body:
Michael Noda wrote:
> On 12/30/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>>> 7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
>>> the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
>>> income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
>>> many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
>>> ads so that we can maintain our independence.
>> You have a strange definition of cost. Wikipedia is missing out on
>> tons of money by not being in the porno business. You don't get to
>> write that up as a cost.
>
> The technical term Danny was alluding to but didn't use was
> [[opportunity cost]].

And opportunity cost is the measurement we should be using. There's no
sense in treating expenditures any differently from unrealized income.

That said, there are other reasons to not have porn ads.

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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Hare

subject:
[Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration
	with Limewire and Yacy ?

body:
Wikiasari will be a service of Wikia, not Wikimedia.

On 12/30/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> If there is one thing that is relevant, then it is that Peer to Peer
> technology can be used for more than just copying material from one
> computer to another. The faulty argument used by the proprietary content
> industry is that because of sharing in a peer to peer network you must
> be a criminal. This is utter rubbish. Consequently this is exactly one
> of the projects were Open Source and Open Content projects need to work
> together because it will show that a complete technology is unjustly
> stigmatised.
>
> When this technology is used in a way that is in line with the way the
> WMF treats copyright, we will be able to create an infrastructure where
> both organisations and communities will work together. I do applaud it
> when it can be a true cooperation, a cooperation where everybody
> collaborates for their own reasons and create something that everybody
> will be happy with.
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
> Oldak Quill schreef:
> > On 30/12/06, thomasasta at gmx.net <thomasasta at gmx.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Hello Jim, hello Sam,
> >>
> >> you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
> >> There are already a lot of coders in the list
> >> http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
> >>
> >> What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
> >>
> >> http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
> >>
> >> Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy,
> limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia
> foundation.
> >>
> >> Both are java.
> >> Kind regards tom.
> >>
> >
> > Preliminary: All respects to Limewire and the hard work that's been
> > put into the development of the software. Also, I'm not making
> > judgement on what the technologies behind Limewire enable end-users to
> > do (FWIW, I am certainly *not* siding with the RIAA!).
> >
> > Someone on these mailing lists a couple of days ago wrote that
> > Wikimedia was the only Web 2.0 venture that really took copyright
> > seriously. Being the leading project in the free-content movement,
> > taking copyright seriously is necessary to furthering our cause and
> > our goals. I do not think it would help us to collaborate with
> > projects which are seen by some (perhaps many) to be legally shady
> > when it comes to copyright. Whether or not we agree with the notion
> > that technology which enables copyright violation should be
> > accountable for any copyright violation that occurs using the
> > technology, we need to respect the law and need to appear
> > above-the-board.
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Dirk Riehle

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode

body:
On a side note, the Computer History Museum (www.computerhistory.org)
in Mountain View is working on a collection of historic software
systems, including their source code, to be preserved for future
generations for study, amusement (I guess), and historic lessons. A
big problem with this, of course, is that you need more than the
source code and binaries; i.e. you need the computers or emulators thereof.

Hpapy new year everyone!

Dirk

PS: One day, I'm sure we will find MediaWiki there :-)))

At 12/30/2006, Ryan Bilesky wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I am proposing a new project called WikiCode, A free source code
>repository.  I'd appreciate it if you could all look over the project page
>at
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCode
>
>I'd also applicate, comments, suggestions, a list of people interested
>because i'd really like to see this become a project.
>
>Thank you,
>Ryan524
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ryan524
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 12/30/06, Ryan Bilesky <rbilesky at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I am proposing a new project called WikiCode, A free source code
>>repository.  I'd appreciate it if you could all look over the project page
>>at
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCode
>>
>>
>
>There already is such a project at:
>http://en.literateprograms.org/
>
>
I will say that there is a need (particularly on Wikibooks, but
elsewhere could be useful) to have a repository of software that would
allow you to archive code snippets that are incompatable with the GFDL.

Of particular note is the huge incompatability with the GPL and the
GFDL, where it would be nice to do commentary (aka annotated texts or
even instructional textbooks) that would bring in GPL code sample that
could be included with a Wikibooks about say C++ programming.  Or to
have as an appendix some software that is available under the GPL.  The
current licensing system on Wikibooks makes this impossible to have both
on the same page and is a copyright violation to GPL examples to
Wikibooks, except under some more obscure fair-use provisions.

At the moment, most Wikibooks authors have a "work around" that places
all code samples on Source Forge, but it is an unsatesfactory solution
in many ways.  Besides the fact that Source Forge doesn't really link in
cleanly with Wikimedia projects (being an external link), you also have
to do the hassle of having to "manually" insert the GPL'd text into the
GFDL'd text if you want a personal copy, and then you can't redistribute
the combined work either.

The other issue is that if a software developer uses Wikibooks for some
tips on creating software, he is "contaminated" with perhaps some
software examples written under the GFDL that can't be used in GPL'd
code.  Or even with software under most other licenses as well except
for the most trivial examples.

I don't know how many Wikibooks are really being held up because of this
issue, but it is something that has been lingering for some time.
 Mixing Wikimedia and non-Wikimedia content may also work, but there are
some further problems that can hold things up.  And certainly not idea.

The real solution would be to have the FSF change the GFDL to be
compatable with the GPL (and the other way too!), but this is the wrong
mailing list to make such a gripe.  Frankly I consider this ought to be
embarassing to the FSF.  I know it has been brought up numerous times in
the various discussion forums of the FSF and is not a new issue.

Another work-around in terms of at least having a common repository for
something like a Wikibook about C++ programming might be at least having
an independent Wikimedia project that has its content available under
licensing terms compatable with the GFDL and GPL (perhaps
dual-licensed?).  This way the content is under the control of the WMF
and shares the same fate in terms of wheither the source code can remain
accessable, which can't be said about either the Literate Programs group
or Source Forge.  While I find it more plausable that the WMF will fold
up and shut down its server farm before Source Forge does, the opposite
sceniero is also just as possible.

In other words, I think there is a practical siter project supporting
role that such a Wikimedia project of software source code examples
could provide and be a valuable addition to the Wikimedia family of
sister projects.  It shouldn't be dismissed completely.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
Very funny, David.

On 12/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5410
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Oldak Quill

body:
On 30/12/06, thomasasta at gmx.net <thomasasta at gmx.net> wrote:
> Hello Jim, hello Sam,
>
> you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
> There are already a lot of coders in the list
> http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
>
> What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
>
> http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
>
> Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy, limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia foundation.
>
> Both are java.
> Kind regards tom.

Preliminary: All respects to Limewire and the hard work that's been
put into the development of the software. Also, I'm not making
judgement on what the technologies behind Limewire enable end-users to
do (FWIW, I am certainly *not* siding with the RIAA!).

Someone on these mailing lists a couple of days ago wrote that
Wikimedia was the only Web 2.0 venture that really took copyright
seriously. Being the leading project in the free-content movement,
taking copyright seriously is necessary to furthering our cause and
our goals. I do not think it would help us to collaborate with
projects which are seen by some (perhaps many) to be legally shady
when it comes to copyright. Whether or not we agree with the notion
that technology which enables copyright violation should be
accountable for any copyright violation that occurs using the
technology, we need to respect the law and need to appear
above-the-board.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFC

body:
Steve Block wrote:

>Is Requests for comments broken?  I'm curious as to how many people on
>the list have followed one and given comment recently, as I've had one
>up a while now and had no outside input.  It's frustrating because I
>think I'm in a subtle POV and OR instance and the person I'm engaged
>with has managed to find an advocate and I'm confused as to the whole
>prrocess.  Since I've got dragged into a debate I've lost my admin hat
>and I can't seem to attract outsiders to the page to build a consensus.
>  It's gotten damn longwinded now, and my patience is becoming
>exhausted.  I've tried the civil debate and it's getting nowhere.  All I
>really want now is simply lots of damn voices to build a consensus.  I
>don't care if I am right or wrong so long as a consensus is built and
>the policies are respected.  So please, follow this link, read the whole
>damn talk page and build the encyclopedia, a word at a time in this
>instance.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Taylor_Allderdice_High_School#Need_outside_input
>
Some time ago we had a long-running and often bitter debate over whether
high-schools were sufficiently notable to be included in Wikipedia.
They are now generally accepted.  Speaking as a person who always
supported their inclusion, I also have to admit that there are very few
that would personally interest me.  The nearest that I have ever been to
Pittsburgh has been to drive by on the Interstate that runs south of the
city.  I took a quick look at the article, corrected a minor grammar
error, and decided that I didn't want to spend the time understanding
the problems connected with a high-school in a city that I have never
visited.  The possible fact that my
great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was imprisoned there at Fort
Duquesne when he was captured by the British enemy during the Seven
Years' War.is not sufficient justification to attract my interest.  The
best you can hope for is editors with local interest in Pittsburgh; the
subject is notable but inherently local.

