body:
"Theo Clarke" wrote

>Anonymous edits enable impulse contributions to WP. I share the consensus
>view that this is desirable. It is not a matter of openness; merely a
>matter of immediacy.

Really, that's not right.  Put up a registration barrier, and you are less
open.

The main issue though is WP's responsiveness.  The USP of wiki is that they
are very responsive to what the online population thinks or knows.  Having
no registration promotes that quality: we do the maximum to make WP
responsive by removing obstructions to just editing.  If we were trying to
scoop other news media, this would show up as an advantage.

Charles


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Theo Clarke

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: April 1st 2006, IRC, the mailing list,
	and the Cabal

body:
All three people responding to my post misunderstood the point that I wished to make.  I regret my lack of clarity.  I am sorry that I have merely muddied the waters. I will try to use the language of openness differently in future.

Theo

On Mon, 4 Apr 2005 14:33:14 +0100, Charles Matthews wrote:
>?"Theo Clarke" wrote
>
>>?Anonymous edits enable impulse contributions to WP. I share the
>>?consensus
>>?view that this is desirable. It is not a matter of openness;
>>?merely a
>>?matter of immediacy.
>>
>?Really, that's not right. ?Put up a registration barrier, and you
>?are less
>?open.
>
>?The main issue though is WP's responsiveness. ?The USP of wiki is
>?that they
>?are very responsive to what the online population thinks or knows.
>?Having
>?no registration promotes that quality: we do the maximum to make WP
>?responsive by removing obstructions to just editing. ?If we were
>?trying to
>?scoop other news media, this would show up as an advantage.
>
>?Charles
>
>
>?_______________________________________________
>?WikiEN-l mailing list
>?WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>?http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stalked by a "new user"

body:
I'd add it as evidence to the Irate case - it smells of sockpuppet to
me.

-Snowspinner

On Apr 4, 2005, at 2:54 PM, Violet/Riga wrote:

> I'd appreciate it if somebody could look at the contributions by
> Kreen, a "new user" that immediately went after articles I've worked
> on, eventually starting an RFC, demanding page protection and claiming
> 3RR for after just one revert!  I'm not aware of any communications
> with this person previously and they've not discussed anything with me
> so far - just come along and tried to organise my de-sysopping.
>
> Not sure how to progress this, though the user seems to have logged
> off now.
>
> ~~~~ Violet/Riga
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Nicolay A. Vasiliev

subject: [WikiEN-l] DB upload trouble

body:
Oh, sorry, but I meant WikiPedia, its database dump.

Alphax wrote:

> Nicolay A. Vasiliev wrote:
>
>> Is there somebody able to answer for me?
>>
>> Nicolay A. Vasiliev wrote:
>>
>>> Hello there!
>>>
>>> Let me come in to your community please :)!
>>>
>>> And immediately I need your advice. I am starting to install
>>> MediaWiki on my server. I got DB dump and tried to execute this from
>>> shell by connecting to DB and pointing the source as this dump. This
>>> operation starts to insert records but after some time it fails with
>>> an error of max packet size exceeding. This paameter set as 1 Gb
>>> already but this fires in any case :(. Help me please how could I
>>> upload the Wiki database.
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance and sorry my por English.
>>>
>>> Nicolay Vasiliev.
>>
>>
>>
> This list is about issues relating to the English Wikipedia. You want
> MediaWiki-l: <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l>
>


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Sounds pretty much like what we had this year.  I'm not even clear that
>there were *any* official joke articles this year, so I assume that they
>only thing that kept the joke articles up was a general disposition among
>certain editors to keep them there.
>
>
I did get a fake "you have new messages" notice that when I clicked on
it linked me to a joke article in the user namespace.  That's fairly
official, I'd assume, since normal users can't send out fake new-message
notices.  On the plus side, it was a pretty good article.

-Mark


list: foundation-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] WSIS: input from Wikimedia Foundation

body:
Hi,

This is the text which will be submitted to the WSIS by the Education Taks
Force. The chapter below '''Rights of free access to repositories of
content''' was added from my recommendation. Critics and suggestions
welcomed.

Best wishes,
Yann

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/World_Summit_on_Information_Society/Political_chapeau

(...)

== Rights of free access to repositories of content ==

All the previous items cannot expand, produce growth, be diffused unless there
is a reduction of the present disconnect between the cost of cultural and
educational products and the duration of copyright and Intellectual Property
Rights and patents.

The taskforce considers that the WSIS process is a unique chance to clarify
the categories between what belongs to public domain and what doesn?t. The
ICTs should facilitate access to existing public domain documents, with
special indexes and metadata. Nation states should develop policies to help
users, inform them about their rights and responsibilities and clarify the
access to these metadata and administrative processes. The current management
of the rights of access is so complicated so far that they produce chilling
effects to use and development of materials.

The taskforce strongly recommends the creation of a right of fair use that is
not constraining. For some data they are theoretically available and free of
rights but in practice, they are not easy to recuperate or they are too slow
to access and therefore create frustration. These obstacles are a severe
impediment to the development of valid teaching materials and reference
documents that would be otherwise facilitators of scaling up modalities, like
replicability, modularity and sustainability for education, training and
research.

(...)
=== Rights of free access ===

The taskforce recognizes the importance of copyright in the interest of
development of innovation and of faire remuneration of creative work, but it
upholds that it should be balanced byh a public right of access to knowledge,
in accordance with the Universal declaration of human rights (art.27). As a
result it recommends an exemption/exception of Intellectual Property Rights
for archiving and educating, in the non-profit contexts of education and
research, like schools, museums, libraries, archives, etc.

For dissemination of materials the taskforce also recommends partnerships
between authors, broadcasters and other content producers and the users
(teachers and students) so as to develop documents together, free of rights,
to enrich the global commons of culture. Other partnerships can be developed
as in the case of the self-evolving Wikipedia?

For documents that are not free of rights, the taskforce recommends the
development of an international mechanism with incremental levels of access,
according to the amount of years. This amount of years should be the reverse
of the one that is currently existing. Instead of   increasing the years of
protection, there should be a cap, that could be located around 30 years with
a moving wall possible of + or ? 3 years, before a document becomes public
domain. This would present the advantage to give the author the benefit of
his work during his lifetime, while allowing others to modify it and creating
innovative forms from it. The authors should be given the option of choosing
a basic fee for use of their documents before the 30 years deadline.
In any case, beyond 30 years of publication, documents and patents produced by
public institutions or co-financed by public funds, should be free of rights
for education purposes, especially for non-profit education.

(...)

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Caching of includes

body:
Joel Wiesmann wrote:
> Now the problem is, that if I create a second event, the sandbox still shows
> only one event and:
> - If I do an "edit" on the sandbox page, the 2nd event appears.
> - It also appears when I clean the browser-cache and reload the page.
> - Doing a "hard-refresh" with shift-reload won't show the 2nd entry.
> - All other caching mechanisms are deactivated.

The rendered HTML of the page is kept in the parser cache. If you're not
using memcached, parser-cache data is stored in blobs in the
'objectcache' table.

Either manually purge affected pages with action=purge, or manually
purge the objectcache table (or just the affected pages using the
cache's delete method), or disable the parser cache.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050404/487fb3dd/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Joseph Reagle

body:
On Monday 04 April 2005 07:42, David Gerard wrote:
> > Analysed at that level, the promotional statement is already untrue.
> > Blocked users and users of blocked IP addresses cannot edit. At a more
> > extreme level, those with no access to the Internet cannot edit. In my
> > opinion, preventing anonymous edits makes the project no less open as
> > long as registration is unrestricted.
>
> This one comes up again and again, and the consensus has always been
> "nope, anon edits will continue thanks."

I'm curious, do you have a pointer to this consensus? (Because of [1].)

[1] http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/lost-minority


subject:
[Wikitech-l] How to configure synchronization of 2 instances
	of	mediawiki

body:
Laurent CHASTEL wrote:
> Is there a way to redirect mysql queries according to their type in
> mediawiki : select on B(slave) and insert/update/delete on master(A) ?
> (mysql replication is used to push modification for A to B)

There is some support for using multiple replicated servers, sending
some queries to a slave, but it's not currently designed for
high-latency links and you can expect to see poor performance.

See DefaultSettings.php for all configuration settings; see $wgDBservers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050404/658fd32b/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] DB upload trouble

body:
I meant the DB dump of WikiPedia

> This list is about issues relating to the English Wikipedia. You want
> MediaWiki-l: <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Instant music playing link

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> For uploaded non-image media (usually .ogg at the moment), how about an
> additional, automatically generated link like
>
> Play
>
> For our current link, I always get the open/save dialog, which *can* be
> great to store the file. But to listen to, e.g., a pronounciation ogg,
> quick'n'dirty in-browser playing would be nice too.

Is your browser misconfigured? The above should be equivalent to a
normal  link except for being useless when JavaScript is
disabled, for right-click save, for opening in new window, or anything
else that normal people might want to do.

