from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Checkuser fiasco

body:
On 10/19/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
> >>others
> >
> >The rodneyking is I believe the standard unit in the US.
>
> So you're suggesting the rest of the world should adopt a US unit as the
> standard? You filthy American imperialist swine!

::bangs experimentally on the rodneykingmeter:: Geez, is this thing still on?

-Kat
[[User:Mindspillage]]
grinning, running, ducking

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


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: fintler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Temple University is Blocked

body:
To whom it may concern,

I just tried to register for an account on wikipedia but it says my IP
(155.247.166.29) has been blocked. It just happens that this IP is for
the web proxy to the biggest library on campus. I'm at Temple
University in Philadelphia (www.temple.edu). Is there any chance of it
getting unblocked so the legit users can add to the site too? I'm not
sure what the policy is for blocking proxies. Thanks for your time.

-Jonathan Bringhurst <jbringhurst at temple.edu>


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Questionable fair use claims: a case study

body:
[[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]

I offer this up as an example of some process problems we have in
dealing with invalid fair use claims.

I found this image while looking for unsourced images.  It is attributed
to a "Eddie Bauer Co., ca. 1984 (?)" which is really not a sufficient
sourcing of the image.  But the fair use discussion is more intresting
and so I'm overlooking that.  This image is a photo of a model wearing
a "safari jacket," and appears in the "safai jacket" article.  Since
the article isn't about the photograph itself, it's not fair use.  I
believe that the lack of a fair use rationale is beyond dispute in this
case which is why I believe this image makes a good case study for our
process.

I added the {{fairusedisputed}} tag on September 19 and notified the
uploader, who removed the tag without discussion.  The uploader also
left a note on my talk page criticizing my involvement.

I waited a while and listed the page on IFD on October 10 again
notifying the uploader.  The image is fuzzy, and isn't particularly
important to the project, and so I thought IFD was a better choice than
PUI (possibly unfree images).  The instructions on the PUI page don't
list fair use problems as a reason to list things on PUI, anyway,
though the exact process is unclear.

The admin who closed the IFD discussion added a "fair use" tag and some
OCILLA boilerplate to the image description page and delisted it
without deletion.  In further discussion, that admin suggested that I
relist the page in phase II of PUI.

I don't care much about this particular image, but I see this as a
bellwether for the broader issue of dealing with the thousands of
images we have where there is a doubtful fair use claim being made by
the uploader.  The process for handling such images is unclear, at
least to me, with the IFD, PUI, and CV (copyright violations) pages
having overlapping purpose and conflicting processes.  Any of these
processes are cumbersome, with notification required to the uploader
and ongoing monitoring to shepherd the image through the process.  And
all of these processes are heavily biased towards inclusion.  Decisions
to keep fair use images are being made by admins who don't understand
fair use and don't appreciate the stakes.

The addition of OCILLA boilerplate is probably unhelpful is nothing
we've agreed upon, let alone had approved by counsel, but that's
relatively unimportant by comparison.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

body:
> I think you're discounting the amount of time that can be be sucked
> up by patrolling. For instance, my longish watchlist has very few of
> the "popular" articles on it, but still gives me some 500 edits to
> review each day. Of those, most are by editors I know and trust, so
> I don't look at those unless the summary line is interesting, but that
> leaves maybe 100 by anons. Of those, maybe 5 of the anon edits are
> the obvious "Joey is gay"-type vandalism, but since there is no way
> to tell which ones they are without bringing up a diff, I need to
> look at all of those edits. That can easily suck up an hour - very
> often at least one of the vandalisms is "complex" in that it involves
> multiple edits, and maybe a ham-handed incomplete attempt to fix,
> thus requiring careful study of the history to make sure all is scrubbed.

I think the solution to this is to come up with ways to streamline this
process. What if watchlists could only show anon edits (or better yet,
include anon edits, edits by certain users you designate, and edits by users
with fewer than X edits)? What if there were ways for groups of users to
share a watchlist and check off items as they complete them (this could be
done for any ad-hoc group of users)? What if we could attach references
directly to pieces of text, or maybe even better, to individual edits? What
if we created a project to systematically go through all the edits made by
IP addresses? What if we added to that a project to go through all the edits
made by users who contributed fewer than say 10 edits? Time is being wasted
because vandalism hunting is way too ad-hoc.

Blocking is an inherently flawed solution to vandalism unless you suggest
that we lock down the wiki to essentially just the admins. Good idea or not,
that's not going to happen, the history of Wikipedia has brought together
too many people who would vigourously oppose it, so if you want a locked
down "wiki" I suggest you start a fork.

Sometimes blocking is an adequete temporary solution for the times when a
longer term fix is still in the works. But as Wikipedia grows and vandals
become more sophisticated, blocking is unlikely to be a good solution.

I think we actually block far too much already, especially with user blocks.
I'd suggest that most blocks actually tend to make it harder to find and
revert vandalism.

Of the other 95 anon edits, most are trivial - spellfix, commas, random
> rearrangement changing good English into broken English :-), etc.
> This leaves a handful of valuable edits, but the average total is less
> than I could have added in the same hour just working from the books in
> my personal library. Nevertheless, I do the patrolling because it seems
> that many of the pages I'm watching have no other reviewers - more than
> a few times I've overlooked an anon's trash and it went unnoticed for
> days or weeks.

I think a study of anon edits would show that the vast majority of them are
trivial, and the remaining ones are by people who would have created an
account anyway. What can't be as easily measured, and what I suspect is the
case, is that there are a lot of users who initially edited the wiki
anonymously and later got hooked and created an account.

So yes, we're keeping the random vandalism under control, but IMHO
> just barely, and at the price of time that should be going into
> development of better content. I think we really need to consider
> whether unlimited anon editing is helping or hurting our primary
> goal of encyclopedia writing.

Stan


from_name: Ben Yates

body:
It's not a hard and fast thing -- sure, someone determined to vandalize
could still do it, but how many vandals are that determined. Putting a small
additional hurdle will help.

On 10/19/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think that a system that uses email addresses as validation is too easy
> to
> game. Look at the popularity of sites such as Spaminator and Bugmenot. I
> also think that a system that forces one to provide an email address will
> drive away many potential good users. If someone is so determined to
> vandalize Wikipedia, they'll find a way around any system. A potential
> good
> user isn't as persistent. I know that I probably wouldn't have started
> editing under an account if I was forced to provide an email address. Most
> likely, that would have been the end of my Wikipedia use.
>


body:
I seriously doubt requiring someone to create a throwaway email account in
order to sign up for Wikipedia would change anything. By this, I mean I
doubt it'd stop any vandals, and I doubt it'd drive away any users (although
it might discourage casual users from creating an account, which could be
argued as a good or a bad thing).

On 10/20/05, Ben Yates <bluephonic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's not a hard and fast thing -- sure, someone determined to vandalize
> could still do it, but how many vandals are that determined. Putting a
> small
> additional hurdle will help.
>
> On 10/19/05, Ben E. <bratsche1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think that a system that uses email addresses as validation is too
> easy
> > to
> > game. Look at the popularity of sites such as Spaminator and Bugmenot. I
> > also think that a system that forces one to provide an email address
> will
> > drive away many potential good users. If someone is so determined to
> > vandalize Wikipedia, they'll find a way around any system. A potential
> > good
> > user isn't as persistent. I know that I probably wouldn't have started
> > editing under an account if I was forced to provide an email address.
> Most
> > likely, that would have been the end of my Wikipedia use.
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 10/19/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> Of the other 95 anon edits, most are trivial - spellfix, commas, random
> rearrangement changing good English into broken English :-), etc.

By the way, I don't think you should discount the usefulness of "trivial"
edits. Yes, any individual edit is trivial, but in aggregate they are
significant. Also consider this: even in a perfect situation, where all
those anonymous fixes were submitted to a talk page or somewhere else for a
regular editor to fix, it'd still take editor time to make the change being
suggested by the anon. In fact, it'd take more editor time to do this than
to simply glance at a diff.

Yes, maybe some of those "anons" would log in instead, but having a bunch of
new users to check is harder than checking anons, at least with anons you
can easily distinguish them from regular users - their name is a number.

It'd be nice if we could get the regular anons to log in, but still let the
casual anons edit anonymously, but I'm not really sure how to do this.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:_User_zb_.5D.5D
Mark Williamson supports a hoax called "Zlatiborian language". If the
intention is that English Wikipedia becomes the irrelevant place for
Balkan languages and dialects, I can help, too. I started to make user
language templates for all regions from Serbia. When I finish it, I
would start to make the same for the regions of USA.


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Doomsday or Beebday?

body:
Keith Old wrote

> I had a look at Alexa's list of English language sites see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=en] The English
version of Wikipedia is not listed in the top 100 whereas the BBC is at
number 13 - we should compare like with like. The site that is ranked so
high is wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org> which is ranked no 42 see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none] . We are
listed Number 2 on reference after My Yahoo see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?catid=10&ts_mode=subject&lang=none].
I would be interested in finding out how My Yahoo! is classified as a
reference site.
  Having said this, I am bullish on Wikipedia too.

