subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
geni wrote:

>Define author. I assume that when I rollback vandalism I don't become
>an author for that article. Anyone feel like digging though the GWB
>article to find 5 legit authors?
>
>
Well, it is incumbent on the creator of the work to define "author" and
list them in the section labeled "history"; reusers only have to
maintain that information, not invent their own.  In this case, if
Wikipedia puts you in the "history" section when you just rollback
vandalism, then it's designating you as an author.  If that's not what
we want, then the "history" section should be changed, or a new "this is
the history for the purpose of the GFDL" section invented.

-Mark


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On 11/29/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Face it: Noone will become insanely rich by selling images from
> Wikipedia, yours or other people's. And even if one or the other image
> turns up in some high-quality production, GFDL or CC-BY-SA make sure
> they'll have to credit the author, which would mean free advertising for
> you.

And not only that, but his production would also have to be licensed
under the same criteria.  I think few profit-making companies would
really want to do that with individual photographs etc.

--
Sam


list: foundation-l

from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Deletion of Wikibooks content by Jimbo

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I may be misremembering, but I don't recall an explicit and narrow
> requirement that Wikibooks be "educational" when it was set up, and
> certainly not "educational" in the narrow sense of "something that a
> university would teach".  Of course textbooks were a major sort of
> book that people had in mind, but I don't recall anyone saying that
> *only* textbooks would be permitted (not to mention defining what
> constitutes a "textbook"!).

Some empirical evidence for this:
  -- The "about" page has never said it is limited to
textbooks---textbooks are only one part of the list of things that
Wikibooks is for
  -- Some of the earliest Wikibooks are non-textbook but informational
books, such as videogame walkthroughs

-Mark


list: wikimedia-l


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

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

body:
On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> There were thousands of images (possibly tens of thousands) that
> qualified for speedy deletion under the new policy.  Issuing warnings
> to the uploader of each such image would have interminably delayed the
> cleanup, which was already well-overdue.  Repeated public notices were
> issued; we're sorry you missed them or did not realize they applied to
> you.

It's called a bot. ;=)

--
Sam


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

body:
On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > [[m:Voting is evil]]
> >
> > Kelly
>
> The alturnatives are worse-Churchill
>
>
> The voteing softwear avoids a lot of the normal downsides of voteing
> by not revealing who has voted for what. There is also the issue that
> with hundreds of people wanting to have a say it is the only real way
> to gage final opinion.

I think Kelly's point loses a lot when taken out of context:

On 11/28/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We need consensus?  Let's hold a two-week, site-wide vote with
> > Concorcet (sp?) voting.  And it's going to be binding.
>
> [[m:Voting is evil]]
>
> Kelly

and my email was in response to

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

So you appear to be arguing under a misconception.  Kelly may think
voting for ArbCom members is evil.  However, she didn't say so, so
don't put words in her mouth.

--
Sam


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

body:
On 11/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't know how many admins on en would be offended by you saying
> > that they are harsh on vandalism.
> >
> > --
> > Sam
>
> Well as an en admin I'll own up to being a control freak when it comes
> to vandalism. A while back a picture on commons was vandalised
> resulting in the wikipedia portal page carrying a vandalised image. It
> took some time for it to be fixed.

I believe that was my point. ;-)

--
Sam


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
geni wrote:
> Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we
> could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?

You could try, but generally speaking we operate under a longstanding
set of carefully grown and slowly changing conventions.  At least to
date, my method of listening very carefully and working very hard to try
to bring together a very broad consensus about a way forward means that
my special role in the 'constitutional framework' of Wikipedia has
proven to be more often useful than not, and of course I intend to do my
best to continue to the best of my abilities with good faith and concern
for all.

--Jimbo


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On Nov 29, 2005, at 5:44 PM, geni wrote:
>
> Define author. I assume that when I rollback vandalism I don't become
> an author for that article. Anyone feel like digging though the GWB
> article to find 5 legit authors?

You actually do become the copyright holder for that version of the
article. It's just that the extent to which this fact matters is
rarely very important, since you GFDLed that version of the article
as well.

-Phil


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Only in a legalistic sense.  The Wikimedia Foundation's server ownership
> would be completely useless without a community willing to volunteer to
> write an encyclopedia that can be hosted on them.

Exactly.  And I consider my leadership of the community to be a more or
less entirely separate matter from any legal arrangements of any kind.
For example, I would imagine that if the foundation were to fall prey to
some extremely unjust lawsuit or political action, I could successfully
lead the community to another place under another name.

Leadership of a volunteer community doesn't come from power, it comes
from having the cautious wisdom to lead the community where it wants to
go.  I am not perfect, but I try.

--Jimbo


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

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

And there is, in German Wikipedia, no arbcom at all.  Bans are voted
upon directly.

There is no simple right way to do this, and the history and processes
of each community are going to vary slightly for a number of perfectly
valid reasons.

--Jimbo


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/29/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > Other than the need for a friendly developer is there a reason why we
> > could not in theory ignore jimbo and elect arbcom whatever?
>
> You could try, but generally speaking we operate under a longstanding
> set of carefully grown and slowly changing conventions.  At least to
> date, my method of listening very carefully and working very hard to try
> to bring together a very broad consensus about a way forward means that
> my special role in the 'constitutional framework' of Wikipedia has
> proven to be more often useful than not, and of course I intend to do my
> best to continue to the best of my abilities with good faith and concern
> for all.
>
>
>
> --Jimbo
>

Disscussion of changes to election procedures were held at
[[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Proposed
modifications to rules]]. In the spirit of slow change those were
started in august. you now appeart to be trying to rush thing through
in about 48 hours. If you want to refore the system why can't you wait
for next years elections like everyone else?

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

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

body:
Brian0981

you could altneratively consider to use "EnotifWiki" (see
http://www.enotif.org ) and configure that to have e-mail notifications
sent out

* on (watched) page changes
* on changes to your user- and user_talk page

* and on new page creations

EnotifWiki is currently based on MediaWiki1.5rc4 and soon upgraded to
1.5.2 or HEAD.

Gordon Joly schrieb:

> At 15:11 -0500 27/11/05, Brian wrote:
>
>> There have been numerous reports recently of finding rampant
>> vandalism on small Wikipedias/Wiktionaries. It might be useful to
>> create an RC page and/or IRC channel which brings together the RC's
>> of the ~50 smallest Wikipedias.
>>
>> brian0918
>
>
> I run about 5 or 6 wikis using Mediawiki and from time to time we have
> vandalism of various kinds. So I would welcome this!
>


from_name: Anthere

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

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dmf5at$1e5$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280701m66ac19abt4b4c63ef8e9936be@mail.gmail.com>	<dmf6nm$79u$1@sea.gmane.org>	<bd4c411e0511280735q22e20bd1vfd4acd96bfa7066@mail.gmail.com>	<dmfh0f$eho$1@sea.gmane.org>	<438B79C3.4080308@apple.com>	<dmfuc0$vsq$1@sea.gmane.org>	<438B8230.4070301@apple.com>
	<dmg0bb$6ds$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:

>>> correct. This said... did you hear about the major uproar on the
>>> german wikipedia due to massive copyright infringment ? It is now in
>>> the press. And the german wikipedia, I believe, choose to entirely
>>> forbid all fair use images at least a year ago.
>>
>>
>>
>> I've not heard a thing about this. Do you have a link?
>>
>> Stan
>
>
> provided in the other mail.
> You may also follow
> http://news.google.de/news?hl=de&ned=de&ie=UTF-8&q=wikipedia&btnG=News-Suche

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1796407,00.html

hitting english speaking world....

Ant


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>It hasn't been decided that jokebooks aren't suitable for any
>Wikimedia project.  Jimbo has declared by executive fiat that this is
>the case.  Your suggestion is quite plainly unethical, Angela.  Keep
>your advertisements off this mailing list.
>
She is just offering a suggestion for a solution. Obviously yu are
against it but it is far from unethical to propose it. And I feel that
accusing Angela of that is going a bit to far.

Walter/Waerth


from_name: kelvSYC

body:
> Some empirical evidence for this:
>  -- The "about" page has never said it is limited to textbooks---
> textbooks are only one part of the list of things that Wikibooks is
> for

And it was greatly opposed by many in the Wikibooks community - when
[[User:Aya]] became a bureaucrat, that was one of the first things
that changed, IIRC (it was this user that put down "anything found in
your library" line).  In the user's critique of Wikibooks, the user
felt that the project was a) too narrow in scope, and that b) many of
its users ignored it.

>  -- Some of the earliest Wikibooks are non-textbook but
> informational books, such as videogame walkthroughs

... which many consider as being inappropriate for Wikibooks and
should be transfered to Wikicities (I happen to be in the opposition,
though).  As a matter of fact, there is a growing movement to either
make Wikibooks a Wikicities clone (by, say, adopting its policies) or
to just move all Wikibooks content to Wikicities.

