body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
>  <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote
>
> > Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some
> other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping
> Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest.
>
> It's a fair point,

It would be a fair point, if it weren't a complete and total straw man
argument.  No one has suggested that we do any such thing, and I have
spoken against it several times.

Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that
we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size
requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.

Wikipedia the website is going to be comprehensive in every sense of
the word, meaning that of course we will eventually have articles
covering everything that's in every other encyclopedia ever written
plus more.  It's totally and completely legitimate for us to rely on
reference works -- including other encylopedias, all of them -- to
ensure our goal of the widest possible coverage of every possible
encyclopedia topic.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Fred, until I appoint you Editor-in-Chief of the print version, I'm
going to ask you not to speak authoritatively about what it will or
won't include.  And I'm not going to appoint you Editor-in-Chief.

In fact, we're going to have a community process to determine what
belongs, and that process is going to have as it's goal a particular
sort of end result, with as clearly-defined parameters as I can make,
based on the requirements of print and the overall design needs of a
concise encyclopedia.

Random lists of trivia are very unlikely to make it.  Remember, the
size of Columbia (a typical concise encyclopedia) is 1/10th the size
of Wikipedia.  This means that 90% of what's in Wikipedia will *not*
make it.

--Jimbo

Fred Bauder wrote:

> It certainly will, and might very well land us in court. I am not at all
> sure about that list and how authoritative it is.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 11:26:29 -0600
> > To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>, <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selecting content of print version
> >
> > Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have things in it like "List of
> > famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people" in it?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Columbia encyclopedia article titles

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >>I see Jamesday's position as nothing better than extreme copyright
> >>paranoia.  It's important to respect copyright in clear cases, but where
> >>there is a serious and reasonable doubt we deserve to take a more
> >>favorable interpretation.
> >>
> >>Since Jimbo would be the one in position to be sued, he should declare
> >>the level of risk that he wants to accept in this.  If he is highly risk
> >>avers, than maybe someone else with appropriate software can put it on
> >>his site.
> >
> >I agree with Ray completely.  This is not problematic in the least.
>
> Is this an official statement that the list can be reinstated?

I'll defer to community judgment following the usual procedures on
deleting things.  But I think the whole protest against it is confused
and paranoid.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Pakaran calls for censorship of Wikipedia

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:
> Only a handful of users seem to care about fostering pluralism, diversity,
> tolerance, and mutual respect on Wiki these days. Fortunately, site owner
> Jimbo Wales is the most ardent defender of a pluralistic community of
> users. His guidance is desperately needed at this point.
>
> Mr. Wales, whom I'm deeply respect for founding this experiment in
> applying a certain set of principles, needs to explain to these
> "anti-Communist" advocates of censorship the differences between liberty
> and fascism.

Yes, while not commenting on the specifics of this dispute, because I
just now looked at the web pages and couldn't come to a firm
understanding of what's going on yet, I will say that absolutely,
Wikipedia is *not* anti-communist, and that banning people for
ideological reasons would be a horrible precedent.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Main Page and its caching

body:
On Mar 4, 2004, at 09:24, Timwi wrote:
> What is this all about? What is the caching problem? Can it not be
> solved by technical means?

The problem is that pages are purged from the cache when *that page* is
updated, but the Main Page on en.wikipedia.org has been restructured in
a way that its content isn't *in* the page. The actual content is
imported from other pages, and when those pages are edited, *those
pages* are purged from the cache, but the Main Page isn't.

It's easy not to notice this if you're logged in or doing editing,
since you'll have engaged a mode that only uses your browser's own
cache and it's easy to reload, but visitors who have never logged in
and not edited in this session will see the old cached version from the
site-wide cache, which gets more and more out of date until somebody
edits the page or does something else to purge it.

Tim's been working on a fix for this which will record the inclusion as
a specially-marked link and then including pages can be purged when
included pages are edited. I'm not sure if this is ready to go yet.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: James Rosenzweig

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
I hope that the arbitrators know that I have nothing
but respect for them.  I would like to point out to
them that the matters of Wik and Anthony were referred
to them two weeks ago, and that we have not received
an update.  The two of them have been much better
behaved for quite some time, but today they've gotten
two pages protected (at Atlantium they each reverted
the other one 15 times in three hours before I
protected it) and they certainly may do more if old
trends are resurfacing.

I know arbitration is difficult, but I think it needs
to be pointed out that two weeks is longer than the
arbitrators had originally estimated as the time
needed to make these decisions.  I also think Wik and
Anthony provide us with an excellent view of how
arbitration affects a user.  If they want to stay,
they are initially worried and self-correct behavior
somewhat.  But as time goes by, if it appears
arbitration is not reaching any result, they may
decide that returning to old ways is acceptable.

I'm not saying this so we can all bash the AC in
public -- they do a thankless job and a difficult one.
 I just am wanting to make sure that they are aware
that the delays in at least one current case may pose
a problem in the near future if Wik and Anthony
continue (I hate to say it, but we may see more
vigilante justice if things deteriorate).  I also am
hoping that the AC can take this opportunity to
consider internally how best to speed cases up so that
we don't face this down the road.

I think it's doable, it's reasonable, and I have every
confidence in the arbitrators that they want the same
things for Wikipedia I do, and that they will find the
best possible way to resolve these issues.  Thanks for
your hard work,

James R. (Jwrosenzweig)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Supreme Court of Canada on copyright

body:
The following case summary may be of interest to some since it concerns
"fair dealing.".  It was released to-day.  For the full text see
http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2004scc013.wpd.html

         The appellant Law Society maintains and operates the Great
    Library at Osgoode Hall in Toronto, a reference and research library
    with one of the largest collections of legal materials in Canada.
    The Great Library provides a request-based photocopy service for Law
    Society members, the judiciary and other authorized researchers.
    Under this "custom photocopy service", legal materials are
    reproduced by Great Library staff and delivered in person, by mail
    or by facsimile transmission to requesters. The Law Society also
    maintains self-service photocopiers in the Great Library for use by
    its patrons. In 1993, the respondent publishers commenced copyright
    infringement actions against the Law Society, seeking a declaration
    of subsistence and ownership of copyright in specific works and a
    declaration that the Law Society had infringed copyright when the
    Great Library reproduced a copy of each of the works. The publishers
    also sought a permanent injunction prohibiting the Law Society from
    reproducing these works as well as any other works that they
    published. The Law Society denied liability and counterclaimed for a
    declaration that copyright is not infringed when a single copy of a
    reported decision, case summary, statute, regulation or a limited
    selection of text from a treatise is made by the Great Library
    staff, or one of its patrons on a self-service copier, for the
    purpose of research. The Federal Court, Trial Division allowed the
    publishers' action in part, finding that the Law Society had
    infringed copyright in certain works; it dismissed the Law Society's
    counterclaim. The Federal Court of Appeal allowed the publishers'
    appeal in part, holding that all of the works were original and
    therefore covered by copyright. It dismissed the Law Society's
    cross-appeal.

         Held: The appeal should be allowed and the cross-appeal
    dismissed. The Law Society does not infringe copyright when a single
    copy of a reported decision, case summary, statute, regulation or
    limited selection of text from a treatise is made by the Great
    Library in accordance with its access policy. Moreover, the Law
    Society does not authorize copyright infringement by maintaining a
    photocopier in the Great Library and posting a notice warning that
    it will not be responsible for any copies made in infringement of
    copyright.

         The headnotes, case summary, topical index and compilation of
    reported judicial decisions are all original works in which
    copyright subsists. An "original" work under the Copyright Act is
    one that originates from an author and is not copied from another
    work. In addition, an original work must be the product of an
    author's exercise of skill and judgment. The exercise of skill and
    judgment required to produce the work must not be so trivial that it
    could be characterized as a purely mechanical exercise. While
    creative works will by definition be "original" and covered by
    copyright, creativity is not required to make a work "original".
    This conclusion is supported by the plain meaning of "original", the
    history of copyright law, recent jurisprudence, the purpose of the
    Copyright Act and the fact that this constitutes a workable yet fair
    standard. While the reported judicial decisions, when properly
    understood as a compilation of the headnote and the accompanying
    edited judicial reasons, are "original" works covered by copyright,
    the judicial reasons in and of themselves, without the headnotes,
    are not original works in which the publishers could claim copyright.

         Under s. 29 of the Copyright Act, fair dealing for the purpose
    of research or private study does not infringe copyright. "Research"
    must be given a large and liberal interpretation in order to ensure
    that users' rights are not unduly constrained, and is not limited to
    non-commercial or private contexts. Lawyers carrying on the business
    of law for profit are conducting research within the meaning of
    s. 29. The following factors help determine whether a dealing is
    fair: the purpose of the dealing, the character of the dealing, the
    amount of the dealing, the nature of the work, available
    alternatives to the dealing, and the effect of the dealing on the
    work. Here, the Law Society's dealings with the publishers' works
    through its custom photocopy service were research-based and fair.
    The access policy places appropriate limits on the type of copying
    that the Law Society will do. If a request does not appear to be for
    the purpose of research, criticism, review or private study, the
    copy will not be made. If a question arises as to whether the stated
    purpose is legitimate, the reference librarian will review the
    matter. The access policy limits the amount of work that will be
    copied, and the reference librarian reviews requests that exceed
    what might typically be considered reasonable and has the right to
    refuse to fulfill a request.

