from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
> I appreciate you ask questions Cimon.
> But, please, please, please, could you make your english a little bit
> more accessible for non natives ?
>

More accessible for natives, too... :)

I'll summarise/translate (apologies to Cimon if I mangle it):

There was a lot of worry in the Old Days about what would happen if the
Foundation was forced to shut down because of legal action. It was
thought that the content and community would just be able to move
somewhere else and restart, and things would carry on almost like normal.

Recently, people have become unsure that we could do this anymore, due
to the large number of changes regarding the involvement of the
Foundation with the projects.

For one thing it has become less likely that the Foundation would be
shut down due to better legal defences, which is good. However we need
to ask if this is a certainty or not, and decide if being able to
relocate easily is still important.

Also, due to the changes that are happening, it is becoming harder for
us to relocate; we need to make sure that we can fill in these gaps if
we did have to restart.

So: do we concentrate on making the Foundation immune, and ignore the
possibility of having to relocate, or do we make sure that everything
the Foundation does will be portable?

Or doesn't it matter?

--
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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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
> I appreciate you ask questions Cimon.
> But, please, please, please, could you make your english a little bit
> more accessible for non natives ?
>

More accessible for natives, too... :)

I'll summarise/translate (apologies to Cimon if I mangle it):

There was a lot of worry in the Old Days about what would happen if the
Foundation was forced to shut down because of legal action. It was
thought that the content and community would just be able to move
somewhere else and restart, and things would carry on almost like normal.

Recently, people have become unsure that we could do this anymore, due
to the large number of changes regarding the involvement of the
Foundation with the projects.

For one thing it has become less likely that the Foundation would be
shut down due to better legal defences, which is good. However we need
to ask if this is a certainty or not, and decide if being able to
relocate easily is still important.

Also, due to the changes that are happening, it is becoming harder for
us to relocate; we need to make sure that we can fill in these gaps if
we did have to restart.

So: do we concentrate on making the Foundation immune, and ignore the
possibility of having to relocate, or do we make sure that everything
the Foundation does will be portable?

Or doesn't it matter?

--
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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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
> I appreciate you ask questions Cimon.
> But, please, please, please, could you make your english a little bit
> more accessible for non natives ?
>

More accessible for natives, too... :)

I'll summarise/translate (apologies to Cimon if I mangle it):

There was a lot of worry in the Old Days about what would happen if the
Foundation was forced to shut down because of legal action. It was
thought that the content and community would just be able to move
somewhere else and restart, and things would carry on almost like normal.

Recently, people have become unsure that we could do this anymore, due
to the large number of changes regarding the involvement of the
Foundation with the projects.

For one thing it has become less likely that the Foundation would be
shut down due to better legal defences, which is good. However we need
to ask if this is a certainty or not, and decide if being able to
relocate easily is still important.

Also, due to the changes that are happening, it is becoming harder for
us to relocate; we need to make sure that we can fill in these gaps if
we did have to restart.

So: do we concentrate on making the Foundation immune, and ignore the
possibility of having to relocate, or do we make sure that everything
the Foundation does will be portable?

Or doesn't it matter?

--
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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subject: [Foundation-l] Quo vadis, WMF?

body:
Anthere wrote:
<snip>
> I appreciate you ask questions Cimon.
> But, please, please, please, could you make your english a little bit
> more accessible for non natives ?
>

More accessible for natives, too... :)

I'll summarise/translate (apologies to Cimon if I mangle it):

There was a lot of worry in the Old Days about what would happen if the
Foundation was forced to shut down because of legal action. It was
thought that the content and community would just be able to move
somewhere else and restart, and things would carry on almost like normal.

Recently, people have become unsure that we could do this anymore, due
to the large number of changes regarding the involvement of the
Foundation with the projects.

For one thing it has become less likely that the Foundation would be
shut down due to better legal defences, which is good. However we need
to ask if this is a certainty or not, and decide if being able to
relocate easily is still important.

Also, due to the changes that are happening, it is becoming harder for
us to relocate; we need to make sure that we can fill in these gaps if
we did have to restart.

So: do we concentrate on making the Foundation immune, and ignore the
possibility of having to relocate, or do we make sure that everything
the Foundation does will be portable?

Or doesn't it matter?

--
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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list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-09-02

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 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 TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Angela, a little word on the en:wp CVU ...

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Counter-Vandalism_Unit&diff=73115462&oldid=73037422

Despite much attempt at sweet reason, they insist on continuing
egregious violation of the logo policy, and apparently won't listen to
anyone but you.

Alternately, if there's a Commons admin who can speedy the pics in
question as an utter violation of all such rules, it would probably be
a good idea.

(And that's not even getting into their strange notion that they can
vote themselves exempt from any sort of civility policy.)

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Frederick "FN" Noronha

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage
	of Wikipedia

body:
I think it has to do with the fact that Internet access in India is
still very limited, and, in some ways, very new.

As a journalist (based in Goa), I've been on e-mail access since 1994.
But till just about 12-18 months back, I paid for every minute of
internet time. Around that time, I managed to get unlimited dial-up
access. Some six months back, I got access to broadband. And only
about two months back, got unlimited 256 kbps broadband (at an
affordable Rs 900 per month).

This may not reflect everyone's situation, since I live some ten kms
out of a town in the smallest state. But outside of the metros (the
four big cities), most people are in a similar predicament.

Also, not enough people have discovered the Wikipedia yet in India. Or
so it seems. But you can expect the tide to turn in not too long a
time. Let's hope so! FN

On 01/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Frederick "FN" Noronha wrote:
>
> >"It's not as bad as it was a year ago. We had almost nothing then.
> >Now, languages like Bengali, Kannada, Marathi are in the 3,000-5,000
> >article range. Hindi, Assamese over 1,000. But Hindi, a very large
> >language, has only 1,500 entries. That's a little surprising," Wales
> >told IANS.
> >
> >
> This actually doesn't surprise me too much.  Hindi is a lingua franca of
> sorts in India, but so is English.  In particular, the Hindi speakers
> most likely to be editing an encyclopedia on the internet (middle to
> upper class, well-educated) are highly likely to also speak very good
> English.  Anecdotally, there are indeed a lot of Indians making good
> contributions on the English-language Wikipedia, so it seems that many
> seem to prefer to put their efforts there, probably for a variety of
> reasons (bigger base to start from; feeling that their contribution will
> have more global impact; etc.).
>
> -Mark

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org  9822122436 +91-832-240-9490
http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com fredericknoronha at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and external links

body:
On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok then, we either link to the bibliography or manually update each
> article with the text in the bibliography. However, how then does the
> referencing system work?

By hand, at present - there isn't a central bibliographical reference
base, as some have mooted. If you can code something that will both
work and be sensibly usable by casual editors, I suspect it would be
most welcomed ...

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
Hmm. What is the copyright status of the old logo?:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/archive/b/bc/20030314234804%21Wiki.png

and can I confirm it is ok to delete this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Wiki.PNG (note capitalisation)

--
geni


body:
On 02/09/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:

> We shouldn't just pick on the CVU.  If we're going to start deleting these,
> we should delete all of them, including the AMA logo, among others.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:CopyrightByWikimedia
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:CopyrightByWikimedia

As long as it gets started somewhere, else the logo policy is purely
decorative and should be removed as obsolete.

- d.


from_name: Jan Kulveit

subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

body:
Hi,

just a link-post, but IMO highly interesting
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html

often various examples how various free / opensource groups
organize their matters are posted here: This is a post from
one of NetBSD founders describing what problems led the once
prospective project into irrelevance. (management, culture,
Foundation going wrong,..)