The fact is that bold moves are needed to clean Wikibooks up, and the
reason that I left the Wikibooks community was that I couldn't see
myself in the new Wikibooks, in whatever shape it may be.


from_name: Christopher Larberg

subject: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 22:45 -0500, Brian wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party, but
did he ever try correcting the article himself? Those who observe faults
in Wikipedia and publicize them seem never to attempt fixing them, but
are then amazed when the faults aren't fixed.

His comparison of Internet service providers to broadcast and print
media is spurious. ISPs merely provide access to a computer network;
they do not pre-approve the traffic as television stations and print
media do.

But hey, what the Internet really needs is a body with legal authority
over online speech, right? It's worked so well for broadcast television
and radio.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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body:
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 22:45 -0500, Brian wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party, but
did he ever try correcting the article himself? Those who observe faults
in Wikipedia and publicize them seem never to attempt fixing them, but
are then amazed when the faults aren't fixed.

His comparison of Internet service providers to broadcast and print
media is spurious. ISPs merely provide access to a computer network;
they do not pre-approve the traffic as television stations and print
media do.

But hey, what the Internet really needs is a body with legal authority
over online speech, right? It's worked so well for broadcast television
and radio.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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body:
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 22:45 -0500, Brian wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party, but
did he ever try correcting the article himself? Those who observe faults
in Wikipedia and publicize them seem never to attempt fixing them, but
are then amazed when the faults aren't fixed.

His comparison of Internet service providers to broadcast and print
media is spurious. ISPs merely provide access to a computer network;
they do not pre-approve the traffic as television stations and print
media do.

But hey, what the Internet really needs is a body with legal authority
over online speech, right? It's worked so well for broadcast television
and radio.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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body:
On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 22:45 -0500, Brian wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party, but
did he ever try correcting the article himself? Those who observe faults
in Wikipedia and publicize them seem never to attempt fixing them, but
are then amazed when the faults aren't fixed.

His comparison of Internet service providers to broadcast and print
media is spurious. ISPs merely provide access to a computer network;
they do not pre-approve the traffic as television stations and print
media do.

But hey, what the Internet really needs is a body with legal authority
over online speech, right? It's worked so well for broadcast television
and radio.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Support freedum of infromashuon

body:
On 11/29/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I concur that, if this is
> significant, we should write about it. But we should not write about
> it simply to make a political point, not publish it simply to make
> that point. There will, after all, be no shortage of copies of it
> hosted around the world to refer to.

This is in the end I think the proper "Wikipedia" solution to
anything: write an article about the memo, the controversy, the
attempt to stifle, hell even include some mainstream speculation about
what its contents may be (properly attributed, of course).

FF


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'

body:
Hi,

I really really need some big whitepapers on Wikipedia and other
wikimedia project usage in schools (pros, cons, aims, analysis,
possibilities).
Our aim is to build a big document and use it in governmental affairs.
If anyone has such papers prepared in major languages, let me know,
thanks!

Domas


subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
I think what you mean is Internet-only license. It is very easy to
include the GFDL in an electronic medium. It is relatively hard to
include it in a print one.

(As someone who WANTS his contributions to be used far and wide, in
any medium, without even wanting attribution, I've started relicensing
all of my images under CC-SA, because it seems even more free than
GFDL in this respect).

FF

On 11/29/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/28/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> > Minor nit-pick: that situation is improbable because IIRC the brochure
> > (if it used GFDL material) has to include the whole whopping GFDL
> > licence in it.
>
> Which is why releasing a picture under the GFDL is de facto a
> Wikipedia-only license.  There have been a few times where I've
> persuaded someone to release an image under GFDL (rather than not at
> all) by showing them how hard it would be for someone to legally use
> the image outside of a Wikipedia context, especially a print one.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


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

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>For the record, there is also a french arbcom, and its organisation has
>>been entirely set up by the french community. All members have been 100%
>>elected by the editorship.
>
>
> And there is, in German Wikipedia, no arbcom at all.  Bans are voted
> upon directly.
>
> There is no simple right way to do this, and the history and processes
> of each community are going to vary slightly for a number of perfectly
> valid reasons.
>
> --Jimbo

Fully agree.
There are even other communities where such decisions are rather left in
the hand of the adminship collective.

Methods used here might appear strange there, but if they work... that
is good :-)


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I really really need some big whitepapers on Wikipedia and other
> wikimedia project usage in schools (pros, cons, aims, analysis,
> possibilities).
> Our aim is to build a big document and use it in governmental affairs.
> If anyone has such papers prepared in major languages, let me know, thanks!

Dunno if you've found the materials on the wiki already.

english:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools_FAQ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_University_projects

german:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_in_der_Schule
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Methodik_f%C3%BCr_Lehrer

Will you prepare the paper in english or lithuanian? I'd be interested
in having a german translation.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] 'Wikipedia in schools'


from_name: Arwel Parry

references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2859ad8d0511280828y3264c1ebp3228850fa314555c@mail.gmail.com>
	<dmfgge$cmr$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>
	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750511281349u36ee0cedu7eafcb5adaf93d88@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<31073ef90511281617x7d096a26m53c249a3f1d17e3a@mail.gmail.com>
	<aaCGOxSty6iDFwEO@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<aaCGOxSty6iDFwEO-wfA80NnNzEcG2Il/BtU0GPXRex20P6io@public.gmane.org>
	<31073ef90511291035n12c94836u50ccff2784357f9@mail.gmail.com>

body:
In message <31073ef90511291035n12c94836u50ccff2784357f9 at mail.gmail.com>,
Mark Wagner <carnildo-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>On 11/28/05, Arwel Parry
><arwel-wfA80NnNzEcG2Il/BtU0GPXRex20P6io at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>
>> In message
>>
>><31073ef90511281617x7d096a26m53c249a3f1d17e3a-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg at pu
>>blic.gmane.org>, Mark
>> Wagner
>><carnildo-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w-XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gmane.org>
>>writes
>> >Assuming Wikipedia is running along smoothly, an administrator can
>> >delete one image every twenty seconds, if they don't notify the user
>> >first or remove the image from pages where it's used, and if they do
>> >only the quickest check to see if the image is tagged correctly.
>> >Deleting all these images would take 185 man-hours of effort.
>> >
>> >If the administrator removes the image from articles where it's used
>> >before deleting it, it takes about 40 seconds to delete an image.
>> >This increases the effort needed to 370 man-hours.
>>
>> Just a minute - are you honestly advocating that images should be
>> routinely deleted without removing links from articles which use them?
>> Because in that case I STRONGLY object to this attitude. For some time
>> I've been coming across articles on my watchlist which suddenly have red
>> image links in prominent places: apart from looking damned ugly, it's
>> highly give a highly unprofessional impression of Wikipedia. It should
>> be OBLIGATORY in my opinion for the people deleting images to FIRST
>> remove the links to them, and hang the extra work involved!
>
>Guess why images tagged as "fair use" but not used in any article
>(such as the image Anthere was complaining about) are being deleted so
>quickly?  It's because the images can be deleted without removing any
>links to them.  Links from talk pages shouldn't be removed, because
>doing so would disrupt history, links from userpages can be ignored
>because they shouldn't have been made in the first place, and links
>from templates have mostly been taken care of by the drive to remove
>fair-use images from template-space.

That's all very well, but the links I was referring to are from
principal articles - I first noticed it when the picture disappeared
from the infobox in [[Bertie Ahern]] leaving a damned great broken link
prominently at the top of the article. But then, he's only the Irish
Prime Minister, so no-one would notice....

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


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

body:
Could the issue of whether jokebook is appropriate for Wikibooks or not
be discussed on Wikibooks, please? Thank you.

Robert's mail was only sent to this group to point out action taken by
Jimmy that, in his view, was an abuse of power and authority. If anyone
wishes to follow up on that, please do so here. If not, find a better
place for your remarks than foundation-l. We should *not* be discussing
the wikibook itself here. It is not a foundation matter, it's an
internal problem of the English Wikibooks and should be (and is being,
from what I read) delt with there.

--
Best,
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Another crime is that my english is far from perfect, which sometimes
> lead me to make strange statements, which might be shocking to some (or
> making their day...).
> Another crime is that I love arguing. A worse one is that I tend to take
> things personally.

These two together may be a reason, but they don't actually constitute
an excuse as such ...

- d.


body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/29/05, Arwel Parry <arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:

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

> {{sofixit}}

That could be the single most obnoxiously unhelpful thing you've ever
posted to wikien-l, certainly per character.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>I think what you mean is Internet-only license. It is very easy to
>include the GFDL in an electronic medium. It is relatively hard to
>include it in a print one.
>
>

It's not even an internet-only license: The only major category of works
(of which I'm aware) for which displaying the GFDL in its entirety is
burdensome is *short* printed works.  Longer printed works are, after
all, what the GFDL was originally intended for, and in fact most of the
license makes clearer sense with printed works than on the internet
("front-cover texts" and so on).  Printing the GFDL in a 300-page book
isn't too much of a burden.