If it is behaving differently, file a bug report with your browser's
developer.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20050404/006bcaf1/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week officially
	launched

body:
To all Wikimedians near and far -

today is the official launch date of the first Wikimedia Collaboration
of the Week. We will try to do something important which affects the
success of Wikimedia and its projects every week. This week,
participating Wikimedians join forces to build the MediaWiki handbook in
multiple languages on Meta.

The current collaboration of the week is featured on the community
portals or other exposed pages of the participating wikis, which at the
present time are Wikipedias in English, German, Spanish, Sicilian, Norsk
(nynorsk), and Chinese. If you haven't already, please promote this idea
on your local project and add your wiki to the list:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_COTW#Participating_wikis

Next week's COTW is decided on:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_COTW#Candidates

The current collaboration on the MediaWiki help is coordinated on this page:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_COTW/Help

(Please help to translate these pages!)

Hopefully, the Wikimedia COTW will raise awareness of Wikimedia, bring
our projects closer together and, most importantly, help to get things
done which need to be done.

I invite you to join the first COTW and help to make it a success.

All best,

Erik


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [Wikipedia-l] The value of Pronunciation

body:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17). I heard accents
> > from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON EARTH I'd
> > ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly homogeneous by
> > comparison.
>
> American, too.  I pride myself (more or less) on speaking a very
> standard American English with a very standard American accent.  This
> has become more important as I speak to people whose first language is
> not English, because a very mainstream American accent is easy to
> understand (for people who watch American movies, at least, which
> means a lot of people).
>
> Germans and Dutch and French have reported to me that I am easier to
> understand than Angela, for example.  (She has a beautiful accent in
> my opinion, but it sounds Very British.)
>
> Now, even so, I once took a fun little quiz/survey online (which I
> can't find now) which was able to identify that I'm from the south --
> it utilized vocabulary and pronounciation questions and in some cases
> I had no idea that there were regional variations at all.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________

Most of the world can't even tell what language i'm speaking most of the
time. I'm from Newcastle, England and have the accent to suit.

I think that in Britain, the further North your accent originates from, the
harder it is for those not from your area to understand you. The London
accent is fairly easy to comprehend in comparison to a Manchurian or Geordie
accent.

- D. Hedley


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: incidently, talking about big principles...

body:
Free use provided credit is given is actually a less restricting
license than the GFDL, which requires credit AND a whole bunch of
other restrictions.

Such images count as a class of free content, and are thus OK on Wikipedia.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
David DJ Hedley said:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>> > I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17). I heard
>> > accents from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON
>> > EARTH I'd ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly
>> > homogeneous by comparison.
>>
>> American, too.  I pride myself (more or less) on speaking a very
>> standard American English with a very standard American accent.

[...]

>> _______________________________________________
>
> Most of the world can't even tell what language i'm speaking most of
> the time. I'm from Newcastle, England and have the accent to suit.

Well I'm from Sunderland, which if anything has a more infamous accent
than nearby Newcastle, and I now live...in Walthamstow. :)


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:

>>David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I was amazed when I moved to Walthamstow (London E17). I heard accents
>>>from people obviously born here that sounded like NOTHING ON EARTH I'd
>>>ever heard before. The Australian accent is incredibly homogeneous by
>>>comparison.
>>>
>>>
>>American, too.  I pride myself (more or less) on speaking a very
>>standard American English with a very standard American accent.  This
>>has become more important as I speak to people whose first language is
>>not English, because a very mainstream American accent is easy to
>>understand (for people who watch American movies, at least, which
>>means a lot of people).
>>
>>Germans and Dutch and French have reported to me that I am easier to
>>understand than Angela, for example.  (She has a beautiful accent in
>>my opinion, but it sounds Very British.)
>>
>>Now, even so, I once took a fun little quiz/survey online (which I
>>can't find now) which was able to identify that I'm from the south --
>>it utilized vocabulary and pronounciation questions and in some cases
>>I had no idea that there were regional variations at all.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>_______________________________________________
>>
>>
>
>Most of the world can't even tell what language i'm speaking most of the
>time. I'm from Newcastle, England and have the accent to suit.
>
>I think that in Britain, the further North your accent originates from, the
>harder it is for those not from your area to understand you. The London
>accent is fairly easy to comprehend in comparison to a Manchurian or Geordie
>accent.
>
>- D. Hedley
>
>
Manchurian? I didn't even know the northern Chinese generally spoke
English... :)  Mancunian's not a difficult accent to understand (IMHO)
-- see the current Doctor Who (well, it's Salford rather than Mancunian,
but it's right next door). As to the further north you go, once you get
past Glesga' and Embra, and west of Aberdeen you find they speak a very
clear English in the Highlands/Inverness area with just a nice soft
accent. The real distinction isn't "north" -- the really impenetrable
accents are urban, and of course the accents which consistently end up
at the bottom of surveys of desirability are Scouse and Brummie.

--
Arwel Parry
"Most planets have a North!" - Doctor Who
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page Monitoring

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

Minty wrote:
>>From the Dept. of Dreams:
>
> What I would really like is to be able to "subscribe" to a specific
> Wikipedia article and be notified **in a manner of my choosing** when
> updates occur.
>
> via Bloglines, another RSS/news reader, via email or an IM / irc msg, etc...
>
> I realise I can create a WP account and then my own custom watch list,
> but quite frankly this ain't cutting the mustard for me (Dept. of
> Dreams, right ;)
>
> I have more than enough passwords, accounts and pages to check on a
> regular basis, and I would generally like to have less not more.  To
> put it bluntly, I don't want to have to login and check a wikipedia
> account...
>
> Is there a way to do this?
>
> Sort of a ....
>
>   WP watch list to *anything*
>
> convertor / service....?

Why don't you write a script that monitors the History page of a
Wikipedia article and takes appropriate action when it notices something
has changed? I don't think Wikipedia needs to build in this function
(imagine the amount of email it would be sending out if it was like
that). I currently use cURL to grab my Recent Changes list for local
viewing.

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

iD8DBQFCUaXVqTO+fYacSNoRAmT+AJ0aK+Va2Q1Vhhvv3XbCw7zetZ0/CgCcCtKF
6VbU5inJniQ+m/h9oMt5F44=
=vz0D
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Traroth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Pictures of Wikipedia on an handy phone

body:
Hi,

I took some pictures of Wikipedia on my handy. Maybe
it's interesting ? You can see them here :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Traroth/Wikipedia_on_my_handy_phone

Traroth

__________________________________________________________________
D?couvrez le nouveau Yahoo! Mail : 250 Mo d'espace de stockage pour vos mails !
Cr?ez votre Yahoo! Mail sur http://fr.mail.yahoo.com/


body:
David Gerard said:
> My own name would be pronounced in vastly varying ways
> in various languages of Europe, but even then I couldn't really assert
> the pronunciations were *incorrect*.

I agree with Mr Garrot.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: (fwd) Re: [WikiEN-l] Vile Triga and MattCrypto.

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 3:24 PM, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> > (VampWillow, JamesF - I wonder how much of a thing we'll need
> > pointing out the UK org does not run the servers ...)
>
> I suspect that it might well become one of our stock replies -
> #REDIRECT[[Wikimedia Foundation]].

At the risk of creating a double redirect... #REDIRECT [[WikiEN-l]].

The Foundation is the wrong place for content disputes as well, though
from the emails sent to the board at wikimedia address, you'd never know.
:)

Angela.


from_name: Sj

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 9:52 AM, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 4, 2005 9:37 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > Of all the ideas that I saw proposed, I think that the absolute best
> > compromise between those who love the holiday and those who are not
> > great fans of it would be to have the main page be 100% real and
> > accurate in every last respect, but *also* to have it be filled with
> > stories that people would naturally suspect to be hoaxes.

This could be very cute, if done correctly.  We might also choose
another outlet for community April Fools' jokes and hoaxes; perhaps
the Community Portal.

> > And finally, and most important, it appeals to all of us on both sides
> > of the debate who are intellectual snobs. :-) Any lame website can
> > come up with fake stories *yawn* to trick people *yawn*.

I don't want to trash my rep as an intellectual snob... but we are
probably the only website in the world that can come up with a fake
full-fledged encyclopedia article, with careful background research,
references to [real] scholarly work on the [fake] subject, and
elaborate footnotes.

> Great minds think alike, as BBC had the same thing:
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4400535.stm

Nice catch :-)  Of course, BBC *also* runs various April Fools' hoaxes
each year.

--
+sj+


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Daniel Mayer said:
>The trouble this time was that the FAs that a person may have
> mistaken for April Fools jokes were already featured on the Main Page
> by the time April 1 came around. Next time these should be kept in
> reserve and then the best of that crop could be the April 1 TFA. 'Did
> you know...' could also be subverted for a day from displaying
> interesting facts that are in new articles to very unusual facts from
> some of our more off the wall - but still correct and real - articles.

What you're saying seems to boil down to: "Next year, let's keep the less
interesting stuff off Wikipedia in the run up to April 1."  How will that
make Wikipedia a better encyclopedia?


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Database dump uploading trouble

body:
Hi!

> [...]
> The error message fires when I try to execute 20050309_cur_table.sql. The
> error message is something like "max_allowed_packet size is exceeded".

