from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: communications committee

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
> Anthere schrieb:
>>A question : why are all members only people living in english-speaking
>>countries ?
>
>
> Most other major languages have press teams who do pretty good work.
> English had no formal team yet while it needs it most. Also, most of the
> international press work has to be done in english. Third, if I invited
> all the non-english people who'd merit it, we would end up with a really
> large committee and have still not all languages represented equally. I
> think for the sake of efficiency it's better to start small. These were
> my reasons for focussing on having people from english speaking
> countries on the committee.
>
> This shouldn't mean that others are excluded. One first task of the
> communication committee will be to invite all members of the local press
> teams to the subcommittee press where probably most actions take place.
> By having this subcommittee, we can integrate all languages equally.
>
> So far my concept for the committee. If you favour a different approach,
> I'm open for suggestions.
>
> greetings,
> elian

Hi Elian

I see your point. Of course, not all languages can be represented and
that would not be the point. And quite obviously, press releases from
the Foundation will be made in english.

But I think the communication committee has a much larger scope than the
one you seem to describe here. To my opinion, it is not only about
relations between Foundation and press, but also between Foundation and
outside world or Foundation and editors.

It could englobe OTRS organisation (ie, not only organising the info-en
queue, but also organising the various languages queue, and making some
proposal for the cross language queues (legal...).

It could englobe information provided by the Foundation to the editors,
such as visual guidelines for logo reuse, or communication upon adoption
of a new legal requirement or new copyright policy.

It might also be something around lobbying. For example, to see what
could be done from a PR point of view to have Wikipedia available again
in China (this will require first of all chinese-speaking editors). Or
communication on wikinews (which will require first of all wikinews
editors).

In short, I believe this committee should go much further than simply
english-speaking press team. And this will mean to involve editors from
all projects and from more languages.

I know the committee may be expanded later to involve these ones. But I
also think the focus of the committee will be directly impacted by those
who composed it. So, the current team will probably focus on *press* and
not on other issues which may be just as relevant to this committee.

Just my opinion.

Ant


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tracking banned user Andrew Morrow

body:
Because he is a vicious troll who has forfeited the privilege of
contributing with his threats, stalking and intimidation, IMO.

k

On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
> > if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
>
> Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to set permissions to certain Wiki pages?

body:
> I'm trying to set permission to certain pages in order not to allow
> some users to
> edit them (for instance, the main page).
>
> Is it possible to do with MediaWiki? Thank you very much,
> --Thomas

Hi Thomas,

I had a sort-of-similar requirement (wanted articles editable only by
logged in users, but to allow comments to be left on talk pages by
anyone including anons).

You have to edit the source to get this functionality though. See:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Users:PyneJ:Hacks:PageWhiteList#Ver_1.5.x

It works for me, and maybe you could use something like this to get
what you want? I agree it would be nice to have broader access
countrol functionality included in MediaWiki out-of-the-box.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: jayjg

body:
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
> > if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
>
> Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.

The point is to make editing Wikipedia difficult for banned editors, without
making doing so difficult for legitimate editors.

Jay.


from_name: Nan Desu-ka?

subject: [WikiEN-l] Complaint purportedly from the subject of a biography

body:
A user claiming to be the cult X-rated film star Tove Jensen (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jensen), has appeared on that
article's talk page and complained about some of the details in the
article posing a danger to her and her family. (see the diffs
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=39744088&oldid=39743955
and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=next&oldid=39744088)

The specific facts in the article that this user is complaining about
are fairly unverifiable.  Of course, I'm not sure to what extent this
user's identity as the subject of the biography is verifiable, either.
 Input on the proper way to proceed here would be welcome.

I normally don't post to the mailing list, but since this is
potentially a foundation issue and I know there have been similar
controversies in the past, I wanted to bring it to the attention of
whoever needs to know, in case we have a lawyer-mandated process for
such claims.

-Nandesuka


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] Babylon Ltd using Wikipedia - press release questions

body:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/uktu013.html?.v=48
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-14-2006/0004281390&EDATE=

  OR YEHUDA, Israel, February 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Babylon Ltd., the leading
  provider of single-click translation and information access software, and
  Wikipedia the free-content, user edited encyclopedia, today announced the
  launch of the Wikipedia as part of Babylon's solution.

    [...]

  "Our collaboration with Wikipedia is the first of its kind for Babylon".
  said Alon Carmeli, VP Sales and Marketing, Babylon Ltd.

Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
Babylon Ltd?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Babylon Ltd using Wikipedia - press release questions


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mailman upgraded

body:
I've upgraded Mailman to 2.1.7, which came out at the end of last year when I
wasn't looking.

It's still on zwinger for now, but I've changed the installation paths from
/home/mailman to /usr/local/mailman and removed the old /home/mailman symlink to
make sure things don't interfere with the switch of the /home NFS server.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
I wrote:

>Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
>downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
>behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
>Babylon Ltd?

Ah, turns out there is!

    http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-February/006096.html

Brad Fitzgerald wrote:

>They jumped the gun with the release but yes, there is a deal with
Babylon pending.

w00t :-)

- d.


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 15 Feb 2006, at 13:53, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>> I agree: the minimum standard for informativeness should be fairly
>> low, but rigorously enforced. I recently created [[DMExpress]], with
>> this line of text (plus link to website, and category):
>>
>> DMExpress is an [[ETL]] tool designed primarily for performance. It
>> uses a proprietary database.
>>
>
> I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a
> reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't
> explain
> notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).

I think DMExpress is really bad. Using ETL, a TLA link is completely
useless as I dont know what it is without clicking. The fact it uses
a proprietary database, well its not clear why that is the one
interesting fact about it. Surpsised it wasnt {{prod}ded yet.

Directivity is a perfect stub I think, much better than my recent
[[Frognal]] that I fell asleep while writing.

Justinc


subject:
[Wikitech-l] mwdumper error: XML document structures must start
 and end within the same entity.

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On 2/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>> 1) Check md5sum.
>
> I did indeed have a bad bz2 file.

Garr. :(

I'll have to integrate automated md5sum generation back into the dump runner...

>> 3) Try the .7z version
>
> When I used 7z e -so , it added some garbage to the output before the
> <media..., and there doesn't appear to be a way to silence it (crazy,
> I know).

The extra junk goes on stderr, not stdout, so unless you're combining the two
streams it's merely an annoyance.

If you don't want to look at it, you should  be able to suppress it by
redirecting stderr on the command line, something like:

7za -so e blah.7z 2>/dev/null | blabla

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Steven Ericsson Zenith

body:
I see a number of serious problems with this approach.

I believe there is a copyright issue since my taking "good edits" and
remaking them in your name you are guilty of plagiarism.  You are not
actually deriving anything as the GFDL allows and you are not correctly
attributing as the GFDL requires.  Conversely, you are actually
deceiving readers about the source of the material and misrepresenting
your own authority.

I would assume that if the policy is to role back all edits from a
banner editor that the best solution is to apply the policy and expect
that independent contributors will take up the slack.

With respect
Steven
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StevenZenith

>Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:18:53 +0000
>From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Tracking banned user Andrew Morrow
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <fbad4e140602150918q52c92dafg at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>This fellow was banned as User:Amorrow for vicious personal attacks
>and threats against other users, and again as User:Pinktulip. His
>personal attacks have escalated to stalking and threats sent to other
>editors' employers. Fairly obviously, he's *remarkably* unwelcome on
>anything to do with Wikipedia.
>
>I'm trying to build up a pattern for a strong complaint, and I'm also
>rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
>if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
>email me or leave a note on my talk page.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 15 Feb 2006, at 14:09, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a
>> reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't
>> explain
>> notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).
>
> Interesting. I'm not sure how incoming links are relevant, but as for
> explaining notability, fair enough. We're talking about a class of
> software tools with perhaps several dozen members at most, and most of
> which cost in excess of $20,000 for a basic licence. So it's probably
> notable...how would you go about succinctly making that point though?

Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of
members doesnt make anything notable.

Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the
paintings would just be listed under the artist.

What else is notable about this?

Justinc


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wrote:
>
> >Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
> >downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
> >behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
> >Babylon Ltd?

So, it sounds like they will just be redisplaying our content and/or
providing links to it. But will this help attract more people to
edit/write articles?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a
> reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain
> notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).