It *is* true that the FSF doesn't appear to have anticipated the
possibility that people might want to reproduce short excerpts from
GFDL'd works, rather than always reproducing the entire work as a book.

-Mark


references:
<dmf1h3$k8t$1@sea.gmane.org> <438B6AC9.7070704@myrealbox.com>
	<dmft4k$rqn$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750511281349u36ee0cedu7eafcb5adaf93d88@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba@mail.gmail.com>
	<bd4c411e0511281429o65430c02k8b6968b4d45b2bba-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<31073ef90511281617x7d096a26m53c249a3f1d17e3a@mail.gmail.com>
	<aaCGOxSty6iDFwEO@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<f80608430511290256o689c4df3te7d8a64322982b00@mail.gmail.com>
	<438CC311.1000808@thingy.apana.org.au>

body:
On 11/29/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> That could be the single most obnoxiously unhelpful thing you've ever
> posted to wikien-l, certainly per character.
>
>
> - d.

Is that a challange? Anyway what happened to eventualism? Those red
links will get removed sooner or latter (ok not entirely serious
there).

If people don't like the way image deltion is being do they are free
to get involved and do it better. Personaly I can't do much since the
image deltion bug is a killer.

If you want better warning either run a bot yourself or find someone
with the technical know how to.

If you want to change the way deletion is done then get involved.

The image situation on wikipedia is a toxic dump of a mess. Sorting it
out is not easy. If you think you know a better way do it do so. No
one is going to stand in your way.

--
geni


from_name: S. Woodside

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Credit card processing for forthcoming fundraiser

body:
On Nov 29, 2005, at 12:34 PM, Neil Harris wrote:

> If there's going to be another fundraiser soon, does anyone know if
> any progress has been made towards accepting credit card donations?

You might consider going with an online clearinghouse for donations.
I just did some quick research online and found the following:

   http://www.networkforgood.org  -- seems to be US-centric but tops
in google
   http://www.justgive.org/ -- more international ? 3% cut
   http://www.guidestar.org/ - US non-profit database

I imagine that people might be happier or more peace of mind donating
through such a system as opposed to paypal or whatever.

--simon

--
http://simonwoodside.com


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] new privacy link in footer

body:
Hello,

To fix bug 4048, I added a new link in the footer. It can be customized
using [[MediaWiki:Privacy]] and [[MediaWiki:Privacypage]] .

You can disabled it by putting '-' (without quote) as text for
[[MediaWiki:Privacy]].

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
On Nov 29, 2005, at 9:31 PM, James D. Forrester wrote:
>
> We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the
> people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in
> the
> past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must
> point
> out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real
> discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness
> of a
> set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.

In practice? Probably not.

-Phil


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] moderation of mark williamson

body:
Thanks guys.

I may or may not still be set to moderated, I guess I'll see with this post.

Mark

On 29/11/05, Olve Utne <olve.utne at gmail.com> wrote:
> At 10:04 29/11/2005, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> >while I find Mark's posting history to be, shall we say, voluminous,
> >his language posts bring important subjects to a wider audience, and
> >I have always gotten the impression that he is acting in good
> >faith.  I haven't received the same impression from some of his detractors.
>
> That is exactly my impression too.  It does not leave the best
> impression of our community....
>
> Respectfully,
>
> -Olve
>
>
> ___________________
>
> Olve Utne
> http://utne.nvg.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: moderation of Mark Williamson

body:
I've obviously missed something the last few days - what happened with Mark?  Has he been banned from the list?  That seems a very extreme action.  What's going on?
  pippu d'angelo

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


subject: [Wikitech-l] server for nagios

body:
Hello,

I used larousse sometime ago but its pending a fedora core upgrade.
Someone also told me that this server will probably get removed, I am
personally fine with it:

Nagios doesnt need a lot of cpu nor a lot of ram, so one of the small
512MB apaches will be fine (tingxi / rose ? ).

If larousse is not a choice, would it be possible to get one of the idle
server to install nagios ?

Also I will most probably need root access to be able to install nagios
or add me to a nagios group and add a /opt/nagios/ directory with write
access to nagios group (that should be enough).

I coded a nagios plugin that pull data from gmetad and use a caching
system to avoid hammering the gmetad server. The server on which nagios
will run will need to be added in the trusted server list for gmetad.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 11/29/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First
Amendment Center".  Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about
the First Amendment.

Kelly


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 11/29/05, Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu> wrote:

> The claim that "no businessman will lightly use material released under
> a Gnu-like license" seems rather unusual.  Today, some huge number of
> businesses do use and distribute material (specifically, software)
> released under just such licenses.

It could be argued that they do not however do so likely. Certian
element of the GFDL make it a pain in the neck to use for traditional
media. Particulary when you get the insane numbers of authors certian
wikipedia articles can rack up.

--
geni


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] server for nagios

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> I coded a nagios plugin that pull data from gmetad and use a caching
> system to avoid hammering the gmetad server

I might have lost track of the discussion at some point, but could you
quickly reiterate what problem you're trying to solve with Nagios, and
why Ganglia proper isn't a good fit if you intend to be collecting data
from it?

Thanks,

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:

>> The claim that "no businessman will lightly use material released under
>> a Gnu-like license" seems rather unusual.

> Having sat in a number of meetings with businesspeople considering
> the use of GNU-licensed material, I can attest that the decision is
> usually made with considerable anguish and argument. The most painful
> decisions are when they realize that the techies have boxed them in
> already, and it's either use GNU, or fire all the techies and spend
> enormous sums re-creating from scratch - at these moments it's
> terrible hard not to grin as free software racks up another victory. :-)

<whisper>why they don't just use FreeBSD ...</whisper>

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 11/29/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >It could be argued that they do not however do so likely. Certian
> >element of the GFDL make it a pain in the neck to use for traditional
> >media. Particulary when you get the insane numbers of authors certian
> >wikipedia articles can rack up.
> >
> >
> Well, the GFDL did anticipate this possibility, and has a clause to
> avoid burdensome requirements like listing 500 people as authors---if
> there are more than 5 authors, the reuser of the content may choose and
> credit 5 of them.

Define author. I assume that when I rollback vandalism I don't become
an author for that article. Anyone feel like digging though the GWB
article to find 5 legit authors?

--
geni


from_name: Brian

body:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm

Talk amongst yourselves.


subject: [Wikitech-l] server for nagios

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Ganglia is for performance trends. Nagios is for monitoring events.

The metric collection changes in Ganglia 3.0.0 were made with the
intention of adding a monitoring/alert mechanism to Ganglia mainline in
the short-term future. But if you need a solution now, or plan to
monitor events that Ganglia doesn't know about, then yes, Nagios makes
good sense.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On 11/29/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Well, it is incumbent on the creator of the work to define "author" and
> list them in the section labeled "history"; reusers only have to
> maintain that information, not invent their own.  In this case, if
> Wikipedia puts you in the "history" section when you just rollback
> vandalism, then it's designating you as an author.  If that's not what
> we want, then the "history" section should be changed, or a new "this is
> the history for the purpose of the GFDL" section invented.
>
> -Mark

But things like rollback and minor fixes are not posible to copyright.
Wouldn't an author have to have some level of copyright ownership over
that article (yeah ok I admit I only skimed the GFDL)?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Most read US newspaper blasts Wikipedia


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
On Tue, 29 Nov 2005, Karl A. Krueger wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 10:01:32PM -0800, Geoff Burling wrote:
> > While I disagree with much of what you have said, I'll admit you have a
> > point there, Mike. One reason I'll never release images of my friends or
> > family under GFDL or CC is that I don't want to be surprised one day
> > by finding that their image has been photoshopped into an ad or a
> > commercial for a product or company.
>
> As others have noted here, the relevant law preventing this unjust act
> has nothing to do with copyright (or defamation) and everything to do
> with [[personality rights]].  There are GFDL-licensed photographs of
> Richard Stallman available on the FSF's Web site, but I would still be
> violating Stallman's rights if I were to take one and turn it into a
> poster implying that Stallman endorsed my favorite project.
>
Obviously you can't imagine how images can be reused in print. Let me
explain.

Some harried worker at an advertising agency needs some faces to add to
an advertisement for their client, Quick & Puke Foods. Said worker surfs
the web, grabs a couple of faces, & inserts them into the background, &
an altruistic person discovers his dead grandmother staring at him
from that ad for Quick & Puke -- to his consternation.

