subject:
[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia e-mail (Raul654 repeated unwarranted bans)
	(fwd)

body:
I got this message in my postbox through Wikipedia e-mail. I have no
interest in dealing with this matter, and am sending it here hoping that
someone else (maybe the mediation committee?) will.

Andre Engels

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:19:11 GMT
From: Plautus satire <plautus at shaw.ca>
To: Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>, Andre Engels <engels at uni-koblenz.de>
Subject: Wikipedia e-mail (Raul654 repeated unwarranted bans)

Please allow me to have a few moments of your time.

I have been the victim of what I feel is a very unfair banning by an admin using the ID Raul654. This banning started several days ago when I began editing several entries as a new contributing user. In this time I have added completely new entries ( http://en.wikipedia.org/Aquaponics http://en.wikipedia.org/Phytochemicals http://en.wikipedia.org/Watercress http://en.wikipedia.org/Garden_cress ) and I have made factual error correction of a few other entries that have remained in place. In particular (since this is an entry that has led to my banning) I corrected an error which stated Albert Einstein was offered the first presidency of Israel, when in fact he had been offered the SECOND presidency. For my insistence that this material and other material belongs in the Albert Einstein entry, I was banned.

Repeated reversions of my edits were done without explanation on the talk page after my ban was lifted. After three attempts to keep a valid edit in an entry I was banned again. Once again the ban was lifted and once again numerous reversions of my edits were performed without discussion or explanation on the talk page. The various page histories will show this from a careful examination. In all three cases where I was banned it was to settle disputed edits. The wikipedia guidelines state that bans and page protections are ONLY to be used in cases of persisent vandalism. I made every edit in good faith and in the end Raul654 decided to use my removal of my OWN posts (which I felt had become extraneous and needlessly adding bloat to a large talk page) from a talk page as an excuse to ban me yet again.

All of this clearly illustrates the double standard Raul654 has been using to ban at least me, but probably many others. If he disagrees with them, he uses their persistence in presenting facts as evidence that they are a troll, a vandal or whatever word he chooses to use. In this case clearly the ban was unwarranted. If he agrees with them, he rewards their persistence in reversion and claims it is a service and not the vandalism that it becomes when a disagreeable sort does the same thing. I was discussing reasonably in talk pages every edit I was making, and was greeted with stony silence and automatic kneejerk reversions. Other users in many cases have stepped in to mediate, to draft "compromise" versions which do not ignore new facts I presented, and in some cases these versions have been stamped out as well. Once again, the page histories reveal all of this.

So I appeal to you to help me get this ban lifted once again, and to ask for advice in dealing with Raul654. Clearly he has made it his personal mission to ban me. He has done it twice over the span of three days, and in both cases it was for edit conflicts made in good faith by all parties, not a case of persistent vandalism as he suggests. Once again, the page histories do indeed show this quite clearly, when indexed with their respective talk page histories.

I should also point out that I was banned for doing something that I admit was a mistake. I deleted somebody else's edits to my talk page, because I felt they were slanderous and inaccurate. I was under the impression my talk page was owned by me and could be modified as I saw fit. I have since apologized for deleting others' edits from my talk page, and have not deleted any since. I have deleted my own messages, as I mentioned above, when I felt they had become pointless, extraneous or simply just bloat. I feel this is every wikipedia user's responsibility to cut down on bloat in "current" editions. If I am wrong I'm willing to be flexible on that, but I definitely do think there needs to be a way for people to delete their own edits without sanction, especially on the talk pages. It's been pointed out by many people at many times that talk pages are not a chat room, if there is information not serving a purpose there I feel it should be deleted.

To sum up I would just like to state that I am a good faith user of wikipedia and not a vandal. Please do not allow Raul654's personal feelings about me to prevent me from contributing in a healthy manner to wikipedia. This is a tremendous resource, and one that I feel I can help improve for all. While I may be new to the "culture" on wikipedia and while I may be very poor at becoming popular, I know for a fact my contribution history ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Contributions&hideminor=0&target=Plautus+satire&limit=500&offset=0 ) shows I can contribute in a meaningful way and am not a "troll" or a "vandal". Perhaps I have different ideals of how wikipedia should get there, but I agree with all as to where it should go. It is and should remain a storehouse of factual information in a usable format, not a game played to score points instead of making point.

I reiterate my request for aid in removing this ban, and in dealing with Raul654 on a more permanent basis. If a culture change is what's needed then I can patiently wait until the culture changes. But if there is another remedy to Raul654's apparent persecution of me on flimsy grounds, I would like to avail myself of it.

Thank you for your time,

Codie Vickers (Plautus satire)


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: nfs performance problems

body:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 09:10:26 -0600, Nick Reinking wrote:

> Is there any reason for this to be done?

Convenience and tidyness i'd say.

>  It's not like the PHP files are
> changing that often.  Wouldn't a simple rdist upon upgrading be
> sufficient, and less prone to breakage?

I guess so, yes. We should see if it helps pretty quickly. Any roots
around?
--
Gabriel Wicke


list: wikien-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Aaahhh... Please edit my message

body:
Please edit my message by removing Paulus satire's email address, and
instead stating that people can get the email address from me when
necessary. I don't think it's a good idea to get his address in the
open without his permission.

Andre Engels


from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia e-mail (Raul654 repeated unwarranted bans)

body:
Some rather, uh, hostile emails by the user in question can be found at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Silsor/fanmail


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unban Plautus satire

body:
>Unless anyone feels there's an "emergency" reason to suspend Plautus
satire's editing privileges, I feel I should "unban" his user account.

I haven't followed the history of this; but definitely didn't need the 18
abusive emails he sent to me personally.

Charles


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] nfs performance problems

body:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 07:12:42 -0800
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:

> Nick Reinking wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 17, 2004 at 04:01:02PM +0100, Gabriel Wicke wrote:
> > > The conclusion that this is related to nfs is close. As a first measure i
> > > would propose to move /apache/common onto the local hd on the Apaches. All
> > > php scripts are validated against the nfs server for changes on every
> > > execution at the moment, this should be the major load.
> >
> > Is there any reason for this to be done?  It's not like the PHP files
> > are changing that often.  Wouldn't a simple rdist upon upgrading be
> > sufficient, and less prone to breakage?
>
> I agree with Nick completely, but I also simply second his questions,
> since I don't know much about it.
>
> In my experience, admittedly a few years outdated now, NFS sucks in
> every possible way.  At that time, it seemed to me that anything hitting
> NFS regularly was doomed to breakage.
>

I would like to add something, this is only an 80G ATA drive we have on zwinger. There was more problems when we used zwinger to cache web pages for apache servers.

I would be nice if we could try to set up more nfs deamon, actually 8, on zwinger.

Shaihulud


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
What procedure?  Where is it?  Has it produced one result?

RickK

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
They just need to quit blocking people without authorization. We have a
procedure. Try talk, then mediation, then appeal to Jimbo if mediation
doesn't work to request Jimbo to ask for arbitration.

Fred

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040217/70594d84/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
I have no problem with this, as long as it's for logged in users and not for anons.

RickK

Jake Nelson <jnelson at soncom.com> wrote:
Fred Bauder wrote:
> They just need to quit blocking people without authorization. We have a
> procedure. Try talk, then mediation, then appeal to Jimbo if mediation
> doesn't work to request Jimbo to ask for arbitration.

Here's a thought- have the blocking code require two sysops to both do it to
take effect, at least in the case of logged-in users. Might solve some of
these issues.

-- Jake

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040217/b1537be2/attachment.htm


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: Robert Michel

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Joining Wiktionary-l and some thoughs

body:
Salve Wiktionary-people,

it`s great to have an own mailinglist. I what you to know that I like to join
and share some ideas for wikitionary soon. I came to wikipedia to find an
explaination for words that I haven`t found with ispell... more about this
visit (still only in German): http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Benutzer:RobertMichel

At the moment I try to get a 25.000 word-list (catchwords) from a geology
bibliothek for a use with GNU-FDL. Beside of wikitonary, I have at he moment
a disput on the German Wikipedia Mailinglist - about a better reserch of
catchwords and an algorithmen how to give names to articels with less as
posible subjectivity. *g*

Because of making my mind about more systematic I tried to scan (manualy) all
wetterforcast region of an german wetterreport:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wettervorhersage_(deutsche_Vorhersagegebiete)
Theses regions are not realy a good example for translations, but it should be
an example to scan the text of national radiostation for words of one field.
With such kontext is it more easy to translate and more usefull for learning
vocabulary. The sum of all fields could build the wiktionary, and one link of
rain could show a list of meterologic words (rain, snow, storm...)

I think the software should support the research of the words and the wictors
(viktors (what is the name for wikitonary people ?)) should work as
systematic as posible and build wordlists for seperate sujects bevore to link
them to another language. To build software for Wikitonary is definitive more
dificult than for the wikipedia, and beside of software-tools giving
software-skills to the wictors should have the same priority.

So with "quick and dirty" we won`t have succsess, and we should take time for
think about
- how to get lists of words (scaning ebooks,news, catchwords form bibliotheks)
- how to split these list in fields
- how to work with them
....
When we find all ways how to find words systematicaly, for every way we should
creat a dummy wordlist to know how to handel these.

Back to the 25.000, I want to add statisticaly informations to these words,
how many books, news, articals, dissertation, webpages, newsgroups-posting
this words are used.