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Importing_a_Wikipedia_database_dump_into_MediaWiki#Packet_size

-- [[cs:User:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Daniel Mayer said:
> --- Tony SiSidawaymiminorityreportluebottle.com> wrote:
>> Daniel Mayer said:
>> >The trouble this time was that the FAFAshat a person may have
>> > mistaken for April Fools jokes were already featured on the Main
>> > Page by the time April 1 came around. Next time these should be kept
>> > in reserve and then the best of that crop could be the April 1
>> > TFTFA'Did you know...' could also be subverted for a day from
>> > displaying interesting facts that are in new articles to very
>> > unusual facts from some of our more off the wall - but still correct
>> > and real - articles.
>>
>> What you're saying seems to boil down to: "Next year, let's keep the
>> less interesting stuff off WiWikipedian the run up to April 1."  How
>> will that make WiWikipedia better encyclopedia?

(Hmm, my editing looks very odd.  Must remember to look at the screen
occasionally)
>
> There is more in life that is interesting than what could be considered
> to be a prank.
>

I'm sorry, but you don't seem to be addressing my question.  The kind of
stuff we're talking about here isn't a prank, it's articles like
[[Exploding whale]] and [[Holy prepuce]], specifically--the kind of
article that tends to know the reader out of his passive rut.  Surely it's
good to have this kind of article all the time, not save them up to take
the place of real April fools pranks.


from_name: Nicolay Vasiliev

body:
Hello there!

I am newbie in WikiPedia and I'd like to install it to my server. I got
an archieve of DB dump and put it to my web-server. But... When I try to
upload this from shell this starts but crashes with an error pointing to
max_packet_allowed meaning this is too small (but I think 1 Mb is enough
and I can't to make it more). I use MySQL 4.1.7 under  FreeBSD 4.10. The
error message fires when I try to execute 20050309_cur_table.sql. The
error message is something like "max_allowed_packet size is exceeded". I
suppose it's because all records are inserted in one "insert" clause.

Any help is very appreciated.
Thank you all in advance.

Nicolay Vasiliev


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Jimbo wrote

> Ok, I think next year we should not tolerate what went on this year.

Hmmm ... one thing that went on from April 1 to April 4 2005 is that WP went
up 10 ranks at Alexa - as I saw by chance a moment ago - rising from 100 to
90.  So perhaps it wasn't all bad.

I'd agree that Wiki-en could be more original next year.  By then, I think,
there should be an expectation that it will be getting up to something worth
tuning in for.  That is, we should play on the idea that WP will amuse in
some less-predictable fashion.

Charles


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Minutemen (vigilantes) article

body:
> >How can this be compared to terrorism? Because of our double-standard.
> >If terrorism is an act, against civilians, intended to strike fear
> >into the hearts of the populace, then I would generally say the events
> >of 11.9 qualify. I would also say the nuclear bombings of Hirosima and
> >Nagasaki qualify. Was that not the intention? So why don't we mention
> >prominently in /those/ two articles that they were terrorist acts?
> >Because we choose to restrict our in-group definition to only those
> >acts perpetrated by people who are not part of the military of a
> >nation internationally recognised as sovreign? Do we realise how
> >sillily fine the line between those two categories is? The only reason
> >we keep it separate is because we want to believe that Us attacking
> >Them is not Evil ("terrorist" can often be used as a synonym for evil
> >in modern American society), while Them attacking Us is. We demonise
> >the British role in the war for American independence, yet we glorify
> >the role of the Union in the American civil war which occurred for
> >strikingly similar reasons. Both were cases of wars seeking to gain
> >independence for a region, the Colonials and the Confederates were
> >both the disgruntled, both wanted to break away, yet the Colonials are
> >good but the Confederates are bad. Some say it's because they had
> >slaves. Then why do we perpetuate the personality cult of George
> >Washington who was a slaveowner?
> >
> You've just made the point that "terrorist" is POV, and yet seem to
> agree to its use.  This is inconsistent.
>

I don't agree to its use. But if we continue with the idea that
"terrorist" is NPOV, then why do we say "vigilante" is POV? It's a
double standard, and that was my point.

Mark


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Final April Fools wrap up

body:
Delirium wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> I think this April Fool's Day was a great success. It was also
>> successful in
>> reminding us which of the admins are the humorless autocratic control
>> freaks.
>> Remember, kiddies: just because someone's enjoying doing something
>> you don't
>> enjoy doing, it doesn't mean that's wrong.
>>
>>
> It's possible some of us just didn't find the jokes funny. =]
>
> April Fool's Day seems to be the day of the year when all the really
> lame jokes crawl out of the woodwork... just take a look at the
> trainwreck that was Slashdot's frontpage for a representative example...
>
> -Mark
>
I saw that trainwreck. What a terrible waste of bandwidth *sob*, It
could have done so many things, like power Wikipedia...

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
contact page (was: [Wikipedia-l] In a massive,
	and often anonymous context, how do we know each other?)

body:
Wouldn't it be great to have a "contact" page where people interested
in a specific topic of Wikipedia could get more directly in touch with
people who need their help. That would be especially great for folks
like me who don't contribute that much to articles but work a lot
"backstage" :D

Thanks

Jean-Baptiste Soufron, Doctorant
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 31 mars 05, ? 23:52, Joseph Reagle a ?crit :

> Hello, I have a question about your article that appeared in Wired.
> One of
> my difficulties within the Wikipedia community, or, say for example,
> this
> e-mail list, is the large number of people one is likely to come
> across. It
> can be difficult to keep track of everyone, particularly in the
> context of
> editing a diverse set of web pages So, I was wondering how do people
> come
> to know of each other? In particular, for your article, how did you
> select
> the folks you did? Asked Jimbo? Looked at the top contributors?
>
> Thanks!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: The value of Pronunciation

body:
When I met Gerard in Rotterdam, he said "hi, I am Gerard". I answered I
did not know him... Could not recognise a name though it is a name used
in France...he had to spell it :-)

ant

Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>By the way, I would strongly questoin GerardM's assertion that the person's
>>way of pronouncing their name is *correct*, in the sense of people
>>pronouncing it differently being *incorrect*.
>
>
> :-) As a matter of courtesy I try really hard to pronounce GerardM's
> name in the way that he does (Dutch way) but it's basically impossible
> for me, and feels embarassing.  So I vary between just giving up and
> pronouncing it the American way, and mangling it. ;-)
>
> --Jimbo
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: (fwd) Re: [WikiEN-l] Vile Triga and Matt Crypto.

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050404 04:16]:
>
>
>>Sorry, but... why would Wikimedia UK receive this sort of things ????
>>Receive what ?
>
>
>
> Sorry, I missed including that bit - an email from an aggrieved en: user
> based in the UK claiming his 3RR bans and cautions for personal attacks
> were evidence Wikimedia is not fulfilling its charitable goals.
>
> (VampWillow, JamesF - I wonder how much of a thing we'll need pointing out
> the UK org does not run the servers ...)
>
>
> - d.

argggg :-(


body:
On Apr 4, 2005 6:31 PM, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be great to have a "contact" page where people interested
> in a specific topic of Wikipedia could get more directly in touch with
> people who need their help.

The WikiProjects usually have a list of participants with them, so
perhaps they could be used for that purpose rather than trying to
maintain a separate list of all the topic areas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject

Angela.


body:
Angela a ?crit:
> On Apr 4, 2005 3:24 PM, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>
>>>(VampWillow, JamesF - I wonder how much of a thing we'll need
>>>pointing out the UK org does not run the servers ...)
>>
>>I suspect that it might well become one of our stock replies -
>>#REDIRECT[[Wikimedia Foundation]].
>
>
> At the risk of creating a double redirect... #REDIRECT [[WikiEN-l]].
>
> The Foundation is the wrong place for content disputes as well, though
> from the emails sent to the board at wikimedia address, you'd never know.
> :)
>
> Angela.

Admitedly, a good bunch of mails sent to board at wikimedia.org end up in
the infoen list...

Dancing chairs...


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Daniel Mayer said:

> Only one April Fools article is needed per year.

How, of all the scores of articles that are created every day on
Wikipedia, do you legislate for there to be only *one* April Fools article
on April 1?


subject: [Foundation-l] Do we have a partnership with Ourmedia?

body:
On Mar 28, 2005 11:19 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I complained very strongly to them about it before they launched their
> site publicly, and so I really don't know what else to say about it.
> It is not my style to speak ill of people, so I think I'll just say
> nothing at all.

Wikipedia has been removed from the partners page as a result of this
complaint.

I contacted the founders of Ourmedia about this, who basically felt
that the link suggested a potential collaboration, much in the same
way that the page at
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_Ourmedia
does. It also reflected the fact that Ourmedia uses Wikipedia as a
resource on pages such as http://ourmedia.org/help/publish-audio and
has had the imput of many Wikipedians into its policies.

JD said "Partnership, to us, means that we are pursuing the same
goals. If you look at our Partners page, it makes no claim about any
formal relationship between Ourmedia and Wikipedia. This is simply a
list of sites that we're working with" and Marc said the partnership
shows that we both "support the notion of shared repositories".