Interesting. I'm not sure how incoming links are relevant, but as for
explaining notability, fair enough. We're talking about a class of
software tools with perhaps several dozen members at most, and most of
which cost in excess of $20,000 for a basic licence. So it's probably
notable...how would you go about succinctly making that point though?

Steve


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm a little confused about why we seem to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.

I think it's among other things connected with the feeling expressed
here by Justin:

On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and
> (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without
> even stubs or redlinks.

In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on
notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so
much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work
to be done on "worthy" subjects.

To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't
you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial"
subjects detracts from our image.

-Matt


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: File format policy

body:
On 2/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/14/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Gregory, there is a big difference between "free content" as with a
> > copyleft license, and using a patent-free format for delivering said
> > content. The former talks about the legality of copying and altering
> > the work, and the latter is only about the technical delivery
> > mechanism. So I think in this case, free has a triple chance of
> > confusion - free as in freedom (to copy), free as in beer and free as
> > in delivery payload (implementation regarding patents).
> >
> > In short - they're not the same.
>
> I don't agree. If I take some content, place it in a safe, and make it
> illegal for people to open the safe unless they agree to pay me money
> and abide by certain other conditions, and then distribute it
> widely... Well..  I can *claim* all I want that the 'content' is free,
> but that would a meaningless claim. The content would be just as
> unfree as if I'd added an oddball license which places odd
> restrictions on the next hop of the distribution chain.

See Delirium's comment - putting it in an alternative format is for
user benefit, not as a sole distribution method. A better analogy - I
have a magazine that I distribute for free to the public via a "news
rack" on the sidewalk, but I also make it available in places where
people have to pay (like an amusement park or night club). Is it
non-free simply because I also make it available in a venue where
folks have to pay to get at it?

> > We have to recognize honestly that Theora installations lag far far
> > behind QT, Real and WM by a large margin and the user experience is
> > not the same to find and download the player/codec.
>
> We give people two click access from our media help page to a number
> of solutions. How can you claim that theora is fundamentally harder to
> install for someone already at our site?
>
> Now, perhaps the media help page could use some improvement. But based
> on the discussion here it doesn't seem like the people complaining
> have even looked at it.

I'm no noob, but see below for my experience.

> > One cannot reasonably think the number of folks with Theora codecs
> > installed even closely approaches the number with Quicktime or Real.
> > Even for the lesser Quicktime, every iPod owner who installs iTunes
> > (nearly all) by necessity installs Quicktime. (Over 30 million iPod
> > units shipped in 2005.) Real Networks has been around since the dawn
> > of the dotcom industry (1993) with tons of legacy content and new
> > content being generated. So it is a bit of a stretch to draw
> > equivalence between Theora and the other non-WMP codecs.
>
> Well a real player from 1993 (or 2004 for that matter) won't likely
> play content released for real today. ... But, I never argued that
> there was as many qt or real users.. Just that the number of
> QT/Real/Xvid/etc codec users is *far* fewer than the number of Windows
> desktops because Windows doesn't usually ship with them.... and
> moreover, that installing theora is just as easy as installing
> QT/Real/etc.

The point of the numbers is that there is a much higher likelihood
when a user runs across an MOV, MP4 or RM file that they have the
codec installed already, so the download/install would be irrelevant.

> If a user has QT/Real/ or whatever third party video players/codecs
> installed there are few reasons why they couldn't install the theora
> codecs.

The problem is it took over 10 minutes of noodling around to track
down a way that would work, and I would not expect a newbie to be so
persistent.

Here's exactly what I did on my Windows machine:

- Went to Commons.wikimedia.org
- Scrolled down one page to Content, By Type, Video; clicked on Video
- Category:Video page comes up, a pretty rudimentary page with a list of files
- Choose "Dosa_preparation.ogg" (my favorite breakfast)
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dosa_preparation.ogg
- Image:Dosa preparation.ogg (Newbie: "Is this a picture? The page
doesn't even say that it's a video"). In fact the only indication that
it's a video is the category at the bottom of the page.
- Click on the Ogg file, Firefox 1.5 downlaods it and launches Winamp
(MP3 player) but no video, not even audio.
- Go back to file's page, look for help but no indication of how to
play this file
- Click on Help in left-hand column -
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents
where the only two mentions of video are:
    * Creating video
    * Converting video
- Converting video is likely to closest to what I want, so I click on
that. The first line: "Wikimedia accepts only video files in the
Theora Ogg format. As of January 2006, this format is still in alpha,
and only a few video-management tools support it just yet." Further
down, in "For_most_operating_systems" recommends
ffmpeg2theora - command line utility? No thanks.
VLC media player - I have that, let's try that
- Go to Firefox download window to manually open the file in VLC
- File not actually in the download folder for some reason, need to
download again using "Save link as..."
- Finally launch VLC 0.8.1, drag-n-drop Ogg file onto it in Windows -
does not play.
- Go back to "Help:Converting Video" help page, under "Converting
Quicktime (.mov) to Ogg Theora" there is a seven step process of how
to do it. No thanks, not worth it. Other option is Quicktime Pro.
That's a paid product, and I only have the free Quicktime Player. No
thanks.
- I'm out of ideas, I go to Google and search for
"site:commons.wikimedia.org theora"
- Result 1 - Commons:File types - No help
- Result 2 - Help:Converting video - I was just there
- Result 3 - Commons:Media help - Ah looks useful! Was there a link to
this from the Ogg page? I still don't know
- Got to Commons:Media help, and under Microsoft Windows see
"Installing codecs from Illiminable..." At first I think it's a typo
with three "I"s or three pipes in a row. :) What they heck are the
talking about? Ok, I'll try the Illiminable codec thing.
- Go to Illiminable.com, click on codec to download (at 798 kbytes, it
will most certainly take longer than 2 minutes to download over a 56k
modem, contrary to what the Commons page says)
- Run the EXE file to install
- Run Windows Media Player, and drag the Ogg file to it
- Success, it finally plays!

Much of this could be solved if there was a obvious "How to play this"
button for each "Ogg" file to the Commons:Media help" but I don't see
one.

If there is a "two click" way to get to the software, I'm not aware of
it. But it would be nice to make it obvious somewhere.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: File format policy


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] File format policy

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in
message news:43F147C7.2020100 at pobox.com...
[snip]
> Fluendo's got a GPL'd Java applet player that can play streaming Ogg
> Vorbis and
> Theora. I've tossed up a quick test page using a random short video clip I
> grabbed off of Commons:
> http://test.leuksman.com/video/

Works fine for me (Windows XP-Pro SP2a, IE6) which doesn't sound much until
you realise that this machine has been java-crippled for as long as I can
recall. I just figured out how to get rid of the broken installation which
came with it and installed the latest VM from Sun.

Now if I could only remember all those sites I wanted to look at but
couldn't...:-(
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Jeremy Dunck

subject:
[Wikitech-l] mwdumper error: XML document structures must start
	and end within the same entity.

body:
On 2/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> 1) Check md5sum.

I did indeed have a bad bz2 file.

> 3) Try the .7z version

When I used 7z e -so , it added some garbage to the output before the
<media..., and there doesn't appear to be a way to silence it (crazy,
I know).

Example:
"
en$ less 7z-junk

7-Zip (A) 4.33 beta  Copyright (c) 1999-2006 Igor Pavlov  2006-02-05
p7zip Version 4.33 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on)

Processing archive: enwiki-20060125-pages-meta-history.xml.7z

Extracting  enwiki-20060125-pages-meta-history.xml<mediawiki xm
"

If you've successfully extracted 7z to stdout without that garbage,
I'd love to know the invocation.

> 4) Tell me your exact OS and Java VM version.

Ubuntu Hoary, x86 32 bit:
$ uname -a
Linux ...  i686 GNU/Linux

en$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_05-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_05-b05, mixed mode, sharing)

But I'm re-downloading the bz2, and will report back.

>(I've previously checked the full uncompressed copy of
> that dump for schema validity, it's fine.)

Thanks for your assistance.
  Jeremy


subject:
[Wikitech-l] mwdumper error: XML document structures must
 start	and end within the same entity.

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> And, this may be a stupid question, but where can I get the source for
> this util?  I don't see a source link on the above page, or in the
> ./tools dir .

It's in our CVS.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Use namespaces to separate diffent formats

body:
How difficult would it be to change the way that namespaces were handled so
that you could assign particular namespaces to particular formats?

What I mean is, would it be possible to arrange that you could, for example,
set up a namespace for "SVG" images. When you viewed the pages in that
namespace, you saw an image; when you edited the page, you got the SVG code.