Perhaps suing the ad agency, Quick & Puke & everyone else involved will
achieve some desired results. Or the judge will decide that no harm was
done & dismiss the case. Me, I'm perfectly happy keeping those images to
myself & remaining ignorant about how a court might actually rule.
>
> > But what _might_ be worth a conversation -- or at least a moment's
> > consideration -- is that introducing GFDL material into an advertisement
> > makes that creation GFDL'd too. By using free images (free as in speech,
> > not as in beer, as the cliche goes), the advertisement then -- at least
> > in part -- becomes free.
>
> This seems to be a common confusion.  A person who inserts GFDLed work
> into their own published work does not *thereby* grant a GFDL license
> for their work.  (If that were the case, GFDL would be a contract of
> adhesion, which it is not; it is merely a copyright license.)
>
> Rather, if I insert GFDLed work into my own published work and *fail* to
> grant a GFDL license for my work, I thereby infringe upon the GFDLed
> work's owner's copyright.
>
> What happens next is for me and the copyright holder to negotiate.  It
> may be that the copyright holder is willing to grant me a license to
> republish their work on different terms, perhaps for a fee, so that I am
> no longer infringing.  It may be that they convince me to relicense my
> work under the GFDL and thereby stop infringing.  It may be that (if
> they have a registered copyright) they sue me and collect statutory
> damages for my infringement.  Or it may be that they simply go get an
> injunction forbidding me from publishing my infringing work at all.
>
> In any case, there's *nothing* in either the GFDL nor the copyright law
> that would *automatically* place my work under the GFDL without my
> explicit action to do so.  Copyright permits the original author to
> forbid the publication of derivative works -- it DOES NOT permit the
> original author to appropriate those works' copyright and set their
> licensing terms.
>
Different language, same result: the advertising campaign comes to a
halt, the ad company & their client loses money -- all while this matter
is hashed out. And if it were *my* material that got sucked into this
creation, I'd insist on allowing reuse under the same terms they accepted
when they use my material: release the finished product under GFDL.
>
> > This may not stand up in court (the GPL & its related licenses have never
> > been tested in court to the best of my knowledge), but the legal uncertainty
> > there is strong enough that no businessman will lightly use material
> > released under a Gnu-like license.
>
> Hardly!  The GPL has certainly been tested in a number of legal cases;
> and GPLed material is used (and distributed) by a huge number of
> businessmen and -women.
>
> The only case which actually reached a final decision by a court was in
> Germany, between the authors of the Linux Netfilter (iptables) code and
> a company called Sitecom.  In that case, the court upheld that Sitecom
> had infringed the Netfilter authors' copyright by failing to adhere to
> the terms of the GPL.
>
The phrase "tested in court" refers to a judge making a ruling whether
the terms of the GFDL (or the GPL, as you mention in this case) are
enforcable. As I said, I'm unaware of either license being recognized in
a court in a manner to create a precedent; your example is the first I
have heard about. And I'm glad it stood.

[snip]
>
> The claim that "no businessman will lightly use material released under
> a Gnu-like license" seems rather unusual.  Today, some huge number of
> businesses do use and distribute material (specifically, software)
> released under just such licenses.  While some proprietary software
> firms have attempted to panic the marketplace about GPL-type licenses,
> their motives for doing so are pretty transparent and their arguments
> not especially credible.  What are yours?
>
You really haven't read about the University of California at Berkeley
vs. AT&T lawsuit, have you? It is an interesting case. AT&T, then the
owner of UNIX, sued UCB over copyright infringement for their version
of UNIX. At first, it looked like a sure win for AT&T, but after the
process of discovery had finished, it was discovered that AT&T had
incorporated large chunks of code that belonged to Berkeley -- without
furnishing the copyright notice that UCB required for reuse. The judge
opined that the university had viable grounds for a countersuit, & AT&T
was forced to negotiate a settlement (otherwise known as a surrender).

This case illustrates a little-known fact in the software industry:
the source & ownership of much of the proprietary code out there is not
certainly known. And I'm sure that more than one corporate manager
would admit that some parts of code look embarassingly similar to
the same code found in textbooks or even competitor's codebases. This
is not to say that anyone *intentionally* stole software from anyone
else -- just to say that there are an awful lot of questions about
lines of code that people would prefer not to ever need to answer.

SCO was banking that this was the case at IBM. Unfortunately for them,
IBM has been playing a similar game *cough* patents *cough* for decades,
& early on had taken the necessary measures to prevent something like
this being done to them. (It also helped that SCO's tactics were sloppy
& badly executed, but that's not relevant.)

Another factor about business fear of GPL/GFDL is that it's something
new & that many of them don't understand it. I think that, with a bit
of imagination & research, one can easily make money with GPL/GFDL; but
until someone makes billions with it -- much as a bunch of guys outside
Seattle made money from their strategy with computers -- I won't be
finding too many businessmen agreeing with me.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

>> <whisper>why they don't just use FreeBSD ...</whisper>

> <whisper>No compiler or debugger...</whisper>

Hey, Minix 3 has ACK! Perhaps the debugger could be called PTOOII.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Non-Commercial Usage

body:
I meant internet-only in relation to *images*.

It is burdensome to use *images* under the GFDL. Imagine attaching two
pages of legalese to include one 3" X 3" illustration. It's not
practical and there's no good reason to require it -- a simple tagline
that says "this is licensed under X and Y, see this URL" is enough for
me, personally.

That is -- yes, the GFDL was intended for longer printed works. I
don't think it works well for short works or images outside of an
electronic medium. What about audio works? I have a hard time
imagining people including a copy of the GFDL in a CD cover -- it's
longer than most linear notes.

I don't have any major gripes with the content of the GFDL, though I
think it could probably be written a bit clearer in some parts. But
the necessity to include the entire license, rather than, say, a
reliable reference (a URL, a citation, whatever) to the license, seems
to make it more practical in some mediums than others.

FF

On 11/29/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Fastfission wrote:
>
> >I think what you mean is Internet-only license. It is very easy to
> >include the GFDL in an electronic medium. It is relatively hard to
> >include it in a print one.
> >
> >
>
> It's not even an internet-only license: The only major category of works
> (of which I'm aware) for which displaying the GFDL in its entirety is
> burdensome is *short* printed works.  Longer printed works are, after
> all, what the GFDL was originally intended for, and in fact most of the
> license makes clearer sense with printed works than on the internet
> ("front-cover texts" and so on).  Printing the GFDL in a 300-page book
> isn't too much of a burden.
>
> It *is* true that the FSF doesn't appear to have anticipated the
> possibility that people might want to reproduce short excerpts from
> GFDL'd works, rather than always reproducing the entire work as a book.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Olve Utne

body:
At 10:04 29/11/2005, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
>while I find Mark's posting history to be, shall we say, voluminous,
>his language posts bring important subjects to a wider audience, and
>I have always gotten the impression that he is acting in good
>faith.  I haven't received the same impression from some of his detractors.

That is exactly my impression too.  It does not leave the best
impression of our community....

Respectfully,

-Olve

___________________

Olve Utne
http://utne.nvg.org


from_name: Gerrit Holl

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

In my opinion moderation is not at all necessary. It was at least two
sides that were behaving impolite. FWIW, I disagree with this decision.

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-11-29 22:59:46  -11.0 degrees Celsius ( 12.2F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikitech-l] server for nagios

body:
>
> I might have lost track of the discussion at some point, but could you
> quickly reiterate what problem you're trying to solve with Nagios, and
> why Ganglia proper isn't a good fit if you intend to be collecting
> data
> from it?

Ganglia is for performance trends. Nagios is for monitoring events.

Domas


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help desk volunteers wanted!

body:
The good news: Wikipedia is more popular than ever. The bad news:
we're getting buried in mail! Looking for clueful and friendly people
to staff the help desk once more. (Also, if you indicated you were
interested before, please reply to me again so I know if you're still
interested.)

I don't think I can improve upon sannse's original description, so:

> We are looking for a long-standing contributor with a good knowledge of
> the English Wikipedia and its policies and procedures.  You should also
> have a working knowledge of other projects.  You need to have infinite
> patience to reply to the same newbie questions time after time, and a
> friendly and helpful style of writing.  Most important is the ability
> not to laugh at people who write to tell us we have a massive security
> hole - an edit link on each page!!!11!.
>
> Being active on IRC is an advantage - it makes a real difference to be
> able to talk over the tricky ones sometimes.
>
> Pay is at the usual Wikipedia rate of lots of good feeling and all the
> cookies you can eat.
>
> Hopefully there will be a big rush of applicants for this wonderful job,
> and I will ask those volunteering to answer a few mails to see if you
> have the style we are looking for.  Jimbo will have the final say though.
>
> Please mail me directly rather than replying to the list if you are
> interested.

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]

p.s. We're lying about the cookies.

--
"There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily
escaped the chronicler's mind."  --Douglas Adams


from_name: Darwin Sadeli

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Thumbnails

body:
Hi,

Currently I'm trying to replicate wikipedia contents into a local
system for a research project. I've managed to download the whole
article database and image dumps, but the image thumbnails are still
missing. Are the image thumbnails available for download, and if yes,
where can I download it? Thanks.

Regards,
Darwin S.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Expertise

body:
On 11/21/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Good point.  Guidelines exist; they can't all be junked.  On the other hand
> they exist in tension.  Unfortunately, policy, semi-policy, guideline,
> whatever, is used in the same fashion as stone clubs in the Neolithic:
> anything to hand to win an argument.  (Yes, yes, uncalled-for slur on Fred
> Flintstone, I know.)

If something really valuable gets deleted, just undelete it.  If this
happens often enough, deletion policy will be subject to refinement.


from_name: Puddl Duk

body:
On 11/29/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/29/05, Brian <brian0918 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
> >
> > Talk amongst yourselves.
>
> I find it ironic that this guy founded the "Freedom Forum First
> Amendment Center".  Sounds like he doesn't really care that much about
> the First Amendment.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________

The first amendment doesn't have anything to do with this.
Assassinating someones character with malicious, unfounded rumors in
NOT a first amendment right.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Image Thumbnails

body:
Darwin Sadeli wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Currently I'm trying to replicate wikipedia contents into a local
> system for a research project. I've managed to download the whole
> article database and image dumps, but the image thumbnails are still
> missing. Are the image thumbnails available for download, and if yes,
> where can I download it? Thanks.

Make sure you have:
  $wgUseImageResize = true;

Then make sure you have gd extension in php (thats bundled in and
usually activated).

You can also use imagemagick instead of gd:
  $wgUseImageMagick = true;
  $wgImageMagickConvertCommand = "/usr/bin/convert";

Note: thumbnails are generated when you view an article.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


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

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> How would it be a big help?
>
> Mark
>
> On 28/11/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>>I'm not sure it's nessecary. As both Angela and I have already noted
>>>in this thread, there is already a group dedicated to monitoring small
>>>Wikis for spam and vandalism.
>>
>>"Not necessary" is not a reason to not do it. It is a help. And
>>personally, I think this would be a *big* help.

The idea is that we can get the inactive wikis to send they rc feed in
one irc channel. For example: #inactives .

Then people can reuse their bot to use that channel, analyse the stream
and report warning.

There is a very good tool written in Java that could be used by the team:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CDVF

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
In light of the recent USA Today article:

In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
sourced.

In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
information that we can verify ourselves.

brian0918


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Templates used in this page"

body:
Brian wrote:
> Is there a way to move the less useful "Templates used in this page"
> section to be below the more useful character-insert and editing
> guidelines?

Your site? Go in and edit EditPage.php.

Our site? Wait until I finish committing updates to EditPage.php.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fair use in non-English Wikipedias (moved from
	wikien)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 11/29/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>We would rather have the smallest amount of fair use content (or
>>>otherwise unfree content) on Wikipedia possible, because it would
>>>maximize our goal to be a *free* encyclopedia.
>>>
>>>
>>This makes philosophical sense.  It allows for "some" free use
>>material.  "Some" is a moving target that relies on flexibility and
>>common sense.  Unfortunately, some people prefer absolute black and
>>white rules that avoid exercising common sense.
>>
>>
>(I presume you intended 'fair' not free above)
>
Damn typos!  :-[

>I think we should be as black and white as it makes sense, but no more.
>A complete prohibition against fair use would make a substantial
>number of subjects effectively unillustratable and would put us at a
>competitive disadvantage to other encyclopedias.
>
Our competitive disadvantage is not a legal argument for fair use, but
the effect on the author's market is.  Where we do seem to agree is that
some level of fair use is acceptable, even if we would determine that
acceptability in different ways.

>>The public interest argument when used alone may be very weak.  The
>>first question that should come up when fair use is claimed is, "Does
>>this contributor understand fair use?"
>>
>>
>The answer to that on english wikipedia is a resounding NO in a great
>many cases.
>
>
>>Perhaps the information page for
>>any image claimed to be fair use should include a fair use analysis
>>section where the contributor MUST answer a series of relevant
>>questions.  In addition to applying the four criteria of US law the
>>person would need to show where the picture comes from.  If it is from a
>>book he would need to show any credits which the author of the book gave
>>with regards to the picture; it's important to be able to trace a
>>picture to its original source.
>>
>>
>I would support this, but there is such a huge amount of material
>already there and such a huge resistance to removing any of it. (I get
>yelled at when tagging totally orphaned 'fair use' material for
>deletion!).  I'm not sure of how we get there from where we are today.
>
One image at a time. :-)

I presume you mean orphaned by the contributor rather than the original
photographer.  If the contributor isn't around anymore to comment or
explain why he thinks it's fair use, there's not much you can do to
change that.  A statement of where the picture came from should be
essential; if a third party intervenor can't supply that information for
the anon or long lost contributor your choice is limited.  If your
approach is scrupulously fair it is difficult to argue against it. ...
but I say this without ever examining how you approach this in an
individual case.

>>He should also be prepared to show why the picture is NOT in the public
>>domain.  This is important because having a work in the public domain
>>would make any fair use argument moot.
>>
>>
>That's usually pretty darn easy, (unfortunately) thanks to modern copyright law.
>
Not always.  Questions of which country's laws apply are not easy.
Whether a US copyright has been renewed can be a problem.  Not knowing
when a picture was taken, or by whom can be a problem.

>>>We don't extend the same tolerance for 'with permission' or
>>>'non-commercial' because it isn't at all clear that choice of freedom
>>>in that case cuts us out from a great number of images which we could
>>>obtain in no other way.
>>>
>>>
>>I would follow this, but not without some regret..  Simply put, I think
>>that a lot of people who add these provisions to our apparent source
>>have probably not thought this through.  Personally, I would prefer to
>>allow much of this material with the proper credits and caveats.  In
>>many ways the due dilligence required by a downstream user of our
>>pictures is no different from that required by a downstream user of our
>>information.  That user has his own responsibility for verifying that
>>the information is accurate.
>>
>>
>I don't agree. In many cases where we use an image under fair use,
>there is very little to no chance of getting the work available under
>a free license.  If the work has already been licensed under
>cc-by-nc-sa it is highly likely that we can get a copy under cc-by-sa
>or GFDL, by using the argument that the SA requirements (or GFDL's
>requirements) are onerous enough that people engaging in the sort of
>commercial distribution they are trying to inhibit via cc-by-nc will
>still be interested in obtaining a separate copyright license under
>more liberal terms.
>
>Furthermore, some people feel that cc-by-nc-sa is unethical because
>claims to discriminate against some classes of use rather than just
>distribution (but likely actually fails in that goal because as a
>copyright license, rather than a contract, it has no ability to impose
>such limitations).
>
>Frankly, our fair use images are actually more 'free' than cc-by-nc-sa
>content that we could have for many of our uses. If we were to produce
>a print edition we could only use cc-by-nc-sa if we could also claim
>fair use, which happens to be less likely for this content simply
>because of its nature.
>
>I want it to be possible to produce and sell a print edition of
>Wikipedia complete with illustrations, this is only realistically
>possible if we limit our content to be Free or fair use (because a
>print edition would be able to make the same fair use claims as the
>online).
>
I must confess that I have made no effort to understand the whole issue
of cc- licences.  They just seem like so much needless complications.  I
tend to regard such notices as meaningless, especially if they are on
some user page where the claim is made that it applies to everything
submitted by that user.  Currently my position is that anything that I
contribute is adequately covered by GFDL, and anybody else's claim that
a cc- licence applies  can be ignored.

I don't expect that those people who are having diifficulty
understanding the principles of copyright are going to do any better
with the subtleties of what distinguishes GFDL from CC.

>>>In any case, there is already pressure from some on English Wikipedia
>>>to further restrict our use of fair use to only cases where it can
>>>clearly be articulated that no reasonable freely licensed content
>>>could be created to replace the fair use image.
>>>
>>>
>>This is one more question that could be asked in a fair use analysis
>>
>>
>It's a question we're starting to ask.
>
>
>>Section 107 of the US copyright law includes "Notwithstanding the
>>provisions of Sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work,
>>... for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching
>>(including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research,
>>is not an infringement of copyright.
>>
>>This is much wider that just criticism.  The reference to Section 106A
>>suggests that it is not even necessary to even attribute the source, but
>>this seems contrary to the fair dealing as it exists in other
>>countries.  Notwithstanding this I think that academic integrity
>>requires proper attribution even for works that have been in the public
>>domain for a very long time.
>>
>>
>
>The statute is vague, and you've only quoted it in part making it moreso.
>A reading of what you've quoted would imply that a school can
>willfully ignore any copyright they wish as long is it is in the
>furtherance of their primary objection.
>
The phrase that I omitted, "including such use by reproduction in copies
or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section," deals
with form rather than substance, but does not help in developing an
understanding of what fair use is.  The four criteria add further
guideles for determining fair use.  When interpreting the often
long-winded and circuitous language of statutes I find that it helps to
reduce a provision to its essentials.  Once that is done one can add
things back one at a time to see if they are relevant to the situation
at hand.  Are "phonorecords" very important to what we are doing at this
time?