Greetings from Aachen,
rob

PS: I study civil ingeneering ;)


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
As far as I can remember, I've only blocked three logged-in users:
Ric, who just yesterday created a user account and then copied my User and User Talk pages to his pages.  I blocked him and deleted the pages.
Wik, twice, for the same violations -- blanking articles and reverting useful content.  And both of those times, I reported it on [[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users/Wik]], so those were NOT "sneaked in under the tent flap".
And JoeM, a repeated, massive POV vandal, who nobody seems to have a problem with blocking, even though it didn't take months to get it accomplished.

Besides, when somebody is blocked it appears in the Recent Changes, and on the [[List of blocked IP addresses and usernames]].

RickK

"Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
Whenever I've blocked someone (other than anonymous IP) or taken any
other unilateral action, I've always immediately reported it to this
mailing list.

Then I've sat back and waited to see what others thought. And if the
consensus went against me, I bowed to the collective will.

A lot of these hasty blocks seem to have sneaked in under the tent flap.

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040217/e5c7fac5/attachment.htm


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anonymous proxies

body:
Ed-
> The fact is, anyone can contribute to Wikipedia. Just create a handle
> and start typing. People who don't want their contributions tracked are
> subverting the WikiWiki principle and should not be helped. (If you're
> contributing at the risk of your life, contact ME and I'll set up
> something safe for you through the underground.)

I have changed the IP block messages for anonymous proxies accordingly.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unban Plautus satire

body:
At 05:09 PM 2/17/2004 +0000, Charles Matthews wrote:

> >Unless anyone feels there's an "emergency" reason to suspend Plautus
>satire's editing privileges, I feel I should "unban" his user account.
>
>I haven't followed the history of this; but definitely didn't need the 18
>abusive emails he sent to me personally.

I feel left out, only two personalized profanity-laden diatribes were sent
to me. Must be because I'm not editing enough, I need to raise my
Wikiprofile more. To work!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Image caching problems

body:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 10:01:59 -0500, List, Christian wrote:

 We would need those pictures to get
> removed completely, not just the image page.

They'll expire from cache eventually (after one month max) but not
immediately. I took a look at the code already, it shouldn't be hard to
do. I would like to ask JeLuF about it first as he's the image expert, but
i'm optimistic we can get the purging going tomorrow or so.
--
Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Plautus satire (fixed link)

in_reply_to:
<20040217192654.22336.qmail@web60704.mail.yahoo.com> (message
	from James Rosenzweig on Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:26:54 -0800 (PST))

body:
> Plautus' abusive correspondence is visible here:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Silsor/fanmail

And it is indeed abusive, and indeed grounds for mediation or
arbitration -- but not for vigilante banning.  We (will soon) have a
process for dealing with people like Plautus; I would vote for the
Arbitration Committee to hear the case.

--
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.com


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unban Plautus satire

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Was there anything official from the Arbitration Committee about Plautus
>satire?
>
>
FWIW, all official arbitration committee action, including both
reviewing a case and making a decision on it, will be documented at
[[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration]] (in the future we expect the
decisions to be explained in more depth as well).  So far the MNH matter
is the only one that's been considered and decided; there are currently
no pending matters.

-Mark


from_name: Dan Drake

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: Wikipedia e-mail (Raul654 repeated unwarranted
	bans)

body:
On Tue, 17 Feb 2004 15:50:29 UTC, Anthere
<anthere8 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Comment ?
> ...

> From: Plautus satire <plautus at shaw.ca>
> Reply-To: Plautus satire <plautus at shaw.ca>
> To: Anthere <anthere8 at yahoo.com>
> X-Mailer: MediaWiki interuser e-mailer
> Content-Length: 2501
>
>
> Please allow me to have a few moments of your time.
>
> I have been the victim of what I feel is a very unfair banning by an admin using the ID Raul654. This banning started several days ago when I began editing several entries as a new contributing user. In this time I have added completely new entries ( http://en.wikipedia.org/Aquaponics http://en.wikipedia.org/Phytochemicals http://en.wikipedia.org/Watercress http://en.wikipedia.org/Garden_cress ) and I have made factual error correction of a few other entries that have remained in place. In particular (since this is an entry that has led to my banning) I corrected an error which stated Albert Einstein was offered the first presidency of Israel, when in fact he had been offered the SECOND presidency. For my insistence that this material and other material belongs in the Albert Einstein entry, I was banned.
>...

Here are three comments:
Gee, he sure sounds reasonable.
Gee, he sure sounded like something completely other than reasonable when
he was contributing to articles, as one can find out in a couple of
minutes of clicking on diffs.
Thanks for getting rid of him.

--
Dan Drake
dd at dandrake.com
http://www.dandrake.com

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
 --George Orwell


from_name: Caroline Ford

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>The Block Log makes fascinating reading.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Block_log
>
>Here are some highlights:
>
>* Users blocked by Jimbo tend to stay unblocked
>* Wik gets blocked and unblocked a lot
>* Raul really wants to block Plautus
>* Not one "block" citing a Committee decision
>
>Ed Poor
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
Agreed - there seems to be a lot of blocking logged in users at the
moment - just because someone is annoyed with them. The precedent was
set a few weeks ago, it seems to be happening at least once a day now.

Secretlondon


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
One

From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 17:45:41 -0800 (PST)
To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

What procedure?  Where is it?  Has it produced one result?

RickK

Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
They just need to quit blocking people without authorization. We have a
procedure. Try talk, then mediation, then appeal to Jimbo if mediation
doesn't work to request Jimbo to ask for arbitration.

Fred

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online
<http://us.rd.yahoo.com/evt=22055/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html>
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040217/18018ad6/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:

> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> The Block Log makes fascinating reading.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Block_log
>>
>> Here are some highlights:
>>
>> * Users blocked by Jimbo tend to stay unblocked
>> * Wik gets blocked and unblocked a lot
>> * Raul really wants to block Plautus
>> * Not one "block" citing a Committee decision
>>
>> Ed Poor
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
> Agreed - there seems to be a lot of blocking logged in users at the
> moment - just because someone is annoyed with them. The precedent was
> set a few weeks ago, it seems to be happening at least once a day now.
>
> Secretlondon
> ----------

My worry is that if Khranus, Mr Natural Health etc had been around this
week - they would have just been permanently blocked with no discussion.
This _is_ what is happening at the moment - and for lesser cases as well.

I'm wondering whether we should go as far as to have a temporary time
out on blocking usernames. Of course, the minute we do that we'll have
Michael.

We need to put the genie back in the box.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anonymous proxies (was Re: Desysop Morwen)

body:
Rich Holton a ?crit:
> How about requiring users from known anonymizers to
> login? This still allows for legitimate uses of the
> anonymizers, but helps to restrict vandals.

I like this idea.
I sometimes use anonymous proxies, sometimes transparent ones. I do not
always remember to switch back to regular connection. What usually makes
me think to switch is that a proxy slows down the connection quite a
bit. If the proxy is good, I just forget.

I use anonymous proxies, but I am not a vandal.

If it is vandalism we are afraid of, we must admit that usually the risk
is higher with anonymous editors. If the editor has an editor name, he
can be banned through his name.
So, the idea of restricting use of proxy only when the editor is
anonymous appears to me bright. We reduce the risk of vandalism, whilst
we authorized anymous proxy use for good editors.


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: wikifying documents: how do I get a list of
 Wikipedia articles titles?

body:
Assini, Pasqualino wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I would like to write a little utility that, given a text, will automatically substitute all the words or expression in it that match titles of Wikipedia articles with links to the corresponding Wikipedia article.

I think that is a very bad idea. Firstly, you have a lot of words like
"a" and "the" that you don't want to be links. Secondly, not every
occurrance of one word (say, "tree") is talking about the topic of that
article (in other words, how do you know whether to link to [[Tree]] or
[[Tree (graph theory)]]).

Timwi


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: image copyright

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Now, it is problematic to me, as some of these images are declared
> being from me in other places (and it is important that they are from
> me *over there*), while now, they also exist in another website,
> apparently owned by another person, and not clearly gfdl any more.
> So, my offering them under gfdl to Wikipedia (that is, normally
> preserving my authorship) is likely to hurt me indirectly in my real
> life as some one could claim being the author and having a copyright
> on it.

Offering your images anywhere, to anyone, potentially carries that risk.
The only sure way to prevent copyright infringement is never to let
anyone else get access to your stuff. For things that are released under
GFDL, you can let the person copying know that they need to comply with
the license. That's part of the reason we keep track of sites that use
Wikipedia for content. If we work with them on it, some will figure out
how to comply. For example, McFly is at least moving in the right
direction--who knows, a little more effort, and Anthony could even be a
model for GFDL compliance. For those that don't, in the worst cases we
can resort to a takedown notice.

> If I can't remove them, I suppose however that I can replace some of
> them with identical images with a gfdl license embedding in ? That
> will not make it for the ones now lost, but at least, future pictures
> and future uses will be saved ? Of course, the embedded licence can be
> removed, but it makes things harder. Can I do that ?

I don't know of anything to stop you from embedding a GFDL notice in any
jpeg or png file you upload. Or even a copyright notice, if you own the
copyright to the image. I suppose people might object to the embedding
for aesthetic reasons. You could also caption images with a copyright
notice--I believe I've seen that a few times.

> If Wikipedia itself does not try to secure its participants rights,
> how far can we go to preserve the rights we should have in our
> participation under gfdl Michael ?