         The Law Society did not authorize copyright infringement by
    providing self-service photocopiers for use by its patrons in the
    Great Library. While authorization can be inferred from acts that
    are less than direct and positive, a person does not authorize
    infringement by authorizing the mere use of equipment that could be
    used to infringe copyright. Courts should presume that a person who
    authorizes an activity does so only so far as it is in accordance
    with the law. This presumption may be rebutted if it is shown that a
    certain relationship or degree of control existed between the
    alleged authorizer and the persons who committed the copyright
    infringement. Here, there was no evidence that the copiers had been
    used in a manner that was not consistent with copyright law.
    Moreover, the Law Society's posting of a notice warning that it will
    not be responsible for any copies made in infringement of copyright
    does not constitute an express acknowledgement that the copiers will
    be used in an illegal manner. Finally, even if there were evidence
    of the copiers having been used to infringe copyright, the Law
    Society lacks sufficient control over the Great Library's patrons to
    permit the conclusion that it sanctioned, approved or countenanced
    the infringement.

         There was no secondary infringement by the Law Society. The Law
    Society's fax transmissions of copies of the respondent publishers'
    works to lawyers in Ontario were not communications to the public.
    While a series of repeated fax transmissions of the same work to
    numerous different recipients might constitute communication to the
    public in infringement of copyright, there was no evidence of this
    type of transmission having occurred in this case. Nor did the Law
    Society infringe copyright by selling copies of the publishers'
    works. Absent primary infringement, there can be no secondary
    infringement. Finally, while it is not necessary to decide the
    point, the Great Library qualifies for the library exemption.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The following case summary may be of interest to some since it
> concerns "fair dealing.".  It was released to-day.  For the full text
> see http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/rec/html/2004scc013.wpd.html

Tomorrow's news - "Acting on a tip from corporate publishers, US forces
captured Canadian Supreme Court justices and took them to Gitmo as
'illegal combatants', film at 11".

:-)

Stan


body:
O.k., your explanation makes sense to me totally.

Nathan Russell wrote:
> Personally, I think that, when handled properly, communism can be
> quite successful and respectful for all citizens.

Well, we'll have to disagree about that.  :-)

But I've promised myself not to talk about politics on wikien-l any
more than absolutely necessary, so I will shut up now.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Well, I'm sympathetic to what you're saying, believe me.  But it
only clouds the issue to make blanket statements like you did.
:-)

I'm sorry that I sounded so harsh.

--Jimbo

Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:14:13AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 09:25:47PM -0500, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > > > Not sure what's *horrible* about no derivative works.  Wikipedia doesn't
> > > > need to alter most images.  I'd take cc-nd over copyrighted with fair
> > > > use.  If cc-nd is completely unacceptable, then so is fair use, right?
> > >
> > > Right. "Fair use" is completely unacceptable.
> >
> > Tomasz is speaking for himself, not for me, nor the Wikimedia
> > Foundation, nor the FSF, nor in the true spirit of freedom.
> >
> > Under Tomasz's interpretation, it would be impossible for us to even
> > quote from a copyrighted book in an article about the author of that
> > book.  This is not freedom, this is copyright paranoia.
> >
> > We do need to be careful about "fair use", because it does raise some
> > potential issues for some re-users.  And we should strongly prefer
> > freely licensed alternatives where they are available.  But fair use
> > (or "fair dealing" as it is called in most other countries and under
> > the Berne convention) is acceptable.
>
> Using short text quotations places few limits on use, modification and
> distribution of a work.
>
> The same can't be said about using "fair use" images - you can't use them
> for commercial purposes, you can't distribute them if it involves some profit,
> and the same applies to any modifications of them.
>
> Please don't confuse these two cases just because they fall under single
> principle in the US law. I'm not in any way against quotations, but most
> of the "fair use" images put on English Wikipedia aren't any more Free
> than "non-commercial use, download from official site only" kind of software.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
>Using short text quotations places few limits on use,
>modification and distribution of a work.

And so does using a single frame from a 50,000+ frame TV episode, or a few
frames from a 150,000+ frame movie. Or even the use of low resolution versions
of non-GFDL images in articles.

>The same can't be said about using "fair use" images -
>you can't use them for commercial purposes, you can't
>distribute them if it involves some profit, and the same
>applies to any modifications of them.

Fair use depends on use. If you extract any fair use material from the context
that makes it fair (the article), then that use may no longer be fair.

That is just as true for images as it is for quotations.

IANAL

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: John Knouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] User insult

body:
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life.  User:MPF calls
me a "snivelling little ignoramus" because we're having a
disagreement about common names.

John Knouse (user:jaknouse)


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 09:25:47PM -0500, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> Not sure what's *horrible* about no derivative works.  Wikipedia doesn't
> need to alter most images.  I'd take cc-nd over copyrighted with fair
> use.  If cc-nd is completely unacceptable, then so is fair use, right?

Right. "Fair use" is completely unacceptable.


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] bugs?

body:
We had some discussion about this on nl: since several people have related
problems recently.

Yesterday I experienced this on XP - MSIE 6:

A page was clearly out of date, the last edits I saw on the history page
were not showing.
Refresh didn't work. So I cleared the whole MSIE cache.

Low and behold the next refresh produced a page that was even older than the
one I already had.
Missing all updates after Feb 28 (It is our 'Village pump' page, updated
frequently).

Might it be that one of the squids does not realize its content is obsolete?

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange behavior

body:
On Mar 4, 2004, at 11:30, Evan Prodromou wrote:
> I wonder if we should have a "view source" for all pages, that just
> serves the Wiki text for the page, unformatted -- not as HTML.

Serving plaintext is human-unfriendly because most browsers will
display it without line wrapping. Using a <textarea> provides legible,
copy-and-pasteable text with soft line wrapping, and minimizes behavior
differences between using 'edit' to get at an editable page's source
and 'view source' to get at a protected page..

For machine readers, Special:Export provides the source text in a light
XML wrapper which includes metadata (title, revision date, last author,
edit comment) for any page.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Abe Sokolov

body:
[[User:Pakaran]] left the following message at [[User talk:RickK]]:

"Hi, thanks for the info.  I agree that the "red faction" thing has gone too
far.  :Feel free to block all addreses adding communist POV to the
wikipedia."

For verification
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:RickK&diff=0&oldid=2622478
compare the two versions].

The ideological censorship endorsed by [[User:Pakaran]] constitutes a
blatant abuse of admin powers. Developers, who have the power need to
suspend adminships, need to monitor the behavior Pakaran.

RickK did not make these comments, so we have to give him the benefit of the
doubt. This is far worse than a single misuse of sysop powers. Over the
course of the 15 months that I've been contributing to Wikipedia, I've never
seen any statement vis-?-vis sysop powers so appalling. We can all screw up
from time to time, but to have a sysop openly advocating ideological
CENSORSHIP by means of bans and blocks might be unprecedented. Unless the
statements are retracted clearly and unambiguously, this is a case for quick
and permanent suspension of sysop powers.

Also, please see my comments at [[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users]]. The
specter of McCarthyism is haunting Wikipedia. The comments by User:Pakaran
are merely an example of a broader, overarching pattern; the abuse of users
who hold unpopular beliefs is practically out in the open now and out of
control.

Recently, e.g., [[User:Adam Carr]] has been seeking to discrediting me for
having a more sympathetic view of the Sunshine Policy of former South Korean
President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Kim Dae-jung and negotiations with
the DPRK.

For this, Adam has been going from page to page, attempting to discredit me
as an "apologist for Stalinism." For the sake of argument, if one goes by
his standards, Madeline Albright, e.g., who visited the DPRK late in the
Clinton administration, would also be Stalinist dupe. For crying out loud,
this might even be absurd to the John Birch Society. Dr. Carr, however,
isn't an idiot; he knows what he's doing. He knows that sloganeering,
browbeating, and McCarthyism allow him to mobilize support on Wiki whenever
his edits are being challenged. If you're ever in an edit war, just call
your opponent a Commie and let mob rule take care of everything!!

Only a handful of users seem to care about fostering pluralism, diversity,
tolerance, and mutual respect on Wiki these days. Fortunately, site owner
Jimbo Wales is the most ardent defender of a pluralistic community of users.
His guidance is desperately needed at this point.

Mr. Wales, whom I'm deeply respect for founding this experiment in applying
a certain set of principles, needs to explain to these "anti-Communist"
advocates of censorship the differences between liberty and fascism.

_________________________________________________________________
Fast. Reliable. Get MSN 9 Dial-up - 3 months for the price of 1!
(Limited-time Offer) http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200361ave/direct/01/


body:
I forgot to sign my message with the Wiki user name.

This is [[User:172|172]], in case that wasn't clear.

