from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi All,

I'll better explain the whole story... our situation is:
1) after getting some nice media exposure traffic started to rise (about 5
published articles since March, 27; 2 of them on national media)
2) people do register, but actually 90% of what we get is from anon users,
from the grammar mistakes they usually make I'd say it's at least 4 main
contributors working almost every day, but all efforts to contact them have
proved unsuccesful this far

Now, I get the impression that a number of papers could use us as a free
source for some kind "Not everybody knows that..." section of their papers.
This would:
1) get a permanent exposure to the wiki
2) increase wiki's authorithy as a public data source
3) get people in touch with the written form of their language.

The main contribution waves came exactly when important media published pms
text quoted from the wiki, so it seems to make sense to work on this. Most
people are not familiar both with reading and writing the language and with
the very concept of a wiki. By acquiring some stable presence in the paper
media we could use the trend that is manifesting itself on spontaneous
basis.

It's not a problem to have a small copyright related text published in small
chars, from our marketing POV we'd want the wiki URL published in bigger
chars. Please bear in mind that given the current trend we'll have NO way to
contact 90% of the authors.

??: "Andre Engels" <andreengels at gmail.com>
> This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense",
> which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls
> under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be
> copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified
> form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A
> copy of this article can be found on our website at
> http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.

Newspapers will need a much shorter text, IMHO. We are going to stand
somewhere in the "local chronicle" page, sometimes in the "Culture" section,
we cannot really expect them to waste this much room. What about writing:
"The original text is published at http://pms.wikipedia.org/wiki/article and
released under a GNU Free Documentation License. Details can be obtained at
http://pms.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia/GNUFDL "

At this point we would use a template to point readers of the original
article to a machine readable copy inside the wiki, in a special namespace
(say Printed_Articles:), where one could know who published what and were.

If it seems to make sense to the people here I'll try my luck in asking the
board to issue an official authorisation for this use.
Thanks
B?rto

PS I suggest to all minor language edition to try this marketing trick. And
the smaller and more local the paper mentioning you, the more contributors
you seem to get. Just make sure that text gets published in the same
language as the original.

----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "Sabine Cretella" <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it>
????: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
??????????: 12 ???? 2006 ?. 14:45
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

> Hi Berto,
>
> consider that it is less of a problem when the authors are for example
> three/four you know. If you all agree to publish that specific article
> under another license (for example cc-by) you can do that - this means:
> each author can publish the own work under various licenses.
>
> Small wikipedias like us (pms, nap, lmo etc.) have less problems in that
> way - it is enough that you take the article, contact all contributors
> (of course anonymous contributors cannot be contacted ... don't really
> know how to deal with that one) and have them state that the article may
> be used under license xyz for the publication in newspaper abc. Creative
> Commons licenses are somewhat better ... you do not have to include the
> whole text of a license there.
>
> Another possibility for us small wikipedias who want to go that way is:
> ask contributors to state that they would agree to a double-licensing
> (for example cc-by) of their work. I suppose most of us will gladly do
> that, because we want to spread the information and not close it down in
> an electronical format.
>
> Ciao, Sabine
>
>
>
> Berto schrieb:
> > Hi!
> >
> > can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote
the
> > source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
> > newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
> > newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article,
the
> > paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a
better
> > media exposure.
> >
> > B?rto
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
>  http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's something I've never understood about our use of the GFDL. I
> assume it is not the case that we are stuck with whatever version of
> the GFDL was around in September 2001? There must be some kind of
> provision in the text of the GFDL to automatically update the license
> to the latest version, am I right? If this isn't the case then we're
> as far from GFDL 1.3 as we are from CC-by-sa.

The GFDL allows any work to also be licensed under the GFDL, *or* any
later version of the GFDL. This allows for small technical fixes
("oops, clause seventeen clashes with an obscure 1927 publishing law
and means GFDL material can't ever appear on cardboard, better fix
that comma and call it 1.3"), but (at least in spirit) means you can't
just replace it with "GFDL 2.0" where clause one is "you must give
Stallman lots of money", because that would be a different license
entirely rather than an incremental upgrade.

Essentially, we're stuck with the general terms of the license, but
(because we're a massive, massive user and thus have clout) we're able
to work on the details a little.

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


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
On 7/12/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Somewhere (I think it might be in the GFDL itself) is a clause that
> says that any future version of the license will be "in the spirit of"
> the original GFDL.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[en:User:Carnildo]]

The "spirit" of the GFDL, I thought, was to be to documents what the
GPL was to code. That spirit is contrary to the actual spirit of the
current GFDL, which seems to be to be an impossible dysfunctional
complex monster.  Hell, switching to one of the CC licenses would be
more in the spirit of the GFDL than the current license.

~maru


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
>>I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.
>
> I disagree. I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the
> ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is
> reverting. On the other hand, administrators are trusted persons, so
> they don't have to explain (and justify themselves) that much, so an
> automatic edit summary is more logical for them than for autoconfirmed
> users.

I'd disagree with the notion that administrators don't need to explain
themselves as much as other editors.  In my opinion, the automatic
rollback should be reserved for situations where there is no possibility
of misunderstanding, which generally means reverting either blatant
vandalism or a very obvious mistake.  If there's any chance that I might
have misunderstood the intent of the edit, or that someone else could
possibly misunderstand why I reverted it, I'll do the revert manually
and provide an edit summary.

Of course, if there was a way to rollback with a custom edit summary...

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Borderline notable bios (yes, again)

body:
On 7/12/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonking
>
> Hmm, I must say that "a liberal application of bonking" does sound
> nice. I'm not sure it would help, though. ;-)
>
> What did you really mean by that?

Clearly he meant the third definition: "having sex using a space hopper".


body:
On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
> quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
> definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
> on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
> Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
> there's the cutoff, I guess.

"Probably"?  If you make the Time 100 anything, you're a public
figure.  There's no gray area.

Brandt is a public figure because, among other reasons, he's been
interviewed by or featured in The New York Times about a half dozen
times, and he's not only done this willingly (as opposed to being
sucked into a news controversy like Brian Chase), he's courted it
through press releases and other means.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
----- ???????? ????????? -----
??: "Oldak Quill" <oldakquill at gmail.com>
????: <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>
??????????: 12 ???? 2006 ?. 19:01
????: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

> You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows
> that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a
> perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous? Couldn't it encourage
> more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather
> than a great source of information?
This is strictly related to the kind of content you allow in the wiki.
Actually I never knew myself that Cristoforo Colombo was a native PMS
speaker and that there is even a museum dedicated to him and opened by one
of his descendants in the village in where he was born. I learned that by
verifying the content we get, andf I hardly can imagine this sort of notions
having a bad impact on the wiki as such. Obviously, some care must be taken
from the very start.

But on the other hand, having such data about small cities and villages
published on the papers will give the people :
1) a clear idea of the kind of data the wiki community rates as interesting
2) the image of a wiki as a way to "store and share knowledge"
3) a first crucial contact with written minor languages as means of
communication
4) the idea that they all hold knowledge that can be shared

Point 4) is crucial for our project "Native atlas". We can manage to
properly collect a full atlas of toponims in native languages ONLY if we can
involve local people. Many of them will limit their contribution to adding
data on their own close geographic area, but a percentage of these people
will also add data on local traditions, life styles, etc. These data alone
have an immense value for researchers who cross-reference toponims to infer
old extinct languages like PIE, ligurian and lepontian. I'd rate this quite
far from being "frivelous". In addition, we would present the material
toghether with a call for partecipation in the "Native Atlas" project, and
present the project itself for what it is: a giant scale data collection
that researchers will eventually use.

The last thing we need is people coming in to add a page about their own
dog's birthday, obviously. Because it would only add extra admin work in
getting rid of it. But this far I do not see any such trend, although it
will definitely happen, if traffic grows enough for that. But at that point
we'll also have a bigger admin structure and we'll be able to cope with the
flow.

I do not think that this marketing channel "as such" can send a peculiar
image of the wiki. As all channels, it really depends on what you use it
for.