Jan Kulveit (Wikimol)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: UI text translation for Board Election 2006

body:
Aphaia wrote:
> (Forwarded from translators-l)
> Hello all,
> Election has begun. Please vote now.
>
> To sysops, if you don't subscribe translators-l. For the Election, we
> have to update two MediaWiki messages, advised Tim Staring.
>

... don't suppose we could get a full list of what is supposed to be
there or not, could we? At present Commons has
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:Boardvote>:

Boardvote/{de,fr}
Boardvote/ru
Boardvote closed/{de,fr}
Boardvote days/{de,fr}
Boardvote dumplink/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits many/{de,fr}
Boardvote entered/{de,fr}
Boardvote entry/de
Boardvote intro/de
Boardvote intro change/de
Boardvote listintro/de
Boardvote needadmin/de
Boardvote notloggedin
Boardvote notloggedin/de
Boardvote notqualified
Boardvote notqualified/{de,fr}
Boardvote notstarted/de
Boardvote novotes/de
Boardvote sitenotice/de
Boardvote strike/de
Boardvote submit/de
Boardvote time/de
Boardvote ua/de
Boardvote unstrike/de

and I'm wondering which ones need to be present...

--
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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body:
Aphaia wrote:
> (Forwarded from translators-l)
> Hello all,
> Election has begun. Please vote now.
>
> To sysops, if you don't subscribe translators-l. For the Election, we
> have to update two MediaWiki messages, advised Tim Staring.
>

... don't suppose we could get a full list of what is supposed to be
there or not, could we? At present Commons has
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:Boardvote>:

Boardvote/{de,fr}
Boardvote/ru
Boardvote closed/{de,fr}
Boardvote days/{de,fr}
Boardvote dumplink/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits many/{de,fr}
Boardvote entered/{de,fr}
Boardvote entry/de
Boardvote intro/de
Boardvote intro change/de
Boardvote listintro/de
Boardvote needadmin/de
Boardvote notloggedin
Boardvote notloggedin/de
Boardvote notqualified
Boardvote notqualified/{de,fr}
Boardvote notstarted/de
Boardvote novotes/de
Boardvote sitenotice/de
Boardvote strike/de
Boardvote submit/de
Boardvote time/de
Boardvote ua/de
Boardvote unstrike/de

and I'm wondering which ones need to be present...

--
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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body:
Aphaia wrote:
> (Forwarded from translators-l)
> Hello all,
> Election has begun. Please vote now.
>
> To sysops, if you don't subscribe translators-l. For the Election, we
> have to update two MediaWiki messages, advised Tim Staring.
>

... don't suppose we could get a full list of what is supposed to be
there or not, could we? At present Commons has
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:Boardvote>:

Boardvote/{de,fr}
Boardvote/ru
Boardvote closed/{de,fr}
Boardvote days/{de,fr}
Boardvote dumplink/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits many/{de,fr}
Boardvote entered/{de,fr}
Boardvote entry/de
Boardvote intro/de
Boardvote intro change/de
Boardvote listintro/de
Boardvote needadmin/de
Boardvote notloggedin
Boardvote notloggedin/de
Boardvote notqualified
Boardvote notqualified/{de,fr}
Boardvote notstarted/de
Boardvote novotes/de
Boardvote sitenotice/de
Boardvote strike/de
Boardvote submit/de
Boardvote time/de
Boardvote ua/de
Boardvote unstrike/de

and I'm wondering which ones need to be present...

--
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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body:
Aphaia wrote:
> (Forwarded from translators-l)
> Hello all,
> Election has begun. Please vote now.
>
> To sysops, if you don't subscribe translators-l. For the Election, we
> have to update two MediaWiki messages, advised Tim Staring.
>

... don't suppose we could get a full list of what is supposed to be
there or not, could we? At present Commons has
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Prefixindex/MediaWiki:Boardvote>:

Boardvote/{de,fr}
Boardvote/ru
Boardvote closed/{de,fr}
Boardvote days/{de,fr}
Boardvote dumplink/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits/{de,fr}
Boardvote edits many/{de,fr}
Boardvote entered/{de,fr}
Boardvote entry/de
Boardvote intro/de
Boardvote intro change/de
Boardvote listintro/de
Boardvote needadmin/de
Boardvote notloggedin
Boardvote notloggedin/de
Boardvote notqualified
Boardvote notqualified/{de,fr}
Boardvote notstarted/de
Boardvote novotes/de
Boardvote sitenotice/de
Boardvote strike/de
Boardvote submit/de
Boardvote time/de
Boardvote ua/de
Boardvote unstrike/de

and I'm wondering which ones need to be present...

--
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: Matt Brown

body:
On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> The cite templates are byzantine. I'm not going to figure them all out
> any more than I'm going to learn every variety of stub template - I
> know a few, but often I'll just put {{stub}} and let someone who wants
> to pick the precisely correct one. I hope this comes across more as
> "division of labour" than "too lazy to do it properly" ;-)

Part of the Wiki way is the fact that your work doesn't have to be
'finished' before you put it up.

In terms of the cite templates, someone who knows nothing about the
actual reference should be able to turn a handwritten reference line
into a templated one, so those who care about that can do it
themselves.

I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
to do the thinking.

-Matt


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

body:
I'm not sure if any issue like this has been raised before anywhere on
Wikipedia. Policy says delete, but I think, discuss. Look at the Holocaust
one. The information there is valuable, but FAR too much to add to the main
article.

Should we
* Allow bibliographic articles?
* Include a MASSIVE reference section at the bottom of the main Holocaust
article?
* Include it in a {{hidden}} template?
* Lose most of that information?
* Wikicat/Wikibibliography project?

I think this issue merits consideration.


from_name: Francis Tyers

body:
On Sat, 2006-09-02 at 00:28 +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ok then, we either link to the bibliography or manually update each
> > article with the text in the bibliography. However, how then does the
> > referencing system work?
>
>
> By hand, at present - there isn't a central bibliographical reference
> base, as some have mooted. If you can code something that will both
> work and be sensibly usable by casual editors, I suspect it would be
> most welcomed ...
>

That would be :sweet:

Fran


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki for disability persons

body:
As an admin on Anarchopedia, one guy asked me to open "disability
Anarchopedia". You can see our talk on the page
http://eng.anarchopedia.org/index.php/User_talk:Millosh#Dear_Millosh.2C
(from this heading to the rest of the page).

Hm. There is no problem to open one or more MediaWikis, but the same
MediaWiki engine would to nothing. I was thinking about changing of
Monobook skin, but it seems that it is not enough.

As this is not only Anarchopedia-related question; as well as it
should be implemented on Wikimedian projects, too; as well as this is
important issue -- I would like to hear is there any good solution for
people with disabilities so they can be able to equally contribute to
MediaWiki projects?

I was thinking about using Emacs (it has wiki interface and I am sure
that I found that it has some interfaces for persons with
disabilities), but Emacs is too complex...

Is there anything else which can be used? If not, is there a people
who are willing to work on such issue? If not, may WMF fund a project
with aim to solve this problem?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] MediaWiki for disability persons


from_name: ScottL

body:
   It is not a matter of learning any specific cite template that is the
problem.  All of them have sufficient documentation to make them usable.
  The problem is that in about 80% of the cases that I have used them
(almost always referring to a web page of varying degrees of
officialness and sometimes news web pages) the correct cite template to
use is very very very far from obvious.

SKL

Akash Mehta wrote:
> Would it make sense to start a WikiProject for organising skilled
> labour that can take basic data submitted by users and insert it into
> articles in the form of cite templates in <ref>'s?
>
> On 9/2/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The cite templates are byzantine. I'm not going to figure them all out
>>> any more than I'm going to learn every variety of stub template - I
>>> know a few, but often I'll just put {{stub}} and let someone who wants
>>> to pick the precisely correct one. I hope this comes across more as
>>> "division of labour" than "too lazy to do it properly" ;-)
>> Part of the Wiki way is the fact that your work doesn't have to be
>> 'finished' before you put it up.
>>
>> In terms of the cite templates, someone who knows nothing about the
>> actual reference should be able to turn a handwritten reference line
>> into a templated one, so those who care about that can do it
>> themselves.
>>
>> I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
>> fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
>> subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
>> to do the thinking.
>>
>> -Matt
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
On 9/2/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>    It is not a matter of learning any specific cite template that is the
> problem.  All of them have sufficient documentation to make them usable.
>   The problem is that in about 80% of the cases that I have used them
> (almost always referring to a web page of varying degrees of
> officialness and sometimes news web pages) the correct cite template to
> use is very very very far from obvious.