Ec


from_name: Ryan Wetherell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
On 12/30/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5410
>
>
> - d.

>Our research partners consist of top data firms worldwide. We hope
you don't read until here because basically, the statistic above is
totally fake. But it looks so authoritative that you can print it out
anyway to carry it into the meeting to prove a point.

Hahaha oh wow.

--Ryan

--
[[en:User:Merovingian]]


from_name: habj

subject:
[Foundation-l] Definition of "community" (was: This is not an
	Advertisement)

body:
This post is a response to a small part on a post in another thread,
and has little or no connection to the original subject of that
thread.

2006/12/28, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:

> Hmm, I think you may be missing something pretty important.  In fact, the
> definition of community is the single most difficult thing to agree upon.
> What is my community, your community, etc. does not have answers.  The Board
> retreat could not answer it with the 25 people who were there.  The Board
> itself cannot agree on the meaning.  Certainly, though, you do not have the
> hubris to think that this thing called Wikimedia exists only for editors, to
> the exclusion of the millions of people who view it every day?  I view the
> orthodox idea that the community consists of, and can only consist of,
> editors as being at least as insulting as the opposite would be to Horning.
> Millions of people *read* the site, and do not contribute a comma.  And
> that's okay!   Generators *and* consumers of free culture must be
> incorporated.  If we are philosophically opposed as people who differ on
> whether a sound is made when a tree falls in  forest, so be it.

The group of people who edit certainly make up a pretty well-defined
community. If one wants, one can think of a community also including
the readers. That is to me, and I believe to must of us editors, a
much more abstract concept. There is nothing wrong with abstract
concepts, and when one needs such one invents them. In theory one
could also have a much wider concept for community in which, for
instance, matching donors are members.

The fundraiser FAQ talks over and over about donations from the
community and donations from companies. It seemed to me the text
assumed that the only individuals who would give money in a fundraiser
such as this one, were the editors. That made me puzzled, to say the
least. The explanation that the Board or its members might sometimes
use the word "community" it in a wider sense than I expected explained
a lot. My language does not have a word exactly matching "community"
in context, and so I usually translate it "wikigemenskap", which
litterally would be wiki community. This is clearly the more narrow
definitions of the word, while the FAQ has chosen the inbetween
definition in which readers and non-editors are included but matching
donators are not. I will go through the draft translation of that FAQ
and replace "wikigemenskap" with the equivalent of "users and
readers", and then that text will make much better sense.

If the Board can not decide what "the community" means, then the Board
should stop probably avoid that term, and search for a more precise
terminology. Things like "the editing community", "the editing
community across all projects", "the Polish language editing
community", "the German Wiktionary editing community" and "the
community of editors and readers" in a certain projects or on all,
should work fine. If one does not know which finder definition to
choose - it means one does not know what one is referring to.

Confusion should be avoided - not only to make life easier for translators.

/habj


from_name: "Thomas Müller"

body:
ok, think anyone knows about the new project wiki-search, so we can use this list, but it is important, that the foundation is as well in the boat and finance as well servers to index websites and third to have a search box-field in each wikipedia country server.##thanks
If wikia does not find a collaboration with the foundation, the foundation should start an own project to estabish a p2p/open source search engine.
only this list keeps all foundation members in the countries up to date, that it is not only about to maintain wikipedia, but to get into the initiative "search" as well. (and others suggested "code" as well, but there is sf.net ).

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:51:01 +0100
Von: "effe iets anders" <effeietsanders at gmail.com>
An: thomasasta at gmx.net
Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration with Limewire and Yacy ?

> Hi,
>
> maybe an odd question, but what is the relevance to foundation-l here? I
> think the other lists you already included in the to: are sufficient?
> Foundation-l is a discussion list for the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Kind regards, Lodewijk Gelauff
>
> 2006/12/30,
> >
> > Hello Jim, hello Sam,
> >
> > you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
> > There are already a lot of coders in the list
> > http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
> >
> > What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
> >
> > http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
> >
> > Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy,
> limewire
> > and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia
> foundation.
> >
> > Both are java.
> > Kind regards tom.
> > --
> > Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
> > Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >

--
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer


subject:
[Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration
 with Limewire and Yacy ?


from_name: thomasasta at gmx.net

body:
Hi Oldak,

well ok, you are right, then employee the limewire coders (in the background) for yacy in wiki sytle and cspace in java integrated, and we are done, then limewire is free, to implement yacy for themselves without any relationship to wikipedia. As Nobody knows, that limewire Sam coded the yacy wiki search p2p engine with cspace-java, as all is open source, limewire can use it as well without wiki branding.

tom

-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:29:21 +0000
Von: "Oldak Quill" <oldakquill at gmail.com>
An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration	with Limewire and Yacy ?

> On 30/12/06, > > Hello Jim, hello Sam,
> >
> > you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
> > There are already a lot of coders in the list
> > http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
> >
> > What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
> >
> > http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
> >
> > Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy,
> limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia
> foundation.
> >
> > Both are java.
> > Kind regards tom.
>
> Preliminary: All respects to Limewire and the hard work that's been
> put into the development of the software. Also, I'm not making
> judgement on what the technologies behind Limewire enable end-users to
> do (FWIW, I am certainly *not* siding with the RIAA!).
>
> Someone on these mailing lists a couple of days ago wrote that
> Wikimedia was the only Web 2.0 venture that really took copyright
> seriously. Being the leading project in the free-content movement,
> taking copyright seriously is necessary to furthering our cause and
> our goals. I do not think it would help us to collaborate with
> projects which are seen by some (perhaps many) to be legally shady
> when it comes to copyright. Whether or not we agree with the notion
> that technology which enables copyright violation should be
> accountable for any copyright violation that occurs using the
> technology, we need to respect the law and need to appear
> above-the-board.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

--
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer


subject:
[Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation
	collaboration	with Limewire and Yacy ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 12/28/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 28/12/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>FWIW, I would see a donation from the Gates Foundation to be less of a
>>>PR stunt than a donation from Virgin Unite.  The Gates Foundation has
>>>pretty much nothing to do with Microsoft other than having the same
>>>founder.
>>>
>>>
>>And that they tend to donate, uh, Windows licenses.
>>
>>
>They do?  {{citation_needed}}
>
There is a certain logic to it.  It's a very inexpensive donation for
them.  Think of the optics of having a Bill and Melinda Gates sponsored
site being powered by Linux. :-)

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Luna

subject: [WikiEN-l] Regarding the "change size" indicator in change lists

body:
On 12/30/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Customising your own CSS style sheets is exactly the opposite of *fixing
> it*.
>
> Steve

Different people want the interface to look different. Rather than wasting
time with endless arguments over who gets "their way," just let everybody
see what they want to see. Everybody wins when the interface can be
customized.

I've been told the Firefox community used to be held up by flamewars over
tabs -- specifically, when we close an open tab, which tab displays next?
One camp wanted to display the next tab to the right; another camp wanted to
traverse to the left; still a third camp wanted to remember the order in
which tabs had been selected, and move to the most recently selected tab. In
my opinion, all three of these groups missed the point: all three options
have followings and are apparently legitimate, and it's more productive to
just allow the user to choose their preferred method.

Saves time. Saves drama. Lets us all get on with writing an encyclopedia.

Why is that a problem?

-Luna


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
If there is one thing that is relevant, then it is that Peer to Peer
technology can be used for more than just copying material from one
computer to another. The faulty argument used by the proprietary content
industry is that because of sharing in a peer to peer network you must
be a criminal. This is utter rubbish. Consequently this is exactly one
of the projects were Open Source and Open Content projects need to work
together because it will show that a complete technology is unjustly
stigmatised.