B?rto


list: foundation-l

from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion

body:
On 7/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> James Hare wrote:
>
> >I don't know if we want the Cherokee name of Wikipedia to feature words like
> >"books", since there might be a Cherokee Wikibooks someday.
> >
> >
>
> Give me a list of concepts and I will translate them for you.  If you
> have other suggestions, please post them here and
> lets get all the options out on the table.
>
> Jeff

Well wiki is suposed to come from fast. Pedia probably comes from the
greek for something like "general education". So the direct
translation into english would be something like "fast general
education"

A short defintion of wiki in english would be hard but soemthing like:

Editable general education /changeable general education

might be one aproach

collaborative general education

might be another

Other than that just tranliterate an accept that there may be other
reasons people don't want to work on it (after all our welsh language
wikipedia only has 4,563 articles)

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Persondata?

body:
On 7/12/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:

> It's a PHP script running on the toolserver:
> http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/persondata.php
>
> Add "category=XYZ" or "title=XYZ" to have it scan a whole category or a
> single article, respectively.
>
> Currently, it ignores the "bold" marker but uses my algorithm to find
> the first text paragraph of an article, as implemented in
> commons_sumitup.php (same location).
>
> As all my tools, it is GPL. You can get the source code at the above URL.
>
> Magnus

Forgive my cluelessness, but what do you mean by "Add 'category...'"?
There seems to be no text input box; I can't figure out how and
whether that should be encoded into the URL; and I'm fairly but not
very sure you don't mean download the php and add those lines, since
variables in PHP usually start with $ don't they?

~maru


body:
On 7/12/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:

>vgatahvi anotlvsgv gadugi
>
>"making knowledge and working together"

Is there a way of switching that to something like recording
knowledge/teachings while working together? "Making" conflicts with no
original research,

> I personally am embarassed by the name -- its dorky, wrong, and
> offensive to some folks.
>
> Jeff

It is a proper noun though. It isn't as if the compound parts of it
are really English words (wiki probably is these days but pedia is
Greek if it is anything). Just avoid refernces to a creator (risks
anoying athiests) and Cherokee people (since non Cherokee people who
speak the langauge are of course welcome).

--
geni


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 7/12/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Angela is co-founder and VP of a company that has received $4M in
> funding, and hosts over 1,500 wikis, including some of the largest
> ones besides Wikipedia. Seth is a noted anti-censorship activist.
> Brandt is, well, Brandt.
>
FWIW, as a co-founder and VP of a company that received over $10M in
funding before finally going bankrupt, I'd say Angela's bigger claim
to fame is as a (soon to be former) director of Wikimedia.

Personally I think it would be a terrible mistake for Wikipedia not to
have some information about Angela.  She played an important role in
the history of Wikimedia, her resignation doesn't delete that.

Anthony


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> I'd disagree with the notion that administrators don't need to explain
> themselves as much as other editors.  In my opinion, the automatic
> rollback should be reserved for situations where there is no possibility
> of misunderstanding, which generally means reverting either blatant
> vandalism or a very obvious mistake.  If there's any chance that I might
> have misunderstood the intent of the edit, or that someone else could
> possibly misunderstand why I reverted it, I'll do the revert manually
> and provide an edit summary.
>
Hence my assumption that administrators are prudent enough to put edit
summaries when needed instead of always using the rollback button. But
that would be in a Perfect World.
> Of course, if there was a way to rollback with a custom edit summary...
That has crossed my mind, but seems hard to implement.

Filip


body:
On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Andrew Gray wrote:
> > > There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on
> > > biographies would be a damn good idea...
> >
> > AH!!!!! Please tell us!  I love cross-cultural wikipedia differences.
>
> [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]]
>
> Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
> quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
> definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
> on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
> Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
> there's the cutoff, I guess.
>
I'd say Wikipedia definitely shouldn't have an article on a person who
isn't a public figure, or at least a "limited public figure".  But
then again, I'd think (though IANAL) that Angela does qualify as at
least a limited public figure in the context of her work on Wikimedia,
a public charity.  By voluntarily choosing to become a board member,
Angela put herself into the public spotlight.  Her resignation doesn't
negate that, at least not for the story of Angela which takes place up
until her resignation is effective.

Of course, maybe I just have no clue what it means to be a "public
figure".  I'd welcome any correction on this matter, either in the
form of citations of legal decisions or in the form of expert
opinions.

Anthony


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi!
> -information added by locals on their customs/traditions will have to
> be verifiable. We cannot accept original research.
Mostly reference data is there. The problem is that such books, more often
than not, are buried into libraries and data never gets any public
exposition. Our procedure at the moment is to allow anon users to drop in
anything they want, and afterwards check the info with our contacts in the
university environment and a number of dedicated mailing lists. If the data
can be proved to be reliable, than we just wikify it and add references for
it.

No matter how hard we try, there is going to be a number of cases that will
remain floating in the mist. We will have a special marker for such data,
asking the people to provide evidence for them. This in turn gets to expand
en:wiki content, too. When translating the "Cairn" entry we found additional
data by contacting both pms and oc communities. References are being checked
and once approved they will be added to the en:wiki entry, too.

> -I don't think distribution in newspapers will change the *type* of
> vandalism we'll get. I'm not even sure if it will increase the volume
> of vandalism greatly.
We had some occasional vandalism only in the first week of our existence. At
the moment trouble is limited to very small edit wars... I suppose we need
to grow much larger before we attract vandals :)

B?rto


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi!

> Saying simply "Source pms.wikipedia.org" (or whatever language version)
> should be enough for anything that does not exceed two paragraphs in
> length.

It's what basically all small newspapers already do when using pics they get
from the net. But anyway I'd rather hear what the board thunks about it.
Having a clear statement for us to present to redactors would greatly
simplify the matter. It's a fair deal: they get free content, we get free
marketing.

B?rto


from_name: Delirium

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> [[en:Japanese Wikipedia]]
>
> Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
> quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
> definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
> on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
> Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
> there's the cutoff, I guess.
>

Empirically, it doesn't seem to be quite as strict as the defamation of
"public figure".  It seems that there are broad classes of activity that
by default are considered to make you worth having an article on jp:.
To pick just one example, basically every sports player ever to play in
some professional league, regardless of public notability or even
notability within the sport, seems to be fair game for an article,
simply by virtue of the fact that they were a sports player in some
professional league.

-Mark


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Time 100 footage

body:
I will try to get in touch with Amanda tomorrow to check up on it.

Garion1000 wrote:
> On 7/10/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7/9/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 5/14/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Amanda Congdon (rocketboom.com) was gracious enough to be our press
>>>> representative at the recent Time 100 party in New York.  She got a
>> lot
>>>> of footage of the guests, which was quite a group of famous people,
>>>> probably at least 100 people at the party already have wikipedia
>>>> articles, many with no photos or fair use photos.
>>>>
>>>> As a condition of being invited, I asked that she release her footage
>>>> and photos under a free license.
>>>
>>> What's the current status on this? It really would be great to have
>> this.
>>> And otherwise to Jimbo, could this image
>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbo_wales/143261674/ be released under a
>> free
>>> license? :) Since there are only fair use images on [[Ann Coulter]].
>>>
>>> Garion (currently doing some fair use replacement)
>> I wonder also, given the fact that Rocketboom has imploded this past week.
>>
>> -Andrew
>
>
> Hmm, yes. Although I read that even though Amanda left, the site will still
> continue. But I do hope Jimbo already has the tape.
>
> Garion
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Sue Reed wrote:
> None of those statements is sourced in any way. And I can find at
> least that many similar statements in several articles on my
> watchlist. Can I delete all that on the spot? If it's "positive" can
> I mark it with [citation needed] and leave it alone?

I think we want to be careful to avoid an accidental bias towards
hagiography.  Mostly what I would do with such statements is try really
hard to tone them down, to remove the value judgments if they seem
sketchy in any way.

Unsourced negative evaluations are a real problem in bios of living
persons even when they fall short of libel or other legal problems.  But
 certainly if anyone ever reads anything negative in wikipedia and
thinks "gee, if that is false, then it is probably libel" then it should
be shot on sight.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jimmy, I think this is a case where your famous divine intervention
>> might be helpful to establish a general principle, so I'd appreciate
>> your input.
>>
>> We have Angela (Beesley) on AfD now:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_%283rd_nomination%29
>>
>
> Two comments:
>
> - Imagine the field day the press and Wikipedia pundits will have --
> seasoned Wikipedians get special treatment on the "NPOV" encyclopedia.
> Apparently, neutral only applies to the rabble. Is there really no
> cabal?
>
> - Why isn't semi-protection, or even full protection, adequate? The
> first line in the AfD is, "I'm sick of this article being trolled.
> It's full of lies and nonsense." Why not just lock it down. As others
> have mentioned, Angela is co-founder of Wikia, has been a high profile
> international evangelist for Wikipedia and historically, still notable
> as serving on the first Wikimedia board.
>
> As someone penning a book about Wikipedia and its history, including
> the creation of Wikimedia Foundation, you can imagine my feelings on
> this.
>
> Please don't take this to mean bio subjects should be left out to hang
> in the wind. But this would set a bad precedent in terms of
> consistency. And Wikipedia would get criticism for it, and deservedly
> so.