_________________________________________________________________
Create a Job Alert on MSN Careers and enter for a chance to win $1000!
http://msn.careerbuilder.com/promo/kaday.htm?siteid=CBMSN_1K&sc_extcmp=JS_JASweep_MSNHotm2


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Copyvio bot (was: Yahoo has choosen Wikipedia for his
	non-commercial channel of CAP)

body:
Robert Michel wrote:
>PS: Search engines like Yahoo could be a good partner to
>get support to use  their server more than 1000 times a
>day, for example with a script which  check every new
>entry if it was only a copy&paste from one webpage or
>newsposting. Do you think when the Wikipedia Foundation
>would request for  support, this would be realistic? E.G.
>Yahoo should has been an interest of  their own that we
>don`t use copy right protectet material ;)

Sorry for the 'me too', but...

I think this is a great idea. :)

As the volume of edits increase, being able to check new contributions for
copyright violations becomes more important since even if a very small
percentage of edits have copyvios, that still will be an absolutely large
amount of text given enough time.

Such a thing could poison and potentially doom any chance for a print version
of any of our content. Fixing a copyvio on the wiki after being notified is
easy. Fixing a copyvio printed on 50,000 print copies would be impossible.

A bot checking each new article and each new major diff for copyvios would be
very helpful. It could be written so that anything from websites known to host
public domain or free content could be excluded from being added to a suspected
copyvio list. Humans would still have to go through that list and make
decisions on whether or not the suspected copyvios are in fact copyvios.
Feeback from that could be used to further refine the copyvio bot.

But yes, that would require more than 1000 searches a day from a single IP
address. We could get around that by coordinating copyvio bot use by several
users from each wiki, but IMO a better way to do it would be to have the bot
become part of MediaWiki and for the service to be run by the Wikimedia
servers. That will require special permission to exceed the 1000 search a day
limit.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Plautus open the floodgates

body:
I did a Google search to see if our dear friend
Plautus Satire had resumed his actions at
other websites and whether he's talked
about wikipedia on them.

So far, the answer seems to be no.

But anyone who would like to see evidence that
his user interaction problems were not
confined to wikipedia should check out
http://www.geocities.com/plautus_satire/floodgatesopen.htm

Warning : the f word sees a lot of use on that
page.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia featured in German weekly magazine

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> Unfortunately, it is often one of the copiers that will be found first,
> which is especially a problem if one does not get the same one every time.

This is a direct consequence of producing "free" content that can be
copied to any URL.  Every copy is a kind of fork, since it isn't
automatically updated when the source is updated (and vice versa), and
since the readership is split between the various site owners.  If
copying is unfortunate, then "free" contents is the wrong method.
But I think the consensus is that "free is right" and thus copying,
duplication and forking must be good.

Perhaps Google is the problem, since it points to websites (providers)
and not to contents.  It recognizes that two pages are on the same
site, but it is not nearly as good to recognize that two pages have
the same contents.

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


from_name: Nathan Russell

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

Jimmy Wales wrote:
| Abe Sokolov wrote:
|
|>Only a handful of users seem to care about fostering pluralism,
diversity,
|>tolerance, and mutual respect on Wiki these days. Fortunately, site owner
|>Jimbo Wales is the most ardent defender of a pluralistic community of
|>users. His guidance is desperately needed at this point.
|>
|>Mr. Wales, whom I'm deeply respect for founding this experiment in
|>applying a certain set of principles, needs to explain to these
|>"anti-Communist" advocates of censorship the differences between liberty
|>and fascism.
|
|
| Yes, while not commenting on the specifics of this dispute, because I
| just now looked at the web pages and couldn't come to a firm
| understanding of what's going on yet, I will say that absolutely,
| Wikipedia is *not* anti-communist, and that banning people for
| ideological reasons would be a horrible precedent.
|
| --Jimbo

Ok, to clarify - first of all, I wasn't thinking, and posted late at
night.  This is of course not an excuse.  I should have phrased my
remark more carefully.

The issue is *one user* - the "red faction" vandal - who did things like
replacing all of the village pump with "RED FACTION".  I was replying to
RickK's comment about that user's registering as User:Jesus Chirst
(sic).  This is a user who has gotten banned for vandalism of various
pages pretty often, and has continued annoying me on AIM.

I do not advocate banning "all communists" any more than I advocate
banning "all iridologists" or "all pepsi lovers."  Personally, I think
that, when handled properly, communism can be quite successful and
respectful for all citizens.  It is true that bad things have been done
in its name, but bad things have been done in the name of the Bible as
well, and few would say that that makes the Bible "bad."

To give an idea of what this person has "contributed":

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=131.216.163.241

Again - Wikipedia's place is not to make judgements or exclude
communists or other belief systems.  This should go without saying.

Nathan
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subject: [WikiEN-l] User insult

body:
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John Knouse wrote:
| See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life.  User:MPF calls
| me a "snivelling little ignoramus" because we're having a
| disagreement about common names.
|
| John Knouse (user:jaknouse)

If you're having a dispute over an article, why not take this to WP:RfPP
or ask for mediation?  I could ask him to stop, but I don't see how that
would accomplish anything.

Nathan
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from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> After the German WikiReader will get a [[ISSN]] soon and the second
> one (Internet) should be finished this week, I think it would be
> time to install a shopping system for distribution of the WikiReader,
> CD-Copies and other stuff.

/me idly wonders if someone should write a Wikipedia article about it...


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Strange behavior

body:
>>>>> "JW" == Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

    JW> O.k., this explanation makes sense.  It's a tradeoff.
    JW> Generally speaking, people ought not be editing in languages
    JW> they can't read anyway.  I wouldn't normally, except that I
    JW> just wanted to change that phone number.

I wonder if we should have a "view source" for all pages, that just
serves the Wiki text for the page, unformatted -- not as HTML.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Selecting content of print version

body:
user_Jamesday wrote:
> If people stop using it to help select which articles to include, so
>the Wikipedia no longer uses and incorporates the Columbia selection,
>it won't be a problem. Using it to see whether the Wikipedia has
>coverage of something is fine - it's creating coverage based on not
>having it that is not.

No, there's no problem with that, either.  It's perfectly legitimate
for us to look at what other encyclopedias cover, and make sure that
we cover everything possible.  If any encyclopedia in the world has an
article on it, so should we.

--Jimbo


body:
It could be a straw man argument except that it is what was proposed and how it was being used.

If people stop using it to help select which articles to include, so the Wikipedia no longer uses and incorporates the Columbia selection, it won't be a problem. Using it to see whether the Wikipedia has coverage of something is fine - it's creating coverage based on not having it that is not.

I know that you didn't propose these things. If people had stuck to what you had suggested, there would have been nothing to worry about.

Ed wrote:

I would like to have a page of article titles which (a) Columbia Concise has but (b) Wikipedia doesn't. It would stimulate us to find existing
articles or to write new articles.

(user_Jamesday: Ed proposing using the Columbia article selection to select articles to produce; Timwi responded by creating the list)

 -------

Timwi wrote:

I have just made four edits; rather, created four new pages:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Aakjaer%2C_Jeppe&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Aalto%2C_Alvar&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Abano%2C_Pietro_d%27&action=history
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Abbado%2C_Claudio&action=history

I'm creating these redirects as they are titles used in the Columbia
encyclopedia, and they have an obvious correspondence to a topic in the
English Wikipedia.

(user_Jamesday: those were the start of a process of creating those redirects automatically because they were in the Columbia Encyclopedia - I think it was stopped by someone applying a two minute block to the robot because it wasn't following the robots policy)

 --------

Ed wrote:

Okay, I wrote a few stubs, made a bunch of redirects. See St - Ta.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Columbia_Encyclopedia_article_titles_(38)

(user:Jamesday: Ed using them to insert redirects into the Wikipedia based on the Columbia selection)

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>>
> > Thought number 2: regardless of the legal defensibility of the use of some
> other encyclopedia's list of articles as a guideline for shaping
> Wikipedia's, it strikes me as being intellectually lazy and a bit dishonest.
>
> It's a fair point,

It would be a fair point, if it weren't a complete and total straw man argument. No one has suggested that we do any such thing, and I have spoken against it several times. <<


from_name: KNOTT, T

subject: [WikiEN-l] User insult

body:
I checked the page. He is calling himself that not you.

Theresa

-----Original Message-----
From: John Knouse [mailto:jaknouse at frognet.net]
Sent: 04 March 2004 19:24
To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] User insult

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tree of Life.  User:MPF calls
me a "snivelling little ignoramus" because we're having a
disagreement about common names.

John Knouse (user:jaknouse)

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


from_name: Yaron Shahrabani

subject: [WikiEN-l] An Idea for a Wiki Project

body:
I only want to post my Idea so I didn't subscribe
Im sorry for any hassle made...

My idea is to have a Wiki Lyrics project where users can put lyrics of songs and add translations to it and maybe have some explanations to the song (even break out and simplification)

The only problem is the copyright of the songs' lyrics... please take it in consideration

My e-mail for replys is: yaron.sh at yuvalim.com
I would really appreciate your reply

Best Regards,
    Yaron Shahrabani
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Main Page and its caching

body:
Hi,

it seems that sysops often submit edits to the Main Page that don't
actually change anything, and in their edit summary they give vague
indications of caching problems.

Now apparently they came up with the idea of placing an HTML comment in
the Main Page, <!-- cache purging value: red-->, and keep changing that
word ("red" in this case) to something else.