The issue is also being discussed on our forums at http://ourmedia.org/node/1552

Angela.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Anthere wrote:

> When I met Gerard in Rotterdam, he said "hi, I am Gerard". I answered
> I did not know him... Could not recognise a name though it is a name
> used in France...he had to spell it :-)
>
> ant
>
Hoi,
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Nl-Gerard.ogg If you want to
hear how I pronounce my name. I would be really happy to have words
(including names) in many languages. So, a French Gerard or an English
Gerard would be appreciated. :) One Dutch Gerard is enough I think .. :)

Sabine has started an article on the Italian wiktionary,
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Giovanni_Paolo_II it shows how the pope's
name is written in many languages. It would be cool to have the
pronunciations here as well. I had already started this .. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM

>
> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales a ?crit:
>
>> David Gerard wrote:
>>
>>> By the way, I would strongly questoin GerardM's assertion that the
>>> person's
>>> way of pronouncing their name is *correct*, in the sense of people
>>> pronouncing it differently being *incorrect*.
>>
>>
>>
>> :-) As a matter of courtesy I try really hard to pronounce GerardM's
>> name in the way that he does (Dutch way) but it's basically impossible
>> for me, and feels embarassing.  So I vary between just giving up and
>> pronouncing it the American way, and mangling it. ;-)
>>
>> --Jimbo
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Angela wrote:
> On Mar 28, 2005 11:19 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>I complained very strongly to them about it before they launched their
>>site publicly, and so I really don't know what else to say about it.
>>It is not my style to speak ill of people, so I think I'll just say
>>nothing at all.
>
>
> Wikipedia has been removed from the partners page as a result of this
> complaint.

I'm glad that's been resolved, at least.

> I contacted the founders of Ourmedia about this, who basically felt
> that the link suggested a potential collaboration, much in the same
> way that the page at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_Ourmedia
> does.

The Wikipedia logo was displayed prominently under a heading "Sponsors
and Partners" on *every page of the site*, and again prominently
displayed with the Wikipedia listing on their Partners page.

How's that even *vaguely* on the same level as having a single
discussion-oriented page on a community-built site that starts off with
text like "Since Ourmedia share one of the goals of the Wikimedia
Commons, it would be good if we could collaborate with them in some way.
Please use this page to brainstorm ways in which we could do this. Ideas
left here will be fed back to the ourmedia group on their wiki." ?

> JD said "Partnership, to us, means that we are pursuing the same
> goals. If you look at our Partners page, it makes no claim about any
> formal relationship between Ourmedia and Wikipedia. This is simply a
> list of sites that we're working with" and Marc said the partnership
> shows that we both "support the notion of shared repositories".

Perhaps we should chip in and buy JD a dictionary? Sooner or later the
poor fellow's going to be at the wrong end of a trademark lawsuit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20050404/a6216bd5/attachment.pgp


body:
Angela wrote:
> On Mar 28, 2005 11:19 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>I complained very strongly to them about it before they launched their
>>site publicly, and so I really don't know what else to say about it.
>>It is not my style to speak ill of people, so I think I'll just say
>>nothing at all.
>
>
> Wikipedia has been removed from the partners page as a result of this
> complaint.

I'm glad that's been resolved, at least.

> I contacted the founders of Ourmedia about this, who basically felt
> that the link suggested a potential collaboration, much in the same
> way that the page at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_Ourmedia
> does.

The Wikipedia logo was displayed prominently under a heading "Sponsors
and Partners" on *every page of the site*, and again prominently
displayed with the Wikipedia listing on their Partners page.

How's that even *vaguely* on the same level as having a single
discussion-oriented page on a community-built site that starts off with
text like "Since Ourmedia share one of the goals of the Wikimedia
Commons, it would be good if we could collaborate with them in some way.
Please use this page to brainstorm ways in which we could do this. Ideas
left here will be fed back to the ourmedia group on their wiki." ?

> JD said "Partnership, to us, means that we are pursuing the same
> goals. If you look at our Partners page, it makes no claim about any
> formal relationship between Ourmedia and Wikipedia. This is simply a
> list of sites that we're working with" and Marc said the partnership
> shows that we both "support the notion of shared repositories".

Perhaps we should chip in and buy JD a dictionary? Sooner or later the
poor fellow's going to be at the wrong end of a trademark lawsuit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20050404/a6216bd5/attachment-0001.pgp


body:
Angela wrote:
> On Mar 28, 2005 11:19 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>I complained very strongly to them about it before they launched their
>>site publicly, and so I really don't know what else to say about it.
>>It is not my style to speak ill of people, so I think I'll just say
>>nothing at all.
>
>
> Wikipedia has been removed from the partners page as a result of this
> complaint.

I'm glad that's been resolved, at least.

> I contacted the founders of Ourmedia about this, who basically felt
> that the link suggested a potential collaboration, much in the same
> way that the page at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_Ourmedia
> does.

The Wikipedia logo was displayed prominently under a heading "Sponsors
and Partners" on *every page of the site*, and again prominently
displayed with the Wikipedia listing on their Partners page.

How's that even *vaguely* on the same level as having a single
discussion-oriented page on a community-built site that starts off with
text like "Since Ourmedia share one of the goals of the Wikimedia
Commons, it would be good if we could collaborate with them in some way.
Please use this page to brainstorm ways in which we could do this. Ideas
left here will be fed back to the ourmedia group on their wiki." ?

> JD said "Partnership, to us, means that we are pursuing the same
> goals. If you look at our Partners page, it makes no claim about any
> formal relationship between Ourmedia and Wikipedia. This is simply a
> list of sites that we're working with" and Marc said the partnership
> shows that we both "support the notion of shared repositories".

Perhaps we should chip in and buy JD a dictionary? Sooner or later the
poor fellow's going to be at the wrong end of a trademark lawsuit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20050404/a6216bd5/attachment.pgp>


body:
Angela wrote:
> On Mar 28, 2005 11:19 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>I complained very strongly to them about it before they launched their
>>site publicly, and so I really don't know what else to say about it.
>>It is not my style to speak ill of people, so I think I'll just say
>>nothing at all.
>
>
> Wikipedia has been removed from the partners page as a result of this
> complaint.

I'm glad that's been resolved, at least.

> I contacted the founders of Ourmedia about this, who basically felt
> that the link suggested a potential collaboration, much in the same
> way that the page at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Collaboration_with_Ourmedia
> does.

The Wikipedia logo was displayed prominently under a heading "Sponsors
and Partners" on *every page of the site*, and again prominently
displayed with the Wikipedia listing on their Partners page.

How's that even *vaguely* on the same level as having a single
discussion-oriented page on a community-built site that starts off with
text like "Since Ourmedia share one of the goals of the Wikimedia
Commons, it would be good if we could collaborate with them in some way.
Please use this page to brainstorm ways in which we could do this. Ideas
left here will be fed back to the ourmedia group on their wiki." ?

> JD said "Partnership, to us, means that we are pursuing the same
> goals. If you look at our Partners page, it makes no claim about any
> formal relationship between Ourmedia and Wikipedia. This is simply a
> list of sites that we're working with" and Marc said the partnership
> shows that we both "support the notion of shared repositories".

Perhaps we should chip in and buy JD a dictionary? Sooner or later the
poor fellow's going to be at the wrong end of a trademark lawsuit.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20050404/a6216bd5/attachment-0001.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Richard Holton said:
> On Apr 4, 2005 1:08 PM, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> wrote:
>> Daniel Mayer said:
>>
>> > Only one April Fools article is needed per year.
>>
>> How, of all the scores of articles that are created every day on
>> Wikipedia, do you legislate for there to be only *one* April Fools
>> article on April 1?
>>
> If I understand things correctly, any "freelance" joke article in the
> main namespace would be treated as vandalism (or something) and be
> speedily deleted (or maybe moved to the user area, or something).
>

Sounds pretty much like what we had this year.  I'm not even clear that
there were *any* official joke articles this year, so I assume that they
only thing that kept the joke articles up was a general disposition among
certain editors to keep them there.
Which is, I should think, all you'd need to keep an April Fool joke
running for a few hours in the morning of April 1.


from_name: Nathan Wong

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I did get a fake "you have new messages" notice that when I clicked on
> it linked me to a joke article in the user namespace.  That's fairly
> official, I'd assume, since normal users can't send out fake
> new-message notices.  On the plus side, it was a pretty good article.

I thought that that was just a fake template that had been placed on the
top of one of the pages :s. Not that I payed it much attention at the
time, I thought that it was too time consuming for a developer task...
and a bit pointless.


subject: [WikiEN-l] DB upload trouble

body:
Nicolay A. Vasiliev wrote:

> Is there somebody able to answer for me?
>
> Nicolay A. Vasiliev wrote:
>
>> Hello there!
>>
>> Let me come in to your community please :)!
>>
>> And immediately I need your advice. I am starting to install
>> MediaWiki on my server. I got DB dump and tried to execute this from
>> shell by connecting to DB and pointing the source as this dump. This
>> operation starts to insert records but after some time it fails with
>> an error of max packet size exceeding. This paameter set as 1 Gb
>> already but this fires in any case :(. Help me please how could I
>> upload the Wiki database.
>>
>> Thanks in advance and sorry my por English.
>>
>> Nicolay Vasiliev.
>
>
This list is about issues relating to the English Wikipedia. You want
MediaWiki-l: <http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l>

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Violet/Riga

subject: [WikiEN-l] Stalked by a "new user"

body:
I'd appreciate it if somebody could look at the contributions by
Kreen, a "new user" that immediately went after articles I've worked
on, eventually starting an RFC, demanding page protection and claiming
3RR for after just one revert!  I'm not aware of any communications
with this person previously and they've not discussed anything with me
so far - just come along and tried to organise my de-sysopping.