While I have deep personal sympathy for Angela's plight, being in the
same basic plight myself, I have to agree with Andrew.  I take no
position on whether Angela is notable or not, but I will say that
whatever we decide here should be consistent with whatever we decide on
similar topics.

For a long time past the time when I was notable enough to have a bio,
we did not have one, because I thought it was important that the project
not be subject to attack from a mocking article in the mainstream press
about us being self-absorbed.  But we are so much now, that the
meanstream press seems to need no actual REASON to mock us, they just
mock us as they please anyway. :)

--Jimbo


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 7/12/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> > In both cases the primary complaint is that the articles contain (or
> > have at times contained) untrue, misleading, or irrelevant information.
> > The obvious way to fix that problem is to remove such information
>
> I can't do that without being accused of violating the autobiography
> policy. Subjects are not supposed to edit their own articles. I have
> tried detailing the errors on the talk page, but it gets ignored.

Part of why I think the autobiography policy is wrongheaded, although
made with doubtless the best of intentions.

-Matt


body:
On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Articles
> are filling up with information that is, at best, borderline trivia
> (and at worst actively stupid), and we have a (default?) culture that
> seems to encourage adding it.

Unfortunately I've also noticed the problem with the counter-reaction
to this.  An article about someone doesn't just have to contain the
things which establish "notability".  One way that an article about
someone can become a hack-job is by removing all the human detail
until only the notoriety is left.

-Matt


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Jimmy, I think this is a case where your famous divine intervention
might be helpful to establish a general principle, so I'd appreciate
your input.

We have Angela (Beesley) on AfD now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_%283rd_nomination%29

The fact that Angela does not want this article to exist has been
cited as a reason to delete. It looks like this deletion will go
through.

Two related examples are Seth Finkelstein:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Seth_Finkelstein

He also prefers the article not to exist, but nevertheless, it was
kept. Then, of course, there's Daniel Brandt.

Angela is co-founder and VP of a company that has received $4M in
funding, and hosts over 1,500 wikis, including some of the largest
ones besides Wikipedia. Seth is a noted anti-censorship activist.
Brandt is, well, Brandt.

Whatever principle we establish here, I think fairness demands that we
establish it with consistency and thoughtfulness. Special treatment
would be a dangerous precedent.

Do we want to respect people's wishes if they are borderline notable
to begin with?

If so, how do we define borderline notability?

If not, should Angela's article be deleted, or would that amount to
special treatment?

One possible answer is: We respect your wishes if you ask nicely. Is
that a fair answer, though? It is a fact that some people are, given
their psychological make-up, _incapable_ of asking nicely.

I don't have any clear answers here. Certainly, given past
experiences, I understand if some people prefer not to be mentioned on
Wikipedia. But, given that we also want to go in the direction of
changing the way Wikipedia works to increase its credibility (stable
versions etc.), is it wise to establish a precedent to keep out
material which could, theoretically, be well-maintained?

I would appreciate your thoughts on this.

Erik


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 17:09:22 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>When I met Seth, he explained to me how this happened.  The vandal used
>a classic trick... the double edit.  The first edit was the vandalism,
>the second edit was innocent.  So if you checked the diffs incorrectly,
>you would not see the attack paragraph.

Hell yes.  I see that a lot.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] New diff feature for Wikipedia

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

It's interesting to see other people pick up the blame/annotate project,
and totally disregard previous work.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Annotation

I've discussed a lot of the implementation issues and already have blame
generating code based on DifferenceEngine, which means that as that
evolves to better support different languages, Annotation doesn't have
to either.

I think it /can/ work, but it will require careful supervision by
someone who has a large amount of expertise about the MediaWiki system
and Wikimedia server cluster.

Oh, and the relevant bug report is
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639

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

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wudhvwGydwCFHKPzBg2GVlo=
=e+Hp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> There is a problem with two relatively tiny groups of people that should
> be at least mentioned here.
>
> First, there are the Wikipedia lovers who insist that everything about
> Wikipedia is super duper important and who love to fill Wikipedia with
> Wikipedia fan cruft *and* to work really hard to look up negative
> information about anyone who has ever been hostile to Wikipedia. ...

"It's true so we should have it in and who are you to say otherwise
and you're just deleting information and... they *asked* for deletion?
OMG CENSORSHIP"

This is a slightly hyperbolic paraphrase, but a true one. People get
insanely twitchy if they think something is removed by request; they
*asked* us to remove it? that means they don't want people to know it!
it must be important! we must fight to keep it!

I've encountered this quite a few times. It seems to be a cultural
thing - I don't think I'd be wrong to guess it's a much more common
attitude among Americans than Europeans, and among a certain type of
them. There's not much we can do except be tactful and occasionally
wield the Big Stick Of Editorial Common Sense.

"No, the names of his four-year-old twin daughters are not notable.
Yes, they're verifiable if you go and... oh, you did go and look up
the county registers did you? That's nice. But it's not important. It
causes the guy undue distress, and our readers don't need to know it."

I mean, trivia stuff. I've seen a few requests on OTRS from people
saying things like "I guess you have an article on me, and that's
fair, but can you take out the fact that I was born on September 2nd
and just have it say 1958?" Or the seemingly inexhaustible list of
minor porn starlets who, quite justifiably, write to us and say "your
article on me has my real name! take it out! I'm scared!"... Articles
are filling up with information that is, at best, borderline trivia
(and at worst actively stupid), and we have a (default?) culture that
seems to encourage adding it.

There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on
biographies would be a damn good idea...

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


body:
On Wed, 12 Jul 2006 16:54:18 -0500, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>...does the borderline notable subject ask not to have a bio? (Angela)
>...does a mature respect for human dignity of a borderline notable
>person suggest that a bio is not needed? (Brian Peppers)
>...is Wikipedia horribly naval-gazing at times? (Jeremy Rosenfeld, Brian
>Chase)

Jimmy, I am glad you have not forgotten Brian Peppers.  Neither have
the YTMNDers.  They will be back; I will be there when they come.  I
hope you will be too.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [Wikitech-l] SVN for Language Select Javascript?

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

Language select allows users to hide foreign languages on multilingual
pages. This would, for example, allow a French reader to see only French
text on multilingual pages (though they would still see Spanish on a
Spanish-only page). (as seen from
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_select )

The feature's been implemented and is currently live on Meta, however,
the version control currently is happening privately on my own machine.
Since it is licensed under an open license (at least implicitly, since
it's been posted on the site), I would like to make the repository public.

I was going to open a SourceForge project, but then it occurred to me
that if it was going to be mainly deployed on Wikimedia websites, why
not store the code on Wikimedia's SVN server?

So my question is would it be feasible to store the code as an extension
Javascript file in the repository? This would mean that if multiple
projects wanted to use the code, all they would have to do is include an
extra Javascript file, rather than have the entire code copied out on
Monobook.js . And also, of course, would it happen?

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
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TCpBj0/swqjx+da2eWLXBrg=
=aiUi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
> > This is a slightly hyperbolic paraphrase, but a true one. People get
> > insanely twitchy if they think something is removed by request; they
> > *asked* us to remove it? that means they don't want people to know it!
> > it must be important! we must fight to keep it!
>
> Exactly.  I am generally reluctant to tell people exactly what the
> complainer has said, because there is a tiny minority who seems to think
> that this is some kind of censorship by me or the Wikimedia Foundation
> and/or a call to arms.

My usual policy is to say "we've had someone write to us and say this
article is crap, can we do something about it" - it's perfectly true,
but it's far more effective than saying "we've had the subject..."

Of course, my hacking an article down is less likely to cause a riot
than you doing so!