This strikes me as a major pollution of the article history as well as
wasted effort.

What is this all about? What is the caching problem? Can it not be
solved by technical means?

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>I see Jamesday's position as nothing better than extreme copyright
>>paranoia.  It's important to respect copyright in clear cases, but where
>>there is a serious and reasonable doubt we deserve to take a more
>>favorable interpretation.
>>
>>Since Jimbo would be the one in position to be sued, he should declare
>>the level of risk that he wants to accept in this.  If he is highly risk
>>avers, than maybe someone else with appropriate software can put it on
>>his site.
>
> I agree with Ray completely.  This is not problematic in the least.

Is this an official statement that the list can be reinstated?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Monitoring changes through IRC

body:
Bill wrote:

> The other day, the community portal "tip of the day" included an IRC
> channel where one can follow changes to Wikipedia as they are made.  How
> about adding the channel name to the boiler plate on recent changes:
>
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

[[Special:Recentchanges]] already contains a link to [[Wikipedia:IRC
channels|Chat]], which in turn lists the "recent changes" channels.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 01:50:03PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
>>/me idly wonders if someone should write a Wikipedia article about it...
>
> not about the software

No, I meant WikiReader.


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 01:50:03PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>
> >After the German WikiReader will get a [[ISSN]] soon and the second
> >one (Internet) should be finished this week, I think it would be
> >time to install a shopping system for distribution of the WikiReader,
> >CD-Copies and other stuff.
>
> /me idly wonders if someone should write a Wikipedia article about it...

not about the software but maybe interesting:
http://tomk32.homelinux.org/wiki/wiki.phtml?title=The_business_plan

ciao, tom

--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Jimmy-
> We do need to be careful about "fair use", because it does raise some
> potential issues for some re-users.

The truth is that since I created [[Wikipedia:Fair use]], to develop a
process to sort out fair use images where we can come up with free
replacements, nothing has changed. People are still uploading fair use
images of actors, politicians etc. where I believe it would be possible to
obtain free images.

I do think we need to put some more emphasis on the process detailed on
[[Wikipedia:Fair use]], and possibly be a bit more strict in deleting
images which do not comply with that process. However I think letting
sysops delete images without due process is not a good idea. We just need
to develop a better feel of what is acceptable and what is not. As long as
long-time regulars keep uploading questionable fair use pictures the
newbies can't learn the boundaries either.

Personally I think that the more information content or historical value
an image has, the easier fair use can be justified. I wasn't very fond of
seeing a promotional poster from "The Passion of the Christ" on the
frontpage, though, and not just because it's a pornographic movie.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:14:13AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 09:25:47PM -0500, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > > Not sure what's *horrible* about no derivative works.  Wikipedia doesn't
> > > need to alter most images.  I'd take cc-nd over copyrighted with fair
> > > use.  If cc-nd is completely unacceptable, then so is fair use, right?
> >
> > Right. "Fair use" is completely unacceptable.
>
> Tomasz is speaking for himself, not for me, nor the Wikimedia
> Foundation, nor the FSF, nor in the true spirit of freedom.
>
> Under Tomasz's interpretation, it would be impossible for us to even
> quote from a copyrighted book in an article about the author of that
> book.  This is not freedom, this is copyright paranoia.
>
> We do need to be careful about "fair use", because it does raise some
> potential issues for some re-users.  And we should strongly prefer
> freely licensed alternatives where they are available.  But fair use
> (or "fair dealing" as it is called in most other countries and under
> the Berne convention) is acceptable.

Using short text quotations places few limits on use, modification and
distribution of a work.

The same can't be said about using "fair use" images - you can't use them
for commercial purposes, you can't distribute them if it involves some profit,
and the same applies to any modifications of them.

Please don't confuse these two cases just because they fall under single
principle in the US law. I'm not in any way against quotations, but most
of the "fair use" images put on English Wikipedia aren't any more Free
than "non-commercial use, download from official site only" kind of software.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Editing via WebDAV

body:
I've just experimented a bit with ZWiki. ZWiki has a very basic WebDAV
editing capability. That means that I can, say, use the KDE text editor
Kate, select "Open file .." and enter

webdav://zwiki.org/SandBox

to edit the SandBox. Strangely enough that returns an HTML file instead of
the wiki source, but otherwise it works reasonably well -- I can save
directly to the server.

WebDAV can also be mounted via DavFS or gnome-vfs and be treated like a
regular FS. On Windows systems WebDAV folders can be viewed almost like
normal ones (although I'm told that editing files isn't transparent - you
get a local copy which you have to copy to the server manually).

So I think it would be quite neat to have WebDAV editing capabilities for
Wikipedia. Is there someone who wants to take that project? If not I might
hack together a proof-of-concept, but I've got lots of other stuff in my
queue ..

On CPAN I found HTTP::DAVServer - "allows you to write server-side
functions to accept, process and respond to WebDAV client requests." It
appears to hook into the Apache module mod_dav.

The tricky part would be stuff like authentication (the DAV server would
have to reimplement our password hashing function), CUR/OLD table queries
for revision storage, and handling edit conflicts reasonably well (could
use the unix command line tool merge, or various libraries, to generate an
auto-merged version with conflict markers). But I think it's very much
doable, and probably no more than a weekend's work. It could make editing
a lot of more fun and lead to other interesting developments (WebDAV
editing with realtime chat, WYSIWYG ...).

So - any takers?

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Wikitech-l] Would this be possible?

body:
Hello.

I was wondering whether it would be possible or not to have extended {{msg:}}
syntax which could include parameters. Maybe the name of the page (so we could
link to discussion/article page easily), or any user-defined parameter.
The aim would be to use {{msg:}} as a template, so that if you decide to change
something, it'll change on all pages - with specific text to each page.

Example: a {{msg:MovieHeader}} message would do a small table with movie title,
original title, country, duration, director. It'd be inserted in movie articles,
so you could have a quick glance at the movie's 'basic' information, and still
since it's a {{msg:}} it's easy to change the format as needed.

Of course, since bots are becoming powerful, they could be used to replace text
in case of a format change. But it'd be easier.

On the other hand, the syntax for parameters may be harder to understand for a
beginner. Something like {{msg:MovieHeader {title} {country} ...}} may look
confusing ^.^

Just my 2 cents of ?

Nicolas 'Ryo'


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] User-agent blocking

body:
Somebody today put GetWiki into the user-agent block list. Please don't
do this; that's Wikinfo's import script and it only goes to our
Special:Export.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:31:02PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>
> >On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 01:50:03PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> >
> >>/me idly wonders if someone should write a Wikipedia article about it...
> >
> >not about the software
>
> No, I meant WikiReader.

ah, there's plenty of text on de: ;-) or don't you speak German *g

not (yet) complete but a start:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Robert Michel

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Yahoo has choosen Wikipedia for his non-commercial
	channel of CAP

body:
Salve Jimmy,

thanks for your clear answer, I havn`t doubts, but in articel in German
magazins it was already unclear who is behind the wikipedia.

Am Donnerstag, 4. M?rz 2004 15:17 schrieb Jimmy Wales:
> The project is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, a nonprofit
> organization, not me.  I can not sell it for my own big profit, even
> if I wanted to do that, which I don't.
;)

I will take care in de.wikipedia that we do not forget to stress the Wikimedia
Foundation and in all other languages, countries, everybody who read this,
should back this responsability in mind:
To stress more about the Wikipedia backrounds, like the Wikimedia Foundation,
a nonprofit organization makes our project more reliable.
Attention, everybody must stress Wiki-M-edia carfully to avoid that a
journalist could maybe understand only Wikipedia!!!

Thank you Jimmy for your patience to clear this point again and....
:)

Have a good day,
rob

PS: Search engines like Yahoo could be a good partner to get support to use
their server more than 1000 times a day, for example with a script which
check every new entry if it was only a copy&paste from one webpage or
newsposting. Do you think when the Wikipedia Foundation would request for
support, this would be realistic? E.G. Yahoo should has been an interest of
their own that we don`t use copy right protectet material ;)


from_name: Nils Kehrein

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Copyvio bot (was: Yahoo has choosen Wikipedia for
 his non-commercial channel of CAP)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Robert Michel wrote:
>
>>PS: Search engines like Yahoo could be a good partner to
>>get support to use  their server more than 1000 times a
>>day, for example with a script which  check every new
>>entry if it was only a copy&paste from one webpage or
>>newsposting.

> But yes, that would require more than 1000 searches a day from a single IP
> address.

As already mentioned on the german list, Google offers an increased
query limit for their free service. I wrote an email months ago and
their answer was, that they need a description of the project/program
to decide. I'm sure that they would give a more-queries-donation
to Wikipedia.

> We could get around that by coordinating copyvio bot use by several
> users from each wiki, but IMO a better way to do it would be to have the bot
> become part of MediaWiki and for the service to be run by the Wikimedia
> servers. That will require special permission to exceed the 1000 search a day
> limit.

I agree that such a bot would be preferrable a part of the Wikimedia-
software, but i don't think that a service like e.g. Google would give
us so much queries per day that a check of every edit is possible.
A kind of distributed copyright-check is in discussion for de:.

Regards,
Nils.