You would then have to put the "description" on the talk page but that would
be OK surely.

I was particulary thinking of this in connection with the various extensions
at Wikisophia (http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Main_Page) many of which would
actually work better as namespaces. It would also work for EasyTimeline.

I was envisaging also changing the way linking and transcluding worked. All
links using [[.]] would be just links. All transcluding, including of
images, would be via {{.}}. Obviously this change is reasonably orthogonal
to the other.

One thing that might work better however is that you could then pass
parameters into a transclusion, which isn't the case at the moment, because
the order of proceessing precludes it.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Sigvat Stensholt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More AfD toxicity

body:
>Just curious...have you read the revision Sean saved? Because while
>stubby, it was far from one or two context-less sentences. (I do think
>brenneman has a point, but a lot of the messages on this matter seem to
>think Sean's initial article was crap.)

>John

I have read the first version of Cart00ney yes. The version was not horridly
"crappy", I mean, the article had enough context to define the subject and
say a bit about it, but it DID fail to explain significance of the neologism.

Now I understand that it might be an idea to give an article more than nine
minutes before tagging them for deletion, if the article gets improved five
minutes later to the point where inclusion is obvious, the AFD debate looks
rather silly.

In the case of Cart00ney, it doesn't matter all that much, several people on
the debate are expressing concerns not only over the article's quality but
also over the subject's suitability as a topic.

If the article is a speedy candidate, a speedy deletion can be done
expediently without any grace period because a new and improved version can
be made easily without an AFD debate getting in the way.

In general, articles on neologisms which don't explain significance are prime
targets for the New Page Patrollers' AFD tags, and they will, and should,
only take into account the merits of the article, not its creator.

Sjakkalle


body:
On 2/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> The extra junk goes on stderr, not stdout, so unless you're combining the two
> streams it's merely an annoyance.

Well.  Now I feel silly.  ;-)


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Advice needed

body:
Here's the content of the article on Wikinfo:

Protected due to privacy considerations.

Fred

On Feb 15, 2006, at 4:15 PM, Guy Chapman wrote:

> This is the latest in the on-again, off-again history of Brian
> Peppers on
> Wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/
> Brian_Peppers_%286th_nomination%29
>
> Peppers is a fad on YTMND and Fark, for reasons which are obvious
> from this
> link:
>
> http://pepperstruth.ytmnd.com/
>
> The problem is, he is notable *solely* because a number of people
> on the net
> have chosen to laugh at his freakish appearance, apparently the
> result of a
> congential deformity.
>
> No, even that's not the problem, the *real* problem is that a lot
> of people
> are determined that we should have an article on him, but the
> sources for
> the fact that he is disabled, lives in a n ursing home, poses no
> threat to
> the community and appears only to be on the offenders' register as
> a result
> of an inappropriate contact with a nurse/carer, is from a source
> which is
> less reliable than Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/
> peppers.asp).
>
> So it seems unavoidable that we will participate in the memtic
> process,
> because we can't say what a lot of us want to say (that Peppers is a
> disabled man, suffers from a congenital deformity, was convicted of a
> technical offence and is known almost exclusively because his
> photograph
> became an In ternet freak-sho exhibit).
>
> People insist on the article, clamour for the picture, and revert
> edits
> which emphasise Peppers' status as a big-time loser in the lottery
> of life -
> possibly because I can't write these edits in a way whihc
> adequately coneals
> my absolute contempt for those who exploit Peppers' picture ad an
> object of
> derision.
>
> Should I just forget it?  Or ar we (either me or those who want the
> article
> restored) missing some vital point of policy?
>
> Guy
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 31, Issue 130

body:
Plagiarism does have something to do with the law if it is a breach of
copyright.  I assume that the banned editor is hostile, so being
defensive may be prudent.

The key points are that the GDFL allows derivative use of the text
provided it is correctly attributed.  The use described is not
derivative and changes the attribution - this contravenes the GDFL.

With respect,
Steven

/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StevenZenith/

>Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:33:52 -0500
>From: Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Tracking banned user Andrew Morrow
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
>	<3bd63d170602151433j3ee83e6flc3bf99079b655ea9 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>
>>> Plagiarism has nothing to do with law,
>>
>>
>
>
>True, but the original poster also claimed it was a copyright issue, which
>would make it something of a legal matter.  I simply forgot to completely
>repeat his point.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] "WikiEN-l Digest, Vol x, Issue y"

body:
Can I just state that it's annoying for those of us who don't have
specialized mailing list readers, reading by thread title, to have "Re:
WikiEN-l Digest, Vol x, Issue y" as a subject line? This makes it
difficult if you've got a thread on, say, AfD and a thread on
plagiarism and you're following one or the other. Could people follow
the instructions included on the Digest itself and edit the subject
line to be more descriptive? </rant>

-Hermione1980

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of
> members doesnt make anything notable.
>
> Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the
> paintings would just be listed under the artist.
>
> What else is notable about this?

I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's my scenario:
I work in the domain of ETL.
Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is.
I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what *anything* is.
No article.

Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your
analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but
his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that
the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products
aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable,
their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of
their products are not.

To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or
below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for
all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or
not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine
articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Sigvat Stensholt <sigvats at mi.uib.no> wrote:
> Now I understand that it might be an idea to give an article more than nine
> minutes before tagging them for deletion, if the article gets improved five
> minutes later to the point where inclusion is obvious, the AFD debate looks
> rather silly.

Do you think? Ideally, prod/AFD should be sort of like putting a
sticky note on something saying "If no one wants this, I'm throwing
this out a week from now". If five minutes later, the thing is in
great shape, fantastic - remove the sticky note and get back to work.
If a week later, it's still mouldy, throw it out.

> In general, articles on neologisms which don't explain significance are prime
> targets for the New Page Patrollers' AFD tags, and they will, and should,
> only take into account the merits of the article, not its creator.

Perhaps here the only problem is that the creator is not entitled,
under AFD policy, to shut down the debate and keep working on his
article.

Steve


body:
This fellow was banned as User:Amorrow for vicious personal attacks
and threats against other users, and again as User:Pinktulip. His
personal attacks have escalated to stalking and threats sent to other
editors' employers. Fairly obviously, he's *remarkably* unwelcome on
anything to do with Wikipedia.

I'm trying to build up a pattern for a strong complaint, and I'm also
rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
email me or leave a note on my talk page.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Thor

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for New Language on WP

body:
Hi.  I am thinking of setting up a new Wikipedia, since we have language
templates for Pig Latin speakers, I would like to create and run a Wikipedia
in Pig Latin.

I have been told that I need to request a new language to be added, if its not
already available on the language list.

I don't know how the process works, but I hope to hear from you soon if this
is ok.

Thor Malmjursson


from_name: Rob

body:
So if someone removes something from any Wikipedia article and I restore it,
I'm guilty of plagiarism?  IANAL, but I can't imagine that DG is guilty of
anything improper in this case, esp. if he says what he's doing in his edit
summaries.

On 2/15/06, Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.com> wrote:
>
>
> I see a number of serious problems with this approach.
>
> I believe there is a copyright issue since my taking "good edits" and
> remaking them in your name you are guilty of plagiarism.  You are not
> actually deriving anything as the GFDL allows and you are not correctly
> attributing as the GFDL requires.  Conversely, you are actually
> deceiving readers about the source of the material and misrepresenting
> your own authority.
>
> I would assume that if the policy is to role back all edits from a
> banner editor that the best solution is to apply the policy and expect
> that independent contributors will take up the slack.
>
> With respect
> Steven
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:StevenZenith
>
>
>


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>> rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
>> if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please

>Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.

It's routine with banned editors to revert everything they do - and
many banned editors mix in good edits, and accidentally hitting those
is a common form of collateral damage from cleaning up after a banned
editor.

So if I revert all and remake the good edits, the good edits stay in
Wikipedia but aren't associated with the banned editor - so that if
others are also following him about, they don't accidentally revert a
good edit. It's a bit more work for me, but hopefully means less work
for others.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually some further expansion on ETL would be nice - I don't
> understand the concept of "data warehousing" yet. Is this basically
> selling credit card details and other personal info to the highest bidder?

Yes it would, most of these topics are quite underdeveloped in
Wikipedia. I think you're confusing data warehousing with datamining -
a data warehouse is just a large database that contains every fact
that a business needs to run its operation. ETL is a pretty general
term for sticking data in datawarehouses, amongst other things.