I was about to say that there were only a few, and then I checked and
found (like all process) they've multiplied and grown while I wasn't
looking.  That's far too damn many.  OTOH, one doesn't have to use the
complex ones; you can just use a standard cite web or whatever.

-Matt


body:
On 02/09/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:

> Obviously me not deleting something that didn't have a policy or
> committee dealing with it at the time isn't a reason to keep it
> forever, as I've just explained at [[Wikipedia talk:Counter-Vandalism
> Unit]].

Thank you :-)

> Since we do now have a trademarks committee and a Brad, I'm sure they
> can sort this out without the need for people arguing on mailing lists
> about whether to speedy delete these images. There's no rush to delete
> them unless the Foundation does object to them, but that also
> shouldn't be seen as permission for them to stay or for more to be
> created.

Yes, that would be a less apocalyptic solution for all involved.

- d.


body:
On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, what do you mean by a central bibliographical reference base?

There are various mooted plans on en: to have a central list of
reference works that can be just referenced in an article. (I'm not
entirely convinced this is workable or won't make editing the wikitext
even more opaque than it is already. The <ref></ref><reference />
syntax seems to work nicely, for example.)

> I
> could code it, if I knew what I was coding. Currently we have the
> <reference> system, which is simple enough, but getting entries in the
> right format is hard.

I tend never to worry about the format, as making sure there's a
decent reference at all is the main struggle at the moment; if someone
else cares they'll go over it later.

>Using the cite templates makes life simple, but
> not everyone knows about them. Is there a wikiproject on improving
> wikipedia's bibliographical standards?

Probably several :-)

- d.


body:
On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> However, neither really actively encourages the improvement
> of referencing in en:wp articles, using the <reference> system, cite
> templates, both, or any other relevant system.

The <reference> system is simple enough *conceptually* as well as
syntactically to be highly usable. It lets you write your citation
down in the exact place a claim is made, then formats everything
nicely.

The cite templates are byzantine. I'm not going to figure them all out
any more than I'm going to learn every variety of stub template - I
know a few, but often I'll just put {{stub}} and let someone who wants
to pick the precisely correct one. I hope this comes across more as
"division of labour" than "too lazy to do it properly" ;-)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] CategoryTree extension

body:
On 02/09/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:

> In case you haven't noticed, Duesentrieb's category tree extension is live
> on all Wikimedia wikis. The subcategory list on category pages is displayed
> as a tree by default. You can click "show as list" to show it in the old
> display format. This additionally sets a cookie so that further requests
> will show a list by default (except pages cached as a tree on the client).

That's fantastic! Is 'expand all' a reasonable future feature? Perhaps
with a limit, in case someone cleverly clicks "expand all" on
[[:en:Category:Fundamental]].

- d.


from_name: Akash Mehta

body:
I suggest any text not in the standard 'references' and 'external
links' be <noinclude>'d, and the page left as it is but transcluded
into the relevant pages (if it isn't already).

On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> > Why should anyone want to delete them?  Bibliographic surveys
> > (particularly annotated bibliographies) would be particularly useful to
> > encourage further study in many broad areas.
>
>
> Well, yes. Annotation would be the best thing to try first - a good
> bibliography is certainly not an *indiscriminate* collection of
> information.
>
> But if people go "ewwww" at the list, see if there's a wikiproject
> that can put it to good use in project space. This works well with
> "List of articles about x" that were popular before categories - such
> lists may be superfluous with the category, but they're still very
> useful for a wikiproject.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Readable and easy to remember passwords

body:
John Ky wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Is it possible to make Mediawiki generate readable and easy to
> remember passwords?  ie. avoiding confusion between 1 and l, and using
> combinations of letters that are pronouncable?
>
> Thanks
>
> -John
Hoi,
There is a difference between if MediaWiki could generate passwords and
if it should. When there is an engine that generates passwords, this
same engine could be used to generate passwords for an attack. Choosing
passwords is the end-users responsibility. It is exactly by choosing a 1
in stead of an l that a brute force attack becomes slightly more
problematic.

The other thing to consider is that when MW starts generating passwords,
they will then be based on English ?? Bad idea when people use other
languages like Hindi or Russian.. At that the captchas doing English
words is not that great an idea (though it is convenient for me).

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On 02/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wait, isn't that encouraged? I had thought that most categories were
> supposed to categorize categories, and only the terminal categories
> were supposed to have articles in them - ex. [[Category:Free
> software]] should have only categories in it, not articles on
> software.

Eh? I don't recall that being required at all. Else you'll end up with
a lot of "other x" subcats.

- d.


body:
Ok then, we either link to the bibliography or manually update each
article with the text in the bibliography. However, how then does the
referencing system work?

On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 01/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I suggest any text not in the standard 'references' and 'external
> > links' be <noinclude>'d, and the page left as it is but transcluded
> > into the relevant pages (if it isn't already).
>
>
> Transcluding blocks of article text (as opposed to, e.g., article box
> templates) is not considered acceptable on en:.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: textbook-l

from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikibooks in the press

body:
There is a very enthusiactic articles about Wikibooks, showing how useful free texbooks can be with example of Geometry book.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1154525979594&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

In fact, I don't remember such an enthusiastic text about Wikibooks in last time.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


body:
On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would it make sense to start a WikiProject for organising skilled
> labour that can take basic data submitted by users and insert it into
> articles in the form of cite templates in <ref>'s?

If there isn't, there probably should be. I'm *amazed* how many people
got to work on stub sorting on en: ... it seems there's a lot of
people who may not be great writers or researchers, but want to do
what they can for the project. You could start with some of the people
who did the stub sorting :-)

- d.


body:
Well, what do you mean by a central bibliographical reference base? I
could code it, if I knew what I was coding. Currently we have the
<reference> system, which is simple enough, but getting entries in the
right format is hard. Using the cite templates makes life simple, but
not everyone knows about them. Is there a wikiproject on improving
wikipedia's bibliographical standards?

On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Ok then, we either link to the bibliography or manually update each
> > article with the text in the bibliography. However, how then does the
> > referencing system work?
>
>
> By hand, at present - there isn't a central bibliographical reference
> base, as some have mooted. If you can code something that will both
> work and be sensibly usable by casual editors, I suspect it would be
> most welcomed ...
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Jan Kulveit wrote:
> just a link-post, but IMO highly interesting
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
>
> often various examples how various free / opensource groups
> organize their matters are posted here: This is a post from
> one of NetBSD founders describing what problems led the once
> prospective project into irrelevance. (management, culture,
> Foundation going wrong,..)
>

I find this part especially interesting, on the need for a strong
separation between a Foundation that provides infrastructure and a
community that manages the project:

6) The existing NetBSD Foundation must be disbanded, and replaced with
   an organization that fulfills its original purpose: to merely handle
   administrative issues, and not to manage day-to-day affairs.  The
   extra committees, which mostly do nothing, must be disbanded -- they
   serve only to obfuscate things.  Everything else must revert to the
   historically separate entity, the NetBSD Project, to be managed based
   on technical merits.  There must be no perceived glamour in
   participating in the Foundation; it must be composed of people doing
   it because they are dedicated and want to help the project.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Commons content reuse how-to?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
> contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
> people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
> page anywhere else that serves this purpose?
>

There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
(but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
licenses we didn't write.

Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
which aren't?).

-Mark


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage
 of Wikipedia

body:
Delirium wrote:

> This actually doesn't surprise me too much.  Hindi is a lingua
> franca of sorts in India, but so is English.  In particular, the
> Hindi speakers most likely to be editing an encyclopedia on the
> internet (middle to upper class, well-educated) are highly
> likely to also speak very good English.  Anecdotally, there are
> indeed a lot of Indians making good contributions on the
> English-language Wikipedia,

This is the case in Scandinavia too.  I would say that a majority
of the Scandinavian contributors speak excellent English, even if
the user base is starting to expand to older, less educated
contributors.  Some Scandinavian wikipedians think the
Scandinavian language versions are jokes, and only contribute to
the English Wikipedia. But the more Scandinavians who contribute
to the English Wikipedia, the more contributors spill over to the
"native" languages, of which 4 are among the top 20 languages at
Wikipedia. Danish with 5 million speakers has 47,000 articles.

So even if these supposedly young, male, upper-class wikipedians
in India speak good English, that is not enough to explain why
Hindi is lagging behind. Perhaps the issue is if they grew up with
an English or Hindi encyclopedia in their parents' bookshelf.  Do
they consider Hindi to be "a language of encyclopedias"?  I don't
see the word "Hindi" in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_encyclopedias

I also don't see the word "encyclopedia" in any of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_literature
or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_literature

In the longer run, I hope Wikipedia should not only have a full
good Hindi version, but one edited by the right proportions of
gender, class, and age.  We probably have a very long way to go.

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Gordon Joly

subject:
[WikiEN-l] You realise this means [[Pokemon]] has to be brought
 to feature quality. (was Well darn, Pokemon is important after all.)

body:
At 15:03 +0100 30/8/06, David Gerard wrote:
>On 30/08/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
>  > It really is a case of "be careful what you wish for", isn't it?
>>  We were quite pleased over at en.wiktionary when Leon turned
>  > stats on there for us a couple of days previously, but the joy
>>  is now mixed with rue as we learn that among our most popular
>>  entries, so far, are consistently MILF, penis, fuck, masturbate,
>>  and breasts.
>
>
>What it tells us is that it is absolutely vital that said articles be
>of the highest possible quality, and in fact should be brought to
>Featured Article status as absolutely soon as possible. (Seriously.)
>

The word "breast" is a classic example of why simplistic "stop words"
approaches will fail. Does anybody want to delete this article?

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

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer

body:
I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be
having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the
mailing list.

~Mark Ryan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
Date: 02-Sep-2006 08:30
Subject: [Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer]
To: ultrablue at gmail.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:41:40 -0400
Subject: Dealing with a famous photographer
Hello folks. I (longtime editor "JDG") stopped monitoring Wikipedia
lists long ago, but I'd like to ask some advice on dealing with a rather
famous photographer in my attempts to include at least one of his images
in the English Wikipedia's Bob Dylan article.

To be honest, this photographer's 1966 portrait of Dylan was up there as
the lead photograph in the article for almost all of `05 and most of
this year, until the Fair Use crackdown. I'll suppress my opinion of
that crackdown and go on to my question: given the following
correspondence, what's the best way to reel the photographer (let's call
him "Mr. K") in?:

<start correspondence>

"Hello J,

Thanks for your email requesting use of my photograph of Bob Dylan for
the lead photo in your Wikipedia article about him.  All in all, I'd
like to go forward but  I'll first need a moment to re-read and fully
understand the "GNU Free Documentation License" material.  I do not want
to lose control of this iconic photograph.  Anything you can say about
that would be helpful.

If we go forward, what is the smallest size file you can use for good
Internet photo reproduction?  The file size you've picked up was made
for press use and for my part,is far too large for Internet use.  The
picture has my copyright notice on the photograph (on Dylan's shoulder)
and I would do the same for the new file  I would provide.   Where would
I send it?

Please let me know your deadline for getting this done.  Yes, I would
like to be linked to my website - what information must I provide?
.
Best regards,
K

----------------------------------------------------------------

 > Dear Mr. K,
 >
 > I'm one of the thousands of drones working on Wikipedia. Some of us
who have been overseeing the Bob Dylan article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan) very much want to use one of
your excellent portraits as the lead photo in the article, but copyright
concerns have forced us to use a very inferior picture. The portrait we
wish to use is the one shown here: >
http://www.cleonproductions.com/flotsam/Bob_Dylan_by_DK.png
 >
 > Would you consider giving Wikipedia explicit permission to use it at
the resolution shown at the above link? We can offer no payment, but we
can offer a link back to your own website, in addition to the standard
photo credit by name. As Wikipedia is currently the 17th most used site
in the world, this link may prove valuable, particularly if you ever try
selling photographs from your site or from a site linked to your site
 >
 > If you choose to give us permission, this particular digital file of
the photo will then fall under the "GNU Free Documentation License" (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License),
with a stipulation that whoever re-uses Wikipedia content must also
display the photo credit as well as a hypertext link of your choosing.
Of course, all rights to the original photo, as well as digital
reproductions at higher resolutions, remain with you.
 >
 > Thanks for your time and consideration,
 >
 > JDG
 >

<end correspondence>

Sorry for the length, but you can see it raises some halfway tricky
questions. I'm not especially knowledgeable about copyright law nor even
of Wikipedia\media's own policies in this area... So, how would you
answer Mr. K (with a view, of course, to "getting" his fine photograph)?

Thx,

JDG


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] My irrelevant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
On 1 Sep 2006 at 20:32, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:

>    How is a plane English sentence describing what someone might have
> wanted, or indicating that if they wanted something else in general,
> that they should follow a link not obvious?  It is in plane english and
> does not require that a person be "in the know" or an editor.  First
> time wikipedia users can get it.

Is "plane English" what is spoken by aircraft flight crews, or does
it refer to a form of English that has exactly two dimensions?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Anthere

body:
Jan Kulveit wrote:
> Hi,
>
> just a link-post, but IMO highly interesting
> http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2006/08/30/0016.html
>
> often various examples how various free / opensource groups
> organize their matters are posted here: This is a post from
> one of NetBSD founders describing what problems led the once
> prospective project into irrelevance. (management, culture,
> Foundation going wrong,..)
>
> Jan Kulveit (Wikimol)

Oh man...

I could put right now half of the points as already valid for us.
And have been thinking of the other half as possible future as well :-(

ant


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Some stats and info

body:
On 02/09/06, Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:

> Finally, I am still looking for someone who runs Linux
> and understands MySql to make a specific
> administrator-list. A complete tutorial is available!

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_queries .

Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 9/2/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> And while we're on the subject, what do people think of this,
>   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/a/a2/Disambig-alt2.png
> instead of the typical this?:
>   http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/meta/a/a2/Disambig-alt1.png

The weakness is that it's not apparently obvious what "Disambiguation"
means (especially when it is a single word displayed to the right of
the title). A hatnote in a standardised form is easy to interpret,
even for someone who hasn't seen one on Wikipedia before, and it also
corresponds with how disambiguation occurs in some other publications.

[[WP:DAB]] does a very good job of setting out when disambiguation
should be done, how it should be done and the various forms it can
take. Interestingly, it actually suggests that where there are only
two articles to be disambiguated, the form that should be taken is the
one you seem not to like. I suggest you bring up this issue on the
talk page there, since apparently some people consider it a good
enough form to recommend.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search index update status

body:
I'm trying to set up a more regular search index update for the Wikimedia sites.
To summarize how it's to work:

A process on maurus (the search build master) runs through the list of all
wikis, dumping their text and piping it to the search index builder program.

As each wiki completes, the newly built index is moved from the build directory
into the complete directory.

The lucene search servers currently restart themselves hourly as a precaution
against memory leaks; additionally before restart they will now do an rsync to
copy over any complete new indexes from the master. [There may be some
refinements to make on this, such as keeping 'live' and 'update' copies and
swapping them out during the restart.]

This should keep search index updates happening within a day or two, rather than
the extremely long and irregular schedule of before.

Currently the build process is running on maurus since last night; it's
currently about 1/3 through enwiki and doesn't appear to have spewed any errors.
I'll check in on it again this evening and if things look ok I'll set up the
synchronization process.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
John Ky wrote:
> Is it possible to make Mediawiki generate readable and easy to
> remember passwords?  ie. avoiding confusion between 1 and l, and using
> combinations of letters that are pronouncable?

Really it shouldn't be generating passwords ever. :)

In the cases where it does generate a password, this should be changed to a
temporary code that lets you get in just far enough to set your own password.

Among other things, this would ensure that people don't have all their account
passwords sitting in their e-mail archives for any opportunist to type
"password" into their Gmail search...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> to do the thinking.

Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
cites, for example

<ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>

So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.

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from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] before and after content display hooks

body:
On 02/09/06, Dan Li <dto at dev.java.net> wrote:
> BeforePageDisplay in includes/SkinTemplate.php can be very useful. The
> only catch is that it isn't called by skins that directly extend Skin
> instead of SkinTemplate (i.e. Cologne Blue, Nostalgia, and Classic).

A symptom of a skinning system that now needs to be ripped out and
rewritten, so that all skins inherit a basic skin class and behave in
the same manner, utilising small differences in the HTML and leaving
most of the work to differing CSS files.

Rob Church


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/09/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:

>    It is not a matter of learning any specific cite template that is the
> problem.  All of them have sufficient documentation to make them usable.
>   The problem is that in about 80% of the cases that I have used them
> (almost always referring to a web page of varying degrees of
> officialness and sometimes news web pages) the correct cite template to
> use is very very very far from obvious.

Indeed. As with the stub-sorting project, if we have reasonably sane
people who care sorting this out and working out what seems a good
idea that will go over okay, then we will easily reach whatever level
of detail people actually care about.

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Matt Brown wrote:
>
>
>>I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
>>fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
>>subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
>>to do the thinking.
>>
>>
>Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
>Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
>over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
>cites, for example
>
><ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
>
>So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
>in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
>available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
>sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
>references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
>1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
>collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
>
There's something to be said in favour of a bibliographic project.
Wikipedians could register what they have, in case someone wants details
looked up.  Maybe the software could even put up a red flag when the
owner hasn't put up a single edit in the last three months essentially
telling others that they are wasting their time asking him.

I do have seriously increasing concerns about the trend toward excessive
templates.  They tend to reflect an obsession toward uniformity that can
obscure the basic values of simplicity where anyone to edit.  The
counter-argument may well be, "Go ahead and add the data; we can fix the
format later."  That still makes it difficult for a non-techie to
correct data that he considers incorrect.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Steven Dutch on academic hierarchies

body:
The title and intro aren't the interesting bits, IMO. The rest is
about academic and knowledge-gathering hierarchies:

   http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Summers.HTM

- d.


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] My irreverant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
--- ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:

> > Do you have a source for that?
>
> WTF?

When you make a sweeping generalised claim about how people actually behave and
perceieve things as if it were a fact, particularly as this applies to a particular
case which should be easily supported or not - its fair to ask for a citation.
In this case you were making some claim about how peoples eyeballs worked and that
this automatically invalidated everything else I said.

>  You seem to be confusing editors with casual readers.  Most of the
> features you point at are for editors.  People who will take the time to
> get use to the conventions and terms used.  Some people just want to
> find the right article.

No, Im not. I also read lots, and in the course of editing I make little changes, and
sometimes more major ones. Im more of a gnome who looks at wiki from the point of view
of readability.

So I disagree that my suggestion is a bad one, just because people here say so, and
particularly because all of the arguments against seem to rest on this notion that 1)
its fine the way it is 2) its confusing 3) its against policy.

3 - DIS policy is borked and needs correcting. Peppering articles in the sciences with
hatnotes referencing pop culture (especially particular bits that in themselves dont
merit an article on their own) is called LINKSPAM and falls under SPAM and not DIS.
2 - People arent stupid, unless they are taught to act that way.
1 - It would probably be fine if every single case were handled by a disambiguation,
and
    not left to discretion. If that was consistent, then we wouldnt see any "for the
    b-side by the Spice Girls" links.

-sv.

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


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject:
[WikiEN-l] You realise this means [[Pokemon]] has to be brought
	to feature quality. (was Well darn, Pokemon is important after all.)

body:
On 9/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> The word "breast" is a classic example of why simplistic "stop words"
> approaches will fail. Does anybody want to delete this article?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer
>
>
> Gordo
>

Not particularly. It's perhaps a bit wordy, but I don't see any policy
reason to delete this.
Can you?


body:
--- ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:

> > Do you have a source for that?
>
> WTF?

When you make a sweeping generalised claim about how people actually behave and
perceieve things as if it were a fact, particularly as this applies to a particular
case which should be easily supported or not - its fair to ask for a citation.
In this case you were making some claim about how peoples eyeballs worked and that
this automatically invalidated everything else I said.

>  You seem to be confusing editors with casual readers.  Most of the
> features you point at are for editors.  People who will take the time to
> get use to the conventions and terms used.  Some people just want to
> find the right article.

No, Im not. I also read lots, and in the course of reading I make little changes, and
sometimes more major ones. Im more of a gnome who looks at wiki from the point of view
of readability.

So I disagree that my suggestion is a bad one, just because people here say so, and
particularly because all of the arguments against seem to rest on this notion that 1)
its fine the way it is 2) its confusing 3) its against policy.

3 - DIS policy is borked and needs correcting. Peppering articles in the sciences with
hatnotes referencing pop culture (especially particular bits that in themselves dont
merit an article on their own) is called LINKSPAM and falls under SPAM and not DIS.
2 - People arent stupid, unless they are taught to act that way.
1 - It would probably be fine if every single case were handled by a disambiguation,
and
    not left to discretion. If that was consistent, then we wouldnt see any "for the
    b-side by the Spice Girls" links.

-sv.

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


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license
it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it
as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing
full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he
already said we can use it.

Less-practical but more in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Encourage him to
release it under GFDL with the knowledge that nobody who really wants
to make any money off of content is going to to be happy licensing
their entire work under the GFDL and attaching all of its license
agreements.

Completely-impractical but completely-in-the-spirit-of-it answer:
Encourge him to release it freely and not care about how his content
is controlled, because information wants to be free, etc.

As my only slightly sardonic answers might give rise, I don't really
think there's a solution here which is both practical (for him) and in
the spirit of Wikipedia. I don't blame him for not wanting to release
it under a free license. There are some ways to secure his interests
and still take advantage of some of our policy loopholes, but they're
not really in the spirit of the wiki IMO.

FF

On 9/1/06, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am forwarding this message on to the list because JDG appears to be
> having some technical issues preventing the sending of mail to the
> mailing list.
>
> ~Mark Ryan
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
> Date: 02-Sep-2006 08:30
> Subject: [Fwd: Dealing with a famous photographer]
> To: ultrablue at gmail.com
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jaydee Gee <JDGee1 at gmail.com>
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 14:41:40 -0400
> Subject: Dealing with a famous photographer
> Hello folks. I (longtime editor "JDG") stopped monitoring Wikipedia
> lists long ago, but I'd like to ask some advice on dealing with a rather
> famous photographer in my attempts to include at least one of his images
> in the English Wikipedia's Bob Dylan article.
>
> To be honest, this photographer's 1966 portrait of Dylan was up there as
> the lead photograph in the article for almost all of `05 and most of
> this year, until the Fair Use crackdown. I'll suppress my opinion of
> that crackdown and go on to my question: given the following
> correspondence, what's the best way to reel the photographer (let's call
> him "Mr. K") in?:
>
> <start correspondence>
>
> "Hello J,
>
> Thanks for your email requesting use of my photograph of Bob Dylan for
> the lead photo in your Wikipedia article about him.  All in all, I'd
> like to go forward but  I'll first need a moment to re-read and fully
> understand the "GNU Free Documentation License" material.  I do not want
> to lose control of this iconic photograph.  Anything you can say about
> that would be helpful.
>
> If we go forward, what is the smallest size file you can use for good
> Internet photo reproduction?  The file size you've picked up was made
> for press use and for my part,is far too large for Internet use.  The
> picture has my copyright notice on the photograph (on Dylan's shoulder)
> and I would do the same for the new file  I would provide.   Where would
> I send it?
>
> Please let me know your deadline for getting this done.  Yes, I would
> like to be linked to my website - what information must I provide?
> .
> Best regards,
> K
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>  > Dear Mr. K,
>  >
>  > I'm one of the thousands of drones working on Wikipedia. Some of us
> who have been overseeing the Bob Dylan article
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan) very much want to use one of
> your excellent portraits as the lead photo in the article, but copyright
> concerns have forced us to use a very inferior picture. The portrait we
> wish to use is the one shown here: >
> http://www.cleonproductions.com/flotsam/Bob_Dylan_by_DK.png
>  >
>  > Would you consider giving Wikipedia explicit permission to use it at
> the resolution shown at the above link? We can offer no payment, but we
> can offer a link back to your own website, in addition to the standard
> photo credit by name. As Wikipedia is currently the 17th most used site
> in the world, this link may prove valuable, particularly if you ever try
> selling photographs from your site or from a site linked to your site
>  >
>  > If you choose to give us permission, this particular digital file of
> the photo will then fall under the "GNU Free Documentation License" (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License),
> with a stipulation that whoever re-uses Wikipedia content must also
> display the photo credit as well as a hypertext link of your choosing.
> Of course, all rights to the original photo, as well as digital
> reproductions at higher resolutions, remain with you.
>  >
>  > Thanks for your time and consideration,
>  >
>  > JDG
>  >
>
> <end correspondence>
>
> Sorry for the length, but you can see it raises some halfway tricky
> questions. I'm not especially knowledgeable about copyright law nor even
> of Wikipedia\media's own policies in this area... So, how would you
> answer Mr. K (with a view, of course, to "getting" his fine photograph)?
>
> Thx,
>
> JDG
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Fastfission wrote:
> Less-practical but more in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Encourage him to
> release it under GFDL with the knowledge that nobody who really wants
> to make any money off of content is going to to be happy licensing
> their entire work under the GFDL and attaching all of its license
> agreements.
>

This seems reasonable; it really depends on what he means by "control of
it".  If he means control of licensing royalties, releasing it under the
GFDL probably won't significantly impact that, because most commercial
publishers would prefer to pay a fee than to comply with the GFDL.  If
he means control in other ways, then he would be releasing some control
of it; for example, people could use it in derived works.

-Mark


body:
I have an email addres, wp at davidgerard.co.uk, set up for en:wp press
queries. Of course, it gets used as a sort of OTRS replacement.

One query I've gotten a bit lately is "may we reuse this text?" or
"may we reuse this image?" I email back explaining how the original
contributor owns it and there will be a license attached, which may be
easy or hard to keep to the terms of.

There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
page anywhere else that serves this purpose?

(Let's assume for the moment I have little interest in diving
headfirst into Commons politics.)

- d.


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Some stats and info

body:
--- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> skrev:

> On 9/1/06, Fredrik Josefsson
> <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
> [snip]
> > Finally, I am still looking for someone who runs
> Linux
> > and understands MySql to make a specific
> > administrator-list. A complete tutorial is
> available!
>
> What exactly do you want? I don't quite understand
> the question, but I
> can almost certainly generate whatever info you
> desire.

It concerns the list of administrators by number of
deletions.

A user made a list, but after some disputes on the
mailinglist he didn't want to maintain it. He also
heavily truncated the page. I am looking for someone
who can maintain it and update it monthly.

If anyone is interested, I will provide the tutorial
that the user generously wrote for me.

/ Fred-Chess


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 9/2/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license
> it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it
> as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing
> full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he
> already said we can use it.
[snip]

Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.

Either we (and other folks like us) can use it as fair use and we
don't need his permission or it's not and we should not accept the
image in our article permission or not.

Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images
that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will
give us permission to display them on their website.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] CategoryTree extension

body:
In case you haven't noticed, Duesentrieb's category tree extension is live
on all Wikimedia wikis. The subcategory list on category pages is displayed
as a tree by default. You can click "show as list" to show it in the old
display format. This additionally sets a cookie so that further requests
will show a list by default (except pages cached as a tree on the client).

The suggestion has been made to add a user preference in addition to the
cookie mechanism. I think we'll probably wait and see what the demand is for
that.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Nice attempt to overrule Jimbos edict against 'with permissions' images.

Overrule it? No way. It's just that I find it a little silly that we
can just change "with permission" images to "fair use" and pretend
that changes much. In practice, we're still using it with permission,
as much as we pretend not to care about being given that permission.
I'm not sure whether labeling it "with permission" or "fair use" is
more helpful to re-users in figuring out what they can use or not.

This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict --
Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the
non-commercial/with-permissions problem. But in the end, Wikipedia is
still using said images non-commercially and with-permission, no
matter how sternly it says, "Honestly, we'd be using it even if we
weren't completely within the terms of this license."

> Please don't encourage a regression to a point where we permit images
> that others couldn't claim fair use for simply because people will
> give us permission to display them on their website.

Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.

FF


body:
On 9/2/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Regression? This is the status quo, as far as I can see.

I just wanted to expand on this somewhat pissy little ending line.

I think this will continue to be the status quo until we have some
more elaboration about what exactly our fair use policy is supposed to
facilitate.

There are a few tugging interests and I'm not ever really sure which
of them are more important than the others. One is illustrating the
encyclopedia (and I mean "illustrating" in a broad sense -- quotations
are fair use too). One is protecting Wikipedia's own liability. One is
protecting the hypothetical liability of hypothetical re-users.

At the moment our policies don't really differentiate between these
interests or encourage people to even be aware of them and how they
sometimes conflict with one another. I think there are ways in which
the policies could be made which would try to balance these out a bit,
but at the moment I'm honestly not always sure what the priorities are
supposed to be. I have some vague notions but usually feel like I'm
blue-skying it, making up most of it as I go along based on
somewhat-related comments by Jimbo.

In my view of it, if we want our policy to be centered around
re-users, then we need to define a target re-user, and work backwards
from there. But if the bar we set there is significantly higher than
Wikipedia's own situation, then we're going to need a lot of very
clear guidelines (probably from on-high) because it is going to lead
to a lot of irritated users.

If we are only really caring about our own rear, then our fair use
policy becomes an easy loophole for the
non-commercial/educational-use-only/with-permissions images.

FF


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Recent changes page improvements to help catch
	spam & vandalism

body:
On 9/2/06, Jeff Carr <basilarchia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I use mediawiki on a lot of sites which have minimal traffic.
>
> It's very time consuming to go click through things on the "Recent
> Changes" page to check for spam & vandalism.
>
> What would make it easier to quickly detect is a "Recent Changes diff
> page". I'm thinking something that just shows the wiki diff for
> several pages at once.

The RSS feed for recent changes just shows the diff -
http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&feed=rss

If you don't want that for all the changes, you could collate the feed
for the history of the pages you do want into a feed reader -
http://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Documentation&action=history&feed=rss

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [Foundation-l] Angela, a little word on the en:wp CVU ...

body:
Obviously me not deleting something that didn't have a policy or
committee dealing with it at the time isn't a reason to keep it
forever, as I've just explained at [[Wikipedia talk:Counter-Vandalism
Unit]].

One problem is that
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_visual_identity_guidelines
is currently about the Wikimedia logo, not about all logos Wikimedia
claims trademarks over.

Since we do now have a trademarks committee and a Brad, I'm sure they
can sort this out without the need for people arguing on mailing lists
about whether to speedy delete these images. There's no rush to delete
them unless the Foundation does object to them, but that also
shouldn't be seen as permission for them to stay or for more to be
created.

Angela.


from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and external links

body:
I'd be happy to start one if nobody has already, I have experience in
starting wikiprojects after [[WP:WWF]]. It seems
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikicite]] did something, but it wasn't very
clear. And then there's [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference
Check]]. However, neither really actively encourages the improvement
of referencing in en:wp articles, using the <reference> system, cite
templates, both, or any other relevant system.

On 9/2/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>
>
> Akash Mehta wrote:
> > Well, what do you mean by a central bibliographical reference base? I
> > could code it, if I knew what I was coding. Currently we have the
> > <reference> system, which is simple enough, but getting entries in the
> > right format is hard. Using the cite templates makes life simple, but
> > not everyone knows about them. Is there a wikiproject on improving
> > wikipedia's bibliographical standards?
>
>    If not there should be.
>
> SKL
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 9/2/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license
> > it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it
> > as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing
> > full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he
> > already said we can use it.
>
> Then please stop saying that "wikipedia can use it" when you are only
> referring to the en.wp.

Oh, please, what other Wikipedias are others referring to in this
thread? Let's not be pedantic for no reason; I think my meaning was
clear.

> If you want to make this picture free to use for wikipedia (regardless
> of the language), then the author has to put one file containing the
> image under a free license.

I don't think copyrights work on a "per file" basis ? they work on a
"per work" basis. To my understanding of it, you can't GFDL only a
low-res version of something and not have it also covered by a
high-res version. At least I'm pretty sure there's nothing in current
caselaw which would imply that different resolutions of the same image
have independent copyright status.

FF


from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [Commons-l] Some stats and info

body:
Greg,

This sounds like it's right up your alley :)

Cary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Fredrik Josefsson
> Sent: Saturday, September 02, 2006 8:45 AM
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Some stats and info
>
>
>
> --- Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> skrev:
>
> > On 9/1/06, Fredrik Josefsson
> > <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
> > [snip]
> > > Finally, I am still looking for someone who runs
> > Linux
> > > and understands MySql to make a specific
> > > administrator-list. A complete tutorial is
> > available!
> >
> > What exactly do you want? I don't quite understand
> > the question, but I
> > can almost certainly generate whatever info you
> > desire.
>
> It concerns the list of administrators by number of
> deletions.
>
> A user made a list, but after some disputes on the
> mailinglist he didn't want to maintain it. He also
> heavily truncated the page. I am looking for someone
> who can maintain it and update it monthly.
>
> If anyone is interested, I will provide the tutorial
> that the user generously wrote for me.
>
> / Fred-Chess
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] special projects committee: public meeting tomorrow

body:
A second public meeting of the special projects committee will take
place tomorrow at 20:00 UTC.  The agenda will include processes for
new project development, community input and feedback, and ways the
committee can be more effective.  Additional agenda items, or specific
ideas for discussion, can be added to the Meta-wiki (see link below).

* Time :  Sunday, September 3, 2006.  20:00 UTC  (16:00 EST / 22:00 CET)
* Location:
    IRC --  #wikimedia-spcomm on irc.freenode.net
    Meta -- http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee/Meetings
      (for agenda, attendee list, and commentary)

--SJ


body:
On 02/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> There isn't, as far as I know.  There should be, though we should make
> clear that we're providing informal/nonlegal guidelines that we think
> (but don't guarantee) explain the requirements for reusers, because we
> don't really have the authority to provide official interpretations of
> licenses we didn't write.
> Unofficial guidelines for the major licenses we use would be useful,
> though---often the problem isn't so much the legal details, as the
> potential reuser not even knowing in broad terms what the reuse
> requirements are (for example, which licenses are copyleft ones and
> which aren't?).

OK. I've just started:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project

body:
The important take-home from this email is not so much anything it
says about open source projects, but that it was written by a project
founder (Charles Hannum) upset that they did to him what he did to
another project founder (Theo deRaadt) several years previously.
Everything else is a real problem, but that's what he really hates
about the NetBSD Foundation.

The main problem with NetBSD, in my opinion, is that it doesn't really
have a compelling story. DeRaadt's fork, OpenBSD, is obsessive about
security and cryptography; it's a small project, but that's a good
enough goal to keep people interested and working on it. Despite it
having substituted stifling project bureaucracy with deRaadt's
famously abrasive but practical personality.

Does Wikimedia have a compelling enough story to keep people here
despite the other people? Well, I'm still here ...

- d.


from_name: John Ky

body:
Hello,

Is it possible to make Mediawiki generate readable and easy to
remember passwords?  ie. avoiding confusion between 1 and l, and using
combinations of letters that are pronouncable?

Thanks

-John


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 1 Sep 2006 at 20:32, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>
> >    How is a plane English sentence describing what someone might have
> > wanted, or indicating that if they wanted something else in general,
> > that they should follow a link not obvious?  It is in plane english and
> > does not require that a person be "in the know" or an editor.  First
> > time wikipedia users can get it.
>
> Is "plane English" what is spoken by aircraft flight crews, or does
> it refer to a form of English that has exactly two dimensions?

You knew what he meant, don't be a smartass


body:
Hi Gerard,

The issue isn't whether it could or should generate passwords because
it already does generate passwords.  The "E-mail password"
functionality people use when they forget their password already
generates a new password.  I am asking if the generated password can
be made easier to remember.  The criteria I'm asking for isn't whether
the generated passwords should be English, but whether they should be
pronouncable - for instance "jimperbolt" or "paldyacktor" instead of
"tN2HcQm".

-John

On 9/2/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> John Ky wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Is it possible to make Mediawiki generate readable and easy to
> > remember passwords?  ie. avoiding confusion between 1 and l, and using
> > combinations of letters that are pronouncable?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > -John
> Hoi,
> There is a difference between if MediaWiki could generate passwords and
> if it should. When there is an engine that generates passwords, this
> same engine could be used to generate passwords for an attack. Choosing
> passwords is the end-users responsibility. It is exactly by choosing a 1
> in stead of an l that a brute force attack becomes slightly more
> problematic.
>
> The other thing to consider is that when MW starts generating passwords,
> they will then be based on English ?? Bad idea when people use other
> languages like Hindi or Russian.. At that the captchas doing English
> words is not that great an idea (though it is convenient for me).
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Sean Black

body:
> Now ask which is the clearer disambiguation system: the current one or
> your proposed one.  I am quite willing to concede that the current
> system can be downright peculiar and mock serious subjects, but I very
> much doubt this is the solution.

How does "you may have been looking for [[this]]" "mock" anything?

~~Sean


body:
If everyone labelled it 'too lazy to do it properly,' [[WP:WSS]]
members would be out of a job :)

On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > However, neither really actively encourages the improvement
> > of referencing in en:wp articles, using the <reference> system, cite
> > templates, both, or any other relevant system.
>
>
> The <reference> system is simple enough *conceptually* as well as
> syntactically to be highly usable. It lets you write your citation
> down in the exact place a claim is made, then formats everything
> nicely.
>
> The cite templates are byzantine. I'm not going to figure them all out
> any more than I'm going to learn every variety of stub template - I
> know a few, but often I'll just put {{stub}} and let someone who wants
> to pick the precisely correct one. I hope this comes across more as
> "division of labour" than "too lazy to do it properly" ;-)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Would it make sense to start a WikiProject for organising skilled
labour that can take basic data submitted by users and insert it into
articles in the form of cite templates in <ref>'s?

On 9/2/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The cite templates are byzantine. I'm not going to figure them all out
> > any more than I'm going to learn every variety of stub template - I
> > know a few, but often I'll just put {{stub}} and let someone who wants
> > to pick the precisely correct one. I hope this comes across more as
> > "division of labour" than "too lazy to do it properly" ;-)
>
> Part of the Wiki way is the fact that your work doesn't have to be
> 'finished' before you put it up.
>
> In terms of the cite templates, someone who knows nothing about the
> actual reference should be able to turn a handwritten reference line
> into a templated one, so those who care about that can do it
> themselves.
>
> I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> to do the thinking.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Analyzing and Visualizing the Semantic Coverage
	of Wikipedia

body:
And wouldn't there be a lot of database space taken up by redundant
categories like this? We could have articles for them, maybe, but at
this rate we'll need to start 'WikiProject WikiDbCleanup'. If there
are 12,000 categories, that has to make up a significant body of data.

On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 02/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wait, isn't that encouraged? I had thought that most categories were
> > supposed to categorize categories, and only the terminal categories
> > were supposed to have articles in them - ex. [[Category:Free
> > software]] should have only categories in it, not articles on
> > software.
>
>
> Eh? I don't recall that being required at all. Else you'll end up with
> a lot of "other x" subcats.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
What are you talking about, redundant?? It's called structure, man!

http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikispecial/EN/CategoryOverviewIndex.htm

Our category system serves many purposes which sometimes clash, but
surprisingly infrequently, IMO.

Good general rule:don't create a category until it's needed. Therefore
it's not at all surprising that categories other than 'leaves' have
contents.

Why is everyone so obsessed with cleanup? It's not even fun, let alone
necessary (most of the time).

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

On 02/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> And wouldn't there be a lot of database space taken up by redundant
> categories like this? We could have articles for them, maybe, but at
> this rate we'll need to start 'WikiProject WikiDbCleanup'. If there
> are 12,000 categories, that has to make up a significant body of data.
>
> On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 02/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Wait, isn't that encouraged? I had thought that most categories were
> > > supposed to categorize categories, and only the terminal categories
> > > were supposed to have articles in them - ex. [[Category:Free
> > > software]] should have only categories in it, not articles on
> > > software.
> >
> >
> > Eh? I don't recall that being required at all. Else you'll end up with
> > a lot of "other x" subcats.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Lists of book references and
	external links

body:
On 9/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone interested in doing for citations what the stub-sorting project
> did for stubs?

You mean create an arcane bureaucracy that tries to efface anything it
considers "unapproved" and screams bloody murder if anybody uses
"their" terminology without asking for permission?

Somehow this doesn't strike me as a good idea.

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: SJ

body:
Jan, thanks for the link.  That is an essay well worth reading (no
less so after David G's clarification).

On 9/2/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Then, give a thought to editors trying to publish a wikijunior on
> internet (activity plainly allowed by our licence), to see it removed
> within 24 hours after announcement on this very list.

What happened to that publishing effort, in the end?  I thought any
removal was to be temporary.  Is there a discussion of the outcome
preserved somewhere, or any follow-up?

SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> I don't know why I ever bother to look at the Wikipedia Review
> site... the antics of the malcontents and morons there always make my
> blood boil.  But the latest stupid accusation they're making against
> Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=3362

We have had external links to evil content in the past.

We've had media files which were were nothing more than exe's renamed
to .jpg or .ogg.

We currently have about 80 external links to exe files (although I've
scanned all of them with clamav and they all pass, if someone can
suggest other free tools which can run on *nix.. that would be useful)

Even if you ignore all the other formats which can act as attack
vectors on typical windows boxes.

So, just because they are crazy doesn't mean there isn't a point....


subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
On 9/2/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Even if you ignore all the other formats which can act as attack
> vectors on typical windows boxes.

gah, hit send on accident yet again..

so even if you ignore all the other formats, there are clearly ways
that Wikipedia can be abused to spread dangerous content to people on
the internet.

And because I'm sure someone will ask about it, here are the tallies
for external link extensions on enwikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/extff


from_name: ScottL

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>> I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
>> fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
>> subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
>> to do the thinking.
>
> Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> cites, for example
>
> <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
>
> So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.

   I really like this idea.  It seems to me that even if it is not
likely to be immediately useful for all articles, the ones that have
major wikiprojects and a limited number of well known sources could not
only use this to great effect but we would also have the ability to use
"what links here" to see which articles are using a specific book as a
reference (which is especially useful for things like published
scientific papers where someone might have published conflicting results.)

SKL


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] More Wikipedia Review Idiocy

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 03/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/2/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Wikipedia is that we're supposedly infecting people with viruses:
>>>
>>>
>>Ah when this first came out we were somewaht worried. now less so but
>>the threat was real.
>>
>>
>It's jawdropping how much software is dumb enough to treat data as
>programs. In 1999, I was still able to tell customers the [[Goodtimes
>virus]] was impossible, as no-one could dream of making an email
>application that would run an email as a program just like that ...
>
Wikiholism is spread by a psychovirus. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 9/2/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Practical but not-in-the-spirit-of-it answer: Tell him not to license
> it as GFDL but to just say that Wikipedia can use it. Then we use it
> as fair use and claim to disregard the Wikipedia-only license, knowing
> full well that he won't actually sue us for infringement since he
> already said we can use it.

Then please stop saying that "wikipedia can use it" when you are only
referring to the en.wp.

If you want to make this picture free to use for wikipedia (regardless
of the language), then the author has to put one file containing the
image under a free license.

Mathias


body:
Lovely.  I hope this can someday contribute to a cross-project
wikicite initiative as well; added linkns to [[m:Wikicite]] to the
page.

SJ

On 9/2/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> The draft is coming along; see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Draicone/WikiProject_Reference_Help
> for current progress and feel free to edit.
>
> On 9/3/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That sounds like a really good idea, and we could use a formal
> > wikiproject to encourage people to help establish these citation
> > collections. I'm starting a draft at [[User:Draicone/WikiProject
> > Reference Help]] if anyone wants to help. If we get a decent plan we
> > can move it to the WP space.
> >
> > On 9/3/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > > Matt Brown wrote:
> > > > I've learned, personally, {{cite web}} and {{cite book}}'s
> > > > fundamentals, and look stuff up from time to time.  I've also created
> > > > subst:able templates for reference works I cite a lot, so I don't have
> > > > to do the thinking.
> > >
> > > Way back when I was doing a bunch of work citing various articles about
> > > Stargate subjects and I kept using the same episode citations over and
> > > over. I considered creating a group of templates specifically for those
> > > cites, for example
> > >
> > > <ref>{{cite stargate sg-1/broca's gap}}</ref>
> > >
> > > So I wouldn't have to keep looking up airdates and other details to fill
> > > in, and if the citation format changed or more information became
> > > available they could all be updated with a single edit. Perhaps some
> > > sort of formalized system along these lines might be useful for common
> > > references? <ref>{{cite collection/Oxford dictionary 2006}}, p.
> > > 1245</ref> for example. These big bibliographic lists would then become
> > > collections of templates like this and they'd make better project pages.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/09/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:

> This loophole has been in existence since day-one of the edict --
> Jimbo himself explicitly left "fair use" as the way around the
> non-commercial/with-permissions problem.

That's not how I remember it at all. Cite please?

- d.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I have an email addres, wp at davidgerard.co.uk, set up for en:wp press
> queries. Of course, it gets used as a sort of OTRS replacement.
>
> One query I've gotten a bit lately is "may we reuse this text?" or
> "may we reuse this image?" I email back explaining how the original
> contributor owns it and there will be a license attached, which may be
> easy or hard to keep to the terms of.
>
> There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
> contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
> people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
> page anywhere else that serves this purpose?
>

Well, there's the OTRS templates:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_image
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_text

(No, they're not live)

> (Let's assume for the moment I have little interest in diving
> headfirst into Commons politics.)
>

Politics is silly.

--
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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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> I have an email addres, wp at davidgerard.co.uk, set up for en:wp press
> queries. Of course, it gets used as a sort of OTRS replacement.
>
> One query I've gotten a bit lately is "may we reuse this text?" or
> "may we reuse this image?" I email back explaining how the original
> contributor owns it and there will be a license attached, which may be
> easy or hard to keep to the terms of.
>
> There is [[Commons:Licensing]], which seems mainly to be for
> contributors. But is there a page on Commons that is a simple guide to
> people wanting to reuse content? If not, should there be? Is there a
> page anywhere else that serves this purpose?
>

Well, there's the OTRS templates:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_image
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en#Permission_for_text

(No, they're not live)

> (Let's assume for the moment I have little interest in diving
> headfirst into Commons politics.)
>

Politics is silly.

--
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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