body:
Hoi,
Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two
licenses that are not compatible otherwise.

It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to
copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of
facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best
there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a
practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about
definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about
this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of
defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having bogus
information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of
their collection was illegally copied.

For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an
application for our data that we did not think about, that is success".
The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in
applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD
export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised
language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are
few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing
ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not
provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the ISO-639-6.

When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright,
the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the license.
What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ
for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete
curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible
to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell
checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user
knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the
functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution provides.

When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ, there
are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links
on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use the
WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to
/integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on this.
>From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the
active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required to
investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into
WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses
like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The
copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to
grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary projects.

When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used under
a less Free license, you only need to attribute.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Jerome Banal wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving /new/
> edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to dual
> licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about whether
> we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk with
> you all.
>
> So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
> useful.
>
> The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
> cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
> specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under GFDL
> license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and CC-by
> at the same time. Which is not our case.
>
> Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would make
> them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help us
> making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part, data
> part...).
>
>
> What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
>
> * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of change
> would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users), new
> edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still reuse the
> whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
>
> * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ), Wiktionary
> content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
> compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
> attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
> remains free so it should not be a big deal).
>
> * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be possible
> without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
> insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
>
> * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
> request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is more
> free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less restrictions,
> including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be more
> difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
> enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a different
> license choice.
>
>
> So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ) and
> bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources -like
> some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles in the
> past and of derivative works).
>
> OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
> Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that just
> sound bad to you?
>
> Thanks all,
> Jerome Banal


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Dual-Licensing Wiktionary :fr ?


list: wikien-l

from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

body:
Our fair use policy states -- correctly, I think -- that we should not
use fair use for generic images and should remove any non-licensed
images which can be reasonably re-created as free images. The goal
behind this was to discourage unnecessary invocations of the fair use
clause, as well as to encourage free content to be created whenever
possible.

That's all well and good. But does this mean that NO images of people
who are currently alive can be used under "fair use"? After all, if
they are alive, potentially one could take a picture of them and
license it as GFDL.

It sounds like an absurd interpretation of the intention of our "fair
use" policy to me, but this is how people have been insisting on
interpreting it at the Wikipedia:Fair Use talk page. I think this is
foolish on many levels -- it has absolutely nothing to do with either
legal issues or free content, it effectively results in the
jettisoning of many perfectly fine "fair use" images which just happen
to be of living people, and it focuses people attention on the most
immaterial fact-y aspects of "fair use" policy rather than trying to
actually understand how to implement it or why it works the way it
does. I think it is a policy which will cause more trouble that it
will benefits.

That particular interpretation of the policy slipped into the main
policy without any discussion.

I've given up on trying to participate in this discussion, though, as
it has, in my opinion, been hijacked by people who really just see
this as a way to get rid of "fair use" media on the English Wikipedia.
While I can see the ups and downs of "fair use" usage, I think that's
a separate issue that should not be what comes into play in
discussions of policy implementation. If the explicit desire is to get
rid of fair use alltogether, this should be handled in a direct
fashion, not in these indirect, five-and-dime approaches.

I'm just posting it here so that people who care about either our
"fair use" policy or about whether Wikipedia has sensible policies or
not can participate either way on the discussion. What disturbs me the
most about it is that many of these changes which will have vast
effects on the use of "fair use" media on Wikipedia are only being
discussed among a very small group of very interested people. In my
opinion if one is to make such a draconian rule as "no living people
allowed", one must gain a certain amount of legitimacy for it, either
by showing it to be in accord with a substantial popular opinion or
from our non-popular authority structures (i.e. by fiat of a
recognized authority).

Just FYI. Discussions taking place at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Images_of_living_people

The criteria in question is FUC #1:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use_criteria

You can find a long rant from me about it -- with more eloquence than
this little note here, in my opinion -- at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Fair_use_criteria#FUC.231_and_people

At this point I don't care either way about it as I've gotten really
sick of even trying to participate in en policymaking especially in
the "fair use" area, as it has gotten clogged with extremists of all
opinions and nobody seems to have much of an interest in creating
sensible, rational policy (I'm aware not everyone will share my
interpretations or cocerns). I just want to open up the discussion a
bit so that people won't be surprised when the day comes that when
five people at WP:FU change our policies and start deleting images
left and right.

I don't think Wikipedia is a waste of time but it certainly caters to
those with time to waste.

FF


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not
 the	place for national constitution

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> The question is not whether they are separate languages, the question is
> are they mutually exclusive. At this moment MediaWiki does not support
> two scripts in one installation.

MediaWiki certainly supports two scripts in one installation!

Not only can you write in as many scripts as you like on any MediaWiki
installation, but for several languages specific support has been added
for automated conversion and linking between alternate scripts of the
same language to make pages written in different scripts integrate
smoothly (Chinese, Serbian, and recently I think Kazakh).

> This will become possible when the
> coding for Multilingual MediaWiki has been finished and integrated in
> MediaWiki proper.

Multilingual MediaWiki (if it ever exists) is to handle a different
case: having content in multiple separate languages, separately marked
and with the ability to have different pages with the same-spelled title
automatically distinguished.

This would probably not help much for the use of multiple scripts.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
Angela wrote:
>> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
>>> age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.
>
> It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
> and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
> checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
> users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.
>

This includes Arbcom too then.

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
Angela wrote:
>> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
>>> age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.
>
> It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
> and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
> checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
> users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.
>

This includes Arbcom too then.

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
Angela wrote:
>> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
>>> age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.
>
> It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
> and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
> checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
> users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.
>

This includes Arbcom too then.

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
Angela wrote:
>> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
>>> age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.
>
> It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
> and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
> checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
> users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.
>

This includes Arbcom too then.

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

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-14

body:
> > >    1 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
> > >    1 new PASSING test(s) :)
> > >    1 previously FAILING test(s) removed O_o
> > >    1 new FAILING test(s) :(
> >
> > Which tests?
>
> It would be nice to have this automated, of course

Now in r17687. If everything goes according to plan there should be a few new tests that show up as failing, and a few new ones that
show up as passing, and these should all be listed by name in the next automated run summary of what's changed.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] status JMOL

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> What is the status of JMOL ? The last I heard was that the code had to
> be sanitised for a security reason if I recall correctly. Is it now in
> principle available for use ?

I haven't heard anything from them since the security review. I can only
assume that the author has lost interest in it. Perhaps someone else will
pick it up. I might do so myself if I have some spare time.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
Hi,

David Gerard schrieb am 15.11.2006 14:57:
>>Take a look at the following stats here:
>>http://tools.wikimedia.de/~avatar/protected.php
>
> Warning: mysql_result() [function.mysql-result]: Unable to jump to row

I forgot to mention that it won't work with wp en, because there is no
functional en dump on the toolserver.

Bye, Tim.

--
http://wikipedistik.de


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are two more angles that are of significance:
>
> 1) The legal.
> 2) The ethical.

[discussion of each snipped]

I think that the vast majority of these 'fair use' images are not
images in either problem category.  Most that I've seen are
fundamentally images whose licenses/permission would permit them to be
used on Wikipedia - in other words, we won't be sued for using them,
nor will their creators have an issue for them to be used here.  The
issue is that the licenses, while permitting use on Wikipedia, don't
count as sufficiently free to be acceptable.

In other words, 'fair use' is being used as an end-run around the
prohibition of non-free with-permission.  The only conflict is with
Wikipedia policy, not the law or general ethics.

-Matt


body:
Hoi,
At this moment the requirement is that two articles on the same topic in
different scripts and identified as such can coexist on one system. The
ability of converting from one script to the other like for Chinese is
something different. As long as there is no automated lossless
conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from Cyrillic to Latin AND the
orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide the required functionality
for Romanian/Moldovan.

One of the things MLMW will also do is allow for the linking from one
article to another within the same wiki similar to the current interwiki
functionality. This is one aspect where MLMW helps when multiple scripts
are used.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Brion Vibber wrote:
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> The question is not whether they are separate languages, the question is
>> are they mutually exclusive. At this moment MediaWiki does not support
>> two scripts in one installation.
>>
>
> MediaWiki certainly supports two scripts in one installation!
>
> Not only can you write in as many scripts as you like on any MediaWiki
> installation, but for several languages specific support has been added
> for automated conversion and linking between alternate scripts of the
> same language to make pages written in different scripts integrate
> smoothly (Chinese, Serbian, and recently I think Kazakh).
>
>
>> This will become possible when the
>> coding for Multilingual MediaWiki has been finished and integrated in
>> MediaWiki proper.
>>
>
> Multilingual MediaWiki (if it ever exists) is to handle a different
> case: having content in multiple separate languages, separately marked
> and with the ability to have different pages with the same-spelled title
> automatically distinguished.
>
> This would probably not help much for the use of multiple scripts.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...

body:
> On 11/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Please note I have added a section to the rules regarding the legal
> > age requirement of 18 years for anyone running for steward.

It makes no sense to apply this to stewards who only give out rights
and not to the people using the rights. If the issue is with who has
checkuser or oversight, then you need to apply the age policy to those
users, not to the stewards who are not using checkuser or oversight.

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] More stewards...


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] On style sheets

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEJHJEAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<455AF2F5.1090104@pobox.com> <ejfu28$bi8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Wed, Nov 15, 2006 at 08:41:38PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
> At one point, LiveJournal introduced a system whereby you can choose to
> use either the latest stable code (the default for everyone), or the
> beta-test code (users had to explicitly set this). They did this by
> setting a cookie, and the cookie would cause their internal proxies to
> choose the right server with the right version of the code. Do you think
> something like that could be implemented on Wikipedia? This has two huge
> benefits:
> * It would work for all Wikimedia sites, not just Wikipedia, much less
>    just the English Wikipedia; and
> * People wouldn't get so upset anymore about seeing problems because
>    they have explicitly opted in for beta-test, and (ideally) would be
>    aware that the general public isn't seeing the problem, while at the
>    same time being encouraged to report the problem so that it can be
>    fixed before the general public gets to see it.
>
> Does this make sense to you? Please ask if anything about the above is
> unclear.

Sounds perfectly sensible to me... until something creeps into the beta
that trashes the databases.  But as you note, the code we'd be running
on the beta is the code we now just push to production, so the danger
level can't be any higher.

Except that conscious beta-testers may hammer harder and therefore be
more likely to break stuff, I guess...

Cheers,
-- 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

	"That's women for you; you divorce them, and 10 years later,
	  they stop having sex with you."  -- Jennifer Crusie; _Fast_Women_


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> That's all well and good. But does this mean that NO images of people
> who are currently alive can be used under "fair use"? After all, if
> they are alive, potentially one could take a picture of them and
> license it as GFDL.
[snip]

It's not hard (finally) to find examples where our policy has
increased the pool of free content. I don't think you're disputing
that from that perspective our policy wins.

That alone makes a pretty compelling argument, and as you pointed
out.. it's that thinking that underlies much of that policy.

There are two more angles that are of significance:

1) The legal.
2) The ethical.

== The legal ==

On the legal front, I haven't found any positive parallel examples in
US case law for the sort of usage you're discussing. What we're
looking for is where X takes a picture of Y, and then Z uses X's
picture of Y for no reason involving X but rather because Z simply
needs a picture of Y.   It's not at all clear that this would be
permitted under fair use.

The ability of Z to use X's work for the purpose of critical
commentary and academic discourse regarding about X and his work is
well established while there is an entire industry
(http://editorial.gettyimages.com/ms_gins/source/home/home.aspx?pg=1,
AP, etc) built around Z playing X to get pictures of Y.   There is a
lot on money behind groups who profit because fair use doesn't make
any editorial use fair game.

So I think we can agree that the legal case there is at best unclear,
and that if we can avoid legal issues we generally should.

== The ethical ==

I think this angle is the simplest of all...

We *completely* and *utterly* depend on the charity of people who
create create content.

No matter what your position is on the ethics of copyright in general,
I suspect that if you think carefully you will agree that acting
against the wishes of the producers of content is not the right thing
to do.

In cases where we use a work to discuss a work, there is a clear case
of necessity... and fair use was created specifically to address these
cases.  Since most works are not self-referential it would be hard to
say that using a work to discuss a work is using in a capacity which
replaces its commercial value.

But imagine where myself and two other photographers take a picture of
Mr. Y for the express purpose of selling the work for inclusion in
newspapers, encyclopedias, textbooks, etc.  Wikipedia then takes my
picture because it needed a picture of Mr.Y and mine was the best (of
course :) ), places it into the article on Mr. Y, distributes it
widely, doesn't compensate me (claiming 'fair use').  The commercial
value of my work is reduced, I have to play an endless game of
wackamole if I do want to try to put the horse back in the stables..
Meanwhile my competitors with lower quality images profit without
difficulty.    Lets ignore the legal issues here, ... I don't see how
anyone could call this sort of use 'fair' using any sane lay
definition of fair.

The huge innovation of Wikipedia over just about every other non-wiki
based site which claims to be supported by community created content
is that we have PROVEN that it is possible to create something of
value beyond far beyond fart jokes and soda rockets without 'community
created' being a codeword for 'copyright violation'.

We've gone so far already in creating our own original quality
content, and we find ourselves at the mercy of both the law and of the
fickle goodwill of the content authoring public.   I simply have not
seen evidence that we're anywhere near the limits of what can be done
with Free Content, so I see no reason to risk our unique position for
a little temporary expedience.

and why now? when we're making such tremendous progress at getting
Free pictures of famous people?

Or put another way, the only clear way to survive as a *large* 'user
contributed content' site with a laissez-faire attitude on copyright
is a Google buyout and the associated cash injection.  Perhaps it's
just me, but I haven't heard the community asking us to go in that
direction.


body:
On 11/15/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there somewhere in the wiki where discussions about Fair Use
> images' appropriateness can go?  I'm having a dispute with someone
> over fair use of a manufacturers' web PR photo  of a relatively rare
> aircraft, and I don't know how to get more wikipedia-copyright-expert
> people's review of the question.

Better than discussion is closure: Since it's a "web PR photo" I
assume the manufacturer is still in business.  Contact them and ask
them to release the image under a free license.   Success rate for
this isn't fantastic, but a quick email (we have boilerplates) costs
you nothing, and if they agree (make sure their reply copies the
permissions queue) the argument is closed.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Factual error on mediawiki.org

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 05:47:58PM +0000, Timwi wrote:
>
>> Public domain is not a license. Please correct this as soon as possible.
>>
>
> No, but it *is* still possible to dedicate original material to the
> public domain, is it not?
>
> Cheers,
> -- jra
>
Hoi,
Not necessarily so. I was told that in the Netherlands it is not even
possible to irrevocably license something.
Thanks,
     GerardM


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> At this moment the requirement is that two articles on the same topic in
> different scripts and identified as such can coexist on one system. The
> ability of converting from one script to the other like for Chinese is
> something different.

Indeed, those are different and unrelated things, and both already
possible with MediaWiki today.

> As long as there is no automated lossless
> conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide the required functionality
> for Romanian/Moldovan.

That's a third thing, and an implementation detail for the given
language (eg, already implemented for Serbian, etc). Nor is it related
to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.

> One of the things MLMW will also do is allow for the linking from one
> article to another within the same wiki similar to the current interwiki
> functionality. This is one aspect where MLMW helps when multiple scripts
> are used.

You can already do that, of course, either manually (perhaps with a
helpful template), or using the interwiki system itself.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> <snip>
>
>> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these
>> changes can be used under
>> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>>
>
>
> I do not know a great deal about the variety of
> licenses.  What do you mean by a less Free license?
> What does this mean in practice?
>
> Birgitte SB
Hoi,
Here a less Free license means a license that is more restrictive. The
one thing required by CC-by is attribution; CC-by-sa also requires
"share alike" and is thereby more restrictive. In practice it means that
as long as the attribution is maintained, you can use the content.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Jerome Banal

body:
Hello Gerard,

Hmm, this is pretty adventurous, isn't it?
GPL is not compatible with GFDL and a poll to change a license of current
content is only valid if the license is entitled to the community as a
collaborative work and not to contributors like in the case of Wikimedia
projects. Otherwise, you should be only able to get edits made 100% by
people who agreed (but I guess, you know all that already).

Also, in some countries (France for example), there is a "database-specific
copyright law" that may apply on dictionaries (a structured list of
synonyms, translations and all being nothing more than a database for the
law) and which basically forbids to copy a "substantial amount" -both in
term of data fields and entries- of a database (if you read some French:
http://www.murielle-cahen.com/p_base_de_donnees.asp).

Thanks,
Jerome Banal

2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two
> licenses that are not compatible otherwise.
>
> It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to
> copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of
> facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best
> there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a
> practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about
> definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about
> this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of
> defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having bogus
> information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of
> their collection was illegally copied.
>
> For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an
> application for our data that we did not think about, that is success".
> The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in
> applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD
> export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised
> language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are
> few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing
> ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not
> provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the ISO-639-6.
>
> When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright,
> the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the license.
> What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ
> for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete
> curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible
> to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell
> checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user
> knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the
> functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution provides.
>
> When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ, there
> are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links
> on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use the
> WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to
> /integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on this.
> >From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the
> active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required to
> investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into
> WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses
> like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The
> copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to
> grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary
> projects.
>
> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used under
> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> Jerome Banal wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving
> /new/
> > edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to
> dual
> > licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about
> whether
> > we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk
> with
> > you all.
> >
> > So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
> > useful.
> >
> > The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
> > cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
> > specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under
> GFDL
> > license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and
> CC-by
> > at the same time. Which is not our case.
> >
> > Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would
> make
> > them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help us
> > making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part,
> data
> > part...).
> >
> >
> > What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
> >
> > * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of
> change
> > would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users),
> new
> > edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still reuse
> the
> > whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
> >
> > * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ), Wiktionary
> > content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
> > compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
> > attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
> > remains free so it should not be a big deal).
> >
> > * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be
> possible
> > without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
> > insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
> >
> > * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
> > request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is
> more
> > free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less restrictions,
> > including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be more
> > difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
> > enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a
> different
> > license choice.
> >
> >
> > So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ)
> and
> > bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources
> -like
> > some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles in
> the
> > past and of derivative works).
> >
> > OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
> > Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that
> just
> > sound bad to you?
> >
> > Thanks all,
> > Jerome Banal
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 11/15/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Our fair use policy states -- correctly, I think -- that we should not
> use fair use for generic images and should remove any non-licensed
> images which can be reasonably re-created as free images. The goal
> behind this was to discourage unnecessary invocations of the fair use
> clause, as well as to encourage free content to be created whenever
> possible.
>
> That's all well and good. But does this mean that NO images of people
> who are currently alive can be used under "fair use"? After all, if
> they are alive, potentially one could take a picture of them and
> license it as GFDL.
>
Seems reasonable to me.  Certainly most images of living people can
reasonably be re-created as free images.  And you say you support that
policy, right?

> It sounds like an absurd interpretation of the intention of our "fair
> use" policy to me, but this is how people have been insisting on
> interpreting it at the Wikipedia:Fair Use talk page. I think this is
> foolish on many levels -- it has absolutely nothing to do with either
> legal issues or free content,

It has a lot to do with free content.  "Fair use images" aren't free
content, and allowing them in Wikipedia reduces the incentive to
create free content.

> it effectively results in the
> jettisoning of many perfectly fine "fair use" images which just happen
> to be of living people,

I wouldn't ever consider a non-free image to be "perfectly fine".
"Occassionally acceptable" would be more my description.

> and it focuses people attention on the most
> immaterial fact-y aspects of "fair use" policy rather than trying to
> actually understand how to implement it or why it works the way it
> does.

Whether or not an image is of a living person is not very material to
the issue of whether or not the use is fair use.  But the fact that an
image is legal for Wikipedia to use is only one factor in whether or
not it should be used.  It is necessary, but it is not sufficient, for
the use of an image to be fair use.

> I think it is a policy which will cause more trouble that it
> will benefits.
>
> That particular interpretation of the policy slipped into the main
> policy without any discussion.
>
I believe there was a thread about publicity photos not being good
candidates for fair use (started by a quite famous Wikipedian), but I
can't find the thread at the moment (so I won't even name the famous
Wikipedian).  If someone can find the thread, please speak up.

> I've given up on trying to participate in this discussion, though, as
> it has, in my opinion, been hijacked by people who really just see
> this as a way to get rid of "fair use" media on the English Wikipedia.
> While I can see the ups and downs of "fair use" usage, I think that's
> a separate issue that should not be what comes into play in
> discussions of policy implementation. If the explicit desire is to get
> rid of fair use alltogether, this should be handled in a direct
> fashion, not in these indirect, five-and-dime approaches.
>
I think there is a desire among many of us to get rid of fair use
altogether.  However, that doesn't mean that it needs to be done here
and now.  I think a gradual approach toward eliminating at least the
vast majority of fair use on Wikipedia is the best approach.

Anthony


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] idea: edit summary preview

body:
I realize full well that obsessing about one's edit summaries is
a sign of, well, obsession, and I'm not about to propose a way of
editing them, but given that their formatting rules are subtly
different from normal wikitext (special treatment of /* */,
evidently no treatment of ''...'', automagic insertion of
the ? character, etc.), it seems like it would be nice (but also
benign) to show a preview of the edit summary along with the rest
of the page when doing Show Preview.  Is this too goofy an idea?


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:

>However, if the check is done for investigation reasons (request by the
>police, by a government etc...), rather than to immediately protect the
>site from a raw attack, yeah, it would be very shocking that a checkuser
>reveals the information. To that date, I do not think it ever occured.
>
>In this case, if a request was made to find out the ip of the user who
>issued the threats, I think the request should be made to the
>board/executive. But *mostly*, the request should be done either by a
>very trusted user, or more likely by a group of trusted editors. If a
>totally unknown person mentions threats have been issued in a language
>we can not understand, and request to know the ip of another editor, I'd
>say the request should not be fullfilled.
>
Things can get even more complicated when the requesting police force is
of a country well known for its violations of civil rights.  A subpoena
from Myanmar.would be a cause for concern.

Even your last point gets tricky.  If a woman is receiving sexual
threats giving the IP details directly to her may not be the most
effective way of dealing with the problem unless she is technically
savvy.  A threat from someone in her own town is more dangerous than one
from the other side of the world, and having the information given
directly to people in a position to do something about the problem will
eliminate the potential for having the authorities as hysteria.

Ec


body:
Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:

>I think that is what both Jimbo and I said...
>
>What the privacy policy states (the way I read it) is that Checkusers are
>allowed to release IP information when one of the conditions for release
>(e.g. abuse of resources, or in this case, threats against a community
>member) are met, and there is no better alternative than to release them
>immediately. For example, a Checkuser in the English Wikipedia is allowed to
>release the IP of a vandal who is creating a plethora of accounts with the
>sole intent of vandalizing the site; in fact, every time a Checkuser blocks
>a vandal IP based on Checkuser information, the IP is released into the
>block log.
>
IP information alone does not always mean we have personal personal
information.

>I cannot imagine a scenario in which a police officer approaches
>a user with the appropriate privileges, identifies himself satisfactorily,
>and makes it clear beyond any doubt that the information is going to be used
>in a rape/stalking/solicitation investigation, and is refused the
>information he needs.
>
I can.  A person with checkuser lives in a country with more limited
civil rights, and the police threaten him with jail if he does not use
that right to give them what they want ...Even in freer countries very
few people are willing to confront the police when they make improper
demands.  If suggesting that they are on a rape investigation will get
them the information they want they'' say that.

>Of course, it may be appropriate to "kick him
>upstairs" to the Florida office as soon as possible, if the situation is not
>as urgent.
>
Sometimes.

Ec


from_name: Steve Sanbeg

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Labeled Section
	Transclusion	(need	feedbackoncurrentstatus!)

references:
<ejd736$j49$2@sea.gmane.org>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKKEKKJEAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<pan.2006.11.15.16.17.39.996613@ask.com>

body:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 11:17:48 -0500, Steve Sanbeg wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:15:19 +1100, Nick Jenkins wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>
>> I've had a second quick look, and something separate is this:
>>
>> In [[Main Page]] I have a bit of the page that contains:
>> ------------------------------------
>>

>>
>>

>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Then in another page I have:
>> ------------------------------------
>> {{#lst:Main Page|ownage}}
>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> The result is that on saving or previewing that page, I get a JavaScript popup dialog box saying "Ownage!".
>> That should not happen; instead what I should get is the following non-executable HTML in the output:
>> ------------------------------------
>>
<script>alert("Ownage!");</script>
>>

>> ------------------------------------
>>
>> Related to this and probably the same issue, is that if there is an image <gallery> wrapped in
 tags, then the image
>> gallery should display on the page that includes it via the {{#lst)).
>>
>> All the best,
>> Nick.
>
> Oh, that's not good.  Setting noparse=>false in the return will fix that,
> but will also cause it to change the edit section links to point to the
> main document.  I expect there's no way to get those right and resolve the
> edit sections correctly without some enhancement to the parser, such as
> allowing the parser function to return a title, or call back into the
> extension when it's done parsing.
>
> Although at least that doesn't change the syntax, like when this
> enhancement was hooked directly into the parser, so maybe that could be
> done.
>
> Thanks
>   -Steve

OK, I seem to have found a better hook for the recursive parsing (as well
as a competent newsreader), so we may be back in business.  The new
version seems to address these issues.

Thanks much!
 -Steve


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Commons needs patrollers and future admins

body:
On 15/11/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/14/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I just sent this to wikien-l asking for helpers. Presumably there are
> > tags, etc. for non-admin patrollers to tag suspect images. Something
> > like this posted to other language Wikipedias would be a good idea, I
> > suspect.
>
> Yes.
> {{delete}}

I think the behaviour of template:delete is slightly different on enwp
and Commons. For Commons, it is a deletion request (normal discussion,
like IFD on enwp). On enwp, it is a speedy deletion marker.

For speedy deletion - these should be extremely obvious cases where no
discussion is required, like album covers and obvious press shots and
the like - there is {{copyvio}}.

At any rate, I encourage anyone interested in helping to install this
- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Quick-delete.js (there
are instructions there) - it will save you tons of time as it
automatically notifies uploaders.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
On 11/15/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the vast majority of these 'fair use' images are not
> images in either problem category.  Most that I've seen are
> fundamentally images whose licenses/permission would permit them to be
> used on Wikipedia - in other words, we won't be sued for using them,
> nor will their creators have an issue for them to be used here.  The
> issue is that the licenses, while permitting use on Wikipedia, don't
> count as sufficiently free to be acceptable.
>
> In other words, 'fair use' is being used as an end-run around the
> prohibition of non-free with-permission.  The only conflict is with
> Wikipedia policy, not the law or general ethics.

I'd be interested to in exploring your view on this further...

First, cases where the copyright holder doesn't care about the content
being in Wikipedia are primary candidates for obtaining free licenses.
I mentioned this in the part above the cutline. A primary objective of
our project is increasing the free content of the world. By accepting
non-free material from friendly copyright holders we are failing at
that important goal.

Secondly, I and many others (as well as our policy) have advocated a
position that only our uses where we are actually discussing the
"copyrighted work" and not something which the copyrighted work simply
contains is actually covered by fair use.

Careful consideration of the language of 17 U.S.C. ? 107 as well as
the legal, social, and economic motivations for fair use suggests this
interpretation of the law. Furthermore, all the case law affirming
fair use that I've seen has been around direct use (i.e. discussing
the copyrighted work itself), and the substantial body of caselaw
*denying* claims of fair use in parody are built around indirect
parody (copy the work to make fun of something almost totally
unrelated).

I have not found a good example of a court saying you can't copy X's
work to critically comment on Y... but I'm tending to think that the
reason is because no one but us is foolish enough to try.

As I pointed out in my prior post,  go to getty image's editorial
section ... look at the images available (and their prices :) ) and
explain to me an interpretation of copyright law which would allow us
to use these pictures in our biographies, but which wouldn't put
getty's editorial images department out of business.

Because most of the pictures of people (especially living people) are
not themselves notable, it can be argued, under the above
understanding of fair use, that our use of these pictures is not
clearly supported as fair use.  (There are examples of picture of
people which are notable, such as the classic photograph of Marlyn
Monroe... but most pictures on our bio are just pictures, the same as
hundreds of other pictures of the famous person).

Because of the above point, I'm not sure how you arrive with "most
I've seen" being clear cases of fair use under the law.  Could you
clarify: I think we're either working with a different definition of
fair use, or talking about a different set of images.

Generally, I prefer that we avoid the legal arguments as they can be
heavily jurisdiction specific and without very similar case law they
often come down to the whim of the court.

I believe that "maximize free content" is a more solid piece of
guidance. Not only is it aligned with the project's goals and the
foundation's mission, an effort to maximize free content also lands us
in the most 'legally safe' zone because an effort to maximize free
content would only allow us to use non-free content where we must and
where no alternative is possible... which is the sort of circumstances
the fair use provisions of our law are intended to protect.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia glossary

body:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 12:25:40 +0000, <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

>Astroturfing?

Look it up in Wikipedia :-)

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


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
A copyright holder can license his content. This is why several Open
Source projects insist that any the ownership of a contribution that is
to be merged  into the core of that project is to be transferred to the
organisation that maintains the project. This way they can provide both
free and proprietary services based on the same code-base. The Wikimedia
projects are not the same. It is possible to write a quality NPOV
Wikipedia article in many ways, just compare articles in different
Wikipedias and you will see what I mean. Wiktionary is very much more
factual; the translation for child in Dutch is kind. The gender is
neutral, the plural is kinderen. You cannot copyright this. The
information in WiktionaryZ and Wiktionary is very much like this. It is
very much the reason why WiktionaryZ could be developed in this way.

It is as you indicate, there are multiple copyrights involved. The
MediaWiki is GPL. The database design is GPL. The database specific
copyright is as indicated earlier with either with the Wikimedia
Foundation or with the community of a Wiktionary project. It is not
possible for a single person to lay claim to the whole of the collection.

The WiktionaryZ project is completely differently organised from the
Wiktionary projects; one is relational the other flat file organised.
When it comes to the data itself, for Wiktionary an article exists for
each each expression spelled in a particular way. In WiktionaryZ there
is a record for each occurrence of the expression per language. It is
therefore impossible for WiktionaryZ to "infringe" on the license held
by Wiktionary in all the ways that you specify for the "database
specific copyright".

Thanks,
    GerardM

Jerome Banal wrote:
> Hello Gerard,
>
> Hmm, this is pretty adventurous, isn't it?
> GPL is not compatible with GFDL and a poll to change a license of current
> content is only valid if the license is entitled to the community as a
> collaborative work and not to contributors like in the case of Wikimedia
> projects. Otherwise, you should be only able to get edits made 100% by
> people who agreed (but I guess, you know all that already).
>
> Also, in some countries (France for example), there is a "database-specific
> copyright law" that may apply on dictionaries (a structured list of
> synonyms, translations and all being nothing more than a database for the
> law) and which basically forbids to copy a "substantial amount" -both in
> term of data fields and entries- of a database (if you read some French:
> http://www.murielle-cahen.com/p_base_de_donnees.asp).
>
> Thanks,
> Jerome Banal
>
>
> 2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two
>> licenses that are not compatible otherwise.
>>
>> It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to
>> copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of
>> facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best
>> there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a
>> practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about
>> definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about
>> this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of
>> defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having bogus
>> information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of
>> their collection was illegally copied.
>>
>> For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an
>> application for our data that we did not think about, that is success".
>> The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in
>> applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD
>> export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised
>> language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are
>> few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing
>> ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not
>> provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the ISO-639-6.
>>
>> When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright,
>> the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the license.
>> What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ
>> for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete
>> curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible
>> to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell
>> checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user
>> knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the
>> functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution provides.
>>
>> When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ, there
>> are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links
>> on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use the
>> WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to
>> /integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on this.
>> >From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the
>> active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required to
>> investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into
>> WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses
>> like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The
>> copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to
>> grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary
>> projects.
>>
>> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used under
>> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>>
>> Jerome Banal wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving
>>>
>> /new/
>>
>>> edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to
>>>
>> dual
>>
>>> licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about
>>>
>> whether
>>
>>> we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk
>>>
>> with
>>
>>> you all.
>>>
>>> So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
>>> useful.
>>>
>>> The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
>>> cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
>>> specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under
>>>
>> GFDL
>>
>>> license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and
>>>
>> CC-by
>>
>>> at the same time. Which is not our case.
>>>
>>> Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would
>>>
>> make
>>
>>> them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help us
>>> making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part,
>>>
>> data
>>
>>> part...).
>>>
>>>
>>> What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
>>>
>>> * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of
>>>
>> change
>>
>>> would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users),
>>>
>> new
>>
>>> edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still reuse
>>>
>> the
>>
>>> whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
>>>
>>> * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ), Wiktionary
>>> content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
>>> compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
>>> attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
>>> remains free so it should not be a big deal).
>>>
>>> * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be
>>>
>> possible
>>
>>> without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
>>> insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
>>>
>>> * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
>>> request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is
>>>
>> more
>>
>>> free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less restrictions,
>>> including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be more
>>> difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
>>> enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a
>>>
>> different
>>
>>> license choice.
>>>
>>>
>>> So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ)
>>>
>> and
>>
>>> bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources
>>>
>> -like
>>
>>> some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles in
>>>
>> the
>>
>>> past and of derivative works).
>>>
>>> OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
>>> Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that
>>>
>> just
>>
>>> sound bad to you?
>>>
>>> Thanks all,
>>> Jerome Banal


body:
On 11/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you wish to rethink your position or do you have counter evidence?

:)

Thanks Geni, although I'm not sure categories are the best way to
demonstrate this... I believe (and hope) that in every category of
'fair use images' there are some images which are being used
correctly. That is, the image is an excerpt of a copyrighted work
which is being used in an article which is providing critical
commentary of that work, and the excerpt is a necessary part of our
ability to educate on the subject.

It's my experience that there are even quite a fair use images which
are used in one place where there is a solid argument, as well as a
number of additional places where there is virtually no claim for fair
use.

Some categories are worse than others... Historically I found the
magazine covers to be pretty bad... often our use of the cover images
has been not to discuss the magazine but instead to compete with the
magazine more successfully by using their images for our coverage of a
common subject.

As an aside I find myself in an interesting position these days. I've
been more active in the commons community where I find myself
*defending* the concept of fair use images in Wikipedia, and then I
walk into En and find myself lamenting enwiki's current fair use image
status. :)

An interesting aspect of this is that the in Dewiki the articles which
I argue need to have fair use images have prominent external links to
someone elses copyvio.. while the enwiki articles which I argue use
fair use images unnecessarily tend to have free illustrations and
sometimes no illustration, but never external links in Dewiki.

This gives me confidence in the correctness of my position ... since
although I strongly support Dewikis view of maximizing free content
even at a substantial short term cost, I fail to see how we're
maximizing free content by externally linking to unfree content. :)


body:
The following is a discussion of the law, not of Wikipedia policy.  I
agree fully with Matthew Brown that these types of images shouldn't be
in Wikipedia.  However, I believe that many of these types of images
would be perfectly legal to use in Wikipedia.

On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Secondly, I and many others (as well as our policy) have advocated a
> position that only our uses where we are actually discussing the
> "copyrighted work" and not something which the copyrighted work simply
> contains is actually covered by fair use.
>
> Careful consideration of the language of 17 U.S.C. ? 107 as well as
> the legal, social, and economic motivations for fair use suggests this
> interpretation of the law. Furthermore, all the case law affirming
> fair use that I've seen has been around direct use (i.e. discussing
> the copyrighted work itself), and the substantial body of caselaw
> *denying* claims of fair use in parody are built around indirect
> parody (copy the work to make fun of something almost totally
> unrelated).
>
> I have not found a good example of a court saying you can't copy X's
> work to critically comment on Y... but I'm tending to think that the
> reason is because no one but us is foolish enough to try.
>
FWIW, I think you've got the law completely wrong here.  Fair use is
used constantly in US media in ways that aren't "actually discussing a
copyrighted work", and it usually doesn't lead to any lawsuits at all.
 But here's one case for you to look at, and a specific quote from
that case, which explicitly contradicts what you're saying:

Bill Graham Archives v. Dorling Kindersley Limited, Dorling Kindersley
Publishing, and RR Donnelley & Sons Company

"In some instances, it is readily apparent that DK's image display
enhances the reader's understanding of the biographical text.   In
other instances, the link between image and text is less obvious;
nevertheless, the images still serve as historical artifacts
graphically representing the fact of significant Grateful Dead concert
events selected by the Illustrated Trip's author for inclusion in the
book's timeline.   We conclude that both types of uses fulfill DK's
transformative purpose of enhancing the biographical information in
Illustrated Trip, a purpose separate and distinct from the original
artistic and promotional purpose for which the images were created.
See Elvis Presley Enters., Inc. v. Passport Video, 349 F.3d 622,
628-29 (9th Cir. 2003) (finding the use of television clips to be
transformative where "the clips play for only a few seconds and are
used for reference purposes while a narrator talks over them or
interviewees explain their context in Elvis' career," but not to be
transformative where the clips "play without much interruption, [and
t]he purpose of showing these clips likely goes beyond merely making a
reference for a biography, but instead serves the same intrinsic
entertainment value that is protected by Plaintiffs' copyrights"); see
also Hofheinz v. A & E Television Networks, Inc., 146 F. Supp. 2d 442,
446?47 (S.D.N.Y. 2001) (ruling that unauthorized inclusion of
copyrighted film clips in actor's biographical film was protected fair
use because the biography "was not shown to recreate the creative
expression reposing in plaintiff's  [copyrighted] film,  [but] for the
transformative purpose of enabling the viewer to understand the
actor's modest beginnings in the film business").  In sum, because
DK's use of the disputed images is transformative both when
accompanied by referencing commentary and when standing alone, we
agree with the district court that DK was not required to discuss the
artistic merits of the images to satisfy this first factor of fair use
analysis."

Repeating that last sentence, "DK was not required to discuss the
artistic merits of the images to satisfy this first factor of fair use
analysis."  I'll leave it up to others to provide more cites.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] AntiSpoof issues

body:
Mark Clements wrote:
> "Timwi" <timwi at gmx.net> wrote in message
> news:ejd0fd$pug$1 at sea.gmane.org...
>
>>Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>
>>>Can we think of a good way to impliment "interactive intervention" in
>>>mediawiki which neither adds weird backend requirements (works with
>>>the nonpersistantness of php) or odd client requirements (no java or
>>>the like).
>>>
>>>The idea is that we have hundreds of people in IRC.. many people RC
>>>patrolling.   There are *many* sorts of activities which software can
>>>mark as suspect but which require judgement.  Is there a reasonable
>>>way for us to get that judgement in real-time?
>>
>>But that's easy... [long suggestion snipped]
>
> This requires that the user supplies an e-mail address - not currently a
> requirement, so far as I know...

Do you have any better ideas?

Note that it is still perfectly possible to register without an e-mail
address if you don't trigger the anti-spoof system, which I would hope
would be the vast majority of cases. If someone is determined to have a
certain username because it's their Internet handle (and not because
they're trying to impersonate someone), they normally wouldn't mind
supplying at least a temporary e-mail address.

Timwi


from_name: xaosflux

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
This would require a developer to create a group that only has the block
additional privlidge, restrict access to the normal blocking interface, and
create a special blocking interface that only allows blocks of a
predetermined ammount of time.

xaosflux

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Henner" <christophe.henner at gmail.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 15, 2006 7:41 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

> Good evening/morning
>
> There's a discussion on the french speaking wikipedia about granted
> some users the power to block vandals one day. Is that possible? I do
> think right now it's not, but is it possible to create a new level
> granted by bureaucrats that allows the user ONLY to use blocking for a
> preset time? Those users wouldn't have access to delete and other
> sysops abilities.
>
> Before letting them going further into the organisation of this I
> though it was better to have a technical answer about it.
>
> Sorry to bother you
>
> Have a nice day
>
> --
> schiste
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] On style sheets

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> There's a couple possible ways to handle this:
>
> 1) Have a read-write copy that periodically repopulates its dataset from
> a live site. Probably pretty safe.
>
> 2) Have a read-only configuration pulling live data from the live
> database on the main server. Hopefully safe if no information-leakage
> bugs, but less to test.

Both of these options have the same problem as test.wikipedia.org: You
can't use them for real, therefore people won't. The only thing that
would keep people actively beta-testing is by letting them use the new
code on the live database.

> 3) Have a read-write configuration using live data with alternate new
> code. Potentially very unsafe.

It would be "potentially very unsafe" only if you place completely
untested code on it. I thought the idea was to place code on it that
would otherwise have already gone out to the live site. Surely it's much
safer to beta-test it first than to push it live immediately. In other
words, I see it as an _addition_ to the development process you are
already using, and it would catch problems such as the CSS/JavaScript
one you mentioned before it goes live.

At one point, LiveJournal introduced a system whereby you can choose to
use either the latest stable code (the default for everyone), or the
beta-test code (users had to explicitly set this). They did this by
setting a cookie, and the cookie would cause their internal proxies to
choose the right server with the right version of the code. Do you think
something like that could be implemented on Wikipedia? This has two huge
benefits:
* It would work for all Wikimedia sites, not just Wikipedia, much less
   just the English Wikipedia; and
* People wouldn't get so upset anymore about seeing problems because
   they have explicitly opted in for beta-test, and (ideally) would be
   aware that the general public isn't seeing the problem, while at the
   same time being encouraged to report the problem so that it can be
   fixed before the general public gets to see it.

Does this make sense to you? Please ask if anything about the above is
unclear.

Timwi


body:
On 11/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> I generaly get round this by pointing out all the things that are
> technicaly fair use even in free images.

"Incidental inclusion" .. not quite the same.
The germans have "right of panorama".

"Look at all the unavoidable copyrighted work in this free image"
attractive argument at the surface but most people find holes.. either
they point out that an incidental inclusion is something else
entirely, or they decide that you're arguing that true infringement is
unavoidable thus we shouldn't worry about it. :)


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> First, cases where the copyright holder doesn't care about the content
> being in Wikipedia are primary candidates for obtaining free licenses.
> I mentioned this in the part above the cutline. A primary objective of
> our project is increasing the free content of the world. By accepting
> non-free material from friendly copyright holders we are failing at
> that important goal.
>
Greg, I'd like to make a point about how difficult it can be to comply
with the image policies. I'm also confused as to whose interests we're
acting in when we insist on using only freely licensed material.

The usual response when I write to a living person to ask for a freely
licensed image of them is 'Yes of course you have my permission,"
followed by how much they love Wikipedia. I have to write again
explaining about our policies, our aim of making freely licensed
material available, the need not to rule out commercial use etc.
Sometimes they get it the second time. Often they reply: "I hereby
license the image for anyone to use with no restrictions, for
educational purposes." I have to write again and tell them "for
educational purposes" is a restriction. I usually have to give them
the precise words they need to say in order to release the image
entirely.

By the time this is done, I feel very exploitative of them. I want
their image on WP, they want it on WP, and the article is more
informative for having it. So it's win-win. And yet I have to insist
that they abandon all rights before that win-win situation can be
acted upon. It feels irrational.

My question is: who are we doing this for?

Any responsible publisher who wants to use our material will check the
copyright situation for themselves; they won't rely on us saying we
have an e-mail releasing all the rights. The release of images isn't
like the release of text, where all Wikipedians release their work by
virtue of editing. Images releases are done one-to-one, different
editors use different approaches, and the copyright holder only has to
say they didn't understand what they were agreeing to for the license
to be invalid.

As for irresponsible publishers, they won't care whether we have a
free license or not; they'll use our stuff regardless.

So what kinds of publishers are the potential beneficiaries of our
image policies?

I'm not asking this in a spirit of opposition, by the way, in case
it's taken like that. I'm genuinely confused.

Sarah


subject: [Wikitech-l] AntiSpoof issues

references:
<ej7f1l$9l7$1@sea.gmane.org> <4557C162.3060807@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<ej8rfq$vrt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0611122134k37734bc5p67bd31f790d22556@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejd0fd$pug$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejdr4p$jcg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejfsl4$5hg$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 11/15/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > This requires that the user supplies an e-mail address - not currently a
> > requirement, so far as I know...
>
> Do you have any better ideas?
>
> Note that it is still perfectly possible to register without an e-mail
> address if you don't trigger the anti-spoof system, which I would hope
> would be the vast majority of cases. If someone is determined to have a
> certain username because it's their Internet handle (and not because
> they're trying to impersonate someone), they normally wouldn't mind
> supplying at least a temporary e-mail address.

The whole point of my 'real time challenge' was to avoid email. Email
is store and forward: i.e. not real-time.  :)

I was hoping for something along the lines of sticking them on an auto
refreshing page (or some kinda ajax spinner) while a notice was
directed to IRC.

I believe we have the human resources on at least some of our projects
to do some amount of 'real time' work.. Where the real time work might
be, things like:

# Account approval
# Edit approval   (i.e. detect penis penis penis and hold their edit
until someone approves it, or perhaps a new sort of protection...)
# Upload approval  (users first upload can be inspected while they wait)

A successful system would integrate well with mediawiki (I consider
this the hard part), be easy for our (impatient) users, and be able to
degrade gracefully. (Track the backlog and if it grows too much, start
directing people to the old non-real time methods rather than leaving
people waiting for ever).


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Labeled Section Transclusion (need
	feedbackoncurrentstatus!)

body:
> > > So what we really need now is some developer feedback!
> > >
> > > Dovi
> >
> > I've just had a very quick look at it, and would only make 3 very minor
> > comments:
>
> Thanks;  I've updated the extension to address those.
>
> Hopefully we'll be able to get this into the SVN soon and start using it!
>
> Thanks again
>   -Steve

Thank you!

I've had a second quick look, and something separate is this:

In [[Main Page]] I have a bit of the page that contains:
------------------------------------

------------------------------------

Then in another page I have:
------------------------------------
{{#lst:Main Page|ownage}}
------------------------------------

The result is that on saving or previewing that page, I get a JavaScript popup dialog box saying "Ownage!".
That should not happen; instead what I should get is the following non-executable HTML in the output:
------------------------------------

<script>alert("Ownage!");</script>

------------------------------------

Related to this and probably the same issue, is that if there is an image <gallery> wrapped in
 tags, then the image
gallery should display on the page that includes it via the {{#lst)).

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation logo : pain and suffering

body:
Hang on, I must contest all this! I see all the Wikimedia logos as
being professional, memorable and simple; therefore effective. They
also fit really well with the default monobook theme, IMO.

S

On 15/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> SJ wrote:
> > This has caused me pain and suffering for some time, as some of you
> > know, but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere in public since the
> > dawn of logotime: The WMF logo is asymmetric.  most notably the green
> > region, but also the blue (varying width, inner and outer rings not
> > quite parallel).   As long as the newly revisited commons logo is
> > being considered
> >
> > Can this be fixed?  Should it be?  Does this asymmetry cause just
> > enough subliminal disjuncture that it sticks in peoples mind?  ...and
> > causes them to do crazy things?  ...and causes them to run out and
> > snap free-content photos of celebrities?
> >
>
> Oh come on, it's not as bad as the Mediawiki logo... :)
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>

--
	?Xyrael / Sean Whitton ~ Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty
		sean at silentflame.com (PGP: 0x25F4EAB7) | xyrael.net


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Then I would advise you not to look at the Album_covers category.

Actually, I suspect the album covers have a better claim to fair use
than most others, since one cannot illustrate an article on an album
of recorded music by identifying the album's appearance in any other
way.  Furthermore, the use of the album art to identify it is
generally permitted without compensation by the record labels, and
thus they cannot claim that our screen-sized images of album covers
detract from their commercial uses of their copyrighted material.
Large-sized reproductions of album art DO have commercial value (e.g.
posters), so it is important that we only reproduce small versions of
them.

Furthermore, photos of album art are accurate reproductions of 2D
artwork and thus do not create a new copyright under Bridgeman vs.
Corel, thus there is no additional photography copyright to consider.

-Matt


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 11/15/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> Not necessarily so. I was told that in the Netherlands it is not even
> possible to irrevocably license something.

Yeah, that's probably true in a whole bunch of jurisdictions.  "Moral
rights" (which generally don't exist in common-law jurisdictions but
do in civil-law ones) are typically impossible to sign away.  And then
maybe in some jurisdictions you have provisions like you have in US
contract law, where you can't give away something for nothing . . . my
impression is that that's not applicable under US *license* law, which
for some reason is different, but I don't know if that's true
everywhere.

Anyway, the courts have upheld the GPL in the US, but I wouldn't be
surprised if sometime soon it's struck down someplace in Europe or
wherever.  So it goes.


list: commons-l

from_name: Marco Schuster

subject: [Commons-l] Delinker bot

body:
Hello all,

I have a half-completed delinker bot in PHP at home; it can start in, i
think, three days.
Anyone who wants to use it, please email me to cdl-klever at gmx.net.

Regards,
Marco


body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Because of the above point, I'm not sure how you arrive with "most
> I've seen" being clear cases of fair use under the law.  Could you
> clarify: I think we're either working with a different definition of
> fair use, or talking about a different set of images.

I think you slightly misunderstood the point I was making, which is
that vast proportions of the images on en: which are claimed as fair
use are actually cases of making up fair use justifications for images
which are free-to-use but have been made available under licenses
which have been deemed unacceptable for use on Wikipedia because they
are free to us but not necessarily free to all who could re-use our
text under the GFDL.

I'm not necessarily claiming that the fair use justifications hold
water - some do, some don't - but in a vast majority of cases in my
experience (which, granted, may not be typical) are not cases where we
would actually have to rely on a fair-use defense in court.  We
already have permission, generally through license terms which permit
an non-profit educational organisation/project like Wikipedia to use
the image.

This is definitely the case in e.g. most of the 'promotional image'
fair-use categories.  Legally speaking, we are taking very little risk
using those images, because they have generally been released free to
the media to use.  They probably do NOT have an explicit license on
them that is compatible with the GFDL, however, even though they are
de facto free for most uses.

There are other categories of claimed fair use on Wikipedia where the
fair use claim is actually one we'd have to use: e.g. historic
photographs, artworks still protected by copyright, etc etc.

I guess what I'm saying is that because the only non-free category
permitted on en: is fair use, if someone wants to use an image that
they don't have under a free license (under our definition of such)
they will attempt to justify it as fair use.  In that case, what the
fair use claim actually means is 'even though Wikipedia can use this
image for free anyway, commercial re-users may be able to use it under
fair use'.

I've done this myself in the past - coming up with fair use
justifications even though Wikipedia already has permission - granted
this was a couple of years ago and Wikipedia's image use policies have
changed quite a lot since then.

In most of these cases, Wikipedia is not in itself in any legal risk -
the free-content goals of the project may be at more risk, of course.

-Matt


body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> We do have nice collaboratively written boilerplate messages ...

'Nice', I feel, only compared to the positively evil nature of average
legalese.  They may have improved since I last looked at them, but
they're still necessarily rather hefty blobs of text.

Not sure if we can do anything about that and still cover everything
we need to cover, however.

I generally ask for CC-By-SA, myself (figuring it's easier to explain
than GFDL), point them towards the creative commons website, and
mention that they can't be noncommercial-only or education-only or
no-modifications because the license has to be compatible with
Wikipedia's license - I leave out the philosophical goals of such,
just 'it has to be this way'.

-Matt


subject: [Wikitech-l] idea: edit summary preview

body:
On 11/15/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> I realize full well that obsessing about one's edit summaries is
> a sign of, well, obsession, and I'm not about to propose a way of
> editing them, but given that their formatting rules are subtly
> different from normal wikitext (special treatment of /* */,
> evidently no treatment of ''...'', automagic insertion of
> the ? character, etc.), it seems like it would be nice (but also
> benign) to show a preview of the edit summary along with the rest
> of the page when doing Show Preview.  Is this too goofy an idea?

I just committed a change to do exactly that a couple of days ago.  It
should go live within a few days, whenever someone decides to
resynchronize the sites with the codebase.


from_name: Parker Conrad

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia Statistics

body:
Hi -- there used to be (as of a month or two ago) a very useful website at
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm that included historical
Wikipedia growth statistics -- very helpful for those of us who are trying
to study the phenomenal growth of this community. Unfortunately, it appears
to have been taken down, or perhaps moved. Does anyone know where I can
access it?

Thanks,

/prc


body:
On the topic of OTRS, I had previously been in the habit of forwarding
the text of permission emails, letters and so forth to the permissions
queue.  Recently I've received several replies from people processing
that queue ( which never seemed to happen before ) insisting that such
permissions are invalid and it only counts if the OTRS person can
email the person directly and confirm it.  This isn't the way it used
to work, and it's annoying if I've received the permission in a way
other than email.

-Matt


from_name: Barcex

subject: [Commons-l] Getting rid of "best before"

body:
Hi Magnus,

  First let me say that I'm a big fan of the Bad Old Ones toy, and an
everyday user of it.

  My concern about the automated deletion of "bad old ones" is that
sometimes I find that the nsd/nld templates were not well added to the
image; i.e. there are no reasons to use that templates, the image can be
saved with a simple edit completing the missing info, or the uploader has
not been notified.

  I wonder if an automated deletion based just on the existence of a
template that anyone can add will delete valid pictures. Of course,
deletions can be undone, but the error has to be detected, and will be
difficult to know where was the image used at the time of deletion.

  I think that the "burden of proof" on source and license is on the
uploader, so it is valid pushing him to specify without ambiguity that data.
But deleting images without at least a simple human review could not be
convenient. Perhaps we can find an intermediate solution: reviewing with Bad
Old Ones and when clicking "delete" on that tool having a bot delinking the
image also.

Barcex

2006/11/15, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com>:
>
> When I just read about admins getting scolded for deleting an image
> that was long past its "due date", I thought about the nature of the
> templates and the message they convey.
>
> Currently, they say something like "this image needs more source info"
> etc., and give the date the template was added. If nothing changes,
> the image *may* be deleted after, what, a month? This would be the
> equivalent of "best before" - in reality, it might last a lot longer
> than that.
>
> What if the attitude of the templates were changed? "This image lacks
> this and that. It will be deleted on XXXX-YY-ZZ unless this
> information is provided." My tool [2] can be used to find images that
> have reached their final use-by date, and could be deleted with good
> reason.
>
> Theoretically, one could write a bot which could do the deletions, so
> no admins get scolded. The idea of a deletion-bot with admin rights (a
> virtual equivalent of [2];-) might sound scary, but setting it for "no
> edits for a month since addition of the template", combined with the
> image resurrection capability, should calm this.
>
> Magnus
>
>
> [1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bad_old_ones.php
> [2]
> http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/samsung_develops_machine_gun_sentry_robot_costs_200k.php
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
On 11/15/06, Christophe Henner <christophe.henner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would a dev mind doing it if the french community decide to organize it?

In part, it's a pretty long-standing request: bureaucrats should be
able to assign more limited groups, such as users who can only roll
back edits, not just sysop/bureaucrat.  It shouldn't be too hard to
do, but none of us has done it yet, and several wikis have already
asked.

The second part, limited blocking interface, is not currently on
anyone's agenda, and while you might get lucky and find a dev willing
to write an extension and a shell user willing to enable it, I don't
think it's likely to happen for a single wiki's request, even one of
the larger wikis, since it's a) not trivial to write, and b) probably
not going to be viewed as a very useful extension.  Sorry.


from_name: Sherool

body:
On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 21:32:05 +0100, George Herbert
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there somewhere in the wiki where discussions about Fair Use
> images' appropriateness can go?  I'm having a dispute with someone
> over fair use of a manufacturers' web PR photo  of a relatively rare
> aircraft, and I don't know how to get more wikipedia-copyright-expert
> people's review of the question.
>
> Thanks.

I guess that would be "fair use review"
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fair_use_review>. All things
considered it's a fairly quiet place, but at least it beats using the
image talk page if you are looking to get more people involved.

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


body:
On 15/11/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:

> Theoretically, one could write a bot which could do the deletions, so
> no admins get scolded. The idea of a deletion-bot with admin rights (a
> virtual equivalent of [2];-) might sound scary, but setting it for "no
> edits for a month since addition of the template", combined with the
> image resurrection capability, should calm this.

I think the thing holding up deletion rates is the need to delink
images. So we have the proposed CommonsDelinker but I'm not sure what
its status is at the moment. I think it's almost ready to go (if the
will is there). Orgullomoore is a pretty busy chap I think, but it
would be good to have a few people trained in its use, because it is
that important to Commons that we wouldn't want it to stop working if
one person gets busy.

If/when CommonsDelinker is introduced, I predict the backlogs will
dissipate pretty rapidly, probably a month or so.

I personally would not throw my weight behind a bot with deletion
rights, but maybe community will is changing. I don't think it's
changed that rapidly, though.

cheers,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] idea: edit summary preview

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>> ...it would be nice to show a preview of the edit summary
>> along with the rest of the page when doing Show Preview.
>
> I just committed a change to do exactly that a couple of days ago.

Wow!  Instant service!  Thanks!  (Was this you predicting the
future, i.e. knowing that I was about to ask, or just a case of
great minds thinking alike? :-) )


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail.wikimedia.org down?

body:
I get a timeout when connecting to mail.wikimedia.org / mail.wikipedia.org.
All the other *.wiki*edia.org pages are up and running for me.
Anything with the mail server?
Michael


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/15/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greg, I'd like to make a point about how difficult it can be to comply
> with the image policies. I'm also confused as to whose interests we're
> acting in when we insist on using only freely licensed material.

We do have nice collaboratively written boilerplate messages ...

> The usual response when I write to a living person to ask for a freely
> licensed image of them is 'Yes of course you have my permission,"
> followed by how much they love Wikipedia. I have to write again
[snip]
> educational purposes" is a restriction. I usually have to give them
> the precise words they need to say in order to release the image
> entirely.

If you used the boilerplate you wouldn't have this problem.

> My question is: who are we doing this for?

If we simply wanted to have a good article without regard for Free
Content, we'd simply direct people to the excellent articles in
Britannica or Encarta for many subjects...

> Any responsible publisher who wants to use our material will check the
> copyright situation for themselves; they won't rely on us saying we
> have an e-mail releasing all the rights.

Like we, as a responsible publisher, always check the copyright status
ourselves rather than depending on someone elses word?

> The release of images isn't
> like the release of text, where all Wikipedians release their work by
> virtue of editing. Images releases are done one-to-one, different
> editors use different approaches, and the copyright holder only has to
> say they didn't understand what they were agreeing to for the license
> to be invalid.

Text imported from outside is exactly the same as images imported from
outside in this regard.

[snip]
> I'm not asking this in a spirit of opposition, by the way, in case
> it's taken like that. I'm genuinely confused.

Can you forward me the OTRS ticket numbers for permissions engagements
where you've run into problems so I can look at them in detail and see
if I can get some folks to help improve the process?

Or perhaps someone with OTRS access would like to search on Sarah's
email address to find them to save us the step?


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] New Thai ICT minister slams open source,
	says it is useless

body:
Hello everybody here an interestin intervieuw with the new Thai ICT
minister part of the "interim" government. He makes a number of strange
statements. Basically he admits he will lie to the foreign press, he
says open source is useless and he favours netcensorship!  I will put
the quotes underneath here, for the whole article go to:

http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/15Nov2006_data001.php

I will keep a copy on my pc in case people can not open it.

The quotes:

/Lying to the foreign press:/

"I see no reason to put CAT or TOT in the stock market, but I'm saying
this to a group of Thai journalists. Tomorrow I will be talking to
foreign journalists and I will tell them that CAT and TOT will be put on
the market at a suitable time, which is not now,"

/Open source is useless:

/"On the subject of open source software, he said the current government
plan was a case of the blind leading the blind, as neither the people
who are in charge nor the people in industry seem to know the dangers of
open source software.

"With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it
and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from
it, there will be no development and open source software quickly
becomes outdated," he said."

<>"As a programmer, if I can write good code, why should I give it away?
Thailand can do good source code without open source, he said."

/Favouring netcensorship:/

<>"The new ICT Minister expressed his belief in censorship and said that
even the most avid freedom of speech advocate would change his mind if
he sees doctored pictures of his daughter's head on a naked body posted
on the Internet.

The ICT Ministry will soon put forward draft Acts to the National
Legislative Assembly on cybercrime and on web sites that are
pornographic or considered lese majeste, allowing officials to arrest,
fine and imprison offenders."

/
/


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] New Thai ICT minister slams open source,
	says it is useless


body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you forward me the OTRS ticket numbers for permissions engagements
> where you've run into problems so I can look at them in detail and see
> if I can get some folks to help improve the process?

I don't follow what this has to do with OTRS.

My question was: who are the potential beneficiaries of the
free-licence images that increasingly we insist on having? We're
insisting on free licences even in situations where we know the
copyright holder doesn't mind, and where there's therefore no legal
problem with claiming fair use. Who is our audience, in other words;
what is our market?  As I said, responsible publishers who want to use
our material won't trust what we say regarding free licenses: they'll
make their own licensing enquiries. And irresponsible publishers won't
care. So who are we doing it for?

Sarah


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-16

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!