> > There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on
> > biographies would be a damn good idea...
>
> AH!!!!! Please tell us!  I love cross-cultural wikipedia differences.

[[en:Japanese Wikipedia]]

Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
there's the cutoff, I guess.

Incidentally, we have something passably similar discouraging
borderline notables. Our *example* for "Less well-known people may be
mentioned within other articles" is [[Ronald Gay]], and look where he
appears...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_gays%2C_lesbians%2C_bisexuals%2C_and_the_transgendered

he's the *only* person in that screenful of text to not be linked. I
think the hint may not have taken very well.

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-13

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 409 of 426 tests (96.01%) FAILED!


body:
On 7/12/06, Travis Mason-Bushman <travis at gpsports-eng.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/06 3:09 PM, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > Well, the article survived AfD, sensibly enough, even today I notice
> > that Seth has had to revert vandalism *personally*.  I just now
> > semi-protected it.
>
> I'm beginning to think that any article with [[Category:Living people]] in
> it should be semi-protected by default.
>
> -Travis

No that would be a big step in reduceing the effetiveness of semi-protect

--
geni


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] ..


subject: [Foundation-l] ..


body:
On 7/13/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> If you are a borderline notable person, though... *and* you have a
> stalker or are somehow a flame-magnet... then I would say that a liberal
> application of semi-protection and *bonking* is worthwhile.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonking

Hmm, I must say that "a liberal application of bonking" does sound
nice. I'm not sure it would help, though. ;-)

What did you really mean by that?

Erik


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
I cannot see that the Japanese rule is different to ours in type, it
is different in degree. I would disagree with the rule simply because
we have the ability to store far more information on far more people
of notability (Wikipedia is not paper). Yes, the occasional person of
lesser notability will be vandalised, but this would occur wherever
you draw the line.

"Notability" has been too heavily relied upon thus far, it is entirely
unquantifiable and shouldn't be used as a measure of worthiness for
inclusion. I say we adopt a far more liberal approach and delete only
those articles which are clear vanity/defamation.

Of course, I don't provide a solution for protection of these lesser
known articles against vandalism. Perhaps VandalBot should be provided
with a watchlist of vulnerable words which tend to be used in both pro
and contra vandalism, but that's for somewhere else.

On 13/07/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
> > quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
> > definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
> > on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
> > Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
> > there's the cutoff, I guess.
>
> "Probably"?  If you make the Time 100 anything, you're a public
> figure.  There's no gray area.
>
> Brandt is a public figure because, among other reasons, he's been
> interviewed by or featured in The New York Times about a half dozen
> times, and he's not only done this willingly (as opposed to being
> sucked into a news controversy like Brian Chase), he's courted it
> through press releases and other means.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Lorenzarius

body:
On 7/13/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thinking about agglutinative languages, do you know what the Japanese
> Wikipedia is called (I would imagine that it too avoids
> transliteration).

The Japanese language readily accepts foreign words because of their
extensive use of their simple method of transliteration. The Japanese
Wikipedia is called ???????, or Uikipedia in romanji.

The Chinese Wikipedia however, did not transliterate the name
directly, because for every sound there're multiple Chinese characters
that fit the sound. Therefore the Chinese Wikipedians instead tried to
find a name that is similar to the "wiki" sound and actually have some
meaning to it. You can read more on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Wikipedia#Naming .

For the Cherokee Wikipedia, I would suggest that they follow their
convention on transliteration. It would be nice to have a sound
similar to "Wikipedia", for it would give a sense of unity and would
be consistent with other language Wikipedia. But I think the more
important thing to consider is that the name would be comfortable for
the users and speakers of the language.

Cheers
--
Larry Lo
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
Tel: +852 95825791


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] re  GFDL publisher credit

body:
> Robert Scott Horning
> <mailto:foundation-l%40wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BFoundation-l%5D%20GFDL%20publisher%20credit&In-Reply-To=>
> wrote
>
>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>If Wikimedia wants to hold a copyright interest inthis material it needs
>>to be ready to defend those copyrights in a serious way.  Having an
>>employee make ad-hoc, arbitrary and speculative pronouncements on the
>>law without a clear policy from the Board to back it up probably puts
>>the entire project into greater peril than the obvious silliness of the
>>more ignorant copyright violators.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold
>copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free
>Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a
>copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the
>copyright and defending the GPL.
>
My preference here would be to have each editor appoint WMF as a
non-exclusive agent for the purpose of taking all steps to defend
editors' copyrights.  This would prevent some distant future management
from using its standing as a copyright owner to do things that can only
be done by any copyright owner.  By disowning any copyrights it may have
in the material it also helps to maintain its distance from the content
if it is ever named to defend some suit based on the contents.

>The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL
>violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the
>WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia
>content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be
>legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an
>individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that
>you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each
>seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.
>
Being agent should permit WMF to act.  The potential complications if
the individuals had to do everything themselves boggle the mind.  There
is also the question that registration of a copyright is a prerequisite
for prosecuting any infringers.  Whose responsibility is it to ensure
that all needed registrations happen?

>Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
>the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
>decision to not claim copyright was done.  The liability instead rests
>on the individual contributors.  Each time you add some content to
>Wikimedia projects, particularly if you use the same account for each
>contribution and are prominent in the "community", you put yourself into
>harm's way legally speaking.  You can be held responsible for the
>content that you added, or even failed to edit out when you made a minor
>change to a page.  In other words, this approach to playing it safe
>really is just transfering liability from the WMF to individual users.
>
>That really should be motivation to being a major contributor to
>Wikimedia projects, isn't it?
>
I have no problem with the idea of WMF being "safe", and that uploaders
should be legally responsible for the material they add.  I really don't
agree that a person who has acted as a mere grammatical editor has
published anything substantive.  Such an editor bases his entire effort
on what is there in front of him; the research needed to establish the
legality of the substance is beyond his frame of reference.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Time 100 footage

body:
On 7/10/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/9/06, Garion1000 <garion1000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 5/14/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Amanda Congdon (rocketboom.com) was gracious enough to be our press
> > > representative at the recent Time 100 party in New York.  She got a
> lot
> > > of footage of the guests, which was quite a group of famous people,
> > > probably at least 100 people at the party already have wikipedia
> > > articles, many with no photos or fair use photos.
> > >
> > > As a condition of being invited, I asked that she release her footage
> > > and photos under a free license.
> >
> >
> > What's the current status on this? It really would be great to have
> this.
> >
> > And otherwise to Jimbo, could this image
> > http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimbo_wales/143261674/ be released under a
> free
> > license? :) Since there are only fair use images on [[Ann Coulter]].
> >
> > Garion (currently doing some fair use replacement)
>
> I wonder also, given the fact that Rocketboom has imploded this past week.
>
> -Andrew

Hmm, yes. Although I read that even though Amanda left, the site will still
continue. But I do hope Jimbo already has the tape.

Garion


from_name: Heema Khan

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Hi,

I can help in this regard. Can read Urdu. The verse is from Qur'an's chapter #2, Al-Baqara (The Cow), Verse #44. Translation from http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/002.qmt.html, three different sources it seems

 002.044
 YUSUFALI: Do ye enjoin right conduct on the people, and forget (To  practise it) yourselves, and yet ye study the Scripture? Will ye not understand?
 PICKTHAL: Enjoin ye righteousness upon mankind while ye yourselves  forget (to practise it)? And ye are readers of the Scripture! Have ye then no sense?
 SHAKIR: What! do you enjoin men to be good and neglect your own souls  while you read the Book; have you then no sense?

--heema

----- Original Message ----
From: Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 2:41:28 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

geni: your translator was nexus on #wikipedia. Could he act as
translator in this matter?
Michael

On 7/13/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> I think we should ask the sysop who added it for their reasons so that
> we can greater understand why it was put there, but I can't read Urdu
> so I'm at a bit of a loss. Does anyone have a nice translator, or can
> speak it themselves? This would seem a sensible step forward to me.
>
>         ?Xyrael
>
> On 13/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Even if the verse were essentually non-religious, a quote from the
> > Qur'an, a religious text, is inappropriate. This verse is blatantly
> > religious though and should be removed as quickly as is possible.
> >
> > On 13/07/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 7/13/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 7/13/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > Hm, imho it depends a bit on it's meaning (I can't read it, sorry). If
> > > > > it is just about, say, the value of knowledge, it might be not even so
> > > > > bad, although I wonder why there should be such quotes in the
> > > > > Sitenotice, as it is probably intended for other messages...
> > > > > Michael
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > the only translation I have is
> > > > "you call people towards the righteous deeds and forget yourself doing
> > > > so, whereas you also read the words of god, don't you have any senses"
> > > >
> > > Hm. Doesn't look really appropriate for a Sitenotice. I can't see any
> > > reason, why this should be shown to every user...
> > > Michael
> > > > from nexus on #wikipedia
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > geni
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
>
>             ?Xyrael
>                     Sean Whitton ? sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
As far as direct translation from Urdu goes, it is more read as "Book of God".