Not sure how to progress this, though the user seems to have logged off now.

~~~~ Violet/Riga


from_name: Dori

subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions

body:
That's a lot of suggestions on hiring and spending money. Can we make sure
that the act of getting more money doesn't bankrupt the foundation? I would
hope some funds are set aside for hosting and rainy days.

On Apr 4, 2005 8:48 PM, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you to everyone who replied to my questions at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions.
>
> A lot of good suggestions and helpful comments were made, and I'm
> hoping we will be able to carry out some of these in the near future,
> or to at least begin considering them.
>
> Here is a summary of some of the suggestions. The inclusion of these
> does not mean there was necessarily agreement on carrying out the
> suggestion. Please see [[m:Board agenda/Open questions]] for the full
> discussion.
>
> == Hosting ==
> * Delegate the management of offers or centralize all hosting offers with
> Jimbo
> * Create a private wiki
> * Hire a secretary for Jimbo
> * Hire someone to manage grants and partnerships
> * Use OTRS more effectively
> * Run offers by a legal committee first
> * Hire a lawyer to write contracts
> * Ask potential partners/hosts whether we can list them among our
> "potential partners and hosts" before doing so
> * Have a standard response for people making offers
> * Be clear about how we could integrate the resources on offer
> * Consider placing databases outside the US
> * Consider the legal implications of chapters owning servers
>
> == Trademarks ==
> * The status of trademark/domain registrations should be listed on the
> Foundation website
> * A group should be tasked with keeping track of this information
> * Get a lawyer to write a contract regarding licensing the logo
> * See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy
>
> == Membership ==
> * Create a portal that allows the community to pay one another to
> produce such tasks
> * Revive the membership task
> * Hire a programmer
> * Specifying tasks properly
> * Mixed views on whether membership was worthwhile, but most thought it
> was.
>
> == Money ==
> * Developer committee should advise on what to buy
> * Budget should be documented
> * Hire programmers for Wikispecies and have them write a decent UI
>
> == Promotion ==
> * Appoint a multi-lingual PR coordinator
> * Have an explicit PR budget
> * Have an unofficial PR committee
> * Spend more on promotion (not all agreed with this)
> * Outreach programs to educational institutions
>
> == Grants ==
> * Hire a full-time grants coordinator
> * Find a way of getting more community involvement with grants
>
> == Developers ==
> * Appoint a developer liaison and possibly a separate server liaison
> * Encourage and empower the developer committee
>
> == Communication ==
> * Clarify the relationship between the Board and the community
> * Global message notification and translation
> * More regular letters from the board
> * More regular/more often meetings
> * More formal involvement between chapters and the board
> * Reform the OTRS procedures
> * Reinvigorat the system of embassies, with elected ambassadors
>
> --
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions


subject: [WikiEN-l] Stalked by a "new user"

body:
I'm not sure it is Irate - they both contributed at the same minute.
It's possible though, and I do think it's a sockpuppet.

Irate was posting on this list recently - if he's still here perhaps
he'll reply?

Cheers

On Apr 4, 2005 9:00 PM, Phil Sandifer <sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I'd add it as evidence to the Irate case - it smells of sockpuppet to
> me.
>
> -Snowspinner
>
> On Apr 4, 2005, at 2:54 PM, Violet/Riga wrote:
>
> > I'd appreciate it if somebody could look at the contributions by
> > Kreen, a "new user" that immediately went after articles I've worked
> > on, eventually starting an RFC, demanding page protection and claiming
> > 3RR for after just one revert!  I'm not aware of any communications
> > with this person previously and they've not discussed anything with me
> > so far - just come along and tried to organise my de-sysopping.
> >
> > Not sure how to progress this, though the user seems to have logged
> > off now.
> >
> > ~~~~ Violet/Riga

~~~~ Violet/Riga


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: (fwd) Re: [WikiEN-l] Vile Triga and Matt
	Crypto.

body:
Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050404 04:16]:

> Sorry, but... why would Wikimedia UK receive this sort of things ????
> Receive what ?

Sorry, I missed including that bit - an email from an aggrieved en: user
based in the UK claiming his 3RR bans and cautions for personal attacks
were evidence Wikimedia is not fulfilling its charitable goals.

(VampWillow, JamesF - I wonder how much of a thing we'll need pointing out
the UK org does not run the servers ...)

- d.


from_name: Minty

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page Monitoring

body:
>From the Dept. of Dreams:

What I would really like is to be able to "subscribe" to a specific
Wikipedia article and be notified **in a manner of my choosing** when
updates occur.

via Bloglines, another RSS/news reader, via email or an IM / irc msg, etc...

I realise I can create a WP account and then my own custom watch list,
but quite frankly this ain't cutting the mustard for me (Dept. of
Dreams, right ;)

I have more than enough passwords, accounts and pages to check on a
regular basis, and I would generally like to have less not more.  To
put it bluntly, I don't want to have to login and check a wikipedia
account...

Is there a way to do this?

Sort of a ....

  WP watch list to *anything*

convertor / service....?


body:
Theo Clarke (wiki at tignosis.com) [050404 20:35]:
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2005 01:06:44 +0100, David 'DJ' Hedley wrote:

> >?That would be undermining the very point that promotes Wikipedia,?though.
> >?"Anyone can edit" is false if anons can't edit. Theres a lot of?people who
> >?would just walk out if that became true.

> Analysed at that level, the promotional statement is already untrue. Blocked users and users of blocked IP addresses cannot edit. At a more extreme level, those with no access to the Internet cannot edit.
> In my opinion, preventing anonymous edits makes the project no less open as long as registration is unrestricted.

This one comes up again and again, and the consensus has always been "nope,
anon edits will continue thanks."

- d.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 9:37 PM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Of all the ideas that I saw proposed, I think that the absolute best
> compromise between those who love the holiday and those who are not
> great fans of it would be to have the main page be 100% real and
> accurate in every last respect, but *also* to have it be filled with
> stories that people would naturally suspect to be hoaxes.
> --Jimbo

Great minds think alike, as BBC had the same thing:

BBC NEWS | Magazine | 10 stories that could be pranks - but aren't
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4400535.stm

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Open questions

body:
Though there are many suggestions on hiring and
spending money, that does not mean we will follow all
these suggestions. Some editors favored spending money
to improve technical issues. Others to improve
communication. Others to improve the grant area. Or
the legal area.

I think in all these cases, we first need to really
make sure we do not host the resources amongst
ourselves. We obviously can not fund all of them right
now.

There is one thing which is certain though. There is a
lot to do, and we are currently stretched to the limit
of our availabilities. One answer could be to try to
get more editors involved in meta issues.

Ant

Dori a ??crit:
> That's a lot of suggestions on hiring and spending
money. Can we make sure
> that the act of getting more money doesn't bankrupt
the foundation? I would
> hope some funds are set aside for hosting and rainy
days.
>
> On Apr 4, 2005 8:48 PM, Angela
<beesley-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
wrote:
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Open questions


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Page Monitoring

body:
 > What I would really like is to be able to "subscribe" to a specific
 > Wikipedia article and be notified **in a manner of my choosing** when
updates occur.
 > via Bloglines, another RSS/news reader, via email or an IM / irc msg,
etc...ENotif - Email notification for page changes

see http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 and
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enotif

- available for CVS HEAD 1.5, and several 1.3.x. version
- and soon for 1.4 - I am working on this

Regards,
Tom


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Instant music playing link

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 10:37 PM, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> To answer myself, maybe one of the nice methods from here:
>
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/mark/audio/play.htm

Hm, interesting. I've added that to my musings on what could be done
to better "integrate" sounds at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia#Software_features

One big advantage of having proper sound markup would be to force
people to finally agree on one way of presenting it, rather than the
proliferation of help pages that keep springing up, and the strange
ways of linking to them...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
Theo Clarke (wiki at tignosis.com) [050404 23:04]:

> I am not advocating the prevention of anonymous edits.  I am saying that such a policy has no relevant connection to the claim that "anyone can edit".