Indeed, Alexa seems to have decided that WP as a whole is not an
English-language site.  But I was doing a comparative traffic search there,
and one can see reasonably clear trends to extrapolate.  The BBC site is one
I have thought of as a target for a while.

Charles


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality vs. consensus

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>>Maintaining deletion discussions actively open after something is
>>deleted would probably have the counter-intuitive result that fewer
>>would be undeleted.  At the very least, the heat would be reduced.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>I'm not so sure about that. Wouldn't it just attract people unhappy
>with the result piling up votes and requesting a recount of the
>original result? Having stuff undeleted isn't a bad thing, as long as
>there's a proper reason behind overruling the original AFD debate (new
>info, faulty closure, or lots of blanket votes).
>
Let's assume that up until the point of deletion things pretty well
proceed as they do now.  Some minimum number of people ask to delete
over a specified time, and no-one votes to keep.  So the article is
deleted.  Someone comes along (It can even be the article's original
writer, who didn't know about the deletion while the AfD was open),
receives support from someone else, and the article is undeleted.  Any
sysop can do this without fear of a firestorm of protest.  As *new*
faces arrive on the scene there may indeed by a long cycle of deletions
and undeletions on some articles, but only a limited number of articles
will face that level of attention.  Fair standards can be established
that will allow for this.  The heat will be less because the attention
will have been drawn away from broad policies that some see as unjust.
Most deletions will then, as now, probably go unnoticed in plain view.

Quite apart from the specific issues connected with a particular
article, the irritant is the finality of deletions.  There is, to be
sure, an available undeletion process but it is seen by many as
cumbersome and ineffective.  It is a long standing principle that
contributors should be prepared to have their writing severely edited,
and that they should avoid taking personal ownership of an article.
Should a deletion be any different?  Those who work to clean things up
by deleting articles should not feel the need to protect their
deletions; that's the mindset that fuels disputes.  If an article really
should be kept deleted they should have the confidence that other new
editors will come along to support that view.  If there really is a
deletionist clique they will be automatically marginalized by the process.

To be clear, I am referring to general deletion policy.  This does not
obviate the need for special policies to deal with such legal issues as
copyright violation or defamation.

Beyond a limited number of core policy principles, static policies are
inconsistent with the wiki.  This is sure to discomfit those individuals
who like certainty with their rules.  Surely, there are many (possibly
most) policies which are so well accepted that they will never change,
but that doesn't mean that changes must not be proposed.  It's just that
such proposals won't get anywhere.  If the wiki is going to belong to
everybody then everybody must feel they have a hand in its policies,
including and especially those who were not there when those policies
were first codified.  I think it's important to learn to live with that
kind of uncertainty and insecurity.

Ec.


body:
On 10/20/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > It'd be nice if we could get the regular anons to log in, but still let
> the
> > casual anons edit anonymously, but I'm not really sure how to do this.
> >
>
> A username is more anonymous than an IP, and provides a greater sense of
> identity. It's impossible to tell which of an IP's edits are good and
> bad, because good and bad users could be using it.

 "A username is more anonymous than an IP, and [a username] provides a
greater sense of identity"? I must not be understanding what you mean,
because that statement seems to contradict itself.
 "It's impossible to tell which of an IPs edits are good and bad, because
good and bad users could be using it." True, but if a user only makes one or
two edits it really doesn't matter anyway. That's what I mean by "casual
anons", the kind of people who would only create an account, make a couple
edits, and then forget they created an account in the first place. For those
people, who probably make up the majority of anon edits, logging in is
meaningless and makes it harder to sort out the good from the bad.
 And of course, it's impossible to tell which of a username's edits are good
and bad. In order to trust that an editor is a "good" editor, they have to
make more than just a few edits. If we could convince those good editors to
create accounts, that would be useful, but for the casual editors it'd
probably be easier if we just threw them all under a single account, and
kept the IP addresses only for the purposes of implementing blocks.

- --
> Alphax | /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iQEVAwUBQ1eogLMAAH8MeUlWAQjAvgf8DT1nCoAf/wirp8oRGLTFzfq50BMb9jmL
> OsN4++CF/w4ywex4qZ+qr+4MqSGP2tDXhi4RIM5zwbzYwEGn9z5Ca6I9MPCnlrmx
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> =ryFV
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] The New Student's Reference Work, 1914

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>> So I found and bought "The New Student's Reference Work", a little
>> encyclopedia in five volumes, published in Chicago in 1914.  As it
>> was published before 1923, it is now in the public domain.  Since
>> this non-Scandinavian work doesn't fit in Project Runeberg, I put it
>> in Wikisource.
>> First I scanned images (300 dpi JPEG) of all 2791 pages and uploaded
>> them to Wikimedia Commons, where you will find them in the category
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:LA2-NSRW
>>
>> Then, for each book page, I created a wiki page on Wikisource
>> displaying the scanned image and containing the raw OCR text. If you
>> want to help in proofreading, use two separate browser windows to
>> open the enlarged image and edit the wiki text.
>
> I don't mean this to sound particularly harsh, but I'm wondering why
> we're doing this on Wikisource, when Distributed Proofreaders for
> Project Gutenberg already has a well-debugged workflow for taking
> texts from images to OCR to proofread to a final version.  Is there an
> advantage to starting our own project that does the same thing they
> already do pretty well?

I view this event as what Wikisource is all about.  Project Runeberg has
been doing this sort of thing all along: a stable JPEG image of the
original page to insure historical accuracy, and an editable OCR
initiated product that can easily be wikified, footnoted or translated
as circumstances require.  This goes well beyond the capabilities of
Project Gutenberg.

Ec


from_name: Martin Richards

body:
From: "Tony Sidaway"

> I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant amounts.   I find
> some now and again.   I find instances of poor quality writing and bad
> organization more often.  A few articles are prone to link-spamming,
> others get POV-pushing.  Compared to that, old vandalism is rather
> rare.

The kind of old vandalims that I find particularly disturbing is stuff like
this
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Bunsen&diff=23686756&oldid=23532482
which occurred on september 21, then was edited in by 2 more editors, until
I reverted it on October 5th. The reason I find it particularly disturbing
is that the anon only ever made that single destructive edit, which was not
only not noticed but actually totally ignored by the next 2 editors, and I
only noticed it because I thought it was odd we had such a crap article on
an important person. If he had been less important I imagine no one would
ever have noticed.

It is stuff like this that really makes me think there must be a better way
than having a policy of "Anyone can edit".

Martin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Doomsday or Beebday?

body:
Gerrit Holl wrote

> charles matthews wrote:
>> Indeed, Alexa seems to have decided that WP as a whole is not an
>> English-language site.
>
> Well, that's correct, isn't it? I would not be fair to compare a
> multilingual project with a mono-lingual one.

I agree.

By the way, I think Alexa rankings are [[lagging indicator]]s.  (There's a
stub in need of work.).

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Checkuser fiasco

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> On 10/19/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Can't find an SI unit for measureing how well people get along with
>>> others
>>
>> The rodneyking is I believe the standard unit in the US.
>
> So you're suggesting the rest of the world should adopt a US unit as
> the standard? You filthy American imperialist swine!

The "rodneyking" might be abbreviated the "RK", and that would bring up
fascinating memories for any Wikipedians that have hung about the
mailing list for a while. :-)

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

references:
<dir0g4$47q$1@sea.gmane.org> <dj63t4$cio$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dj7c0v$ucf$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
>
>>Tim Starling schreef:
>>
>>
>>>I've done some HTML dumps of Wikipedia:
>>>
>>>http://static.wikipedia.org/
>>>
>>>
>>It is very nice. But I do not see any reason to include the talk page.
>>
>>
>Talk pages include information vital to the diligent reader, such as
>factual disputes and source information. Once we are sure Wikipedia is
>perfect, we can remove the talk pages, and the reader can base their
>trust in the accuracy of our material on the force of our authority alone.
>
That sounds like a predictions that talk pages will stay forever. :-)

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed!  Is anyone seriously asking for all deleted articles to be
> made accessible?  What about all the copyright infringements and
> defamatory material?  That just wouldn't make sense.  This sounds like
> a straw man.

Anthony DiPierro

--
geni


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So what do we do about this?

body:
As an update on this, at the moment the dispute tags remain in place,
but I'm being reverted on removing a claim by the founder of Ben and
Jerry's on the election (Grounds for removal being that the founder
of Ben and Jerry's is not an expert on elections), and a paragraph in
the midst of a bunch of stuff about voter suppression in Ohio that
tries to present a state senator in Detroit making a comment about
voter suppression as evidence of an organized pattern of it - which
would be fine if the section were at all about Detroit and Michigan,
but as I said, it's about Ohio, so the Detroit quote is just
misdirection and poisoning the well.