>As a taxpayer who has seen
>what his local school district spends on text books, I certainly wish
>this were true. Alas...
>
Not just textbooks, but site licences too.  School districts often end
up in these situations because senior governments haven't got the guts
to make the hard decisions that they need to.  Our own current
provincial government has a philosophy that supports privatized
government services.  They haven't privatized the educational system
(yet), but there is constant speculation that they may try to merge
school districts as a cost saving tool.

Many school districts have neither the funding nor the expertise to do
what needs to be done to cope with the rising cost of materials.
Promoting the broad use of open source software is still a hard sell.
The vested interests have done a good marketting job in telling school
districts that only their publications are authorized and authoratative.

Authorized textbooks are a scam.  There is no good reason why a group of
teachers can't get together to use a wiki to write a textbook that would
be every bit as good as what they now get from a high priced publisher.
The costs would then be limited to the costs of physical production,
which in a big enough district could be done with an in-house printing
facility.  It might even be cheap enough to allow them to have teachers
diverted from a few hours of class room duties to work on textbooks.  As
in any profession the ability to take on-the-job time for reflection and
development is as important as the time spent in direct production.

Sorry, looks like I getting too much into an education rant.

>The fact of the matter is that most everything that matters about fair
>use in the US comes out of case law, not the statute.
>
Absolutely, but the implications of that have not sunk in with people
who think that everything in law is simple and straightforward.  The
various free licences are still untested in the courts.

>You are correct that the simple use of the word criticism was an
>oversimplification. However, I believe such a statement captures the
>spirit of the primary intention of fair use in the US (and its cousins
>around the world) which is that we need to provide some relaxation of
>the otherwise oppressive control a copyright holder has in order to
>safeguard the ability for the public to engage in criticism,
>discussion, and other academic endeavors.
>
I see scholarship and research as equally important.  I'm not going to
take up the question of oppressive copyright holders now; that would be
another rant.

>>It's good that reliance is being reduced, but an absolutism that denies
>>the use of all fair use images does not seem warranted.  It is easy to
>>imagine situations where allowing a fair use image would be the right
>>thing to do.  This might include images where the copyright status is
>>unclear, or orphan works.  These can always be taken down easily if
>>there is a complaint from a person with the right to make that
>>complaint.  If such material lasts long enough (I would suggest three
>>years from the upload date.) the doctrine of laches could become applicable.
>>
>>
>While I agree that there are cases where permitting fair use makes
>sense, I think your cited examples are cases where we should not use
>fair use.  If we can not claim fair use via traditional rationale,
>then we are just saying "Lets break the law, call it fair use, play
>stupid, and IFF we are caught we'll fix it because we know the penalty
>isn't so bad".
>
>That you continue the argument with "(if we break the law long enough)
>maybe we'll get a ruling that we're allowed to contine because they
>didn't catch us sooner".
>
Where did I say anything about breaking the law?  Fair use is not a
breech of law.

>It is *exactly* this sort of reasoning that worries me so greatly.
>Were I a judge and someone brough me a case where it was shown that:
>1) Wikipedia was persistently infringing their copyrights.
>
I have not said anything about "persistently" infringing anybody's copyright

>2) Wikipedia was requiring the copyright holder to jump through a
>hoops for each and every image they wanted down.
>
Again we are dealing with one-off situations.  As long as we are dealing
with someone's first claim "each and every" does not enter the picture.

>3) Wikipedia was making outrageous claims of fair use
>
What makes a claim outrageous?

>4) Wikipedia administrators having discussions about how we don't need
>to worry too much about following the law because we can take material
>down after a complaint (and thus after much damage is potentially
>done) and not suffer any harm.
>5) Wikipedia administrators having discussions about how if we ignore
>our legal obligations long enough we might just manage to kill the
>copyright holders right...
>
That such things would need to be discussed is normal when there are
differences of opinion.  There is nothing conspiratorial to it as you
seem to suggest..  Favorable interpretations of the law are not illegal.

>Well, if someone brought me that I wouldn't think to hard before
>issuing an injunction demanding Wikipedia be taken off line until it
>could demonstrate that it wasn't infringing on anyone's copyrights.
>
But nobody is bringing that to you.  Far from it.  Your last remaks seem
to overdramatize the situation.

Ec


from_name: Netocrat

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Patch: suppress auto-numbering of TOC and honour
	user	prefs

body:
On Sat, 24 Sep 2005 23:07:07 +1000, Netocrat wrote:

> This is a minimal change to add a new magic token that prevents
> numbering of the TOC and to do the same when the user option "Auto-number
> headings" under "Misc" in "Preferences" is set.
                                             ^^^
Should have been "not set", but since I misinterpreted the purpose of that
preference, I'm not surprised the patch received no attention.

Here's a new patch that deals solely with suppressing TOC/heading
auto-numbering when a __NOTOCNUM__ directive is included in the page.
Same reasoning as originally (e.g. for FAQ pages where deprecated answers
are removed but new content should not reuse that answer's number):

> The token directive is useful because some sections in a wiki may already
> include numbering as part of the heading and suppressing auto-numbering is
> useful in those cases.

Let me know if there's a more appropriate place to submit this.

Index: includes/Parser.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/includes/Parser.php,v
retrieving revision 1.533
diff -u -r1.533 Parser.php
--- includes/Parser.php	27 Nov 2005 06:04:41 -0000	1.533
+++ includes/Parser.php	29 Nov 2005 14:09:35 -0000
@@ -2708,6 +2708,11 @@
 	function formatHeadings( $text, $isMain=true ) {
 		global $wgMaxTocLevel, $wgContLang, $wgLinkHolders, $wgInterwikiLinkHolders;

+		# do not number TOC entries or corresponding headings if the string
+		# __NOTOCNUM__  (not case-sensitive) occurs in the HTML
+		$mw =& MagicWord::get( MAG_NOTOCNUM );
+		$noTocNum = $mw->matchAndRemove( $text );
+
 		$doNumberHeadings = $this->mOptions->getNumberHeadings();
 		$doShowToc = true;
 		$forceTocHere = false;
@@ -2836,16 +2841,18 @@

 				$levelCount[$toclevel] = $level;

-				# count number of headlines for each level
-				@$sublevelCount[$toclevel]++;
-				$dot = 0;
-				for( $i = 1; $i <= $toclevel; $i++ ) {
-					if( !empty( $sublevelCount[$i] ) ) {
-						if( $dot ) {
-							$numbering .= '.';
+				if (! $noTocNum ) {
+					# count number of headlines for each level
+					@$sublevelCount[$toclevel]++;
+					$dot = 0;
+					for( $i = 1; $i <= $toclevel; $i++ ) {
+						if( !empty( $sublevelCount[$i] ) ) {
+							if( $dot ) {
+								$numbering .= '.';
+							}
+							$numbering .= $wgContLang->formatNum( $sublevelCount[$i] );
+							$dot = 1;
 						}
-						$numbering .= $wgContLang->formatNum( $sublevelCount[$i] );
-						$dot = 1;
 					}
 				}
 			}
Index: languages/Language.php
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/wikipedia/phase3/languages/Language.php,v
retrieving revision 1.741
diff -u -r1.741 Language.php
--- languages/Language.php	28 Nov 2005 23:56:35 -0000	1.741
+++ languages/Language.php	29 Nov 2005 14:09:56 -0000
@@ -203,6 +203,7 @@
 #   ID                                 CASE  SYNONYMS
 	MAG_REDIRECT             => array( 0,    '#REDIRECT'              ),
 	MAG_NOTOC                => array( 0,    '__NOTOC__'              ),
+	MAG_NOTOCNUM             => array( 0,    '__NOTOCNUM__'           ),
 	MAG_FORCETOC             => array( 0,    '__FORCETOC__'           ),
 	MAG_TOC                  => array( 0,    '__TOC__'                ),
 	MAG_NOEDITSECTION        => array( 0,    '__NOEDITSECTION__'      ),

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Deletion of Wikibooks content by Jimbo

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
>> Jokebooks are completely out of place in Wikibooks because they do
>> not serve a
>> valid educational purpose. A textbook on comedy that had example
>> jokes in it
>> would be welcome, however. This type of distinction was decided on
>> when I
>> helped found Wikibooks, so Jimbo is not acting by executive fiat. He
>> is simply
>> trying to put that project back on track.
>
> I may be misremembering, but I don't recall an explicit and narrow
> requirement that Wikibooks be "educational" when it was set up, and
> certainly not "educational" in the narrow sense of "something that a
> university would teach".  Of course textbooks were a major sort of
> book that people had in mind, but I don't recall anyone saying that
> *only* textbooks would be permitted (not to mention defining what
> constitutes a "textbook"!).
>
> Instead, I recall a focus mostly centered around *format*---Wikibooks
> was to be a place for book-like things that were of a detail, length,
> or tone (e.g. how-tos or lengthy narrative exposition) unsuitable for
> an encyclopedia article and therefore unsuitable for Wikipedia, but
> still useful as information in some sense.  I took as a possibly
> mistaken implicit assumption that the *content* was to be basically
> the same as Wikipedia---anything verifiable and neutral.