--
Created by 100 monkeys with 100 typewriters.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Creative Commons Licence

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Jimmy-
>
>
>>We do need to be careful about "fair use", because it does raise some
>>potential issues for some re-users.
>>
>>
>
>The truth is that since I created [[Wikipedia:Fair use]], to develop a
>process to sort out fair use images where we can come up with free
>replacements, nothing has changed. People are still uploading fair use
>images of actors, politicians etc. where I believe it would be possible to
>obtain free images.
>
>
I think part of the problem is that it's hard to get licensing, because
nobody understands the GFDL.  It's easy if Wikipedians submit their own
photographs, which should be encouraged (it saves a lot of hassle, and
lets us get exactly what we want), but often that's not possible.

To raise one example, a few weeks ago I emailed Red Hat's licensing
department asking about the copyright status of their "hat" logo.  I
essentially asked if we may, solely as regards copyright law, use that
particular drawing (which I assume is copyrighted, being an original
drawing) under either the GFDL or some other permissive license.  I went
to some length to indicate that we're not asking for any trademark
license or any sort of trademark permission at all, and will expect to
be held to the standard permitted uses of trademarks.

So far, haven't gotten a response... if even a GPL-friendly company like
Red Hat doesn't know what to do about it (unless I just hit the wrong
people), then I don't see why we'd expect most others to do so.

Though in this particular case, it may be worth it to not bother, as 99%
of the thing with logos is probably the trademark, not the copyright on
a particular drawing that comprises the logo.

-Mark


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Editing via WebDAV

body:
On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 08:36:00PM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I've just experimented a bit with ZWiki. ZWiki has a very basic WebDAV
> editing capability. That means that I can, say, use the KDE text editor
> Kate, select "Open file .." and enter
>
> webdav://zwiki.org/SandBox
>
> [...]
>
> WebDAV can also be mounted via DavFS or gnome-vfs and be treated like a
> regular FS. On Windows systems WebDAV folders can be viewed almost like
> normal ones (although I'm told that editing files isn't transparent - you
> get a local copy which you have to copy to the server manually).
>
> [...]

What would a directory listing of en: look like? 250,000 articles in one
directory? Or paths of the form /f/r/a/Francois_Hotman?

googling for PHP and WebDAV I ended at
http://www.bitflux.ch/developer/misc/webdavserver.html

The code would provide a start for a proof of concept.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


from_name: Martin Harper

subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration

body:
> I would like to point out to them that the matters of Wik and
> Anthony were referred to them two weeks ago, and that we have
> not received an update.

For Wik we have agreed more or less on findings of fact, but need
to decide on remedies (if any) and provide details.

The case of Anthony has not yet been accepted, with the score
standing at two votes to accept, one vote to reject. The backlog of
Wik, Plautus, and Irismeister, may be discouraging votes to accept.

[[wikipedia:requests for arbitration]] and related pages have the gory
details.

-Martin


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
Thomas R. Koll wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:31:02PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
>>Thomas R. Koll wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 01:50:03PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>>>
>>>>/me idly wonders if someone should write a Wikipedia article about it...
>>>
>>>not about the software
>>
>>No, I meant WikiReader.
>
> ah, there's plenty of text on de: ;-) or don't you speak German *g
>
> not (yet) complete but a start:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

Nonono... I meant an encyclopedic article.

There's neither http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader nor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader ...


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Would this be possible?

body:
Nicolas Weeger wrote:

> I was wondering whether it would be possible or not to have extended
> {{msg:}} syntax which could include parameters.

Yes, of course this would be possible. And of course people have already
had this idea. It's just that nobody has gotten around to actually
coding it yet.

I imagine this would require some detailed specification and planning
before implementation, or else we run into flexibility problems later.

For instance, an obvious solution would be to have $1, $2, etc. in the
template. However, once you think about it, you realise that this is
stupid because
(a) you can only have ten parameters, unless you come up with some
     complicated syntax to specify whether $10 is supposed to mean
     [$1] + 0 or [$10];
(b) you can't easily obsolete a parameter you no longer need, because
     it would shift all the other parameters to other names;
(c) it simply doesn't tell you what they mean
(d) various other reasons

I suppose a much better idea would be key-value pairs, e.g.
{{msg:Template|name=Robert E. Lee|born=19.01.1807|died=12.10.1870}}
and then using {$name}, {$born}, {$died} in the MediaWiki text.

This is still rather unflexible because it doesn't allow for
(a) default values if a parameter isn't specified
(b) conditional inclusion of stuff (e.g. a table row)
(c) lists/arrays

It is difficult to come up with a use for the latter, but the former two
are very important.

It only gets more and more complicated. :)

Timwi


from_name: Abe Sokolov

subject: [WikiEN-l] Glad Pakaran retracted comment

body:
[[User:Pakaran]] did us a great service by retracting his statements. Upon
reading his apology, I immediately retracted my opposition to his adminship
on the votes for de-adminship page. Real sincerity and reflection was
evident. In the end, Pakaran did us all a service by putting his foot in his
mouth.

This major concern, after all, isn't really Pakaran's unfortunate comments,
but an over-arching problem that the statement epitomized. This episode has
alerted us to the prospects of "tyranny of the majority," which seems to be
festering and intensifying from my observations. To say the least, it's a
quite a banal and elusive danger. It crops up when well-meaning admins
engage in such oppressive behavior without even realizing it. Perhaps
Pakaran's statement to RickK was a nonchalant Freudian slip. Given the group
hysteria that Lance/Hector/Richard's presence has generated, this might not
be a baseless conjecture.

Regarding Lance/Hector/Richard, the charges of "vandalism" and "trolling" do
not explain the root of the problem. Instead, his bad behavior is a symptom.
Since his view of the world starkly diverges - to put it in an understated
way - from those of the vast majority of users with whom he's been
interacting, joining the Wiki community of users becomes an impossible game
to play.

The "red faction" isn't a vandalism problem, but an example of mutual
misperception and misjudgment breeding conflict and hostility. On a more
practical note, the persistence of the "red faction" in regenerating itself
over and over again (almost like Lir and his many incarnations) makes it
clear that banning this user, or attempting to chase himaway and make him
feel unwelcome, are crude, self-defeating solutions. Since the Wiki mailing
list is libertarian country, I'll say that it's like slapping on price
controls to curb inflation. Or perhaps putting a bandage on a leaking dam.
In other words, it's an unworkable straitjacket that will only confound the
problem.

For the problem to subside, Pakaran, RickK, Adam Carr, PMA, Very Verily, Tim
Startling, and Robert Merkel (the most virulent critics of our Red user)
need to treat him with respect (or at least a facade of respect for the sake
of cooperation), allowing Lance/Hector/Riohard to meet his critics at least
halfway.

BTW, I know that a few cynics would dismiss these comments, accusing me of a
leftist agenda. If these charges crop up, I refer to the October 2003
mailing list, where I was the most ardent critic of banning [[User:RK]].
Recently, I also remarked to [[User:G-Man]] that we desperately lack elderly
contributors (giving us Gen-X and Baby Boom biases). I also noted the need
to promote more non-Western admins a while ago.

- [[User:172|172]]

_________________________________________________________________
Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee when you click here.
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963


from_name: Thomas Luft

subject: [Wikitech-l] deletion of single revisions: now possible

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

Hi,

I just finished coding an extension that enables deletion of single
revisions of an article. This might be useful for copyright violations.
I added the files to sourceforge in the "feature request" section (id
908150) and attached them to this mail (hope this works via gmane).

The extension enables the following:
- -needs confirmation by the sysop who makes the deletion
- -writes the deleted revision to the "archive" table and
replaces the text of old_text with something like "This
revision has been deleted". Additionally old_user_text is
replaced by "deleted" and the link to the user is removed
(todo: check the username during registration so that noone
can register as "deleted")
- -adds an entry to the deletion log

What is missing:
- -undeletion is not possible (and I have no idea how to
implement this)

Hope this is useful

Regards

Thomas aka Urbanus
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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Main Page and its caching

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> schrieb:

> The problem is that pages are purged from the cache when *that page* is
> updated, but the Main Page on en.wikipedia.org has been restructured in
> a way that its content isn't *in* the page. The actual content is
> imported from other pages, and when those pages are edited, *those
> pages* are purged from the cache, but the Main Page isn't.
>
> It's easy not to notice this if you're logged in or doing editing,
> since you'll have engaged a mode that only uses your browser's own
> cache and it's easy to reload, but visitors who have never logged in
> and not edited in this session will see the old cached version from the
> site-wide cache, which gets more and more out of date until somebody
> edits the page or does something else to purge it.
>
> Tim's been working on a fix for this which will record the inclusion as
> a specially-marked link and then including pages can be purged when
> included pages are edited. I'm not sure if this is ready to go yet.

As far as I can see, one does not need to do such edits to get the cache
'corrected' - a forced reload while logged out seems to do the trick as
well. I'm not sure about it, but I cannot remember any case that I did
not get the newest version that way. Now this _could_ mean that there is
simply nobody ever watching our Dutch frontpage, but I do hope that that's
not what's the problem... At the very least, those who want to do an edit
like mentioned above might try the logged out reload first to see whether
an edit is necessary.