Several people - notably Delerium, Rhobite, and Voice of All - have
come by the page to voice support for the removal. Gue


subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality vs. consensus

body:
Jeff Heikkinen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>>
>>> I think the word you're looking for is "irony". Alphax was making the
>>> ironic observation that an overwhelming number of Wikipedians are more
>>> concerned with consensus than with quality.
>>
>> Not only that but they misunderstand the nature of consensus.
>> Effective consensus depends on having effective community.  Consensus
>> that is motivated by being right and winning your point is not much
>> of a consensus.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "winning your point", but why is being
> right NOT a good motivation? I'm having a hard time thinking of a
> better one.

Yeah! Maybe I should stop accidentally watching Dr. Phil on TV.  Damn
radical Texans!  Just before I wrote the above he was talking about
"rights warriors" in a marriage.  Some of them can end up "right" in
Divorce Court.

Being right is wrong when the wrong person also thinks he's as right.
Who has the monopoly on objectivity?

Ec


body:
(Sorry, accidentally whacked send)

As an update on this, at the moment the dispute tags remain in place,
but I'm being reverted on removing a claim by the founder of Ben and
Jerry's on the election (Grounds for removal being that the founder
of Ben and Jerry's is not an expert on elections), and a paragraph in
the midst of a bunch of stuff about voter suppression in Ohio that
tries to present a state senator in Detroit making a comment about
voter suppression as evidence of an organized pattern of it - which
would be fine if the section were at all about Detroit and Michigan,
but as I said, it's about Ohio, so the Detroit quote is just
misdirection and poisoning the well.

Several people - notably Delerium, Rhobite, and Voice of All(MTG) -
have come by the page to voice support for the removal. Guettarda has
brought his support for the status quo on the article, and was
actually the one to make the revert.

So that's the road {{sofixit}} is leading to.

-Snowspinner


from_name: Gerrit Holl

subject: [WikiEN-l] Doomsday or Beebday?

body:
charles matthews wrote:
> Indeed, Alexa seems to have decided that WP as a whole is not an
> English-language site.

Well, that's correct, isn't it? I would not be fair to compare a
multilingual project with a mono-lingual one. But then:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/us/languages.shtml

Gerrit.

--
Temperature in Lule?, Norrbotten, Sweden:
| Current temperature   05-10-20 11:29:53    4.7 degrees Celsius ( 40.4F) |
--
Det finns inte d?ligt v?der, bara d?liga kl?der.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Milos Rancic wrote:

>On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:_User_zb_.5D.5D
>Mark Williamson supports a hoax called "Zlatiborian language". If the
>intention is that English Wikipedia becomes the irrelevant place for
>Balkan languages and dialects, I can help, too. I started to make user
>language templates for all regions from Serbia. When I finish it, I
>would start to make the same for the regions of USA.
>
I would suggest that consideration of Zlatiborian be deferred until all
differences between Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian have been resolved. ;-)

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lidiane Mendonça

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia Commons

body:
Boa tarde,
 Gostaria de saber se ? poss?vel conseguir o c?digo-fonte do projeto
Wikimedia Commons?
Caso seja poss?vel favor indicar em qual site consigo.
 Gostaria tamb?m de solicitar, se poss?vel, o envio de mensagens em minha
l?ngua que ? o Portugu?s do Brasil.

--
Abra?os

Lidiane Cristina


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] latex2wiki, html2wiki, no online

body:
Hello

I am looking for a simple, no online, converter either

    -  latex2wiki

    -  html2wiki

 I have seen some converters for producing math formulas, music etc.
For me a simple html2wiki converter would be fine.

Thanks

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
>
>>[[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]
>>
>>I offer this up as an example of some process problems we have in
>>dealing with invalid fair use claims.
>>
>
>And in my opinion, we should move to a policy situation where you would
>not have to go through the rigamarole you had to go through with this
>image.  You should have been able to delete it on sight as being
>tantamount to vandalism, which it essentially is.
>
This is the kind of situation where you might want to throw around
some of your personal authority; there are a lot of editors not
getting the message (or not wishing to accept it), and some in-WP
pronouncements on a especially egregious offenders can be usefully
quoted by your minions^Wenforcers.

>
>We have this strange social culture built up around images which I
>believe is caused mostly by the fact that image deletion is instantly
>permanent, rather than being something that can be reverted.  If we
>could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as easily) as we
>revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable text, we would be much
>better able to pick and choose images wisely.
>
Fewer people seem to have cameras than I would have imagined. It took
me all of two minutes to roll my [[lawn mower]] out and make original
images for the article, but we still have all these people uploading
the first poor thumbnail of a commonplace object that Google finds
for them.

Stan


body:
Anthony DiPerro wrote:

> I think it's also important to realize that there isn't really a serious
> legal threat to keeping these images around. OCILLA would protect Wikimedia
> in this case, and even moreso as the image is merely being kept around
> temporarily while its fate is decided. It's important that we remember why
> we're removing these images in the first place - it's because Wikipedia is a
> free encyclopedia - not because there's a serious legal threat involved.[...]

I disagree.

OCILLA does not protect a content provider that is aware of the
copyright violation.  And we are aware of it, both in the general terms
that we know that we have thousands of unfree images, and in specificity
with regard to this case in particular.  We even tag copyvios.  How
would we mount an OCILLA defense for content that had been tagged as a
copyvio by a Wikipedian, put on a list of copyvios, and then served up
for another 30 days?  The argument that some have advanced that it
"might be fair use" doesn't hold any water WRT to OCILLA because fair
use is an affirmative defense - the onus of proof is on us. Moreover,
this image isn't fair use.

The problem I believe we have from a legal standpoint is that we could
be sued and end up with either a settlement or injunction giving us a
very short amount of time to identify and remove problem content.
Since our processes take time, we might end up having to quit serving
images until we were able to be sure the problem content was gone.
That would be a real blow to the project.  I think it's relatively
unlikely.  IMO the greatest risk is not from Eddie Bauer or a hollywood
publicist, but rather from the Bettman Archive, Britannica, Reuters, or
someone else who sees us as competition.  If Reuters found 200 stolen
images, they'd have a hell of a case.  Do we have 200 images stolen
from Reuters?  I wouldn't care to speculate.

In general I am more concerned about perception and bad press.  The
mainstream press would love to run an article comparing Wikipedia to
Napster.  Taking 30 days to delete copyvio hardcore porn, or images
from Reuters, neither of which can't be speedied if properly
attributed, doesn't do a thing for our reputation.

> I don't know that I agree
> that the use of this image isn't fair use. It probably is.

I continue to find it troubling that there remain widely respected
Wikipedians that cannot recognize cases such as this that clearly are
not fair use.


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Well, exactly. And there a few instances when blogs by people who are
otherwise notable could potentially be used. If Howard Dean wrote a
blog entry about how he had been swindled in the election, I could see
putting that (properly attributed) as a source ("Candidate Howard Dean
also claimed to have been swindled,[ref]", etc.). But these are fairly
uncommon circumstances, I think.

FF

On 10/19/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Fastfission"  wrote:
> > The key issue here is not the topic at hand but whether or not it is
> > verifiable. The main question here seems to be, "Do blogs count as
> > sources?"
> > In certain rare cases they ought to be, but in general they are no better
> > than citing user pages on Wikipedia. If a blog can cite a source, then we
> > can find that source and cite it ourselves, I assume.
>
> If the article is not actually about a particular blog, you'd be on rather
> shaky ground depending upon it as a "primary source".
>
> IMNSHO
>
> HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> This is the kind of situation where you might want to throw around
> some of your personal authority; there are a lot of editors not
> getting the message (or not wishing to accept it)

I have a collection of howls of protest on my talk page placed there by
people who are upset that I deleted an image they uploaded.

People just don't get it.


body:
And if the "guy on the internet" is notable enough to warrant citation
as an interesting/informed opinion, then that's great. (i.e. the
Howard Dean example)

But if one is assigning a POV to a non-notable figure, then that's not
a good use of blogs as a source.

If Jimbo wrote something on his user page about Wikipedia, we could
cite it in the article on Wikipedia. If I wrote something on my user
page about Wikipedia, it doesn't belong in any article. Why? Because,
in regards to this topic, I'm not at all notable. (Something which
implies nothing negative, in my opinion) Allowing excessively
non-notable opinions into articles goes down an unpleasant slippery
slope: why require citation at all? "[[User:Fastfission]], of
Wikipedia, thinks that Einstein was totally wrong in his math, though
no physicists share that opinion." Instead of NPOV, you end up with
Particularist POV -- a thousand POVs, none of which are notable. Which
isn't the goal of NPOV, I'm fairly sure.

FF

On 10/19/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
> >What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
> >they witnessed or attended?
> >
> >
> That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
> guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
> witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as a
> source?
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> [[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]
>
> I offer this up as an example of some process problems we have in
> dealing with invalid fair use claims.

And in my opinion, we should move to a policy situation where you would
not have to go through the rigamarole you had to go through with this
image.  You should have been able to delete it on sight as being
tantamount to vandalism, which it essentially is.