This is essentially the way I remember it too. I'm sure that if Mav sees
it differently he should be able to cite something to support his facts.

Ec


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

geni wrote:

> Disscussion of changes to election procedures were held at
> [[Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2005/Proposed
> modifications to rules]]. In the spirit of slow change those were
> started in august.

Curious. I was under the impression that those were essentially a joke.
The last time I looked, not one of the proposals wasn't (a) already
discussed at length and, by consensus, dismissed, and (b) made in any
sort of constructive way - most of them were proposed changes on what
the Committee was, rather than how to help it do its job effectively,
and there was no differentiation between changes to the voting system
and changes to the system being voted upon.

I do note, looking at it now, that on both these points the discussions
seem to have improved to an extent, but it's disheartening in the
extreme to see that no-one has attempted to refactor the page for
usefulness (for example, proposals 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, and 11, at the very
least, seem to have been rejected by most participants, yet they remain
on the page, just the same as all the others).

We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the
people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in the
past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must point
out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real
discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness of a
set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.

Yours,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Snowspinner wrote:
> On Nov 29, 2005, at 9:31 PM, James D. Forrester wrote:
>
> > We've been doing this for two whole years now. Couldn't some of the
> > people who - despite **not a single change or new statement made in the
> > past month** have all of a sudden started protesting (and, I must point
> > out, entirely justifiably) - have actually tried to start a real
> > discussion, instead of a point-by-point aimless hybrid nothingness of a
> > set of discussions randomly and uselessly lumped together.
>
> In practice? Probably not.

Ha. Well, even so, I would like to apologise for that rant of mine. It
was foolish of me to post it; I would like to blame it on being both
very tired and greatly distressed by the sudden rise in people who are
interested in the rather tricky matter of how to chose the appointments
to the Committee as compared to the past year as I've been talking to
people and trying to find someone, anyone who actually cares, but that
would be ducking the blame, and I wouldn't want to do that.

I'm sorry, especially to anyone who might have felt that I was attacking
them. That was not my intent, and certainly is not my motive in general.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
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subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Brian wrote:
>
>
>
>>In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags using
>>a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start out by
>>placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources, and then, if
>>it is not sourced in a week, create something like the {{copvio}}
>>page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire article),
>>explaining with a detailed message that the article must be thoroughly
>>sourced.
>>
>>
>
>
>I don't know about enforcing it ... but, on en: at least, the
>{{unreferenced}} tag (which {{unsourced}} redirects to) is there for
>anyone who wants to use them. I put it on articles I happen across that
>are (a) not a stub (b) don't have even an external link somewhere.
>
>
>
>
I agree about that, but I think the templates currently aren't taken too
seriously. People will be motivated to cite/reference with this proposed
system, or something like it. And it seems like something that we should
automatically be requiring. Peer-reviewed encyclopedias do not require
this, because they have trusted, known contributors. Our contributors
are not known in anything like the same sense, so we have to show the
public that our content is based on verifiable information.

>>In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
>>difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
>>articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
>>articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't solve
>>everything, but I think it should be a vital part of Wikipedia; since we
>>do not know who edits an article, we need to know that it is based on
>>information that we can verify ourselves.
>>
>>
>
>
>It's hard to *enforce*. It's already good practice per
>[[:en:Wikipedia:Verifiability]].
>
>
>
I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
"References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
We need only do the same thing with article templates.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Brian wrote:
>
>
>
>>I don't think it would be too hard to enforce. To start, a bot can look
>>for any external links in the article, or for use of one of the common
>>reference templates. Either that, or search for a section called
>>"References", "Sources" or "External links". To enforce image tagging,
>>we have appropriate image templates which are flagged/ignored by a bot.
>>We need only do the same thing with article templates.
>>
>>
>
>
>OK, a semi-automatic bot-assisted {{unreferenced}}-tagging. That'll find
>them. We can then run "find the sources" drives. Sound workable?
>
>
I like the idea very much. It will encourage people to not only provide
citations for unsourced articles, but make it a general part of everyday
activity.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


body:
Is there a way to move the less useful "Templates used in this page"
section to be below the more useful character-insert and editing guidelines?


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] How to develop policy in a multilingual organization

body:
"If you contribute to the Wikimedia projects, you are publishing every
word you post publicly."

german translation:
"Wenn Sie zu den Wikimedia-Projekten beitragen, ver?ffentlichen Sie
jedes Wort, das sie abschicken, ?ffentlich."

That's the second sentence of our privacy policy, to be found on
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
and inspires me to loose a few words on how policy writing should be
handled in a multilingual project:

* Decide on the core principles of the policy - the essential rules
* Create a nice, elaborate page in english which you place on the
Foundation wiki as the official policy
* Ask the community to create inofficial translations based on the
essential rules - they may want to phrase a few things differently, some
things may need longer or shorter explanations depending on culture,
country or project. They may translate the english version word by word
but are free to formulate the essential rules in their own words if they
prefer.
* Each translation should have a note on top that in doubt the english
version is the valid one.

In the case of the privacy policy, I decided to act on these principles.

The german privacy policy at
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Datenschutz tries to say the same
as the english one but in own words. Some paragraphs and sentences which
are not part of the core rules were shortened for the sake of clarity
and readability.

If you disagree with this you may want to find community members who
will create a literal translation. My feel for language and style
doesn't allow me to do so.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
What if he had never found it?

We need more fact checking.

Fred

On Nov 29, 2005, at 9:13 PM, Christopher Larberg wrote:

> I hate to be the wet blanket to this man's Wikipedia-bashing party,
> but
> did he ever try correcting the article himself?


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:

>
>>
>> It's an interesting idea, but it would apply to so many articles on
>> such a coarse grained way it may wind up being ignored. Perhaps such a
>> function could be tied to the TOC, so that each section would have a
>> flag of whether it had been sourced to satisfaction.
>>
>> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>>
> And who is going to have time to check all the sources. Also most of
> the material that I write comes from books as I hate the external link
> festivity some articles become. So who is going to check the books I
> use. Hint you can find my library I have at my disposal in Thailand
> here: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:Waerth/Mijn_bronnen (it
> is in Dutch but you get my drift).
>
Creating a "References" section or using a template to make a proper
book citation will be just as detectable as using an external link. We
are currently only talking about citing sources, not about verifying
them. Articles need to be referenced before their contents can be verified.

> Also I think it is wrong to play panick over one criticism. Yes things
> need to be done. We knew that for years already. To now start
> panicking and coming with emergency reactions we might not help the
> situation.
>
This isn't panicking. This is doing what we should have been doing all
along, and treating our article content with the same importance that we
treat our image content. This is a step in the right direction.


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE

body:
The problem is that the bulk of our content has no explicit source.
It may be correct and unchallenged, but no source is listed.
Additionally, a slightly more sophisticated level of vandalism would
simply list a spurious source. Beyond that lies referencing a source
which is known to be in error.

Fred

On Nov 29, 2005, at 10:58 PM, Brian wrote:

> In light of the recent USA Today article:
>
> In the same way that we are currently enforcing proper image tags
> using a bot, could we do the same with unsourced articles? Start
> out by placing {{unsourced}} in all the articles lacking sources,
> and then, if it is not sourced in a week, create something like the
> {{copvio}} page-replacer to hide the unsourced content (the entire
> article), explaining with a detailed message that the article must
> be thoroughly sourced.
>
> In my mind, at least, it doesn't seem like there should be any
> difference between enforcing sources for images and sources for
> articles. If anything we should be enforcing the latter more, since
> articles form the basis of the encyclopedia. I know this won't
> solve everything, but I think it should be a vital part of
> Wikipedia; since we do not know who edits an article, we need to
> know that it is based on information that we can verify ourselves.
>
> brian0918
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Enforcing WP:CITE


from_name: Michael P Hopcroft

subject: [WikiEN-l] Most read US newpaper blasts Wikipedia

body:
kosebamse at gmx.net wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>> The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-alpha or
>> early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black
>> "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
>>
>
> The even more basic problem is everybody and their dog laments about article
> quality, yet nobody is bold enough to tell the world that we have already
> way too much garbage and can't even tell what is garbage and what is not. It
> has long been obvious to the insiders, and I am actually amazed that the
> rest of the world is only now beginning to realize it. Wikipedians need to
> realize that no amount of mediocre-to-shitty articles can compensate for a
> lack of quality content.
> A helpful approach would be to stop accepting new articles, take our
> content, scrutinise it and rewrite it from zero. Rewrite the encyclopedia
> and let the warriors/nutters/clueless kids have their fun, but not on our
> servers. Ah, the charm of radical solutions.
>
An even more radical, but ultimately rational, approach would be to
admit that the Wikipedia experiment is a disastrous failure and shut the
site down completely and permanently.