Er yes, sorry about that - I read more than you actually wrote.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page Monitoring

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 9:34 PM, Minty <mintywalker at gmail.com> wrote:

> What I would really like is to be able to "subscribe" to a specific
> Wikipedia article and be notified **in a manner of my choosing** when
> updates occur.
>
> via Bloglines, another RSS/news reader

As for RSS (& Atom, etc), see lots of previous posts on these lists
[this one & mediawiki-l]. Or rather, don't bother, because they can be
summarised thus:
* people like the idea of RSS-ised watchlists
* people like watchlists to be private
* an RSS feed for watchlists could be made pseudo-private by having a
random token in its URL, and only activating it when the user first
asked for it (and, presumably, giving them the option of
re-randomising or disabling it)
* feed aggregators don't, in general, support secure connections, but
I think some do, so that's another option; not that MediaWiki can use
that kind of login yet either, mind you

See also http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=471,472,943
- 472, for instance, discusses turning individual page histories into
feeds, for a more fine-grained kind of "subscription" which wouldn't
suffer the privacy problem.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Instant music playing link

body:
For uploaded non-image media (usually .ogg at the moment), how about an
additional, automatically generated link like

Play

For our current link, I always get the open/save dialog, which *can* be
great to store the file. But to listen to, e.g., a pronounciation ogg,
quick'n'dirty in-browser playing would be nice too.

And, no disadvantages for the tin foil hat^W^W^W^W our
JavaScript-disabeled friends :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] Instant music playing link

body:
To answer myself, maybe one of the nice methods from here:

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/mark/audio/play.htm

Magnus

Magnus Manske schrieb:
> For uploaded non-image media (usually .ogg at the moment), how about an
> additional, automatically generated link like
>
> Play
>
> For our current link, I always get the open/save dialog, which *can* be
> great to store the file. But to listen to, e.g., a pronounciation ogg,
> quick'n'dirty in-browser playing would be nice too.
>
> And, no disadvantages for the tin foil hat^W^W^W^W our
> JavaScript-disabeled friends :-)
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
Daniel Mayer said:
>
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> How, of all the scores of articles that are created every day on
>> Wikipedia, do you legislate for there to be only *one* April Fools
>> article on April 1?
>
> There is only one TFA per day - hence *today's* featured article.

Ah, my mistake.  I didn't know the proposal was only to limit the "Today's
Featured Article".


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l]  Submission on Orphan works

body:
Yann Forget wrote:

>This is the text which will be submitted to the WSIS by the Education Taks
>Force. The chapter below '''Rights of free access to repositories of
>content''' was added from my recommendation. Critics and suggestions
>welcomed.
>
>
That being said I should put the following on the record which I
submitted to the US Copyright Office in response to their call for
comments in their study of orphan works.

>I write as an active member and contributor in the Wikipedia family of projects.  In particular, much of my participation in that project has been focused on the Wikisource project.  This project is concerned with making old texts available on the internet, and because of that needs to be more attentive of copyright issues than the other projects.  Because the servers for the project are located in the United States, the law of the United States is the most directly applicable, but because it is our intention that the texts should be fully reproducible by users of the text we must ever be mindful of the fact that many users will be in other countries and subject to other laws.
>
>The average citizen of any country is law-abiding, and to this end is prone to err to his disadvantage.  In the absence of any significant financial interest on his part he is not willing to risk litigation that could arise from his action no matter how remote the risk.  He ignores the fact that a potential claimant must satisfy certain requirements before he can undertake a formal legal action, and tends to see copyright law as primarily a criminal law issue rather the primarily civil issue that it is.  To some extent he has been intimidated by the dire warnings that the movie industry puts at the beginning of its movie videos.  If he sees a copyright notice on the back of the title page for a modern reprinting of a 19th century work, he interprets that as applicable to the entire work rather than to just the material that the new editor has added.
>
>The former renewal provision was perhaps one of the more interesting features of United States copyright law, not only because it allowed orphan works to go into the public domain more quickly, but also because it allowed an author who may have lost his rights through a poor publishing deal to regain those rights and the possibility of an improved contract.  The rigid time limit for renewals did indeed have unfortunate consequences, but that could have been ameliorated by specifying less drastic results for failing to renew such as allowing a copyright to be revived.
>
>Copyrights, like other intellectual property rights are first of all property rights.  Can they continue to survive in the absence of anyone to own those rights?  Take this plausible scenario.  My grandfather, who was not a writer, died in 1948 leaving 14 children, but no will.  He did not own enough to make a will worthwhile. Now, all of his children, and many of his nearly 40 grandchildren have died.  Under a life plus 70 regime if I were to discover a long lost work of his such as a collection of love poems related to his 1895 marriage, determining the ownership of the copyright would be a nightmare since no single descendant would have the authority to permit the publication of the work.
>
>If a corporation is dissolved  or becomes bankrupt the copyrights may not be mentioned at the time of dissolution, or in the listing of assets during the bankruptcy process.  Is this tantamount to a declaration of worthlessness?  Worse still for a non-profit corporation that by law is not allowed to distribute its residual assets to its members.
>
>It should be stated in law that copyright cannot exist in the absence of an owner.
>
>Such a statement should, of course, depend on evidence.  Simply being unable to find an owner is not evidence that he does not exist.  There should be more than that, but good evidence requires proving a negative, and that is something which in reality can be very difficult if not impossible.  It could be stated that failure to mention a copyright in the course of a corporate bankruptcy would be definitive proof that the copyright was abandoned, but in the case of a personal bankruptcy this could lead to unjust results.
>
>I would put the concept of an orphaned copyright directly in the law. It might have a different name, and for the purposes of these comments I will call it "dormant" to distinguish my usage from the term "orphan" as used in the Notice of Inquiry.
>
>A dormant copyright is a copyright that has not been protected by its owners by a positive act.  With reference to the old law a copyright that was not properly renewed would become dormant rather than go into the public domain.  Dormancy alone would not terminate a copyright.  A copyright would still continue to be valid until its normal expiry date unless it can be clearly proved that there is no owner, or that the owner has taken definite steps to put it into the public domain.
>
>As things stand the basic patent rule is that patents last for twenty years.  This is a very modest term when compared to copyright terms.  (As an aside I would keep the copyright rule that expiry takes place on the last day of the year; it would be wasteful of everybody's resources to have disputes that depend on the specific date in the year when a copyright became effective.)  A twenty year "no dormancy" rule could be reasonable.  During that time the burden of proof would be on the user to show that he had the right to use the material, or that there was clear evidence that the copyright was terminated.
>
>A twenty-year no dormancy period would be a rolling period.  Any protective act would cause the period to be extended.  Legal republication would be a protective act.  Thus, in the case of a popular novel, it would not be uncommon for it to be reprinted many times in the five years following its first publication; after that it is no longer produced by the publisher.  Each such reprint would reset the dormancy clock.  Of course no such resetting could serve to extend copyrights beyond the normal expiry period.  A copyright extension registration notice at any time could be another positive act that prolongs the no dormancy period.  Filing a will or corporate dissolution documents showing the transfer of copyrights would be yet other such steps.
>
>When a copyright goes into dormancy the burden of proof on the user would be diminished.  Proof of having searched public databases for relevant information may be sufficient to discharge his duty of due diligence.  These searches would not be limited to copyright office records, but could include, among other things, searching the Social Security Death Index for evidence of the author's death, or national on-line telephone records.  A report of a company that does on-line searches could also be evidence.  Keeping printed records of these searches could be prima facie evidence that the searches were made and when.  Perhaps too a notice should go on the back of the republisher's title page to the effect that the material is being published under dormancy provisions.
>
>What happens then when a person has done his due diligence, and published the desired dormant material, only to have the copyright owner reappear.  The republisher should have limited rights.  He should not be penalized for what he did prior to the reappearance of the copyright owner, and he should be allowed to print and distribute copies  that are already subject to a printing contract.  If the number of undistributed copies exceeds a certain number a reasonable statutorily determined royalty could be required on a sliding scale.  Federal Court litigation in these circumstances would be ridiculously expensive when small amounts are under consideration.  If the republisher wishes to produce even more perhaps a compulsory licensing scheme could be considered.
>
>The technical ability of anyone to easily republish anything electronically presents special challenges to copyright.  Often this is done in blissful unawareness of copyright law.  The concept of take-down request should certainly continue, and should continue to include the requirement that the person requesting the take-down have some legal standing in the matter.  No-one should be required to respond to a do-gooder who only has half of the facts even though would dictate that the republisher review the situation.  Apart from that an electronic republisher should face the same duty of due diligence as a paper republisher.  In addition a dormancy notice should be essential as a caveat to additional downstream republishers.
>
>The small publisher, the person who puts a work on a website, or the scholar is not motivated by profit in his undertakings.  The entire demand for the republished work may not exceed 100 copies.  At that level even cost recovery would make the price prohibitive to his potential market.  This is no different from original works with a low demand.  Amateur genealogists have certainly discovered that when they try to recover costs from family members.  But rather than trying to develop complicated provisions about defining small producers their interests should be built into copyright system in a way that minimizes the effects when small quantities are produced.  Such quantities would be determined on a cumulative basis to prevent possible abuse of the provision.
>
>Although the present Canadian provision for copyright licensing has only been used since 1990, provisions of this sort have been in Canadian law much longer, but were simply never used.  The mere 143 licenses that have been issued suggest that the procedure is unduly bureaucratic.  Reading the three licence rejections that have been published makes clear that the Canadian Copyright Board functions as some kind of quasi-judicial body.  This is not consistent with any kind of efficient treatment of these issues.
>
>The introduction of copyright collectives does not help much either.  Such bodies only serve to create added costs for their own administration.  They may have some use as voluntary associations of authors, but even there there needs to be a mechanism to limit their rights to accumulate funds for authors with whom they no longer have any contact.  Worse still is the apparent situation under Romanian law where the ownership of orphan works defaults to the collective.
>
>Any registration system must be easy to use by all concerned.  Needles paperwork can be the greatest disincentive to compliance in any law, and can be filled with traps for the unwary.  For the copyright holder registration should be optional rather than a required.  This should satisfy the Berne Convention requirement that copyrights cannot be limited by formalities.  The registration would be strictly evidentiary in nature for establishing an author's rights.  This would not bar a possible requirement that publishers file a monthly report of what they have published in that month.  For the user the registration system would best be in the form of a searchable on-line database that is capable of producing a report to the effect that "This person has today searched the date for Xxxxx, but nothing was found in the database."  Numerous variations are possible to cover all conceivable situations.
>
>Only government are in a position to produce such a registration database at a reasonable cost.  Low or non-existent fees to the owner will encourage registration.  The absence of fees to the user will encourage compliance.  It is important to remember that while a single fee for searching the copyright status of a book may be reasonable, this same fee can become considerable for a user who wants to publish a series of extracts from a wide range of books.  Private industry cannot do this without a means of recovering costs.  In our electronic age it may become necessary to put this task in the hands of an appropriate international body.  An international registry could also help to determine what country's copyright laws apply to any given work.
>
>I should also speak of the public domain.  When a copyright expires it characterized as having "fallen into the public domain".  This suggests that being in the public domain is something less than ownership.  I would suggest rather that "public domain" means ownership by the general public, and that governments are the protectors of the public domain.  There is a provision in the law now that allows for penalties when something is improperly claimed as copyrighted, but it should also be made clear that this also applies for wrongful claims on material that is in the public domain.
>
>Finally, I would assert that in order to balance interests related to copyright both the owner and the user have rights and responsibilities.  The owner in particular has a responsibility to make a small effort to protect his copyrights.  He should not depend solely on blunt legal instruments to protect it on his behalf.  If he fails to take a few fundamental steps he may find that his copyright is still valid but impaired.
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Final April Fools wrap up