Andre Engels


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

body:
If my 2cents count here, Ray's position sounds quite reasonable to me, too.
If Jimbo is the one taking the legal risk, and if he honestly thinks that it
falls under fair use, then I think we should let him work on the list.

At Japanese wikipedia, we sometimes talk about taking legal risks. Current
understanding is that if administrators are too cautious taking risks (or
too bold) and other users do not like it, the users recall the admins, and
find substitute who can take reasonable risk.

This idea is again, because admins are far more likely to be sued for
knowingly keeping suspected copyvio, obscene, defamatory, or other allegedly
illegal material available - more so than other users.

We take admins' opinions a bit more seriously when it comes to risk. But
admins have to serve the users, so if they think their idea of reasonable
risk is too far away from other users', then they should resign.

I think there is little dispute regarding Jimbo's good leadership and
contribution, and there is no need for recall or resignation. So we can
support his move.

If Columbia comes to notify us, then we would discuss again.

Regards,

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
Frustrated with dial-up? Lightning-fast Internet access for as low as
$29.95/month. http://click.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200360ave/direct/01/


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS and other syndication feeds

body:
I've added into the head branch some quick preliminary stuff for
supporting syndication feeds, adding an RSS option to Special:Newpages.

Access like so: http://....?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss

It should be quite easily extendible to other QueryPage-based special
pages (indeed, a change to QueryPage could probably make it available
for every one of them), and to other similar feed formats such as Atom
(subclass in Feed.php). These feeds at least for now don't include page
text or anything, just titles, dates, edit comments, and links.

This replaces the old (and broken for a long time) rdf/recent.phtml...
once it's working smoothly in all the places it's appropriate we'll
also want handy visible links to the syndication feeds, of course.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nucleic acid and DNA

body:
Here are the two versions of expressing a matter that they mainly fight
over. I find one a bit more felitous, but there is not a dime's worth of
difference. What's going on?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nucleic_acid&diff=2544710&oldid=2
506775

(You might have to glue that URL together to make it work)

See the discussion at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nucleic_acid

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 13:51:24 +0100
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Nucleic acid and DNA
>
> There is no hurry.
>
> There has been an edit war going on DNA since late december.
> It was first protected on the 16th of january. Nearly 2 months ago.
>
> It still is protected, and there is absolutely no reason to think it is
> gonna be unprotected anytime soon.
>
> Today, I protected Nucleic acid per Lir request (the fight is the same,
> and by the same people than on DNA). Lir requested protection 2 weeks
> ago, and I promised to do so, if no solution were to be found. So that
> she wouldnot let herself go in an reversion war again.
>
> I hope this will not spread to all articles related to molecular
> biochemistry; it would be unfortunate that all those are protected one
> after the other.
>
> Now, it seems that there is little chance that discussion is gonna
> happen, until the case between 168 and Mav is solved.
>
> So, though there is no hurry in comparison to vandal fighting, I would
> like to ask Jimbo,
> * either to dip his hand in holy water, and shake it over pending
> requests for Jimbo to refer pending request for arbitration, so that the
> arbitration committee know that this request is relevant and should be
> considered
> * or that Jimbo take care of Mav and 168 little disagreements as he was
> doing previously
> * or that Jimbo talks to 168 and Lir
> * or that someone (anyone !) tries to find an idea so that 168 and Lir
> can live together on the same project.
>
> It is not as important that vandals, but there has been at least 2
> contributors unhappy here for about 2 months. Meanwhile, they do not
> participate happily and efficiently, but rather spoil the mood, and
> discourage others.
> *This* is important. Imho
>
> ant
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
I blocked a user whose handle is "Jesus Chirst".

It should be self-evident that this is an unacceptable user name.

I feel very strongly about this, and I feel my action though unilateral
is justified. Our username policy is clear.

If his aim is to contribute to the encyclopedia, he can pick a less
provocative user name. If he has some other name, then he has no right
to register at all.

I expect Mav and Jimbo to back me up on this, or my vacation will be
permanent.

Ed Poor
Bureaucrat


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Thursday 04 March 2004 18:22, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:
> > Thought number 1: Is the print version of Wikipedia going to have
> >things in it like "List of famous gay, lesbian, and bisexual people"
> >in it? That should distinguish us from the Columbia Encyclopedia and
>
> It strikes me as unlikely that such "list" articles will make the cut.

Surely they can't be used as regulary articles but they could be used for
making a themed index at the end of the book.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Shop

body:
On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 12:01:23AM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> Nonono... I meant an encyclopedic article.
>
> There's neither http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader nor
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader ...

There's only one official and one upcoming.
There are not important to get their own article.

ciao, tom

--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
   -.-       http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
   /|>	           http://tomk32.bookcrossing.com
   / \                 http://tinyurl.com/u6de


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pliny, Larouse, Geoffrin and others...

body:
Hello,

Have we some news about the oldest servers ?

Where is Geoffrin now ?

I understand, it's not very interesting to use Larousse now :)

And Pliny ? Pliny could be a good web server if the drive problem is fixed.

Shaihulud


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote

> Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that
> we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size
> requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.

A propos that, I had a look last night at the Cambridge Encyclopedia (ed.
David Crystal), which is a very large single volume hardback.  The stats
were:

- 40000 articles
- 2 million words.

Charles


from_name: Dan Keshet

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RSS and other syndication feeds

body:
Are you all aware of how the "Related Changes" to "List of voting systems
topics" is being used at http://www.electorama.com?  I don't know how Rob
does it, but it would probably be simplified by a standard RSS feed.  It
would be perfect for any themed site to hook people into a WikiProject.
Imagine a Korean portal showing the last five edits to "list of topics
related to Korea", etc.

Brion Vibber wrote:

> I've added into the head branch some quick preliminary stuff for
> supporting syndication feeds, adding an RSS option to Special:Newpages.
>
> Access like so: http://....?title=Special:Newpages&feed=rss
>
> It should be quite easily extendible to other QueryPage-based special
> pages (indeed, a change to QueryPage could probably make it available
> for every one of them), and to other similar feed formats such as Atom
> (subclass in Feed.php). These feeds at least for now don't include page
> text or anything, just titles, dates, edit comments, and links.
>
> This replaces the old (and broken for a long time) rdf/recent.phtml...
> once it's working smoothly in all the places it's appropriate we'll
> also want handy visible links to the syndication feeds, of course.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Evan Prodromou

body:
So, this is a Good Thing.

I'm wondering how unreasonable it would be to syndicate watchlists. I
think we'd have to have some kind of authentication, and I don't know
how well that fits in with the RSS framework.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://www.wikitravel.org/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote
>
>>Wikipedia Print articles will be selected by an internal process that
>>we're going to iron out as we get a better grasp on the size
>>requirements and exactly what we're going to need to do.
>>
>A propos that, I had a look last night at the Cambridge Encyclopedia (ed.
>David Crystal), which is a very large single volume hardback.  The stats
>were:
>
>- 40000 articles
>- 2 million words.
>
It could be interesting (if it weren't so much work) to produce a
comparative table showing on an article by article basis whether or not
each encyclopedia has an article on the topic.   :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>I blocked a user whose handle is "Jesus Chirst".
>
I presume that "Chirst" is a creative misspelling on the part of the
user rather than a typo by Ed. :-)

>It should be self-evident that this is an unacceptable user name.
>
Although I am personally not bothered by this kind of name choice, I do
view the credibility of such users as suspect.  I also recognize that
many other members find it offensive.

>I feel very strongly about this, and I feel my action though unilateral
>is justified. Our username policy is clear.
>
>If his aim is to contribute to the encyclopedia, he can pick a less
>provocative user name. If he has some other name, then he has no right
>to register at all.
>
>I expect Mav and Jimbo to back me up on this, or my vacation will be
>permanent.
>
As much as I may understand your views on this issue, I find your threat
at the end to be an overreaction.  These incidents are not new to
Wikipedia, and they tend to work their way through the system without
the need for threats from senior users.  The threat is unbecoming of a
right-wingerr whom even unapologetic leftists have come to respect.

Ec


from_name: Weeger Nicolas

body:
>Yes, of course this would be possible. And of course
>people have already
>had this idea. It's just that nobody has gotten around to
>actually
>coding it yet.

Happens sometimes :)

>I imagine this would require some detailed specification
>and planning
>before implementation, or else we run into flexibility
>problems later.
<snip snip>
>It only gets more and more complicated. :)

Some users have expressed their concern about the complexity of WikiSyntax, getting more & more complicated... And this would make it even more complicated ^.^

>Timwi

Nicolas


from_name: Jason Richey

subject:
[Wikitech-l] please no experiments on March 5th (was: Re: please
	no experiments on March 6th

body:
I was going to change the DNS servers for wikipedia.org today (the
5th).  I'm pretty sure that qualifies as an experiment, so I'll put it
off until Monday...

Jason

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
> >I'd like to edit some Wikipedia articles on March 6th from about 9 to 15
> >o'clock CET (8-14 UTC)
>
> Sorry, I confused the dates. I meant Friday, March 5th.
>
>
> Kurt
>
> --
> http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Vielleicht hat Dein Nachbar das Buch, das Du
>                           schon immer lesen wolltest - leih es Dir aus!
> http://wikipedia.de    -- Die freie Enzyklop?die
> http://jansson.de      -- Icke
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nucleic acid and DNA

body:
There is no hurry.

There has been an edit war going on DNA since late december.
It was first protected on the 16th of january. Nearly 2 months ago.

It still is protected, and there is absolutely no reason to think it is
gonna be unprotected anytime soon.

Today, I protected Nucleic acid per Lir request (the fight is the same,
and by the same people than on DNA). Lir requested protection 2 weeks
ago, and I promised to do so, if no solution were to be found. So that
she wouldnot let herself go in an reversion war again.

I hope this will not spread to all articles related to molecular
biochemistry; it would be unfortunate that all those are protected one
after the other.

Now, it seems that there is little chance that discussion is gonna
happen, until the case between 168 and Mav is solved.

So, though there is no hurry in comparison to vandal fighting, I would
like to ask Jimbo,
* either to dip his hand in holy water, and shake it over pending
requests for Jimbo to refer pending request for arbitration, so that the
arbitration committee know that this request is relevant and should be
considered
* or that Jimbo take care of Mav and 168 little disagreements as he was
doing previously
* or that Jimbo talks to 168 and Lir
* or that someone (anyone !) tries to find an idea so that 168 and Lir
can live together on the same project.

It is not as important that vandals, but there has been at least 2
contributors unhappy here for about 2 months. Meanwhile, they do not
participate happily and efficiently, but rather spoil the mood, and
discourage others.
*This* is important. Imho

ant


from_name: mark at kruegerbrothers.com

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Watch out: Wikipedia on German TV channel 3Sat this
	Saturday!

body:
This Saturday at 6:30pm (repeated Monday 7am and 945am) the tech magazine
"neues" of the country-wide German public TV channel "3Sat" will report on
information gathering in the WWW. Within this report, Wikipedia will be
discussed as an example of a cost-free and license-free service. At the end
of the magazine at around 7pm there will be the possibility to ask questions
in the related chat-room at www.3sat.de/neues .

Below you will find the complete message published in the recent newsletter
(in German):

	Wissen im Netz:
	Das riesige World Wide Web hat Vor- und Nachteile. Einer der
Vorteile: Man kommt schnell und meist kostenlos an Informationen. Nachteil:
Wo und wie Suchen? In j?ngster Zeit finden sich vermehrt Angebote, n?mlich
Online-Enzyklop?dien, die Wissen b?ndeln. Und zwar aktuell nicht nur
kommerzielle Portale, sondern auch "freie" Seiten, wie "Wikipedia". Der
Unterschied ist, dass hier jeder interessierte Nutzer selbst Artikel
schreiben kann. Au?erdem darf man das bereits gesammeltes Wissen kostenlos
abrufen und weiterverarbeiten. neues checkt die Qualit?t solcher
Online-Enzyklop?dien und gibt Tipps zum Thema Wissen im Netz.

	Chat zum Thema !
	Ab 19 Uhr k?nnen Sie zum Thema Wikipedia Ihre Fragen im Chat
stellen. Unter www.3sat.de/neues

Have fun!

Mark Kr?ger

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from_name: Colin Pickard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
Funny, I was just looking at his contribution list as this turned up in my
inbox.

I don't think you need to worry about him contributing - all he's done to
date is argue on chat pages.  It's a sock puppet for someone else - probably
User:Micheal.

his user page contains much rhetoric about reformed vandals.

User:akaDruid

-----Original Message-----
From: Poor, Edmund W [mailto:Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com]
Sent: 05 March 2004 14:29
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

I blocked a user whose handle is "Jesus Chirst".

It should be self-evident that this is an unacceptable user name.

I feel very strongly about this, and I feel my action though unilateral
is justified. Our username policy is clear.

If his aim is to contribute to the encyclopedia, he can pick a less
provocative user name. If he has some other name, then he has no right
to register at all.

I expect Mav and Jimbo to back me up on this, or my vacation will be
permanent.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nucleic acid and DNA

body:
Yes, I see a lot of arbitrary nonsense. Either version is quite acceptable.

Fred

> From: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: anthere8 at yahoo.com, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:41:28 +0100
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nucleic acid and DNA
>
> You may find what is going on on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADNA
>
> Fred Bauder a ?crit:
>> Here are the two versions of expressing a matter that they mainly fight
>> over. I find one a bit more felitous, but there is not a dime's worth of
>> difference. What's going on?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nucleic_acid&diff=2544710&oldid=2
>> 506775
>>
>> (You might have to glue that URL together to make it work)
>>
>> See the discussion at
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nucleic_acid
>>
>> Fred
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] User talk page spamming (policy suggestion)

body:
Hi,

please can we introduce a policy against spamming of User talk pages?

It seems to have become a habit of people to take the revision history
of some page and spam everybody's User take page with a request that is
vaguely related to that page.

As an example, someone wanted to create a Wikibook on [[Lucid
dreaming]]. To find contributors, they spammed the User talk pages of
all Wikipedians who had previously edited the Wikipedia article on
[[Lucid dreaming]]. This is particularly annoying because they didn't
even care to check if any of the edits might have been only a spelling
correction (like mine was).

Today (or yesterday, whatever), [[User:Zanimum]] spammed loads of User
talk pages in an attempt to find someone to "send out the press
release". I have no idea what that means, and I don't even care, but I'd
really rather not be bothered with these things just because I have
corrected a spelling mistake.

If this continues, then people will eventually be discouraged from
correcting spelling mistakes (or making similarly minor improvements)
for fear of being spammed with random requests on their User talk page.

Thanks,
Timwi


body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:

> I'm wondering how unreasonable it would be to syndicate watchlists.

Might be an interesting idea, but may raise privacy concerns. These RSS
feeds must therefore be deactivatable.

> I think we'd have to have some kind of authentication, and I don't know
> how well that fits in with the RSS framework.

It is not possible in general to authenticate an RSS feed. Of course
Wikipedia could require a cookie or a HTTP Auth before it will show you
the RSS feed, but that makes it pretty much useless because most RSS
readers don't support this. In particular, a lot of RSS readers -- such
as LiveJournal -- handle RSS feeds as a fundamentally public resource
and cannot allow any authentication to be sent with it.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Nucleic acid and DNA

body:
You may find what is going on on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3ADNA

Fred Bauder a ?crit:
> Here are the two versions of expressing a matter that they mainly fight
> over. I find one a bit more felitous, but there is not a dime's worth of
> difference. What's going on?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Nucleic_acid&diff=2544710&oldid=2
> 506775
>
> (You might have to glue that URL together to make it work)
>
> See the discussion at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Nucleic_acid
>
> Fred


from_name: Catherine Munro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Boilerplate request for permission

body:
Comments please on draft of new letter at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission

Thank you!
Catherine


subject: [Wikitech-l] Footnotes

body:
Another Wikisourceror has raised the matter of footnotes in the
Scriptorium.  http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikisource%3AScriptorium

> Hello! I wasn't able to figure out how to insert raw html anchors in
> to the text. I am mainly interested in inserting
>
> Hello! I wasn't able to figure out how to insert raw html anchors in
> to the text. I am mainly interested in inserting "clickable"
> footnotes, something like
>
> 1
>
> but as you see it does not work. Apparently the program automatically
> escapes the "angle" characters, is there a
>
I know that some time ago we talked about being able to annotate at
Wikisource, but it's still a small enough project that the technical
people aren't regularly there.  Can anybody help him?

Ec


from_name: Optim

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User talk page spamming (policy suggestion)

body:
Summary: Timwi asked to have a policy against
talk page spamming.

My reply:

I don't think it would be good to have such a
policy. And the incidents you described are not
"spamming".

--Optim

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Search - Find what you?re looking for faster
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
He was also spending all of his time writing nonsense on user pages and otherwise not contributing.

RickK

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
I blocked a user whose handle is "Jesus Chirst".

It should be self-evident that this is an unacceptable user name.

I feel very strongly about this, and I feel my action though unilateral
is justified. Our username policy is clear.

If his aim is to contribute to the encyclopedia, he can pick a less
provocative user name. If he has some other name, then he has no right
to register at all.

I expect Mav and Jimbo to back me up on this, or my vacation will be
permanent.

Ed Poor
Bureaucrat

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
Summary: EdPoor blocked a user "Jesus Chirst".

My reply:

His/her username was the only reason for the
block?

There was no discussion before the block?

If these two statements are true, then this user
should get unblocked.

--Optim

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
Summary: Ed Poor blocked a user "Jesus Chirst". I
posted a message saying he should be unblocked if
the username was the only reason for the block
and there was no discussion about it before (and
I forgot to add that the user should not have
been involved in any act of vandalism).

Message:

Forget my previous post. I managed to find some
time to check the contributions of "Jesus
Chirst". I wouldn't suggest anybody to unblock
him/her without discussion here.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&target=Jesus_Chirst

--Optim

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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Facts or Propaganda

body:
The mailing list is open to Abe (172) and to other members of the Red
Faction, should they be deemed to exist, or to them as individuals should we
take the perspective that there is no organized Marxist-Leninist activity on
Wikipedia, rather unlikely, but perhaps a fiction we might adopt for the
sake of peace.