Steve


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Wed, Feb 15, 2006 at 05:29:15PM +0000, David Gerard wrote:
> So if I revert all and remake the good edits, the good edits stay in
> Wikipedia but aren't associated with the banned editor - so that if
> others are also following him about, they don't accidentally revert a
> good edit. It's a bit more work for me, but hopefully means less work
> for others.

Banned editors are disallowed from editing.  However, banned editors
still hold copyright over their own words.  If you revert their good
contributions and then re-post their own words under your name, you
might be seen as illicitly taking credit for their work.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Plagiarism has nothing to do with law,

True, but the original poster also claimed it was a copyright issue, which
would make it something of a legal matter.  I simply forgot to completely
repeat his point.


from_name: David Newton

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Juriwiki-l] Re: Copyright complaints

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>> This is an immensely serious issue since it exposes Wikipedia,
>> Wikisource and the Wikimedia Foundation, not to mention the
>> contributors to the sites, to legal liability. I wanted a definitive
>> statement over copyright and I did not get that statement.
>
>Some points:
>
>1) We're dealing with a matter of copyright law and not a basic,
>everyday one.  On legal questions where there isn't a huge amount of
>precedent and case law, you can't get a definitive answer.  Thus, not
>many people feel qualified to comment on what the legal situation is.
>2) The Foundation, I'm sure, does not want to expose itself to
>liability by giving legal advice to contributors.

>-Matt

I wanted a definitive statement over the copyright policy of the
Foundation. Angela provided that statement on this mailing list a
couple of days ago. The position is that public domain, GFDL and
GFDL-compatible text are what is allowed. That is a clear position and
one that, if followed, will not land the person in trouble at all.

We then come to the area of fair use. The problem I have with fair use
on Wikisource is that Wikisource reproduces the whole of a work by
definition. One of the tests for the likelihood of a work being fair
use is that the reproduction is not a "significant" amount of the
work. The whole of a work is certainly a "significant" amount of the
work. This is not like an artistic work where a reduced resolution
version can be used and where such reproductions have been found to be
fair use in things like Bridgeman vs Corel. When reproducing the whole
of a literary work that work is reproduced with full fidelity. The
typographic setting of the work is not relevant here since the US does
not have typographical copyright. Wikisource is also something that
people are encouraged to make use of for commercial purposes. Again
that's one of the major indicators for finding something as fair use
gone.

Fair use, by design, is a legal grey area. I cannot claim to be a
copyright lawyer and an expert on the precedent in the US. What I can
claim to be is a layman with an above average knowledge of copyright
law and also someone who is alarmed by the misunderstandings and
deliberate flouting of fair use that go out on Wikimedia sites. This
UN situation is a classic example of that.

The UN resolutions are copyrighted under US statute law. Therefore in
order to use them on Wikisource either the permission of the UN must
be received or fair use must be relied upon. I don't know of anyone
who has approached the UN for permission and given the terms of use on
their website I doubt that they would be willing to license their
resolutions under a GFDL-compatible license. That leaves fair use and,
as I indicated in the previous paragraph two of the major indicators
for finding that a use is fair use are not relevant for this use of
material.

With respect to the Crown copyright material I know that OPSI are not
willing to license things under a GFDL-compatible licence as they were
asked about this by someone at Wikipedia. Since fair use does not
exist in the UK (where the OPSI servers are located) it cannot be
relied upon as a defence for reusing the content and the materials
must be removed from Wikisource. I don't know whether the UN servers
are in the United States, but I suspect they are. If that is the case
then fair use does exist as a defence for use of the copyrighted
material, I would say it is a weak defence in this case given that two
of the indicators for finding material as fair use are not present.

All in all when creating such a high visibility site as Wikipedia and
its allied sites I would say that we are better off erring on the side
of caution when it comes to copyright law. If that means we cannot get
pictures for articles or use certain source texts then so be it. Only
where there is clear precedent for something being fair use, and the
case concerned can be cited in the guidelines for copyright, should
fair use be relied upon.

David Newton


body:
On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
> if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please

Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.

Steve


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wrote:
>
> >Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
> >downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
> >behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
> >Babylon Ltd?
>
> Ah, turns out there is!
>
>     http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-February/006096.html
>
> Brad Fitzgerald wrote:
>
> >They jumped the gun with the release but yes, there is a deal with
> Babylon pending.
>
> w00t :-)
>
>
> - d.

Just as long as this doesn't turn into another answers.com mess
(although I will admit that did result in WP:TOOL being reworked into
someing userble).

--
geni


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Sigvat Stensholt wrote:

>>As noted earlier in this thread, that is exactly the moral I've learned.
>>Wikipedia has no tolerance for works in progress.
>>
>>
>
>I tend to agree with Guy's and Aaron's evaluation here. The article, once it
>enters main namespace, is in the frontline. People making a "normal" search
>for it will be able to access it. The article should be able to stand on its
>own legs by then and if it doesn't it should be deleted, even if the subject
>is notable and a proper article can be written in its place.
>
>For example, the first edition we got about Robert Aumann contained
>
> "He won the Nobel Prize!"
>
>Lets go through why this type of article is bad. First, the article is not
>very useful to the readers. The people who are likely to look up Robert
>Aumann are those who read that he had won the economics prize already. The
>people who didn't know this would also find the article useless. (They would
>think "Huh?, What Nobel prize? When? For what?". Second, it is an
>embarrassment to Wikipedia if people look this up or follow a bluelink,
>expecting to find a real article, and find this. The reader is annoyed and
>decides that the reputation of Wikipedia being low quality is absolutely
>true. Third, the presence of such articles, written by a veteran Wikipedian I
>might add, tells newbies that they don't need to put any effort into writing
>the articles (after all the vets don't), and that makes the quality of newer
>articles very poor.
>
>Therefore, that revision of the article was speedy deleted, based on the
>criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new
>article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
>
>*What/Who IS the subject?
>*Why should the reader care?
>*Could this article be useful to anyone?
>
>If you plan on making a longer article for first submission and don't want to
>suffer a browser crash right before you submit it, you can put work in
>progress on a subpage of you userpage, and then move it off to the main
>article namespace when the article is in reasonably good shape.
>
>This is not extreme immediatism. A poorly written, or short article which is
>still useful and establishes context can be included.
>
>Sigvat Stensholt (AKA "Sjakkalle")
>
>
Just curious...have you read the revision Sean saved? Because while
stubby, it was far from one or two context-less sentences. (I do think
brenneman has a point, but a lot of the messages on this matter seem to
think Sean's initial article was crap.)

John


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unused userboxes

body:
charles matthews wrote:
> "Matt Brown" wrote
>
>> I do suspect in the current climate that will just make a dozen people
>
> start to use it, to protect it.
>
> Something to that.  Attention-seeking behaviour is sometimes best
> treated by ignoring it, as parents know.

Wisdom.

Having said that, I heard today that the number of userboxes, and in
particular the number of very problematic userboxes, has exploded.  I
think this is seriously Not Good For Our Loving Little Community.

I am not doing anything about it just yet, but I am willing to concede
that my nonviolent social request that people knock it off and think
about what it means to be a Wikipedian has not gotten very far.

As far as I can determine, and I am very much aware that I am here
prejudicing the terms of debate, this is a cultural battle between
wikipedians and people who have stumbled into this cool site they heard
about on CNN where you can write whatever the hell you want and argue
with people for fun.

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mirroring article onto another website

body:
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. I figured out my own approach
that works pretty well, adapted from the javascript in the Wikipedia
widget for Mac OS X. It's a data scraping approach that pulls in a
page from $url and strips off the header and footer. The advantage to
this approach is that it doesn't require any knowledge of the
MediaWiki codebase. Here's the basic PHP code:

$article = file_get_contents($url);
echo processRawHtml($article);

function processRawHTML($article) {
   $start = strpos($article, '
');
   $end = strpos($article, '');
   $article = substr($article, $start, $end-$start) . '
';
   return $article;
}

Of course, this needs some further elaboration, such as a search-and-
replace to convert local hyperlinks to their full URLs.

--Sheldon Rampton


subject: [WikiEN-l] "Wheel war" (Worst. Userbox. Ever.)

body:
Sam Fentress (Asbestos) wrote:
> Jimbo claims he blocked him for voting "Keep" on a TFD...

