews is
unique in this manner and would look rather bad if inactive. However,
I would like to suggest that the lock occurs at three months, and
perhaps the notice (or a similar one) is applied at one, giving people
on the project a chance to get it going again - a two-stage system.

S

On 17/10/06, Ilya Haykinson <haykinson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would place a much shorter window on the inactivity threshold --
> perhaps 1 month.
>
> I second the suggestion for the higher reactivation requirement, as
> well -- it encourages the redevelopment of a community. One must
> notice though that the reactivating users may not at all be related to
> the originating users, and yet they would have this higher burden of
> rounding up members.  I would suggest that in response we should be
> quicker at unlocking the wiki once the votes are in.
>
> -ilya haykinson
>
> On 10/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > I suggest the following policy:
> >
> > When a Wikinews edition has seen no new stories for 8 weeks, the wiki
> > is locked and a site notice is added: "This Wikinews edition is
> > currently inactive. If you are interested in working on it, please
> > indicate so on [[m:Wikinews/Reactivate an edition]]." (In the correct
> > language, of course.) Instead of just 5 votes, you would need 10
> > Wikimedians to sign the reactivation pledge.
> >
> > Inactive editions could also be removed from the interlanguage link
> > list on the Main Pages, but that would be optional if it's too much
> > maintenance.
> >
> > There are currently a few Wikinewses that meet this criterion. In
> > general our setup policy tends to at least determine whether there's a
> > general interest but that doesn't ensure that people keep posting.
> >
> > Without such a policy, I think we are just turning these sites into
> > magnets for vandalism and spam, as well as making Wikinews look
> > unprofessional (a news site with news that are a year old isn't much
> > of one). An open recognition that an edition is dead seems preferable
> > to me.
> >
> > Wikinews is of course very special in this regard because it doesn't
> > really matter that much if a Wikipedia edition is dead for a couple of
> > months, but for Wikinews, it is a very obvious sign that the critical
> > mass is not there.
> >
> > Does this policy proposal sound reasonable?
> >
> > --
> > Peace & Love,
> > Erik
> >
> > Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
> >
> > DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
> > in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
> > position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


subject: [Wikipedia-l] kid safe

body:
On 17/10/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's actually just a very out of date mirror of Wikipedia (July 2003
> according to their [[current events]] page). They don't appear to have
> changed anything to make it "child-friendly".

They removed [[snowballing]] after enough people laughed at it that
someone told them.

- d.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] kid safe

body:
Hi

Whilst I was looking for images of kids playing with an encyclopedia
(...), I found this site

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://solar-center.stanford.edu/images/solactivity.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.kids.net.au/encyclopedia-wiki/gl/Global_warming&h=187&w=236&sz=22&hl=en&start=30&tbnid=gs0RDokBqOuxKM:&tbnh=86&tbnw=109&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dkids%2Bencyclopedia%26start%3D18%26ndsp%3D18%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Dfr%26sa%3DN

What striked me is the subtitle of this site

Kids.Net.Au - kids safe search engine for children, parents and teachers.

I love the idea of a kid safe search engine for children using primarily
wikipedia :-)

Now, review and compare

http://encyclopedia.kids.net.au/page/ma/Masturbation

and

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

That's the spirit !!!

anthere


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Emma wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> I am a new member of the wikipedia society. I have a plan to start wikipedia
> in a new language. Please give me any suggestion.
>

1. What language?

2. How many people speak it?

3. Do we have it already?

4. See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages

--
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: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20061017/830a1dcc/attachment.pgp


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 23:28:05 +1000, Brianna Laugher wrote:
> For the satellite stuff we can use NASA WorldWind, right?

The Landsat images they use are in the public domain, but I don't know if
there's a place that offers them for bulk download.

If were to look into this type of data, we should definitely contact the
guys at osgeo.org (Open Source Geospatial Foundation), they should know
what is available and what would be nice to have. There are all kinds of
people on wikipedia-l, but experts in many fields are not reading this
list.

Roger


from_name: Kusma

body:
On 10/16/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've just gone and removed semi-protections from about a dozen user
> talk pages. All of them were targets of vandalism in the past,
> generally due to their own anti-vandalism efforts. The pages included
> pages of administrators.
>
> For obvious reasons, anyone who is warning and blocking new users in
> turn needs to be able to be contacted by these users with questions,
> concerns, etc. Semi-protection must not be used in this fashion, and
> I've removed the line supporting it from the semi-protection policy.

I like Ryulong's solution: He is a prolific vandal-fighter whose talk
page is sprotected (so discussion with logged in users is not
disrupted by frequent vandalism) but he has an extra talk page at
[[User talk:Ryulong/Unprotected]] that IPs can use. This eliminates
most vandalism from his ordinary talk page but still allows
communication from anyone.

Kusma