For stuff that you have a copyright in, you can do whatever the law
allows to preserve your rights. Basically, you as an individual have the
same options available to deal with infringement as Wikipedia does.
Wikipedia doesn't have that much ability to protect the rights of
individual contributors, it can only protect its own rights. The most
Wikipedia could do on your behalf is maybe lead a class action suit on
behalf of all the contributors whose copyrights are being infringed.
However, I would point out that your rights as a contributor do not come
from the GFDL. They come from whatever copyright you own. The GFDL gives
other people permission, it doesn't give you as an author any rights.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Sascha Noyes

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
On Tuesday 17 February 2004 08:45 pm, Rick wrote:
> What procedure?

Arbitration

> Where is it?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration

> Has it produced one result?

Yes, Mister Natural Health was blocked from editing articles for 30 days.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Please encrypt all email. Public key available from
www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
On 02/17/04  at 02:56 PM, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> said: >
Here are some highlights:

> * Users blocked by Jimbo tend to stay unblocked
> * Wik gets blocked and unblocked a lot
> * Raul really wants to block Plautus
> * Not one "block" citing a Committee decision

Ok, these blocks haven't been strictly by the book, but there isn't one I
think that was truly uncalled for and calls into question the judgement of
the concerned admin. Let's keep in mind the *spirit* not just the *letter*
of the law for a moment. As for Wik, it is not like a variety of people
haven't put substantial effort into encouraging him to change his ways. In
vain of course; he is incorrigible.

V.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Page footers

body:
Hi,

please everybody discuss the layout of the new page footers.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Page_footers

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
On 02/17/04  at 01:29 PM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> said:

> They just need to quit blocking people without authorization. We have a
> procedure. Try talk, then mediation, then appeal to Jimbo if mediation
> doesn't work to request Jimbo to ask for arbitration

And how many months will this take???

V.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Take my name off the IP block page, please

body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> Erik placed the following notice on the IP block page:
>
> << This IP address is blocked for editing because it belongs to an
> anonymizing proxy. If you really need anonymization, please contact Ed
> Poor (Edmund.W.Poor at abc dot com), and he'll set up something safe for
> you through the underground. >>
>
> I don't know if this was meant as a joke, or to make a point. But it's
> not a public service I can provide. What I meant was that people contact
> me privately: note that writing to me at me work address is NOT PRIVATE.
> Employers have the right to read e-mail, court orders can force them to
> divulge contents, etc.

Really ?
Normally, it is illegal for an employer to read employees emails in France.
Well, some do of course, but if they try to use this fact from a legal
pov, they are in deep trouble

> Please take my name and e-mail address out of the IP block notice
> quickly.
>
> Thank you.
>
> Ed Poor


from_name: Plautus Satire

subject: [WikiEN-l] IP ban

body:
I'll tread carefully since I feel like I am on thin ice here, but I have been unbanned by name though I still seem banned by IP. Is this intentional or unintentional? I have no other forum to ask really or I wouldn't bother this forum with it.

P.S.: I am not a "troll" or "vandal," I swear, just a very enthusiastic user and now proud contributor. I have no more desire to see wikipedia "ruined" than anybody else. And to Raul654 if you're reading this, and to everyone else I responded to in anger, I apologize. There is no excuse or rationalization for blowing your top and I clearly blew my top. I can only offer by way of explanation that I FELT I was being treated very unfairly by people who were being capricious and unreasonable.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I waiting for moderation?

body: I just read that this forum is not moderated except in emergency. And that users are also flagged only in emergency. Why do I have to wait for moderation?


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Some dead end pages are alive!

body:
On Feb 17, 2004, at 22:18, Rob W.W. Hooft wrote:
> I am having a problem with a new wikipedia hobby: cleaning out dead
> end pages. The problem is that a number of the entries in the list of
> dead end pages are "#redirect" pages which are not at all dead ends.
> As an example, at the moment of this writing, in
>
>    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Deadendpages
>
> entry number 20 is [[AIBO]], which is a redirect to [[Aibo]]. The
> latter is not a dead end page, and even if it would be, [[AIBO]]
> should probably not be listed either....

The link tables are not correct due to old and possibly current bugs.

NOTHING BASED ON THEM IS RELIABLE UNTIL THEY ARE CLEANED UP. This is a
known problem, and is not dependent on anything in those special pages,
but just in the contents of the link tables (and possibly the code that
manages those tables).

Affected special pages include but are not limited to:
Whatlinkshere
Deadendpages
Orphans
Wantedpages
Recentchangeslinked
Unusedimages

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040217/d61c9277/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] image copyright

body:
Anthony wrote:
>I'm in the process of adding the full page histories to the
>McFly page. I'm also going to add a ===References===
>section pointing to the wikipedia article.  I've downloaded
>the huge (16 gigs uncompressed) history file.  This should
>be finished by the end of the week.  Hope this alleviates
>everyone's concerns.

Wow - thanks Anthony. When this gets done I will have to publicly apologize for
saying that you were trolling.

--mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools


subject: [WikiEN-l] blacklist

body: This preemptive moderation proves I am on some sort of "blacklist".


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The Block Log

body:
Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>
>> Whenever I've blocked someone (other than anonymous IP) or taken any
>> other unilateral action, I've always immediately reported it to this
>> mailing list.
>>
>> Then I've sat back and waited to see what others thought. And if the
>> consensus went against me, I bowed to the collective will.
>>
>> A lot of these hasty blocks seem to have sneaked in under the tent flap.
>>
> Sorry Ed, but we can't use nostalgia as a valid argument.  When I first
> joined you would feel obliged to take a sabbatical whenever someone
> objected to your blocking someone.  But times have changed; that's
> progress, and you can't stop progress.  "Everybody"'s armed now.  Why
> bother sneaking under the tent flap, when you can slash a hole in the
> back of the tent with your machete.
>
> Ec

By "everybody", I suppose you mean "sysop", right ?


from_name: Guillaume Blanchard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Command by URL

body:
Hello all,
I created a set of key-words for Mozilla (to use in the URL bar).
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%E9dia:Navigateur/Mozilla (sorry, French
only)
In this pack, I included links to Wikipedia (fr: & en:) pages
(article/user/meta/talk... rc, upload, ...) and link to direct search
request for most famous free (French) encyclopedia.
For exemple, "quid Revolution" give the result page of searching the word
"Revolution" on the Quid's encyclopedia.
I'd like to add new feature for Wikipedia's key-words but I don't kown if
it's possible :
- Search (still unvailable) : someone know what the search request URL look
like ?
- Block user : Not possible from URL ? Perhaps not a good idea :o/
- SQL : Send SQL requeste from URL ? possible ?
Any comment are welcome.

Aoineko


from_name: Robert Michel

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] Info German Wikiprojects: "Spoken Wikipedia" &
	"Wikipedia for Blinds"

body:
Salve,

it`s probably a little early to share ideas of audio outputs, but these ideas
could be interesting for Wiktionary, too - or I would be happy when non,
German speakes would be interested in:

Wiki Project "Spoken Wikipdia" - the aime is to speak Featured articles and
recod this digitaly. This would maybe interest the same people which like
audiobooks, blind people and people which like to learn a language:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiprojekt_Gesprochene_Wikipedia

I try to start a project "Wikipedia for blinds", which has the aim to take
care that the user-interface of the Wikipeadia is blind user friendly, and
shared some ideas for synthetic speach output on PC, internet audiostream and
telephone:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikiprojekt_Wikipedia_f?r_Blinde

Synthetic speachoutput is IMHO not good engough for the Wiktionary, but both
projects could bring ideas for the Wictionary interfaces and maybe people who
like to speak and record word pronunciations *g*

rob


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vigilantism must stop

body:
Wik complains that he's been banned 5 times, twice by RickK, twice by
Hephaestos, once by Ed Poor.

Raul654 banned Plautus Satire.

Erik banned Antony DiPierro.

Unless there's an actual emergency, this is not the way to handle
these situations.  Even if the offense is a bannable offense, it is
not right for sysops to make these decisions outside of our
established process.

Admitttedly, there is some gray area around the term "emergency", so
I'm not upset with any particular case.  In each of the cases in
question, the contributor in question who was banned was acting badly,
and the sysops in question were acting out of good faith.

However, we're going down a dangerous path here if we aren't careful.

So I ask, please, that sysop vigilantism come to a close.  Let's chill
out and let the process work.  There is a process, and it is a bit
slow, but let's try to make it work.

Alternatively, we should make a conscious decision, with debates and
probably even a system-wide vote, to change our traditional reluctance
to have "cops" policing wikipedia by banning people for bad behavior.

Perhaps we could formally expand the set of circumstances where sysops
are allowed to ban problem users temporarily.  Or perhaps not.

But, we certainly should not do it by creeping precedent, but by open
agreement.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] image copyright

body:
Anthony and I have been having a very productive and wide ranging
discussion about copyright and other such issues, and it is obvious
to me that he's going to do the right thing, and that his motives
are sincere.  He's done some hotheaded edits which he clearly regrets,
but he seems very much to be a good person to me.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Anthony wrote:
> >I'm in the process of adding the full page histories to the
> >McFly page. I'm also going to add a ===References===
> >section pointing to the wikipedia article.  I've downloaded
> >the huge (16 gigs uncompressed) history file.  This should
> >be finished by the end of the week.  Hope this alleviates
> >everyone's concerns.
>
> Wow - thanks Anthony. When this gets done I will have to publicly apologize for
> saying that you were trolling.
>
> --mav
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
> http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Some images need to be deleted...

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrighted

Clicking from here to "What links here" we find:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Copyrighted

It looks like there are only 9 images which purport to be "used with
permission".  These are not acceptable for Wikipedia.

Under Clause 7 of the license, it's perfectly o.k. to include such
images in a GNU FDL document as aggregations, so my concern is not
particularly *license* related.  That is, I don't think our including
these images is a license violation.  (Images are clearly the sort of
"separate and independent documents or works" contemplated by that
section of the license.)

But our goals are loftier and more pure than the GNU FDL.  We want our
content to be maximally reusable, period.

Therefore, these images should be deleted.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] More images to be deleted

body:
It looks like SecretLondon is the one who put most of these up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:PAphoto

"This image is courtesy of PA Photos Ltd ( http://www.papicselect.com/
). It is copyrighted, and not to be supplied to third parties. See
Wikipedia:Pictures from PA Photos Ltd for details."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:PAphoto

------

These are from a vareity of contributors...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Noncommercial

"This image is not licenced under the GFDL. It is under a
non-commercial-use only licence."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Noncommercial

------

Some of the above might be usable under "fair use", but I think we
should be very cautious about fair use.

--Jimbo


body:
What we need is the ability to mark "used with permission" and "used under
non-commercial fair use doctrine" images.

Then those images could be semi-automatically excluded by third parties
depending on their use. We could even have different database dumps:
1) Complete Wikipedia backup
2) Non-commercial use (minus "used with permission" images)
4) Commercial use (minus "used with permission" and "non-commercial fair use
doctrine" images)

Any image linked via our new image syntax can be cleanly not displayed in
articles (captions and div mark-up is all included inside [[image:...]]).

As Erik noted before we should primarily be concerned with creating the best
encyclopedia on the planet. To do that we are going to have to live with having
some images that may not be usable by third parties (FDL text can always be
created on all topics while photos of many things cannot).

I therefore prefer this 'best of both worlds' approach.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikistats

body:
Alfio wrote:

> The table+calendar for each year is around 18Kbytes and >100 links,
> so if it has been added to 2000+ years, that's easily enough to
> account for the increase in database size, and I suspect in words and
links.

Right on the spot. I checked a random year:
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/1880
7 links for weekdays occur 12 times each on the page, other doubles occur.

A bit wasteful in my view, but with new server who cares about performance
:)
Perhaps some other bot will tidy things up sometime.

Anyway, I adapted the stats script: each link will only be counted once per
article.

pl: number of internal links dropped from 598K to 373K = 62%
for comparison
nl: dropped from 312K to 292K = 94%

New Perl scripts will be ready for upload probably tomorrow.
They will also add some data on most active contributors:
edits in last 30 days, ranking now and 30 days ago.

---------

Camille/Shaihulud,

Did you produce the stats on your own PC, from downloaded dumps?
Brion used to do just that until a few months ago (I have trouble
downloading the largest dumps intact myself)
but in recent months ran them directly on the server,
(which is why they were not updated in recent weeks, by the way, with all
that server shuffling).

Downloading all dumps each week seems quite a hassle. But if Brion gave you
server access, fine with me,
one less monkey on his back. I just need to know whom to address for
occasional updates.

Erik Zachte


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Viajero wrote:
> > They just need to quit blocking people without authorization. We have a
> > procedure. Try talk, then mediation, then appeal to Jimbo if mediation
> > doesn't work to request Jimbo to ask for arbitration
>
> And how many months will this take???

It doesn't matter.  It's the law.

But, the real answer is that it will take about 2 weeks per case, I
think.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Requiring two blocks from different sysops before a logged-in user is
blocked?

This is not a bad idea.  I'm personally not so concerned with sysops
acting in bad faith.  We're good people, and I don't think that's the
issue.  I'm more concerned with the perceived and real legitimacy of
our processes.

Jake Nelson wrote:

> Fred Bauder wrote:
> > No, it just means you have two in the wrong.
>
> I said some. Not all. And if the number were three? Or four? I didn't
> suggest those before, because I think being able to block someone who starts
> going nuts immediately is important, but the RC patrol tends to number more
> than two at any given time...
>
> -- Jake
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Viajero wrote:
> > * Users blocked by Jimbo tend to stay unblocked
> > * Wik gets blocked and unblocked a lot
> > * Raul really wants to block Plautus
> > * Not one "block" citing a Committee decision
>
> Ok, these blocks haven't been strictly by the book, but there isn't one I
> think that was truly uncalled for and calls into question the judgement of
> the concerned admin. Let's keep in mind the *spirit* not just the *letter*
> of the law for a moment. As for Wik, it is not like a variety of people
> haven't put substantial effort into encouraging him to change his ways. In
> vain of course; he is incorrigible.

I want to second this, and make sure that there's no misunderstanding
about where *I* am coming from.  I think that the blocks are not
evidence of sysops acting in bad faith, and my campaign against
vigilantism should not be taken as a disapproval of any particular
block.

It's just that we're going down a path of nearly daily blocks of
logged in users that are contrary to our established precedents, and
we ought to be very cautious about that.

Rest assured, I am not forgetting that these people who are being
blocked *are* pains-in-our-asses.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Rick wrote:
> As far as I can remember, I've only blocked three logged-in users:
> Ric, who just yesterday created a user account and then copied my
> User and User Talk pages to his pages.  I blocked him and deleted
> the pages.

I think that's totally legitimate.  What you might do, in the
interests of preserving an aura of neutrality, is ask another sysop to
do the dirty work.  But that kind of behavior falls pretty cleanly
into the category of "pure vandalism", and I see no real pressing need
for us to hold a full court case about it.

> Wik, twice, for the same violations -- blanking articles and
>reverting useful content.  And both of those times, I reported it on
>[[Wikipedia:Conflicts between users/Wik]], so those were NOT "sneaked
>in under the tent flap".

But these were controversial, and remain so.  Wik is a regular
contributor, not a "simple vandal", a general pain in the neck, but
not an emergency situation.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rob W.W. Hooft

body:
I am having a problem with a new wikipedia hobby: cleaning out dead end
pages. The problem is that a number of the entries in the list of dead
end pages are "#redirect" pages which are not at all dead ends. As an
example, at the moment of this writing, in

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Deadendpages

entry number 20 is [[AIBO]], which is a redirect to [[Aibo]]. The latter
is not a dead end page, and even if it would be, [[AIBO]] should
probably not be listed either....

Clearly not all redirects are listed, but the ones that are listed make
cleaning up a lot more difficult.

Rob

--
Rob W.W. Hooft  ||  rob at hooft.net  ||  http://www.hooft.net/people/rob/


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
MNH was not an emergency. He did nothing which affected the functioning of
Wikipedia. He simply acted ugly. Hopefully he will return and be a good
citizen in the future. I must say, in the absence of need, I haven't really
looked into the matter of Wik or thought very hard about it.

If you feel mediation will not be productive contact Jimbo directly with
your plea. Only he can refer the matter to arbitration.

Fred

> From: John Robinson <john at freeq.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 09:34:54 -0600
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log
>
> I don't see how Wik is any less an emergency situation than MNH was.
> He's been blocked five times by three different people.  Obviously
> there is an issue here that needs to be addressed.
>
> Could this case not be referred to the arbitration committee?  It's my
> understanding that they don't have anything pending at the moment.
>
> -Hephaestos
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: John Robinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
I don't see how Wik is any less an emergency situation than MNH was.
He's been blocked five times by three different people.  Obviously
there is an issue here that needs to be addressed.

Could this case not be referred to the arbitration committee?  It's my
understanding that they don't have anything pending at the moment.

-Hephaestos


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policing vs. judging (was: The Block Log)

body:
As a compromise between unregulated vigilantism and the established
committee procedure, how about this?

Any admin has the right to temp-ban a user, BUT:

* Must report this ban to the mailing list of the encyclopedia from
which the user is banned
* The Arbitration Committee will immediately review the temp-ban

This is like letting any cop arrest a suspect, but requiring a judge to
decide that very same day whether to put him in jail pending trial or
release him on his own recognizance.

We are working in Internet time. So perhaps the full Arbitration
Committee needn't meet to discuss the validity of a temp ban. Maybe only
one A.C. member would be enough.

They could say, "Okay, Raul acted in good faith but we think user:Nutso
isn't an "emergent threat" so we're overturning the temp ban. Please go
through channels on this one."

Or they might say, "Yeah, what a pest! Temp ban sustained pending
committee consideration."

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


body:
This question is exactly what the arbitration committee is currently
discussing as far as permanent procedure is concerned. Opinion is divided.

The temporary emergency procedure requires a referral from Jimbo. I'm sure a
request from the mediation committee stating that mediation had been tried
and failed would be influential.

Fred

> From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2004 11:11:41 -0500
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Referring a matter (was: The Block Log)
>
> I think the Mediation Committee can also refer a matter to arbitration.
> At least it /said/ it can.
>
> Do we need to change the rules?
>
> Should it be just any user who can refer a matter to the arbitration
> committee? Should the A.C. then decide what the next step is? How about:
>
> * temp ban
> * refer to Mediation Committee
> * hear the case
>
> Must there be a prescribed order? A lot of us don't want to wait 2 whole
> weeks! Even 5 days seems like a lifetime around here...
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
John Robinson wrote:
> Could this case not be referred to the arbitration committee?  It's my
> understanding that they don't have anything pending at the moment.

What's the status of mediation?

Wik asked me to refer it to arbitration, too.

But I won't until the mediators assure me that they've given up on
trying to reach peace.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Referring a matter (was: The Block Log)

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> I think the Mediation Committee can also refer a matter to arbitration.
> At least it /said/ it can.

For the moment, to keep the load on them down while they continue
finalizing their procedures, the arbitration committee has asked that
I stand between them and various cases, referring only those for which
there's a crucial need.

> Must there be a prescribed order? A lot of us don't want to wait 2 whole
> weeks! Even 5 days seems like a lifetime around here...

I think you're right, and we can all remember that this is a good
faith effort to feel our way forward carefully.  Things will get
better as we learn what works and what doesn't.

Believe me, I want this whole thing to be fast and efficient.  If it
isn't, then I'm going to continue to be in the middle of such fights,
and that's a job I want to be out of completely by at least the end of
this year, if not by much sooner.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of corporate logos

body:
I think the use of corporate logos is perfectly fine, given the exact
caveats that you've stated about identifying them as trademarks.  I
think that the argument that including them is "intrinsically
promotional and POV" isn't remotely convincing.

--Jimbo


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of corporate logos

body:
> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Some images need to be deleted...

This makes me wonder again about the use of corporate logos (see http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Johnson%27s ,
and of course http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logotype )

I tried to formulate a policy, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
Logos , but the discussion was disappointingly sparse. From the input of
others, notably JamesDay, I got the impression that people were pretty sure
that corporate logos were fair use, and that it was OK to include them
together with a notice explaining that they were (almost certainly)
trademarks and not GFDL.

(What controversy there was seemed to be between those who felt that the use
of logos was intrinsically promotional and POV, and those (like myself) who
thought that it was analogous to including a photo of a living person in an
article about that person--intrinsically promotional, but appropriate and
encyclopedic).

Should corporate logos be banned on the basis of licensing issues?


from_name: RameezDon

subject: [Wikitech-l] Article  Structure??

body:
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040218/d56032c8/attachment.html>


subject: [WikiEN-l] What's the rush? Let's talk (was: The Block Log)

body:
Wik,

Sorry to discuss you behind your back if you don't read this list.

But, here goes:

Wik has been a pest for a long time, and we put up with him for a long
time too. Then we suddenly changed the rules (see M & A Committees).

On top of that, the Developers gave all sysops the ability to temp-ban
signed-in users -- but no community consensus emerged about the
"authority" to use that "power".

To make it worse, just as the committees were getting started, a troll
sneaked in and stirred things up (hint: his username was an anagram of
the phrase "is a troll").

I don't know if this is how government arises in the real world, but I'm
hoping we can have some discussion on this mailing list and try to come
to a consensus on how we will work together on our two main goals:

* Make a free, accurate, neutral encyclopedia
* Provide a pleasant working environment for contributors

Ed Poor


body:
I think the Mediation Committee can also refer a matter to arbitration.
At least it /said/ it can.

Do we need to change the rules?

Should it be just any user who can refer a matter to the arbitration
committee? Should the A.C. then decide what the next step is? How about:

* temp ban
* refer to Mediation Committee
* hear the case

Must there be a prescribed order? A lot of us don't want to wait 2 whole
weeks! Even 5 days seems like a lifetime around here...

Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vigilantism must stop

body:
Jimmy-
> Erik banned Antony DiPierro.

I still think that was justified, in accordance with established
precedent, and not "vigilantism". I will gladly explain why if you want me
to.

As for expanding ban privileges, please consider making the "three revert
rule" (see Wikipedia:Revert) official policy and allowing 24 hour bans
(after a warning) in case it is violated. Edit wars are a huge pain for
everyone involved, and we really need to put an effective stop to them
once and for all.

As a less severe measure we will probably also want to implement per-
article bans.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Content partnerships

body:
Jimbo has just appointed me "content partnership coordinator" for the
Wikimedia foundation. It's a semi-official function which basically means
that I try to negotiate useful relationships with companies or
organizations who might in some way be interested in distributing our
articles. The benefit for us: backlinks.

I have tried to establish contact with Amazon.com and IMDB. If you have
any other ideas for websites which might be interested in our articles
about
- books
- movies
- CDs
- bands
- people
- places
- unusual sex practices,

especially sites getting a lot of traffic, please let me know. I may also
be able to help with other Wikimedia projects, if there's any partnership
potential there.

I consider it my responsibility to try to establish working relationships.
I am not, however, interested in coordinating enforcement of the FDL
(yuck). I will work on the basis of Wikipedia:Copyrights in negotiating
terms.

As soon as we have some results, I will establish a special page on
Wikipedia to describe these efforts.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikistats

body:
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004 03:59:40 +0100
"Erik Zachte" <e.p.zachte at chello.nl> wrote:

> Alfio wrote:
>
> > The table+calendar for each year is around 18Kbytes and >100 links,
> > so if it has been added to 2000+ years, that's easily enough to
> > account for the increase in database size, and I suspect in words and
> links.
>
> Right on the spot. I checked a random year:
> http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/1880
> 7 links for weekdays occur 12 times each on the page, other doubles occur.
>
> A bit wasteful in my view, but with new server who cares about performance
> :)
> Perhaps some other bot will tidy things up sometime.
>
> Anyway, I adapted the stats script: each link will only be counted once per
> article.
>
> pl: number of internal links dropped from 598K to 373K = 62%
> for comparison
> nl: dropped from 312K to 292K = 94%
>
> New Perl scripts will be ready for upload probably tomorrow.
> They will also add some data on most active contributors:
> edits in last 30 days, ranking now and 30 days ago.

cool

> ---------
>
> Camille/Shaihulud,
>
> Did you produce the stats on your own PC, from downloaded dumps?
> Brion used to do just that until a few months ago (I have trouble
> downloading the largest dumps intact myself)
> but in recent months ran them directly on the server,
> (which is why they were not updated in recent weeks, by the way, with all
> that server shuffling).

I run it directly on the nfs server which is idle most of time.

> Downloading all dumps each week seems quite a hassle. But if Brion gave you
> server access, fine with me,
> one less monkey on his back. I just need to know whom to address for
> occasional updates.

Yeah, send me the new script to me, less work for Brion now :)

Thanks

Shaihulud


body:
Daniel-
> What we need is the ability to mark "used with permission" and "used under
> non-commercial fair use doctrine" images.

I'm not sure we can really allow anything besides public domain, fair use,
FDL and FDL-compatible licenses. If I understood the FSF statement on our
fair use questions correctly, the FDL simply does not apply to fair use
material. This cannot be said about material that is specifically licensed
as non-commercial or under special permission.

We can still argue that the images and the text are separate, but that
argument is far more difficult to sustain and probably more problematic in
terms of our open content goal.

I do think we need to develop better guidelines on image use to encourage
the use of boilerplate requests and to discourage the use of "fair use"
images when we clearly could take a photo of our own. We do also
definitely need copyright flags.

Perhaps we could streamline the process of getting permissions, at least
by having a Wikipedia: page where people can dump image URLs and other
people can send the requests, to share the workload.

I think the trick in getting FDL permissions is to write better letters.
We need to use positive, uplifting words like "copyleft" and "open
content", and we need to create some enthusiasm for Wikipedia, and all
that without the letter sounding too spam-like. We should probably focus
some energy on creating better boilerplate letters. For private
individuals, "public domain" may work better than "FDL".

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: image copyright

body:
Michael Snow a ?crit:

> For stuff that you have a copyright in, you can do whatever the law
> allows to preserve your rights. Basically, you as an individual have the
> same options available to deal with infringement as Wikipedia does.
> Wikipedia doesn't have that much ability to protect the rights of
> individual contributors, it can only protect its own rights. The most
> Wikipedia could do on your behalf is maybe lead a class action suit on
> behalf of all the contributors whose copyrights are being infringed.
> However, I would point out that your rights as a contributor do not come
> from the GFDL. They come from whatever copyright you own. The GFDL gives
> other people permission, it doesn't give you as an author any rights.
>
> --Michael Snow

OK.

But if I give the copyright to Wikipedia, then it is up to Wikipedia to
ensure that its rights as copyright owner are respected ?
If I do transfer the copyright to Wikipedia, do I still stay the author ?
If I do, and someone claim the pictures are his, who has the right to
say it is not true ?


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: image copyright

body:
On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 12:09:36PM +0100, Anthere wrote:
> Michael Snow a ?crit:
> >For stuff that you have a copyright in, you can do whatever the law
> >allows to preserve your rights. Basically, you as an individual have the
> >same options available to deal with infringement as Wikipedia does.
> >Wikipedia doesn't have that much ability to protect the rights of
> >individual contributors, it can only protect its own rights. The most
> >Wikipedia could do on your behalf is maybe lead a class action suit on
> >behalf of all the contributors whose copyrights are being infringed.
> >However, I would point out that your rights as a contributor do not come
> >from the GFDL. They come from whatever copyright you own. The GFDL gives
> >other people permission, it doesn't give you as an author any rights.
> >
> >--Michael Snow
>
> OK.
>
> But if I give the copyright to Wikipedia, then it is up to Wikipedia to
> ensure that its rights as copyright owner are respected ?
> If I do transfer the copyright to Wikipedia, do I still stay the author ?
> If I do, and someone claim the pictures are his, who has the right to
> say it is not true ?

In Europe the copyright is divided into "moral rights" and "financial rights".
Claiming authorship is part of the former, and as such is not transferable.


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Article  Structure??

body:
RameezDon wrote:

> hello guys,
>
> i m facing a problem with the structure of the MySQL database
> i m not able to understand how do we categorize the articles in the
> "cur" table
> ofcourse "cur_id" acts as the primary key & with the help of
> "cur_title" we get to know
> the title of the article.....but how do we relate that particular
> article to  a specific field say "Physics" or "Engineering "

We don't. Not on the database level, anyway.

There's an experimental category functionality in the source, but it is
not turned on right now. It won't work with special fields, either;
rather, it will arrange through the link structure.

Magnus


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Wed, 18 Feb 2004, Poor, Edmund W wrote:

> I think the Mediation Committee can also refer a matter to arbitration.
> At least it /said/ it can.
>
> Do we need to change the rules?
>
> Should it be just any user who can refer a matter to the arbitration
> committee? Should the A.C. then decide what the next step is? How about:
>
> * temp ban
> * refer to Mediation Committee
> * hear the case
>
> Must there be a prescribed order? A lot of us don't want to wait 2 whole
> weeks! Even 5 days seems like a lifetime around here...
>
The step involving the Mediation is not going to work.

1. The Label "Committee" is something of a misnomer; the members do not meet
as a group or decide things as a group. It's a list of people who are
willing to mediate.

2. The function of the chairman of the Committee is more to act as a go-between
between the Committee's members & anyone desiring mediation. To expect the
chair to receive requests for arbitration, investigate, then forward them, I
feel, is not something the chair should be involved in. (Although the chair
may have a place in the process if the mediation process broke down due to
lack of participation by one of the parties.)

3. To ask any member of the Mediation Committee to do the same is also not
right. Using a personal example, as a member of the Mediation Committee with
this privilege, were to receive a request to send Wik to arbitration, I'd
forward it in a hearbeat, based on my own opinion of him. If it were someone
else, I'd be more inclined to investigate matters to determine whether
Mediation is not the best solution. Some Wikipedians I would probably
decline to refer to Arbitration based on my own opinion of that Wikipedian.
Can everyone be comfortable with such possible expressions of prejudice?

Rather, I think what is needed are several pathways to Arbitration:

* Failure of Mediation is obviously one path.
* Requests from a given number of Wikipedians in good standing should be
another. (By this, say 10 Wikipedians want me, Llywrch, investigated by
the committee for my behavior concerning the [[Paleosiberian Literature]]
article. And by "Wikipedians in good standing" I'm thinking of some minimum
qualification that 95% of us should meet -- having a registered username,
currently active in Wikipedia, & not currently involved as a subject in
either Mediation or Arbitration.)
* A grandfather clause. By this, I am referring to a number of urgent conflicts
that were underway before January 1, 2004. I believe prompt attention to
these conflicts would help bring credibility to the process. We can't just
wipe the slate clean as of that date; we are currently having problems
now due to behaviors from then.

Geoff


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rejected post

body:
I rejected Anti-capitalist's post of Fri Feb 13 23:19:07 2004, saying,

<< Please don't shout so much. We get the joke about "anticap" vs. "ALL
CAPS", but cleverness isn't sufficient. Posts must be courteous as well.
>>

Ed Poor
Wikien-l Admin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Junk mail

body:
I finally got around to clearing out last weekend's crop of non-member
mail on this list.

Three were from Plautus, automatically held by the software due to
excessive cc's in the mail header. I passed these on to the list.

One was a bona fide inquiry about using a GFDL image of Robert Moses,
the guy who built a highway and park on Long Island. I passed it on,
despite the risk of being accused of "favoritism" because I live on Long
Island :-)

The rest got canned and banned.

By the way, I think it's better to select "discard" rather than "reject"
for junk mail, because sending them a rejection notice tells them that
this is a valid e-mail address. My theory is that valid e-mail addresses
get re-sold at a higher price and attract 20 times as much junk mail.

Ed Poor
Wikien-l admin


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] can't view Wikipedia with Safari

body:
On Feb 18, 2004, at 13:46, David Friedland wrote:
> I get the following error while trying to view Wikipedia in Safari:
>
>
Sorry- we have a problem...

>
>
The current access rules don't allow this request.

>     The most likely reason is that your User-Agent is blocked:

Safari certainly isn't blocked; it's my primary browser!

Is this a continuing problem? On which pages? Can you try reloading? Is
it different with other browsers on the same machine? etc

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040218/c22f82e2/attachment.pgp>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] I cannot access the Wikipedia Tomeraider format
	download page

body:
On Feb 18, 2004, at 11:01, jason bush wrote:
> I have tried different ISP's to load the following webpage:
>
> http://download.wikimedia.org/tomeraider/current/
>
> but I get this Error Message:
>
> Forbidden

(Well, at least the DNS update finally went through!)

Should be working now.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040218/c116ccd5/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Insight on banning from a Horse Whisperer

body:
Roberts made his discovery about negotiations in at age thirteen. He was
hired to keep a herd of feral horses, mustangs, under observation and to
report their location to his employers from time to time. So he had no
duties other than to watch the horses. One day he observed that after a
yearling colt had made a major pest of himself by biting and kicking
other members of the herd without provocation, the alpha (lead) mare
reached the limits of her tolerance for such misbehavior and drove the
colt out. Once away from the protection of the herd, the colt felt
insecure and wanted to get back among the other horses, but the lead
mare kept a threatening eye on him and every time he tried to sneak back
in she would forcefully drive him off again.

Finally, the colt that had been ostracized for insubordination seemed to
realize that he could not sneak back in and that his position became
progressively more perilous the longer he remained outside the
protection of the herd. At that point he dropped his head close to the
ground and moved along periodically sticking his tongue out to lick
around his mouth and clashing his teeth together. The sound created by
striking a horse's large teeth together is rather like the sound
produced by hitting one fist-sized stone with another, and is quite
audible at some distance. Once the lead mare perceived this message of
submission being given by the colt, she signalled that she would allow
him to reenter the herd by changing her body language from challenging
to placid acceptance. After readmitting him to the herd she spent a
great deal of time grooming him.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policing vs. judging (was: The Block Log)

body:
Poor, Edmund W a ?crit:
> As a compromise between unregulated vigilantism and the established
> committee procedure, how about this?
>
> Any admin has the right to temp-ban a user, BUT:
>
> * Must report this ban to the mailing list of the encyclopedia from
> which the user is banned
> * The Arbitration Committee will immediately review the temp-ban
>
> This is like letting any cop arrest a suspect, but requiring a judge to
> decide that very same day whether to put him in jail pending trial or
> release him on his own recognizance.
>
> We are working in Internet time. So perhaps the full Arbitration
> Committee needn't meet to discuss the validity of a temp ban. Maybe only
> one A.C. member would be enough.
>
> They could say, "Okay, Raul acted in good faith but we think user:Nutso
> isn't an "emergent threat" so we're overturning the temp ban. Please go
> through channels on this one."
>
> Or they might say, "Yeah, what a pest! Temp ban sustained pending
> committee consideration."
>
> Ed Poor, aka Uncle Ed

Seems ok to me
With an add-on
Anytime, any other sysop may lift the temp ban as well

------

What happen if two sysops temp-ban and un-temp-ban more than 3 times the
  problematic user in question ? :-)


from_name: David Friedland

body:
I get the following error while trying to view Wikipedia in Safari:

Sorry- we have a problem...

The current access rules don't allow this request.

     The most likely reason is that your User-Agent is blocked:

Here's the current user-agent block list:

# we don't like these user-agents:
acl stayaway browser ^Iala
acl stayaway browser ^Teleport
acl stayaway browser ^WebStripper
acl stayaway browser ^Snoopy
acl stayaway browser grub
acl stayaway browser ZyBorg
acl stayaway browser linko
acl stayaway browser FAST
acl stayaway browser HTTrack
acl stayaway browser Microsoft.URL.Control
acl stayaway browser ^Xenu
acl stayaway browser LARBIN
acl stayaway browser efp at ...
acl stayaway browser larbin
acl stayaway browser ^LWP
acl stayaway browser libwww-perl
acl stayaway browser Python-urllib
acl stayaway browser ^WorQmada
acl stayaway browser ^TorQmada
acl stayaway browser ^k2spider
acl stayaway browser fetch.api.request
acl stayaway browser Zealbot
acl stayaway browser dloader
acl stayaway browser NaverRobot
acl stayaway browser Exalead
acl stayaway browser Fetch
acl stayaway browser Offline.Explorer
acl stayaway browser WWW-Mechanize
acl stayaway browser Downlad.Ninja
acl stayaway browser Web.Downloader
acl stayaway browser HTTrack
acl stayaway browser Sister.Site
acl stayaway browser WebReaper

     To get more information you can visit #wikipedia.

<ADDRESS>
Generated Wed, 18 Feb 2004 21:45:46 GMT by wikipedia.org (squid/2.5.STABLE4)
</ADDRESS>


body:
On Feb 18, 2004, at 15:04, Brion Vibber wrote:
> On Feb 18, 2004, at 13:46, David Friedland wrote:
>> I get the following error while trying to view Wikipedia in Safari:
>>
>>
Sorry- we have a problem...

>>
>>
The current access rules don't allow this request.

>>     The most likely reason is that your User-Agent is blocked:
>
> Safari certainly isn't blocked; it's my primary browser!
>
> Is this a continuing problem? On which pages? Can you try reloading?
> Is it different with other browsers on the same machine? etc

Ok, seems Gabriel accidentally blocked Safari while reconfiguring Squid
and it was then fixed without telling anybody.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: PGP.sig
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040218/5e38b0de/attachment.pgp>


from_name: sannse

body:
Ed wrote:

> I think the Mediation Committee can also refer a matter to arbitration.
> At least it /said/ it can.
>
> Do we need to change the rules?
>
> Should it be just any user who can refer a matter to the arbitration
> committee? Should the A.C. then decide what the next step is? How about:
>
> * temp ban
> * refer to Mediation Committee
> * hear the case
>
> Must there be a prescribed order? A lot of us don't want to wait 2 whole
> weeks! Even 5 days seems like a lifetime around here...

The Arbitration Committee will take referrals from the Mediation Committee
once they go fully live (and from individuals, but they may refer these to
the Mediation Committee where they think that best).  Until they are ready
to officially open they have said they will take cases via Jimbo only.
That's what I understood anyway.

--sannse


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> writes:

> MNH was not an emergency. He did nothing which affected the functioning of
> Wikipedia. He simply acted ugly.

This is a point that I simply don't understand.

MNH acting ugly requires the continual attention of sysops whose time would be
much better spent constructing a free encyclopedia.

The constant bickering, squabbling and edit war engendered by MNH (and his
ilk) create an unpleasant, confrontational and adversarial atmosphere that
will (and has) dissuaded people from contributing.

For most (all?) of us, contributing to Wikipedia is a activity that takes up
our free time.  Most people have no desire to do something in their free time
that leads them open to conflict and abuse from people who act ugly.

Disrupting the prevailing atmosphere of amiable co-operation is detrimental to
Wikipedia attracting new contributors.

Users who act ugly are detrimental to the functioning and aims of Wikipedia.

Editing wikipedia is not a human right.  Bannings too good for 'em, I say.
--
Gareth Owen
I'm very enamoured of the idea of meta-content markup ...
there are a lot of cool possibilities. But we should be reluctant to tamper
much with a system that totally works in an amazing way. -- Jimmy Wales


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for arbitration

body:
OK, I listed a request for moderation between me and Wik, and he has refused moderation.  There is now no procedure for arbitration except to appeal to Jimbo, so I am now asking for Jimbo to refer this problem to the arbitration committee.

Will anything get done now, or are we in a black hole?

RickK

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040218/a6de6d4d/attachment.htm


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting fake accounts

body:
Hi,

How to delete fake accounts on the French Wikipedia?
There are quite some of them, cf.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers

I think all accounts without any contributions should be deleted.
At least accounts number 1 to 6, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21 to 24...

Thanks,
Yann

--
http://non-violence.org Site coop?ratif sur la non-violence
http://forget-me.net Alternatives et non-violence
http://fr.wikipedia.org Encyclop?die libre
http://forget-me.net/pro/ Formations et services Linux


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images of corporate logos

body:
Logos are clearly fair use in our articles about companies. However, we should also pursue the licensing options described in the talk page of the article. The reasons are pragmatic: if we're licensed, we're less likely to have legal action taken against us. Also, being licensed allows us to clearly use the images in every country except the US, where fair use equivalents are often significantly more restrictive. That is, licensing is an asset, not a liability. Well, unless you like needless legal action because we didn't ask for a free to acquire license, that is.

I've dealt with PR Newswire (I have a license from them myself) and spoke with them about Wikipedia licensing some months ago. No problem to license us. All we have to do is ask officially and we'll have worldwide licenses for corporate logos and all sorts of other images, almost all of which are also going to be fair use in the US, when used as we'll use them. Similarly, no problem for other encyclopedias to obtain a license - it's a specific category on their application and the applications are generally accepted. It's paperwork, but that's about all - it doesn't actually restrict things. It certainly doesn't stop us from telling people that while we have a license, it's also fair use.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The Block Log

body:
Wik has refused mediation.  The next step is arbitration, I have requested that Jimbo refer it to the arbitration committe, since that's the only way to get it done right now.

RickK

John Robinson <john at freeq.com> wrote:
I don't see how Wik is any less an emergency situation than MNH was.
He's been blocked five times by three different people. Obviously
there is an issue here that needs to be addressed.

Could this case not be referred to the arbitration committee? It's my
understanding that they don't have anything pending at the moment.

-Hephaestos

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040218/41a871c7/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleting fake accounts

body:
On Wed, Feb 18, 2004 at 05:31:35PM +0100, Yann Forget wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How to delete fake accounts on the French Wikipedia?
> There are quite some of them, cf.
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers
>
> I think all accounts without any contributions should be deleted.
> At least accounts number 1 to 6, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21 to 24...

You don't have to contribute to create an account.
In fact most of the people who have made accounts are readers,
not active contributors.


body:
Ed,

Unilateral action is the problem, so no unilateral approach should be chosen. Instead, look to the example of the temporary desysopping of 168. There, the matter was raised and brought to #wikipedia. While the problem was ongoing the community there and those who saw the straw poll quickly rapidly concluded that the behavior merited temporary desysopping and used the poll, at Tim's request, to assure Tim that there was widespread support and little opposition to it. Tim then acted.

What we need is to formalise some sort of quick consensus-taking system, so we can assure ourselves and the community that it is not a unilateral act but rather is something which has been discussed first.

We also don't need permanent bliocks. All we care about is behavior. If blocking for 24 hours does the job, that's all we should use until we see that the problematic behavior is repeated. At that point, the previously agreed block can be used again, until either the problematic behavior ends or the matter has been resolved through mediation or arbitration.

So, I propose: a bell-ringer page all who want to be aware of these can monitor, named in all upper case so it really stands out. If some situation merits considering a temporary block, edit the page once, identify the account which is meriting the concern and point to the location of the straw poll being used to confirm that this is a widely supported temporary action, rather than unilateral disagreement and inapproriate action.

Then have that straw poll and use something around majority of five, majority of 80% in favor. Fail to meet those thresholds and it's clear that there's at least some potential that another approach is best. If it ever falls below those thresholds, remove it immediately.

At that point, we'll have protected the community effectively and rapidly, without giving rise to too many concerns about personal bias and inappropriate action based on it. That should suffice to allow the mediation and arbitration committees to take the time they need to take to properly consider longer term action, while still aleviating any problems which arise while carrying out that process.

It's pretty easy to get at least five people agreeing that some behavior is clearly over the line, if it is. Paying a visit to #wikipedia and asking is the fastest way. That's also where I rapidly found that there was broad agreement against that recent ban of yours and joined secretlondon in reversing it, reassured that I was acting properly by that discussion.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] In favor of shutting down WikiEN-l

body:
David Friedland wrote:

> On behalf of Kingturtle, who claims to be unable to post to the list,
> I would like to call everyone's attention to his post on:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration
>
> He says:
>
>> Many of the higher level decisions regarding wikipedia are not
>> discussed or made within wikipedia-proper, but are instead discussed
>> and made on WikiEN-l. Not all have the ability to post to the mailing
>> lists; this results in cutting out some people from important
>> dialogs. In actuality, there is close to nothing that needs to be
>> said in WikiEN-l that cannot be said in wikipedia-proper. I would
>> like the arbitration committee to hear my arguments for the shutting
>> down of WikiEN-l. You can call it User:Kingturtle v. WikiEN-l.
>
I disagree with this.  There are plenty of ways to post to the mailing
list, from plenty of free web-based email services.

I also would much prefer discussions take place on a reasonable forum
designed for discussion like a mailing list, instead of an unreasonable
hack like using a Wiki to simulate a discussion forum, which has no
threading, no message management, no "read all new messages", etc.

In short, I'd strongly dislike any important discussions taking place on
Wikipedia, unless we move from a Wiki system to a real message-board
system.  And by a real message-board system, I mean along the lines of
what Slashdot and Kuro5hin have, not along the lines of vBulletin, which
does not support fully-threaded discussions.

-Mark


body:
Apparently some discussion and decision making is also taking place on #wikipedia, which is even a worse place for decisions to be made.

RickK

Delirium <delirium at rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
David Friedland wrote:

> On behalf of Kingturtle, who claims to be unable to post to the list,
> I would like to call everyone's attention to his post on:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration
>
> He says:
>
>> Many of the higher level decisions regarding wikipedia are not
>> discussed or made within wikipedia-proper, but are instead discussed
>> and made on WikiEN-l. Not all have the ability to post to the mailing
>> lists; this results in cutting out some people from important
>> dialogs. In actuality, there is close to nothing that needs to be
>> said in WikiEN-l that cannot be said in wikipedia-proper. I would
>> like the arbitration committee to hear my arguments for the shutting
>> down of WikiEN-l. You can call it User:Kingturtle v. WikiEN-l.
>
I disagree with this. There are plenty of ways to post to the mailing
list, from plenty of free web-based email services.

I also would much prefer discussions take place on a reasonable forum
designed for discussion like a mailing list, instead of an unreasonable
hack like using a Wiki to simulate a discussion forum, which has no
threading, no message management, no "read all new messages", etc.

In short, I'd strongly dislike any important discussions taking place on
Wikipedia, unless we move from a Wiki system to a real message-board
system. And by a real message-board system, I mean along the lines of
what Slashdot and Kuro5hin have, not along the lines of vBulletin, which
does not support fully-threaded discussions.

-Mark

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

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040218/081613c8/attachment.htm


from_name: Abigail Brady

body:
On Wed, 2004-02-18 at 11:09, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
> Clicking from here to "What links here" we find:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
> It looks like there are only 9 images which purport to be "used with
> permission".  These are not acceptable for Wikipedia.
>
> Under Clause 7 of the license, it's perfectly o.k. to include such
> images in a GNU FDL document as aggregations, so my concern is not
> particularly *license* related.  That is, I don't think our including
> these images is a license violation.  (Images are clearly the sort of
> "separate and independent documents or works" contemplated by that
> section of the license.)
>
> But our goals are loftier and more pure than the GNU FDL.  We want our
> content to be maximally reusable, period.
>
> Therefore, these images should be deleted.

If these images should be deleted, then so should all the fair use
images.  I fail to see a distinction here.

--
Abi


from_name: jason bush

body:
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040218/ea06de4b/attachment.html>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More images to be deleted

body:
Jens,

I don't agree that all copyrighted images should be deleted. I don't want to delete the GFDL images I've uploaded, and I assure you that I have not placed those images into the public domain, so the Wikipedia must either accept that it can use them under my GFDL licensing of them or find some other alternative (using as fair use, or not using or some other option).

However, it's not that simple either. Consider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Devonport_Dockyard_in_1909_plan_small.png . That's an image I released as GFDL and I'm perfectly entitled to do so because I'm in the US. However, there's a potential catch. The source image is in the public domain in the US (an old British book) but in some jurisdictions that book may still be covered by copyright and the image may not be in the public domain. Then there's the matter that I obtained the image from a web site which had scanned the book. In US law, that's fine - the book is in the public domain, so the scan is also in the public domain. But what about the law elsewhere? I don't know that there's no jurisdiction where that would be copyright infringement, even though I know that it wasn't copyright infringement where I am and that I was perfectly entitled to make and release a GFDL derivative work. Somewhere, there may be a jurisdiction where that work isn't actually GFDL. So I fully described the origins and anyone can check their local laws

The point here is that even GFDL works do not have clear status. Any prudent reuser must check the copyright status in their own jurisdiction before using them.

Now, it could be argued that someone could take a current photograph of the same subject. But what about the different attitudes to rights to the appearance of architectural works around the world? Again, even if the image had been taken by the uploader, a reuser must still check what their local law says.

This sort of question is one reason why publishers often ask contributors of anything which will be published to agree to indemnify the publisher against legal claims. The contributor may be ignorant of the law in Middle Of Nowhere, but the publisher at least gets to sue the contributor to recover damages, if the insurance piolicy doesn't pay. The contributor, of course, is likely to be unhappy if they didn't know that the work would be published in Middle Of Nowhere and didn't include that place in the thousands of different jurisdictions around the world they checked before uploading the image.

Again, the message here is: you always have to check. It really doesn't matter what you claim the license is, whether you're claiming public domain so no license needed or GFDL license. You have to check.

It doesn't matter what we accept, and since we're a wiki there's no reason to reject temporarily less than ideal images, because they can be replaced later. What matters is that we get accurate descriptions and tag things to help people to identify possible risks, so they can consider things under their local law and make an informed decision for themselves.

The images from secretlondon/Caroline are another example. Caroline correctly obtained licenses. Those protect her and the Wikipedia from allegations of copyright infringement in the jurisdiction from which she was uploading. In the US, those images are fair use in the way we use them, so I'll shortly have added a fair use tag to them as well. Same image. Which it is depends on where you are. Pick the legal status which makes most sense for you. For US Wikipedia users, it'll be fair use and they can use the image that way. UK users and others who may need a license knowwho to ask if their local laws require that they do so.

The world is a comlex place. Tagging and telling people origins makes more sense than forgetting that we're a wiki and can replace images later, if we can get a more free image. That's how we handle text stubs. It should also be how we handle image stubs (images with less than ideal rights status). The images are not the last version we'll ever see just because they are all we have today.


subject: [WikiEN-l] blacklist

body:
Plautus

>>This preemptive moderation proves I am on some sort of "blacklist". <<

This is a moderated list. Anyone who is not a subscriber to the list will have their posts to it delayed until a moderator notices and releases the post to the list.

The purpose is to prevent spamming and it's effective at preventing those who reads these lists from seeing lots of spam. It doesn't prevent the moderators from seeing the spam, so they do sometimes miss legitimate posts which have been buried in the spam.


from_name: Caroline Ford

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
>Clicking from here to "What links here" we find:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
>It looks like there are only 9 images which purport to be "used with
>permission".  These are not acceptable for Wikipedia.
>
>Under Clause 7 of the license, it's perfectly o.k. to include such
>images in a GNU FDL document as aggregations, so my concern is not
>particularly *license* related.  That is, I don't think our including
>these images is a license violation.  (Images are clearly the sort of
>"separate and independent documents or works" contemplated by that
>section of the license.)
>
>But our goals are loftier and more pure than the GNU FDL.  We want our
>content to be maximally reusable, period.
>
>Therefore, these images should be deleted.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
I'm very upset about this. I am the one who has asked for permission to
use certain images as otherwise there was no way of getting images of,
say, politicians.

I agree that everything should be maximally usuable - but all I have
done is tagged these images, the wiki is full of images that are not
tagged and in many cases not used with permission. This has only come up
because I am doing things by the book.

Remember - fair use does not exist outside the US. If the wiki has fair
use images then it is not maximally usable. However there is no desire
to remove fair use images. We cannot use fair use images in the UK. The
only way of getting pictures is to ask for permission, or to take them
ourselves. All government images are copyrighted.

All I have done is spent some time asking for permission and negotiating
with the press offices of various places. I'm upset that my attempt to
stick to the law,and my many hours work has resulted in this.

Caroline (Secretlondon)


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
>Clicking from here to "What links here" we find:
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Copyrighted
>
>It looks like there are only 9 images which purport to be "used with
>permission".  These are not acceptable for Wikipedia.
>
>Under Clause 7 of the license, it's perfectly o.k. to include such
>images in a GNU FDL document as aggregations, so my concern is not
>particularly *license* related.  That is, I don't think our including
>these images is a license violation.  (Images are clearly the sort of
>"separate and independent documents or works" contemplated by that
>section of the license.)
>
>But our goals are loftier and more pure than the GNU FDL.  We want our
>content to be maximally reusable, period.
>
>Therefore, these images should be deleted.
>
>--Jimbo
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


body:
On behalf of Kingturtle, who claims to be unable to post to the list, I
would like to call everyone's attention to his post on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration

He says:

> Many of the higher level decisions regarding wikipedia are not
> discussed or made within wikipedia-proper, but are instead discussed
> and made on WikiEN-l. Not all have the ability to post to the mailing
> lists; this results in cutting out some people from important
> dialogs. In actuality, there is close to nothing that needs to be
> said in WikiEN-l that cannot be said in wikipedia-proper. I would
> like the arbitration committee to hear my arguments for the shutting
> down of WikiEN-l. You can call it User:Kingturtle v. WikiEN-l.


from_name: Plautus Satire

subject: [WikiEN-l] Preservation of context.

body:
It seems there is a proven effective tactic that was used once already to get me banned and is now being used again. Evercat is insisting that I must preserve all the context in every message on every talk page when I insert material. I must not only defend my own positions now but also protect and defend the positions of others. I have had many posts broken up by the responses from others. Do I have a right to reversion all of their edits then ask for their immediate banning if in ten minutes they are still trying to put THEIR OWN COMMENTS in context?

I really despise having to appeal to the masses just to use wikipedia as any other person is doing right at this very moment. Having to continually and constantly defend each and every single edit, no matter how trivial, is really tiresome. What is causing all "the problems" on wikipedia? Is it people like me? Or is it the frustration I'm sure many have endured of being banned and moderated for hurting somebody's feelings with the truth?

Honestly I have to say if the sorts Evercat is complaining about are bannable offenses, Evercat, show your evidence here. Let us all see what you're so uptight about, before you get me banned again.


from_name: Sascha Noyes

body:
On Wednesday 18 February 2004 08:33 pm, David Friedland wrote:
> On behalf of Kingturtle, who claims to be unable to post to the list, I
> would like to call everyone's attention to his post on:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration
>
> He says:
> > Many of the higher level decisions regarding wikipedia are not
> > discussed or made within wikipedia-proper, but are instead discussed
> > and made on WikiEN-l. Not all have the ability to post to the mailing
> > lists; this results in cutting out some people from important
> > dialogs. In actuality, there is close to nothing that needs to be
> > said in WikiEN-l that cannot be said in wikipedia-proper. I would
> > like the arbitration committee to hear my arguments for the shutting
> > down of WikiEN-l. You can call it User:Kingturtle v. WikiEN-l.

Mailing lists are a far superior medium for discussing issues than the
wiki-interface.

Less bandwidth is consumed in discussing things on mailing lists.

The arbitration committee doesn't have any jurisdiction over this.

Best,
Sascha Noyes
--
Encryption key available from http://www.pantropy.net/snoyes.asc


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Trust metrics

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> But, I think that at least some people
>
>really *ought* to have a simple check on their behavior, a way for
>them to look at a number and say "Oh, I've been rude."  I think some
>people are simply lacking in the social skills to know about such
>things for themselves.
>
>
I think the web-of-trust system could help check antisocial behavior
without resorting to numerical ratings. I would suggest implementing it
so that if User:Jimbo Wales adds User:Michael Snow to his list of people
he distrusts, the system automatically posts that fact on User
talk:Michael Snow. That would be a fairly clear message and should get
my attention, especially when it's followed up by others from those who
agree with Jimbo. The people that don't respond to that kind of
correction probably don't care, and will stay rude no matter what kind
of feedback system we use.

--Michael Snow