It is also discussed on Urdu Wiki

http://ur.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D9%88%D8%AC%D9%88%D8%AF%DB%81_%D8%B3%D8%B1%DA%AF%D8%B1%D9%85%DB%8C%D8%A7%DA%BA#.D8.A7.D8.AC.D8.A7.D8.B2.D8.AA_.D8.AF.D8.B1.DA.A9.D8.A7.D8.B1.DB.94.DB.94.DB.94

some of the posts are in English. The Urdu posts are in the favour and are from the site editors who added it. The arguments in favour are quite interesting, something in the line of, Urdu is the language of Muslims and no one is against Qur'an.

--heema

----- Original Message ----
From: Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 3:03:59 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

Regardless. It uses a couple of undisputable proper nouns in there:
"Scripture" and "Book" which can, in the context, only refer to the
Qur'an. It also uses the religious POV "righteousness".

On 13/07/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Jul 13, 2006, at 6:53 AM, Heema Khan wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I can help in this regard. Can read Urdu. The verse is from
> > Qur'an's chapter #2, Al-Baqara (The Cow), Verse #44. Translation
> > from http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/002.qmt.html, three
> > different sources it seems
> >
> >  002.044
> >  YUSUFALI: Do ye enjoin right conduct on the people, and forget
> > (To  practise it) yourselves, and yet ye study the Scripture? Will
> > ye not understand?
> >  PICKTHAL: Enjoin ye righteousness upon mankind while ye
> > yourselves  forget (to practise it)? And ye are readers of the
> > Scripture! Have ye then no sense?
> >  SHAKIR: What! do you enjoin men to be good and neglect your own
> > souls  while you read the Book; have you then no sense?
> >
> > --heema
>
> Good advice for administrators, arbitrators, and, indeed. anyone. I
> think it is a good thing.
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
>I belive this this has already been disscused on ur.wikipedia. They
>have come to thier descision. Now we are going to have to deal with
>that problem.

Yes, the matter was discussed there and the discussions
are finished on the 8th of July, so it seems that
Sitenote is permanent for now.

--heema


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>Robert Scott Horning
>>
>>The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL
>>violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the
>>WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia
>>content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be
>>legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an
>>individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that
>>you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each
>>seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.
>>
>>
>>
>Being agent should permit WMF to act.  The potential complications if
>the individuals had to do everything themselves boggle the mind.  There
>is also the question that registration of a copyright is a prerequisite
>for prosecuting any infringers.  Whose responsibility is it to ensure
>that all needed registrations happen?
>
>
Registration is certainly nice in GFDL and most copyleft enforcement
because it sets up a minimum statutory penalty if you can prove
copyright infringement.  Otherwise you can only seek actual damages.
 Note that the registration must take place before the infringement
occurs.  This is something I've discussed at length on this mailing list
before, with many individuals on this list quite against formal
registration, and deliberate obfuscation of user information that would
make such registration difficult to impossible.

All I'm pointing out is that the situation right now is exactly up to
individual contributors, and you are correct, it boggles the mind to
think what is really necessary to do this enforcement.

>>Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
>>the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
>>decision to not claim copyright was done.  The liability instead rests
>>on the individual contributors.  Each time you add some content to
>>Wikimedia projects, particularly if you use the same account for each
>>contribution and are prominent in the "community", you put yourself into
>>harm's way legally speaking.  You can be held responsible for the
>>content that you added, or even failed to edit out when you made a minor
>>change to a page.  In other words, this approach to playing it safe
>>really is just transfering liability from the WMF to individual users.
>>
>>That really should be motivation to being a major contributor to
>>Wikimedia projects, isn't it?
>>
>>
>>
>I have no problem with the idea of WMF being "safe", and that uploaders
>should be legally responsible for the material they add.  I really don't
>agree that a person who has acted as a mere grammatical editor has
>published anything substantive.  Such an editor bases his entire effort
>on what is there in front of him; the research needed to establish the
>legality of the substance is beyond his frame of reference.
>
>Ec
>
>
I'm not saying that a person who adds some minor edit to a Wikipedia
article that is then brought up in a libel lawsuit is necessarily going
to be completely held responsible for everything in that article, but
liability is certainly there to an extent and it wouldn't surprise me if
your name was brought up in a formal lawsuit that simply decided to go
after every contributor in the history of the article, even if all you
did was revert blatant vandalism at one point acting in good faith.
 That would still take some time to explain even what reverting
vandalism is to a judge, who has no clue about MediaWiki software and
wouldn't even really understand the role of admins or vandalism patrols
in Wikimedia projects.  I'm sure such a judge in a lawsuit like that
would learn real fast, but you would have to get a lawyer and defend
yourself first.  As the John Siegenthaler situation suggests, there may
be some individuals who really get bent out of shape for what content is
in Wikipedia and don't care to seek redress from within the Wikimedia
community of users and editors.  And if you reverted one form of
vandalism, the question would be raised as to why you let other
blatantly wrong facts about a person or company go unchecked.

I hope that nobody really has to deal with these issues, and I'm also
sure that if there was a problem that a "legal defense fund" could be
set up very quickly to help out Wikimedia users who through no fault of
their own got tied up with these issues.

I was involved briefly with the DVD de-CSS software and "dodged the
bullet" when my involvement was only peripheral to the lawsuits that
were thrown around by the MPAA and the DVD Fourm for cracking the
encryption used on DVD-Video discs.  And this was GPL'd software that
the only justification for filing the lawsuit was a violation of a trade
secret by somebody who did reverse engineering of software and didn't
have any affiliation with any company producing DVD software.  I do know
some of the people who were dragged into court over that issue, and it
was a pain to try and deal with.  With the technical books that are on
Wikibooks, I don't see a reason why that sort of situation might not
repeat itself again but with written publications instead.... even if
the situation turns out to be perfectly legal.  And the liability would
indeed rest on the contributors in this situation.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
On Jul 12, 2006, at 9:54 PM, Angela wrote:

> On 7/13/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>> In both cases the primary complaint is that the articles contain (or
>> have at times contained) untrue, misleading, or irrelevant
>> information.
>> The obvious way to fix that problem is to remove such information
>>
>
> I can't do that without being accused of violating the autobiography
> policy. Subjects are not supposed to edit their own articles. I have
> tried detailing the errors on the talk page, but it gets ignored.
>
> Angela.

Obviously you are beginning to understand some of the complaints
people make. And facing the fact that what has been published about
you is not you.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

>On 7/13/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Such things are up to the individual project, IMHO.
>>
>>
>
>Wikipedias central pillars are not up the individual project. These include
>
>1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
>2. Wikipedia is written in NPOV (these include religious endorsements)
>3. Wikipedia respects copyright law
>4. Wikilove.
>
>Mathias
>
>
However, I would point out that the only thing this violates is #2
listed above.  The Quran (Koran?) is in the public domain and certainly
free of copyright, and Wikilove would encourage you to try and come to
an accomodation here rather than micromanage this from the WMF board or
stewards.

In other words, let the individual project deal with this, using their
own cultural standards for native speakers of Urdu, tempered with these
pillars and principles you mentioned.  It doesn't need to take up
bandwidth here unless there is a deadlock on this issue and isn't being
dealt with.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


body:
On Jul 13, 2006, at 5:41 AM, Oldak Quill wrote:

> Not at all. The best way to improve the site would be to work with
> other langauge Wikipedias and within Wikimedia. Are you being active
> in seeking members?