I know I'm a little late in responding to this, but I don't want this to
turn into a widely accepted urban legend.  Of course I did not, and
would not, block anyone just for voting "Keep" on a TFD.  Please.

Joeyramoney put a userbox on his page saying "This user is a pedophile".
  He was blocked for it, then unblocked, and well, you can go read the
whole sordid tale, but a wheel war ensued which ended only when I, in
careful consultation with as many members of the arbcom as I could find
that sad evening, attempted to restore "status quo" to some reasonable
state and temporarily desysopped several admins.

In the case of Joeyramoney his block was for trolling, in particular for
trolling by putting a "This user is a pedophile" userbox on his page.  I
unblocked him myself a couple of days later when it was determined that
he was more or less just a 16 year old kid with about a week of
experience at Wikipedia who likely had no idea that he was stumbling
into the middle of the Great Userbox War of 2006.

A 24 hour block would have been perfectly appropriate, though.

As to my actions in putting a very very very firm foot down that night,
I would do it again if necessary.  Not everything went perfectly that
night, and for that I am sorry.  But let us absolutely not let this go
down in history as "Jimbo blocked someone for voting on a TFD".

--Jimbo

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


from_name: Jon

body:
If there is information in the biography that hasn't been verified (or is even the sort of thing that is unverifiable) then it just shouldn't be in the article. Remove everything that is not supported by a citation to a reputable source.

  Jon

Nan Desu-ka? <wikidesuka at gmail.com> wrote:
  A user claiming to be the cult X-rated film star Tove Jensen (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jensen), has appeared on that
article's talk page and complained about some of the details in the
article posing a danger to her and her family. (see the diffs
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=39744088&oldid=39743955
and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=next&oldid=39744088)

The specific facts in the article that this user is complaining about
are fairly unverifiable. Of course, I'm not sure to what extent this
user's identity as the subject of the biography is verifiable, either.
Input on the proper way to proceed here would be welcome.

I normally don't post to the mailing list, but since this is
potentially a foundation issue and I know there have been similar
controversies in the past, I wanted to bring it to the attention of
whoever needs to know, in case we have a lawyer-mandated process for
such claims.

-Nandesuka
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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body:
David Gerard wrote:
> This fellow was banned as User:Amorrow for vicious personal attacks
> and threats against other users, and again as User:Pinktulip. His
> personal attacks have escalated to stalking and threats sent to other
> editors' employers. Fairly obviously, he's *remarkably* unwelcome on
> anything to do with Wikipedia.

In this particular case, we have escalated it to legal.  And, yes, if we
have different levels of unwelcome (and we do), David's characterization
as him being "remarkably" unwelcome is remarkably apt.

Block on sight, revert on sight.

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


from_name: Ilya N.

body:
Do we get free translation services?

On 2/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wrote:
> >
> > >Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
> > >downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
> > >behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
> > >Babylon Ltd?
> >
> > Ah, turns out there is!
> >
> >
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-February/006096.html
> >
> > Brad Fitzgerald wrote:
> >
> > >They jumped the gun with the release but yes, there is a deal with
> > Babylon pending.
> >
> > w00t :-)
> >
> >
> > - d.
>
> Just as long as this doesn't turn into another answers.com mess
> (although I will admit that did result in WP:TOOL being reworked into
> someing userble).
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Chris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fail mySql Connect to Localhost

body:
Chris <chris.dole at ...> writes:
>
> Hello,
>
> I've set up MediaWiki successfully one other XP box, but my second can't do
the
> config:
>
> Checking environment...
> PHP 5.1.2: ok
> PHP server API is apache2handler; ok, using pretty URLs
(index.php/Page_Title)
> Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
> PHP is configured with no memory_limit.
> Have zlib support; enabling output compression.
> Neither Turck MMCache nor eAccelerator are installed, can't use object
caching
> functions
> GNU diff3 not found.
> Couldn't find GD library or ImageMagick; image thumbnailing disabled.
> Installation directory: C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs\wiki
> Script URI path: /wiki
> Warning: $wgSecretKey key is insecure, generated with mt_rand(). Consider
> changing it manually.
> Trying to connect to MySQL on localhost as root...
> MySQL error 2003: Can't connect to MySQL server on 'localhost' (10061)
>
> I can log into mySql with the same parameters using MySql Administrator
> (localhost). What might MediaWiki be doing differently?
>
> Thanks in advance for any tips.
>
> Regards,
> Chris
>

This just in: It seems that there is a networking difference between the
environment where the config worked and the one where it did not. It has
something to do with DNS setup confusing mySql. I found a post elsewhere that
said to add the "enable-named-pipe" option to mySql's my.ini (see below) and
then use "." instead of "localhost" to force it to use named pipes. It worked!
It's a trick to keep in mind in case you ever run up against something like
that. (Plus I was relieved that I had not done something stupid...)

[mysqld]
# The TCP/IP Port the MySQL Server will listen on
port=3306
#Path to installation directory. All paths are usually resolved relative to
this.
basedir="C:/Program Files/MySQL/MySQL Server 5.0/"
#Path to the database root
datadir="C:/Program Files/MySQL/MySQL Server 5.0/Data/"
#Enable named pipes
enable-named-pipe


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 15 Feb 2006, at 16:07, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's
> my scenario:
> I work in the domain of ETL.
> Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is.
> I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what
> *anything* is.
> No article.
>
> Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your
> analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but
> his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that
> the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products
> aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable,
> their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of
> their products are not.
>
> To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or
> below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for
> all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or
> not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine
> articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.

I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats
the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is
a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But individual
software products are often not very notable (if I write the history
of software if wont include much about programs that import and export
data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us know.

I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of
products
(that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be
filled in.

Justinc


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Babylon Ltd using Wikipedia - press release
	questions

body:
One thing I was worried about is that Babylon contained spyware for some
time. However, it turns out that they already removed it in 2002 to
appeal to a professional audience. Anyone worried that Babylon contains
spyware should read this:

http://www.babylon.com/eng/display.php?id=87&tree=7&level=3&show_id=680

Otherwise, it's a fairly cool product, since it uses OCR to identify
words you click on, so you can even translate stuff from images. I used
it all the time when I was still on Windows.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tracking banned user Andrew Morrow

body:
On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
> > > > if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
> > >
> > > Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.
> >
> >
> > The point is to make editing Wikipedia difficult for banned editors, without
> > making doing so difficult for legitimate editors.
>
> My mistake, I had thought David was rolling back edits he had made
> prior to being banned.
>
> Steve

Amorrow was indef blocked last august so I suspect most of his edits
will have in turn been edited.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote

body:
Out of curiosity, Ray, what caused you to respond to a one year old
email from me now? Are you experiencing some lag? :-)

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 15 Feb 2006, at 22:28, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>> I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats
>> the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is
>> a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But
>> individual
>> software products are often not very notable (if I write the history
>> of software if wont include much about programs that import and
>> export
>> data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us
>> know.
>
> I've expanded the stub now. I understand that software products are
> not inherently notable, but let's not confuse some shareware platform
> game with expensive, highly specialised data loading software used by
> massive companies to transfer enormous quantities of data each day.

Its much more like an initial stub should be now. Its not clear that
it shouldnt be moved to the company but thats ok, it wouldnt lose
anything either way.

I am not sure that price is part of notability in software; I have
written non notable but expensive software.

>> I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of
>> products
>> (that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be
>> filled in.
>
> A good article about ETL would be great, and some basic information on
> the various products - short articles, or collected together - would
> be great. I don't know about "never be filled in" - Wikipedia is
> supposedly timeless. Compared to many of the really trivial subjects
> covered, it's a bit disappointing that the whole domain of data
> management, data warehousing, ETL etc is of such low quality.
>
> Maybe time for a bounty...:)

Never filled in is an interesting one. Some things will not be
documented
well enough to write an article if its not written soon. Maybe that will
change if things like internet archive work. Maybe that means they
werent
notable.

Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and
(despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without
even stubs or redlinks. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we
dont have an article on [[Scandinavian design]], the genesis of among
other things [[Ikea]]. I have books lying around my computer that would
provide sources for hundreds of missing articles. Must write one now.

Justinc


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 2/15/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand
> > > if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please
> >
> > Why?  Not questioning you, but I haven't heard of doing this before.
>
>
> The point is to make editing Wikipedia difficult for banned editors, without
> making doing so difficult for legitimate editors.

My mistake, I had thought David was rolling back edits he had made
prior to being banned.