Characterization of the list as a whole as libertarian seems a stretch, but
certainly some conservative, even reactionary, POV surfaces on Wikipedia.
The issue is editors who view Wikipedia as a vehicle for political struggle.
I can probably be counted amoung them as I apply the same slogan to
Communist totalitarianism that is usually applied to the Holocaust, Never
Again... and view accumulations of accurate knowledge available to the
people (the working class, in this context) as innoculation against
repetitions of past evils as they struggle against oppression.

That said, in relationship to Marxist-Leninism, I are one, or rather was one
and have great sympathy with the humanist ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and
even Stalin. But fairly representing those ideals and the efforts of
Marxist-Leninist governments to realize them is not usually the issue with
Abe and his colleagues, but rather Potemkin village like systemic
misrepresentations of the state of affairs in North Korea, Belarus, East
Germany, etc. which anyone familiar with the facts is going to view as
misleading and false.

That is what it comes down to. Is Wikipedia a repository of facts or of
propaganda. (or of clever [[spin (politics)]])

Fred

> From: "Daniel P.B.Smith" <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 06:25:34 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Liberatarian country
>
> From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>
>
>> Since the Wiki mailing
>> list is libertarian country,
>
> I don't like that facile generalization.
>
> --
> Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate:
> dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
If the Wikipedia community codifies such non-policies (We have no policy
on...) expect those who egregiously violate reasonable community standards
to say in their defense such things as "There is no policy against reverting
pages" etc... and, at least in their own mind, justify gross violations of
etiquette which carried to an extreme disrupt the project to an unacceptable
degree.

Fred

> From: Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 00:41:56 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: User talk page spamming (policy suggestion)
>
> Summary: Timwi asked to have a policy against
> talk page spamming.
>
> My reply:
>
> I don't think it would be good to have such a
> policy. And the incidents you described are not
> "spamming".
>
> --Optim
>
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from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Liberatarian country

body:
From: "Abe Sokolov" <abesokolov at hotmail.com>

> Since the Wiki mailing
> list is libertarian country,

I don't like that facile generalization.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at world.std.com alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked user: Jesus Chirst

body:
On Friday 05 March 2004 15:29, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I blocked a user whose handle is "Jesus Chirst".
>
> It should be self-evident that this is an unacceptable user name.

What if that is his real name?


from_name: Jens Frank

body:
On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 02:57:56PM +0100, mark at kruegerbrothers.com wrote:
> This Saturday at 6:30pm (repeated Monday 7am and 945am) the tech magazine
> "neues" of the country-wide German public TV channel "3Sat" will report on
> information gathering in the WWW. Within this report, Wikipedia will be
> discussed as an example of a cost-free and license-free service. At the end
> of the magazine at around 7pm there will be the possibility to ask questions
> in the related chat-room at www.3sat.de/neues .

You are of course aware that Wikipedia is *not* license-free, but licensed
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

	Regards,

		jens frank


body:
Summary: Timwi asked to have a policy against
talkpage spamming. I disagreed. Timwi replied
stating "It is annoying to be bothered with
impersonal requests that you have nothing to do
with."

My message:

Since you had edited the article, you had some
connection with the case, so it was not spamming.

Personally I was very happy to get this user's
message regarding Lucid dreaming, and I wouldn't
like people to stop informing me about articles
where I have contributed because of some
"spamming" policy.

I wouldn't like if some user will use the talk
pages for real spamming (i.e. "buy my product"
etc). But I just don't understand how the cases
you described can be considered spamming.

I wouldn't object a spamming policy if it could
define properly what spamming is.

--Optim

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from_name: Robert Graham Merkel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 8, Issue 16

body:
On Fri, Mar 05, 2004 at 09:39:21AM -0800, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
> For the problem to subside, Pakaran, RickK, Adam Carr, PMA, Very Verily, Tim
> Startling, and Robert Merkel (the most virulent critics of our Red user)
> need to treat him with respect (or at least a facade of respect for the sake
> of cooperation), allowing Lance/Hector/Riohard to meet his critics at least
> halfway.
>

The only "red faction" user that I have personally criticised, as far as
I can recall, is you.

> BTW, I know that a few cynics would dismiss these comments, accusing me of a
> leftist agenda. If these charges crop up, I refer to the October 2003
> mailing list, where I was the most ardent critic of banning [[User:RK]].
> Recently, I also remarked to [[User:G-Man]] that we desperately lack elderly
> contributors (giving us Gen-X and Baby Boom biases). I also noted the need
> to promote more non-Western admins a while ago.
>

My problem with "red faction" users (and you are the only one I can
remember tangling with more than once), is very simple.  The group
systematically mischaracterise facts and omit
others to give uniformly favourable impressions of various left-wing
despots like Stalin and Kim Jong-Il.  Secondly, trying to alter the article
to point out the atrocities committed on their watch, as well as
pointing out their achievements, if any, is like trying to pull out one's own
teeth with tweezers, as they are rarely prepared to concede that anything is
the subject's fault, and continually revert and challenge edits, and are
impossible to engage in debate on talk pages.  They are essentially unable
to see any other perspective.  If they do concede that some bad things
happened on this person's watch, It's always the system's fault, or the
West's fault, the Soviets' fault...
Trying to treat such users with respect ends up with the article
remaining unchanged, and terrible.  Hence, frustration builds up and
civility tends to go away after dealing with enough of this crap.

As far as my own clashes with "the red faction", I invite readers to
have a look around [[Kim Jong-Il]]'s edit history and talk page, for
instance, and make up their own minds.  Contrast with, say, [[Deng
Xiaoping]], which cunningly buries the Tiananmen Square protests in such
a way that a reader not already familiar with the subject would miss it.

--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Robert Merkel
                                     robert.merkel at benambra.org
                                        http://benambra.org

I always thought the most significant thing we ever found on the whole
goddamned Moon was that little bacteria that came back and lived and
nobody ever said s... about it.
   -- Pete Conrad.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Abe Sokolov wrote:
> Since the Wiki mailing list is libertarian country, I'll say that
> it's like slapping on price controls to curb inflation.

I think this is a useful observation.  I'm not sure it's 100%
applicable, but the broader point is important.  One of the most
important observations of economics and game theory as we might apply
it to our context here is that "passing a law" with a desirable
outcome is not always the same thing as finding a good solution.

The reason I say that Abe's comment may not be 100% applicable is that
what we really try to do around here is "tax" bad behavior.  We know
that we can't really stop "Michael" or "24" or "Plautus" from ever
editing again, but we can try to make sure that we impose costs on
them with minimal costs to us.

The best responses to problem users are responses that interfere the
least with other people, that cost the least amount of good people's
time and energy, while imposing the maximum possible difficulty on
their continuance of bad behavior.  Those are theoretical goals, which
various of our software tools achieve to varying degrees.

--Jimbo


body:
Constans, Camille (C.C.) wrote:
> Where is Geoffrin now ?

At Penguin Computing, or perhaps in transit to me here in Florida.

> I understand, it's not very interesting to use Larousse now :)
>
> And Pliny ? Pliny could be a good web server if the drive problem is fixed.

Those two are still in San Diego, doing nothing.  They will be sent by
Jason to me pretty soon.  I was holding off because (a) we don't need
them really and (b) I may "borrow" them as a part of migrating other
things from San Diego to Tampa.


body:
One thing that happened recently was that a user, I actually forget his name
and the issue, decided he would crosspost some concern to all the members of
the arbitration committee. He had no case under consideration, just wanted
to cover his bases by "informing" all of us. Not too serious but just
nonsense.

The policy, if any, need to contain language like "excessive", "irrelevant",
etc. to properly characterize the nuisance character of spamming.

Fred

> From: Optim <optim81 at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 6 Mar 2004 07:34:34 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] User talk page spamming (policy suggestion)
>
> I wouldn't object a spamming policy if it could
> define properly what spamming is.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of encyclopedia topics

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> I have filtered the old list I had compiled once against a current
> list of article titles, and have about 79000 topics left. I put the
> "central" page for these at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_encyclopedia_topics
> and created one "demo" page (#57) with 1000 links. Should I upload the
> otheres as well (also 1000 links each), or is the quality too bad?

Seems like a cool list to have! It would be useful to know which
encyclopedia was the original source. I'd also suggest letting all the
terms run together on the page, no line breaks, since no one is ever
going to add any kind of explanatory note after each term, and you get
to see more of them at once.

They do uppercase where we would lowercase, so some amount of redir
will be needed. Even so, interesting to see how many topics are still
overlooked - I did a sample of titles from the Grove Encyclopedia of
Music a while back, and we had just 5% of its articles, got a few years
yet before we're world-class in the music area.

Stan


from_name: limholt at excite.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of encyclopedia topics

body:
 --- On Sat 03/06, Magnus Manske < magnus.manske at web.de > wrote:

>Should I upload the otheres as well (also 1000 links each), or is the
>quality too bad?

One thing you didn't say is how much work is involved to create and upload. The quality is mixed, some are worthwhile. pointing out obvious oversights, while others seem too obscure. If its not too much work, sure, upload them.

Thankjs, Lou Imholt (LouI at Wiki)

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