We have this strange social culture built up around images which I
believe is caused mostly by the fact that image deletion is instantly
permanent, rather than being something that can be reverted.  If we
could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as easily) as we
revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable text, we would be much
better able to pick and choose images wisely.

--Jimbo


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Tom Cadden wrote:

> Unfortunately it is more common than we realise. From
> nonsensical 'factoids' that are made up to completely
> ridiculous articles. I came across one page recently
> on a prominent early 20th century politician. It was
> twelve lines of paranoid, POV garbage. It had been
> sitting there for months. If anyone thinking about
> joining Wikipedia had stumbled across the article as
> their first experience of the site I wouldn't have
> blamed them for saying "if this is what this so-called
> encyclop?dia publishes, it is obviously a heap of
> crap" and left Wikipedia. Even when I rewrote it the
> vandal kept coming back to reinsert his garbage. When
> I left for a few weeks he came back again, put back
> the rubbish and it survived unnoticed until I came
> back and saw it on my watchlist.
>
First, what you're encountering is not vandalism: it's
someone pushing her/his POV. All of us do that on Wikipedia,
whether what we write is paranoid garbage or not; whether
we are successful should depend on how we agree to disagree
on the subject -- although it sometimes doesn't.

Second, take a look at Wikipedia's steps for conflict
resolution: your situation is why these steps have been
created. Start at the far end of complaining to the ArbCom,
& I'm sure one of these steps will solve the case. (A fair
number of these kinds of agreements come to a resolution
just by simply asking another person to join in the
conversation.)

Geoff


from_name: Leonardo Gregianin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimedia Commons

body:
Citando Lidiane Mendon?a <lidianemendonca at gmail.com>:
 Boa tarde,
 Gostaria de saber se ? poss?vel conseguir o c?digo-fonte do
 projeto Wikimedia Commons?
 Caso seja poss?vel favor indicar em qual site consigo.

Boa tarde,
O Wikimedia Commons ? gerido pelo software MediaWiki[1] como
todos os outros projetos da Wikimedia: Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
etc, o software MediaWiki ? livre licenciado pela GPL e o
projeto est? hospedado no SourceForge[2].

[1] http://www.mediawiki.org
[2] http://sourceforge.net/projects/wikipedia

Abra?o,
Leonardo Gregianin


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 10/20/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
> Fewer people seem to have cameras than I would have imagined. It took
> me all of two minutes to roll my [[lawn mower]] out and make original
> images for the article, but we still have all these people uploading
> the first poor thumbnail of a commonplace object that Google finds
> for them.
>

The problem is worst on such generic articles, as you say. If one's writing
a specific article on a specific lawnmower, say the [[GrassMaster Lawn
Master 2000]], then one needs a specific picture of that specific model. It
might have been out of production for 20 years and examples are hard to
find. In that case, I believe it's quite acceptable to go to the GrassMaster
corporate website to see if they have a picture we could use under fair use,
or scan an image out of a period GrassMaster catalog. We're using a
company's own promotional image to illustrate (and thus, in a sense,
promote) their own product - a fairly slam-dunk fair use case, and likely
counting as use with permission as well (so zero chance we'll get sued). Of
course, should some fellow Wikipedian be a lawnmower collector who has one,
it's preferable if we get their free-licensed photos to replace it.

Using such a photo on a more generic page, such as [[lawn mower]], is not a
good fair use. Such is a large proportion of the bogus fair use claims we
get.

The other category is people who, wanting to illustrate the [[GrassMaster
Lawn Master 2000]] article, will rummage through their well-thumbed stack of
"Lawnmower Monthly" until they find one on the cover, scan that cover, and
use the magazine cover to illustrate the article. After all, "aren't
magazine covers always fair use"?

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Meanwhile, AfD grinds on

body:
On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> I never asked for copyright infringments to be made more accessible.
> Actually I think they should be made less accessible.
>

However you know that this is not posible with the current softwear.

--
geni


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Delirium wrote:
> I don't mean this to sound particularly harsh, but I'm wondering
> why we're doing this on Wikisource, when Distributed
> Proofreaders for Project Gutenberg already has a well-debugged
> workflow for taking texts from images to OCR to proofread to a
> final version.  Is there an advantage to starting our own
> project that does the same thing they already do pretty well?

This is a fascinating topic with many facets.

My starting point was not PGDP vs Wikisource, but Project
Runeberg's existing software and workflow vs MediaWiki.

I hope that the text and illustrations of this old encyclopedia
are useful on their own.  Having the scanned images on Wikimedia
Commons make them easily accessible.  Having the text on
Wikisource, where it can be proofread with wiki markup makes it
easy to reuse in Wikipedia and other projects.

But this is also a demonstration of a new and different principle
for digitization and proofreading of old books.  This started out
as an informal discussion during Wikimania, as you can read on
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LA2#Digitizing_books_with_MediaWiki

One argument against PGDP's current solution is that it is a
workflow only, it is not a wiki.  Once they finish proofing a book
and ship the e-text to Project Gutenberg, there is no way to go
back and correct errors (the wiki way).  They also don't publish
the scanned images, so if you suspect an error (right or wrong) in
a Project Gutenberg e-text you cannot go back and look at the
scanned image.  These drawbacks are overcome by publishing the
scanned images and using a wiki approach to proofreading
(never-ending, non-linear).  This is what Project Runeberg does,
and what this new MediaWiki/Wikisource demo does.

People are asking me why I don't publish Project Runeberg's
software to allow other projects to be started with a similar
structure.  My answer is that the source code is ugly, not
developed to be distributed.  Instead of cleaning up that code, it
would make more sense to improve MediaWiki to support digitization
and proofreading.  In fact, MediaWiki can already be used for
this.  How can I demonstrate that?  By starting my own MediaWiki
site, of course.  But since I'm lazy I decided instead to use
Wikisource for my little demo.

I think it is reasonable to put in question why Wikisource exists
at all, since we already have all these other digitization
projects.  My point was never to redefine Wikisource.  I just
happened to use it for this encyclopedia.  Some people in the
English Wikisource "Scriptorium" (community discussion) have
welcomed my initiative.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


from_name: Nyenyec N

body:
Fighting vandalism does take away a lot of time from good editors that
could be much better spent elsewhere.
A couple of months ago I looked at [[Adolf Hitler]] and spotted an
embarassing mistake in it. I started wondering how it could stay in
for months when there are truly knowledgable editors watching it all
the time.

It is one of the pages being subjected to constant vandalism, which
makes it nearly impossible to track the good faith edits, since they
are mixed up with the bad stuff. There is simply too much noise in the
page history.

You need to check out the diffs all the time and you can't always
simply revert, because sometimes good faith edits are mixed up with
bad faith edits. I think it takes a lot of time just to keep the
article from deteriorating into a mess, let alone improving it.

I think fighting vandalism this way is a truly stupid waste of time.

Something needs to change.

nyenyec

On 10/20/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> From: "Tony Sidaway"
>
> > I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant amounts.   I find
> > some now and again.   I find instances of poor quality writing and bad
> > organization more often.  A few articles are prone to link-spamming,
> > others get POV-pushing.  Compared to that, old vandalism is rather
> > rare.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/20/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
> We have this strange social culture built up around images which I
> believe is caused mostly by the fact that image deletion is instantly
> permanent, rather than being something that can be reverted. If we
> could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as easily) as we
> revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable text, we would be much
> better able to pick and choose images wisely.

 I don't think that reasoning is correct. You'll usually get a fight just
trying to remove the image from an article, something which is easily
reverted. In fact, I've been blocked for removing a non-free image from the
main page. The [[Al Gore]] article used to be filled with them. Completely
unnecessary, and yet there was significant opposition to their removal. I
have no idea if this situation has yet been corrected, well over a year
later.
 It simply hasn't been made clear that reliance on fair use is only
permitted in cases where there is no alternative.

--Jimbo

 Anthony


body:
On 10/20/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> It's really quite simple. If safari jackets are still in existence, it
> would be easy enough for a Wikipedian to find or make a free image,
> meaning fair use is unneccesary. Clarify when fair use is permitted on
> the upload page and urge people to read the instructions carefully.
> When we're giving clear instructions on what is and isn't allowed we
> can simply delete images that fail to abide by the rules.

 I think this is an important distinction to make. I don't know that I agree
that the use of this image isn't fair use. It probably is. But for the
purposes of Wikipedia just being fair use isn't enough. We should only be
relying on fair use where finding or making our own image is nearly
impossible. The term fair use is not very well understood by the vast
majority of Wikipedians, and it's important that we make the correct
arguments. For instance, I don't think we should be saying that we're
removing a "fair use image", there's no such thing as a "fair use image".
Rather, we're removing a "non-free image", and the reason we're removing it
is that 1) it's not licensed to everyone under a free license, and 2) it can
be replaced by a free image with a reasonable amount of work.