Steve


from_name: Guy Chapman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Advice needed

body:
This is the latest in the on-again, off-again history of Brian Peppers on
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brian_Peppers_%286th_nomination%29

Peppers is a fad on YTMND and Fark, for reasons which are obvious from this
link:

http://pepperstruth.ytmnd.com/

The problem is, he is notable *solely* because a number of people on the net
have chosen to laugh at his freakish appearance, apparently the result of a
congential deformity.

No, even that's not the problem, the *real* problem is that a lot of people
are determined that we should have an article on him, but the sources for
the fact that he is disabled, lives in a n ursing home, poses no threat to
the community and appears only to be on the offenders' register as a result
of an inappropriate contact with a nurse/carer, is from a source which is
less reliable than Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/peppers.asp).

So it seems unavoidable that we will participate in the memtic process,
because we can't say what a lot of us want to say (that Peppers is a
disabled man, suffers from a congenital deformity, was convicted of a
technical offence and is known almost exclusively because his photograph
became an In ternet freak-sho exhibit).

People insist on the article, clamour for the picture, and revert edits
which emphasise Peppers' status as a big-time loser in the lottery of life -
possibly because I can't write these edits in a way whihc adequately coneals
my absolute contempt for those who exploit Peppers' picture ad an object of
derision.

Should I just forget it?  Or ar we (either me or those who want the article
restored) missing some vital point of policy?

Guy


subject: [WikiEN-l] Complaint purportedly from the subject of a biography

body:
Agree, there is no reason to keep potentially harmful, or potentially
libellous, unverifiable material.

Steve

On 2/15/06, Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> If there is information in the biography that hasn't been verified (or is even the sort of thing that is unverifiable) then it just shouldn't be in the article. Remove everything that is not supported by a citation to a reputable source.
>
>
>   Jon
>
> Nan Desu-ka? <wikidesuka at gmail.com> wrote:
>   A user claiming to be the cult X-rated film star Tove Jensen (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jensen), has appeared on that
> article's talk page and complained about some of the details in the
> article posing a danger to her and her family. (see the diffs
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=39744088&oldid=39743955
> and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=next&oldid=39744088)
>
> The specific facts in the article that this user is complaining about
> are fairly unverifiable. Of course, I'm not sure to what extent this
> user's identity as the subject of the biography is verifiable, either.
> Input on the proper way to proceed here would be welcome.
>
> I normally don't post to the mailing list, but since this is
> potentially a foundation issue and I know there have been similar
> controversies in the past, I wanted to bring it to the attention of
> whoever needs to know, in case we have a lawyer-mandated process for
> such claims.
>
> -Nandesuka
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Advice needed

body:
On 2/15/06, Guy Chapman <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> This is the latest in the on-again, off-again history of Brian Peppers on
> Wikipedia:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Brian_Peppers_%286th_nomination%29
>
> Peppers is a fad on YTMND and Fark, for reasons which are obvious from this
> link:
>
> http://pepperstruth.ytmnd.com/
>
> The problem is, he is notable *solely* because a number of people on the net
> have chosen to laugh at his freakish appearance, apparently the result of a
> congential deformity.
>
> No, even that's not the problem, the *real* problem is that a lot of people
> are determined that we should have an article on him, but the sources for
> the fact that he is disabled, lives in a n ursing home, poses no threat to
> the community and appears only to be on the offenders' register as a result
> of an inappropriate contact with a nurse/carer, is from a source which is
> less reliable than Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/photos/people/peppers.asp).
>
> So it seems unavoidable that we will participate in the memtic process,
> because we can't say what a lot of us want to say (that Peppers is a
> disabled man, suffers from a congenital deformity, was convicted of a
> technical offence and is known almost exclusively because his photograph
> became an In ternet freak-sho exhibit).
>
> People insist on the article, clamour for the picture, and revert edits
> which emphasise Peppers' status as a big-time loser in the lottery of life -
> possibly because I can't write these edits in a way whihc adequately coneals
> my absolute contempt for those who exploit Peppers' picture ad an object of
> derision.
>
> Should I just forget it?  Or ar we (either me or those who want the article
> restored) missing some vital point of policy?

As with most controversial topics, the way out is to absolutely insist
on sourcing.  And sourcing means *quality* sourcing.  Not every fact
needs to be footnoted in the article; a talk page subpage would be
excellent.  If there are no reliable sources, the information (such as
it is) gets deleted.

If anyone questions this, it is supported by all three strands of the
project: policy (WP:V), process (WP:CITE) and the good of the
encyclopaedia (aka common sense).

And if there's no information left, the article must be deleted.

--
Sam


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> I dont know if there should be one. I cant tell from the stub, thats
> the problem. The company might be notable (I think that WP:CORP is
> a bit restrictive, and should be ignored in many cases). But individual
> software products are often not very notable (if I write the history
> of software if wont include much about programs that import and export
> data). But it of course may be very important; just neither of us know.

I've expanded the stub now. I understand that software products are
not inherently notable, but let's not confuse some shareware platform
game with expensive, highly specialised data loading software used by
massive companies to transfer enormous quantities of data each day.

> I would rather have a good article about ETL including a list of
> products
> (that could be redirects) than a bunch of stubs that may never be
> filled in.

A good article about ETL would be great, and some basic information on
the various products - short articles, or collected together - would
be great. I don't know about "never be filled in" - Wikipedia is
supposedly timeless. Compared to many of the really trivial subjects
covered, it's a bit disappointing that the whole domain of data
management, data warehousing, ETL etc is of such low quality.

Maybe time for a bounty...:)

Steve


body:
On 2/15/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> So if someone removes something from any Wikipedia article and I restore it,
> I'm guilty of plagiarism?  IANAL, but I can't imagine that DG is guilty of
> anything improper in this case, esp. if he says what he's doing in his edit
> summaries.

Plagiarism has nothing to do with law, and is totally about
misrepresentation. So if DG is not misrepresenting the reason for the
edits, and is not claiming that he wrote the material, there is no
issue.

Steve


from_name: Dorożyński Janusz

body:
| -----Original Message-----
| From: ... Brion Vibber
| Sent: Wednesday, February 15, 2006 11:12 PM
/
| I'll have to integrate automated md5sum generation back into
| the dump runner...

It's great news, really.

	Reg., Janusz 'Ency' Dorozynski


from_name: britney i

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
My ip I am afraid to post my ip on the world wide web beacuse of all the craszs My user name UltraBrain The issue Blocked If an adim absoultly needs my ip then I would provide it to them.          Your user name or IP address has been blocked from editing
You were blocked by Ricky81682
Reason given: Autoblocked because your IP address has been recently used by "UltraBrain". The reason given for UltraBrain's block is: "recreation of deleted content and vandalism". (see our blocking policy)
  The aritcle keept on getting vandilized by just getting deleted. It needs protection. And I should be unblocked. It is only meant to provide knowledge of the subject matter. But it seems that some people are just big babys with power that they should not have.

---------------------------------
 Yahoo! Mail
 Use Photomail to share photos without annoying attachments.


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Sigvat Stensholt wrote:
>>As noted earlier in this thread, that is exactly the moral I've learned.
>>Wikipedia has no tolerance for works in progress.
>
>
> I tend to agree with Guy's and Aaron's evaluation here. The article, once it
> enters main namespace, is in the frontline. People making a "normal" search
> for it will be able to access it. The article should be able to stand on its
> own legs by then and if it doesn't it should be deleted, even if the subject
> is notable and a proper article can be written in its place.
>
> For example, the first edition we got about Robert Aumann contained
>
>  "He won the Nobel Prize!"
>

Ah, but it was written by Jimbo :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> I am not sure that price is part of notability in software; I have
> written non notable but expensive software.

Is there any discussion of notability for software? How many software
products do we want in Wikipedia? I would have thought several
thousand, if not several tens of thousands could easily be justified.
We are, after all, an encyclopaedia. Is our aim not to produce a
consultable body of knowledge? I'm a little confused about why we seem
to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.

> Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects and
> (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without
> even stubs or redlinks. Someone pointed out to me the other day that we
> dont have an article on [[Scandinavian design]], the genesis of among
> other things [[Ikea]]. I have books lying around my computer that would
> provide sources for hundreds of missing articles. Must write one now.

Heh, good idea. My apartment is a tribute to [[Ikea|Scandinavian design]].