A project with two equally important goals that are utterly incompatible
by definition -- why was it launched in the first place? Wouldn't any
rational observer have seen a result like this as not only possible but
likely, if not inevitable?

The USA Today article makes a case not just for the obliteration of
Wikipedia but ultimately for taking down the Internet itself.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Foundation-l] Most read US newpaper blasts
	Wikipedia

body:
The root of the problem is that using our software and site a person
is able to do harm to another anonymously. This harm is then
"innocently" spread by Google and our mirrors.

It is rather time consuming and difficult to actually identify an
editor. Much more difficult then say validating a credit card (which,
if the money arrives, is good).

Perhaps we should run two versions: a public version which could be
googled and mirrored and a semi-private version which could not be
googled or mirrored. The public version would be cited and fact-
checked; the semi-private version a work in progress.

To implement this, google would be blocked from the main site and no
distribution would be made of its contents. The public version would
be built from scratch with all information fact checked.

This would also prevent using our site for googlebombing which is a
major motive with some exploitive users.

Fred

On Nov 30, 2005, at 2:03 AM, Keith Old wrote:

> We should look again at allowing anonymous edits, This seems to
> have been
> the root of the problem.
>
> Blogs and webforums have more rigorous requirements to leave
> remarks than we
> do. I acknowledge that most anonymous editors contribute in good
> faith but
> many do not.
> Further, the cost of cleaning up after the ones who do not detracts
> from the
> main work of writing the encyclopedia. I am not calling for
> credentialism
> but registering as a user.
>
> It also means that many users are blocked for 24 hours as a result of
> sharing an IP with a vandal. I had to change my ISP last year
> because of
> vandalism from someone else. We also have had rogue registered
> users but at
> least we have procedures to deal with those.
>
> Further, the anonymous nature of the edits means that many edits are
> unfairly discounted because people can't be sure of the value of
> the edits.
> As a volunteer of the help desk, I am aware of at least two
> professors who
> have tried to edit but have had their edits removed. That may have
> been fair
> enough in one case but the point remains. A point made by Professor X
> carries much more weight than a point made by IP 123.xx.
>
> A similar problem occurs with copyvios. On a couple of occasions,
> people
> have uploaded material from their personal webpages which have been
> speedy
> deleted as copyvios. If they were identified, there would have been a
> greater chance that their right would have been recognised.
>
> We need to do a cost/benefit analysis showing what we gain from
> allowing
> anonymous edits compared to the losses of cleaning up vandalism from
> anonymous edits.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
>
> Keith Old
> User:Capitalistroadster
>
> On 11/30/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>>
>> Andrew Lih wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I know what you're saying, and I don't think anyone on the
>>> Foundation-L list would endorse anything like regulation or being on
>>> the hook legally.
>>> But this clearly should be added to the wake up calls -- "SOFIXIT"
>>> does not cut it anymore. Wikipedia cannot enjoy the bragging
>>> rights of
>>> a "Top 40" web site without changing its quality standards to match.
>>>
>>
>>
>> The problem is that we peaked way too early. The site is late-
>> alpha or
>> early beta at best, and should have big 1995-style yellow and black
>> "UNDER CONSTRUCTION" GIFs with really bad aliasing on most pages.
>>
>> There's no drastic solution that won't fuck up the community
>> operations
>> of the site. Running a hack'n'slash cull on the live site will
>> lead to
>> the current webcomics debacle times a thousand. We already have
>> specialists in all sorts of areas saying they don't even want to
>> bother
>> starting to write up something they know for Wikipedia because (quote
>> from Sunday's UK meet) "some idiot will delete it *because* they
>> don't
>> understand it." Imagine that outside attitude for a thousand
>> specialist
>> subjects.
>>
>>
>>
>>> I'm not convinced the Article Rating feature that is waiting in the
>>> wings is the right or efficient way to do it. But we have to get
>>> closer to the "1.0" solution. It's time.
>>>
>>
>>
>> There isn't a fast way and article rating isn't a fast way either.
>> There
>> is no silver bullet. We are early beta (usable and testable but
>> mostly
>> composed of bugs) and the real world will need to get used to that,
>> because there is no way to change that in the next week or month.
>>
>> I suspect we'll actually be able to work better if we're not
>> flavour of
>> the month.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Introduction

body:
On 11/29/05, normannormal at gmail.com <normannormal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello to everyone!
>
> My name's Luis, from Uruguay.
> I am new to the list, and hope I will be able to help in the
> development of the wonderful MediaWiki. I?ve been looking for some tasks in bugzilla to start (any suggestions?)
>
> Also, once I have familiarized with the development process, I am very interested in the MediaWiki 2 projects and the Complex tasks.
>
> Cheers,
> Luis

Hi Luis, you might want to look at the list of bugs that are open and
are not enhancements in bugzilla:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=advanced&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr&short_desc=&product=MediaWiki&long_desc_type=substring&long_desc=&bug_file_loc_type=allwordssubstr&bug_file_loc=&keywords_type=allwords&keywords=&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&bug_severity=blocker&bug_severity=critical&bug_severity=major&bug_severity=normal&bug_severity=minor&bug_severity=trivial&emailassigned_to1=1&emailtype1=substring&email1=&emailassigned_to2=1&emailreporter2=1&emailcc2=1&emailtype2=substring&email2=&bugidtype=include&bug_id=&votes=&chfieldfrom=&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=&cmdtype=doit&order=Reuse+same+sort+as+last+time&field0-0-0=noop&type0-0-0=noop&value0-0-0=

Or just pick something you want to work on and think needs to be done.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Brian wrote:

> http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm
>
>
> Talk amongst yourselves.

Shrug, one more person discovers WP.

Although most days I'm irritated by anons in one way or another,
requiring login creation doesn't change the equation that much;
imagine everybody just creating logins named the same as each IP
they use, and adding "-1", "-2", "-3" for reuses of an IP number.
At most it would help in tracking groups of related changes.

The problem of unsourced libels is not unique to us, we share that
with the blogosphere. We do have the mechanisms to fix it, but not
enough knowledgeable people doing the watching - if I had been
watching this guy's page, I might have let the addition go through,
because it sounds plausible, includes a caveat that the claim might
have been unfounded, and since 99% of additions don't include a
source, it's not unusual that way either.

We could just get a lot more hardnosed about reverting suspect
changes; since our last discussion about all this, I've personally
taken a tougher line about instantly reverting poor changes, and
so far no one seems to have protested my high-handedness. I wonder
how it would go if I summarily reverted all unsourced edits??

Stan


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

body:
On 11/30/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The root of the problem is that using our software and site a person
> is able to do harm to another anonymously. This harm is then
> "innocently" spread by Google and our mirrors ...
> Perhaps we should run two versions: a public version which could be
> googled and mirrored and a semi-private version which could not be
> googled or mirrored.

Fred has raised an important point here. I'd like to see our talk
pages not be googled or mirrored, if that's possible. I'm dealing with
a situation at the moment where two registered users are out to cause
harm to a semi-notable, real-life person. They inserted insulting
material about him into an article, he kept deleting it, ended up
being blocked for 3RR, complained to Jimbo, and after much
back-and-forth, the material was removed. Now, the users who inserted
it are discussing the situation and how terrible this person is on the
article talk page. I think they're doing it deliberately to get the
information out there, but they're not violating policy, so there's
nothing I can do to stop them. With the whole site being picked up by
google, whether something's in an article that's monitored for
unsourced material or on a talk page that isn't, actually makes no
difference in terms of how far the material ends up getting spread.

Sarah


body:
I hesitated to post this message because I don't want
to take credit for the idea.  It was actually an idea
put forth by Johntex, relayed to me after the recent
meetup he'd gone to.  I'm not sure that he subscribes
to wikien-l, though, so I thought I'd mention it FWIW.
 I believe he also relayed the idea to Jimbo so
perhaps this has already been circulated.

Johntex's idea is essentially a spinoff of an
"approved" version.  He essentially proposed that
Wikipedia create an additional "tab" people could
click on to see the last "approved" version.
Everybody can still edit the non-approved version,
just as normal.  And I guess, taking the idea out to
its logical extreme, at intervals the two versiosn
would be compared and any new information meshed into
the "approved" version.  This way everybody can still
edit and contribute, but anyone concerned about
ensuring the version they're looking at has been
vetted thoroughly could simply click on the "approved"
tab.

Thoughts?

Kate

__________________________________
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