That is the bottom line here. You are the one who knows Cherokees,
not us. The common ground is that everyone would like to see a
project that succeeds, whether yours or ours, if such a distinction
can be made.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On Jul 13, 2006, at 6:53 AM, Heema Khan wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I can help in this regard. Can read Urdu. The verse is from
> Qur'an's chapter #2, Al-Baqara (The Cow), Verse #44. Translation
> from http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/002.qmt.html, three
> different sources it seems
>
>  002.044
>  YUSUFALI: Do ye enjoin right conduct on the people, and forget
> (To  practise it) yourselves, and yet ye study the Scripture? Will
> ye not understand?
>  PICKTHAL: Enjoin ye righteousness upon mankind while ye
> yourselves  forget (to practise it)? And ye are readers of the
> Scripture! Have ye then no sense?
>  SHAKIR: What! do you enjoin men to be good and neglect your own
> souls  while you read the Book; have you then no sense?
>
> --heema

Good advice for administrators, arbitrators, and, indeed. anyone. I
think it is a good thing.

Fred


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


subject: [Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 7/13/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>>
>>>I am curious how you plan to compile these books in a format that looks
>>>good on paper and not strictly as a web format.  While this can be
>>>automated to an extent, I do think there are some issues that come from
>>>trying to move content from a web format to a printed page, and not all
>>>of these can be completely automated.
>>>
>>>
>>As you have pointed out, an automatic conversion of html (or mediawiki
>>markup) into latex can not be automated in a way that the book is
>>absolutely perfect.
>>
>As I've mentioned before, I'd love to see a Wikimedia project which
>does exactly this.  Then the latex could be edited collaboratively to
>make things more "absolutely perfect".  It's nice to see it's at least
>somewhat possible, though I'd say the quality of the previews right
>now is fairly low.
>
>Anthony
>
While this is something that perhaps should be moved to the tech list,
I'm curious about what the user interface of something like this ought
to look like if we did something like this?

MediaWiki software certainly is capable of storing and retrieving raw
ASCII text, and perhaps we could throw another "tab" that would be an
editable LaTeX version of the content that could also be "regenerated"
from the Wiki markup content.  This would be another independent page
with edit histories, like the talk page.

Other kinds of options might be available, but the user experience would
have to be smooth and consistant with other aspects of editing Wikimedia
content.

I like the idea too, and might want to get involved with trying to put
it together.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
Sean Whitton wrote:

>In response to this I would say that #2 is the most important pillar,
>something which Jimbo used to quote on his userpage (this seems to
>have gone now). I would agree with him because a projects as wide
>reaching as the foundation's cannot prosper without this. We need to
>keep things as open and accessible as possible and only through NPOV
>can we encourage people to get involved. If I was a non-Muslim speaker
>of Urdu, I can imagine being concerned that the site was heavily
>orientated in that direction, which is not the idea. Referring to #1,
>it's an encyclopedia and the only purpose of having different
>languages is to allow others to read and edit, not to make any other
>divisions.
>
>
But are you a non-Muslim speaker of Urdu who has complained and dealt
with this locally on the project?  I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't
raise concerns, but a knee jerk reaction is also not called for if there
is a place to address this within the Urdu Wikipedia and getting active
users from within that project to deal with the issue.  I just havn't
see what steps are being done from within the community to address the
issue.  If you have tried to deal with this issue and admins are being
belligerant in keeping this sitenotice up, that would be a completely
different issue altogether.  Even then, we are only getting one side of
this issue and assuming bad-faith.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


list: commons-l

from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [Commons-l] Radical proposal

body:
"Articles" as they exist on Commons are used almost exclusively for gallery
purposes.  It is a preferred method of image display for a large number of
commons users who often prefer the ability to customize image display and
provide image discription that galleries offer.

Cary Bass
Bastique

> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Oldak Quill
> Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 7:13 AM
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Radical proposal
>
>
> I concur. I only use categories, not sure why anyone uses articles.
>
> On 12/07/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > stevertigo wrote:
> > > Crossposted to
> > >
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Radical_proposal
> > >
> > > Since sorting images seems to be a categorical affair, and
> that articles here do not
> > > require much in the way of articles or descriptions, is it
> possible to make article
> > > pages function as if they were a category?
> > > It would save some typing, and reduce use of static linkage
> (ie. articles) in favor of
> > > dynamic likage (ie. categories).
> > >
> > > "Articles" in turn would require fitting into a namespace,
> though I agree that would
> > > seem to defy convention.
> > > Again, this idea is based on the notion that everything could
> fit into category pages,
> > > or commons: pages, and little else. A migration/integration
> campaign would be required.
> > >
> >
> > "Articles" as they exist on other Wikimedia projects have no place on
> > Commons.
> >
> > --
> > Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> > Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> > "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> > Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l


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

> I'd love to have this in the MediaWiki core, we were discussing just a few
> days ago how much a feature like this would help Commons. Adding a
> javascript variable describing the user's currently selected language is on
> my to do list, for this exact application.
>
> I think we could put a loader stub in wikibits.js and have the bulk of the
> feature in a separate file, how does that sound?

Sounds great. Does that mean I'd get SVN access (even if it's just for
that extension folder) to maintain it?

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
 3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
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from_name: Anthony

body:
On 7/13/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
> Hi Robert
>
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
> > I am curious how you plan to compile these books in a format that looks
> > good on paper and not strictly as a web format.  While this can be
> > automated to an extent, I do think there are some issues that come from
> > trying to move content from a web format to a printed page, and not all
> > of these can be completely automated.
> As you have pointed out, an automatic conversion of html (or mediawiki
> markup) into latex can not be automated in a way that the book is
> absolutely perfect.
> But right now we are pretty satisfied with the results - even though we
> are still working on improvments of the conversion.
> The conversion is done with a parser we developed from scratch - as
> mentioned in a previous post. The mediawiki markup is translated
> into an internal representation which then gets transformed to latex (to
> be more precise "context") - this is the hard part. It is slightly easier to
> transform the internal representation back to html since some css-style
> information can be maintained.
>
As I've mentioned before, I'd love to see a Wikimedia project which
does exactly this.  Then the latex could be edited collaboratively to
make things more "absolutely perfect".  It's nice to see it's at least
somewhat possible, though I'd say the quality of the previews right
now is fairly low.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit

body:
On 7/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Robert Scott Horning said:
> >The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold
> >copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free
> >Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a
> >copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the
> >copyright and defending the GPL.
> >
> My preference here would be to have each editor appoint WMF as a
> non-exclusive agent for the purpose of taking all steps to defend
> editors' copyrights.

Optionally, I hope.  I personally have no desire to sue people over
the vast majority of my legal rights under copyright law.  Basically,
as long as you don't take my works and then create a non-free
derivative, I don't care what you do with it, at least so far as
copyright law is concerned.

Frankly, I'd hope that the WMF would do the same, and only use
lawsuits to make works more free, not less.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] re GFDL publisher credit


body:
> Anthony
> <mailto:foundation-l%40wikimedia.org?Subject=%5BFoundation-l%5D%20GFDL%20publisher%20credit&In-Reply-To=44B43991.5060907%40telus.net>
> wrote
>
>On 7/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l>> wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>> >It's not just the fact that the distribution is taking place on the
>> >Internet, though.  The fact that everyone is an editor and every bit
>> >of content is a constant work in progress makes for a reasonable
>> >argument that these works are in fact not yet published at all.  The
>> >more I think about it the more I see this as the most sane
>> >interpretation.
>> >
>> If it has been made public it has been published.  The real question
>> here is _who_ did the publishing.
>>
>{{citationneeded}}
>
>
"For he bat wil pupplische ony thing to make it openly knowen, he wil
make it
to ben cryed and pronounced in the myddel place of a Town" - John
Mandeville, "Travels", 14th century.  The basic meaning has been around
for  a long time.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l]  SVN for Language Select Javascript?

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

Rob Church wrote:
> Given our current attitude, it seems you'd get Subversion access if
> you offered to blow your nose in the name of MediaWiki.

Erm... ::offers to blow nose in the name of MediaWiki?:: Subversion
access would be very nice.

> We don't typically do per-folder permissions; we just trust people not
> to fuck up code they don't understand or touch stuff they're not
> supposed to.

I'd have no problem self-enforcing. My main trouble is remembering to
set my editor to use tabs instead of spaces when editing MediaWiki code.

> However, I'd vouch for your sanity and ability to keep your sticky
> fingers to yourself, and I want to see some proof of concept code for
> this.

Actually, the proof of concept code is already live on Meta. You can
view the Javascript at MediaWiki:Monobook.js (
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Monobook.js&action=render
, scroll down ).

- --
 Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
 SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
 GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
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from_name: Brian Salter-Duke

body:
On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 11:21:21PM +0100, Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 12/07/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> >There is a problem with two relatively tiny groups of people that should
> >be at least mentioned here.
> >
> >First, there are the Wikipedia lovers who insist that everything about
> >Wikipedia is super duper important and who love to fill Wikipedia with
> >Wikipedia fan cruft *and* to work really hard to look up negative
> >information about anyone who has ever been hostile to Wikipedia. ...
>
> "It's true so we should have it in and who are you to say otherwise
> and you're just deleting information and... they *asked* for deletion?
> OMG CENSORSHIP"
>
> This is a slightly hyperbolic paraphrase, but a true one. People get
> insanely twitchy if they think something is removed by request; they
> *asked* us to remove it? that means they don't want people to know it!
> it must be important! we must fight to keep it!
>
> I've encountered this quite a few times. It seems to be a cultural
> thing - I don't think I'd be wrong to guess it's a much more common
> attitude among Americans than Europeans, and among a certain type of
> them. There's not much we can do except be tactful and occasionally
> wield the Big Stick Of Editorial Common Sense.

Maybe that explains why I'm puzzled by this discussion, being a Brit now
in Australia. We are not trying to write an encyclopedia overnight. If
someone does not want an article on them, then I think we should be
inclined to delete it. The times when we do not delete should be where
the person has put themselves into the public limelight and people will
want to know about them. We do not therefore delete [[George W. Bush]]
or any politician. However people who found businesses or are VPs of
businesses are entitled to privacy. Our readers do not have to be able
to find information about them on WP.

Having meet Angela at a couple of Melbourne meetups, although we have
not discussed her article, I understand why she wants it to go. I'm
about to move over to Afd to state my opinion.

> "No, the names of his four-year-old twin daughters are not notable.
> Yes, they're verifiable if you go and... oh, you did go and look up
> the county registers did you? That's nice. But it's not important. It
> causes the guy undue distress, and our readers don't need to know it."
>
> I mean, trivia stuff. I've seen a few requests on OTRS from people
> saying things like "I guess you have an article on me, and that's
> fair, but can you take out the fact that I was born on September 2nd
> and just have it say 1958?" Or the seemingly inexhaustible list of
> minor porn starlets who, quite justifiably, write to us and say "your
> article on me has my real name! take it out! I'm scared!"... Articles
> are filling up with information that is, at best, borderline trivia
> (and at worst actively stupid), and we have a (default?) culture that
> seems to encourage adding it.
>
> There are times that I think adopting the rule jp.wiki has on
> biographies would be a damn good idea...

Could you tell us what this rule is or where to find it written in
english?

> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 36, Issue 32
> ****************************************

--
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
 Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki, WikiNews, WikiBooks and Commons


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 7/13/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jimmy, I think this is a case where your famous divine intervention
> might be helpful to establish a general principle, so I'd appreciate
> your input.
>
> We have Angela (Beesley) on AfD now:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Angela_Beesley_%283rd_nomination%29

Two comments:

- Imagine the field day the press and Wikipedia pundits will have --
seasoned Wikipedians get special treatment on the "NPOV" encyclopedia.
Apparently, neutral only applies to the rabble. Is there really no
cabal?

- Why isn't semi-protection, or even full protection, adequate? The
first line in the AfD is, "I'm sick of this article being trolled.
It's full of lies and nonsense." Why not just lock it down. As others
have mentioned, Angela is co-founder of Wikia, has been a high profile
international evangelist for Wikipedia and historically, still notable
as serving on the first Wikimedia board.

As someone penning a book about Wikipedia and its history, including
the creation of Wikimedia Foundation, you can imagine my feelings on
this.

Please don't take this to mean bio subjects should be left out to hang
in the wind. But this would set a bad precedent in terms of
consistency. And Wikipedia would get criticism for it, and deservedly
so.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blogosphere takes notice of Reuters confusion

body:
http://www.intelliot.com/blog/archives/2006/07/12/reuters-stinks/

"Wow. This has got to be one of the worst news stories of all time. It
doesn't make sense that it was even written, much less published. And
much, much less the fact that it mentions Wikipedia and tries to pass
it off as valid news."

http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/07/12/2140252.shtml

 Reuters offers correction to Wikipedia slam. junger writes "Reuters
put out a hit piece on Wikipedia, saying that the encyclopedia wasn't
credible in 'covering' the breaking news of the death of Enron's Ken
Lay, but then Reuters has to correct their own story because they
couldn't properly identify one of their sources."

http://www.jasonunger.com/2006/07/10/the-irony-reuters-slams-wikipedias-credibility-issues-own-correction/

So Wikipedia can get confused because inital reports were varied about
the cause of Lay's death, but Reuters can't even identify who gave
them the information they used in their report?

And journalism has sunk to a new low.

For sake of completeness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2006-07-10/Reuters


from_name: A. Nony Mouse

subject: [WikiEN-l] Israel News Agency

references:
<glj2b2hddph5v6h74uciqcvfjfh0vumr6n@4ax.com>
	<2ed171fb0607092316x41dc393m739773bbd1d81e3d@mail.gmail.com>
	<42f90dc00607100603q8471d0ftd8e2cf22dcf34ff3@mail.gmail.com>
	<44B4B1C7.6020203@gmail.com>

body:
No, Google News affiliates are all hand-picked by Google.

Although the other problem with their "bar" is that they have a large number
of middle eastern and liberal employees who seem to think that Hezbollah's
"news agency" and other racist "news" sources ought to be let in, while
politically conservative news sources constantly get dropped.

A. Nony Mouse

On 7/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Matt Brown wrote:
> > On 7/9/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'm startled that Google News finds "Israel News Service" worthy of
> >> inclusion among its sources.
> >
> > I'm not so sure Google News has much of a bar to inclusion.
> >
>
> Their bar to inclusion is that they've spidered it.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] Radical proposal

body:
I find it very disappointing that folks here don't find human driven
presentation of content to be valuable.  Will we now be deleting the
commons main page and simply redirecting it to a category?

This will force projects to build their own true gallery pages rather
than build them on commons.  Because of the difficulty of building
truly multilingual things on commons the incentive to avoid working on
commons already exists... this will just increase it further. :(

On 7/11/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Crossposted to
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#Radical_proposal
>
> Since sorting images seems to be a categorical affair, and that articles here do not
> require much in the way of articles or descriptions, is it possible to make article
> pages function as if they were a category?
> It would save some typing, and reduce use of static linkage (ie. articles) in favor of
> dynamic likage (ie. categories).
>
> "Articles" in turn would require fitting into a namespace, though I agree that would
> seem to defy convention.
> Again, this idea is based on the notion that everything could fit into category pages,
> or commons: pages, and little else. A migration/integration campaign would be required.
>
>
> Steven
>
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from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
All I know is that the old version of the article was a lot more interesting.

On 7/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
> >
> > I removed the jokes.  Mikka reverted.  My reasoning:
> > * no reliable sources for these being considered representative of the
> > classes of joke discussed
> > * this is about the concept of the joke, it is not [[List of jokes]]
> > (and most especially not [[List of randomly selected and generally
> > abysmal jokes]])
> > * several are gratuitously offensive.  It should be possible to read
> > the article on joke, be told that racist jokes exist, but not be
> > subjected to them unless you visit a separate article
> > * WP:NOT a joke book
> > * cruft, cruft, cruft and more cruft.  Most are drive-bys.
> >
>
> Drive-by cruft is a good case for [[Wikipedia:Stable versions now]].
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
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body:
On 7/13/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >On 7/13/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >>
> >>>I am curious how you plan to compile these books in a format that looks
> >>>good on paper and not strictly as a web format.  While this can be
> >>>automated to an extent, I do think there are some issues that come from
> >>>trying to move content from a web format to a printed page, and not all
> >>>of these can be completely automated.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>As you have pointed out, an automatic conversion of html (or mediawiki
> >>markup) into latex can not be automated in a way that the book is
> >>absolutely perfect.
> >>
> >As I've mentioned before, I'd love to see a Wikimedia project which
> >does exactly this.  Then the latex could be edited collaboratively to
> >make things more "absolutely perfect".  It's nice to see it's at least
> >somewhat possible, though I'd say the quality of the previews right
> >now is fairly low.
> >
> >Anthony
> >
> While this is something that perhaps should be moved to the tech list,
> I'm curious about what the user interface of something like this ought
> to look like if we did something like this?
>
Well, the easiest way would unfortunately involve a fork of the
content.  You'd have to pick a particular edition to export to LaTeX,
and then edit it from there.  There would be rules, of course, that no
major changes to the content could be made, and that minor fixes (e.g.
grammatical) would have to be backported, but that's messy.

It'd be nicer if the merging could also be automated, but that's
complicated.  The best solution would probably involve a way to put
the formatting directives directly into the wikitext, but that has its
own problems.

> MediaWiki software certainly is capable of storing and retrieving raw
> ASCII text, and perhaps we could throw another "tab" that would be an
> editable LaTeX version of the content that could also be "regenerated"
> from the Wiki markup content.  This would be another independent page
> with edit histories, like the talk page.
>
Yeah, that's basically what I'd see it as, except I'm not sure how
you'd be able to regenerate the page if significant formatting changes
had been made without losing those changes (or performing a manual
merge).

> Other kinds of options might be available, but the user experience would
> have to be smooth and consistant with other aspects of editing Wikimedia
> content.
>
> I like the idea too, and might want to get involved with trying to put
> it together.
>
Well, the first step would be to create the wikitext->LaTeX converter.
 Really I think that alone is a time consuming job, and the rest of
the details can wait for it.  I haven't gotten a look at wiki2xml yet
though.  Maybe it could be easily converted into something like that.

It's nice to see that there's some level of interest.  Being that it's
such a complicated project I'm not sure there's enough yet, though.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
What I understood from the discussion. Two guys oppose it. They gave their reasons. Two are in favour and both are administrators.
I think why the other people didn't talk much was because the few arguments that are in Urdu literally made
it like everyone who is working on urdu wikipedia is not against Qur'an and if you are not against Qur'an
then you shouldn't have any problem with this Sitenotice, and as long someone who doesn't like Qur'an
is not part of the community, this should go on. The final point is that as no one is getting angered
therefore this promotion of Islam should continue. This point was made on 8th of July. After this there
is no discussion, and I think it is assumed that it is fine with everyone, therefore continue
with this practice.

I can see why people didn't reply much. If you make this issue religious, like in favour
or oppose of Qur'an then obviously people will be reluctant. I think the sitenotice should
be removed. There is simply no point in it at all.

--heema

----- Original Message ----
From: Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com>
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 5:57:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

You're absolutely right, the discussion should be raised over there,
and it appears that it already has. However, I don't quite understand
the comments of Heema - when you say that the discussion is over and
the decision has been made, do you mean that there was an overwhelming
argument or that someone with a level of authority stepped in? The
latter seems unlikely because theoretically there isn't anyone except
the board of a local arbcom that could do that, afaik. Could you
clarify this, please?

On 13/07/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Sean Whitton wrote:
>
> >In response to this I would say that #2 is the most important pillar,
> >something which Jimbo used to quote on his userpage (this seems to
> >have gone now). I would agree with him because a projects as wide
> >reaching as the foundation's cannot prosper without this. We need to
> >keep things as open and accessible as possible and only through NPOV
> >can we encourage people to get involved. If I was a non-Muslim speaker
> >of Urdu, I can imagine being concerned that the site was heavily
> >orientated in that direction, which is not the idea. Referring to #1,
> >it's an encyclopedia and the only purpose of having different
> >languages is to allow others to read and edit, not to make any other
> >divisions.
> >
> >
> But are you a non-Muslim speaker of Urdu who has complained and dealt
> with this locally on the project?  I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't
> raise concerns, but a knee jerk reaction is also not called for if there
> is a place to address this within the Urdu Wikipedia and getting active
> users from within that project to deal with the issue.  I just havn't
> see what steps are being done from within the community to address the
> issue.  If you have tried to deal with this issue and admins are being
> belligerant in keeping this sitenotice up, that would be a completely
> different issue altogether.  Even then, we are only getting one side of
> this issue and assuming bad-faith.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
>
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--

    ?Xyrael
        Sean Whitton (Xyrael) <sean at silentflame.com> [xyrael.net]
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subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice

body:
On 7/13/06, Heema Khan <heema_khan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, the matter was discussed there and the discussions
> are finished on the 8th of July, so it seems that
> Sitenote is permanent for now.

Nothing like this is really "permanent". --LV


subject: [Foundation-l] Quran in Sitenotice


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Sidestacking and pinching

body:
Shortcut WP:SAP.
Template: {{sidestack}}

'Nuf said.
-Stevertigo

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subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
A customary part of [[military terminology]] is the usage and promotion of military
terms to frame political disputes in the language of a particular POV, or else to frame
indecent acts of violence in sterile and quasi-scientific language. "Liquidation" and
"pacification" are probably the most canonical examples; from WWII and the Vietnam War,
respectively. The Rumsfeldian usage of the term "humane" also comes to mind.

Current issues, include the inclusion of the term "Operation Just Desserts" in the
[[2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon]] article in the lede. Likewise the article
[[Operation Summer Rains]] also a military, hence POV nomenclature and hence needs
renaming, though I cannot myself determine what to call it.
Is it an "incursion" (ie. "a limited incursion into the country of Congress") or an
"invasion", a "retaliation" or a "retribution" etc.

-Stevertigo

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from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 13/07/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/12/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Basically, if you're not a "public figure" (which seems to be defined
> > quite narrowly - perhaps in a similar way to the Western defamation
> > definition?), *you don't get named* at all, much less have an article
> > on you. I'm not a public figure. Angela's not a public figure. Daniel
> > Brandt's not a public figure. You probably are, and so's Xeni, but
> > there's the cutoff, I guess.
>
> "Probably"?  If you make the Time 100 anything, you're a public
> figure.  There's no gray area.

I keep forgetting Wikipedia went and got famous! He certainly is.

> Brandt is a public figure because, among other reasons, he's been
> interviewed by or featured in The New York Times about a half dozen
> times, and he's not only done this willingly (as opposed to being
> sucked into a news controversy like Brian Chase), he's courted it
> through press releases and other means.

I confess I have been avoiding paying attention to this whole thing,
but yes, that's the sort of thing involved.

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
On 7/13/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A customary part of [[military terminology]] is the usage and promotion of military
> terms to frame political disputes in the language of a particular POV, or else to frame
> indecent acts of violence in sterile and quasi-scientific language. "Liquidation" and
> "pacification" are probably the most canonical examples; from WWII and the Vietnam War,
> respectively. The Rumsfeldian usage of the term "humane" also comes to mind.
>
> Current issues, include the inclusion of the term "Operation Just Desserts" in the
> [[2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon]] article in the lede. Likewise the article
> [[Operation Summer Rains]] also a military, hence POV nomenclature and hence needs
> renaming, though I cannot myself determine what to call it.
> Is it an "incursion" (ie. "a limited incursion into the country of Congress") or an
> "invasion", a "retaliation" or a "retribution" etc.

Is it your assertion that WP should not use the miliary operation
names for describing events?

It's one thing to state that military terminology tends to gloss over
unsightly details like shooting and killing people, which is true.

It's quite another to assert that military operation  names are
unencyclopedic or so POV that they should not be used in the WP.  The
operation names are just designators for an event, and are often both
the most common and only popularly known public label for those events
(Desert Storm, for example).

It is possible to take Robin Lakoff too seriously.

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


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] POV nomenclature

body:
stevertigo wrote:

>Current issues, include the inclusion of the term "Operation Just Desserts" in the
>[[2006 Israeli-attacks on Lebanon]] article in the lede. Likewise the article
>[[Operation Summer Rains]] also a military, hence POV nomenclature and hence needs
>renaming, though I cannot myself determine what to call it.
>Is it an "incursion" (ie. "a limited incursion into the country of Congress") or an
>"invasion", a "retaliation" or a "retribution" etc.
>
If it's an official name, then that's what it's called. What's next,
renaming articles on companies and products because their names were
chosen to have positive associations? We could have such winners as
"[[computer company named after irrelevant fruit]] is the maker of
the [[Apple variety chosen because the name has a snappy abbreviation]]."

Stan