body:
Matt R wrote:

>Well, I think it was easily worth it. On the "fun people" scale, you'd expect
>encyclopedia editors to be right down there with accountants and morticians,
>but April Fool's demonstrated that, as a community, we have the capacity to
>step back for a day and not take ourselves quite so seriously (even if 99% of
>the time we're acrimoniously bitching about VfD or Autofellation etc...) I'll
>add my thanks to all those people, too.
>
>-- Matt
>[[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
If you ever miss the insanity of last Friday, just go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Filiocht/European_toilet_paper_holder_on_wheels/Anti_%27T%27_bias_poll_on_a_pogostick

And fun times shall be had by all, in the User: namespace, safely out of
harm's way.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


list: commons-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Commons-l] Registration for Wikimania started

body:
Hi all,

Registration for Wikimania, the first international Wikimedia conference
is now possible on http://wikimania.wikimedia.org

We'd like to invite all participants of the wikimedia projects to join
this big event in summer 2005.

Wikimania will take place from 4th to 8th august 2005 in Frankfurt am
Main, Germany.  The event will combine Wikimedia community discussions
and software hacking with academic research, presentations of current
implementations, and user/community panels. Wiki fans, community
members, and developers are all invited to attend.

We are also encouraging presentation and content submissions for the
conference; for more information, see the call for papers
(http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers).

Please pass this message along to all Wikimedia projects, in english or
translating it (for coordination see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcement)

If you'd like to help or have ideas for the conference, don't hesitate
to contact us at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Feedback (or
just ask here on the mailing list).

Wikimania is an event from the community for the community - it will
live from your participation ;-)

greetings and hope to see you in summer,
elian,
for the Wikimania organisation team


subject: [Foundation-l] Registration for Wikimania started


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Registration for Wikimania started


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Registration for Wikimania started

body:
[forwarded message from Elian]

Hi all,

Registration for Wikimania, the first international Wikimedia conference
is now possible on http://wikimania.wikimedia.org

We'd like to invite all participants of the Wikimedia projects to join
this big event in summer 2005.

Wikimania will take place from 4th to 8th August 2005 in Frankfurt am
Main, Germany.  The event will combine Wikimedia community discussions
and software hacking with academic research, presentations of current
implementations, and user/community panels. Wiki fans, community
members, and developers are all invited to attend.

We are also encouraging presentation and content submissions for the
conference; for more information, see the call for papers
(http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers).

Please pass this message along to all Wikimedia projects, in english or
translating it (for coordination see
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcement)

If you'd like to help or have ideas for the conference, don't hesitate
to contact us at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania:Feedback (or
just ask here on the mailing list).

Wikimania is an event from the community for the community - it will
live from your participation ;-)

greetings and hope to see you in summer,
elian,
for the Wikimania organisation team


body:
Arwel Parry (arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk) [050405 01:25]:

>  The real distinction isn't "north" -- the really impenetrable
> accents are urban, and of course the accents which consistently end up
> at the bottom of surveys of desirability are Scouse and Brummie.

Oh, yes. For a good example, listen to [[Benjamin Zephaniah]] speak (or
perform), and then realise he was in fact born in Birmingham. Authentic
native speech there.

By the way, I would strongly questoin GerardM's assertion that the person's
way of pronouncing their name is *correct*, in the sense of people
pronouncing it differently being *incorrect*. A proper noun can be a word
in a language susceptible to accent variations without being *incorrect* -
if someone says their name is "John Smith" in a Walthamstow council-estate
accent, someone saying it in Australian, American newsreader, Canadian or
whatever accent is not *incorrect* in pronouncing it the local way, not
even a little bit. It's *interesting* to know how the person pronounces it,
but it's not a firm guide to pronunciation. My own name would be pronounced
in vastly varying ways in various languages of Europe, but even then I
couldn't really assert the pronunciations were *incorrect*.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Juriwiki-l

body:
Hello

A new mailing list was opened this week. Its name is Juriwiki-l at mail.wikimedia.org. Its moderator is Soufron.

Primary goals of the list
In the past few months, we observed an increasing need of legal counselling. Needs may be related to the following issues
* requests from editors or readers with regards to our content from a legal perspective (in particular copyright violations, defaming content etc...)
* setting up of new chapters (e.g. bylaws to write and discuss)
* contracts with other organisations (e.g. hosting contracts, CD Rom publishing contracts...)
* trademark issues (official request of trademarks, contracts allowing logo uses, recovery of lost domain names...)
* non-profit status, income revenue service...
* ...

Who can post to the list ?
Anyone may post to this list (at least, until we begin to have spamming issues)

Who will be member of the list ?
Only a limited number of people will receive the mails.
The recipiendaries will be
* the members of the WMF board (so, for now, Jimbo, Angela, Anthere, Tim and Michael)
* the presidents of local associations (currently, Ryo for the french board and Kurt for the german board)
* Legal advisors. For now, three have agreed to join, Soufron, Aurevilly and Micha?l Snow. Others have been contacted but have not answered yet. Others might be soon contacted.

Why will be that list quite private ?
All of these issues may require input from professionals essentially, and many of them will require discretion. Hence the choice for a separate private mailing list.
Naturally, when some issues would be beneficial to be discussed in public, the discussions will occur on Foundation mailing list, or meta, or on the irc channel as usual. Similarly, when editors are directly involved in an issue, they will be put in copy of the mails exchanged on the juri list. The limited number of automatic recipiendaries is set up both to garantee discretion on certain topics, and to foster the creation of a team of legal advisors.

Will the number of members stay limited or can it increase ?
We hope that this number increase over the next months. If you are a regular editor of one of wikimedia project and are a professional in the legal field, you are most welcome to join the legal team (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/legal where we will try to keep information updated). If you are an editor and know another editor which could help, please tell us and contact him. We need help in this field, and the bigger we grow, the more help we will need. Obviously, help from several countries will be very helpful, in particular in countries where 1) there is or will be soon a local chapter or 2) we are setting up collaborations with local firms or organisations.

Will the language be english only ?
Preferably, but when enough people share the same language to fix an issue essentially related to a specific country, another language than english should be used if that makes things easier. In this case, very short summaries could be added in english.

Could someone be removed from the list ?
Yes, in case of serious disruption or obvious legal inability. Except I, allowed to be both unable and disruptive :-)

How can you, as an editor or a developer, make use of this resource and help ?
Though this list is not kept secret, I'd like to ask you not to display it proeminently on projects. I think it would be best it is kept open for sending mails, but as soon as too much spam is received, we will have to restrict access. Similarly, this list is not meant to deal with all the daily complaints most projects receive. Most issues can be and should be dealt by editors (example, a person complaining of copyvio or the fact a site is not respecting fully our license... is everyone business and everyone should feel empowered to take care of it as much as possible). So, please, do not liberally hand out this address. However, when you think an issue is getting out of hand, require the board attention or input from a professional, please contact us.