--Mgm

 Anthony


body:
uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

>Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>>This is the kind of situation where you might want to throw around
>>some of your personal authority; there are a lot of editors not
>>getting the message (or not wishing to accept it)
>>
>
>I have a collection of howls of protest on my talk page placed there by
>people who are upset that I deleted an image they uploaded.
>
Yep, people are willing to dump all over admins, but I've noticed
they get a lot quieter when Jimbo steps in. Mailing list habitues
have known for quite a while that this all was coming, but even
now the upload form doesn't directly tell people that the fair-use
criteria are being taken seriously these days.

>
>People just don't get it.
>
Well, you're doing God's work. Like turning a supertanker, slow
to get started, but I suspect that a year from now, bogus "fair-use"
images will be speedied with little ado.

Stan


body:
On 10/20/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>
> I don't care much about this particular image, but I see this as a
> bellwether for the broader issue of dealing with the thousands of
> images we have where there is a doubtful fair use claim being made by
> the uploader. The process for handling such images is unclear, at
> least to me, with the IFD, PUI, and CV (copyright violations) pages
> having overlapping purpose and conflicting processes. Any of these
> processes are cumbersome, with notification required to the uploader
> and ongoing monitoring to shepherd the image through the process. And
> all of these processes are heavily biased towards inclusion. Decisions
> to keep fair use images are being made by admins who don't understand
> fair use and don't appreciate the stakes.

 I believe CV is for copyright violations, PUI is for unfree (or possibly
unfree) images which aren't necessarily copyright violations, and IFD is for
the rest. In this case, I'd say the image was clearly unfree, and probably
not a copyright violation, so PUI is probably the right place for it.

But none of this should be necessary simply to remove the image from the
article(s), and in my opinion that's much more important than deleting the
image from the site, especially for cases which might not be a copyright
violation and for which the copyright holder isn't yelling at us to remove
the image. That's just my opinion, though.
 Anthony


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dollar costs and inflation

body:
[apologies to Ray, who gets this twice]

On 18/10/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> There are certainly any number of government publications (and
> presumably websites) from around the world that give a wide range of
> economic indexes for inflation, employment, population, interest, GDP,
> etc.  The application of these national indexes to specific locations
> would produce totally unreliable results.  If no ships were bringing
> coffee to Alaska in 1865 it's value there may have been considerably
> higher than elsewhere, and those inhabitants may have needed to be
> satisfied with a bitter blend of chicory.

Mmm-mm, chicory.

My point was not so much local economics as changes in scale -
depending on what measurement you use, the $7.2m paid to buy Alaska in
1867 could be anything from just shy of ninety million (the value
quoted in [[Alaska purchase]], which I suspect is nonsensical) to very
nearly ten billion. I'm not an economist, so I can't tell you what is
more reasonable - but encouraging the use of "worth $x in modern
money" is going to be meaningless a lot of the time, especially if we
have it generated automatically.

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


body:
On 10/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > But none of this should be necessary simply to remove the image from the
> > article(s), and in my opinion that's much more important than deleting
> the
> > image from the site, especially for cases which might not be a copyright
> > violation and for which the copyright holder isn't yelling at us to
> remove
> > the image. That's just my opinion, though.
> > Anthony
>
> But that makes any fair use claim even weaker (ok that is exactly the
> reason why I remove them from acticles but that is a secondary point).

 Not really. The single most important factor for a fair use analysis is the
impact of the use on the market for the original, and taking the image out
of the article lessens that impact. The other factors aren't really hurt
either, because the fact is the reason the image is being kept is in
consideration for being used in an article, and that reason is just as good
as actually using it in the article.
 I think it's also important to realize that there isn't really a serious
legal threat to keeping these images around. OCILLA would protect Wikimedia
in this case, and even moreso as the image is merely being kept around
temporarily while its fate is decided. It's important that we remember why
we're removing these images in the first place - it's because Wikipedia is a
free encyclopedia - not because there's a serious legal threat involved. In
my opinion even images on user pages should be given a little bit of leeway
for this reason. An image which isn't included in any of the articles isn't
really in the encyclopedia itself, it's in a temporary workspace which we
use to create an encyclopedia.

--
> geni

 Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: latex2wiki, html2wiki, no online

body:
>>>>> "David" == David Iberri
<diberri at gmail.com> writes:

   David> You might try my HTML::WikiConverter Perl module (available
   David> from CPAN [1]) which comes with a simple html2wiki
   David> command-line interface. [[Wikipedia:Tools]] might also be of
   David> use [2].
Thanks,

   David> -- David Iberri

   David> [1] http://search.cpan.org/dist/HTML-WikiConverter/
I will try this one.

   David> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools
that one seems not to be able to convert html tables.


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA256
>
>Delirium wrote:
> > Alphax wrote:
> >
> >> What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
> >> they witnessed or attended?
> >>
> >>
> > That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
> > guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
> > witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as a
> > source?
> >
>
>What's the difference between a blog and any other page on the internet?

Blogs have no editorial standards, no way of verifying that anything on them
is correct, true, relevant, notable, reliable, sane.  Blogs are only good as
sources for articles about those specific blogs.

Jay.


body:
>From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
>
>I think we actually block far too much already, especially with user
>blocks.
>I'd suggest that most blocks actually tend to make it harder to find and
>revert vandalism.

Huh? How?

Jay.


body:
>From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
>
>I seriously doubt requiring someone to create a throwaway email account in
>order to sign up for Wikipedia would change anything. By this, I mean I
>doubt it'd stop any vandals, and I doubt it'd drive away any users
>(although
>it might discourage casual users from creating an account, which could be
>argued as a good or a bad thing).

It would mean it would generally take up to 10 minutes to create a new
account, as opposed to just seconds to edit anonymously from a new IP.  For
pure vandals/blocked users it would get tiring after a while, if they were
all blocked in seconds.

Jay.


from_name: Richard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Approved languages awaiting creation

body:
Servien Ilaino <servien at ...> writes:

>
> Hi,
>
> There are 5 new languages which have been approved, and are awaiting
> creation. They are:
>
> 1. Venetian
> 2. Udmurt
> 3. Samogitian (?emait??ka)
> 4. Banyumasan
> 5. Lombard
>
> They can be found at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
>
> Serv
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ...
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Hi,
Just adding a note about the codes. Three languages have ISO 639-3 codes, and
the other two don't have any existing ISO codes. In the last couple of days
there has been discussion on using "locally defined codes" starting with "q" for
Samogitian and Banyumasan, if that is necessary. In the case of Samogitian the
proposers said they would prefer a code such as "bat-smg", but would accept
"qsm". For Banyumasan, there was no clear alternative, but they said they would
accept a code such as "qbn". The full list of codes is:

1. Venetian: vec (ISO 639-3)
2. Udmurt: udm (ISO 639-3)
3. Samogitian: qsm (locally defined code) (or "bat-smg")
4. Banyumasan: qbn (locally defined code)
5. Lombard: lmo (ISO 639-3)

All of these proposals have been on the request page for months and none of them
seem controversial, so I hope they can be created soon. If you have any
questions or concerns about any of them, feel free to contact me, Servien, or
other regular contributors to the request page.

Richard ("Chamdarae")


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
> Tim Starling schreef:
>
>>I've done some HTML dumps of Wikipedia:
>>
>>http://static.wikipedia.org/
>>
>
>
> It is very nice. But I do not see any reason to include the talk page.

Talk pages include information vital to the diligent reader, such as
factual disputes and source information. Once we are sure Wikipedia is
perfect, we can remove the talk pages, and the reader can base their
trust in the accuracy of our material on the force of our authority alone.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikitech-l] Approved languages awaiting creation

body:
Hi,

There are 5 new languages which have been approved, and are awaiting
creation. They are:

1. Venetian
2. Udmurt
3. Samogitian (?emait??ka)
4. Banyumasan
5. Lombard

They can be found at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages

Serv


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Milo?,

What I support is not a "hoax", but rather the right to determine
one's own sociolinguistic and sociocultural identity.

In the past, it would have been possible for many people to change
their cultural identity than it is now, and in many cases they would
be accepted by the community they sought to join.

If somebody decided that they were part of an ethnic group that
previously didn't exist (like if I suddenly decided today I were a
Glapolgaptoringian), in some parts of the world what they said would
be taken at face value.

If somebody wants to say that their mother tongue is called
Zlatiborian, we should let them.

Again somebody makes the daft mistake of bringing the US into this.
When I speak of self-determination for indigenous people or
independence for regions in other corners of the earth, people often
say something like "Well, why don't you support Texas independence
then?" and the most simple answer to that is that I do to the extent
that Texans themselves support it. I am not a hypocrit(e).

So, if somebody wants to make a language template for Newyorkish,
Californic, Texan, Cascadian, or Lasvegish, I will not be like you and
say "This is a rediculous hoax! You speak English!" but instead "While
I personally wouldn't consider those to be languages, to each his own.
If you want to say you speak that 'language', I will support you in
that".

So, I will support the existence of the Zlatiborian language template,
so long as it is in use on at least one userpage.

Mark

On 20/10/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#.5B.5BTemplate:_User_zb_.5D.5D
> Mark Williamson supports a hoax called "Zlatiborian language". If the
> intention is that English Wikipedia becomes the irrelevant place for
> Balkan languages and dialects, I can help, too. I started to make user
> language templates for all regions from Serbia. When I finish it, I
> would start to make the same for the regions of USA.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Servien Ilaino <servien at ...> writes:

>
> Hi,
>
> There are 5 new languages which have been approved, and are awaiting
> creation. They are:
>
> 1. Venetian
> 2. Udmurt
> 3. Samogitian (?emait??ka)
> 4. Banyumasan
> 5. Lombard
>
> They can be found at:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages
>
> Serv
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at ...
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Hi,
Just adding a note about the codes. Three languages have ISO 639-3 codes, and
the other two don't have any existing ISO codes. In the last couple of days
there has been discussion on using "locally defined codes" starting with "q" for
Samogitian and Banyumasan, if that is necessary. In the case of Samogitian the
proposers said they would prefer a code such as "bat-smg", but would accept
"qsm". For Banyumasan, there was no clear alternative, but they said they would
accept a code such as "qbn". (Also, Banyumasan here is for all Western Javanese
varieties, not just Banyumasan itself.)  The full list of codes is:

1. Venetian: vec (ISO 639-3)
2. Udmurt: udm (ISO 639-3)
3. Samogitian: qsm (locally defined code) (or "bat-smg")
4. Banyumasan: qbn (locally defined code)
5. Lombard: lmo (ISO 639-3)

All of these proposals have been on the request page for months and none of them
seem controversial, so I hope they can be created soon. If you have any
questions or concerns about any of them, feel free to contact me or
other regular contributors to the request page.

Richard (Chamdarae)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
I feel I should also make it clear that just because I support the
right of these people to claim that they speak these "languages", I
most certainly do not support the creation of wikis in these
languages.

So while I support the right of people to claim they speak
Montenegrin, I think a Montenegrin WP would only exacerbate the
current Balkan linguistic dilemma.

Mark


from_name: Tom Cadden

body:
Unfortunately it is more common than we realise. From
nonsensical 'factoids' that are made up to completely
ridiculous articles. I came across one page recently
on a prominent early 20th century politician. It was
twelve lines of paranoid, POV garbage. It had been
sitting there for months. If anyone thinking about
joining Wikipedia had stumbled across the article as
their first experience of the site I wouldn't have
blamed them for saying "if this is what this so-called
encyclop?dia publishes, it is obviously a heap of
crap" and left Wikipedia. Even when I rewrote it the
vandal kept coming back to reinsert his garbage. When
I left for a few weeks he came back again, put back
the rubbish and it survived unnoticed until I came
back and saw it on my watchlist.

A solution might be to create alongside recent changes
and a watchlist a topiclist, whereby if people are
interested in, and knowledgeable about, a topic, all
edits on that topic would show up. That way they could
keep an eye on articles that they have not edited (or
even knew existed) but which they know about and so
could spot vandalism or garbage edits. In my case I
would then easily spot dodgy edits on Irish history,
politics, constitutional law, etc. Others could do
sport, of television, or whatever. It might help catch
dodgy edits in obscure article quickly.

--- Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com>
> >
> > >
> > >Show me some old vandalism.
> >
> > Are you suggesting it doesn't exist? I've come
> across week-old vandalism on
> > little-watched articles on my watchlist.
> >
>
> I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant
> amounts.   I find
> some now and again.   I find instances of poor
> quality writing and bad
> organization more often.  A few articles are prone
> to link-spamming,
> others get POV-pushing.  Compared to that, old
> vandalism is rather
> rare.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Tony,

> On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
>
>>If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously wrong, it
>>is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through, sure
>>its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much for
>>an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.
>
> Show me some old vandalism.

I've rvted vandalism that's been weeks old in the past (sorry, no
examples come to mind).  But that's on really obscure articles that I've
only come across because of Random Page patrolling or similar.

The longest I can think of with a specific example on a well-maintained
(ish) page is [[Victorian Gold Rush]], which included an embarrassingly
prominent test ("hello mr sheep") that wasn't noticed, despite others
editing the article, for four hours.

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.4/143 - Release Date: 19/10/2005


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Doomsday or Beebday?

body:
Charles,
 I had a look at Alexa's list of English language sites see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=lang&lang=en] The English
version of Wikipedia is not listed in the top 100 whereas the BBC is at
number 13 - we should compare like with like. The site that is ranked so
high is wikipedia.org <http://wikipedia.org> which is ranked no 42 see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none] . We are
listed Number 2 on reference after My Yahoo see [
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?catid=10&ts_mode=subject&lang=none].
I would be interested in finding out how My Yahoo! is classified as a
reference site.
  Having said this, I am bullish on Wikipedia too.

 On 10/20/05, charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
> Ed Poor seems to have found a new variant on the Doomsday-meltdown
> scenario
> so often in the past wrongly predicted. My own researches at Alexa suggest
> WP will in fact overtake the BBC web site (currently #11 of
> English-language
> sites), and will do so on some measure by early 2006. Interesting to find
> out which prediction is fulfilled.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Delirium wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
>> they witnessed or attended?
>>
>>
> That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
> guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
> witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as a
> source?
>

What's the difference between a blog and any other page on the internet?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Quality vs. consensus (was: Meanwhile, AfD grinds on)

body:
G'day Jeff,

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
<snip />
>> Effective consensus depends on having effective community.  Consensus
>> that is motivated by being right and winninbg your point is not much
>> of a consensus.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "winning your point", but why is being
> right NOT a good motivation? I'm having a hard time thinking of a better
> one.

I can't really speak for Ray on this one --- but I'll try to adopt a
Canadian accent and give it a jolly good burl.  (Ray's Canadian, right?)

   By "motivated by being right and winninbg your point" heI doesn't mean
   "Person X is motivated because he's right", eh.  Rather, heI means
   that Person X believes that, if she can just swing enough votes
   towards her argument through whatever means she can effect, then
   that's as good as having been right in the first place, eh.

Assuming that Ihe means what Ihe think heI means, Ihe reckons it's a
beaut point.  Over to you, Ray --- was I close?

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Stan Shebs wrote about anonymous editing:
> very often at least one of the vandalisms is "complex" in that it
> involves multiple edits, and maybe a ham-handed incomplete attempt to
> fix, thus requiring careful study of the history to make sure all is
> scrubbed.
>

The best solution in cases where an anon or a newbie has tried to revert
is to do it yourself, manually. If Mediawiki finds that there is no
change, it silently ignores the revert.

> Of the other 95 anon edits, most are trivial - spellfix, commas,
> random rearrangement changing good English into broken English :-),
> etc. This leaves a handful of valuable edits, but the average total
> is less than I could have added in the same hour just working from
> the books in my personal library. Nevertheless, I do the patrolling
> because it seems that many of the pages I'm watching have no other
> reviewers - more than a few times I've overlooked an anon's trash and
>  it went unnoticed for days or weeks.
>

You should be on the welcoming committee! Wherever possible I leave
messages for anons who have "done good" (or at least, not done bad - and
I leave messages for them as well). It lets them know that their work is
appreciated, and more importantly, lets them know how things work around
the place.

> So yes, we're keeping the random vandalism under control, but IMHO
> just barely, and at the price of time that should be going into
> development of better content. I think we really need to consider
> whether unlimited anon editing is helping or hurting our primary goal
>  of encyclopedia writing.
>

It's entirely possible that we are reaching the point of discovering
that Wikipedia doesn't scale. We already know that certain parts of it
don't. Maybe it's time to "set aside" (permanantly protect) some of our
best articles for version 1.0 and let people work on the rest.

- --
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from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

> So, since you believe this is *clearly* not fair use, I assume you can point
> to a number of court rulings, some at a very high level in the appeals
> process, which cover similar uses which were ruled to not be fair use? I for
> one would be interested in seeing those cases.

I am not an attorney, however even my meager lay resources are able to
identify:

Los Angeles News Service, Robert Tur v. Audio Video Reporting Services
et al.
Encyclopaedia Britannica v. Crooks
Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corporation

There are more.  No shortage of bogus fair use claims reaching the
courts.

uc


body:
On 20/10/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> From: "Tony Sidaway"
>
> > I'm suggesting that it's not around in significant amounts.   I find
> > some now and again.   I find instances of poor quality writing and bad
> > organization more often.  A few articles are prone to link-spamming,
> > others get POV-pushing.  Compared to that, old vandalism is rather
> > rare.
>
> The kind of old vandalims that I find particularly disturbing is stuff like
> this ...

The worst I ever noticed was someone removing the entire "Political
History" section from [[George H. W. Bush]], which meant we had
nothing covering him between 1964 and 1988. This was removed on 26th
November 2004, and I only discovered it on _15th January 2005_.

You have to wonder how no-one noticed it missing in the intervening months...

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/20/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> You have to wonder how no-one noticed it missing in the intervening months...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

Because no one ever really reads that article.

--
geni


body:
On 20/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:

> > A username is more anonymous than an IP, and provides a greater sense of
> > identity. It's impossible to tell which of an IP's edits are good and
> > bad, because good and bad users could be using it.
>
>  "A username is more anonymous than an IP, and [a username] provides a
> greater sense of identity"? I must not be understanding what you mean,
> because that statement seems to contradict itself.

If you edit as an IP which resolves to
452c.student-resnet.chicago.edu, I can tell a surprising amount about
you. If you edit as [[User:Chicago_guy]], I can't.

But it's a lot *easier* for the community to attatch an identity to
the one with a username, rather than the one with an IP. There's a
couple of IPs that I know are good, reliable editors, people I have no
reason to distrust, yet I keep checking their edits on my watchlist
simply because I can't ever remember that 123.123.123.123 (or
whatever) is the person who keeps working on the date pages. If they
were editing under a name, after a week or so I'd easily remember the
name, I'd know not to chase them around when I had no reason to...

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma
	as	far as communications.]

body:
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Hash: SHA256

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I have no particular opinion on the proposal below, nor does it have
> anything directly to do with us, but I was just thinking that for
> disasters that are easy to foresee, we might want to think about how we
> can be prepared in advance to bring people the information they need.
>
> Is there anything we can do in advance to prepare?
>
> We're so fast anyway, I have no ideas, but I thought I'd pass along the
> notion.
>
<snipped>

Distributed computing is the way to go here. I don't think we'd be able
to maintain full functionality in the event of a major hit on the
Florida servers, but I have some ideas about how we might be able to at
least stay up (sorry if some of these sound stupid or obvious):

* The Paris/Amsterdam/Korea servers (not entirely sure how these are
being used at present) could be put into a "serve cached versions only"
mode as soon as contact with Florida was lost. Anything in the squid
caches (any devs know the percentage of total content?) would still be
viewable.
* Once we have the infrastructure, have entire database backups (or at
least parts of them) scattered around the place so that should Florida
go down for an extended period (or be destroyed completely), everything
would still be safe. I forget what the estimated worth of all the
Wikimedia content is, but I believe it's in the millions of dollars.
* Invest in wireless communications technology and reliable power backup
systems. If major local infrastructure was destroyed (power, data lines)
but the servers themselves were still intact, they would still be useful
if they could be connected with the rest of the internet (even if only
as read-only). With a decent antenna, it should be possible to get 20km
range on a wireless connection, so multiple points could pick up and
statically serve the data.

Of course, these all depend on us having enough money to do this. When
will Wikimedia get its own colocation facility? Or does it have one already?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Requests for checkuser rights

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> If all of this is true, I think y'all have done a pretty good job of keeping
> this information private. I first became particularly concerned about this
> when Jimbo mentioned considering selling log data to researchers (implying
> to some extent that they were kept for longer than 2 weeks), and also I
> thought someone presented a sample log line which included username
> information.

There was never any proposal to provide access logs to researchers which
allow identification of users. The idea was for researchers to write
scripts which output either aggregate data or anonymised logs. We would
run them on the logs and provide them with the results. It hasn't
eventuated, though.

Any suggestion that Wikipedia might sell personal access pattern data to
marketing firms in the way that the online advertising agencies do is
pure paranoia.

> I just looked back (gmail search is awesome), and here was the log line that
> was provided by Jerome Jamnicky:
> "
> 1124167686.523 210 12.34.56.78 <http://12.34.56.78/> TCP_MISS/200 2962 GET
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=Potato&go=Go -
> PARENT_HIT/207.142.131.200 text/html [Host:
> en.wikipedia.org\r\nUser-Agent : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1;
> en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050716 Firefox/1.0.6\r\nAccept:
> text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=
> 0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5\r\nAccept-Language:
> en-us,en;q=0.5\r\nAccept-Encoding: gzip,deflate\r\nAccept-Charset:
> ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7\r\nKeep-Alive: 300\r\nConnection:
> keep-alive\r\nReferer:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoterica\r\n]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoterica%5Cr%5Cn%5D>
> [HTTP/1.0 200 OK\r\nDate: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:48:06 GMT\r\nServer:
> Apache\r\nX-Powered-By: PHP/4.3.11\r\nContent-language: en\r\nVary:
> Accept-Encoding,Cookie\r\nExpires: -1\r\nCache-Control: private,
> must-revalidate, max-age=0\r\nContent-Encoding: gzip\r\nConnection:
> close\r\nContent-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\r\n\r]"
>
> Now that I look at it again, it doesn't seem to have username information
> (not sure what 1124167686.523 is though, maybe a timestamp). Are these log
> files still thrown away after 2 weeks?
>
> (For those following at home, the thread was entitled "Research access to
> logs", in September 2005 on the wikipedia-l mailing list.)
>
> Angela.

We only keep such logs for about an hour, and at the moment, they're not
even merged and processed. They're spread over the hard drives of 24
squids.

At the time Jerome was writing, we had a log aggregation and processing
system set up, to generate statistics, but the logs were still deleted
after they were processed, rather than archived. If we wanted to provide
such information to external researchers, we'd first have to start
gathering it.

Of course, just because we're not gathering such information at the
moment doesn't mean we won't gather it in the future, within the limits
of the privacy policy. If you're worried about the cops finding out what
you were reading yesterday, don't be, but if they asked us today to give
them a list of everything you read tomorrow, well we could probably sort
that out.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Static HTML dumps

references:
<dir0g4$47q$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dj63t4$cio$1@sea.gmane.org>	<dj7c0v$ucf$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43575D4A.7090302@wikia.com>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>>Talk pages include information vital to the diligent reader, such as
>>factual disputes and source information. Once we are sure Wikipedia is
>>perfect, we can remove the talk pages, and the reader can base their
>>trust in the accuracy of our material on the force of our authority alone.
>
>
> I agree with you completely.  Many users will want to see the talk pages.
>
> However, as a potential user of this, I find the 27GB size a bit
> daunting.  I have, at this moment, 8GB free space on my laptop.
>
> I wonder how much work it would be for you to generate a few different
> versions...
>
> Complete (current version)
> Complete, no images
> Minimum (no talk pages, no images)
>
> A really cool thing to have would be some kind of cleverly constructed
> "middle" version -- some images, but not all the images -- but I can't
> at the moment think of any clever way to decide algorithmically which
> images to include.  Maybe exclude images over a certain size, or include
> a maximum of one image per article or similar?
>

Theoretically, all images in articles are thumbnails. Just include the
thumbnail versions of the images.

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body:
On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> But none of this should be necessary simply to remove the image from the
> article(s), and in my opinion that's much more important than deleting the
> image from the site, especially for cases which might not be a copyright
> violation and for which the copyright holder isn't yelling at us to remove
> the image. That's just my opinion, though.
>  Anthony

But that makes any fair use claim even weaker (ok that is exactly the
reason why I remove them from acticles but that is a secondary point).

--
geni


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 10/20/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> > [[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]
> >
> > I offer this up as an example of some process problems we have in
> > dealing with invalid fair use claims.
>
> And in my opinion, we should move to a policy situation where you would
> not have to go through the rigamarole you had to go through with this
> image.  You should have been able to delete it on sight as being
> tantamount to vandalism, which it essentially is.
>
> We have this strange social culture built up around images which I
> believe is caused mostly by the fact that image deletion is instantly
> permanent, rather than being something that can be reverted.  If we
> could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as easily) as we
> revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable text, we would be much
> better able to pick and choose images wisely.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
It's really quite simple. If safari jackets are still in existence, it
would be easy enough for a Wikipedian to find or make a free image,
meaning fair use is unneccesary. Clarify when fair use is permitted on
the upload page and urge people to read the instructions carefully.
When we're giving clear instructions on what is and isn't allowed we
can simply delete images that fail to abide by the rules.

--Mgm


list: foundation-l

from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] About new wikipedias

body:
Sorry, but I apologize the choice to have ISO and Ethnologue like main references
about new wikipedias.

ISO and Ethnologue are not scientific and authoritative sources about languages.
They have a lot of strange or arbitrary statements.

I exhort you to compare ISO and Ethnologue with http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=43
or with http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/lang/languages/langmin/euromosaic/index_en.html,
you can see a lot of differences. Perhaps ISO and Ethnologue dont recognize
the difference between dialect and language, for example, or they have a
confused distinction between the languages. Ethnologue has this problem because
it born with the target to save minor tongues, but it exceed with some ridiculous
cases.

I think that if my friends and I choice to speak something like our natural
language but with some differences, for example changing the order of syntax,
between ten years we can have our Ethnologue code at first, and ISO code
(this is a consequence) at second.

The problem is that I read a lot of strange argumentations, some studies
made by an author that has never spoken the idiom that he is studying, supported
by ISO and Ethnologue and I think: "...oops at moment I have thought to have
only spoken three languages, but I am polyglot: I speak ten languages!".

But the problem is not this. Wikipedia is strongly supported by community,
but if the community spoke something strong differently to language (or dialect)
of his Wikipedia: this is the paradox.

Ilario


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] About new wikipedias


from_name: marjonbakker at dds.nl

subject: [Foundation-l] About new wikipedias

body:
Hallo,

Ik ben van e-mailadres veranderd. Mijn nieuwe adres is:

marjonbakker at xs4all.nl

Gelieve dit te veranderen in je adresboek. Mijn oude adres zal per 31-1-2006 niet meer geldig zijn.

Vriendelijke groet,

Marjon Bakker


subject: [Foundation-l] About new wikipedias


from_name: Dori

subject:
[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
On 10/20/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> In a press release today
> (<http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051020/ukth030.html?.v=1>), The
> Wikimedia Foundation announced a new partnership with Answers.com.
>
> A proposal was made by Answers Corporation to add a link in the
> sidebar of the English Wikipedia to the Wikipedia:Tools page
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools>).
>
> That page will highlight the "1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition"
> software. Revenues from this toolbar will be split with the Wikimedia
> Foundation. The Board have signed up to a 60-day trial of this
> proposal.
>
> I would like to welcome comments on this, both before the launch early
> next year, and during the trial period. The talk page at
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers>
> should be used so that comments can be kept in one place.

This smells like advertising and spyware to me. I can't believe that
the foundation would go along with this. If we're to be NPOV, we'd
need to do this for Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc until that sidebar
was all but useless. And if that's not done, than this is pure
advertising.

Dori


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/20/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPerro wrote:
>
> > I think it's also important to realize that there isn't really a serious
> > legal threat to keeping these images around. OCILLA would protect
> Wikimedia
> > in this case, and even moreso as the image is merely being kept around
> > temporarily while its fate is decided. It's important that we remember
> why
> > we're removing these images in the first place - it's because Wikipedia
> is a
> > free encyclopedia - not because there's a serious legal threat
> involved.[...]
>
> I disagree.
>
> OCILLA does not protect a content provider that is aware of the
> copyright violation. And we are aware of it, both in the general terms
> that we know that we have thousands of unfree images, and in specificity
> with regard to this case in particular.

I'm aware of "it", but I'm not Wikimedia. I'm not an employee of Wikimedia.
I'm not an officer of Wikimedia. Wikimedia can't be sued because you or I am
aware of something.

Furthermore, while I'm aware of the existence of the image, that doesn't
mean I'm aware that it is a copyright infringement. In fact, I highly doubt
that it is a copyright infringement.

To think that Wikimedia is going to get sued because we kept an image which
was probably fair use around for a few weeks while we tried to determine
whether or not we could use the image, without receiving so much as a legal
threat, and deleted the image after those few weeks or whenever we received
a complaint from the copyright holder, whichever came first, is called
*copyright paranoia*. It would make absolutely no sense to sue Wikimedia
over such a thing. You'd almost certainly lose, and even if you won the
damages you'd be awarded would be virtually nonexistent. It's quite simply
*not going to happen*.

We even tag copyvios. How
> would we mount an OCILLA defense for content that had been tagged as a
> copyvio by a Wikipedian, put on a list of copyvios, and then served up
> for another 30 days?

The argument that some have advanced that it
> "might be fair use" doesn't hold any water WRT to OCILLA because fair
> use is an affirmative defense - the onus of proof is on us. Moreover,
> this image isn't fair use.

The distribution of this image for the purposes of determining whether or
not we should include it in the encyclopedia most certainly is fair use. But
that's not even necessary. In order to fall under OCILLA, Wikimedia must
"not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the
material on the system or network is infringing." It doesn't need to
actually be fair use for us to be protected under OCILLA, it is only
necessary that Wikimedia (which I'd take to include officers, employees, and
the board, but not any mere volunteer editor) has *actual knowledge* that it
isn't fair use (or "be aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing
activity is apparent", which isn't the case either).

The problem I believe we have from a legal standpoint is that we could
> be sued and end up with either a settlement or injunction giving us a
> very short amount of time to identify and remove problem content.

An injunction? The image would be deleted long before the judge even hears
the case. Any request for an injunction would be moot. It would be
absolutely ludicrous for a copyright holder to persue a lawsuit at all when
all they have to do is send an email or letter to the DMCA compliance
officer.

Since our processes take time, we might end up having to quit serving
> images until we were able to be sure the problem content was gone.

The process to take down an image when no one is actually complaining about
that image takes time. The process at [[Wikipedia:Request for immediate
removal of copyright violation]] takes much less time, and the process of
contacting Jimbo by telephone or email probably would take even less time
than that.

That would be a real blow to the project. I think it's relatively
> unlikely. IMO the greatest risk is not from Eddie Bauer or a hollywood
> publicist, but rather from the Bettman Archive, Britannica, Reuters, or
> someone else who sees us as competition. If Reuters found 200 stolen
> images, they'd have a hell of a case. Do we have 200 images stolen
> from Reuters? I wouldn't care to speculate.

Well look, I agree that anything from Reuters or Britannica and the like
would be our worst problem. And do we have 200 images from Reuters, I don't
know. But we don't have 200 images from Reuters which are currently
undergoing evaluation as a PUI or a copyright violation.

If Reuters did find 200 images of theirs on Wikipedia, I still think start
out by contacting us and giving us information about them. And we should and
almost certainly would work closely with them to resolve the problem. Sure,
they could sue and maybe get a few bucks for the past infringements, but if
instead they worked with us we could provide them with a direct contact that
would immediately delete the images as they find them.

Now maybe you're going to say that they'd try to sue us just so they could
shut us down, but I don't see that happening. Wikimedia is making a good
faith effort to respect copyright law, and a judge or jury is going to see
that and not award a ridiculous judgement against it. Furthermore, the
donations of money and legal support would come pouring in in such a
situation. Again, I think these fears are copyright paranoia.

In general I am more concerned about perception and bad press. The
> mainstream press would love to run an article comparing Wikipedia to
> Napster. Taking 30 days to delete copyvio hardcore porn, or images
> from Reuters, neither of which can't be speedied if properly
> attributed, doesn't do a thing for our reputation.

Well, I think we're talking about two different things here. I think a cut
and dry case of copyright infringement should be deletable immediately. If
we are, to quote OCILLA, "aware of facts or circumstances from which
infringing activity is apparent", we should delete the image immediately (or
more accurately, we should immediately stop distributing the image - there's
no need to actually delete it as mere possession of copyrighted materials is
not illegal).

> I don't know that I agree
> > that the use of this image isn't fair use. It probably is.
>
> I continue to find it troubling that there remain widely respected
> Wikipedians that cannot recognize cases such as this that clearly are
> not fair use.

So, since you believe this is *clearly* not fair use, I assume you can point
to a number of court rulings, some at a very high level in the appeals
process, which cover similar uses which were ruled to not be fair use? I for
one would be interested in seeing those cases.

Otherwise, your clarity is actually pure speculation.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Blocking Proposal

body:
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Martin Richards wrote:
<snip>
>
>
> Also, there are people on the proposal page desperate for it to be
> introduced because they get blocked frequently.
>
> This new kind of block would only be used when the existing kind of
> block failed, no IP would be blocked just simply for being shared. And
> if AOL vandals did stop vandalising, then it would never be blocked at all.
>

Here's an idea: how about a way to "selectively" block/unblock users
sharing IPs? Eg. when going to the block page:

* Block other users sharing this user's IP? (would enable or disable
autoblocker for registered users, would prevent or allow other users on
the same IP to keep editing)

* Unblock this user only (would reverse autoblocker for IPs, would allow
trusted users to keep editing when hit by IP blocks)

Alternatively, how about a "global whitelist" of users who *won't* be
blocked by the autoblocker, ever (unless they are individually blocked)?

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body:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
> >
> >I think we actually block far too much already, especially with user
> >blocks.
> >I'd suggest that most blocks actually tend to make it harder to find and
> >revert vandalism.
>
> Huh? How?

Because the blocked user can no longer edit under the same username and/or
IP address. It's much harder to find vandalism when you don't know what
accounts to look under. Just look at what happened when Wik was blocked. It
made it harder to find and revert his/her bad edits, not easier.

Jay.

Anthony


body:
On 10/19/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/19/05, Martin Richards <Martin at velocitymanager.com> wrote:
> >
> > If you think all vandalism is noticed in RC then you are seriously
> wrong, it
> > is totally unquestionable that a significant amount does get through,
> sure
> > its not much compared to the total volume, but it is still way too much
> for
> > an encyclopedia that is trying to establish credibility.
>
>
> Show me some old vandalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wave_model&diff=3162880&oldid=3162856
12 April 2004

to

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wave_model&diff=5317009&oldid=5316979
20 August 2004