When this technology is used in a way that is in line with the way the
WMF treats copyright, we will be able to create an infrastructure where
both organisations and communities will work together. I do applaud it
when it can be a true cooperation, a cooperation where everybody
collaborates for their own reasons and create something that everybody
will be happy with.

Thanks,
   GerardM

Oldak Quill schreef:
> On 30/12/06, thomasasta at gmx.net <thomasasta at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>> Hello Jim, hello Sam,
>>
>> you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
>> There are already a lot of coders in the list
>> http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
>>
>> What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
>>
>> http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
>>
>> Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy, limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia foundation.
>>
>> Both are java.
>> Kind regards tom.
>>
>
> Preliminary: All respects to Limewire and the hard work that's been
> put into the development of the software. Also, I'm not making
> judgement on what the technologies behind Limewire enable end-users to
> do (FWIW, I am certainly *not* siding with the RIAA!).
>
> Someone on these mailing lists a couple of days ago wrote that
> Wikimedia was the only Web 2.0 venture that really took copyright
> seriously. Being the leading project in the free-content movement,
> taking copyright seriously is necessary to furthering our cause and
> our goals. I do not think it would help us to collaborate with
> projects which are seen by some (perhaps many) to be legally shady
> when it comes to copyright. Whether or not we agree with the notion
> that technology which enables copyright violation should be
> accountable for any copyright violation that occurs using the
> technology, we need to respect the law and need to appear
> above-the-board.
>
>


from_name: Gurch

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 12/30/06, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I've assumed the new numbers (I'm not sure what to call them) were wrapped
>> in a div or span to make them friendly to CSS customization. From there on,
>> if a user doesn't like them, they're free to change the colors, text
>> decoration, or anything else, or even just make them disappear. As is
>> frequently the case with open source projects, if you don't like something,
>> you're usually free to *fix it*.
>
> Customising your own CSS style sheets is exactly the opposite of *fixing it*.
>
> Steve

That is arguably true. However, if two groups of people have different
opinions over how the interface should look, only one of these can be
made the default; members of the other group must then make personal
changes in order to achieve the desired format. (Unless a new skin or
entry in the preferences page is created for every minor interface
tweak, which would be rediculous). This is standard practise; I have
modified (or more usually removed) dozens of things in my personal
interface, and have never expected these changes to be made on a global
level nor provided as preferences.

-Gurch


subject: [Foundation-l] This is not an Advertisement

body:
Jeroenvrp wrote:

>I'm not talking about informing every single
>project, but the ones with a good amount of community members.
>
It llooks like your theory of community democracy is already showing cracks.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Move page showing double redirects

body:
On 30/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> This user refuses to do the cleanup. Hope this helps.

Superb attitude.

The problem we'd face if, for instance, 200 or even 2000 redirects
needed to be corrected in an autonomous, atomic fashion, is that the
software has to do the same as the user - open the page for editing,
make the changes without disrupting other content on the page (e.g.
categories, or cute little templates), save the page, handle edit
conflicts, rinse and repeat.

It might be much faster on the server side, but it's still a
time-consuming operation, which could well time out for large sets -
leaving us with a worse mess to clean up. Then there's the problem
that it might be desirable to have some of the redirects left intact,
etc.

I'm not against some kind of automated assistance for such operations,
but it will have to work in a robust fashion, taking into
consideration that we don't want to make the situation worse.

Rob Church


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding the "change size" indicator in change
	lists

body:
On 30/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not reasonable to expect the average person to differentiate
> between "people who hack CSS and JavaScript" and "developers". I read
> wikitech-l, know what CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MediaWiki are, and
> still don't really get who is responsible for what, or what caused
> each visible change. How is the average Wikipedia user supposed to
> have any idea?

It is reasonable, however, to expect people not to go ape shit when
something happens that they don't like. It's furthermore reasonable to
expect that people will listen when we say, for instance, "that change
was done by one of your colleagues, not us - please go moan at them,
kthx".

> I don't really know how to improve this situation, but some sort of
> more visible process for improvements to MediaWiki and to the
> Wikipedia stylesheets might help. I don't consider Mediazilla
> "visible" at all.

If you're suggesting that we need to start asking for permission
before we commit every single improvement to the software, then you
can forget it; a lot of them have to be done to make the site more
stable.

As I've said before, I well appreciate that not every change benefits
everyone, but hopefully, none of them seriously hamper other users'
ability to continue to operate. I for one *do* solicit user opinion
when it comes to introducing major new things, or more likely, making
significant changes to existing processes - and I not only involve the
users, but I also check with Brion on a frequent basis that what I'm
doing is sane.

BugZilla is the bug tracking software, and it's where we track bugs
and feature requests. I'm sorry if it's not considered wholly visible
to all users, but it's not our fault no-one likes to link to it in,
e.g. the sidebar, or other visible places on Wikipedia. If people have
significant objections to something, we have that; and we also have
this mailing list, which is not private, and at least two public IRC
channels, which are not invite-only.

I strongly object to the assertion that the development team is in
anyway elitist or deliberately ignorant of user opinion; that is
simply unfair and completely untrue. If we didn't care about the user
base, we wouldn't actually be doing this.

> Hope this helps.

Not really; your attitude is rather what I was talking about in my last post.

Rob Church


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] How do "deletionists" find articles to delete?

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 29/12/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> David Gerard wrote:
>
>>> Anyone who thinks they're an "inclusionist" should do Special:Newpages
>>> patrol some time. OH MY GOODNESS THE FIREHOSE OF CRAP!
>
>> I think anyone who uses a speedy tag should have to do an hour of this.
>>   Might make people realise what the speedy tags really are for.
>
>
> I think the problem is that, doing their level best in good faith to
> deal with the FIREHOSE OF CRAP, they get punch-drunk from repeatedly
> being hit over the head with the sum total of human stupidity and
> eventually scream "AIEEEE IT'S ALL CRAAAAP KILL IT ALL KILL IT WITH A
> STICK!!!"

Oh, I entirely agree.  That's why I said an hour.

> So A7 needs to be much less grey-area that it appears to be in
> practice. This will reduce stress for all.

Yes.  It's just very hard to put into words people who shouldn't have
articles.  I always kind of figure that I'd rather the good was deleted
at this stage than the bad was allowed to hang around longer than
needed.  The good will always end up on Wikipedia at some point.  I
always look at the way the article on Wayne Rooney started as a shining
example that Wikipedia works.

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from_name: Anthere

body:
thomasasta at gmx.net wrote:
> Hello Jim, hello Sam,
>
> you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
> There are already a lot of coders in the list
> http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
>
> What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
>
> http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
>
> Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy, limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia foundation.
>
> Both are java.
> Kind regards tom.

Maybe this needs to be repeated again, but
1) this mailing list is the list dedicated to Wikimedia Foundation issues
2) The Wikimedia Foundation is not involved in *any way* in the
wiki-search project (if this project actually exist)

Incidently, who is Sam ?

Anthere


from_name: Stephen Park

subject: [WikiEN-l] Right to anonymity and Autobiographies

body:
Currently Wikipedia has a policy protecting individuals who use pseudonyms
from being "outed" and having their legal names revealed. I think this is
generally a good policy and I use it myself since I edit using a pseudonym.

The problem is when use of a pseudonym allows individuals to surreptitiously
edit an article on themselves in a self-promotional or at least a
self-interested way. The guideline in WP:AUTO is that individuals are
discouraged from editing in an autobiographical manner and that if they do
so it's a "good idea" if they identify themselves. However, if they don't,
anyone who suspects someone of editing autobiographically is restrained from
voicing their suspicions, even if they have very strong evidence, by
WP:HARASSMENT's prohibition against "outing" people.

I think we should allow people to maintain their anonymity but that there
needs to be an understanding that if you want to be anonymous you can't take
advantage of that anonymity by editing an article on yourself ie your right
to anonymity ends once you transgress WP:AUTO.

What do people think about have a policy (say as part of BLP) that states
that any editor who edits a biographical article on themselves must identify
disclose that they are doing so and modifying WP:HARASS in order to create
an exception to the "no posting of private information" rule in the case
where someone is editing an autobiographical article surreptitiously? And
how should this be permitted? Should editors be permitted to ask CheckUsers
to verify that a suspected auotobiographer's location is consistent with
that of the person they're writing about? Should editors be permitted to go
to WP:ANI or WP:Request for Arbitration and voice a concern that someone is
editing autobiographically without declaring themselves?

Stephen


subject: [WikiEN-l] oh no, not again

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion/Log/2006_December_28#Category:Administrators_open_to_recall.E2.80.8E

Okay, point taken.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 29/12/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> zero 0000 wrote:
>
>>>   Someone who can read music should be able to report from
>>>   a musical score that it is in E-flat, even though that requires
>>>   specialist knowledge.
>
>> Agree with you.  But Wikipedia isn't the place for them to report that.
>>   We aren't a place for original research.  The place for them to report
>> that is in their criticism of the score published in some other source.
>>   We summarise it.  That's how it works.
>
>
> That *is* summarising it. Summarising the obvious should not require
> teaching J. Random Querulous the basics of your field because they
> want a source for your observation that "the sky is blue" based on the
> wavelength of the light from it tending to be more like 400nm than
> 700nm.

Yeah, you're probably right.  Trying to keep comic book articles free of
OR has probably heightened my senses as to what it is.

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subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

> I have been subscribed to this list for about a year and read (or
>
>skim) everything which passes through it. There has not, before a
>couple of days ago, been an explicit mention of the agreement with
>Virgin Unite.
>
One needs to distinguish between such arrangements in general and
specific contracts.  The generalities need to be publicly discussed, but
the details of specific contracts that are consistent with agreed
general principles may require no pre-publication in order to achieve a
greater impact.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Esperanza on MfD again

body:
For those who managed to completely miss this over the holiday period
as I did, Esperanza is on MfD again, and it looks like this time it
probably won't survive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Esperanza

In general I have no contact at all with Esperanza, so it came as a
surprise to me that it seems recently to have had some kind of
internal meltdown, which has triggered this MfD.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why the article warning templates should go on the
	*article*, not the talk page

body:
On 30/12/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Who's sari now?

No, What's sari!

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Teun Spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
How? - by a bot.

On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history
WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two
months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely,
if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I
admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.

Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to
English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at
start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right
that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When
we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them
to translate it.

One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a
lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and
it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and
read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is
up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to
the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it.
This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true
for information from the local chapters. This is true for information
from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on
commons.

There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time
to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected
information to the people on their talk pages. information in the
village pumps.

I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may
start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.

We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push".
When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes
a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images
milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to
discover it, we go out and tell them.
It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.

teun

On 12/30/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in
> > english, would be a solution.
>
> How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we
> care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to,
> regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though.
> Principally I have find no difference between communications via
> sitenotice and ones via VP.
>
> On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language
> projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted
> in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of
> translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability
> of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why
> it came in English but not in our language?"
>
> --
> KIZU Naoko
>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see
the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language
pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a
solution.

Bryan

On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> How? - by a bot.
>
> On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history
> WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two
> months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely,
> if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I
> admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
>
> Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to
> English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at
> start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right
> that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When
> we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them
> to translate it.
>
> One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a
> lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and
> it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and
> read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is
> up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to
> the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it.
> This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true
> for information from the local chapters. This is true for information
> from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on
> commons.
>
> There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time
> to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected
> information to the people on their talk pages. information in the
> village pumps.
>
> I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may
> start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
>
> We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push".
> When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes
> a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images
> milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to
> discover it, we go out and tell them.
> It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
>
> teun
>
> On 12/30/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in
> > > english, would be a solution.
> >
> > How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we
> > care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to,
> > regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though.
> > Principally I have find no difference between communications via
> > sitenotice and ones via VP.
> >
> > On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language
> > projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted
> > in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of
> > translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability
> > of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why
> > it came in English but not in our language?"
> >
> > --
> > KIZU Naoko
> >   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
> >   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: Ligulem

body:
On 30.12.2006 10:53, Rob Church wrote:
> [This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken
> place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village
> pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the
> crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other
> appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on
> one.]
>

I'm not sure what the problem is here. But the change size is pretty
cool and I love it. It helps a lot for spotting problem edits on recent
changes.

I didn't like the bold red and green either and this has been improved
in the mean time by choosing a bit less bright colors in the style sheet
:-).

Per the complaints, I saw only the ones on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29
which were pretty harmless given the large user base Wikipedia has.

Disagreeing voices are usually the loudest and fastest. Don't forget all
the people who just silently use the cool new features and are happy
with them.

So keep up the good work!


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 30/12/06, thomasasta at gmx.net <thomasasta at gmx.net> wrote:

> Anyway, then let?s concentrate on the search-l of wikia, though I think
> it is wrong to have the foundation not in the boat. Then the new search
> engine has nothing to do with wikipedia and then the media hype is
> not understandable. Is Jimmy then a freerider of the wikipedia lable ?

The media hype is entirely a storm in a teacup, as I understand it.

Basically, wikia had a search project, a year or two ago. It fell into
disuse, but the site hung around. Then Jimmy made some passing comment
about how a wiki-based search engine would be a good thing to a
journalist, who rooted around and found the old project site, put two
and two together, and got seventeen. And then everyone else took their
stories from him, so...

Wikia discovered that there were a plethora of news stories about it
suddenly appearing, and took this opportunity to kickstart the old
project. Nothing new was created; it just got a lot of interest
because of the media hype.

Wikimedia/Wikipedia is not involved, and has never been involved; this
is just the fault of people getting confused between Wikia and
Wikimedia, and certainly isn't a deliberate attempt to get leverage
off the name. Journalists tend to assume that anything Jimmy does is
talking about Wikipedia, hence the linkage - if Wikia had announced
this themselves, they'd have been able to make it clear from the
outset that it was *them* not the Foundation doing it, but sadly the
stories sort of ran ahead of them.

One day, we'll be able to get all these subtle differences explained
to journalists. I hope that magic day comes soon... as it is, we have
a hard enough time explaining to people that the Foundation a) does
things which aren't the English Wikipedia, or b) doesn't operate every
wiki on the planet.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
You might be right.
I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present
situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go
hunting around to find where information has been published, has
disadvantages too.

One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes
optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.

teun

On 12/30/06, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
> If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see
> the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language
> pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a
> solution.
>
> Bryan
>
> On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How? - by a bot.
> >
> > On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history
> > WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two
> > months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely,
> > if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I
> > admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
> >
> > Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to
> > English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at
> > start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right
> > that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When
> > we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them
> > to translate it.
> >
> > One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a
> > lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and
> > it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and
> > read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is
> > up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to
> > the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it.
> > This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true
> > for information from the local chapters. This is true for information
> > from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on
> > commons.
> >
> > There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time
> > to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected
> > information to the people on their talk pages. information in the
> > village pumps.
> >
> > I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may
> > start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
> >
> > We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push".
> > When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes
> > a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images
> > milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to
> > discover it, we go out and tell them.
> > It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
> >
> > teun
> >
> > On 12/30/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in
> > > > english, would be a solution.
> > >
> > > How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we
> > > care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to,
> > > regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though.
> > > Principally I have find no difference between communications via
> > > sitenotice and ones via VP.
> > >
> > > On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language
> > > projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted
> > > in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of
> > > translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability
> > > of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why
> > > it came in English but not in our language?"
> > >
> > > --
> > > KIZU Naoko
> > >   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
> > >   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > foundation-l mailing list
> > > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] new site notice now ready

body:
On 12/30/06, David Strauss <david at fourkitchens.com> wrote:
> Michael Noda wrote:
> > On 12/30/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 12/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >>> 7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
> >>> the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
> >>> income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
> >>> many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
> >>> ads so that we can maintain our independence.
> >> You have a strange definition of cost. Wikipedia is missing out on
> >> tons of money by not being in the porno business. You don't get to
> >> write that up as a cost.
> >
> > The technical term Danny was alluding to but didn't use was
> > [[opportunity cost]].
>
> And opportunity cost is the measurement we should be using. There's no
> sense in treating expenditures any differently from unrealized income.

If we were a for-profit entity, I would agree. The purpose of
Wikipedia is not to maximize income or profit. All things being equal,
more income -> more realization of Wikimedia's goals, but the
introduction of ads would not be keeping things equal.

Adding advertisements would fundamentally change the nature of
Wikipedia. Additional income to the tune of $60K a day would too; but
I believe it would be a hard argument to make that the difference from
the increased money would necessarily be fundamentally improving. I
rather suspect that one of Wikipedia's core reasons for success has
been its minimal reliance on monetary transactions (related to its
minimal reliance on experts, minimal reliance on long-term planning,
etc.).

> That said, there are other reasons to not have porn ads.

There are other reasons not to have any ads. (See above, or think of your own.)


body:
On 12/30/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> When we were in the porno business we would have the best articles
> explaining what porno is. It would not be 1.500.000 articles in English,
> we would not have 312.579 articles with lexical information as on the
> English language Wiktionary, we might have 1.056.887 media files but
> really. I am also certain that we would not have you interested in such
> a resource then again what do I know?

Of course I would be. The internet is for porn, after all.

> Please use reasonable arguments.

Your failure to understand the scintillating precision of my arguments
is not an indication of any lack of reason on my part.

>
> The Cunctator schreef:
> > On 12/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> First of all, I want to say that I agree with most everything Erik has
> >> written so far, and can't really add to his eloquent explanations. Nevertheless,
> >> as someone who was involved from the beginning in these discussions, I want to
> >> raise a few points here.
> >>
> >> 1. The Wikimedia Foundation has grown beyond anyone's wildest  expectations
> >> in terms of traffic, hits, articles, and projects. We are a top ten  website.
> >> 2. We are doing this on a shoestring budget, with minimal staff and minimal
> >> expenses.
> >> 3. We are able to do this because of dedicated volunteers, like everyone
> >> writing on this list.
> >>
> >> But --
> >>
> >> 4. The Foundation, which hosts all these projects does not want to be
> >> gobbled up by some big corporation, like Youtube was, like Myspace was, or like  any
> >> other successful website was. We want to maintain our independence.
> >> 5. Independence comes at a cost. We have to buy servers, and we have to  find
> >> the right people to manage all of the other things involved with running a
> >> huge foundation.
> >> 6. Considering our growth, the base of volunteers does not scale. All the
> >> good will in the world does not mean that people can take off exams or their
> >> jobs or their families to work 24/7 to keep this thing running.
> >> 7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
> >> the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
> >> income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
> >> many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
> >> ads so that we can maintain our independence.
> >>
> >
> > You have a strange definition of cost. Wikipedia is missing out on
> > tons of money by not being in the porno business. You don't get to
> > write that up as a cost.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
Hoi,
When we were in the porno business we would have the best articles
explaining what porno is. It would not be 1.500.000 articles in English,
we would not have 312.579 articles with lexical information as on the
English language Wiktionary, we might have 1.056.887 media files but
really. I am also certain that we would not have you interested in such
a resource then again what do I know?

Please use reasonable arguments.

Thanks,
     GerardM

The Cunctator schreef:
> On 12/28/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>> First of all, I want to say that I agree with most everything Erik has
>> written so far, and can't really add to his eloquent explanations. Nevertheless,
>> as someone who was involved from the beginning in these discussions, I want to
>> raise a few points here.
>>
>> 1. The Wikimedia Foundation has grown beyond anyone's wildest  expectations
>> in terms of traffic, hits, articles, and projects. We are a top ten  website.
>> 2. We are doing this on a shoestring budget, with minimal staff and minimal
>> expenses.
>> 3. We are able to do this because of dedicated volunteers, like everyone
>> writing on this list.
>>
>> But --
>>
>> 4. The Foundation, which hosts all these projects does not want to be
>> gobbled up by some big corporation, like Youtube was, like Myspace was, or like  any
>> other successful website was. We want to maintain our independence.
>> 5. Independence comes at a cost. We have to buy servers, and we have to  find
>> the right people to manage all of the other things involved with running a
>> huge foundation.
>> 6. Considering our growth, the base of volunteers does not scale. All the
>> good will in the world does not mean that people can take off exams or their
>> jobs or their families to work 24/7 to keep this thing running.
>> 7. We are already paying a steep cost. While it doesn't appear in the  audit,
>> the fact that we do not have advertising is costing us. This is  unrealized
>> income at a minimum of $60k a day and probably much more. In other  words it is
>> many millions a year. Yet, the Board and the community have chosen  to avoid
>> ads so that we can maintain our independence.
>>
>
> You have a strange definition of cost. Wikipedia is missing out on
> tons of money by not being in the porno business. You don't get to
> write that up as a cost.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5410

- d.


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 12/30/06, Stephen Park <stephenpark15 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Currently Wikipedia has a policy protecting individuals who use pseudonyms
> from being "outed" and having their legal names revealed. I think this is
> generally a good policy and I use it myself since I edit using a
> pseudonym.
>
> The problem is when use of a pseudonym allows individuals to
> surreptitiously
> edit an article on themselves in a self-promotional or at least a
> self-interested way. The guideline in WP:AUTO is that individuals are
> discouraged from editing in an autobiographical manner and that if they do
> so it's a "good idea" if they identify themselves. However, if they don't,
> anyone who suspects someone of editing autobiographically is restrained
> from
> voicing their suspicions, even if they have very strong evidence, by
> WP:HARASSMENT's prohibition against "outing" people.
>
> I think we should allow people to maintain their anonymity but that there
> needs to be an understanding that if you want to be anonymous you can't
> take
> advantage of that anonymity by editing an article on yourself ie your
> right
> to anonymity ends once you transgress WP:AUTO.
>
> What do people think about have a policy (say as part of BLP) that states
> that any editor who edits a biographical article on themselves must
> identify
> disclose that they are doing so and modifying WP:HARASS in order to create
> an exception to the "no posting of private information" rule in the case
> where someone is editing an autobiographical article surreptitiously? And
> how should this be permitted? Should editors be permitted to ask
> CheckUsers
> to verify that a suspected auotobiographer's location is consistent with
> that of the person they're writing about? Should editors be permitted to
> go
> to WP:ANI or WP:Request for Arbitration and voice a concern that someone
> is
> editing autobiographically without declaring themselves?

As one example, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/ScienceApologist-
there's a balance between anonymity and WP:AUTO and WP:COI (which may
be
more important).  The underlying issue is, if you can write an NPOV article
about yourself, no one will be any the wiser.  If you write something that
sounds promotional, most people will change it if they notice.  If you
edit-war to remove unfavourable material from a bio, and you only edit
articles related to that bio, then people will figure things out quickly
enough.

We don't have policies and guidelines just for the fun of it - we discourage
editing articles about yourself and your family members because even good
editors have a hard time writing an NPOV article about topics like that.  If
you suspect that someone is too close to the subject then you can politely
point them towards AUTO and COI - these guidelines are most effective when
people voluntarily respect them.  If they are still disruptive, treat them
as you would any other disruptive editor.

Ian


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cookie based blocking and bug #3233. A quick
	hack implimented on commons.

references:
<e692861c0612111854q5f2b8afp88c18bb3b899b9b5@mail.gmail.com>	<457E4C8A.3030407@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<elmnr2$n0n$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<457EE42A.6050502@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Hi!

> I think you can, but yes, this is an intrusion of peoples privacy.

*grin* http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?
threadID=615562&messageID=3424234

Quote for lazy ones: "Java has no native way of finding a MAC
address, because there's really nothing you can do with it."
Some workarounds are on that page. I doubt anyone would  run (or want
to code) such java bits.

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
> http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5410

You could have at least made it add up to 100%... you can't have an
"other" row and not have the total be 100%.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
On 30/12/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://www.esolutionsdata.com/statistic/5410

> You could have at least made it add up to 100%... you can't have an
> "other" row and not have the total be 100%.

I didn't make it, I was pointed to it.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Hoi,
Everyone who is with the Wikimedia Foundation a little bit longer
*knows* about the foundation mailing list, about Meta. Certainly for
people like yourself and Jeroenvrp there is no such thing as "being
confronted" with whatever. It is your choice to be informed. The
Foundation and its board represent the communities as best as they can.
The board consists of volunteers it is not feasible to have you, when
you are not interested enough to read the mailing lists, force fed what
you do not want to read. It is also not fair to complain about how the
need for continually bigger needs for money are met without providing
alternatives, credible alternatives.

The forced posting in English on "Village Pumps" is stupid; people are
not going to read it. If they are interested to read things, they can
subscribe to the several mailing lists that are in existence. Even then
you will find that it is not enough because some communities expect that
their POV, published on their mailing list, their "Village Pump" is to
be accepted.

Truly, if there is to be subscribe/unsubscribe let it be by the persons
who have a real interest. The people who are not interested will not
read anyway and will still claim the right to complain.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Teun Spaans schreef:
> You might be right.
> I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present
> situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go
> hunting around to find where information has been published, has
> disadvantages too.
>
> One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes
> optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
>
> teun
>
>
> On 12/30/06, Bryan Tong Minh <bryan.tongminh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If one would post a message to all vilage pumps in english, I can see
>> the maillist flooded by messages concerning "anglosaxism", "language
>> pushing", "discrimination", etc. I don't think that would be a
>> solution.
>>
>> Bryan
>>
>> On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> How? - by a bot.
>>>
>>> On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history
>>> WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two
>>> months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely,
>>> if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I
>>> admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
>>>
>>> Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to
>>> English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at
>>> start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right
>>> that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When
>>> we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them
>>> to translate it.
>>>
>>> One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a
>>> lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and
>>> it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and
>>> read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is
>>> up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to
>>> the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it.
>>> This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true
>>> for information from the local chapters. This is true for information
>>> from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on
>>> commons.
>>>
>>> There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time
>>> to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected
>>> information to the people on their talk pages. information in the
>>> village pumps.
>>>
>>> I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may
>>> start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
>>>
>>> We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push".
>>> When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes
>>> a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images
>>> milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to
>>> discover it, we go out and tell them.
>>> It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
>>>
>>> teun
>>>
>>> On 12/30/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 12/30/06, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Perhaps a bot posting sensitive messages into every village pump, simply in
>>>>> english, would be a solution.
>>>>>
>>>> How? It would work somewhere. It wouldn't work in other places. If we
>>>> care the entire community, it is not the way we are going to,
>>>> regretfully I admit that is roughly what we are doing though.
>>>> Principally I have find no difference between communications via
>>>> sitenotice and ones via VP.
>>>>
>>>> On non-English projects, speically non Indo-European language
>>>> projects, I have seen some (important to some extent) messages posted
>>>> in English and left without comment. In this way the possiblity of
>>>> translation doesn't depend on its importance but genuinly availability
>>>> of volunteering translators. The next possible complaint would be "why
>>>> it came in English but not in our language?"
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> KIZU Naoko
>>>>   Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
>>>>   * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


subject: [WikiEN-l] Statistics prove it!

body:
> I didn't make it, I was pointed to it.

I'll let you off, then.


body:
Hoi,
I also read Anthere's later posting to this effect. It does not detract
anything from what I have said though. I would welcome collaboration
between organisations including the WMF,
Thanks,
    GerardM

James Hare schreef:
> Wikiasari will be a service of Wikia, not Wikimedia.
>
> On 12/30/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> If there is one thing that is relevant, then it is that Peer to Peer
>> technology can be used for more than just copying material from one
>> computer to another. The faulty argument used by the proprietary content
>> industry is that because of sharing in a peer to peer network you must
>> be a criminal. This is utter rubbish. Consequently this is exactly one
>> of the projects were Open Source and Open Content projects need to work
>> together because it will show that a complete technology is unjustly
>> stigmatised.
>>
>> When this technology is used in a way that is in line with the way the
>> WMF treats copyright, we will be able to create an infrastructure where
>> both organisations and communities will work together. I do applaud it
>> when it can be a true cooperation, a cooperation where everybody
>> collaborates for their own reasons and create something that everybody
>> will be happy with.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>    GerardM
>>
>> Oldak Quill schreef:
>>
>>> On 30/12/06, thomasasta at gmx.net <thomasasta at gmx.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hello Jim, hello Sam,
>>>>
>>>> you search for coders to get wiki-search out.
>>>> There are already a lot of coders in the list
>>>> http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Developers
>>>>
>>>> What do you think about a collaboration with limewire ?
>>>>
>>>> http://www.limewire.org/forum/showthread.php?p=3090&posted=1#post3090
>>>>
>>>> Integrate yacy in limewire and built up a colaboration with yacy,
>>>>
>> limewire and messenger cspace (ported to java) for wikia and wikimedia
>> foundation.
>>
>>>> Both are java.
>>>> Kind regards tom.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Preliminary: All respects to Limewire and the hard work that's been
>>> put into the development of the software. Also, I'm not making
>>> judgement on what the technologies behind Limewire enable end-users to
>>> do (FWIW, I am certainly *not* siding with the RIAA!).
>>>
>>> Someone on these mailing lists a couple of days ago wrote that
>>> Wikimedia was the only Web 2.0 venture that really took copyright
>>> seriously. Being the leading project in the free-content movement,
>>> taking copyright seriously is necessary to furthering our cause and
>>> our goals. I do not think it would help us to collaborate with
>>> projects which are seen by some (perhaps many) to be legally shady
>>> when it comes to copyright. Whether or not we agree with the notion
>>> that technology which enables copyright violation should be
>>> accountable for any copyright violation that occurs using the
>>> technology, we need to respect the law and need to appear
>>> above-the-board.


list: commons-l

from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages

body:
Why not just edit stuff in the [[mediawiki:*]] namespace to make the
uploader field more prominent in the file history? Whomever uploaded
it is usually the author, and you don't need users to do the "right
thing" its automatic.

-bawolff


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Teun Spaans wrote:

>You might be right.
>I realize that posting in english is not optimal. But the present
>situation, where people are confronted with a change and must go
>hunting around to find where information has been published, has
>disadvantages too.
>
>One way to work around the problem os that this "push" becomes
>optional, in the senese that village pumps can subscribe/unsubscribe.
>
Posting these notices in English may not be optimal, but I think the
chance of getting timely translations is much better when you give the
material to a pool of potential (but perhaps undiscovered) translators.
Things are likely to go more slowly when you have only one person to
whom you can give the work.  It also seems more wiki-like to distribute
the task to a group of workers.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


from_name: thomasasta at gmx.net

body:
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 11:10:08 -0500
Von: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration	with Limewire and Yacy ?

> Wikiasari will be a service of Wikia, not Wikimedia.
>

yes, you posted this already, and I got it now,
though Angela refused this seperation of foundation and wikia, after your mail:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012721.html
That?s why I used the foundation list again in CC.

Anyway, then let?s concentrate on the search-l of wikia, though I think it is wrong to have the foundation not in the boat. Then the new search engine has nothing to do with wikipedia and then the media hype is not understandable. Is Jimmy then a freerider of the wikipedia lable ?

Earning money with wikia (search) riding on wiki and wikipedia/ wikimedia-foundation is then like ... dunno how to compare.. but possible.

>From the content view it is time to have an open source engine and I do not understand, why wikipedia community should be not participating in this, a common or a similar project.

I think it is not ok, that the wikipedia community think wikia-search is from wikipedia and they support the profit interest of wikia by free work, which resuls in a search engine, which is free, but not open source (maybe the search engine is open source coded, but the database has to be payed as a free, but not open source software). Jimmy speeks freely of a licensed engine...

Kind regards. tom
--
Der GMX SmartSurfer hilft bis zu 70% Ihrer Onlinekosten zu sparen!
Ideal f?r Modem und ISDN: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/smartsurfer


body:
I think the problem is this: If someone challenges an editor over his or her
adding or protecting puffery in an article or for removing critical
information and accuses them of violating WP:AUTO the accused editor can
turn around and have his accusor punished for "outing" him. WP:HARASSMENT
was not intended to protect editors who are violating WP:AUTOBIO so I think
at the very least an exception should be written into WP:HARASSMENT for this
situation.

On 12/30/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/30/06, Stephen Park <stephenpark15 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Currently Wikipedia has a policy protecting individuals who use
> pseudonyms
> > from being "outed" and having their legal names revealed. I think this
> is
> > generally a good policy and I use it myself since I edit using a
> > pseudonym.
> >
> > The problem is when use of a pseudonym allows individuals to
> > surreptitiously
> > edit an article on themselves in a self-promotional or at least a
> > self-interested way. The guideline in WP:AUTO is that individuals are
> > discouraged from editing in an autobiographical manner and that if they
> do
> > so it's a "good idea" if they identify themselves. However, if they
> don't,
> > anyone who suspects someone of editing autobiographically is restrained
> > from
> > voicing their suspicions, even if they have very strong evidence, by
> > WP:HARASSMENT's prohibition against "outing" people.
> >
> > I think we should allow people to maintain their anonymity but that
> there
> > needs to be an understanding that if you want to be anonymous you can't
> > take
> > advantage of that anonymity by editing an article on yourself ie your
> > right
> > to anonymity ends once you transgress WP:AUTO.
> >
> > What do people think about have a policy (say as part of BLP) that
> states
> > that any editor who edits a biographical article on themselves must
> > identify
> > disclose that they are doing so and modifying WP:HARASS in order to
> create
> > an exception to the "no posting of private information" rule in the case
> > where someone is editing an autobiographical article surreptitiously?
> And
> > how should this be permitted? Should editors be permitted to ask
> > CheckUsers
> > to verify that a suspected auotobiographer's location is consistent with
> > that of the person they're writing about? Should editors be permitted to
> > go
> > to WP:ANI or WP:Request for Arbitration and voice a concern that someone
> > is
> > editing autobiographically without declaring themselves?
>
>
> As one example, see
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/ScienceApologist-
> there's a balance between anonymity and WP:AUTO and WP:COI (which may
> be
> more important).  The underlying issue is, if you can write an NPOV
> article
> about yourself, no one will be any the wiser.  If you write something that
> sounds promotional, most people will change it if they notice.  If you
> edit-war to remove unfavourable material from a bio, and you only edit
> articles related to that bio, then people will figure things out quickly
> enough.
>
> We don't have policies and guidelines just for the fun of it - we
> discourage
> editing articles about yourself and your family members because even good
> editors have a hard time writing an NPOV article about topics like
> that.  If
> you suspect that someone is too close to the subject then you can politely
> point them towards AUTO and COI - these guidelines are most effective when
> people voluntarily respect them.  If they are still disruptive, treat them
> as you would any other disruptive editor.
>
> Ian
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Keitei

body:
On Dec 30, 2006, at 17:41, Stephen Park wrote:

> I think the problem is this: If someone challenges an editor over
> his or her
> adding or protecting puffery in an article or for removing critical
> information and accuses them of violating WP:AUTO the accused
> editor can
> turn around and have his accusor punished for "outing" him.

Does this happen often? Granted, I don't tend to edit bios, but this
situation doesn't ring any bells. Is it hypothetical or are there
instances in which this has happened?

--Keitei


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>Perhaps we would be better to post a link here:
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
>
>With a very short english message: "Last week's
>summary of foundation-l is now available.  Please
>translate."
>
...

>I don't like just posting "sensitive" messages because
>it is hard to tell what any one wiki will find
>sensitive.  Not all wiki's are complaining about the
>sitenotice.  Although the LSS is not perfect I think
>it is the best option for "pushing" information.
>
The Foundation list summary looks good.

The success of a communications strategy depends not only on the
information being posted, but on people taking the time and
responsibility to read it.  One of the reasons for this reading failure
is the sheer volume of messages that are issued.  So, at least rating
the significance of the messages would be important.  A Board statement
about a newly adopted policy would have a very high rating.  Yet another
person's complaint about being blocked would have a very low one.
Putting numerical ratings on each message would help those with limited
time to choose which ones to read first.

If the information has been there and easily accessible for a reasonable
time there is no valid excuse for not being informed.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


body:
thomasasta at gmx.net wrote:
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 11:10:08 -0500
> Von: "James Hare" <messedrocker at gmail.com>
> An: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Betreff: Re: [Foundation-l] wiki search & wikimedia foundation collaboration	with Limewire and Yacy ?
>
>
>>Wikiasari will be a service of Wikia, not Wikimedia.
>>
>
>
> yes, you posted this already, and I got it now,
> though Angela refused this seperation of foundation and wikia, after your mail:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012721.html

You misunderstood. She did not refuse separation of Wikia and Wikimedia
Foundation. She explained that Wikiasari was not a Wikia project either.

> That?s why I used the foundation list again in CC.
>
> Anyway, then let?s concentrate on the search-l of wikia, though I think it is wrong to have
the foundation not in the boat. Then the new search engine has nothing
to do with wikipedia and
then the media hype is not understandable.

Precisely correct. The search engine has nothing to do with Wikipedia.
And the media hype is not understandable.

>Is Jimmy then a freerider of the wikipedia lable ?

I can not comment, as I am not really sure of what "lable" mean here.

> Earning money with wikia (search) riding on wiki and wikipedia/ wikimedia-foundation is then like
  ... dunno how to compare.. but possible.
>
>>From the content view it is time to have an open source engine and I do not understand,
why wikipedia community should be not participating in this, a common or
a similar project.

If Wikipedians want to participate to such a project, they can
absolutely do so.

> I think it is not ok, that the wikipedia community think wikia-search is from wikipedia
and they support the profit interest of wikia by free work, which resuls
in a search engine,
which is free, but not open source (maybe the search engine is open
source coded, but the database
has to be payed as a free, but not open source software).

The Wikipedia community does not think wikia-search if from Wikipedia.
The media think so.

The Wikipedia community does not support the profit interest of Wikia by
free work. Any one can go and help. But there is no more relationship.

>Jimmy speeks freely of a licensed engine...

Yes, just as Jimbo can also have political opinions, maybe a belief in a
certain God, preference for sushis over german sausages, and more
willingness to date women than men.

> Kind regards. tom

It may be that so many wikipedians support the idea of a freely
licenced, search engine, built in collaboration, in the future tom. And
it may be that in the future the Foudnation supports such a project. But
right now Tom, there is nothing. It is just the press making up things.

I have no problem with you discussing this here, but please do realise
that until 48 hours ago, none of us had ever heard of this project. We
just discovered it through the press and are unrelated to it.

Best regards

Ant


from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode

body:
On 12/30/06, Ryan Bilesky <rbilesky at gmail.com> wrote:
> The site appears to be gone, or the link broken, or something....

It's the correct link but the site seems temporarily down. You can
read it in the google cache: http://tinyurl.com/yckkc3

The site says:
"LiteratePrograms is a unique wiki where every article is
simultaneously a document and a piece of code that you can view,
download, compile, and run by simply using the "download code" tab at
the top of every article."

Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding the "change size" indicator in change
 lists

body:
Ligulem wrote:
> On 30.12.2006 10:53, Rob Church wrote:
>> [This is in response to all the bitching and whining that's taken
>> place since December 24th, on mailing lists, bug trackers, village
>> pumps and sleazy little back-alley forums...I apologise for the
>> crossposting. As ever, please feel free to forward this to other
>> appropriate parties or lists, but keep responses and/or discussion on
>> one.]
>
> I didn't like the bold red and green either and this has been improved
> in the mean time by choosing a bit less bright colors in the style sheet
> :-).

You know, while you do have a point about the colors, I can't help but
think the reason this has caused such a tempest in a teapot is that what
we have here is a concrete example of the proverbial [[bikeshed]].

(See also http://red.bikeshed.com/ and/or http://green.bikeshed.com/)

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode

body:
On 30/12/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> The real solution would be to have the FSF change the GFDL to be
> compatable with the GPL (and the other way too!), but this is the wrong
> mailing list to make such a gripe.  Frankly I consider this ought to be
> embarassing to the FSF.  I know it has been brought up numerous times in
> the various discussion forums of the FSF and is not a new issue.

The GFDL ought to be embarrassing to the FSF, but anyway.

> Another work-around in terms of at least having a common repository for
> something like a Wikibook about C++ programming might be at least having
> an independent Wikimedia project that has its content available under
> licensing terms compatable with the GFDL and GPL (perhaps
> dual-licensed?).

An obvious workaround for now is for authors to explicitly
dual-licence their code contributions to the book as GFDL and GPL.
There's no way to enforce that for future contributors to that book,
though. But it should be easy enough to make it WikiBooks recommended
best practice.

> In other words, I think there is a practical siter project supporting
> role that such a Wikimedia project of software source code examples
> could provide and be a valuable addition to the Wikimedia family of
> sister projects.  It shouldn't be dismissed completely.

Indeed - it's something that would be useful as a service project as
well. Dual license everything on it under GFDL (for reusability in the
rest of Wikimedia text) plus at least one FSF-approved Free Software
license, DFSG-approved Free license or OSI-approved Open Source
license. (I say "or" to catch stuff like the Netscape Public License,
which is FSF-free but not OSI-open, and I believe there's at least one
licence which is OSI-open but not FSF-free. And then there's the GFDL,
which isn't DFSG-free.)

[DFSG = Debian Free Software Guidelines, which OSI's requirements are based on]

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] WikiCode


body:
On 30.12.2006 17:36, Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> You know, while you do have a point about the colors, I can't help but
> think the reason this has caused such a tempest in a teapot is that what
> we have here is a concrete example of the proverbial [[bikeshed]].
>
> (See also http://red.bikeshed.com/ and/or http://green.bikeshed.com/)
>

The colors are just fine now. Also the bolding for larger numbers is
very cool.

I thought everything is in harmony now. So I was a bit surprised by
Rob's post. But maybe I missed something.


subject: [Foundation-l]   Push/Pull communications (es Advertisement)

body:
Teun Spaans wrote:

>On the english wiki, I am a member of the Military history
>WikiProject. There is a newsletter, which appears every monbth or two
>months. All members are notified on their talk page. By a bot. Surely,
>if a project can manage this, the core of wikimedia can mange this? I
>admit, some volunteers are needed to do this.
>
Although recently I have been only lurking on this WikiProject, I must
speak positively of these newsletters.  Whether they will succeed in
getting us lurkers to contribute is pure guesswork, but it will improve
the possibility.  Keep up the good work.

Do any other WikiProjects have such newsletters?

>Yes, the language is a problem. At the moment I see no alternative to
>English. Translation by babelfish gives terrible results. At least at
>start, there wont be volunteers able to translate it. You are right
>that the next complaint will be that the message is in english. When
>we have taken this step, and the complaint comes, we can invite them
>to translate it.
>
Sometimes the only answer to such complaints is, "This is a volunteer
project; what are you doing to improve it?"

>One of the problems with the current communication is that we rely a
>lot on "pull", not on "push". The information is posted somewhere, and
>it is left to the wikipedians to visiti these places frequently and
>read it. It is up to the wikipedians to discover these places. It is
>up to the wikipedians to go to these places frequently. It is up to
>the wikipedians to read them It is up to the wikipedians to act on it.
>This holds true for communication from the foundation. This is true
>for information from the local chapters. This is true for information
>from commons, such as deletions. It is true for policy changes on
>commons.
>
It took a while to realize that your push/pull analogy was taken from
the language of addressing computer stacks.  :-)

If a person goes to a page frequently but unsuccessfully to see if there
are any additions he soon becomes discouraged and stops looking there.

The stacks need sorting.  Stacks operate on a Last In First Out (LIFO)
basis.  If everything is put into one big stack the oldest entries wil
soon be lost regardless of their importance.  We need more conveniently
sized stacks.  Some of these are made available by default, others, such
as study group nesletters, require a positive effort to subscribe.
These lists could be added to the top of one's watchlist with a flag to
show that there have been new additions to the list.

>There is no information brought to the door. I think it might be time
>to change all this. We might start about thinking delivering selected
>information to the people on their talk pages. information in the
>village pumps.
>
Perhaps, but that needs to be done selectively to avoid overwhelming them.

>I dont say we should communicate everything to everyone, but we may
>start thinking about such a change in our communication strategy.
>
>We are already communicating to the outside world based on "push".
>When the english wiki reaches it n-th million article, whap, out goes
>a press release. The same for commons: when the 1 million images
>milestone was reached. We dont wait till the media visit our sites to
>discover it, we go out and tell them.
>It wouldnt be bad when we followed the same line internally.
>
Worth considering.

Ec


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement

body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Birgitte SB wrote:
>
> >Perhaps we would be better to post a link here:
> >
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LSS/foundation-l-archives
> >
> >With a very short english message: "Last week's
> >summary of foundation-l is now available.  Please
> >translate."
> >
> ...
>
> >I don't like just posting "sensitive" messages
> because
> >it is hard to tell what any one wiki will find
> >sensitive.  Not all wiki's are complaining about
> the
> >sitenotice.  Although the LSS is not perfect I
> think
> >it is the best option for "pushing" information.
> >
> The Foundation list summary looks good.
>
> The success of a communications strategy depends not
> only on the
> information being posted, but on people taking the
> time and
> responsibility to read it.  One of the reasons for
> this reading failure
> is the sheer volume of messages that are issued.
> So, at least rating
> the significance of the messages would be important.
>  A Board statement
> about a newly adopted policy would have a very high
> rating.  Yet another
> person's complaint about being blocked would have a
> very low one.
> Putting numerical ratings on each message would help
> those with limited
> time to choose which ones to read first.
>
> If the information has been there and easily
> accessible for a reasonable
> time there is no valid excuse for not being
> informed.
>
> Ec
>
> _

I am not sure rating is necessary.  The key messages
worth reading in a thread have links from the summary
to their archived location.  I would think everyone
should have time to read the basic summary and if a
particular thread is something they care about the
should read the message(s) that are linked to.  And if
they REALLY care they can read through that section of
the archive completely.  Of course the archived
messages is always in english which is a problem for
those reading translations of the summary.  But that
would still be a problem even if they were rated.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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subject: [Foundation-l] Advertisement


body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>I want to explain were I think the general opposition
>to advertisement comes from.  While brion is correct
>that free-content is not against commercialism; free
>content is against consumerism.  Advertising is a
>large part of the culture of consumerism.  This is a
>culture that *is* at odds with the ideas of Wikimedia.
> This is where I believe the strong reaction against
>ads stems from more than anti-commercialism.
>
This is an interesting distinction.

>It is sometimes hard to remember how
>much of a communication problem still remains within
>this organiztion.  Six months ago it was nearly
>impossible to know what happening at the Foundation
>level.  Now there are annoucements, reports, and even
>timetables!  But this is not being spread much through
>the larger community.
>
I have noticed improvements in that six months.  Those who have worked
on this deserve the credit, and I can't picture Jimbo doing it all
himself.  Expanding the community that is informed will take it one step
further.

Ec


from_name: "Thomas Müller"

subject:
[Foundation-l] foundation-wikipedia-search-project (was: wiki
 search & wikimedia foundation collaboration with Limewire and Yacy ?

body:
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
Datum: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 18:14:44 +0100
Von: Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>

> it may be that in the future the Foudnation supports such a project.
>
> I have no problem with you discussing this here, but please do realise
> that until 48 hours ago, none of us had ever heard of this project. We
> just discovered it through the press and are unrelated to it.
>
> Best regards
>
> Ant

Hi Ant, that?s it. We need an initial discussion that the wikipedia/wikimedia foundation needs an open source search engine.

We should take time to discuss the need and the options brought by your idea for such a project. Keep wikia what it want to be. Let?s foundraise an own new open source search engine.

and I suggest to base upon http://yacy.net - the p2p webindex-search.

If then wikia chooses as well this idea, we can later collaborate as well.
If Jimmy chooses the central engine "nutch", then we have our own.

So this is about to bring out the idea to the foundations in each country here on the list, and to start a thread about it on this list.

48 hours or one hours you bring up the idea here, and before the decisions here really start, we should discuss the option, to have in each wikipedia country a search field box, to search as well in the web with yacy.

Users can install the firefox toolbar, see here how it works:

http://www.yacy-websuche.de/wiki/index.php/De:YaCyBar

It would be wrong that the foundation goes to the press and says, we have nothing to do with it, we could use the hype to work out an own concept.
With options for a collaboration with wikia.com

We should use the chance, to use the reality, which was created by the press, as it seems to be needed.

Would it be possible to run yacy.net  on each wikipedia server (or other) and get the search box into the wikipedia left manue (at the bottom) )

The wikiepdia yacy server then could index the wikiepdia server.
So please someone can forward this mail to the tech-admin list of the wikiservers? Thanks

Kind regards Tom
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