What is the secondary goal of this list ?
Though we managed quite well till now, the growing number of legal threats on the biggest wikipedias suggest that one day or another, a threat will transform itself in a reality. Even if we are entirely in our right, we will need help to defend our case. It is best that we are organised and ready for it when it happens.
Secondly, it was reported more than once, that in front of "professionals", we needed to appear more business-like. Having good legal support in deals we are trying to negociate, should be very beneficial.
We are growing very fast. While we should not fall into bureaucracy, nor give positions which might reveal impossible to give to another one later on... or might cause diplomatic issues, I think it is important we organise team work around some issues. The legal team seemed one of the most required team right now.

There is a last point. Legal issues are amongst those activities which are essentially done behind the doors and I think most of you do not realise they are done at all ;-) Still, people like Aurevilly or Soufron (and others I do not mention here, Aurevilly and Soufron are those I know best) give a lot of this invisible time to the project. Others might have the ability to help... but just do not realise how they could do it. I hope that the existence of the team and of the list will help them realise where they could get involved.

Thank you for all those who give invisible work in any cases :-)

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
 Better first dates. More second dates. Yahoo! Personals


subject: [Foundation-l] Juriwiki-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Page Monitoring

body:
> See also http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=471,472,943
> - 472, for instance, discusses turning individual page histories into
> feeds, for a more fine-grained kind of "subscription" which wouldn't
> suffer the privacy problem.

Ta for the pointers :)

I don't think any of the bug reports quite get there, but "individual
page histories into feeds" is exactly what I was thinking about [1]

To be all fashionable about it, it's the "long tail" thing.  There are
a lot of people who, between them, are interested in a lot of
articles.  But on average there is only going to be one or two people
passionate about one given article.

At the moment, we are assuming either

- a (relatively) few people monitor lots of pages
- lots of people are going to login and check their (small) watchlists
fairly regularly

Imagine I am interested in the "random weird topic" page.  I'd like to
be notified of updates to this page, but I won't be checking in daily
just in case.

Email alerts would be perfect, and I note that it *could* be a
wonderfully seperated (ad sponsered) service (low traffic for the
user, relevent ads, useful service, entirely independent)

Ok, why the WP-tech list?

[1]

This only happens if it is easy (and or massively popular, which it
isn't right now)

It could be done in a couple of ways.

WP offering RSS feeds of page histories is one.  It's not optimally
efficient use of server resources or bandwidth.  WP sending out emails
to users itself is another, but ... core business ... focus ...

Anyone could, given the interest (ad revenue), set up a site/service
that would easily let me "bookmark" a wikipedia page, and deliver this
service.  It still presents problems about such an organisation
polling a bunch of pages every day or so.  Yes, you could block them,
but why block a service that is mutually usefull all round?

Someone like Bloglines could (with arrangement) download the DB
nightly and then email out daily updates.  More efficient all round.

Bloglines (or similar) is a commercial company, so I'm sure they might
help with the logistics of a daily DB dump.  This then benefits
everyone in the community.

I'm in no way associated with bloglines, other than as a end user of
the service.   I'd also be quite happy with any other solution.

There are a bunch of articles I am interested in, but I won't be
logging in to watchlist them.  That might mean I am lazy, and so be
it.  But some form of RSS feed of page histories would be a really
neat feature to have.


from_name: Sj

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: April 1st 2006, IRC, the mailing list,
	and the Cabal

body:
On Apr 4, 2005 3:25 PM, Joseph Reagle <joseph.nyu at reagle.org> wrote:
> On Monday 04 April 2005 07:42, David Gerard wrote:
> > > Analysed at that level, the promotional statement is already untrue.
> > > Blocked users and users of blocked IP addresses cannot edit. At a more
> > > extreme level, those with no access to the Internet cannot edit. In my
> > > opinion, preventing anonymous edits makes the project no less open as
> > > long as registration is unrestricted.
> >
> > This one comes up again and again, and the consensus has always been
> > "nope, anon edits will continue thanks."
>
> I'm curious, do you have a pointer to this consensus? (Because of [1].)
>
> [1] http://reagle.org/joseph/blog/culture/lost-minority

My initial suggestion that "we may as well make it read-only for anons
all the time; they often have no intention of cleaning up after
themselves" was sarcasm.  A significant fraction of serious edits
(over 30%, I believe) are anonymous.  Whoever took fifteen seconds to
update [[Johnny Cochran]] last week, 3 minutes after he shuffled off
his mortal coil, was anonymous.  Try visiting a dozen random pages,
and inspecting their histories.

The soft security of allowing but monitoring anonymous edits is a
cornerstone of Wikipedia's community, philosophy, and success.  Those
suggesting that we bar anons from editing are often new to the
community, or new to wiki, and mistake soft security for  no security,
or for a philosophical decision made "for the community" rather than
for the quality of the project.  One canonical reference:
   http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SoftSecurity

(There is surprisingly no good WP article on the subject...)

There are certainly clever ways to improve the handling of edits from
anonymous or unknown users, some of which have themselves come up many
times (but hang on implementation). My favorite is the idea of
optimizing/structuring the distributed process of reviewing such
edits, so that there is limited repetition of work, and no edits pass
by unremarked.

SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Submission on Orphan works

body:
On Apr 5, 2005 3:09 AM, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Le Tuesday 5 April 2005 08:54, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
> > That being said I should put the following on the record which I
> > submitted to the US Copyright Office in response to their call for
> > comments in their study of orphan works.

Nice.  When was this?  Did you get a response?

> I am writing an article for the next Quatro about this.

Quarto, not Quatro :)

--
+sj+


body:
Sj wrote:

>On Apr 5, 2005 3:09 AM, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>Le Tuesday 5 April 2005 08:54, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :
>>
>>
>>>That being said I should put the following on the record which I
>>>submitted to the US Copyright Office in response to their call for
>>>comments in their study of orphan works.
>>>
>>>
>
>Nice.  When was this?  Did you get a response?
>
>
I submitted my response on March 25 -- five minutes before the filing
deadline.  :-)

I didn't receive any substantive response, only the following:

>Thank you for your submission of Comments in response to the Notice of Inquiry on Orphan Works.  Please be aware that in order to facilitate public review of the comments submitted in this proceeding, copies of Initial Comments and Reply Comments submitted will be made available to the public, including in electronic form on the Copyright Office web site.
>
>Please visit the following page on the Copyright Office website for updated information on the Orphan Works Notice of Inquiry:
>
>http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/index.html
>
All the submissions (716 of them) are available through that website.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions

body:
Thank you to everyone who replied to my questions at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda/Open_questions.

A lot of good suggestions and helpful comments were made, and I'm
hoping we will be able to carry out some of these in the near future,
or to at least begin considering them.

Here is a summary of some of the suggestions. The inclusion of these
does not mean there was necessarily agreement on carrying out the
suggestion. Please see [[m:Board agenda/Open questions]] for the full
discussion.

== Hosting ==
* Delegate the management of offers or centralize all hosting offers with Jimbo
* Create a private wiki
* Hire a secretary for Jimbo
* Hire someone to manage grants and partnerships
* Use OTRS more effectively
* Run offers by a legal committee first
* Hire a lawyer to write contracts
* Ask potential partners/hosts whether we can list them among our
"potential partners and hosts" before doing so
* Have a standard response for people making offers
* Be clear about how we could integrate the resources on offer
* Consider placing databases outside the US
* Consider the legal implications of chapters owning servers

== Trademarks ==
* The status of trademark/domain registrations should be listed on the
Foundation website
* A group should be tasked with keeping track of this information
* Get a lawyer to write a contract regarding licensing the logo
* See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Logo_and_trademark_policy

== Membership ==
* Create a portal that allows the community to pay one another to
produce such tasks
* Revive the membership task
* Hire a programmer
* Specifying tasks properly
* Mixed views on whether membership was worthwhile, but most thought it was.

== Money ==
* Developer committee should advise on what to buy
* Budget should be documented
* Hire programmers for Wikispecies and have them write a decent UI

== Promotion ==
* Appoint a multi-lingual PR coordinator
* Have an explicit PR budget
* Have an unofficial PR committee
* Spend more on promotion (not all agreed with this)
* Outreach programs to educational institutions

== Grants ==
* Hire a full-time grants coordinator
* Find a way of getting more community involvement with grants

== Developers ==
* Appoint a developer liaison and possibly a separate server liaison
* Encourage and empower the developer committee

== Communication ==
* Clarify the relationship between the Board and the community
* Global message notification and translation
* More regular letters from the board
* More regular/more often meetings
* More formal involvement between chapters and the board
* Reform the OTRS procedures
* Reinvigorat the system of embassies, with elected ambassadors

--
Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Open questions


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool's Day next year

body:
--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Daniel Mayer said:
> >
> > --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> >> How, of all the scores of articles that are created every day on
> >> Wikipedia, do you legislate for there to be only *one* April Fools
> >> article on April 1?
> >
> > There is only one TFA per day - hence *today's* featured article.
>
> Ah, my mistake.  I didn't know the proposal was only to limit the "Today's
> Featured Article".

I also recycled a proposal that 'Did you know...?' could be used to list odd
and surprising facts for that day from our growing list of unusual articles.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail