subject:
[Foundation-l] Turkish Wikipedia won Golden Spider- 2006 Best
 Content Prize

body:
Escellent!  It makes me wonder whether it would be possible for this
ever-increasing world wide collection of trophy hardware could all be
brought to Wikimania where everybody could see it together.

Ec

Bryan Tong Minh wrote:

>Congrats! Please don't forget to make pictures!
>
>On 1/12/07, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Congratulations to all Turkish wikipedians!
>>
>>On 1/12/07, A. ?zg?r Erdemli <dbl2010 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hi everybody,
>>>
>>>I wanted to share a great news with all wikimedians. Although it is not
>>>officially announced yet I got an email today from the Golden Spider Web
>>>Awards Organization. Turkish Wikipedia won Golden Spider- 2006 Best Content
>>>Prize. The Golden Spider award is a nation wide, most famous and most
>>>reputable web award organization in Turkey.
>>>
>>>Couple pictures from previous years ceremonies:
>>>http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/news/90164.jpg
>>>http://www.telepati.com.tr/agustos05/gorsel/spider.jpg
>>>http://www.telepati.com.tr/temmuz05/gorsel/Turkcell-AltinOrumcek.jpg
>>>http://www.turkline.com/altinorumcek.php
>>>
>>>The ceremony will be held on 25 January 2007. We are currently trying to
>>>figure it out, who will go get the prize, since there is no Turkish chapter
>>>yet. Probably some old Wikipedia fellow will go and get it and send to
>>>Wikimedia Foundation and WMF keep the prize safe until "Wikimedia Turkiye"
>>>go live. That what I am thinking.
>>>
>>>Thanks.
>>>
>>>Dbl2010
>>>
>>>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] UK government information changes on the way?

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

>The BBC is carrying an interesting story on possible changes in the
>attitude of the UK government to the free use of government information.
>At the moment, the Statute Law Database is Crown Copyright, as is nearly
>all UK government information, with a commercial licence needed for any
>use other than private study or non-commercial research.
>
>According to the BBC, this may be about to change, and the changes may
>be part of a wider change in attitude to the free reuse of government data.
>
>Is this something that the Foundation or other interested Wikipedians
>might be interested in pursuing with the UK government?
>
This sounds like a welcome development.  I think that this is one area
where US law has got it right.  Having the UK do this could start the
ball rolling in other countries..

I think that the suggestion that they might still require permissions,
even free ones, unworkable.  I think requiring a simple disclaimer that
the mirrored version of a law is not an official one should be enough to
ensure that people aren't deceived.  From what I have seen of US
material this does not seem to be a significant problem there.

Ec


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>James Hare wrote:
>
>
>>Hopefully, through this, closing AFDs will be based less on vote counting
>>and more on evaluating the opinions of people.
>>
>>
>I can see it now - Librarian badlydrawnjeff notes that over 10k books
>generally meet our standard in a given year, and a shitstorm ensues.
>
>A good idea that will never, ever happen.
>
Yeah, shitstorms tend not to be noticed by people who are already full
of it. :-)

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki as a Wikimedia project

body:
Phil Boswell schreef:
> Rob Church wrote:
>
>> On 07/01/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>>> If this move is intended to bring more volunteer developers to MediaWiki
>>> I
>>> am afraid that it is just window dressing. It will not make much of a
>>> difference because people come and stay as they like. If you TRULY want
>>> more
>>> developers, having someone dedicated to coaching the people who are new
>>> to
>>> the MediaWiki code would make much more of a difference. Having someone
>>> coach people who are doing projects and stuff in Universities would
>>> really
>>> help.
>>>
>> Absolutely! New developers come in all very excited about the thing -
>> they've submitted a few patches, we've generally used those to help
>> mould them into shape, and we've got a feel for them - but they're
>> still very "green" - I certainly was. It would make excellent sense if
>> a more experienced developer was assigned to "mentor" newbies, and I
>> don't mean that in the sense of being up their noses - I mean that in
>> a sense of giving their changes a quick eyeball, and being available
>> to answer the odd email about how something should be done.
>>
>>
> Interestingly, given the stink being raised in certain on-wiki circles about
> IRC and off-wiki communication, it is evident from lurking on the
> appropriate channels that this is already being done spectacularly well by
> Brion and Rob, not to mention the other devs who are there from time to
> time.
>
> I just wanted to make it absolutely clear that the "mentoring" process is
> already ongoing, if not necessarily officially or under that precise name,
> and seems to be working very well indeed.
>
> HTH HAND
>
Hoi,
There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can
read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward
that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person
that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at
all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new
people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a
community of people working together. This will not change, what would
change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that
the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You
may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively
developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an
interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of
developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki
ecology.

My feeling is that as the use of MediaWiki is increasing, the scope of
what people work on will increase at the same time. This is to be
expected to have a direct impact on the scope developers work on as
well. Consequently, it will be of an increasing importance to both
maintain the architectural integrity of MediaWiki and allow for the
growth of the developer community at the same time.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/12/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Darn it, you foiled my plans to totally screw around with people's lives!
>>SARCASM ASIDE, I think I would've stayed away from the quagmires even if you
>>hadn't told me how it presents a pickle.
>>
>>
>Do you know where they are? are you sure? are you really sure?  Do you
>not wish to be an admin?
>
Huh?  He would be putting the deleted  material on an alien site.

>Ah paranoia can be a wounderful thing
>
Nice pun!  "Wound" as in injury, or "wound" as in a clock spring? :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.

body:
James Hare wrote:

>I've suggested that each individual WikiProject establish the notability
>standards, so naturally I guess they'd be involved in deletion, too. We
>already have Deletion Sorting, which is a blessing.
>
It may be a little premature to establish criteria.  If the Deletion
sorting can be used to alert project member of what debates are on their
plate, they can then develop an empirical approach to what they are
considering and use that to build policy.

Ec


body:
Rob Church schreef:
> On 13/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> There are two ways in which you can read a proposal for change. You can
>> read it as a criticism and you can read it as a possible road forward
>> that intents to allow us to do even better in the future. With a person
>> that would be tasked to support people new to MediaWiki, it is not at
>> all a good idea to have this person be the only person that these new
>> people are exposed to. Development is done best when there is a
>> community of people working together. This will not change, what would
>> change is the scale of the influx of people. You may already notice that
>> the amount of people working on the MediaWiki code is increasing. You
>> may have noticed that some aspects of the MediaWiki code are actively
>> developed but are of no relevance to other groups that do not have an
>> interest. This means that we now have several sub communities of
>> developers all involved in MediaWiki all being part of the MediaWiki
>> ecology.
>>
> [snip the rest]
>
> What part of Phil's post, or my post, was in any way counter to this
> general feeling that "more developers == good"?
>
>
> Rob Church
Hoi,
Not necessarily anything. I do agree with Phil that a good job is being
done. I also think that as the amount of developers grow, as there are
more Wikis deployed, it becomes increasingly important to maintain
coherence. We need unity in diversity.
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Keitei wrote:

>On Jan 12, 2007, at 16:11, Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>
>
>>I suppose now might be a decent time to trot out an old idea: what
>>about giving WikiProjects a greater role in the deletion process?
>>They are already (for the most part) the natural gathering places for
>>people with some interest in a particular topic (and, by association,
>>some degree of knowledge of it); presumably, we could therefore expect
>>that the consensus of participants in a WikiProject would thus be a
>>little more informed on topics within that project's scope than the
>>consensus of randomly selected editors.
>>
>>
>I wonder if holding deletion debates within WikiProject space would
>be a feasible or good idea. The idea would be creating consensus over
>whether something was notable/verifiable enough among those familiar
>with the topic, so as to create a more nuanced debate.
>
Absolutely

>A time limit
>would probably be not such a great idea, but once consensus was
>reached, deletion could be requested.
>
I don't know if we can handle that much sanity.

>Of course there isn't a
>WikiProject for every topic, and not every nominator knows where to
>find relevant WikiProjects.
>
A valid criticism, but couldn't we somehow use categories to do this?

>However, this would curb uninformed drive-
>by votes and make deletion discussions hopefully more debate and less
>polling. It'd also be a huge reform to deletion process, which is
>entirely unwanted if I read community feeling correctly. Oh well.
>
That depends on which community you are talking about.

Ec


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Steve

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... issues from the Third
	World

body:
Some questions.

Is the procedure really failing? Are we all just nava-gazing? Is it as
simple as David Goodman suggested several thousand words back when he
explained that the important articles can only be saved by active,
interested participation? Are we fighting for a hopelessly obscure minority?

-S

On 1/12/07, Confusing Manifestation <confusingmanifestation at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> What nobody seems to have mentioned is the fact that in AfD
> discussions admins are *supposed* to look at all the votes and the
> reasonaing behind them, and make an informed decision based on that
> (which is exactly what several posts have said should be done). Of
> course there are probably a fair few who don't, and in any case the
> informed decision is still liable to have a bit of bias behind it, but
> just saying "a thousand 'delete, nn' shouldn't count as much as one
> 'keep, here's a bunch of references'" isn't actually adding anything
> to the procedure that isn't (theoretically at least) already there.
>
> CM
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Strauss

subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

body:
Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
the user interfaces.

And thoroughness is better than purity. With license-annotated, thorough
content, you can easily remove the offending bits to achieve purity. The
converse is not so easy.

Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 13/01/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/12/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/12/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> So, when is the English wikipedia planning to get rid of  the
>>>> noncommercial and wikipedia-only images that are still in use.
>>> less than 1000 of each less
>> And the list is being whittled down all the time.  The commitment to
>> get rid of them is there.
>>
>>>> And what
>>>> about fair use, which to me sounds like wikipedia-only but without
>>>> asking permission?
>>>>
>>> That isn't quite the case.
>> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
>> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
>> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
>> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
>> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).
>
> Keeping aside the "fair use text quotations" (what the??), are you
> sure you're speaking for everyone when you say "we" there? Somehow I
> feel certain I'm not the only one who would like to get rid of fair
> use on en.wp, and envisages a happy English Wikipedia future without
> this crutch.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
the user interfaces.

And thoroughness is better than purity. With license-annotated, thorough
content, you can easily remove the offending bits to achieve purity. The
converse is not so easy.

Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 13/01/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/12/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/12/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> So, when is the English wikipedia planning to get rid of  the
>>>> noncommercial and wikipedia-only images that are still in use.
>>> less than 1000 of each less
>> And the list is being whittled down all the time.  The commitment to
>> get rid of them is there.
>>
>>>> And what
>>>> about fair use, which to me sounds like wikipedia-only but without
>>>> asking permission?
>>>>
>>> That isn't quite the case.
>> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
>> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
>> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
>> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
>> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).
>
> Keeping aside the "fair use text quotations" (what the??), are you
> sure you're speaking for everyone when you say "we" there? Somehow I
> feel certain I'm not the only one who would like to get rid of fair
> use on en.wp, and envisages a happy English Wikipedia future without
> this crutch.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
such items when we need them to discuss a topic.

For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
the user interfaces.

And thoroughness is better than purity. With license-annotated, thorough
content, you can easily remove the offending bits to achieve purity. The
converse is not so easy.

Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 13/01/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/12/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 1/12/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> So, when is the English wikipedia planning to get rid of  the
>>>> noncommercial and wikipedia-only images that are still in use.
>>> less than 1000 of each less
>> And the list is being whittled down all the time.  The commitment to
>> get rid of them is there.
>>
>>>> And what
>>>> about fair use, which to me sounds like wikipedia-only but without
>>>> asking permission?
>>>>
>>> That isn't quite the case.
>> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
>> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
>> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
>> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
>> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).
>
> Keeping aside the "fair use text quotations" (what the??), are you
> sure you're speaking for everyone when you say "we" there? Somehow I
> feel certain I'm not the only one who would like to get rid of fair
> use on en.wp, and envisages a happy English Wikipedia future without
> this crutch.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issue with external links

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Expect big changes in the next 24 months on internet copyright and usage
>in the United States Congress and Senate. Congress has been getting too
>many people complaining. One sad note is that Slashdot is no longer
>"news for geeks" but "news for hackers, and software pirates". The
>pendulum is starting
>to swing back the other way and unfortunately, it may swing too far to
>the right. Experimental internet IP litigation is where WE DO NOT
>WANT TO BE in the line of fire.
>
>Anything folks can do to limit our exposure here is a good thing. For
>the most part, WMF and its policies err on the side of caution, and this
>is a very
>good thing. The more prudent we can be in this area, the better. There's
>just been too much abuse of the current copyright laws by the internet
>community as a whole.
>
>:-)
>
>Jeff
>
I expect that if there will be any major legislation, it will mainly
cover presumptions of fair use rather than changes in the release of
public documents.  And fair use is clearly something that even Wikimedia
projects tend to abuse on a large scale.

I think it was a very wise and prudent move on the part of those who set
up the Wikimedia Commons that they avoided fair use images altogether.
 This may be ultimately a saving grace for all Wikimedia projects that
this has been done.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Nina Stratton

body:
On 1/12/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Message: 10
> > Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:19:31 -0500
> > From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)
> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Message-ID:  <
> 43348cda0701120919k15954458g636078210a2adede at mail.gmail.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> >
> > I suggested something on another thread that stated that only people
> with
> > background in a certain field should be qualified to judge notability.
> > Chemists determine chemical notability, Finns determine notability of
> > Finnish folk, the list goes on. Perhaps it's time to give AFD a good ol'
> > reworking to separate the opinions of people who are qualified to speak
> > about the subject's notability and outsider's opinions (both are
> important,
> > but we can't put the fingers of clueless people on the red button).
> > Hopefully, through this, closing AFDs will be based less on vote
> counting
> > and more on evaluating the opinions of people.
>
> I'd have to agree with James on this one.  This could also be a boon for
> FA
> and GA promotions.  It would diminish the tendancy for voting at AFD, FAC,
> etc. to look like a division of "i don't like it" and the "i like it"
> camps.
>
> Several months ago, an AFD came up for "Amafanius", an early Roman
> Epicurean
> philosopher whose works, while unfortunately lost to the ages, were
> discussed at length in the works of Cicero (who trashed Amafanius with
> glee), and in Michel de Montaigne.  Because of their referencing,
> the philosophical offerings of Amafanius can actually be
> reconstructed...but
> only in broad strokes.  As someone who studied classics at Rutgers and am
> well-versed in this area, I recognized that he was notable and should have
> a
> place here at Wikipedia.  Thankfully, because a few others were just as
> well-versed, we were able to save the article.
>
> But, unfortunately, as it typical around here,  a large number of users
> who
> obvious appeared to be the tech-saavy, internet-raised Pokemon-crowd for
> whom nothing exists before, say, 20 years ago, voted for "Delete".
>
> One of the failings, one that probably contributes to some of the negative
> reputation Wikipedia has earned, is that it does not have any expert
> oversight.  Perhaps some sort of prominent, scholarly, editorial advisory
> board would be in order?  Even if loosely bureaucratic, it would add a
> little more weight to the credibility of the encyclopedia that would be a
> worthwhile step in counteracting an image diminished by our pop-culture
> heaviness (pokemon, star trek, etc.) and "anyone can edit (read:
> vandalise/insert false information)" repuation.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> User:ExplorerCDT
>

Try Citizendium. Google it. Go there now.

Sincerely,

Nina
"Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and
conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work." - Abdul Kalam


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Website remote loading English Wikipedia

body:
> Hey, that's really a rude one: on top of the page there's a big notice:
> "You can help us clicking these ads" and then a bunch of Google Ads.
>

we already used to nuke that site, it just switched provider. anyway, nuked
again.

