subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 11/28/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2005, at 01:04, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >> You should probably reconsider after realizing that Wikipedia was
> >> created by a corporation, I believe one which made most of its money
> >> off ads, in fact.
> >>
> > "Bomis is a dot-com company founded in 1996. Its primary businesses
> > are the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and the
> > sale of erotic images over the Internet (see also Internet
> > pornography)."
> >
> > Yep, ads and porn are why Wikipedia exists today.  Throws a wrench in
> > that whole "corporations can do nothing but evil" theory.
>
> Slight rewrite of history. Jimbo made his money from options trading
> and set up Nupedia and Bomis at about the same time as far as I
> remember (I guess I should check the Wp article). Bomis profits
> may have funded Wp for a bit (and the corporations were for a while
> entangled), but I wouldnt say adds and porn funded it directly -
> the Spanish wp fork was about ads.
>
> Justinc

How could you accuse me of rewriting history when you admit yourself
that you're not sure.  Check the WP article.  "Bomis is most notable
for creating the online encyclopedia project Nupedia, and hiring Larry
Sanger to manage it. During the early stages of this project, Sanger
began the development of Wikipedia, which was originally intended as a
sub-project and drafting platform for the more formally organized
Nupedia. However, Wikipedia, with its much lower barrier to entry,
rapidly outgrew its "parent", and soon became far larger than the main
business of Bomis itself."

You could say ads and porn didn't fund Wikipedia *directly*, because
Wikipedia itself didn't contain ads and porn.  But Bomis did, and
Bomis provided pretty much the sole funding for Wikipedia in the
beginning.  Wikipedia was a sub-project of Nupedia, which was a
project of Bomis.

Also, from the [[Wikipedia]] article, "Nupedia was founded on 9 March
2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company."  And
"Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by
the use of advertisements."

Either the Wikipedia article(s) are wrong as well as my memory, in
which case Jimbo should speak up and clarify so we can rewrite it, or
my recollection of history is much more accurate than yours.

Anthony


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: yet another image lost for posterity

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<98dd099a0511281145w7ca9346cp1ebcd176125d5823@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfru9$nle$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Does that clarify ?

It clarifies your particular situation but it doesn't clarify why I
should be terribly heartbroken that an image you didn't see fit to use
on any page whatsoever got deleted as part of a generally sensible
policy. The people doing this sort of maintenance are neither psychic
nor have nor need the patience required to notify the hundreds of
users who have uploaded images tagged as fair use but not used in
articles and then wait for responses. If they are tagged as fair use,
they should be either used or deleted -- I don't think this is in any
way a rash policy, it is just one which recognizes that a "fair use"
claim resides in "use" and is not a license or a free ticket to "I
want to keep this image here but I cannot or will not license it
freely".

It sounds to me like you feel somewhat entitled to use Wikipedia as a
personal file server. But perhaps I am misinterpretted or misreading
something.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: Google Alert - Wikipedia

body:
That would be a pretty radical form of extreme eventualism. Nothing
has fallen into the public domain in the U.S. on account of copyright
expiring for a long, long, long time due to continual copyright
extension acts. And I think there is probably little hope that this
situation will change over time -- there is simply too much money
invested in works created in the late 1920s, too little monetary and
political force to remind Congressmen of the "temporary" in the phrase
"temporary monopoly".

FF

On 11/28/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > Sadly, though, in some instances, i.e. for illustrating articles
> > regarding comics, you will never get a free-licensed image.
>
> True.  Although a position one could describe as 'extreme eventualism'
> would state that the comics will eventually fall into the public
> domain and then be usable ...
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Arbitration Committee elections,
	2005 - still no information!

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we
> > > could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
> >
> > The ArbCom's power comes entirely from the willingness of the admins
> > and the community in general to implement the decisions it comes up
> > with.  If we're willing to forgo the use of the formal voting
> > software, there's nothing stopping the community from running its own
> > ArbCom election.
> >
> > --
> > [[User:Carnildo]]
>
> Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia
> Foundation.  The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but
> Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation
> and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the
> servers).

However servers and fundraiseing are not the concern of arbcom.

--
geni


from_name: Anthere

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>

body:
>>I have the feeling that in one year or so, freely licensed orphan images
>>will indeed be deleted on the english wikipedia. That would be well
>>within what I currently observe.
>
>
> I see no reason to share your pessimism.
>
> Kelly

it is a deal :-)
I keep this in memory to see what the future will offer us :-)

See you next december ...

ant


from_name: Steve Block

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Norvy wrote:
>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=SablePlante.JPG
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> yet another image deleted
>>> *without any personal warning to the uploader
>>> *even though it was uploaded before the tags ever existed...
>>>
>>> I find that pityful. Really pityful. Really really pityful.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> To be fair, you were asked to tag them on December 16th, 2004.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Image_tagging
>> Seems like plenty of warning to me.
>> --
>> Norvy
>
>
>
> see for example
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Unverified_images
>
> it says
>
> Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:
>     ?     Image:DjeDje.jpg
>     ?     Image:Dune.JPG
> I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you add
> one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if you
> release it under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{fairuse}} if you
> claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means, just let
> me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag them for
> you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation script)]]
> 04:02, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
> P.S. You can help tag other images at User:Yann/Untagged_Images. Thanks
> again.

To be fair, the above looks like an automated message, so it doesn't
actually state that fair use tags are acceptable on user pages.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 27/11/05


body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On the other hand eventualism resulted in the current mess we have
>>with image lisences.
>
>
> I would disagree. It is not eventualism, but right-now-ism, that leads
> people to use an unfree image instead of waiting for a free-licensed
> one to appear.

Sadly, though, in some instances, i.e. for illustrating articles
regarding comics, you will never get a free-licensed image.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 27/11/05


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 11/28/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2005, at 00:43, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>
> > So if 25 people spend 1 hour a week it'll take...less than a year.
> > The problem with this would be?
> >
>
> The other tens of thousands of images uploaded in the mean time. The
> fact that when people complain about removal of one non free image they
> point to others and say this hasnt gone yet why should mine go.
>
But, this person is specifically complaining about an image that was
uploaded years ago.  I could see deleting the tens of thousands of
images uploaded more recently first, though I think you're severely
exaggerating how many unfree images are going to be uploaded in the
next 44 weeks.  And you ignored the point about how many of those
images are by *unique individuals*.  There's no need to tell someone
who has already been told time and time again, but telling people at
least once (look, here's a list of images of yours we're going to
delete unless you add a tag) is the least that can be done.

> > Even if it's wasted effort 99% of the time (and I think this is a
> > gross exaggeration), what about at least notifying users who *are*
> > active, like, say, someone who currently serves on the board of the
> > foundation?
>
> How is anyone supposed to remember the usernames of everyone on the
> foundation and why do they expect to get special treatment? For a
> while we had some bot assisted notification for some classes of
> speedy delete; hopefully these will return soon if the bot bureaucracy
> can be overcome (er, performance improves). This particular deletion
> is not about this really, it is about communication of changing policies
> to people.
>
> Justinc

C'mon, if you're going to remember just three usernames, Anthere
should be one of them.  Does she deserve special treatment?  No,
that's not what I'm saying.  I'd expect the same treatment for any
active user, at the least.

Are there really admins who don't know who Anthere is?  I mean, I
don't know what I'm supposed to call her as her real name (just
noticed she signs her emails "Ant", but it feels strange calling her
that I guess in part 'cause that's what my family calls me), but,
anyway, I digress.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Support freedum of infromashuon

body:
I've got no problem with "freedom of information" and certainly think
that this alleged memo should be published widely when and if it is
released/exists/etc., but Wikipedia and the WMF cannot be vehicles for
this sort of political controversy (talk about POV pushing). If WP has
any legal obligation to follow the Official Secrets Act or whatever (I
imagine it does -- the idea that the UK and US wouldn't have worked
out these sorts of things in treaties seems unrealistic to me) then it
shouldn't break the law. Doing so would put the whole project at risk
for what would in practice be little gain. I do not think there will
be a difficulty in finding people to post the contents of whatever
this memo is. If it comes down to Wikipedia being the last possible
outlet in the world, then maybe we could talk about it.

And let's also remember that Wikipedia is a place full of contributors
from all political and ideological backgrounds, all of which are
welcome to contribute as long as they obey a few simple rules.

FF

On 11/28/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Since Wikipedia is supposed to be, like, into this
> 'freedom of information thing,' (and stuff) and, like,
> that includes our friends even in the UK, who arent
> used to like, living under freedom (and stuff)...
>
> I thought it might not be out of our mandate to put
> this little image (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Illpublish.png ) on
> the front page. Maybe even at Wikisource! (Im sure
> somebody here is an admin there. Ive only got my meta
> priveleges left now - snif!). The image is a little
> white box that says "Ill publish the Al Jazeera memo."
> It may or may not be linked to the Blairwatch.org
> site.
>
> Anyway, though it might, like, be cheezy to stand up
> for freedom of information (and stuff) though. Plus,
> that might violate Wikisource's NOR policy.
>
> Stevertigo
>  Confused: Is it still called 'Valspeak'
>  when a guy uses it?
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.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
>


body:
On 11/28/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Since Wikipedia is supposed to be, like, into this
> 'freedom of information thing,' (and stuff) and, like,
> that includes our friends even in the UK, who arent
> used to like, living under freedom (and stuff)...
>
> I thought it might not be out of our mandate to put
> this little image (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Illpublish.png ) on
> the front page. Maybe even at Wikisource! (Im sure
> somebody here is an admin there. Ive only got my meta
> priveleges left now - snif!). The image is a little
> white box that says "Ill publish the Al Jazeera memo."
> It may or may not be linked to the Blairwatch.org
> site.
>
> Anyway, though it might, like, be cheezy to stand up
> for freedom of information (and stuff) though. Plus,
> that might violate Wikisource's NOR policy.
>
> Stevertigo
>  Confused: Is it still called 'Valspeak'
>  when a guy uses it?

The front page of wikipedia should not be used for campianing whatever
the cause. We don't have a big notice on the front page when china
banned as I fail to see a reason to put up a notice now.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 11/28/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> On 29 Nov 2005, at 01:19, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > How could you accuse me of rewriting history when you admit yourself
> > that you're not sure.  Check the WP article.  "Bomis is most notable
> > for creating the online encyclopedia project Nupedia, and hiring Larry
> > Sanger to manage it. During the early stages of this project, Sanger
> > began the development of Wikipedia, which was originally intended as a
> > sub-project and drafting platform for the more formally organized
> > Nupedia. However, Wikipedia, with its much lower barrier to entry,
> > rapidly outgrew its "parent", and soon became far larger than the main
> > business of Bomis itself."
> >
> > You could say ads and porn didn't fund Wikipedia *directly*, because
> > Wikipedia itself didn't contain ads and porn.  But Bomis did, and
> > Bomis provided pretty much the sole funding for Wikipedia in the
> > beginning.  Wikipedia was a sub-project of Nupedia, which was a
> > project of Bomis.
> >
> > Also, from the [[Wikipedia]] article, "Nupedia was founded on 9 March
> > 2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company."  And
> > "Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by
> > the use of advertisements."
> >
> > Either the Wikipedia article(s) are wrong as well as my memory, in
> > which case Jimbo should speak up and clarify so we can rewrite it, or
> > my recollection of history is much more accurate than yours.
>
> Sorry, yes I should have checked first. Apologies. Was based on my
> memory. I am not quite convinced by the article though, based on
> what Jimbo has said. He has always said that he personally paid for
> Nupedia (the sum of $250000 springs to mind); however as Bomis
> basically is Jimbo this is rather vague. Jimbo says Bomis never made
> large amounts of money (or lost it), and that he made his money before
> that. I think the article could be made more precise.
>
Hmm, let me see if I can find this.  I believe I specifically asked
Jimbo about this discrepancy (the Wikipedia page for him says "In
2004, Wales had been quoted as saying that he spent around US$500,000
on the establishment and operations of his Wiki projects."), and he
responded that the money technically came through Bomis.  There was a
quote he gave saying it came from him, but that was either a misquote
or he was not being precise.  But I could be mistaken on this one.

This could even be reconciled with Bomis not making much money, if the
money was contributed to Bomis and then spent by Bomis.  But now I'm
starting to speculate.

> WP clearly was owned by Bomis. Its not that important, although as
> a footnote in the history of the web we should be the first to get it
> right.
>
> Justinc

I think it's important to realize that WP was started by a for-profit
coporation when you make the suggestion that WP shouldn't be usable by
for-profit corporations, especially when you suggest that this
restriction was part of the original intention of the project.

Anthony


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: WikiStatus - OpenFact's replacement

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

Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Monday 28 November 2005 03:31, Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>>> Hmmm... I think I'll rename it CoLocus, short for Community
>>> Contingency Locus. What do you think?
>
> CoCoLoco? ;)

Timwi wrote:
> Not wanting to smash every idea here, but "Lokus" in German means loo
> (toilet), and "CoCoLoco" sounds suspiciously like "Kokolores", which
> means nonsense. :-)

No, no, that's absolutely fine. Worst thing that could happen is that no
one answers to this extremely un-wikitech-l conversation and I end up
settling for a subpar name. We probably want a meaningful name, I think.

Unfortunately, I registered a SourceForge project under colocus, and it
was approved, and now I can't change it. Shouldn't have been so
trigger-happy. So, I'll either have to justify my name, or request my
project is deleted and register a new one. >_<

Locus means "the scene of any event or action (especially the place of a
meeting)". Co doubles up meaning as community and contingency (the
community was an after thought).

Is having a good name really that important?

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

iD8DBQFDi7x8qTO+fYacSNoRAiBjAJ4+38zmYIzrwm7T36Y8vauD6UOVlwCeL3vb
IDHacjqMM2884ZJPGvzrA44=
=WrSS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfm9v$1e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281152m50e38652v@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfs1h$nle$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 28/11/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > If single-login-across-projects is working by then, I strongly suspect
> > we *will* see deletion of orphaned free images on en.wikipedia -
> > because they'll be being shifted over to Commons...

> I am not really sure how setting up single login could make it possible
> for images to be shifted from one project to another ? Did developers
> suggest it could be automated somehow ? if so, it sure is an additional
> motivation...

I believe, though I've not looked into it, that one of the problems
holding up large-scale shifting of images between projects is that
it's tricky to credit someone who has an account elsewhere.
Single-logon may make this easier.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfm9v$1e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281152m50e38652v@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfs1h$nle$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281334l3bf4303dx@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 11/28/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe, though I've not looked into it, that one of the problems
> holding up large-scale shifting of images between projects is that
> it's tricky to credit someone who has an account elsewhere.
> Single-logon may make this easier.
>

Well that and the issue that wikipedia admins are a buch of control
freaks who have seen commons's record of dealing with vandalism and
are not impressed.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Algeria images

body:
On 11/28/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> In this case however Anthere has lost some (non free) photos that I
> cannot find
> on the mirrors; I only have an old image dump of commons not of en
> [BTW is
> there a set of old archive image dumps that are not public?]. She
> does not
> have any other copy of the deleted images (redlink jpegs on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/PictAlgerie). If anyone has an
> image dump from the last few years they should be there, and it would
> be much
> appreciated if they could be emailed to Anthere (or if there is a
> more out
> of date mirror that I havent found).
>
> Justinc

Hmm, I might have this in a tarball.  Can someone tell me the
directory it'd be in (e.g.  en/upload/0/00/)?  I'll try to figure out
the hash function in the mean time but hopefully someone will get it
for me first :).

Anthony


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> And the community would be completely useless without the servers.
> Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached.  The
> community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the
> board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support
> of the community.

We need consensus?  Let's hold a two-week, site-wide vote with
Concorcet (sp?) voting.  And it's going to be binding.

--
Sam


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>
	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think you should not play on words if you were fair.
>
> A year ago, fair use was authorized, with no mention if it was
> authorized in the encyclopedic content or in the user page.
> Amongst the two untaggued pages listed above, one was a picture of my
> daughter and labelled as such. It was clearly not meant for encyclopedic
> space.
>
> Besides, see the message just below as well :
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Image_tagging
>
> It says
>
>
>
> P.P.S. I hope all is well with you, and that you are enjoying your
> labors with Angela and Jimbo. :)
>
> Looking here, I'd like to add that the following images need tags:
>         ?       Image:Acacia.JPG
>         ?       Image:Dessication.JPG
>         ?       Image:SablePlante.JPG
>         ?       Image:Hoggar.JPG
>         ?       Image:Hoggar2.JPG
>         ?       Image:Hoggar5.JPG
>         ?       Image:Oasis.JPG
>         ?       Image:Sahara3.JPG
>         ?       Image:Sahara5.JPG
> Any more tags would be a great help. Thanks!
> --[[User:Ricky81682|Ricky81682 (talk)]] 08:11, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
>
>
>
> Does that look like an automated message ? The P.P.S. ?
>
>
>
> Look, I find the general behavior which consist in saying to an editor
> "you are allowed to do that", then a year later, to rudely delete work
> without warning, upon the reason it is no more allowed now to do that, a
> bit difficult to admit.
>
> But I find the behavior which consist one year later to deny that what
> was done a year before, was authorized at that time, much more difficult
> to admit. Fair use was authorized a year ago. Period.

I think what you are arguing is something different to quite a lot of
others.  They are saying why the policy was necessary.  Your complaint
is actually that you weren't warned.  I don't think anyone would
disagree that you should have been notified before the deletions took
place.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfm9v$1e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281152m50e38652v@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfs1h$nle$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281334l3bf4303dx@mail.gmail.com>
	<f80608430511281339n7f8b53e5ja51a0f4e1304a4ff@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well that and the issue that wikipedia admins are a buch of control
> freaks who have seen commons's record of dealing with vandalism and
> are not impressed.

I don't know how many admins on en would be offended by you saying
that they are harsh on vandalism.

--
Sam


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Ampersand symbol in URLs

body:
Netocrat wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Nov 2005 12:40:56 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Netocrat wrote:
> [incorrectly patching Title.php/getLocalURL() and getFullURL() to encode
> ampersands]
>> This patch is incorrect, and will cause broken URLs to be output
>> throughout the wiki.
>
> Too hasty - I didn't notice that there were already escaped versions of
> these functions and that unescaped versions were necessary.

As a general rule, escaping should be done as close as possible to the actual
use. It's part of the file format or communications protocol in your output, not
a part of your data, so you want to keep them separate to avoid unnecessarily
hobbling code that should be more flexible.

URLs may go to different outputs, not always HTML; for instance HTTP headers,
plaintext output, generated JavaScript code, etc, will all have different
requirements from XML/HTML text.

Early escaping is also dangerous, since additional processing or just forgetting
where you got some value can end up producing either corrupt data (such as
double-escaping) or security vulnerabilities from missing escaping (SQL
injection, HTML/JavaScript injection, etc).

>> Instead, you should locate the individual *output* of the bad URL that
>> you found and patch *that* to properly HTML-encode its output.
>
> I based part of the extension on code from BoardVote.php, which doesn't
> use the escaped url function to generate the action of a form.  So the
> patch is not very significant anyhow but this is what it should have been:
[patch snipped]

Thanks, I've applied it to CVS.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20051128/59ad2b61/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] code gripes

body:
S. Woodside wrote:
> I've hit a point now where the Parser access User functions. With a
> command line test there's not going to be a user, so I could either fake
> one, or I could temporarily modify the parser.

If there's something in Parser that accesses a user directly it perhaps should
be migrated to ParserOptions, as that's what it's for.

> It seems like this might be a good place to insert an intermediate
> parsing format (something between the article{wikitext, ...} and the
> final HTML.

There's a couple attempts at this floating around, not sure what the state is.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20051128/b83a8283/attachment.pgp>


body:
stevertigo wrote:
> Anthere wrote: >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=SablePlante.JPG
>
>
>>yet another image deleted
>>*without any personal warning to the uploader
>>*even though it was uploaded before the tags
>
> ever existed...
>
>>I find that pityful. Really pityful. Really  really
>
> pityful.
>
> The image (whatver it was -- we will never know) was a
> danger to Wikipedia and to Wikimedia itself. The
> erasure of one single insignificant image (whatever it
> was -- we may never know) is insignificant compared to
> the increased security that Wikipedia and Wikimedia
> now has, as a result of not hosting that image.
>
> Stevertigo
> Le calembour a pr?vu

I missed the calembour ? Can you explain ?

As for the loss of security, I garantee my husband will not even sue us
for using one of his images :-)

To be fair Steve, if you believe that a board member uploaded images
that could be endangering the project and possibly cause herself suffer
from a lawsuit, you should fear much much worse happening in the future :-)


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Mike Finucane wrote:

>      I *do* have a
> problem if someone -say a newspaper - lifts one of my images from
> Wikipedia, and uses it instead of paying for their own photography, and
> makes a profit therefrom.

While I disagree with much of what you have said, I'll admit you have a
point there, Mike. One reason I'll never release images of my friends or
family under GFDL or CC is that I don't want to be surprised one day
by finding that their image has been photoshopped into an ad or a
commercial for a product or company. The only thing worse would be to
find that they've been photoshopped into a commercial supporting a
politician I despise so vehemently that I wouldn't piss on them if
they were on fire.

One could speculate whether this use amounted to some form of libel --
based on the assumption that association with a given product, service,
company or politician could be defamatory -- but in the case of dead
people, I don't think libel or slander applies. I'm not a lawyer, & I'm
not looking to start a discussion here on the matter, I'm just explaining
that I've found a simple solution by avoiding the problem.

But what _might_ be worth a conversation -- or at least a moment's
consideration -- is that introducing GFDL material into an advertisement
makes that creation GFDL'd too. By using free images (free as in speech,
not as in beer, as the cliche goes), the advertisement then -- at least
in part -- becomes free.

This may not stand up in court (the GPL & its related licenses have never
been tested in court to the best of my knowledge), but the legal uncertainty
there is strong enough that no businessman will lightly use material
released under a Gnu-like license. There are enough headaches in publishing
creative material: why further introduce those surrounding copyright &
trademark?

But I do wonder at the concept of a GFDL'd commerical, & how that might
play out in business.

There's more I could say, but I think a pointer to the lawsuit between
UC Berkeley & AT&T over the UNIX codebase in the early 1990s is sufficient.
Half of the people on this mailing list know how free software affected
the outcome of that case (& probably can discuss it better than I), &
the other half should read about it.

Geoff


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<98dd099a0511281145w7ca9346cp1ebcd176125d5823@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Given that images used on used pages are unlikely to end up in a DVD or
>>a book, I seriously doubt who would suffer copyright infringement
>>attacks for images hosted on community pages.
>>
>>It strikes me as odd, that we authorize fair use on encyclopedic content
>>(which is likely to be reused and to irritate copyright holders), while
>>forbidding it on personal pages (where it is unlikely to be much troubles).
>>
>>Overall, our license issues strike me as being more confusing and messy
>>every day that goes by.
>
>
> It strikes me that you don't really know what fair use is. It might
> aid you if you read our page on the fair use policy at [[WP:FU]]
> first, because you seem confused on a few legal points which are not
> terribly difficult but most people haven't been exposed to them.
>
> The reason people have been cracking down on fair use tagging is
> because if something is tagged as such but is not actually "fair use",
> then it is a copyright violation and puts us in a legally bad
> position. People have been generously mopping up some of the simple
> cases (i.e. where images are claimed as "fair use" but are not used in
> an encyclopedia article) with the sole intention of helping Wikipedia
> keep a "clean" legal status. The goal is to avoid getting sued and
> having Wikipedia donations spent on lawyers rather than new servers.
>
> I don't want to sound unsympathetic, but I'm having a hard time
> understanding why you absolutely needed to have an image whose
> copyright was owned by someone else and not released freely kept on
> the Wikipedia servers even though it wasn't being used.
>
> FF

Simple.
At the same time, we were working with a lawyer (participant) to
wikipedia, Alex, on the french wikipedia, setting up a policy to clarify
fair use on our project.

When we set up the policy, we worked on a collection of "explanations"
the editors had to provide for the images to be acceptable under the
fair use doctrine. Amonst those "explanations" were the possibility to
reuse some images in poor quality, while the high quality images were
under copyright.
For example, an image of a movie advertisement, or a cd print (the
jacket ? is that the word ?), could be used, while uploading a full high
quality movie picture could not.

Most of the images I uploaded on Wikipedia are mine and are under the
gfdl, even those of my children, which is probably a serious mistake
(and I presume I will soon delete them, because I think they could be
used in inappropriate ways). Amongst the few not under gfdl, those from
Algerian desert were taken by my husband. When I uploaded them, there
were no tags. So, I did not even asked him really. But I knew there were
a couple he might have desired to use later in his own reports (ie, in a
professional book or leaflets, where the printer usually retain
copyright... poor life of researchers :)). For this reason, I uploaded
them in low quality, rather than printing quality. It was also a time
when they were no images on these topics at all.

In december 2004, when a hord of fanatic started deleted all my images,
upon the reason I never taggued them (of course, they were no tags when
I uploaded them), I hurried tagging them. And fell on these few from my
husband. He was away on a expedition far away at that time, and I
thought "do I have the right to put a GFDL tag on them, whilst he does
not even know what it means, but while I know he approves the reduced
quality use... but might put the high quality in a book later on ?). I
asked a couple of people, who said "fair use". And since it was accepted
at that time, fair use it was. it was not a problem a year ago. he does
not care for the copyright of the low quality at all.

When we went to Algeria again together, we both together took more than
800 images. Most are mostly professional and would not interest
wikipedia I think. Mostly plants (for me) and rocks (for him). I
uploaded a few of these pictures on commons. I put all of them under
GFDL. Some of them were uploaded in low quality on purpose. But being
better informed then, we put them under a free licence. And kept the
high quality for us.

Does that clarify ?

Ant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfm9v$1e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281152m50e38652v@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 28/11/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>>>I have the feeling that in one year or so, freely licensed orphan images
>>>>will indeed be deleted on the english wikipedia. That would be well
>>>>within what I currently observe.
>>>
>>>I see no reason to share your pessimism.
>>
>>it is a deal :-)
>>I keep this in memory to see what the future will offer us :-)
>
>
> If single-login-across-projects is working by then, I strongly suspect
> we *will* see deletion of orphaned free images on en.wikipedia -
> because they'll be being shifted over to Commons...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray

I am not really sure how setting up single login could make it possible
for images to be shifted from one project to another ? Did developers
suggest it could be automated somehow ? if so, it sure is an additional
motivation...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

body:
On 11/28/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know how many admins on en would be offended by you saying
> that they are harsh on vandalism.
>
> --
> Sam

Well as an en admin I'll own up to being a control freak when it comes
to vandalism. A while back a picture on commons was vandalised
resulting in the wikipedia portal page carrying a vandalised image. It
took some time for it to be fixed.

--
geni


body:
On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:

> [[m:Voting is evil]]
>
> Kelly

The alturnatives are worse-Churchill

The voteing softwear avoids a lot of the normal downsides of voteing
by not revealing who has voted for what. There is also the issue that
with hundreds of people wanting to have a say it is the only real way
to gage final opinion.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: copyright and arbcom issues

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B79C3.4080308@apple.com>
	<dmfuc0$vsq$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> incidently, this major issue is the reason why Jimbo will probably not
> answer the questions about the arbcom for a while... so, please, show
> patience :-)
>
> ant

We've shown a lot of patience however we have run out of time. D-day
is december the 1st.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Algeria images

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Hmm, I might have this in a tarball.  Can someone tell me the
> directory it'd be in (e.g.  en/upload/0/00/)?  I'll try to figure out
> the hash function in the mean time but hopefully someone will get it
> for me first :).
>
> Anthony
>
Found it.  The hash is just an md5 of the file name.
[[Image:Dune1.JPG]] is back (had the lowest valued hash).  Extracting
these from the tarball is taking a *long* time though, so I might have
to put the rest off until tomorrow.  I assume Ant will copy these
somewhere then re-delete them.

Anthony


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>
	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750511281349u36ee0cedu7eafcb5adaf93d88@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfug2$vsq$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Thanks, you are absolutely correct Sam.
> Yes, what bugs me is the change of policy and no-warning.
>

Well you probably have better acess to jimbo than the rest of us to complain

> I have no problem with adopting a much stronger policy against fair use
> myself. I think it will empoverish the project, but protect it greatly,
> as there has been a lot of abuse on this tag use.
>
> Ant

In many ways it would help the project since it would provide a
greater incentive for people to find free content.

--
geni


body:
On 11/28/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> > Sadly, though, in some instances, i.e. for illustrating articles
> > regarding comics, you will never get a free-licensed image.
>
> True.  Although a position one could describe as 'extreme eventualism'
> would state that the comics will eventually fall into the public
> domain and then be usable ...
>
> -Matt

The other posibilty is that the companies publishing comics will
decide that it is in there interest to release some publicity material
under the GFDL. This might speed up if people stoped useing fair use.

--
geni


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Norvy wrote:
>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=SablePlante.JPG
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> yet another image deleted
>>>> *without any personal warning to the uploader
>>>> *even though it was uploaded before the tags ever existed...
>>>>
>>>> I find that pityful. Really pityful. Really really pityful.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> To be fair, you were asked to tag them on December 16th, 2004.
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Image_tagging
>>> Seems like plenty of warning to me.
>>> --
>>> Norvy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> see for example
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Unverified_images
>>
>> it says
>>
>> Hi! Thanks for uploading the following image:
>>     ?     Image:DjeDje.jpg
>>     ?     Image:Dune.JPG
>> I notice it currently doesn't have an image copyright tag. Could you
>> add one to let us know its copyright status? (You can use {{gfdl}} if
>> you release it under the GNU Free Documentation License, {{fairuse}}
>> if you claim fair use, etc.) If you don't know what any of this means,
>> just let me know at my talk page where you got the images and I'll tag
>> them for you. Thanks so much. [[User:Poccil|Peter O. (Talk, automation
>> script)]] 04:02, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)
>> P.S. You can help tag other images at User:Yann/Untagged_Images.
>> Thanks again.
>
>
> To be fair, the above looks like an automated message, so it doesn't
> actually state that fair use tags are acceptable on user pages.

I think you should not play on words if you were fair.

A year ago, fair use was authorized, with no mention if it was
authorized in the encyclopedic content or in the user page.
Amongst the two untaggued pages listed above, one was a picture of my
daughter and labelled as such. It was clearly not meant for encyclopedic
space.

Besides, see the message just below as well :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Image_tagging

It says

P.P.S. I hope all is well with you, and that you are enjoying your
labors with Angela and Jimbo. :)

Looking here, I'd like to add that the following images need tags:
	? 	Image:Acacia.JPG
	? 	Image:Dessication.JPG
	? 	Image:SablePlante.JPG
	? 	Image:Hoggar.JPG
	? 	Image:Hoggar2.JPG
	? 	Image:Hoggar5.JPG
	? 	Image:Oasis.JPG
	? 	Image:Sahara3.JPG
	? 	Image:Sahara5.JPG
Any more tags would be a great help. Thanks!
--[[User:Ricky81682|Ricky81682 (talk)]] 08:11, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)

Does that look like an automated message ? The P.P.S. ?

Look, I find the general behavior which consist in saying to an editor
"you are allowed to do that", then a year later, to rudely delete work
without warning, upon the reason it is no more allowed now to do that, a
bit difficult to admit.

But I find the behavior which consist one year later to deny that what
was done a year before, was authorized at that time, much more difficult
to admit. Fair use was authorized a year ago. Period.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Support freedum of infromashun

body:
-- Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:

> Apart from being massively POV, it would also > be
original research.
> We should base our articles on verifiable material
published in other reliable
> sources.

Ah, another convenient reference to WP:CITE and
WP:NOR. Its reporting on the nature of a document
which is both wikinewsworthy and wikipedic. Anyway,
the purpose was to generate some thinking on the
issue, and to establish in pixels that the general
consensus is to do whats right, and support doing
whats right. I suppose this goes without saying.

But calling it "massively POV" [sic] is hardly fitting
language for a document that (if verified by
credentialled and loyal government sources) would seem
destined to put the final nail in the coffin of a
false political ideology. I suppose this goes without
saying.

>We should not be publishing original documents
ourselves.
> At best, it would be a matter for Wikisource.

Well if thats your point, then we are only in
disagreement about your low value judgement of "at
best." AFAIK there is no wikisource mailing list, so
we are discussing this issue here --even though it
does fly into the territories of Wikipedia policy, as
well as foundation policy and rhetoric.

Stevertigo
 The dagger-legend is, of course, a lie

__________________________________
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.
http://music.yahoo.com/unlimited/


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Monday 28 November 2005 03:31, Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Hmmm... I think I'll rename it CoLocus, short for Community Contingency
> Locus. What do you think?

CoCoLoco? ;)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Arbitration Committee elections,
	2005 - still no information!

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>>Umm, the ArbCom's power comes from Jimbo as President of the Wikimedia
>>>Foundation.  The "community" can run its own election if it wants, but
>>>Jimbo and the board choose how to spend the funds of the foundation
>>>and how to administer the property of the foundation (such as the
>>>servers).
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Only in a legalistic sense.  The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership
>>would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to
>>write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.
>>
>>-Mark
>
>
> And the community would be completely useless without the servers.
> Somewhere between the two a consensus needs to be reached.  The
> community can't overthrow the arb com without the support of the
> board, and the board can't institute the arb com without the support
> of the community.
>
> Anthony

For the record, there is also a french arbcom, and its organisation has
been entirely set up by the french community. All members have been 100%
elected by the editorship.

ant


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikisource Main english page deleted?

body:
On 28/11/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Google IFL redirects to this page, which is curiously
> deviant from normal Main Page formatting...
>
> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page:English

I hope nobody minds, but I've taken what seemed like the most logical
action, and caused this to redirect to the real Main Page, rather than
leave all out-dated links to simply "rot" completely. Remember, "cool
URIs don't change", and we shouldn't just ignore the fact that clearly
people have linked to that page, and won't expect those links to lead
to a blank screen - gaming Google won't change those links.

The more logical approach might have been to redirect to [[en:Main
Page]], which is presumably the same/nearest equivalent content, but I
don't think that's allowed any more.

> Everybody please game google to redirect to either
> en.wikisource or www.wikisource

Certainly, having the international front page (which is currently the
second Google result) or the English one (which comes 3rd, I think)
come top of the rankings would be good, but I think this will heal
itself over time, as nobody will add new links to the old page unless
they're literally copying and pasting old links.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B79C3.4080308@apple.com>

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>
>> I have the feeling that in one year or so, freely licensed orphan
>> images will indeed be deleted on the english wikipedia. That would be
>> well within what I currently observe.
>
>
> It wouldn't surprise me, I seem to recall some people muttering about
> that a while back. Just imagine all the AfDers migrating over to IfD!
>
>> I do not think people will bother moving them to commons, it is too
>> heavy to do.
>
>
> As a board member, isn't it within your power to pay a developer to
> come up with an automated way to transfer images from language WPs
> to commons? It's been wanted for some time, and would solve a lot of
> our image management problems. Commons has evolved much better ways
> to deal with large masses of images.

Nod. But frankly, it would not be considered as the most urgent thing a
developer would have to take care of. Issues such as single login, or
very simply, having the site run smoothly and with a decent efficiency
(images loading time...) would be the priority.

Beyond this, we always fall back on the same issue, paying developers
means more money. More money means having more fundraiser or fundraiser
lasting longer, or people willing to take the time to ask for more
grants (not so many people interested in doing that...) or simply
looking for more sponsors, or putting ads ;-)

>> Overall, our license issues strike me as being more confusing and
>> messy every day that goes by.
>
>
> Organizations that deal professionally with as many images as are
> now in WMF's collection often have persons paid to do nothing but
> deal with license issues, calling and writing copyright holders for
> permissions, negotiating prices for licenses, etc. Pinching down on
> non-free images is basically our strategy to simplify things so
> that the Foundation doesn't have to start interviewing job candidates...
>
> Stan

correct. This said... did you hear about the major uproar on the german
wikipedia due to massive copyright infringment ? It is now in the press.
And the german wikipedia, I believe, choose to entirely forbid all fair
use images at least a year ago.

incidently, this major issue is the reason why Jimbo will probably not
answer the questions about the arbcom for a while... so, please, show
patience :-)

ant


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750511281349u36ee0cedu7eafcb5adaf93d88@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>I think you should not play on words if you were fair.
>>
>>A year ago, fair use was authorized, with no mention if it was
>>authorized in the encyclopedic content or in the user page.
>>Amongst the two untaggued pages listed above, one was a picture of my
>>daughter and labelled as such. It was clearly not meant for encyclopedic
>>space.
>>
>>Besides, see the message just below as well :
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/box#Image_tagging
>>
>>It says
>>
>>
>>
>>P.P.S. I hope all is well with you, and that you are enjoying your
>>labors with Angela and Jimbo. :)
>>
>>Looking here, I'd like to add that the following images need tags:
>>        ?       Image:Acacia.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Dessication.JPG
>>        ?       Image:SablePlante.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Hoggar.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Hoggar2.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Hoggar5.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Oasis.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Sahara3.JPG
>>        ?       Image:Sahara5.JPG
>>Any more tags would be a great help. Thanks!
>>--[[User:Ricky81682|Ricky81682 (talk)]] 08:11, Dec 16, 2004 (UTC)
>>
>>
>>
>>Does that look like an automated message ? The P.P.S. ?
>>
>>
>>
>>Look, I find the general behavior which consist in saying to an editor
>>"you are allowed to do that", then a year later, to rudely delete work
>>without warning, upon the reason it is no more allowed now to do that, a
>>bit difficult to admit.
>>
>>But I find the behavior which consist one year later to deny that what
>>was done a year before, was authorized at that time, much more difficult
>>to admit. Fair use was authorized a year ago. Period.
>
>
> I think what you are arguing is something different to quite a lot of
> others.  They are saying why the policy was necessary.  Your complaint
> is actually that you weren't warned.  I don't think anyone would
> disagree that you should have been notified before the deletions took
> place.
>
> --
> Sam

Thanks, you are absolutely correct Sam.
Yes, what bugs me is the change of policy and no-warning.

I have no problem with adopting a much stronger policy against fair use
myself. I think it will empoverish the project, but protect it greatly,
as there has been a lot of abuse on this tag use.

Ant


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

subject: [Wikitech-l] importDump.php runs and runs and does not do anythin

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Brion Vibber
| Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 9:45 PM
/
| importDump.php is relatively inefficient, and is generally
| expected to be used with smallish data sets being copied in
| from another wiki. For bulk imports you'll get much much
| better performance with mwdumper.

Well, it's true. mwdumper is excellent.  I've got that result for processing
pages_current of polish wiki - 233491 pages: conv. xml->sql 201 sec., and
the whole process (unpack,conversion,load) ended for 30 min.
Thx, Brion

Btw, can you change mwdumper output from I get

10?000 pages (292,235/sec), 10?000 revs (292,235/sec)
...
233?491 pages (1?186,643/sec), 233?491 revs (1?186,643/sec)

to

 10.000 pages (  292/sec),  10.000 revs (  292/sec)
...
233.491 pages (1.186/sec), 233.491 revs (1.186/sec)

or (without thousand separator)

 10000 pages ( 292/sec),  10000 revs ( 292/sec)
...
233491 pages (1186/sec), 233491 revs (1186/sec)

Reg., Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski

|
| > If not, I would highly appreciated any help. Unfortunately I cannot
| > use mwdumper, because OSX 10.3 only allows java 1.4 and
| with java 1.4
| > I get exception errors.
|
| Java 1.5 for Mac OS X can be downloaded from www.apple.com.
|
| 1.4 will still be the default JVM, but you can run 1.5
| specifically with:
| /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Commands/java
|
| -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
|
|


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: "What redirects here" list on Edit page

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
>
>>A casual reader will not care if they are redirected between pages. An
>>inexperianced editor _may_ wonder why they link to [[Foo]] and end up at
>>[[Bar]]; some help entries can help on this if they don't already exist.
>
> Actually, I would disagree with this rather strongly - a casual reader
> (or newbie editor, which we encourage to be the same thing) will
> generally be *very* surprised if they end up at a different page from
> the one they expected, precisely because they *don't* know what a
> redirect is. They may well not care that they're redirected between
> pages, but if they're not told that that's the case, *they will be
> confused*.

I think you're basing this on the helpdesk questions you've seen.
Myself, I haven't ever seen such a question from a confused user, but
then again, I don't monitor the various helpdesks we have regularly.

I can't really imagine that particularly many people would be surprised
at redirects. Almost all redirects make sense. It makes sense for a
misspelling to redirect to the correct spelling. It makes sense for
synonyms to redirect to each other. And it makes sense for too specific
a topic (e.g. a minor fictional character) to redirect to a general
article (clearly titled "list of minor characters", in this example). I
think the only people who are "surprised" are those who are actually
trying to figure out how things work; those who wonder how Wikipedians
told the system that a link to X should redirect the user to Y, as
there's no obvious way of doing that.

In passing, I would also challenge your view that "we encourage casual
readers and newbie editors to be the same thing" -- although we
encourage everyone to join Wikipedia, it is still a product aimed at
end-users who generally don't want to participate, so it makes sense to
distinguish between the two.

At this point I was going to make a new suggestion, namely to have a
textbox with "titles that redirect to here" on the edit page, rather
than a list of links. Redirects would then be edited at the target
title, not the redirect's title. I've realised, though, that this would
make a lot of things more complicated. In particular, if you add a
redirect and then the system tells you "Sorry, that title already
redirects to [[somewhere else]]", you would then have to go to
[[somewhere else]], remove the redirect and come back. You would also
have to do that if you wanted to turn the redirect into a disambiguation
page. Maybe the way it's done now is the best after all.

Timwi


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to be

body:
G'day Mike,

> I was going to enrich Wikipedia with a whole bunch of my images, but
> quite frankly, i dont want someone getting rich off my work.
> As such, I was intending to add creative commons no commercial use tags.
>
> Then I come across this note from you:
>
> "All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only
>
>> are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_.  We have
>> tolerated them for some time..."
>
> Well fear not; you wont have to tolerate any of my images.
>
> I'm going to have to re-evaluate contributing to wikipedia if its based
> on providing source material for commercial companies.

That's *not* what it's based on.  Please take more care before jumping
to conclusions in the future; that's a real good way to twist an ankle
or something.  See below.

> Feel free to explain WHY you have this policy; but I have to say your

Very well, then.  I shall!  Well, I'll have a bash at it, anyway; IANAL.

It's rather simple, but took me quite a while to work out as well.  All
Wikipedia content is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation Licence
(GFDL).  Now, the GFDL is a hellish and byzantine pile of legalistic
nonsense that enjoys rather a lot of support amongst the geek community,
such as those who form the core of Wikipedia's contributors.

The GFDL, essentially, means the following:
  a) GFDL-licenced works may be reused by anyone, for any purpose (even
     commercial)
  b) Reusers must allow that portion of their work that relies on your
     image (I think) to be reused similarly.
  c) They must set aside fifteen gazillobytes of space to store the GFDL
     text.

Anything under an explicitly different licence (e.g. Creative Commons,
or even under Public Domain) is actually /multi-licenced/, meaning that
reusers can pick and choose what licence they want to follow.  As such,
non-commercial-use only images can be used as either a) the non-com
licence, or b) the GFDL.  I imagine people who want to licence their
images as non-commercial-use-only would be rather upset to discover this
after the fact, so it's best not to allow the images in the first place.

I don't know why the GFDL always allows commercial use.  Presumably it's
part of the whole ideological "copyleft is beautiful" bizzo.  I've taken
great pains to avoid understanding how the Free Software Movement people
think, and I cherish my ignorance in this regard.  However, it does, and
Wikipedia is much better off as a result.  There are a number of
Wikipedia "mirrors" who display regular database dumps (?) of our
content, licenced under the GFDL.  For instance, answers.com pulls
together content legally licenced from a number of different sources,
and collects it all together and displays it with ads.  It donates a
sizable proportion of its revenue to the Wikimedia Foundation, and helps
keep us afloat.

> explanation above wasnt very tactful or conducive to goodwill on my part.

Perhaps there's someone with a better way with fancy words than I who
can rewrite the template.

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 27/11/2005


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<bd4c411e0511281107k1b91fb0s4bf4392c05192070@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfm9v$1e9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281152m50e38652v@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfs1h$nle$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<f3fedb0d0511281334l3bf4303dx@mail.gmail.com>
	<f80608430511281339n7f8b53e5ja51a0f4e1304a4ff@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 28 Nov 2005, at 21:39, geni wrote:

> On 11/28/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I believe, though I've not looked into it, that one of the problems
>> holding up large-scale shifting of images between projects is that
>> it's tricky to credit someone who has an account elsewhere.
>> Single-logon may make this easier.
>>
>
> Well that and the issue that wikipedia admins are a buch of control
> freaks who have seen commons's record of dealing with vandalism and
> are not impressed.

If more vandalism control is needed on Commons I am happy to work on it.
I have not noticed a problem.

Justin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: <link> elements for interlanguage link information

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> Could this thread please be kept on topic?

You're (probably) assuming that if people hadn't changed the topic, more
traffic would be generated on your original topic. I sincerely doubt
this is true. I don't think anyone is discouraged from replying to your
original topic by the mere presence of a diverging thread.

The new topic is perfectly on-topic on this mailing list, so you're
unlikely to succeed in prohibiting it. But even if it was off-topic, you
would merely force it to be moved to another list, but you would still
not encourage increased discussion of your original topic.

Timwi


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B79C3.4080308@apple.com>	<dmfuc0$vsq$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<42f90dc00511281403vfd627e1q50ac2afbba60d64e@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>correct. This said... did you hear about the major uproar on the german
>>wikipedia due to massive copyright infringment ? It is now in the press.
>>And the german wikipedia, I believe, choose to entirely forbid all fair
>>use images at least a year ago.
>
>
> Is there an english-language place to read about this?  First I'd heard of it.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Matt

I do not think so. Maybe the english wikinews tomorrow ?

But see http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/66701 for now.

Ant


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B79C3.4080308@apple.com>	<dmfuc0$vsq$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<438B8230.4070301@apple.com>

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> As a board member, isn't it within your power to pay a developer to
>>> come up with an automated way to transfer images from language WPs
>>> to commons? It's been wanted for some time, and would solve a lot of
>>> our image management problems. Commons has evolved much better ways
>>> to deal with large masses of images.
>>
>>
>>
>> Nod. But frankly, it would not be considered as the most urgent thing
>> a developer would have to take care of. Issues such as single login,
>> or very simply, having the site run smoothly and with a decent
>> efficiency (images loading time...) would be the priority.
>>
>> Beyond this, we always fall back on the same issue, paying developers
>> means more money. More money means having more fundraiser or
>> fundraiser lasting longer, or people willing to take the time to ask
>> for more grants (not so many people interested in doing that...) or
>> simply looking for more sponsors, or putting ads ;-)
>
>
> At one point, I was keen to do some wikimedia development, so as to help
> with this sort of thing, and set up a test wiki, but it's more fun to
> upload
> images than to hack on PHP...
>
>>
>> correct. This said... did you hear about the major uproar on the
>> german wikipedia due to massive copyright infringment ? It is now in
>> the press. And the german wikipedia, I believe, choose to entirely
>> forbid all fair use images at least a year ago.
>
>
> I've not heard a thing about this. Do you have a link?
>
> Stan

provided in the other mail.
You may also follow
http://news.google.de/news?hl=de&ned=de&ie=UTF-8&q=wikipedia&btnG=News-Suche


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] citations, etc.

body:
For those of you foolish enough to use Wikipedia as a source, you
should check out the bells and whistles on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Cite , when it's up and working.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Cite?page=Red_Sox

The projects could still use a good Wikicite project, to collage
citation information about non-WP content... to provide that kind of
comprehensive multi-format citation detail about every cite used in/by
an article, and offer editors a place to comment on the citations
(quality, reliability, disambiguation with better-known cites)
themselves.

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

++SJ


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

stevertigo stated for the record:

> But calling it "massively POV" [sic] is hardly fitting
> language for a document that (if verified by
> credentialled and loyal government sources) would seem
> destined to put the final nail in the coffin of a
> false political ideology. I suppose this goes without
> saying.

Going for the "irony thick and sticky enough to suck the boots right off
your feet" award, are we?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Oops, I forgot to download part of the Internet.
 sean at epoptic.org |
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDjAUrMAt1wyd9d+URAurlAJ0XaRf9xVZ6LkBf6yV8fIF8LQo7gACeM5Mn
6ZlNCEP78BGDmKJk+1mYquc=
=OH8w
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anthere's Algeria images

body:
I deleted the one of these in question.

I apologise for the inconvenience.

I appreciate that there is potentially a problem in communicating
changes of
policy (in this case with respect to out treatment of non free
content; unlike
some I dont think the position with respect to free content will
chnage, not
without a fork). I am not sure what is the best way of communicating
policy
(and procedure) changes; although there are many things that go on
without
notifying potentially interested parties (eg AfD) it is hard to work
out a
notification method that isnt spam. However as history is preserved
it is not
normally an issue, nothing is lost. Just some bitrot normally.

In this case however Anthere has lost some (non free) photos that I
cannot find
on the mirrors; I only have an old image dump of commons not of en
[BTW is
there a set of old archive image dumps that are not public?]. She
does not
have any other copy of the deleted images (redlink jpegs on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anthere/PictAlgerie). If anyone has an
image dump from the last few years they should be there, and it would
be much
appreciated if they could be emailed to Anthere (or if there is a
more out
of date mirror that I havent found).

Justinc


from_name: S. Woodside

subject: [Wikitech-l] code gripes

body:
Hi someone said "show me the code" so I'm diving in. I'm trying to
make parserTests work without the database (without installing
anything). I'm basically just going through the code running it,
fixing and error, then running until the next error.

Now I'm brand new to MediaWiki but I've done a lot of programming in
lots of languages. Including a bit of PHP. Seems to me like there's
an awful lot of global functions which is a bit worrying. Maybe this
is just the normal way to do things in PHP but it seems a bit
worrying to me because it could mean spaghetti code. Umm...
documentation isn't great but I've seen worse (like Mozilla).

But.. the biggest thing seems to be that the database kind of
permeates the whole code... I can see why parserTests' author wrote
separating it from the database as a @todo... and it's a bit tricky.
I'm trying to do that now, writing fake classes and stuff in there.
We'll see if it works out. A good long-term project might be to
refactor so that the database is well isolated from the rest of the
code. So that, for example, you could rip out the database and insert
something else, or like for parserTests, run some parts of the code
without a database at all. That's especially useful for unit tests :-)

(For example I tried to include "commandLine.inc" and it wouldn't go
because there's no database. I made a "commandLineSimple.inc" and
ripped out all the database code.)

I've hit a point now where the Parser access User functions. With a
command line test there's not going to be a user, so I could either
fake one, or I could temporarily modify the parser.

It seems like this might be a good place to insert an intermediate
parsing format (something between the article{wikitext, ...} and the
final HTML.

--simon

--
http://simonwoodside.com


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: single login ?

body:
I think crediting a foreign user is less of a problem than giving the
image a proper copyright tag in another language.

On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't know how many admins on en would be offended by you saying
> > that they are harsh on vandalism.
> >
> > --
> > Sam
>
> Well as an en admin I'll own up to being a control freak when it comes
> to vandalism. A while back a picture on commons was vandalised
> resulting in the wikipedia portal page carrying a vandalised image. It
> took some time for it to be fixed.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> On Monday 28 November 2005 03:31, Edward Z. Yang wrote:
>
>>Hmmm... I think I'll rename it CoLocus, short for Community Contingency
>>Locus. What do you think?
>
> CoCoLoco? ;)

Not wanting to smash every idea here, but "Lokus" in German means loo
(toilet), and "CoCoLoco" sounds suspiciously like "Kokolores", which
means nonsense. :-)

Timwi


body:
On 28 Nov 2005, at 20:52, geni wrote:

> On 11/28/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Since Wikipedia is supposed to be, like, into this
>> 'freedom of information thing,' (and stuff) and, like,
>> that includes our friends even in the UK, who arent
>> used to like, living under freedom (and stuff)...
>>
>> I thought it might not be out of our mandate to put
>> this little image (
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Illpublish.png ) on
>> the front page. Maybe even at Wikisource! (Im sure
>> somebody here is an admin there. Ive only got my meta
>> priveleges left now - snif!). The image is a little
>> white box that says "Ill publish the Al Jazeera memo."
>> It may or may not be linked to the Blairwatch.org
>> site.
>>
>> Anyway, though it might, like, be cheezy to stand up
>> for freedom of information (and stuff) though. Plus,
>> that might violate Wikisource's NOR policy.
>>
>> Stevertigo
>>  Confused: Is it still called 'Valspeak'
>>  when a guy uses it?
>
>
> The front page of wikipedia should not be used for campianing whatever
> the cause. We don't have a big notice on the front page when china
> banned as I fail to see a reason to put up a notice now.

Best thing is to make it a featured article, it will get on the
front page fast.

But I am in the UK so not like used to freedom or stuff so
what do I know.

Stevertigo, the UK press normally ignore official secrets act "gagging".
There is a public interest defence. Sometimes someone goes to prison
its true.

Justinc


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RC patrol for ~50 smallest wikipedias

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> I'm not sure it's nessecary. As both Angela and I have already noted
> in this thread, there is already a group dedicated to monitoring small
> Wikis for spam and vandalism.

"Not necessary" is not a reason to not do it. It is a help. And
personally, I think this would be a *big* help.

Timwi


from_name: Netocrat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Ampersand symbol in URLs

body:
I noticed while validating the HTML output of an extension that some
urls are being generated with a plain & instead of encoded as & and
the W3C validator complains about this as an error.  This patch fixes
the line of code that was the source of the uncoded ampersand (and
another line I noticed) if anyone with CVS access chooses to apply it.

--
http://members.dodo.com.au/~netocrat


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/28/05, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> (Appears that I mispelled "informashion" in the
> subject.)
>
> Well, you correctly mention China and its quite proper
> to focus a great deal of energy on their restrictions
> on information and communication. (Do they block
> Wikipedia because of communication or information
> reasons?).

We don't know.

>In that regard, the esteemed founder took a
> wisely netural and non-provocative course. In a
> country where there is no established freedom of
> speech, it may not be polite to assume that arguements
> based on local free speech concepts are valid over
> there. The UK however has a substantial
> English-speaking population, and likewise a tradition
> of emulating and deferring to American concepts of
> personal liberty etc.

Erm no we don't. We don't have a history of deferring to anyone.

> The current case is of course an
> important and interesting anomaly, and its a good
> thing to see that Wikipedias users have used WP:ITN to
> properly feature an important story that American
> media has left alone, and which UK media lack the
> liberty to properly investigate.
>

We don't know that there are other posible reasons for the offcial
secrets act kicking in.

> Certainly I think the issue is best targeted to
> Wikisource, and I listed a request at Talk:Main Page
> to put the banner up. Im not being a hard on about it
> - I think its appropriate that it generate discussion,
> and it may be that as far as Public domain documents
> go, the Al Jazeera bombing memo might just be the most
> interesting source document in the world right now.

Public domain? I doubt it. Crown copyright perhaps.

--
geni


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] moderation of mark williamson

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I usually don't read the postings of Mark Williamson (only the answers
> to his) but now I accidentally saw that he has forwarded the private
> email of another wikipedian to the list. Add to this the frequent
> flame-wars and attacks on people... Watching the list degrade into
> endless fights about absurd language proposals, in my opinion it's
> enough. I switched his account to moderated now.

Dances :) and cheers .......

Waerth/Walter


body:
On 28/11/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> I think you're basing this on the helpdesk questions you've seen.
> Myself, I haven't ever seen such a question from a confused user, but
> then again, I don't monitor the various helpdesks we have regularly.

Well, yes, I said I was; but I'm also basing it on the fact that those
seemed very logical and reasonable confusions.

> I can't really imagine that particularly many people would be surprised
> at redirects. Almost all redirects make sense. It makes sense for a
> misspelling to redirect to the correct spelling. It makes sense for
> synonyms to redirect to each other. And it makes sense for too specific
> a topic (e.g. a minor fictional character) to redirect to a general
> article (clearly titled "list of minor characters", in this example).

It's not just a case of redirects "making sense" - when people want to
reverse a decision to redirect, it should be as easy as other edits.
So if someone decides that two terms *aren't* synonyms, or that a
character isn't really that minor at all, they should be able to edit
the pages appropriately - I know this argument's much abused, but this
does seem rather central to being "an encyclopedia that anyone can
edit". And the first step in changing the redirect is to know that the
redirect exists in the first place - I'm not convinced people would
even find a "what redirects here" list if they were unaware of what a
redirect was (though, I guess that's why you suggested putting it on
the edit page - so that there was a higher chance of them discovering
it "by accident". Still, seems a poor substitute for just announcing
the redirection clearly in the first place.)

> I think the only people who are "surprised" are those who are actually
> trying to figure out how things work; those who wonder how Wikipedians
> told the system that a link to X should redirect the user to Y, as
> there's no obvious way of doing that.

I guess the users I'm thinking of are those who are just about getting
used to the basic principles of the wiki, and understand that [[foo]]
should link to an article called "foo" - "how remarkably simple", they
think... Then when they are presented with an article called
"Meta-syntactic variable" instead, they are surprised - suddenly, the
wiki is doing some kind of voodoo and interpretting what they say,
rather than obeying it. They may not think of it as "a link to X
redirecting the user to Y" at all - they'll just think they've
misunderstood the basic "link by typing the title of the target page"
philosophy.

So yeah, I guess they're the ones trying to figure out "how things
work" - but only in as much as they're trying to participate, as
they've been constantly invited to do since they first visitted the
site.

Maybe, though, I'm over-compensating for my own system-logical mind
(and experience with MediaWiki), and most new users *would* actually
come to the correct conclusion with no clues other than consistently
arriving at the "wrong" page; I'm not convinced, though.

> In passing, I would also challenge your view that "we encourage casual
> readers and newbie editors to be the same thing" -- although we
> encourage everyone to join Wikipedia, it is still a product aimed at
> end-users who generally don't want to participate, so it makes sense to
> distinguish between the two.

Well, I sort of see your point, though I'd point out that you don't
have to "join" anything in order to edit Wikipedia, you just click
"edit this page", so the transition from reader to editor is a very
subtle one in some senses. But yeah, I'll accept that "redirected
from" notices aren't that important to readers - assuming editors are
clever enough with their introductions that the redirects *do* make
sense - but as soon as you turn editor, you absolutely need to know
what's going on.

> At this point I was going to make a new suggestion, namely to have a
> textbox with "titles that redirect to here" on the edit page, rather
> than a list of links. Redirects would then be edited at the target
> title, not the redirect's title.

There was a discussion along those lines a while ago (either on this
list or mediawiki-l, I forget which), which got rather confusing, to
the extent that I'm still not sure if there might be a feasible middle
way on this...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On 29 Nov 2005, at 00:24, stevertigo wrote:

> --- Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Best thing is to make it a featured article, it will
>> get on the front page fast.
>
> Its been on the front page for two or three days now.
>

Yeah but no but. Previous poster wanted more publicity. Was
just suggesting improving article to FA was best way...

>> But I am in the UK so not like used to freedom or
>> stuff so
>> what do I know.
>
> OK, I wasnt sure. Ive never been there. Ive heard you
> guys have lots of Starbucks' popping up though.

Oh yes loads. Come and visit, you are very welcome.

Sorry, I find your tone of voice slightly hard to
interpret by email, I think the ironing may be mixed up.

>> Stevertigo, the UK press normally ignore official
> secrets act "gagging".
>> There is a public interest defence. Sometimes
> someone goes to prison its true.
>
> Thats good to know. I had thought all the brave people
> were here in the USA.

I am afraid that [[Official Secret Act]] is really really bad
and doesnt reflect much of the importance. I did think the UK
law articles were in a kind of ok state, but it seems not.
IANAL though, so not sure I can help very much. Although
[[Riot Act]] is equally bad I have mroe historical background.

> --- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Erm no we don't. We don't have a history of
> deferring to anyone.
>
> OK, fine -- have it your way.
>> We don't know that there are other posible reasons
> for the offcial secrets act kicking in.
>
> Youre right -- there could be other valid reasons for
> suppressing a document which describes a conversation
> between public officials about committing terrorism
> against private citizens of a friendly state. We
> should just defer to the wisdom of the Krown.
>

Most official discussions are not released. The US
has not released it either. Can a transcript be
obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act?
The UK FoI version is not real.

>> Public domain? I doubt it. Crown copyright perhaps.
>
> Well then she could just send us a takedown notice and
> we'll immediately obey, offering to polish the crown
> jewels if she likes as a peace offering.

Yes, get a copy and we can do that. As a republican
I wont be offering to polish the crown jewels though.

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 29 Nov 2005, at 01:04, Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> On 11/28/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>> You should probably reconsider after realizing that Wikipedia was
>> created by a corporation, I believe one which made most of its money
>> off ads, in fact.
>>
> "Bomis is a dot-com company founded in 1996. Its primary businesses
> are the sale of advertising on the Bomis.com search portal, and the
> sale of erotic images over the Internet (see also Internet
> pornography)."
>
> Yep, ads and porn are why Wikipedia exists today.  Throws a wrench in
> that whole "corporations can do nothing but evil" theory.

Slight rewrite of history. Jimbo made his money from options trading
and set up Nupedia and Bomis at about the same time as far as I
remember (I guess I should check the Wp article). Bomis profits
may have funded Wp for a bit (and the corporations were for a while
entangled), but I wouldnt say adds and porn funded it directly -
the Spanish wp fork was about ads.

Justinc


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translation wiki proposal

body:
Great idea

> * Name : babel.wikimedia.org  ?
> * Main Page : a list of languages by, say, # of native
> speakers/readers [1], with prominent links to other views (by
> language-cluster, by geographic region, by article-count, by reader
> popularity...), information on translators & translation, and language
> statistics [2].

I think that a list in such an order would be confusing without any
soirt of qualification.

> * Content : All localizable MediaWiki strings, in 200+ languages [3].
> Portals for each language, describing work being done to develop that
> language, with portal-content in a few core language + the lang in
> question.  All localizable custom strings for Wikimedia projects, in
> those languages.  Key strings and messages (such as site-wide notice
> templates) which are used regularly and needed in every language.

The main problem with that would be: how many people are going to
visit? Many people who have translated the interface or some other
similar work at a Wiki would need to know that this Wiki existed, and
further, they'd have to have incentive to come.

Mark

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


body:
On 29 Nov 2005, at 00:43, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
> So if 25 people spend 1 hour a week it'll take...less than a year.
> The problem with this would be?
>

The other tens of thousands of images uploaded in the mean time. The
fact that when people complain about removal of one non free image they
point to others and say this hasnt gone yet why should mine go.

> Even if it's wasted effort 99% of the time (and I think this is a
> gross exaggeration), what about at least notifying users who *are*
> active, like, say, someone who currently serves on the board of the
> foundation?

How is anyone supposed to remember the usernames of everyone on the
foundation and why do they expect to get special treatment? For a
while we had some bot assisted notification for some classes of
speedy delete; hopefully these will return soon if the bot bureaucracy
can be overcome (er, performance improves). This particular deletion
is not about this really, it is about communication of changing policies
to people.

Justinc


from_name: Arwel Parry

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>
	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750511281349u36ee0cedu7eafcb5adaf93d88@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<31073ef90511281617x7d096a26m53c249a3f1d17e3a@mail.gmail.com>

body:
In message
<31073ef90511281617x7d096a26m53c249a3f1d17e3a at mail.gmail.com>, Mark
Wagner <carnildo-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>Assuming Wikipedia is running along smoothly, an administrator can
>delete one image every twenty seconds, if they don't notify the user
>first or remove the image from pages where it's used, and if they do
>only the quickest check to see if the image is tagged correctly.
>Deleting all these images would take 185 man-hours of effort.
>
>If the administrator removes the image from articles where it's used
>before deleting it, it takes about 40 seconds to delete an image.
>This increases the effort needed to 370 man-hours.

Just a minute - are you honestly advocating that images should be
routinely deleted without removing links from articles which use them?
Because in that case I STRONGLY object to this attitude. For some time
I've been coming across articles on my watchlist which suddenly have red
image links in prominent places: apart from looking damned ugly, it's
highly give a highly unprofessional impression of Wikipedia. It should
be OBLIGATORY in my opinion for the people deleting images to FIRST
remove the links to them, and hang the extra work involved!

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] A proposal for new language creation

body:
valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:

>>IIRC the Ethnologue criterion for including a constructed language is
>>the the existence of literary works in that language.
>>
>>
>I don't think so.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnologue
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIL_International
>
Sorry, I should have been more clear in making the distinction between
Ethnologue/SIL and ISO 639-3 for which Wthnologue is the "Registration
Authority".  Ethnolgue essentially does not concern itself with
constructed languages.

The following is from http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/types.asp

>
>     Constructed languages
>
> This part of ISO 639 also includes identifiers that denote constructed
> (or artificial) languages. In order to qualify for inclusion the
> language must have a literature and it must be designed for the
> purpose of human communication. Specifically excluded are
> reconstructed languages and computer programming languages.
>
Ec


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 29 Nov 2005, at 01:19, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> How could you accuse me of rewriting history when you admit yourself
> that you're not sure.  Check the WP article.  "Bomis is most notable
> for creating the online encyclopedia project Nupedia, and hiring Larry
> Sanger to manage it. During the early stages of this project, Sanger
> began the development of Wikipedia, which was originally intended as a
> sub-project and drafting platform for the more formally organized
> Nupedia. However, Wikipedia, with its much lower barrier to entry,
> rapidly outgrew its "parent", and soon became far larger than the main
> business of Bomis itself."
>
> You could say ads and porn didn't fund Wikipedia *directly*, because
> Wikipedia itself didn't contain ads and porn.  But Bomis did, and
> Bomis provided pretty much the sole funding for Wikipedia in the
> beginning.  Wikipedia was a sub-project of Nupedia, which was a
> project of Bomis.
>
> Also, from the [[Wikipedia]] article, "Nupedia was founded on 9 March
> 2000 under the ownership of Bomis, Inc, a Web portal company."  And
> "Funded by Bomis, there were initial plans to recoup its investment by
> the use of advertisements."
>
> Either the Wikipedia article(s) are wrong as well as my memory, in
> which case Jimbo should speak up and clarify so we can rewrite it, or
> my recollection of history is much more accurate than yours.

Sorry, yes I should have checked first. Apologies. Was based on my
memory. I am not quite convinced by the article though, based on
what Jimbo has said. He has always said that he personally paid for
Nupedia (the sum of $250000 springs to mind); however as Bomis
basically is Jimbo this is rather vague. Jimbo says Bomis never made
large amounts of money (or lost it), and that he made his money before
that. I think the article could be made more precise.

WP clearly was owned by Bomis. Its not that important, although as
a footnote in the history of the web we should be the first to get it
right.

Justinc


subject: [Foundation-l] Translation wiki proposal

body:
Dear Wiki*edians & especially polyglots :

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, being thankful as ever for these
polylingual projects (I just won a bet with a Chilean about his home
town, referencing spanish wp articles :), I would like to propose a
new one (gasp!) : an all-language wiki devoted to language overviews,
language proposals, interface localization (text, images, &c), and
translations of core Wikimedia and MediaWiki messages.  Similar
proposals have been floated before, with little discussion; here is
another attempt on the theme.

* Name : babel.wikimedia.org  ?
* Main Page : a list of languages by, say, # of native
speakers/readers [1], with prominent links to other views (by
language-cluster, by geographic region, by article-count, by reader
popularity...), information on translators & translation, and language
statistics [2].
* Content : All localizable MediaWiki strings, in 200+ languages [3].
Portals for each language, describing work being done to develop that
language, with portal-content in a few core language + the lang in
question.  All localizable custom strings for Wikimedia projects, in
those languages.  Key strings and messages (such as site-wide notice
templates) which are used regularly and needed in every language.
Policy and discussion pages about new language creation.
** Optional content : Other translation efforts, such as global press
releases, which work through a high volume of content (thousands of
edits in dozens of languages) in a short period of time.
** Related project : a specific "interface-translation wiki" for the
latest MediaWiki installation, which auto-updates the localizable
strings in the latest MW version.[4]

Please comment or indicate support for the idea on meta:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Babel_Wiki

[1] Not just readers; if there's no written language, audio output and
input are excellent ways to transfer information... we've been doing
that for eons longer than we've been passing around printed bytes

[2]  % completion of interface translation; # of self-identified
'translators' in and out of the lang; full list of wikimedia projects
in that lang w/origin-dates, article and active-editor counts; links
to key pages on target wikis

[3] Eventually significantly more than 200.
[3'] It may be useful to have one template/page per string per
language, to facilitate automatic conversion from wiki to other
formats; multiple views of l10n strings (e.g., 2 langs side-by-side on
one page as in Special:Allmessages).  ~200 languages x (200 custom
strings x 5 Wikimedia Projects + 1000 standard strings) = O(500K)
pages, worth its own project.

[4]  These ideas could be merged; or that project (say, at
language.mediawiki.org) could offer ways to pull content from the
appropriate section of the Babel wiki (and more security safeguards).

++SJ


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translation wiki proposal


body:
G'day Sean,
> Mike Finucane stated for the record:
>
>>Well fear not; you wont have to tolerate any of my images.
>>
>>I'm going to have to re-evaluate contributing to wikipedia if its based
>>on providing source material for commercial companies.
>>
>>Feel free to explain WHY you have this policy; but I have to say your
>>explanation above wasnt very tactful or conducive to goodwill on my part.
>
> Because Wikipedia is free as in freedom.  Your pictures are not free
> (though apparently they are gratis); you are limiting who can distribute
> them.  Please re-evaluate contributing to Wikipedia if you are unwilling
> to support freedom.

Let's not get narky, eh?  I didn't like his tone, either, but I don't
think it's good policy to invite people willy-nilly to leave.

Cheers,

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.8/184 - Release Date: 27/11/2005


body:
On 11/28/05, Gerrit Holl <gerrit at nl.linux.org> wrote:
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
> > Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> > >I usually don't read the postings of Mark Williamson (only the answers
> > >to his) but now I accidentally saw that he has forwarded the private
> > >email of another wikipedian to the list. Add to this the frequent
> > >flame-wars and attacks on people... Watching the list degrade into
> > >endless fights about absurd language proposals, in my opinion it's
> > >enough. I switched his account to moderated now.
> >
> > Dances :) and cheers .......
>
> I think this is not a very constructive reaction either.
>
> regards,
> Gerrit, who disagrees with the moderation decision.

Agreed on both counts.  If Mark is moderated from this list in part
due to his language posts, then we absolutely need a separate mailing
list for discussing new language proposals.

This and the recent blocking/censorship of wonderfool leave a very
sour taste in my mouth.

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 29 Nov 2005, at 02:10, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
> Hmm, let me see if I can find this.  I believe I specifically asked
> Jimbo about this discrepancy (the Wikipedia page for him says "In
> 2004, Wales had been quoted as saying that he spent around US$500,000
> on the establishment and operations of his Wiki projects."), and he
> responded that the money technically came through Bomis.  There was a
> quote he gave saying it came from him, but that was either a misquote
> or he was not being precise.  But I could be mistaken on this one.
>
> This could even be reconciled with Bomis not making much money, if the
> money was contributed to Bomis and then spent by Bomis.  But now I'm
> starting to speculate.
>

His money technically through Bomis sounds quite plausible.

>> WP clearly was owned by Bomis. Its not that important, although as
>> a footnote in the history of the web we should be the first to get it
>> right.
>>
>> Justinc
>
> I think it's important to realize that WP was started by a for-profit
> coporation when you make the suggestion that WP shouldn't be usable by
> for-profit corporations, especially when you suggest that this
> restriction was part of the original intention of the project.

I didnt suggest this thats someone else. I am entirely in favour of
for profit uses. The curse of threaded mails again...

Justinc