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Advice needed

body:
On 2/15/06, Guy Chapman <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Should I just forget it?  Or ar we (either me or those who want the article
> restored) missing some vital point of policy?
>
> Guy

The problem is that there are at least three different arguments going
on. The should it exist or not argument. The "if it exists what should
it contain aregument" and it is a current battle ground for the
heavily pro-process vs the not so heavily pro-process groups. All in
all a fun day for all the family.

Just wait for the fight over Haley to begin. Those wishing to do their
pre reading would be advised to cheack US privicy laws with regards to
minors and the mechanics of the YTMND/Myspace relationship.

--
geni


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-16

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: PMID incorrectly converts space to underscore... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 264 of 281 tests (93.95%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
On 15 Feb 2006, at 23:27, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 2/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm a little confused about why we seem to keep trying to raise
>> the bar on notability.
>
> I think it's among other things connected with the feeling expressed
> here by Justin:
>
> On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>> Yes it is frustrating that so much work goes into trivial subjects
>> and
>> (despite what some people seem to think) there are vast areas without
>> even stubs or redlinks.
>
> In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on
> notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so
> much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work
> to be done on "worthy" subjects.
>
> To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't
> you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial"
> subjects detracts from our image.

Actually I dont have a problem with large amounts of trivia.

I do have a problem with stuff that makes a bad stub but could add
detail and context to a larger article. When I was organizing the
stuff in the field of [[Beer]] I spent a lot of time merging
articles about individual beers (normally written after a trip to
the pub) into articles about breweries. Beers come and go but
breweries are companies and have documentation. I think I left
about 40 beers that had real notability (some eponymous with
breweries eg Guinness and the Budweisers, others historical).
Maybe one day someone will write good articles about every beer
brewed by Miller, 100 words or so but I doubt it. In the mean time
a sentence under the main article is better in every way.

Steve said:
 > Is there any discussion of notability for software? How many software
 > products do we want in Wikipedia? I would have thought several
 > thousand, if not several tens of thousands could easily be justified.
 > We are, after all, an encyclopaedia. Is our aim not to produce a
 > consultable body of knowledge? I'm a little confused about why we
seem
 > to keep trying to raise the bar on notability.

Notability for software is interesting, not sure I have seen any
guidelines (I dont contribute much as its too much like work). Does
the program embody new techniques? Did it create a new market? Did
it replace the market leader? Maybe those questions just reflect my
interests but at least they give something to write a few hundred
words on.

Its difficult. Sometimes there are articles that I might think could
only be a stub and be wrong. And having a stub might make someone else
write a real article. The stubs I have written that have been taken
up by other people have really pleased me, although not as much as
some of the obscure stuff I have written real articles on (like
[[Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association]]).

Justinc


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/15/06, Sigvat Stensholt <sigvats at mi.uib.no> wrote:
>
>>criterion of little or no context. So when you push the save button on a new
>>article make sure that you have made an attempt at answering
>>
>>*What/Who IS the subject?
>>*Why should the reader care?
>>*Could this article be useful to anyone?
>
>
> I agree: the minimum standard for informativeness should be fairly
> low, but rigorously enforced. I recently created [[DMExpress]], with
> this line of text (plus link to website, and category):
>
> DMExpress is an [[ETL]] tool designed primarily for performance. It
> uses a proprietary database.
>
> I think this is enough information to be usfeul for someone who just
> wants to know what the hell this product is that they saw mentioned
> somewhere. I might even argue that with just the first sentence it is
> sufficient to tell the reader what category of software the product
> is, and what makes it different.
>
> Do others agree with this?
>

I recently created [[Directivity]], which has a stub notice and a
reference. I'd have {{prod}}ed yours as "software which doesn't explain
notability, no incoming links, advertising" (and I still might).

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Jeffrey M. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes situation "not acceptable"

body:
On Wednesday 15 February 2006 23:15, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 2/16/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > So where the hell are all of these new ones coming from?
>
> Good question! ?About 35 editors have more than 100 edits to userboxes
> (quite a small number of people, really).

If it's possible to extract this information from the database, it would be
helpful to find out who it is that's *creating* all these userboxes--not just
who's editing them.  Using myself as an example, I'm probably one of the "one
or two with around 300" edits, but (IIRC) I've only created a single userbox.
My number of edits is in the hundreds, though, because I went through and
subst'd out the {{Userbox}} template in hundreds of existing userboxes; this
was part of a strong push to bring userboxes into compliance with [[WP:AUM]]
(avoid using meta-templates), which was tagged as official policy at the
time.  Such subst'ing, as well as the removal of fair use images in
enforcement of item 9 of [[WP:FUC]], would also probably account for much of
other Wikipedians' high edit counts on userbox templates.  (I'm fairly
certain that this is the case for [[User:Silence]], for example.)

If it is possible to distinguish between userbox edits and userbox template
creation when querying the database, that might go a long way in figuring out
where these 2500 new userboxes have come from and what they're used for.
(I'm quite surprised at this number, myself.)  Perhaps I don't have a good
understanding of the scale of userbox usage, but it wouldn't surprise me all
too much if many of those 2500 (or the 3500 before them) are used on only a
single user page (or aren't used anywhere at all).

--
[[User:Jeffrey Smith]] <wikipedian at jeffsmith.us>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Fun with Zwinger

body:
Just a general update:

* The primary Apache docroots are now NFS-free.

Some additional bits like the www.*.org portals have been moved into the
locally-copied common files set, and old symlinks for uploads and wikistats have
been eliminated in favor of always redirecting at HTTP level.

Erik Zachte's wikistats are now on stats.wikimedia.org, which is served via
albert for the moment.

* However some MediaWiki monitoring and diagnostic logs still need to be moved
over to a non-NFS system. Until those are fixed, a failure on primary NFS could
still hang Apache processes.

* /home is still being served from suda; zwinger is still usable as a login
point, but it will get reinstalled at some point so we can finally upgrade from
the old red hat 9. :)

* The latest greatest versions of some files may still be in /home/from-zwinger.
Copy as needed.

Additionally, Tim's been setting up failover for our LVS, and an LVS in front of
the squids in Tampa like we already have in Kennisnet and Yahoo clusters. This
should ease the load balancing and failover of the primary proxy servers, which
we had had on an ugly round-robin DNS rotation for some time.

Tim's also setting up the new squid boxes we got in a few weeks ago; there was
some delay in getting those online due to a weird SATA driver which complicated
installation.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Jitse Niesen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags()

body:
On 2/11/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> If you'd like try rewriting [Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags()] so it balances end tags
> properly, detects illegal nesting cases, and understands MathML, that would be
> super awesome.

I thought a bit about it and I came to the conclusion that I don't
quite understand what Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags() is supposed to do.

Firstly, I was wrong about the MathML. Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags()
does not need to understand MathML, because at the point where it is
called, the Parser::strip() has replaced the <math> tags by
placeholder strings.

But the important point is: How can Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags()
balance tags? Consider the input
----
First line. <s> Struck through
More text.

Another paragraph.
----
There is an unclosed <s> tag here, so removeHTMLtags() should close
it. If it does the same as HTML Tidy, it adds </s> after "More text.",
before the </p> implied by the empty line.

Okay, that's fine. But now consider
----
* First line. <s> Struck through
* More text.

Another paragraph.
----
In this case, the </s> has to be put after "Struck through".

I think this means that removeHTMLtags() can only work if it parses
the text according to (a subset of) the wiki-grammar. But that seems a
bit messy from the design point of view. The alternative is to call
removeHTMLtags() later, at the same time when HTML Tidy is called
(this is what I wrongly thought to happen).

By the way, I'm still interested to hear why you want to get rid of
HTML Tidy. Is it performance?

Cheers,
Jitse


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/16/06, Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.com> wrote:
> Plagiarism does have something to do with the law if it is a breach of
> copyright.  I assume that the banned editor is hostile, so being
> defensive may be prudent.
>
> The key points are that the GDFL allows derivative use of the text
> provided it is correctly attributed.  The use described is not
> derivative and changes the attribution - this contravenes the GDFL.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
>

Attribution still exists in the acticle history and rember if enough
enough people have edited the article we don't have to provide
attribution for all of them.
--
geni


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Go ahead and remove anything unverifiable that could cause problems in your
opinion or that of the complainer.

Mgm

On 2/15/06, Nan Desu-ka? <wikidesuka at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A user claiming to be the cult X-rated film star Tove Jensen (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tove_Jensen), has appeared on that
> article's talk page and complained about some of the details in the
> article posing a danger to her and her family. (see the diffs
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=39744088&oldid=39743955
> and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Tove_Jensen&diff=next&oldid=39744088
> )
>
> The specific facts in the article that this user is complaining about
> are fairly unverifiable.  Of course, I'm not sure to what extent this
> user's identity as the subject of the biography is verifiable, either.
> Input on the proper way to proceed here would be welcome.
>
> I normally don't post to the mailing list, but since this is
> potentially a foundation issue and I know there have been similar
> controversies in the past, I wanted to bring it to the attention of
> whoever needs to know, in case we have a lawyer-mandated process for
> such claims.
>
> -Nandesuka
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 2/16/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> :Feb 15 16:53:49 Ral315  Tony_Sidaway asks:  "In the past six weeks
> the number of userboxes on English Wikipedia has risen from 3500 to
> 6000 and, despite your appeals for restraint, the number pertaining to
> political beliefs has risen from 45 to 150.

About 2500 new userboxes, but only about a hundred of them political.

I'm assuming there's no new proliferation of multi-level Babel boxes
(which I suspect is the case, since most of the ones anyone would want
to use were probably created months ago).   Even if we get a separate
userbox for every popular TV show/movie/sports team/book/food that
people might like, I would still expect there to be only a few hundred
of them; it looks like I'm off by a factor of magnitude, though.

So where the hell are all of these new ones coming from?

Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 2/15/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>>Costing in excess of $20000 and being in a class with a small number of
>>members doesnt make anything notable.
>>
>>Paintings by a moderate artist might fall into that category, but the
>>paintings would just be listed under the artist.
>>
>>What else is notable about this?
>
>
> I know very little about DMExpress - hence the stubbiness :) Here's my scenario:
> I work in the domain of ETL.
> Someone mentions DMExpress. I have no idea what it is.
> I head to Wikipedia, my first resource when I want to know what *anything* is.
> No article.
>
> Should there not be an article? There aren't that many ETL tools. Your
> analogy is a bit flawed: You're saying that the artist is notable, but
> his paintings aren't. The equivalent then would be something like that
> the company is notable, but that individual copies of their products
> aren't. Really, though, in many cases, the company is not notable,
> their product isn't notable, and obviously individual instances of
> their products are not.
>
> To resolve the question of whether my example of a stub was above or
> below the minimum quality waterline (just as an example, delete it for
> all I care :)), we do need to agree whether DMExpress is notable or
> not. A brief search shows 800 google results including magazine
> articles, so I'm not sure what the "no" argument would be.
>

Actually some further expansion on ETL would be nice - I don't
understand the concept of "data warehousing" yet. Is this basically
selling credit card details and other personal info to the highest bidder?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Greg Sabino Mullane

subject: [WikiEN-l] More AfD toxicity

body:
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> In other words, I feel that people keep trying to raise the bar on
> notability because it bugs them that people are willing to expend so
> much effort on what they consider "trivia" when there's so much work
> to be done on "worthy" subjects.

There are three problems with this:

1) One person's trivia is another person's worthy subject.

2) It doesn't necessarily transfer. People who are feverishly working on
editing one of the Pokemon articles are not likely to edit something more
"worthy" like nuclear physics if the Pokemon article was not found or not
allowed. Instead, they'd be off playing with their Pokemon cards, or
writing for a site that *did* have Pokemon articles. We just lost an editor.

3) We should welcome all people, regardless of their article preferences or
their choice of what to spend their time on. A great way to do this it to
have an amazing breadth of articles. The trivial articles can often be a
"gateway drug" - they find us when searching Google for a particular Simpsons
episode, find out they can edit it, make a small correction, follow a few
links, create an account, do some more editing, and the next thing you know
they are vandal fighting, improving random articles, and posting their two
cents to the Peppers controversy. :)

> To be fair, it's only one reason, another being that some feel (don't
> you love weasel terms?) that large amounts of information on "trivial"
> subjects detracts from our image.

If by large amounts if information they mean the size and detail of some of
our articles on "trivial" things, then the solution is to increase the depth
of non-trivial articles, not to curb the creation of "large-yet-trivial" ones.

If by large amounts they mean the number of articles on trivial things versus
non-trivial things, setting a higher bar to limit the number of trivial articles
created is not the answer. What needs to happen is draw in more editors. Even if
most only edit "trivial" articles, some will also contribute to "non-trivial" ones.
I'd rather see non-trivial articles improved by 20% at the cost of keeping the
same same trivial/non-trivial ratio, rather than see the ratio decrease for a 5%
improvement.

- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg at turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200602152130
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from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia merchandise

body:
The wikimedia foundation makes comparatively little from selling
shirts, so I've put together a new store for them on spreadshirt
(which has higher quality plot prints, not just digital prints -- and
which I am not in any way affiliated with, for the record) and come up
with a few new designs and a fashion-y logo-ish thing.  (I'm not a
designer by trade, so I'm sure these could be improved on.)

The store is at https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=21410 -- let
me know what you think (though for god's sake don't buy anything from
it yet; nobody but the hosting/shirtmaking company will get any
money).

Also, who else exactly should I contact about this?

Ben Yates
Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Welcome to the world of corporate ethics.
Ec

David Gerard wrote:

>http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060214/uktu013.html?.v=48
>http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-14-2006/0004281390&EDATE=
>
>  OR YEHUDA, Israel, February 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Babylon Ltd., the leading
>  provider of single-click translation and information access software, and
>  Wikipedia the free-content, user edited encyclopedia, today announced the
>  launch of the Wikipedia as part of Babylon's solution.
>
>    [...]
>
>  "Our collaboration with Wikipedia is the first of its kind for Babylon".
>  said Alon Carmeli, VP Sales and Marketing, Babylon Ltd.
>
>Dropping our name so as to imply a more active collaboration than
>downloading a database dump ... that seems slightly questionable
>behaviour. Unless, of course, there was an active collaboration with
>Babylon Ltd?
>


subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Out of curiosity, Ray, what caused you to respond to a one year old
>email from me now? Are you experiencing some lag? :-)
>
My apologies.  I know there are a lot of things that just don't get
tossed from my mailing list files, and I usually check the date of what
I'm answering.  Good thing I was mostly agreeing with you. :-)

Ray


subject: [Foundation-l] German law and wikiquote


from_name: Jonathan & Kendra Dailey

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Marwari language Wikipedia

body:
Marwari is spoken by over 13 million people in India, Pakistan, and Nepal.
It is related to Hindi but it is a distinct language with a long (1500 year)
written history and has a great amount of worldwide Diaspora.

How do we get this started?


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Today I took the opportunity of an interview on IRC, organised by The
Signpost, to ask Jimbo about userboxes:

:Feb 15 16:53:49 Ral315  Tony_Sidaway asks:  "In the past six weeks
the number of userboxes on English Wikipedia has risen from 3500 to
6000 and, despite your appeals for restraint, the number pertaining to
political beliefs has risen from 45 to 150.  Can the problem of
unsuitable userboxes still be resolved by debate?"
:Feb 15 17:11:57 jwales  eh
:Feb 15 17:11:59 jwales  userboxes
:Feb 15 17:12:00 jwales  eh
:Feb 15 17:12:40 jwales  I'm looking at the political beliefs one now.
:Feb 15 17:13:50 jwales  My only comment on the userbox situation is
that the current situation is not acceptable.

By which I take it that something must change, one way or the other.

Those figures are from the database, by the way.  I took measurements
of numbers on January 4 and on February 14.  During January,, about
2000 new userboxes were created, but the rate has slowed and now in
the first two weeks of February we have only seen about 600.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the concept of "grandfathering",
asking people who didn't want to get rid of their userboxes to use the
"subst" command on the templates in their user page.  This is good for
the user because, if he really wants to keep the userbox, it protects
him from the effects of deletion and editing.   It's also more
wikilike because it gives him the opportunity to alter the text a bit
to say a bit more about his own precise views instead of just some
bumper-sticker slogan.

Well the good news is that someone is going around doing just that.
He follows after template deletions and inserts the code of the
deleted template into user pages.  This reduces the backlash effect
and enables really unsuitable templates to become, perhaps acceptable,
items on a userpage, while the template source is delete.


body:
On 2/16/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> So where the hell are all of these new ones coming from?
>
> Kirill Lokshin

This user has found yet another way to violate fair use.

--
geni