-- Domas
http://dammit.lt/


from_name: K P

body:
On 1/13/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> > That is not a viable solution. We need to solve our problems, not push
> good people off to >another project. AfD is broken.
>
> No it isn't. If you claim it is lets see some data to back it up.
>
> --
> geni

The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing

I don't think it's broken, but it is out of control, essentially this was
nominated for deletion because the OR should be removed and that would leave
a stub, yet being a stub is not a criterion for deletion. There are many
such AfDs without valid reasons for deletion, for fairly basic articles--the
guidelines for proposing AfD are pretty much  ignored by a number of editors
who appear to stroll Wikipedia looking for things they can nominate  because
the article rubs them the wrong way for some reason.  That Wikipedia got to
the point where it considered Rock climbing for deletion, even if it was
speedy kept, may be an indicator of concern--maybe it was prank, though.

KP


subject: [WikiEN-l] I Cried

body:
That sucks. I don't know what upsets me more - the fact that this guy's good
faith edits were subverted, or the post directly after his.

The second URL is also disheartening. If I understand it correctly, it's
because many of these images weren't uploaded at Wikimedia Commons, so the
license isn't altogether clear. I get confused myself with all the licenses.
Most of my uploads have been historical in nature, but it's still tricky
sometimes.

On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> There is this fun paradox with wikipedia.
>
> I was submitting a description to something which I am the copyright
> holder of, but it was removed because it was copyright protected. When I
> pointed out I had rights to it, because it was something i/company owned - i
> was told you should not edit your own entries.
>
> http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=856133&postcount=6
>
> These are good. The whole thread is at
>
> http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=32349
>
> Fred
>
> I actually am working, something about the Derek Smart Arbitration is
> somewhere in this thread.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Sincerely,

Nina
"Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and
conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work." - Abdul Kalam


subject: [Wikitech-l] Discovered a remote loader

body:
Hi!

> They're filed at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Mno#Medbib.com_-_.22the_modern_encyclopedia.22

medbib and cooldictionary blocked.

-- Domas
http://dammit.lt


list: commons-l

from_name: J JIH

subject: [Commons-l] UK government information changes on the way?

body:
This is interesting when British governmental information may become
more public. While I support pursuing with the UK government, I also
consider it needed to pursue with the USA government to accept the
rule of the shorter term.

Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain#The_rule_of_the_shorter_term
and you will find that without honoring the rule of the shorter term
of the Berne Convention in the US Copyright Law, certain works may be
in the public domain in their home countries, but still considered
legally copyrighted in the USA. This is harming the Wiki projects
unless the server can ever be moved to a jurisdiction honoring the
rule of the shorter term like Macao, but the Foundation has no such a
plan.

How about using http://www.petitiononline.com/ to pursue reclaiming
the public domain? I would like to strongly encourage everyone to sign
the following petitions involving copyright and public domain:

http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html Reclaim the Public Domain
http://www.petitiononline.com/mrap/petition.html M.R.A. Platform
http://www.petitiononline.com/ukpod001/petition.html Podcasters'
Rights and the WIPO Broadcast Treaty
http://www.petitiononline.com/oldgame/petition.html Abandonware

Jusjih, an admin at Commons, Wikisource, Wiktionary, and Wikipedia
uncomfortable with excessive copyright blocking orphaned works

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk>
> Date: Jan 12, 2007 6:49 PM
> Subject: [Foundation-l] UK government information changes on the way?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia
> Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> The BBC is carrying an interesting story on possible changes in the
> attitude of the UK government to the free use of government information.
> At the moment, the Statute Law Database is Crown Copyright, as is nearly
> all UK government information, with a commercial licence needed for any
> use other than private study or non-commercial research.
>
> According to the BBC, this may be about to change, and the changes may
> be part of a wider change in attitude to the free reuse of government data.
>
> Is this something that the Foundation or other interested Wikipedians
> might be interested in pursuing with the UK government?
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6255321.stm
>
> -- Neil


body:
On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> K P schreef:
> > The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent
> nominations
> > that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
> >
> > [
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing
>
> No it isn't. It shows that AfD is working perfectly fine.
>
> What exactly is the problem, apart from that the article was nominated
> at all?
>
> Eugene

That is the problem that the article was nominated at all, in this case.
The time could have been spent researching and improving the Rock climbing
article.

The overall problem though is that there are guidelines and they're ignored
in favor of deletionists proposing articles for deletion because of their
poor quality regardless of the subject, or for a dozen other reasons not
related to suggested guidelines for deletion (the play only opened a week
ago so the article should be deleted).

Wikipedia policies are confusing in general to new editors because a number
of them are largely ignored by the community, but it's never clear to
newbies which ones are a joke and which ones are actually followed--this
leads to a serious amount of BITING in a hostile atmosphere.  I've only done
AfD for a couple of weeks, and I've taken it off my watch list, because it's
frustrating debating articles nominated by editors who admit they're
nominating it *because they never heard of it*--over half the random
articles I get are on topics I never heard of.  And the guidelines are no
clue to a newcomer.

Really, the overall concern is that there are policies for AfD and they're
ignored in favor of articles being nominated because they're poor quality or
someone never heard of something or its number of Ghits is low.

KP


from_name: Ken Arromdee

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, geni wrote:
> > The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
> > that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
> >
> > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing
> AFD appeared to work fine the article was kept.

See also [[Talk:Video_game_crash_of_1983]], though that never got to the
point of having an AFD.

Making people run around as fast as possible to stay in the same place is not
"working fine" just because the article was kept.

It highlights a real problem with the policies.  If you let anyone delete
uncited material, and you even consider original research as a reason to
delete an article, you leave the way open for vandals to intentionally
challenge random claims and random articles just to cause trouble.

What we *should* do is require that you must sincerely consider uncited
material questionable before deleting it (or using it to nominate an article
for deletion).  (Of course, this won't prevent the vandal from lying and
trying to delete the article anyway, but then, that's true of any policy.)


from_name: luke brandt

subject: [Foundation-l] Diversity and NC images - Board meet

body:
On Friday 15 Dec 2006 Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 12/15/06, luke brandt wrote:
>> From what I understand (but please someone correct me if I
>> misunderstood the reports) the Wikimedia Board didn't vote last time
>> these matters were raised because it prefers to allow autonomy.

> On issues such as whether we should allow NC images I, as member of
> the current Board, definitely don't think there should be any project
> level autonomy at all. If we want to keep our content compatible
> across languages and projects, we need to apply a consistent standard
> of freedom.

> I think this will have to be discussed with the current Board.
> Unfortunately we're very taken up by fundraising preparations and
> other critical planning issues at the moment; I do hope to bring it up
> at the next face-to-face meeting in Janaury.

> At this time, I would strongly, strongly ask anyone advocating the use
> of NC content in a project to reconsider. It would hurt Wikikimedia
> tremendously.

It seems to me that the opposition to NC is based on a most curious and
imperfect interpretation of the word 'free,' one that seeks to encompass
the freedom to make a profit from other people's efforts. I therefore
hope that the Foundation won't have any truck with the idea of diluting
its previous attitude to autonomy - luke


body:
On 1/13/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 09:10:29 -0800, "K P" <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >The overall problem though is that there are guidelines and they're
> ignored
> >in favor of deletionists proposing articles for deletion because of their
> >poor quality regardless of the subject, or for a dozen other reasons not
> >related to suggested guidelines for deletion (the play only opened a week
> >ago so the article should be deleted).
>
> There is no such thing as a deletionist, only different levels of
> inclusionism.  If you think you are an inclusionist, go and visit
> [[Special:Newpages]], a.k.a. the Firehose of Crap.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG

There do tend to be a handful of editors nominating many articles for
deletion, and another handful voting keep on all of these regardless of
their crap level.

There is a lot of crap on Wikipedia, and it bothers me.  I suggested an
article on a serious encyclopedia worthy topic (thermal optima) be deleted
until something worthwhile is put up, after trying to write something
without research (my first such Wikipedia attempt), because I was concerned
about the accuracy.  It is better, imo, better to get rid of an article
rather than keep an inaccurate one--always get rid of inaccuracies. Newpages
are rather disheartening.

Many topics on Wikipedia have to be considered entirely on their own merits,
and this is hard to do, set policies with meaning, and acknowledge that
policies can't be applied to everything, and encourage editors to both
consider policies, and weigh whether something is an exception.  Many AfD
also need some background research as to whether or not they should be
deleted--not internet research.  I don't have any solutions.

KP


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On 1/13/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:38:38 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
> <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> >'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's
> >getting to the point where you can't even say the sky is blue without
> >one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original research! Need
> >citation!"'
>              {{fact}}

Yeah Fred, what kind of sourcing is this...a forum posting??  See WP:RS - posts
to bulletin boards, Usenet, and wikis, or messages left on blogs, should not
be used as sources. :)

Ian


subject: [Wikitech-l] switching & resetting memcached servers

body:
Travis,

On 1/5/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
>
> Great, thanks for the tip. I initially installed memcached-1.2.1 on the
> new
> server and that apparently doesn't work too well with MW 1.6.7. Switching
> back to 1.1.3 seems to have fixed the problem.

Memcached 1.2 seems to have lots of changes. As we use php-client, probably
some of communication/compression/etc methods have changed there, but not in
our codebase.

I had a plan of rolling out 1.2 some day (and add UDP support at mediawiki
for many types of memcached updates), so probably we'll be compatible soon.

BR,
Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] How Wikipedia deal with MySQL replication delay?

body:
Howard,

I suppose the problem should be quite obvious...
> any technique deal with this kind of delay?

Though we do have some delay detection and avoiding code, the primary
principle is not to have replication delay on servers that are used for
mediawiki. Let it cost a bit of consistency in case of huge crashes, but we
have pretty async configuration of our db servers.

Domas


subject: [Wikitech-l] CoolDictionary.com

body:
Hi!

http://www.cooldictionary.com/words/Portal:Current%20events.wikipedia.
> I think one of the devs should block this, if possible.

As mentioned already in other post - blocked.

-- Domas
http://dammit.lt/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Falcon

body:
Alex,

I was reading about MySQL's Falcon engine (which appears to have reached an
> alpha branch), and was wondering if anyone had tried it with Mediawiki,
> and
> for that matter the whole Wikipedia dataset. Curious to know how it
> behaves,
> and how much efficiency the compressed storage engine gets...

Falcon isn't suitable for now to run Wikipedia dataset. It doesn't have
covering indexes (all reads hit data rows), it doesn't have 'ORDER BY ...
LIMIT' optimization, it is hungry for filesorts, etc.

Mediawiki's primary engine is InnoDB, then some sites may attempt to use
MyISAM, though that isn't well supported...

For some wikipedias though, BLACKHOLE seems to be the best engine MySQL has
produced.

Domas


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Assuming consensus

body:
On 1/9/07, Bob Petrovich <wrestfan01 at gmail.com> wrote:

[changes to facebuster article]

> Samuel Blanning not only took it on himself to block me, but to remove my
> corrections from the pages, after I reported the harassment by Paulley and
> Naohiro19, who were threatening me as they continually tried to vandalize
> wikipedia and accused me of vandalism for making factual corrections.

Might this be good advice for editors facing resistance to their edits
in some articles.

If you make a change in an article and that change is reverted by an
ip address or a user with no history of editing the article in
question, assume no consensus for the previous state of the article
and add your changes back. If it's just one editor doing the
reverting, he'll violate 3RR before you will.

However, if your changes are reverted by an editor with a history of
contributing to the article in question, then assume that there's
consensus for the current state of the article. Persisting at this
point might (perhaps incorrectly) make you look like a troll or a
vandal, especially of such changes have been attempted in the past. If
one of the editors is also an admin then you might even be blocked as
a "sock puppet" of the previous "troll". (this is why it's a good idea
to register an account and have a non troll/non vandal editing history
before "going to war") The best thing to do in this case is to bring
your case to the article's talk page. Bring plenty of references
because your probably going to need them. Chances are they've gone
over this issue numerous times in the past. Read the talk page's
archives to see of this is the case.

If you still can't convince them then just accept the fact that you
are not going to win this one and go play elsewhere.


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject: [WikiEN-l] Yes, it's Esperanza again

body:
On 1/12/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> And there also has been constant fighting over the replacement essay on
> WP:EA itself.
>
> I AM JAMES, BRINGER OF BAD NEWS
>
> On 1/12/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > The AFD was for the organization, not the all the programs contained in
> > it.
> > Treating the subpages individually is no more than logically.
> >
> > Mgm
> >
> >
> > On 1/12/07, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> > > > Yeah, this time it's a deletion review, as apparently some admins
> > > > unilaterally deleted the history of Esperanza's subpages against
> > > consensus
> > > > established at the MFD.
> > > >
> > > > [[WP:DRV/EA]] is already a working shortcut.
> > > >
> > > > --Chacor
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > my god, why won't they just die out.
> > >
> > > --
> > > GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
Is that still going on? why not replace it with the signpost article,
I suppose It'd be more neutral


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> Fortunately, articles without references will soon no longer go to AfD.
>
> You may want to leave a comment at [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion
> for unsourced articles]].

That proposal seems to lack consensus.

-Matt


body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007, Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
> > It highlights a real problem with the policies.  If you let anyone delete
> > uncited material, and you even consider original research as a reason to
> > delete an article, you leave the way open for vandals to intentionally
> > challenge random claims and random articles just to cause trouble.
> >
> > What we *should* do is require that you must sincerely consider uncited
> > material questionable before deleting it (or using it to nominate an article
> > for deletion).  (Of course, this won't prevent the vandal from lying and
> > trying to delete the article anyway, but then, that's true of any policy.)
>
> Fortunately, articles without references will soon no longer go to AfD.
>
> You may want to leave a comment at [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletion criterion
> for unsourced articles]].

That's not better, that's worse.

It's also irrelevant in most of the vandal cases because the articles targeted
by vandals in this way usually have at least one source somewhere, which
exempts it from that proposal.


body:
On 1/13/07, Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> Matthew Brown schreef:
> > That proposal seems to lack consensus.
>
> How can you tell? The discussion is over 600 kB long...

Because it's that long yet there seems to be no more agreement at the
bottom than at the top - plus my gut feeling that there's no way the
consensus of active en.wp contributors will agree on it.

-Matt


body:
True enough. But if its really isolated to the third-world than I'm sure
someone can produce several examples of wonderful articles nixed by ignorant
deletionists. Examples can be made and wrists can be slapped?

-S

On 1/13/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's only hopelessly obscure if you're looking at it from the first world
> :-)
>
> On 13/01/07, Steve <subsume at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Some questions.
> >
> > Is the procedure really failing? Are we all just nava-gazing? Is it as
> > simple as David Goodman suggested several thousand words back when he
> > explained that the important articles can only be saved by active,
> > interested participation? Are we fighting for a hopelessly obscure
> minority?
> >
> > -S
> >
> > On 1/12/07, Confusing Manifestation <confusingmanifestation at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > What nobody seems to have mentioned is the fact that in AfD
> > > discussions admins are *supposed* to look at all the votes and the
> > > reasonaing behind them, and make an informed decision based on that
> > > (which is exactly what several posts have said should be done). Of
> > > course there are probably a fair few who don't, and in any case the
> > > informed decision is still liable to have a bit of bias behind it, but
> > > just saying "a thousand 'delete, nn' shouldn't count as much as one
> > > 'keep, here's a bunch of references'" isn't actually adding anything
> > > to the procedure that isn't (theoretically at least) already there.
> > >
> > > CM
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
Gurch wrote:

> geni wrote:
>
>> On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>>
>>> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's
>>> getting to the point where >you can't even say the sky is blue
>>> without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original
>>> >research! Need citation!"'
>>
>> Problem is whith that classic example is that the sky often isn't
>> blue. It spends a fair bit of time being black with white bits.
>> Depending on where you are grey may be popular and red/pink may appear
>> as much as twice a day.
>>
> Indeed. I'd say it's spent more time being grey than blue, recently.
> Miserable weather...

I'd be very happy if we could have a little wikiality declare my sky to
be blue right about now.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Kenny Barney

body:
http://tramadol.tfres.net/wiki/Main_Page has managed to evade the block.
Their site is working again. Also, it appears that they use several
different subdomains (e.g. http://soma.tfres.net/wiki/Main_page) which work
as well.

Finally, there is another site that is even trying to copy the URL.
http://en.wikipedia.ifc.com.pl/wiki/Main_Page


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] African maps

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:

>On 1/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>My point was not about permissions.  It even assumes that we will
>>receive all the permissions we want.  It's about why we are better
>>suited to carry this material than Northwestern U.  It's about the
>>ethics of a Borg-ism that indiscriminately vacuums up all the material
>>it can find.
>>
>>
>I'm not sure that this is a matter of us thinking we're a better host
>than Northwestern U for anyone else.  It's us thinking that for our
>own use, we're a better host than them, because having a local copy is
>good.  Because they might move their stuff in future or even take it
>down.  Lots of reasons that for our own purposes, taking our own copy
>is useful.
>
Absolutely, there's lots of reasons, but the reasons should be there on
an item by item basis.  Do we need to indiscriminately host their entire
corpus of maps when we only have use for a few?  Even the argument that
something might be taken down needs to be on a case by case basis, and
not base it on unfounded speculation.  There are some sites, not major
universities, where this would be a worry.  A site where there has been
no new activity in the last couple of years might be a cause for concern.

We all love to hate M*******t, partly because it dominates its
industry.  We need to be conscious of not becoming resentfully referred
to as W*******a because of our dominance.  I think that it's important
to view ourselves as a part of a community of websites developing free
access to information.  That requires maintaining the respect of other
members of that community, and you don't do that by raiding their
efforts.  The survival of a vision depends on sharing that vision, and
that cannot happen if our allied co-visionaries are  put in a position
where they need to defend their efforts from the superpower on the block.

Ethical considerations rest upon forseeing the consequences of one's own
actions.  Ethics are not governed by rules and laws, nor are they
imposed through fear of arbitrary ounishment.  Ethics involves a
willingness to be at a disadvantage when it is the right thing to do.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Thomas Dalton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>I suggested something on another thread that stated that only people with
>>>>background in a certain field should be qualified to judge notability.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Who determines someone's qualifications? I can claim to be an expert
>>>on any topic I like, that doesn't make it true.
>>>
>>>
>>You can establish your expertise through your participation in the
>>relevant WikiProject.
>>
>>
>After what happened with the WikiProject Alternative medicine I do not
>trust wikiprojects to be neutral. You also risk turning every
>wikiproject into something with internal politics matching Esperanza.
>
I can't comment on Esperanza because I have not been following that debate.

I do think it's wrong to extrapolate the experiences regarding
Alternative medicine into all sorts of unrealated projects.  In the
present context all we would be asking them to do is to deal with
alternative medicine topics.  There may be contentious issues there, but
I think it's reasonable to expect that both sides will remain more or
less on topic.

The potential for every WikiProject to have it's own internal politics
is certainly there, but why is that so bad?  Is it really any better to
throw these issues into a communal sewage treatment plant than a local
septic tank?  It might be easier to find a lost diamond ring in the latter.

Ec


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-13

body:
On Sat, Jan 13, 2007 at 12:15:59AM -0800, brion at pobox.com wrote:
> Passed 484 of 503 tests (96.22%)... FAILED!

Wasn't a change made to the regression tester a while back to make that
final status message less confusing?

Did it... regress?  :-)

Cheer,s
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274


from_name: rfrangi at libero.it

body:
> Matt wrote:
>
> Fair use is an important freedom under US law that many on the English
> wikipedia are loath to abandon.  There is always going to be fair use
> in Wikipedia, and we are unlikely to want to eradicate it entirely -
> for one thing, pretty much all language versions of Wikipedia use fair
> use text quotations (or whatever the local legal equivalent is).

Honestly, Fair use is an important freedom, but it's not a licence. NC images are way more free than fair use images (i.e. copyrighted images that you use without asking for permission).

My personal position is that what is true for texts should be true for images and other types of contents. So if WMF pojects  release their texts under GFDL, they should allow only images with GFDL of compatible licenses. For what I can see, asking it.wiki to remove NC images (no matter how gradually) without asking someone else to remove fair use images will only piss off the italian community (And by the way we still think that the removal of images tagged as PD-Italy from Commons has been an abuse).

I think WMF should state clearly which kind of licences are proper for its projects and everything that is not compliant with this should be removed everywhere, quickly. Possibly this will piss off more pepole, but it's the only way out IMHO.

Roberto (Snowdog)

------------------------------------------------------
Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
http://click.libero.it/infostrada13gen07


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
luke brandt schreef:
> On Friday 15 Dec 2006 Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> On 12/15/06, luke brandt wrote:
>>
>>> From what I understand (but please someone correct me if I
>>> misunderstood the reports) the Wikimedia Board didn't vote last time
>>> these matters were raised because it prefers to allow autonomy.
>>>
>
>
>> On issues such as whether we should allow NC images I, as member of
>> the current Board, definitely don't think there should be any project
>> level autonomy at all. If we want to keep our content compatible
>> across languages and projects, we need to apply a consistent standard
>> of freedom.
>>
>
>
>> I think this will have to be discussed with the current Board.
>> Unfortunately we're very taken up by fundraising preparations and
>> other critical planning issues at the moment; I do hope to bring it up
>> at the next face-to-face meeting in Janaury.
>>
>
>
>> At this time, I would strongly, strongly ask anyone advocating the use
>> of NC content in a project to reconsider. It would hurt Wikikimedia
>> tremendously.
>>
>
> It seems to me that the opposition to NC is based on a most curious and
> imperfect interpretation of the word 'free,' one that seeks to encompass
> the freedom to make a profit from other people's efforts. I therefore
> hope that the Foundation won't have any truck with the idea of diluting
> its previous attitude to autonomy - luke
Hoi,
Your POV is not what the Foundation has expressed from the start. I
think you are completely wrong in this.
Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Confusing Manifestation

body:
What nobody seems to have mentioned is the fact that in AfD
discussions admins are *supposed* to look at all the votes and the
reasonaing behind them, and make an informed decision based on that
(which is exactly what several posts have said should be done). Of
course there are probably a fair few who don't, and in any case the
informed decision is still liable to have a bit of bias behind it, but
just saying "a thousand 'delete, nn' shouldn't count as much as one
'keep, here's a bunch of references'" isn't actually adding anything
to the procedure that isn't (theoretically at least) already there.

CM


body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/13/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
>>that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
>>
>>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing
>>
>>
>AFD appeared to work fine the article was kept.
>
Yes, and if it only happens rarely we can easily laugh about the idiot
who made the nomination; however, when it happens too regularly many are
left with the impression that they must watch their backs because the
idiot attacks are so random.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> >>I suggested something on another thread that stated that only people with
> >>background in a certain field should be qualified to judge notability.
> >>
> >>
> >Who determines someone's qualifications? I can claim to be an expert
> >on any topic I like, that doesn't make it true.
> >
> You can establish your expertise through your participation in the
> relevant WikiProject.

After what happened with the WikiProject Alternative medicine I do not
trust wikiprojects to be neutral. You also risk turning every
wikiproject into something with internal politics matching Esperanza.

--
geni


body:
On 1/13/07, rfrangi at libero.it <rfrangi at libero.it> wrote:
> My personal position is that what is true for texts should be true for images and other types >of contents. So if WMF pojects  release their texts under GFDL, they should allow only >images with GFDL of compatible licenses.

Could you clarify what you mean here? Do you mean "as free as or more
free than the GFDL" or do you mean the statement literaly?

--
geni


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Total size of the Wikipedia (snapshot)?

body:
On 1/13/07, Jon Noring <jon at noring.name> wrote:
> I'm curious as to the size (in bytes) of the current Wikipedia.
>
> That is, if one took a snapshot of the Wikipedia in web form (including
> markup, images, multimedia, etc.), how large would it be? If the web
> documents were compressed, then how large would it be? (This would not
> include edit history information which I assume is substantial -- only
> interested in a snapshot of the current pages.)

You can go to http://download.wikipedia.org/ and look at the static
downloads. The current html dowload for the English wikipedia is about
5.5 GB, compressed with 7-zip.

In the tables at http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm
the number of "binaries" (images, audio etc) was 620k last October. I
don't see the actual size in bytes anywhere.

Alfio


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> luke brandt schreef:
>
>> It seems to me that the opposition to NC is based on a most curious and
>> imperfect interpretation of the word 'free,' one that seeks to encompass
>> the freedom to make a profit from other people's efforts. I therefore
>> hope that the Foundation won't have any truck with the idea of diluting
>> its previous attitude to autonomy - luke
>
> Hoi,
> Your POV is not what the Foundation has expressed from the start. I
> think you are completely wrong in this.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

Hi Gerard,
I shouldn't have interjected the word 'therefore' as I think there are
other good reasons for autonomy as well, as I earlier surmised you do
too. But I'd be interested to know why you disagree on NC. I already
read Eric's arguments:

http://intelligentdesigns.net/Licenses/NC

as well as this reply:

http://cites.boisestate.edu/v6i3e.htm

and I'd be interested to know your view.

Thanks
luke


from_name: Dan Collins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Gary Kirk wrote:
> There is once again a proposal to move the Main Page out of mainspace.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page#Requested_move
>
in the name of Jimbo, WHY?

--
GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net

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from_name: David Strauss

body:
The difference is that material licensed NC usually has freer
substitutes. Invoking fair use usually indicates the absence of a
substitute. Furthermore, fair use and NC are orthogonal considerations:
an image can be neither, one, or both. Just because we might allow fair
use as a compromise doesn't mean compromises elsewhere are warranted. I
don't see the logical step from allowing fair use to allowing
non-commercial media.

So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
under fair use because we don't have a substitute.

If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.

The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
(Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
images undermine that goal.

effe iets anders wrote:
> If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
> justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
> bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
> consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
> expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
> stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
> quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?
>
> I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
> as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
> Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
> use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
> (To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
> educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
> is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
> principles, what is more our principle then free licences?
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
>> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>>> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
>>> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
>>> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
>>> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>>
>> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
>> licenses
>> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
>> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
>> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
>> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
>> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
>> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
>> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
>> right
>> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>>
>> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
>>> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
>>> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
>>> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
>>> the user interfaces.
>>
>> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>>
>> Marco aka Cruccone
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
The difference is that material licensed NC usually has freer
substitutes. Invoking fair use usually indicates the absence of a
substitute. Furthermore, fair use and NC are orthogonal considerations:
an image can be neither, one, or both. Just because we might allow fair
use as a compromise doesn't mean compromises elsewhere are warranted. I
don't see the logical step from allowing fair use to allowing
non-commercial media.

So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
under fair use because we don't have a substitute.

If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.

The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
(Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
images undermine that goal.

effe iets anders wrote:
> If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
> justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
> bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
> consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
> expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
> stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
> quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?
>
> I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
> as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
> Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
> use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
> (To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
> educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
> is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
> principles, what is more our principle then free licences?
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
>> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>>> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
>>> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
>>> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
>>> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>>
>> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
>> licenses
>> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
>> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
>> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
>> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
>> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
>> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
>> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
>> right
>> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>>
>> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
>>> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
>>> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
>>> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
>>> the user interfaces.
>>
>> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>>
>> Marco aka Cruccone
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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body:
The difference is that material licensed NC usually has freer
substitutes. Invoking fair use usually indicates the absence of a
substitute. Furthermore, fair use and NC are orthogonal considerations:
an image can be neither, one, or both. Just because we might allow fair
use as a compromise doesn't mean compromises elsewhere are warranted. I
don't see the logical step from allowing fair use to allowing
non-commercial media.

So, I'm against using non-commercial images unless we're using them
under fair use because we don't have a substitute.

If we use a fair-use image, a commercial organization can at least take
whole Wikipedia pages and re-use them. On the contrary, non-commercial
images must be removed if they don't meet fair-use criteria.

The key here is that we're producing a free-content *encyclopedia* on
Wikipedia, not a free library of the media used to create the content.
(Wikimedia Commons *is* a project creating a free library of media.)
This means the final goal is free-content articles. Non-commercial
images undermine that goal.

effe iets anders wrote:
> If there is no freely licensed substitute, I think we have in the long run
> justr to accept that, and work with substitutes of minor quality. Thats just
> bad luck, but a direct consequence of what we are doing. That is a
> consequence of our choise for freedom, for free licenses. How can you EVER
> expect a photographer, national institutes, record labels, to license their
> stuff freely when even *we* refuse to use the free versions of lower
> quality, and use copyrighted content under the flag of fair use?
>
> I think snowdog made an excellent point in this discussion. NC is more free
> as Fair Use. So a direct consequence would be that NC should be allowed on
> Wikipedia. Even educational use only is more free. So if we choose for fair
> use in the long run, we have to be fair ourselves, and accept those as well.
> (To be clear: I am totally against allowing either NC, either
> educational-only either fair use). It just might very well be that the GFDL
> is worthless then, and when people are talking about throwing out our
> principles, what is more our principle then free licences?
>
> Lodewijk
>
> 2007/1/13, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com>:
>> On 1/13/07, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
>>> Allowing fair use is not an issue of convenience. There are some items
>>> that will not be available in any free form until their copyrights
>>> expire that also have no substitutes. We cannot simply refuse to use
>>> such items when we need them to discuss a topic.
>>
>> You see, this exactly the very reason why on it.wikipedia non free
>> licenses
>> are allowed, i.e. because there are things that cannot be illustrated with
>> free images because the copyright on these images is all they're worth to
>> their owner. Fair use is one (legitimate, IMHO) way of going round this,
>> asking for permission to use the same thing is another, where you have the
>> added bonus that the copyright owner has agreed so she cannot sue you for
>> copyright violation. Unfortunately, not all legislations allow fair use in
>> the same way (newspapers have a wider access to "diritto di cronaca" -
>> right
>> to tell, which is quite similar to fair use to me).
>>
>> For example, if an article discusses the controversy between Apple's
>>> Sherlock and the competing program Watson, it's necessary to invoke fair
>>> use to illustrate the differences through screenshots. Even the most
>>> descriptive prose cannot suffice when the topic is the visual looks of
>>> the user interfaces.
>>
>> I agree, but this does not make those images free.
>>
>> Marco aka Cruccone
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
"Jussi-Ville Heiskanen" wrote

> I personally fear systemic bias on wikipedia is being squeezed from
> two directions concurrently at the moment.
>
> The way AFD currently works means that pages which are not on many
> users watchlists is uniquely vulnerable to AFD-wonks predation. So
> that means that the bias stemming from our communitys composition not
> only affects what gets created but also what gets deleted. This
> two-way squeeze worries me.

Yes, but deletion is only a secondary factor.

> Although I commend in general terms the drive to emphasize quality
> over quantity, to me at least that does not extend so far as to
> emphasizing removal of content over creation of it. And this is a
> question that should at least be addressed. I think it would be useful
> if the board and or Jimbo uttered something on the matter to let us
> know how they view the question in general on this mailing list.

The Board? This is all at a per-wiki level.

> So how about it? Even if we accept that quantity is *less* important
> than the quality, is creation still preferred over removal?

I think there is exactly this type of issue, namely that pressure for 'instant high quality' in articles means that it is much easier (in terms of time) to create articles that are in areas where there is existing reference-quality material. As for how to address the problem: watch closely the use of PROD and CSD A7 deletions, which can be ridiculous; appeal to everyone's good sense in asking patiently for sources for articles which are in tougher areas, and respecting everyone's work.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
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from_name: David Goodman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Entries for deletion.... Notability

body:
An good article that is properly defended is less likely to be
deleted. I have seen many worthy articles fail because there are no
outside references, and the claims are either exorbitant or mild. You
can not expect others to know, unless you tell them.

On 1/13/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Ian Tresman wrote:
>
> >>>Technically all Wikipedia editors are outside their field since they
> >>>are all generally anonymous. That leaves common sense which is
> >>>generally described in WP:NOTABLE.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>That is a remarkably illogical non-sequitur.  Being anonymous does not
> >>imply that one loses all connection with his fields of interest.
> >>
> >>
> >No, it means that it is not verifiable.
> >
> >I've invited experts in their field to contribute their expertise to
> >Wikipedia, only to have it vetoed by an anonymous editor who claim to
> >be a professor and an expert in his field.
> >
> >You would think that two verifiable experts in their field would have
> >sway over an anonymous unverifiable editor.
> >
> This makes so little sense that I wonder whether we are talking about
> the same thing.  What I have been talking about is having editors with a
> common interest having the strongest influence on determining the
> notability of an article.  This has nothing to do with inviting experts
> to contribute.  It has to do with ignoramuses using their cookie-cutter
> interpretation of notability (or verifiability ) to delete articles
> about which they know nothing.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
On Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:14:17 +0200, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:

>uniquely vulnerable to AFD-wonks predation

Assuming bad faith, at all?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nina Stratton [mailto:ninaeliza at gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 07:56 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.
>
>On 1/12/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Message: 10
>> > Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007 12:19:31 -0500
>> > From: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)
>> > To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>> > Message-ID:  <
>> 43348cda0701120919k15954458g636078210a2adede at mail.gmail.com>
>> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>> >
>> > I suggested something on another thread that stated that only people
>> with
>> > background in a certain field should be qualified to judge notability.
>> > Chemists determine chemical notability, Finns determine notability of
>> > Finnish folk, the list goes on. Perhaps it's time to give AFD a good ol'
>> > reworking to separate the opinions of people who are qualified to speak
>> > about the subject's notability and outsider's opinions (both are
>> important,
>> > but we can't put the fingers of clueless people on the red button).
>> > Hopefully, through this, closing AFDs will be based less on vote
>> counting
>> > and more on evaluating the opinions of people.
>>
>> I'd have to agree with James on this one.  This could also be a boon for
>> FA
>> and GA promotions.  It would diminish the tendancy for voting at AFD, FAC,
>> etc. to look like a division of "i don't like it" and the "i like it"
>> camps.
>>
>> Several months ago, an AFD came up for "Amafanius", an early Roman
>> Epicurean
>> philosopher whose works, while unfortunately lost to the ages, were
>> discussed at length in the works of Cicero (who trashed Amafanius with
>> glee), and in Michel de Montaigne.  Because of their referencing,
>> the philosophical offerings of Amafanius can actually be
>> reconstructed...but
>> only in broad strokes.  As someone who studied classics at Rutgers and am
>> well-versed in this area, I recognized that he was notable and should have
>> a
>> place here at Wikipedia.  Thankfully, because a few others were just as
>> well-versed, we were able to save the article.
>>
>> But, unfortunately, as it typical around here,  a large number of users
>> who
>> obvious appeared to be the tech-saavy, internet-raised Pokemon-crowd for
>> whom nothing exists before, say, 20 years ago, voted for "Delete".
>>
>> One of the failings, one that probably contributes to some of the negative
>> reputation Wikipedia has earned, is that it does not have any expert
>> oversight.  Perhaps some sort of prominent, scholarly, editorial advisory
>> board would be in order?  Even if loosely bureaucratic, it would add a
>> little more weight to the credibility of the encyclopedia that would be a
>> worthwhile step in counteracting an image diminished by our pop-culture
>> heaviness (pokemon, star trek, etc.) and "anyone can edit (read:
>> vandalise/insert false information)" repuation.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Christopher D. Thieme
>> User:ExplorerCDT
>>
>
>
>Try Citizendium. Google it. Go there now.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>Nina

That is not a viable solution. We need to solve our problems, not push good people off to another project. AfD is broken. Maybe we could split AfD up into areas. That way it would not be the unwieldy monster it is and those of us with some expertise could stand to have it on our watchlists and show up.

Fred


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] formalism (was: Re: Entries for deletion....
	issues from the Third World)

body:
I'd distinguish between the sources used to establish the notability
of the article  and those for the verifiablity of details.

The sort of source which helps the most in defending the notability of
the article is a book review or product review, and the better known
the source for this, the better, but for perfectly good subjects, only
non-standard sources are available.

For details, I agree that some of the articles are excessive. This is
particularly the case in the sciences, where some of the articles are
footnoted as densely as for a scholarly review--which is not WP.  But
if a fact is challenged it does have to be documented.

I think trying to get FA status (etc) under the current practices not
worth the trouble. If you want it, you do have to follow the fashion.
If they are going to be on the main page, an illustration is not
unreasonable. Otherwise, the answer to someone who asks for a
illustration is obvious: go put one in yourself.

I'm more concerned with the substance of articles.

On 1/9/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
> >>For individual articles, the way to do it is to put in a clearly
> >>sufficient number of citations. from printed works. (accompanied by
> >>English translations if necessary). I've found that specific citations
> >>from peer-reviewed journals do help, if they are at all pertinent. So
> >>do Ph.d. theses and even Masters theses.
> >>
> This is the current vogue on Wikipedia: everything should have a
> gazillion inline citations, and conversely, anything that does not have
> a gazillion inline citations is bad. This is how very good articles that
> used to have FA status or ability one or two years ago are now
> considered "horrible" according to the current fashion.
> Now, what this vogue leads to:
> * We have very good articles (in terms of content and accuracy) on which
> nobody who knows the topic objects anything is wrong, but which are
> considered bad because not every statement that any person who have
> heard about the issue would agree with has a source.
>
> * We have horrific articles, but in which everything is "sourced".
> Anything goes: trivia, mention of the subject appearing in a Seinfeld
> episode, quotations from newspapers on fields they are incompetent about
> (such as science), etc.
>
> Formally speaking, they sound nice, and they please the crowd who thinks
> that what's important in life is sticking to formal rules and earn good
> marks for it. However, those articles really are a shame.
>
> In addition, this kind of "sourcing" has a strong bias towards Internet
> sources (Internet-accessible newspapers, sites, etc.), which, on the
> other hand, tend to be very inadequate on many topics. I remember
> recently reading an evaluation of an article on fr: (I think, 'Women in
> Iran') by a known specialist. What she said:
> * A lot of relevant literature on the issue is ignored.
> * On the other hand, Internet sources, often not much good, are
> overrepresented.
> * There are numerous errors.
> But this article nearly made it to "featured" status, because, formally
> speaking, it had everything! Many citations, photos etc.
>
> To me, the rules that we create, as all rule systems, have this perverse
> effect that people work more to fulfill the rules ("we should have a
> photo" even on abstract topics, "we should have a gazillion citations"
> even if they are low quality) than to fulfill the goal (having good
> articles that people knowing the subject would agree reflect the various
> notable points of view in an unbiased way).
>
> -- DM
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:12:54 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>That is not a viable solution. We need to solve our problems, not push
>good people off to another project. AfD is broken. Maybe we could
>split AfD up into areas. That way it would not be the unwieldy monster
>it is and those of us with some expertise could stand to have it on
>our watchlists and show up.

It already is split up.  That's what the categories added late last
year are for.

As to it being broken, it rather depends.  A lot of the time it makes
the right decision.  Sometimes it gets it wrong, but then, who
doesn't?

I made a suggestion recently, that we put new entries at the top to
reduce the tendency of the last in the list to be seen only by one or
two people.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Platonides

body:
Another one:
http://oursportscentral.com/services/history/wiki.php?title=Special:Recentchanges


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page.

body:
On 1/13/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think I'm going to write a novel (under pseudonym, so it won't screw up
> the quality literary pursuits I'll eventually get around to publishing)
> called "Main Page"...probably about a murder mystery where one irate
> editor
> murders another over some personal attacks and edits to an article he
> considered owned and sacrosanct from others interference.

And then it can be a movie starring Tom Hanks. Ooh.

P.S. I tried having the renaming the main page back in 2004/2005.  I
> actually support it being set up as a portal.  It's amazing how many
> people
> will force any other article to comply with policy, but oh, God, not the
> Main Page!?!?!?!?!? ~cdt

As I understand it, the main arguments against moving it are (a) it's of
reader interest, and we don't expect readers to understand portals and
namespaces right off the bat, and (b) the absolutely horrifying number of
redirects and broken links that would result, possibly for years down the
line.

But I dunno. Consensus against moving it seems to be pretty solid, from what
I've seen, so I'm inclined to find more productive pursuits. Not sure where
I sit, personally, but not a big issue for me, either way.

-Luna


body:
On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> That is not a viable solution. We need to solve our problems, not push good people off to >another project. AfD is broken.

No it isn't. If you claim it is lets see some data to back it up.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body: 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's getting to the point where you can't even say the sky is blue without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original research! Need citation!"'


subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:38:38 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's
>getting to the point where you can't even say the sky is blue without
>one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original research! Need
>citation!"'
             {{fact}}

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
http://oursportscentral.com/services/history/wiki.php?title=Special:Recentchanges

"Unfortunately, no content could be extracted." \o/

-- Domas
http://dammit.lt/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's getting to the point where >you can't even say the sky is blue without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original >research! Need citation!"'

Problem is whith that classic example is that the sky often isn't
blue. It spends a fair bit of time being black with white bits.
Depending on where you are grey may be popular and red/pink may appear
as much as twice a day.

--
geni


body:
> On 1/13/07, rfrangi at libero.it <rfrangi at libero.it> wrote:
> > My personal position is that what is true for texts should be true for images and other types >of contents. So if WMF pojects  release their texts under GFDL, they should allow only >images with GFDL of compatible licenses.
>
> Could you clarify what you mean here? Do you mean "as free as or more
> free than the GFDL" or do you mean the statement literaly?
>
> --
> geni
>

Yes, "as free as or more free than the GFDL"

Roberto (Snowdog)

------------------------------------------------------
Passa a Infostrada. ADSL e Telefono senza limiti e senza canone Telecom
http://click.libero.it/infostrada13gen07


subject: [WikiEN-l] I Cried

body:
There is this fun paradox with wikipedia.

I was submitting a description to something which I am the copyright holder of, but it was removed because it was copyright protected. When I pointed out I had rights to it, because it was something i/company owned - i was told you should not edit your own entries.

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=856133&postcount=6

These are good. The whole thread is at

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=32349

Fred

I actually am working, something about the Derek Smart Arbitration is somewhere in this thread.


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's getting to the point where >you can't even say the sky is blue without one of these little Napoleans squawking, "Original >research! Need citation!"'
>
> Problem is whith that classic example is that the sky often isn't
> blue. It spends a fair bit of time being black with white bits.
> Depending on where you are grey may be popular and red/pink may appear
> as much as twice a day.
>

Indeed. I'd say it's spent more time being grey than blue, recently.
Miserable weather...

-Gurch


from_name: Cool Cat

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Ethnicity inhabited region categories,
	religion inhabited region categories

body:
So why would cfd of such a thing generate so many 'keep' votes?

    - Cool Cat

On 1/12/07, Cool Cat <wikipedia.kawaii.neko at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes,
>
> Tariq Americans with African heritage do live in New York. The point is
> categorizing New York as a "bla inhabited region" is essentially redundant
> and trivial since we would probably have pages of categories.
>
> The problem I am having is with [[Category:Kurdish inhabited regions]]. I
> think the category is problematic, trivial and redundant. Such categories
> often fail to meet [[WP:V]].
>
> I also have problems with a [[Category:Religion in Kurdistan]] and its
> subcats. Not only are they underpopulated, but also they fail to meet
> [[WP:V]].
>
>    - Cool Cat
>
> On 1/12/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/12/07, Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu- <tariqabjotu at gmail.com > wrote:
> > >
> > > That does not seem logical to me at all. I'm sure 99.99999% of readers
> > > will be wondering how the heck New York is an "African inhabited
> > > region." Like me... how the heck is New York an "African inhabited
> > > region"?
> > >
> > > -- Tariq Ab- Jo- Tu-
> >
> >
> > It's all a matter of perspective... there are Africans in New York,
> > after
> > all, none of use is more than a few hundred (maybe a thousand or two
> > max)
> > generations removed from Africa :)
> >
> > But seriously - is there any nationality not represented in New York, or
> > London, or... It strikes me as a hopelessly broad series of categories,
> > and
> > also terribly trivial.
> >
> > Ian
> >
> > Cool Cat wrote:
> > > > Is it logical to categories states, cities, provinces based on
> > religion
> > > or
> > > > ethnicity? (ex: tagging New York state being a part of
> > > [[Category:African
> > > > inhabited region]] and etc)
> > > >       - Cool Cat
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Little Napoleans

body:
On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> 'I've run afoul of the rules lawyers on Wikipedia many times. It's getting
> to the point where you can't even say the sky is blue without one of these
> little Napoleans squawking, "Original research! Need citation!"'
>
> From a gamers forum post at
>
> http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=856122&postcount=3
>
> Fred

Well, if he'd just stop posting original research and provide a few good
citations...


subject: [WikiEN-l] I Cried

body:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2007 15:57:29 +0000, "Fred Bauder"
<fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

>I was submitting a description to something which I am the copyright holder of, but it was removed because it was copyright protected. When I pointed out I had rights to it, because it was something i/company owned - i was told you should not edit your own entries.

Not a paradox - leave it to someone else to judge how significant your
invention is and write it up.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Spam-blacklist for URLs (on Wikimedia sites or
	otherwise)

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 11/01/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> wikitech-l: Does this sound workable in our present setup, per
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/SpamBlacklist_Documentation ?
>
> Additional blacklists can be added in the site configuration; this
> should be no problem - the French Wikipedia want a local blacklist,
> too.

The french request is referenced in bugzilla:
   http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8492

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


subject: [WikiEN-l] Playing Wikipedia

body:
'I recall a blog post about people who were "playing wikipedia" as a game. Much like trolls feed off forum flamewars, they fed off engaging in wiki-politics, powertrips and drama.'

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=856284&postcount=19

Fred


body:
On 1/13/07, K P <kpbotany at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The AfD for Rock climbing is just the most outrageous of recent nominations
> that contributes to the impression that AfD is broken
>
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rock_climbing
>

AFD appeared to work fine the article was kept.

>
> I don't think it's broken, but it is out of control, essentially this was
> nominated for deletion because the OR should be removed and that would leave
> a stub, yet being a stub is not a criterion for deletion. There are many
> such AfDs without valid reasons for deletion, for fairly basic articles--the
> guidelines for proposing AfD are pretty much  ignored by a number of editors
> who appear to stroll Wikipedia looking for things they can nominate  because
> the article rubs them the wrong way for some reason.  That Wikipedia got to
> the point where it considered Rock climbing for deletion, even if it was
> speedy kept, may be an indicator of concern--maybe it was prank, though.
>

It is quite hard to come up with a system that prevents stuff from
being nominated for deletion that doesn't create other problems. The
odd completely flawed listing isn't much of a problem.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] I Cried

body:
On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> There is this fun paradox with wikipedia.
>
> I was submitting a description to something which I am the copyright holder of, but it was >removed because it was copyright protected. When I pointed out I had rights to it, >because it was something i/company owned - i was told you should not edit your own >entries.

It isn't much of a secret that for a long time our copyright rules
have been used as a fairly effective way of removeing marking screeds.
Before G11 came along this would have been a fairly standard way of
dealing with the problem.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Playing Wikipedia

body:
On 1/13/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> 'I recall a blog post about people who were "playing wikipedia" as a game. Much like trolls feed off forum flamewars, they fed off engaging in wiki-politics, powertrips and drama.'
>
> http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=856284&postcount=19
>
> Fred
>
>

You want I should dig out all the threads from digital point
complaining about our removeing external links?

Or the various threads out there on various forums complaining about
this arbcom thing?

Come on a forum post based on reading a blog. I'm really not too worried.

--
geni