from_name: xaosflux

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
This has been brought up several times, you may want to review
[[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information
on the past findings.

xaosflux
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nick Jenkins" <nickpj at gmail.com>
To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:16 AM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

> >From Gregory Maxwell in the "[Wikitech-l] User block changes" thread:
>> If someone can't cooperate they are lost to us and we should just
>> block, if they can then there is  no need for fancy technical
>> measures.
>
> I agree. OT (hence the subject name change), but related to this
> general principle of just getting out of the way of people that are
> fundamentally sensible:
>
> Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current
> situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature
> which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's
> contributions page".
>
> Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins
> only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia
> admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin
> of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo
> vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big
> net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last
> edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle
> gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
>
> <rant>
> Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which
> we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is
> too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000
> edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty
> good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on
> their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't
> we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can
> already do just that bit easier and quicker? And I don't just mean me,
> or just this specific user and that specific user, I mean all users
> who cross a certain measurable threshold of trustworthiness and
> commitment, should automatically be given rollback ability. Maybe
> start the entry criteria high so that only a few people qualify
> initially, and then gradually lower them whilst the gain from lowering
> exceeds the pain from misuse - that would be fine, as long as it's a
> systematic attempt to empower a whole category of trusted users, as
> opposed to a user-by-user non-systematic approach.
> </rant>
>
> All the best,
> Nick.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On 7/11/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the
> threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.
>
> Are you not proposing a whole new level of user just below admin?
> Seeing that certain features would be unavailable to "trusted users"
> (such as article deletion), the criteria for becoming one would be
> less rigorous.
>
> Any thoughts?

Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue,
given that there's no technical issue with creating a new usergroup
other than that the userrights situation isn't very modular right now
(so a new extension would have to be created to allow bureaucrats or
whoever to grant rollback ability).  Wikitech-l is discussion for
technical stuff, not local wiki policy.  And this *has* been discussed
extensively on enwiki; if you would like to resurrect discussion of
instituting the group there, it would be a good idea to follow
xaosflux's link and work from there, since policy is generally made
on-wiki.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke

I removed the jokes.  Mikka reverted.  My reasoning:
* no reliable sources for these being considered representative of the
classes of joke discussed
* this is about the concept of the joke, it is not [[List of jokes]]
(and most especially not [[List of randomly selected and generally
abysmal jokes]])
* several are gratuitously offensive.  It should be possible to read
the article on joke, be told that racist jokes exist, but not be
subjected to them unless you visit a separate article
* WP:NOT a joke book
* cruft, cruft, cruft and more cruft.  Most are drive-bys.

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


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] PLEASE HELP the Welcome log

body:
Hello Commonsfolk and recently subscribed admins,

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orgullobot/Welcome_log

This is another plea for assistance on the Welcome log. PLEASE HELP us
check it, even if it's only two users each day. There is a backlog of
nearly two weeks.

Newbies make a ton of mistakes and catching them early and correcting
them is one way to cut down on future workload in terms of reducing
required unlinking of images that need to be deleted, stopping problem
uploaders earlier and reduce 'orphan' uncategorised images.

After you've corrected their mistakes and left them a note explaining
what they're doing wrong, if necessary, please remove their name from
the list. It's very straightforward.

Please help... even if you just look for some 'easy' users that had
made no mistakes and remove their names from the list.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Orgullobot/Welcome_log

thanks,

Brianna
User:pfctdayelise

PS: If you don't have 'quick nominate as no source/no license/for
deletion + notify uploader' links installed, you might like to. See
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Quick-delete.js


subject: [Commons-l] PLEASE HELP the Welcome log

body:
On 11/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since the welcome template is entirely non-personal, why not get someone to
> design a bot to do this job? Within minutes of a user signing up a message
> could be left by the bot so giving them some introductory information. It is
> preferable that the bot have some inbuilt delay between signup and message
> so that the user can see the message pop-up after a few minutes editing.

A bot *does* do this job.... I am not asking people to welcome users.
I am asking them to check the user's uploads.

The bot only welcomes new users after they have made at least one edit
or one upload.

Brianna


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joke

body:
Much humour involves some kind of offense to a particular group of people.
It is a very difficult issue, someone will complain regardless of who is
targeted. I do believe, however, that examples of jokes are necessary to an
article about jokes (perhaps a couple of audio clips in which famous
comedians deliver a joke or two). An article about novels will contain the
names of many novels, this not being the case would strike most as odd.

Are there any extremely widely known offensive jokes such that their
documentation by us wouldn't be offensive to anyone?

On 11/07/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joke
>
> I removed the jokes.  Mikka reverted.  My reasoning:
> * no reliable sources for these being considered representative of the
> classes of joke discussed
> * this is about the concept of the joke, it is not [[List of jokes]]
> (and most especially not [[List of randomly selected and generally
> abysmal jokes]])
> * several are gratuitously offensive.  It should be possible to read
> the article on joke, be told that racist jokes exist, but not be
> subjected to them unless you visit a separate article
> * WP:NOT a joke book
> * cruft, cruft, cruft and more cruft.  Most are drive-bys.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 04:16:07PM +1000, Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current
> situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature
> which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's
> contributions page".
>
> Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins
> only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia
> admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin
> of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo
> vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big
> net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last
> edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle
> gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.

Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected
(more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is
about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.

Perhaps that's Captain Obvious, reporting for duty, and that's why no
one mentioned it, but...

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

	Fanfic: read enough, and you'll loose your mind.  --me


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On 7/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected
> (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is
> about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.

Er, rollback can be rolled back.  Not only that, it can generally be
rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user.  Therefore,
privileges such as deletion (which can only be reverted by one of a
few hundred admins) are significantly more sensitive.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 11:21:33PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 7/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected
> > (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is
> > about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.
>
> Er, rollback can be rolled back.  Not only that, it can generally be
> rolled back by *anyone*, even an anonymous user.  Therefore,
> privileges such as deletion (which can only be reverted by one of a
> few hundred admins) are significantly more sensitive.

Physically, perhaps.

Though, when examining the logical aspect, I suppose it's actually
*lower* impact to roll-forward an unwanted rollback; either direction,
of course, runs the risk of eating edits in the interim.

This is what I get for combining alcohol, karaoke, and mailing lists.

Sorry.

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

	Fanfic: read enough, and you'll loose your mind.  --me


from_name: Niels Fledderus

subject: [Commons-l] intelligence in flagging

body:
For more experienced users not selecting a licence is actually easier if you
know exactly which template to use, because you can prepare the complete
description page in the upload form, without having to move the category to
the bottom or correcting a too generic tag afterwards. A show preview button
whould be nice though.

Although I agree with Brianna/pfctdayelise that people should look into
licenses before uploading, I think having a "I don't know option" is
preferable over people just randomly picking a license. When just 1 in 100
people is honest so be it, but that at least makes it obvious that more
attention is needed. Too many people just slap on a license without thinking
or take things too easily for granted, see the World Cup images from Flickr
which are obviously copyvio's.

~~~~ (hmppf, doesn't work ;-)). NielsF

>From: "Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
>To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Commons-l] intelligence in flagging
>Date: Wed, 12 Jul 2006 09:58:27 +1000
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>
>On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It would be nice to still allow people to select "I don't know what the
> > license is" so that those with more experience can help (particularly
>easy
> > for us in the case of old photographs).
>
>1 in maybe 100 would be such nice cases, the other 99 would be
>explaining that random stuff off the web is copyrighted. I would
>prefer people find out the license BEFORE uploading. It would save a
>lot of work. We have a [[commons:Help desk|]] for this purpose.
>
>Brianna
>_______________________________________________
>Commons-l mailing list
>Commons-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-07-12

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 409 of 426 tests (96.01%) FAILED!


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Offering Wikibooks content for sale

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>Brad Patrick wrote:
>
>
>>Robert, what would an efficient process look like to you, assuming the
>>licensing component is a requirement?
>>
>>
>This needs to be a community-driven approach, where ordinary Wikimedia
>users who contribute to various project have the opportunity to
>participate and make this sort of content available.  There is also no
>need for having a dozen independent "publishers" that all go off on
>their own direction.  Certainly once it is apparent that you can make
>some money off of publishing content like this, there will be a dozen
>different companies offering Wikimedia content for sale, so your caution
>is justified.  In this case, we are talking about publishing content as
>a Wikibooks community rather than as a bunch of mavericks.
>
We obviously don't "need" a dozen independant publishers producing the
same thing., but should we even be trying to stop it.  With more of them
doing it they will soon end up trying to undercut each others' prices.
It would also be easy to spread doubts about whether these people are
even producing the most recent version.  In all likelhood this dozen
publishers will have a dozen different editions.  What they do to make
sure that they are producing the latest edition is their problem.

>Ideally, what I'd like to see is some sort of "official" WMF store that
>is able to offer books like this.  There should be some restrictions
>placed on such content that are primarily quality based restrictions.
> This would imply some sort of "editorial board" or some others that
>would have the ability to accept or offer suggestions on improving the
>content to meet publication standards.  All of this can be accomplished
>with volunteers, and doesn't require anything new other than some extra
>web pages to help organize the effort and helping select the editorial
>board.  In addition, any such gatekeepers should be selected by the
>community and come up from the users rather than something appointed by
>the WMF board, as is the tradition for other such people like admins,
>stewards, etc.
>
>If you want to "publish" a book you've written that has Wikimedia
>project content, you can organize it and then submit it to this board
>for review.  If the book is accepted for publication, it is somehow
>added to the WMF store.  Other "features" at the store can include
>featured books, or the host of things you find for book retailers.  Or
>simply make the book available with an ISBN and it would be available
>from Amazon.com or a bunch of other on-line bookstores.  The exact path
>to publication isn't so important as that it is made available.
>
Some of this may be fine for "official" Wikimedia publications, but a
general policy of requiring approval for all third party versions would
strike me as contrary to copyleft principles.

>This is something that I see local Wikimedia chapters being involved
>with, as they can help find local printers to make content like this
>available to people in their respective countries.  Certainly it would
>make much more sense to print a book in Poland for Polish readers than
>ship something from North America to do the same thing.  Still, it would
>be nice to have an established process to show high quality Wikimedia
>materials that would enhance rather than detract from Wikimedia projects.
>
Absolutely.  The right of any person to produce the material should not
be exclusive.

>I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to
>help reduce costs.  Particularly in the printing business, there are
>economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly.  This book
>which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even
>less in large volumes.  It only makes sense that this is something that
>can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this
>reason alone.
>
>One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control.
> As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen,
>cause damage, and a host of other related problems.  Lulu Press does
>offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit
>businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve
>other compromises.  Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer
>in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be
>the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
>
Allowing others to produce the physical formats does save us the need to
hire people for inventory maintenance and shipping, or to rent
facilities for storing these goods.  I agree that longer print runs do
benefit from economies of scale, but short runs make updating without
wastage of obsolete stock easier.

>There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks.
> You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined
>exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their
>trademarks and logos used on publications.  If it is an "official"
>publication, there is obviously some more lieniency than for
>"non-official" publications, and some clear guidelines should be in
>place for at least people like me (an admin) can point to and say "it
>says here that you can (can't) do what you are asking."  I think
>[[b:en:Wikibooks:Copyrights]] does a pretty good job for instance, but
>that was something written by decidely a non-lawyer when Wikibooks was a
>much smaller project  (Thanks mav for your work on that!)  Certainly
>that needs to be reviewed formally by the WMF to see if that is what is
>intended, together with similar copyright statements on the other
>Wikimedia projects.
>
What's really needed in terms of trademarks in general is a clear policy
statement from the Board about the kind of activities that it considers
to be violation of its rights.  This may be greater of less than what is
available in its rights under the law, though it stands to reason that
the more it deviates from its legal rights the more the policy will be
challenged.  None of this prejudges what an actual legal proceeding
would produce.  The primary effect of such a policy would be to give a
safe harbour for activities that are not clearly forbidden.

>BTW, thanks to everybody for your comments on this matter.
>
Your bold steps in this direction are to be commended.  Without such
steps there would be no progress.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Persondata?

body:
I believe my following characterisation is accurate, if it is not
please correct me.

The tool is given a category containing biographies (and nothing
else?) such as [[Category:1984 births]]. The tool then, through some
pattern recognition, produces a completed {{Persondata}} template (a
metadata template containing vital stats about a person, see the
example below - it is not something you or I read, something for
computers to read) for every article in that category.

So, for example, the article [[A. R. Rawlinson]] (listed in the above
category) contains the following lead sentence:

"'''Lieutenant-General A.R. "Dick" Rawlinson''' ([[1894]]-[[1984]])
served in [[military intelligence]], before commencing on a
[[screenwriting]] career."

Magnus' tool will convert discrete facts in this prose data (name,
DoB, DoD) into fields for the Persondata template. It produces this
for the above example:

{Persondata
 |NAME=Rawlinson, A.R.
 |ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
 |SHORT DESCRIPTION=served in [[military intelligence]], before
commencing on a [[screenwriting]] career
 |DATE OF BIRTH=1894
 |PLACE OF BIRTH=
 |DATE OF DEATH=1984
 |PLACE OF DEATH=
 }}

The user using the tool then copies this completed template and pastes
it into the A. R. Rawlinson article.

On 12/07/06, poore5 at adelphia.net <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> ---- Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > poore5 at adelphia.net wrote:
> > > Hello Magnus,
> > >
> > > Could you explain a little more about how you plan to use the tool?
> > >
> > > I have some concerns about using it on Biographies of living people on Wikipedia-en. We have too much unverified information added to these article. I strongly believe that each article needs to be examined closely to verify the content meets our Wikipedia:BLP guidelines before it is added to a template.
> > >
> > Well, it can't run fully automatically, there has to be a user making
> > the changes. I could prevent the tool from showing a template for people
> > with no death date (=probably living;-) if there's great concern about
> > that. Otherwise, the tool doesn't generate new data; it merely tries to
> > extract the data already in the article and put it into a form that is
> > more machine-readable.
> >
> > Magnus
>
> I thought you said something about doing whole categories. I got the impression that the tool would convert a whole group of articles, over course one after another.
>
> Who would use the tool? Does a human need to verify each fact (not sure of a better word) before it goes into the template?
>
> If not I'm concerned about some false information slipping through.
>
> Otherwise it sounds great.  : - )
>
> Take care,
> Sydney aka FloNight
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] User block changes

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

Tim Starling schrieb:
> A couple of people asked me about interaction between various kinds of
> blocks and block options, and indeed, in some cases the behaviour was
> undefined or accidental. I've now implemented the following rules:
>
> * The "anon only" and "prevent account creation" options will be silently
> ignored on username blocks.

If the "prevent account creation" option is ignored on username blocks,
it has not to be mentioned in the log (List of blocked IP addresses and
usernames), isn't it?

Example from deWP today:

21:36, 11 July 2006, D (Talk) blocked BgMgBgMgBgMg (contribs) (infinite,
account creation blocked) (unblock) (kneipenschl?ger)

Raymond.
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from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should we block unregistered AOL users?

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 7/12/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
>
>
>> Given the above, would it now be advisable to block the entire AOL proxy
>>   pool from editing by unregistered users?  This would have the side
>> effect that AOL users would no longer be hit by random autoblocks.
>>
>
> AOL have agreed to set XFF headers for Wikimedia sites, so this won't
> be necessary. However, that was a few weeks ago now and I'm not aware
> of it having been implemented yet. I'll follow up and see if there's
> any response. I suggest holding off on the blocks for a while longer
> to see whether we can avoid this.
>
> Angela.
>
>
That's fantastic news! AOL supporting XFF should remove the need for a
_lot_ of blocking.

-- Neil
>
>
>


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

>On 7/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 7/4/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>On 7/4/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>
>"Having an
>employee make ad-hoc, arbitrary and speculative pronouncements on the
>law without a clear policy from the Board to back it up probably puts
>the entire project into greater peril than the obvious silliness of the
>more ignorant copyright violators."
>
>For the record, Ray, Jeff, Eric and Anthony are not employees of the
>Foundation.
>
>I am, and I hope you do not have a problem with the idea of a paid general
>counsel having as one of his primary responsibilities the generation of
>'speculative pronouncements on the law.'  That is rather the point.  My
>client, my ethical obligation, and the recipient of my professional legal
>advice is the Board.  It's my bar card on the line.  It is not my job to wax
>eloquent on the law for the sake of making people on a listserv have more to
>rant about.
>
>Thanks for including the word "probably" in the statement above, btw.  I'd
>hate to think you were taking a position without leaving yourself rhetorical
>wiggle room.  That would probably' be silly as well.
>
>
>
For the record I am NOT an employee of the Foundation, just a schmuck
working on Native
American translations and helping bring Wikipedia to Native Peoples.

My background is well known and I've been on the receiving end of
litigations directed at me
by some very wealthy and powerful groups for years. My father was an
attorney and I grew
up surrounded by lawyers. Here's the bottom line.

You win when you are NOT involved in litigating AT ALL and when people
can work things out. Going
in front of Judge is the worst of all possible scenarios in a conflict -
its like going to Las Vegas and playing
high rollers at the craps tables. You have no idea what will be the
outcome since judge is a fallible human being
trying to listen to both sides and making sense of all of it and
balancing the rights of both parties, and I've been there
-- many times, and not as an advocate but as a party where my interests
were on line and depenent on the outcome.
There's no magic formula or elightened policy the Board or anyone can
come up with in a vacuum that will be a
magical panacea and protect them.

Wikipedia's current policies concerning WP:RS are outstanding and
address almost 100% of any issues people can raise.
When these polcies are followed, people have little to no recourse. The
problem is one of enforcement of their policies,
not the system they have created. Brad has done a job that is beyond
exemplary in keeping the Foundation level and working
out conflicts with Folks and Wales has a heart of gold that shows
through like a beacon in the fog
when you can communicate effectively with him.

I for one am immensely impressed with Wales, Brad, Danny and what they
have built and I will support them to the hilt (which does
not come easily for me). I understand the community issues and the
incredible balacing act these guys have to do to make
this whole thing work, and to be honest I am nothing but totally
impressed with the progress they've made given the types of folks
who visit their site and post troll bait and the antics of a lot of the
folks that they work with and try to steer into a good direction.

My article was one example and Wales totally blew me away with his
mature and thoughful handling of these people who were trolling.
I can say for certainty the Foundation has things well in hand and as
someone who has been involved in exactly the issues you raise
in a plethura of Federal an State Court cases, they are good men, a
judge would view them as good men, and their current policies, when
adhered to, would protect them almost 100% in these cases.

And if they want to protect their rights, as far as I can tell, they are
protecting the rights of the community and all of you to be successful.
Wales
seems to operate on a higher set of laws (or perhaps a more precise
understanding of the one universal law), and his direction is sound (though
eccentric) and incredibly productive. When the issue of the website came
up, he stated he applauded this persons courage for promoting
the pervasiveness of Wikipedia's content and said "I hope it goes back
up", indicating he had already done his own internal balancing of
the pros and cons -- they are his Foundations trademarks and his call on
how he wants to use them.

Enough said.

All my love to all of you,

Don't worry, be happy.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


from_name: Nathan

body:
Fantastic.

- nathanrdotcom

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, Angela wrote:

> I've just had confirmation that this should be working. From AOL this morning:
>
> > I have just now added all the domains you have listed below to our
> > config to get XFF headers. You should see them sometime later today when
> > the process is finished updating all of our web proxies.
>
> Thanks to Jim Sheafer for setting this up, and to Mike Wise for
> putting me in contact with him.
>
> Hopefully this means you can now block one AOL user without affecting
> another one.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Advice_to_AOL_users should
> probably be updated when we're sure this is working.
>
> Angela.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
The worry of course is that it makes vandalism very, very easy. If the
threshold were low then it would be open for abuse by vandals.

Are you not proposing a whole new level of user just below admin?
Seeing that certain features would be unavailable to "trusted users"
(such as article deletion), the criteria for becoming one would be
less rigorous.

Any thoughts?

On 12/07/06, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
> This has been brought up several times, you may want to review
> [[Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges]] on en: for more information
> on the past findings.
>
> xaosflux
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Nick Jenkins" <nickpj at gmail.com>
> To: <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:16 AM
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users
>
>
> > >From Gregory Maxwell in the "[Wikitech-l] User block changes" thread:
> >> If someone can't cooperate they are lost to us and we should just
> >> block, if they can then there is  no need for fancy technical
> >> measures.
> >
> > I agree. OT (hence the subject name change), but related to this
> > general principle of just getting out of the way of people that are
> > fundamentally sensible:
> >
> > Something that seems a bit strange to me is rollback. The current
> > situation I believe is that "Admins have a handy 'rollback' feature
> > which allows them to instant-revert changes from a user's
> > contributions page".
> >
> > Sounds great, useful, and sensible. Everything apart from the "admins
> > only bit". Why stop at admins? Me personally, I'm not a wikipedia
> > admin (and currently the idea of yet another system that I'm an admin
> > of in some way holds zero appeal), but the ability to quickly undo
> > vandalism is useful, and could be given to far more users and be a big
> > net win for vandalism control. The whole "history -> click on last
> > edit minus one -> click edit -> type out 'revert' -> click save" cycle
> > gets very tedious and repetitive after a while.
> >
> > <rant>
> > Why do we do this? Yes, there probably has to be some point at which
> > we start trusting people enough to do easy rollbacks, but "admin" is
> > too high a standard. If someone has a login, and has (say) >= 1000
> > edits, and has used the system for (say) >= 3 months, there's a pretty
> > good chance they can spot an anon committing vandalism on pages on
> > their watchlist. So why don't we make undoing this easier? Why don't
> > we help such people more, empower them more, and make what they can
> > already do just that bit easier and quicker? And I don't just mean me,
> > or just this specific user and that specific user, I mean all users
> > who cross a certain measurable threshold of trustworthiness and
> > commitment, should automatically be given rollback ability. Maybe
> > start the entry criteria high so that only a few people qualify
> > initially, and then gradually lower them whilst the gain from lowering
> > exceeds the pain from misuse - that would be fine, as long as it's a
> > systematic attempt to empower a whole category of trusted users, as
> > opposed to a user-by-user non-systematic approach.
> > </rant>
> >
> > All the best,
> > Nick.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Angela

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should we block unregistered AOL users? (was:
	[Wikitech-l] User block changes)

references:
<e8su7s$h8r$1@sea.gmane.org> <e8vdjk$d5s$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44B3D213.40203@vyznev.net>

body:
On 7/12/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:

> Given the above, would it now be advisable to block the entire AOL proxy
>   pool from editing by unregistered users?  This would have the side
> effect that AOL users would no longer be hit by random autoblocks.

AOL have agreed to set XFF headers for Wikimedia sites, so this won't
be necessary. However, that was a few weeks ago now and I'm not aware
of it having been implemented yet. I'll follow up and see if there's
any response. I suggest holding off on the blocks for a while longer
to see whether we can avoid this.

Angela.


from_name: Austin Hair

body:
On 7/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Some of this may be fine for "official" Wikimedia publications, but a
> general policy of requiring approval for all third party versions would
> strike me as contrary to copyleft principles.

I don't see anyone proposing any limitation on free reuse; rather,
given the choice between an "official" Wikimedia publication at a fair
price and a dirt-cheap unedited screen dump, which would you buy?

Austin


subject: [Foundation-l] Cherokee Wikipedia Name Suggestion

body:
The name should be:

???? ????

(digoweli gatsanula)
"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "

to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".

The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
language, and was synthesized.

Just a suggestion...

Jeff


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On 12/07/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thoughts: not to be a jerk, but this is more of a Wikien-l issue,
> given that there's no technical issue with creating a new usergroup
> other than that the userrights situation isn't very modular right now
> (so a new extension would have to be created to allow bureaucrats or
> whoever to grant rollback ability).

Little work needs to be done; we have an extension suitable for this.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
On 12/07/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Snipping your rant for a moment, the reason that rollback is protected
> (more than other things) is that in the stream of wikidom, rollback is
> about the only thing which can't be... rolled back.

Um...yes, it can. Just like everything else.

Rob Church


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Berto

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Hi!

can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the
source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the
paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better
media exposure.

B?rto


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>A key factor in distinguishing between a publisher and an ISP seems to
>be editorial control, and oonsciously active participation in the
>editing process.  An ISP who is told that there is something illegal
>about a page can easily remove it as a result of being so told.  Being
>pro-active in this may be more characteristic of a publisher, because it
>involves making our own legal decisions about whether a writing is in
>some fashion illegal.
>
>Ec
>
The problem here is that Jimbo in particular and the WMF in general has
been very active in making editorial decisions.... particularly
regarding content on Wikibooks, with deletion of substantial sections of
Wikibooks content on the "orders from Jimbo".  Office actions as well on
Wikipedia (a somewhat controvercial subject) suggest that there is some
active participation in this editing process.  I'm not just talking
about WMF board members that are also acting as contributors, but
forceful decisions that have overriding authority and preempt
objections, even strong objections by the community.

I'm not really sure where the WMF would fall into this category, but I
wouldn't simply claim the WMF to be a mere service provider.  I'm not
necessarily saying that editorial control is wrong here, but it does
have legal implications as you have pointed out.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>If Wikimedia wants to hold a copyright interest inthis material it needs
>to be ready to defend those copyrights in a serious way.  Having an
>employee make ad-hoc, arbitrary and speculative pronouncements on the
>law without a clear policy from the Board to back it up probably puts
>the entire project into greater peril than the obvious silliness of the
>more ignorant copyright violators.
>
>Ec
>
The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold
copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free
Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a
copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the
copyright and defending the GPL.

The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL
violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the
WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia
content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be
legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an
individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that
you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each
seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.

Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
decision to not claim copyright was done.  The liability instead rests
on the individual contributors.  Each time you add some content to
Wikimedia projects, particularly if you use the same account for each
contribution and are prominent in the "community", you put yourself into
harm's way legally speaking.  You can be held responsible for the
content that you added, or even failed to edit out when you made a minor
change to a page.  In other words, this approach to playing it safe
really is just transfering liability from the WMF to individual users.

That really should be motivation to being a major contributor to
Wikimedia projects, isn't it?

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>I guess I would like to see it done through the community as well to
>>help reduce costs.  Particularly in the printing business, there are
>>economies of scale that help to reduce costs significantly.  This book
>>which was for sale at $12 a copy could be brought down to $4 or even
>>less in large volumes.  It only makes sense that this is something that
>>can and should be done with a centralized coordinated effort for this
>>reason alone.
>>
>>One huge issue on top of everything else is simply inventory control.
>>As this is physical items, that means they can be damaged, stolen,
>>cause damage, and a host of other related problems.  Lulu Press does
>>offer this sort of inventory control, and there are other for-profit
>>businesses who are willing to do print-on-demand, but that does involve
>>other compromises.  Certainly we shouldn't be tied down to one printer
>>in any case, and in this situation the Wikimedia Foundation should be
>>the publisher of the content, not Lulu Press.
>>
>>
>>
>Allowing others to produce the physical formats does save us the need to
>hire people for inventory maintenance and shipping, or to rent
>facilities for storing these goods.  I agree that longer print runs do
>benefit from economies of scale, but short runs make updating without
>wastage of obsolete stock easier.
>
It still helps out even with print on demand systems if you have a high
volume of sales.  The point I was trying to make is that by trying to
pool our efforts to publish content jointly, we can help reduce costs
not only for ourselves, but for everybody involved.  It helps even if
all we are doing is moving from one print-on-demand printing house to
another for competitive rates.  If it becomes in our interest (Wikimedia
users trying to physically print content) to purchase physcial
facilities due to increased savings, perhaps that is something that can
be discussed when that makes a wise business decision.

I will say that the print industry is very competitive in almost every
aspect, and so many options available that we shouldn't be tied down to
a specific business model.  Lulu Press and places like that, however,
seem to be the easiest way to do some initial printing and get started
in the process.  There are more things, however, that can be done with
an organized group of Wikimedia users, and I would like to be involved
with those who want to do this with English-language content.

>>There are some legal issues such as placement and usage of trademarks.
>>You hit that one well, and in this situation we need to have it defined
>>exactly how and in what ways that the WMF would like to have their
>>trademarks and logos used on publications.
>>
>>
>>
>What's really needed in terms of trademarks in general is a clear policy
>statement from the Board about the kind of activities that it considers
>to be violation of its rights.  This may be greater of less than what is
>available in its rights under the law, though it stands to reason that
>the more it deviates from its legal rights the more the policy will be
>challenged.  None of this prejudges what an actual legal proceeding
>would produce.  The primary effect of such a policy would be to give a
>safe harbour for activities that are not clearly forbidden.
>
>
Agreed.  I'm not demanding that the WMF drop everything just to help fix
this squeeky wheel, but I would point out that by cooperating with
Wikimedia users and providing a path that seems reasonable will make
everybody comfortable.  There will eventually be some genuine sleezebags
who will push the envelope and perhaps force legal action by the WMF
into trademark defense, but we are not trying to push the limits of
legality here.  All I'm asking for is to see what the WMF would consider
to be reasonable uses of their trademarks with print publications.  The
sense I am getting is absolutely no use of any trademark is permitted,
even if it is a mere URL or even a side mention like "Thanks to the
Wikimedia Foundation for hosting the servers that made this content
possible."  If those need to be removed to keep Brad and the WMF board
happy, I will oblige.  I think that would be unfortunate, however.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
Anthony wrote:

>>Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
>>the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
>>decision to not claim copyright was done.
>>
>>
>
>AFAIK, Wikimedia has *not* (yet?) disclaimed any copyright interest
>they may hold in this content.  They don't claim copyright on the
>contributions made by individuals, and they haven't gotten into the
>messy business of copyright assignment, but there is a quite
>legitimate argument that they hold copyright on anything added by
>employees in the scope of their employment (such as Jimbo and/or
>Danny), and possibly that they hold some sort of compilation
>copyright.  I think it's quite likely that if Wikimedia doesn't
>explicitly disclaim copyright on these works that they do hold at
>least some copyright interest in them.
>
I would dare say that the amount of content that has been contributed by
Danny as a result of his official duties is so trivially small that it
can be ignored completely, especially on the major projects like
Wikipedia.  I'm not saying that such contributions are meaningless, but
it won't really have any impact on any copyright issues for Wikimedia
project content.

As far as the WMF disclaiming copyright interest, I guess as an
"official" policy statement that has been issued by the WMF, you are
correct.  However, there have been plenty of statements on this list and
elsewhere disclaiming such interest that I think it would be very
difficult now to assert copyright interest as well.  When I added the
WMF author credit (compilation credit?) to the Wikijunior books, I was
trying to give the WMF the benefit of the doubt and at least help
preserve any copyright interest in content like that.  Indeed the only
reason and justification for pulling the Wikijunior Big Cats book was
specifically because the WMF was mentioned as the author when such
attribution was being denied.

The GFDL is one of the reasons why the messy business of copyright
assignment has not been dealt with before.  It is interesting that on
none of the Wikimedia projects is there a copyright statement anywhere,
and only on the [[Wikibooks:Copyright]] page can you even find the
copyright symbol and any assertion of copyright, even on behalf of the
contributors.  Wikipedia lacks even this simply copyright claim, as do
other Wikimedia projects.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


from_name: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frank Ahrens mass-reply

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> In response to responses to
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/08/AR2006070800135.html
>
> "Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and write.
>
> Apologies for the mass e-mail but, as you may have guessed, I got
> plenty of feedback.

<snip>

> Finally, to the one wittily sarcastic e-mailer: No, it has not escaped
> mynotice that I write about TECHNOLOGY for a NEWSPAPER. Soon, however,
> The Post will be a Web site with a newspaper attached, not the other
> way
> around, if that hasn't already happened.
>
> Thanks much and please keep reading. You may feel free to post this on any
> and all forums. (fora?)
>
> Best,
>
> Frank Ahrens"
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
And of course my burning question now is, who was the "wittily sarcastic
e-mailer"? That was brilliant.

-KillerChihuahua


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [Wikitech-l] User block changes

body:
Simetrical wrote:
>
> Perhaps a more intuitive solution would be to enable the anon only and
> no account creation options for username blocks, and just apply them
> to autoblocks?

This is not a particularly effective solution, since it would require
admins blocking registered users to guess in advance whether the user is
using a shared IP or not.  That said, I wouldn't really oppose having
this feature _in addition to_ the precedence system.

The new precedence system seems quite good, but it would be further
improved by the ability to mark IPs and/or IP ranges as completely
exempt from autoblocks, essentially creating an "anti-block" that would
take precedence over any coincident autoblocks.

Also, the interface really needs to be changed so that one can change
the block length and/or type without first removing the previous block
(possibly with a confirmation dialog like the one used when reuploading
images).  Right now a fast vandal (such as a vandalbot) could easily
slip in several edits between the unblock and the subsequent reblock,
particularly if the admin isn't careful or suffers from connection lag.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
> Though, when examining the logical aspect, I suppose it's actually
> *lower* impact to roll-forward an unwanted rollback; either direction,
> of course, runs the risk of eating edits in the interim.

The builtin rollback feature is actually fail-safe in the sense that it
will do nothing if there have been additional edits after the one that
was to be rolled back.

Some of the JavaScript replacements may or may not share this safety
feature, and "manual" rollback (by editing an old version) certainly
doesn't.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> There's a user JavaScript tool that was developed some time ago which provides
> about the same one-touch rollback capability for any user. Rollbacks of course
> are nothing special, it's just a little convenience to automate the process,
> which in a SoftSecurity fashion gives the interested Good Guys a tiny leg up
> against random vandals.

The JavaScript tool is also slow, breaks frequently on minor interface
changes and has, in the past, had several bugs that would more or less
subtly mess up the page being rolled back.  It's a really bad substitute
for the real thing.

> We have the technical capability to add a rollback-only group. But all that
> creates is another bottleneck: assigning and managing that permission.

I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.

There are a lot of ways in which any user can already cause much more
damage much more quickly and easily than with rollback.  Of course, the
rollback feature probably would facilitate revert warring, but we
already have a social solution to that: 3RR.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
On 12/07/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the
> source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
> newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
> newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the
> paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better
> media exposure.

Print is tricky for the GFDL - it seems to be the case * that when
you're reproducing material under the GFDL online, you can get away
with a link to the complete license and authorship information even if
this is hosted on another server, whereas putting it in printed form
means it stands alone, so you need to add the whole license, etc.

* I'm not sure if this is explicitly laid down or if it's just the
generally-accepted interpretation, though.

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


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit

body:
On 7/12/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >If Wikimedia wants to hold a copyright interest inthis material it needs
> >to be ready to defend those copyrights in a serious way.  Having an
> >employee make ad-hoc, arbitrary and speculative pronouncements on the
> >law without a clear policy from the Board to back it up probably puts
> >the entire project into greater peril than the obvious silliness of the
> >more ignorant copyright violators.
> >
> >Ec
> >
> The precedence that I would like to use for why the WMF should hold
> copyright on Wikimedia project content is the same reason why the Free
> Software Foundation holds copyright for the GNU projects:  If there is a
> copyright violation, they can be a legal party to enforcing the
> copyright and defending the GPL.
>
> The same thing (I would hope) could apply to the WMF if there is a GFDL
> violation.  As it stands right now, by disclaiming copyright, all the
> WMF can do to enforce a flagarant copyright violation of Wikipedia
> content is sit on the sidelines and act as a cheerleader.  Brad would be
> legally excluded from even being able to offer advise.  If you are an
> individual contributor and want to defend the copyright of content that
> you wrote, you would have to hire your own counsel, as would each
> seperate contributor who would want to join in the legal defense.
>
> Frankly, I think this is an ugly situation, although it is "safe" for
> the WMF and from a legal liability perspective, I do understand why the
> decision to not claim copyright was done.

AFAIK, Wikimedia has *not* (yet?) disclaimed any copyright interest
they may hold in this content.  They don't claim copyright on the
contributions made by individuals, and they haven't gotten into the
messy business of copyright assignment, but there is a quite
legitimate argument that they hold copyright on anything added by
employees in the scope of their employment (such as Jimbo and/or
Danny), and possibly that they hold some sort of compilation
copyright.  I think it's quite likely that if Wikimedia doesn't
explicitly disclaim copyright on these works that they do hold at
least some copyright interest in them.


subject: [Foundation-l] GFDL publisher credit


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frank Ahrens mass-reply

body:
In response to responses to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/08/AR2006070800135.html

"Thanks to everyone for taking the time to read and write.

Apologies for the mass e-mail but, as you may have guessed, I got
plenty of feedback.

In case you are interested in knowing, it broke down approximately like
this:

- 65 percent: You don't get that Wikipedia is not designed to break
news, you idiot.
- 10 percent: You and the rest of your dead-tree Luddite friends just
don't get it, you idiot.
- 10 percent: You're the best! Thank you for exposing Wikipedia for
the unreliable tar pit it is! (These primarily came from .edu
addresses.)
- 10 percent: You raise some good points. For an idiot.
- 5 percent: I can tell from your writing that you are a masculine and
virile male specimen and that greatly arouses me. (Typically, that's
about 30 percent of my e-mail, FYI.)

Just to clarify: My point was NOT that Wikipedia is a place to go for
breaking news. Everyone knows that. My point was that this breaking
news EXPOSED the weakness of Wikipedia, which is that anyone can go in
and
write anything. I realize such rantings/inaccuracies may only last
minutes or hours, but then again, they may not. Because there is no
expert peer-review, single editor or board of editors and experts who
approve or
discard entries, it can be a Wild West.

I acknowledged that this is Wiki's greatest strength, as well. It is
dynamic and vibrant and draws from expertise and points of view far
beyond that which could be assembled on any editorial board. In many
ways,
Wiki approaches the ultimate editorial board. But it is still board by
gang, subject to the currents and eddies of political bias and
inaccuracy.

To recapitulate: I like Wikipedia. I just want it to be better. And it
will become so. I have no desire or ability to stop Wikipedia; I enjoy
it, find it entertaining and a useful first-dive for information.

Finally, to the one wittily sarcastic e-mailer: No, it has not escaped
mynotice that I write about TECHNOLOGY for a NEWSPAPER. Soon, however,
The Post will be a Web site with a newspaper attached, not the other
way
around, if that hasn't already happened.

Thanks much and please keep reading. You may feel free to post this on any
and all forums. (fora?)

Best,

Frank Ahrens"


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [WikiEN-l] Persondata?

body:
maru dubshinki schrieb:
>
> Magnus: I'm glad to hear someone is working on the
> extracting-persondata-from-article idea, which has been bruited about
> for a while (but never actually acted on); but how exactly does it
> work? Does it parse the first bolded run of text as the name, the
> first two years as birth and death dates, and ditto for locations and
> birth and death places, etc? Is it a AWB program, a pywikipedia (my
> personal hope), a standalone program, what? I am rather interested in
> such a program. Also, will it run on Linux and be Free?
>
It's a PHP script running on the toolserver:
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/persondata.php

Add "category=XYZ" or "title=XYZ" to have it scan a whole category or a
single article, respectively.

Currently, it ignores the "bold" marker but uses my algorithm to find
the first text paragraph of an article, as implemented in
commons_sumitup.php (same location).

As all my tools, it is GPL. You can get the source code at the above URL.

Magnus

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from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] intelligence in flagging

body:
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> It would be nice to still allow people to select "I don't know what the
> license is" so that those with more experience can help (particularly easy
> for us in the case of old photographs).

1 in maybe 100 would be such nice cases, the other 99 would be
explaining that random stuff off the web is copyrighted. I would
prefer people find out the license BEFORE uploading. It would save a
lot of work. We have a [[commons:Help desk|]] for this purpose.

Brianna


body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
>
>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The name should be:
>>
>>???? ????
>>
>>(digoweli gatsanula)
>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>>
>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>>
>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
>>language, and was synthesized.
>>
>>Just a suggestion...
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the
name can create something you do not intend.

Let's look at it:

Wi-gi-que-di-ya

wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
gi - to combine
que - incomplete verb root about an animal
di - plural for a non living object
ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or
topic)

Not to mention "di" is always at the start of a pural word, "gi" is a
modifier always at the end of a word, que isn't a word at all, and "wi"
is a tense modifer always at the end of word.

Translation:

"Something very negative in the past was put together for (??? -
something that resembles a contraction of the word nesgi which means
keep your hands off of it) , and there were a bunch of them (di) that
dwell in a large area.

In other words, its current name implies "negative place to keep your
hands off of and there's a whole bunch of us here".

Based on the edit history of the site, seems to have been the course
followed.  Perhaps we should change its name?

Jeff


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>You mention trying to get permanently featured as "not everyone knows
>that" sections on the fun pages of newspapers. Could this not fuel a
>perception of Wikipedia as somewhat frivelous?
>
So what?  Let them have whatever perception they want.  People are
fascinated by these snippets of information that are short enough that
they can just repeat to their friends over the next glass of wine.  If
you are worried about it being seen as frivolous then you are taking
this all too seriously

>Couldn't it encourage
>more people to see our contents as a random collation of facts rather
>than a great source of information?
>
Yes, that would be an excellent outcome.

I don't see the point of getting into such complicated legalese
contortions over what amounts to very short extracts from Wikipedia.
Saying simply "Source pms.wikipedia.org" (or whatever language version)
should be enough for anything that does not exceed two paragraphs in
length.  A simple policy statement that any such usage will be viewed as
fair use should be adequate to the circumstances.  Trying to dissect the
minutiae of GFDL to deal with this can only benefit stupid lawyers.

Ec


body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>How amusing!
>
>For a language like Cherokee then (agglutinative), it seems
>appropriate to not use transliteration.
>
>
You can use transliteraton, but there are rules to avoid using
conjugators and verb stem modifiers in trasliterations since these
create meanings in the word and may create something unintended.

>Thinking about agglutinative languages, do you know what the Japanese
>Wikipedia is called (I would imagine that it too avoids
>transliteration).
>
>

Not a clue.

Jeff

>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
>>>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
>>>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
>>>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
>>>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
>>>
>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>The name should be:
>>>>
>>>>???? ????
>>>>
>>>>(digoweli gatsanula)
>>>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>>>>
>>>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>>>>
>>>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
>>>>language, and was synthesized.
>>>>
>>>>Just a suggestion...
>>>>
>>>>Jeff
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the
>>name can create something you do not intend.
>>
>>Let's look at it:
>>
>>Wi-gi-que-di-ya
>>
>>wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
>>gi - to combine
>>que - incomplete verb root about an animal
>>di - plural for a non living object
>>ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or
>>topic)
>>
>>Not to mention "di" is always at the start of a pural word, "gi" is a
>>modifier always at the end of a word, que isn't a word at all, and "wi"
>>is a tense modifer always at the end of word.
>>
>>Translation:
>>
>>"Something very negative in the past was put together for (??? -
>>something that resembles a contraction of the word nesgi which means
>>keep your hands off of it) , and there were a bunch of them (di) that
>>dwell in a large area.
>>
>>In other words, its current name implies "negative place to keep your
>>hands off of and there's a whole bunch of us here".
>>
>>Based on the edit history of the site, seems to have been the course
>>followed.  Perhaps we should change its name?
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rollback for trusted users

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> I'd support giving rollback privileges to all autoconfirmed users.
I disagree. I think that the important aspect of manual reverting is the
ability to enter summary of the edit, i.e. to explain why someone is
reverting. On the other hand, administrators are trusted persons, so
they don't have to explain (and justify themselves) that much, so an
automatic edit summary is more logical for them than for autoconfirmed
users.

Filip [dungodung]


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
2006/7/12, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net>:

> can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the
> source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
> newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
> newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the
> paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better
> media exposure.

I assume that by 'a wiki' you mean 'Wikipedia' here? Being sold is no
problem. The GFDL explicitly allows commercial reuse. The real problem
is that the GFDL requires publication of the complete text of the
license, the 5 major authors and the publication history of the work.
Of these, the last would be the smallest problem, provided we don't
consider each version of a Wikipedia page as a separate edition, in
which case "This article is based on such-and-such Wikipedia article,
version <date>" could be considered enough. The second is problematic
because Wikipedia itself does not keep to the GFDL here - there is no
author list except for the page history. The first has the problem
that the license could easily be as large or larger than the article
itself. Online one can just have it on a different webpage and link to
that, in printed material it's not that easy.

Having said that, Wikimedia policy is for online publication to be
considered adhering to the GFDL when they mention the GFDL and link to
it, and the same with the original Wikipedia page. I think it would be
sensible to have similar requirements for print media, perhaps with a
short description of what the GFDL means added because people cannot
just click a link in a print newspaper. Thus, I would like to allow
this provided the newspaper adds something like:

This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense",
which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls
under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be
copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified
form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A
copy of this article can be found on our website at
http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.

That last line is because  I suddenly remembered another requirement
of the GFDL: One has to have a machine-readable version of the article
available for any and all who request it.

However, I am not speaking here in any kind of official capacity here.
Until the Wikimedia Foundation approves it my statements have no value
whatsoever. And even if the Wikimedia Foundation approves it,
technically all the editors of the article should approve too,
although an approval of the Free Software Foundation instead would
clear up a lot of sky as well.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their
requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you
are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external
organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software
Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they
demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)?
Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be
considered.

On 12/07/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/7/12, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net>:
>
> > can a newspaper publish an article from a wiki, provided that they quote the
> > source page? I am thinking to propose this to a number of small local
> > newspapers, but I am not clear on the copyright matter, since these
> > newspapers are actually sold. Obviously, it would be just an article, the
> > paper is 99,5% made of their own stuff. It would do great to get a better
> > media exposure.
>
> I assume that by 'a wiki' you mean 'Wikipedia' here? Being sold is no
> problem. The GFDL explicitly allows commercial reuse. The real problem
> is that the GFDL requires publication of the complete text of the
> license, the 5 major authors and the publication history of the work.
> Of these, the last would be the smallest problem, provided we don't
> consider each version of a Wikipedia page as a separate edition, in
> which case "This article is based on such-and-such Wikipedia article,
> version <date>" could be considered enough. The second is problematic
> because Wikipedia itself does not keep to the GFDL here - there is no
> author list except for the page history. The first has the problem
> that the license could easily be as large or larger than the article
> itself. Online one can just have it on a different webpage and link to
> that, in printed material it's not that easy.
>
> Having said that, Wikimedia policy is for online publication to be
> considered adhering to the GFDL when they mention the GFDL and link to
> it, and the same with the original Wikipedia page. I think it would be
> sensible to have similar requirements for print media, perhaps with a
> short description of what the GFDL means added because people cannot
> just click a link in a print newspaper. Thus, I would like to allow
> this provided the newspaper adds something like:
>
> This article is an adaptation from the Wikipedia article "Nonsense",
> which can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsense. It falls
> under the GNU Free Documentation License, which means that it can be
> copied and distributed by anyone in modified in modified or unmodified
> form as long as the new publication is under the same license. See
> http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html for the text of the license. A
> copy of this article can be found on our website at
> http://www.somenewspaper.com/article/08-11/fromwikipedia.htm.
>
> That last line is because  I suddenly remembered another requirement
> of the GFDL: One has to have a machine-readable version of the article
> available for any and all who request it.
>
> However, I am not speaking here in any kind of official capacity here.
> Until the Wikimedia Foundation approves it my statements have no value
> whatsoever. And even if the Wikimedia Foundation approves it,
> technically all the editors of the article should approve too,
> although an approval of the Free Software Foundation instead would
> clear up a lot of sky as well.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?

On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> The name should be:
>
> ???? ????
>
> (digoweli gatsanula)
> "the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>
> to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>
> The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
> language, and was synthesized.
>
> Just a suggestion...
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
On 12/07/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their
> requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you
> are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external
> organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software
> Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they
> demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)?
> Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be
> considered.

Wikimedia can't change the license requirements to something more
lenient (a hypothetical soft-GFDL, or CC-BY, or something), because
only the copyright holder can relicense material they've released
under a given license.

And the copyright holders are the *authors*, not Wikimedia. Of course,
if the specific authors are willing to dual-license their work as
something else, you're sorted, and it may well be doable to manage
this for the bulk of the articles on a small wiki with only a few
active contributors... but it's a hack.

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


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Printed on Demand Books from Wikipedia articles

body:
This is a very good idea.

Y'know, I came up with this same idea yesterday!

On 7/12/06, Volker Haas <volker.haas at brainbot.com> wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> as the title suggests I would like to introduce a website to the
> wikimedia community that offers books consisting of wikipedia articles
> that areprinted on demand. The unique feature is that every user can
> individually pick arbitrary articles from the wikipedia (currently only
> from the english version) and add them to his book. Once the user is
> satisfied with the book's content, he can download a pdf-preview and
> check how the book will look like when printed. The last step is to
> order the book and get a unique encyclopedia containing only selected
> wikipedia articles.
>
> The service is located at http://www.pediapress.com and has not yet been
> publicly announced.
>
> I would like to know the opinion of the wikimedia community about this
> service, since I am aware of the fact that a couple of copyright and
> also "moral" issues are related to selling wikipedia content.
>
> Some of these issues are pointed out in the thread "Offering Wikibooks
> content for sale"
> (http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/foundation/63024).
>
> I would like to give you some details about our efforts to comply with
> the GFDL and also the spirit of the wikipedia content and community:
>
> * on the pediapress.com website and in the printed books it is clearly
> stated that all articles have their origin in the wikipedia project
>
> * below each article a link (in case of the book the plain URL) to the
> original wikipedia article is shown
>
> * all principle authors are listed below an article in the book if
> possible
>
> * pediapress does not generate any unnecessary traffic on wikipedia
> since we use the wikipedia dumps
>
> * we e-mailed with Angela Beesley (member of the Board of Trustees of
> the Wikimedia Foundation) and Brad Patrick (general counsel to  the
> Wikimedia Foundation) who did not see anything problematic with our
> service
>
> Last but not least I want to point out that the pediapress affiliate
> program has the goal to generate donations to the wikimedia foundation:
> after ordering a book, users have the option to publish and promote
> their book. Thereby others are able to buy the published book. The
> publisher receives a provision of 10% of the books price which he can
> donate to the wikimedia foundation.Please note that pediapress is still
> in a "beta" phase even though compiling, printing and ordering books is
> perfectly possible. But since all processing and layouting is done
> automatically there are still some shortcomings that will be fixed asap.
>
> I don't want to deny that my company (brainbot technologies AG -
> http://brainbot.com) and I hope that pediapress supports itself
> financially. The main motivation nevertheless was to give something back
> to the wikipedia community. Since me and my colleagues aren't exactly
> good writers but heavy consumers of the wikipedia, we thought it would
> be a better idea to try to promote the offline usage of the wikipedia by
> building pediapress.
>
> Thanks for your patience - I hope some of you check out pediapress and
> post their opinions.
>
> Volker Haas
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>But is there a way to transliterate it without using any conjugators
>or verb stem modifiers?
>
>

Yes, there is, but it isn't going to produce a "wiki" sound.   Native
languages (ours included) have evolved to incorporate
expression of the physical world in spiritual terms.  Because of this,
misuse of the language is perceived by most native
speakers as an extreme form of disrespect.  For example:

"di" means plural of nonliving objects and

"u" or "una" means plural of a living sentient being

using "di" to make a human word plural is a form of insult.   diyvwi
would mean (its not a real word but could be used) to call
a person or group of people "subhuman".  You have to be careful with
native languages in doing transliteration.  Every Cherokee I
have shown wi-gi-que-di-ya to has rolled their eyes (oh brother roll
your eyes) or laughed because of the name.   The fact is, I dount
if we named the main Wikipedia site "The bad place put together in the
past we should keep our hands off of because its part of an animal and has
a lot of people dwelling there" would not serve to attract people to
edit there.

aniyvwiya is a very respectful way of saying cherokee people becaue the
word yvwi means "it has a spirit".  Another example is Hello in Cherokee.
Modenr speakers in Okalhoma use two forms.  osiyo and just siyo.  siyo
is not respecful and is an impersonal "what do the h_ll do you want"
form of hellow because it drops the "o" sound.  "o" in front of the word
means "I treat you as an equal and greet you" instead of just "I greet
you".  One example.

Here's some other suggestions which are broad and will attract Cherokee
editors to the site:

????? ???

"Aniyvwiya gadugi"  - The human people of the creator working together

?????

"Aniyvwiya" - The human people of the creator.

??????

"Aniyvwiyayi" - The place of the human people of the creator

??? ???

"Tsalagi gadugi" - Cherokee people working together

??? ???? ????

"tsalagi digoweli gatsanula" -    Cherokee fast books

??? ????

"tsalagi digoweli" - Cherokee books

Jeff

>ja.wikipedia (???????) transliterates as U-I-KI-PE-DI-A! So they
>transliterated too.
>
>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>How amusing!
>>>
>>>For a language like Cherokee then (agglutinative), it seems
>>>appropriate to not use transliteration.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>You can use transliteraton, but there are rules to avoid using
>>conjugators and verb stem modifiers in trasliterations since these
>>create meanings in the word and may create something unintended.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Thinking about agglutinative languages, do you know what the Japanese
>>>Wikipedia is called (I would imagine that it too avoids
>>>transliteration).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Not a clue.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
>>>>>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
>>>>>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
>>>>>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
>>>>>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
>>>>>
>>>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>The name should be:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>???? ????
>>>>>>
>>>>>>(digoweli gatsanula)
>>>>>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>>>>>>
>>>>>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
>>>>>>language, and was synthesized.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Just a suggestion...
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Jeff
>>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the
>>>>name can create something you do not intend.
>>>>
>>>>Let's look at it:
>>>>
>>>>Wi-gi-que-di-ya
>>>>
>>>>wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
>>>>gi - to combine
>>>>que - incomplete verb root about an animal
>>>>di - plural for a non living object
>>>>ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or
>>>>topic)
>>>>
>>>>Not to mention "di" is always at the start of a pural word, "gi" is a
>>>>modifier always at the end of a word, que isn't a word at all, and "wi"
>>>>is a tense modifer always at the end of word.
>>>>
>>>>Translation:
>>>>
>>>>"Something very negative in the past was put together for (??? -
>>>>something that resembles a contraction of the word nesgi which means
>>>>keep your hands off of it) , and there were a bunch of them (di) that
>>>>dwell in a large area.
>>>>
>>>>In other words, its current name implies "negative place to keep your
>>>>hands off of and there's a whole bunch of us here".
>>>>
>>>>Based on the edit history of the site, seems to have been the course
>>>>followed.  Perhaps we should change its name?
>>>>
>>>>Jeff
>>>>
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>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: [Wikipedia-l] Marketing: a question

body:
Doing another multi-licensing drive is the next best thing (though
time machines are alot more fun). I forget which user performed the
last multi-license drive (he/she used a bot to post on user's talk
pages, quite controvertial at the time). I, personally, would happily
multilicense into CC-by-sa for the sake of the project (I'm surprised
I haven't done it yet).

On 12/07/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/7/12, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com>:
> > Can an individual organisation such as Wikimedia change their
> > requirements, despite the license, to something more lenient as you
> > are suggesting? Even if they did, could some external
> > organisation/person have a problem with it? Could the Free Software
> > Foundation claim that we're misusing the GFDL? If they did, could they
> > demand we use a different license (I think not, but I'll ask anyway)?
> > Well, I'm just speculating, but they're questions that should be
> > considered.
>
> No, technically we cannot. I don't think the FSF can make such a
> claim, but the individual authors of that Wikipedia page might well
> have a point if they claim it is violating their copyright.
>
> I sometimes wished I had a time machine so I could go to January 2001
> and warn Jimbo about the problems of the GFDL, advising him to find or
> create another license for Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
And the chr2syl extension needs to be added as well since at present,
editing in syllabary on the site is difficult.

Jeff

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Oldak Quill wrote:
>
>
>
>>But is there a way to transliterate it without using any conjugators
>>or verb stem modifiers?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>Yes, there is, but it isn't going to produce a "wiki" sound.   Native
>languages (ours included) have evolved to incorporate
>expression of the physical world in spiritual terms.  Because of this,
>misuse of the language is perceived by most native
>speakers as an extreme form of disrespect.  For example:
>
>"di" means plural of nonliving objects and
>
>"u" or "una" means plural of a living sentient being
>
>using "di" to make a human word plural is a form of insult.   diyvwi
>would mean (its not a real word but could be used) to call
>a person or group of people "subhuman".  You have to be careful with
>native languages in doing transliteration.  Every Cherokee I
>have shown wi-gi-que-di-ya to has rolled their eyes (oh brother roll
>your eyes) or laughed because of the name.   The fact is, I dount
>if we named the main Wikipedia site "The bad place put together in the
>past we should keep our hands off of because its part of an animal and has
>a lot of people dwelling there" would not serve to attract people to
>edit there.
>
>aniyvwiya is a very respectful way of saying cherokee people becaue the
>word yvwi means "it has a spirit".  Another example is Hello in Cherokee.
>Modenr speakers in Okalhoma use two forms.  osiyo and just siyo.  siyo
>is not respecful and is an impersonal "what do the h_ll do you want"
>form of hellow because it drops the "o" sound.  "o" in front of the word
>means "I treat you as an equal and greet you" instead of just "I greet
>you".  One example.
>
>Here's some other suggestions which are broad and will attract Cherokee
>editors to the site:
>
>????? ???
>
>"Aniyvwiya gadugi"  - The human people of the creator working together
>
>?????
>
>"Aniyvwiya" - The human people of the creator.
>
>??????
>
>"Aniyvwiyayi" - The place of the human people of the creator
>
>??? ???
>
>"Tsalagi gadugi" - Cherokee people working together
>
>??? ???? ????
>
>"tsalagi digoweli gatsanula" -    Cherokee fast books
>
>??? ????
>
>"tsalagi digoweli" - Cherokee books
>
>Jeff
>
>
>
>>ja.wikipedia (???????) transliterates as U-I-KI-PE-DI-A! So they
>>transliterated too.
>>
>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>How amusing!
>>>>
>>>>For a language like Cherokee then (agglutinative), it seems
>>>>appropriate to not use transliteration.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>You can use transliteraton, but there are rules to avoid using
>>>conjugators and verb stem modifiers in trasliterations since these
>>>create meanings in the word and may create something unintended.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Thinking about agglutinative languages, do you know what the Japanese
>>>>Wikipedia is called (I would imagine that it too avoids
>>>>transliteration).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Not a clue.
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Oldak Quill wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Most Wikimedia projects don't translate "Wikipedia", "Wiktionary", and
>>>>>>"Wikimedia", they transliterate them. Even non-Latin alphabets do
>>>>>>this: Russian Wikipedia is called "?????????" which transliterates as
>>>>>>Ve-I-Ka-I-Pe-Ye-De-I-Ya (those are the names of the letters, at
>>>>>>least). Does Cherokee have some kind of formal transliteration system?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>On 12/07/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>The name should be:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>???? ????
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>(digoweli gatsanula)
>>>>>>>"the books = pedia " " that are fast = wiki "
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>to match the actual meanings of the words "wiki" and "pedia".
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>The current name of the site, while catchy, is not accurate for the
>>>>>>>language, and was synthesized.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Just a suggestion...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Jeff
>>>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>Yes. it does have one for words like this, but taking potshots at the
>>>>>name can create something you do not intend.
>>>>>
>>>>>Let's look at it:
>>>>>
>>>>>Wi-gi-que-di-ya
>>>>>
>>>>>wi  - (negative imperfect past tense)
>>>>>gi - to combine
>>>>>que - incomplete verb root about an animal
>>>>>di - plural for a non living object
>>>>>ya - broad area of concern (means "pertains to or covers a broad area or
>>>>>topic)
>>>>>
>>>>>Not to mention "di" is always at the start of a pural word, "gi" is a
>>>>>modifier always at the end of a word, que isn't a word at all, and "wi"
>>>>>is a tense modifer always at the end of word.
>>>>>
>>>>>Translation:
>>>>>
>>>>>"Something very negative in the past was put together for (??? -
>>>>>something that resembles a contraction of the word nesgi which means
>>>>>keep your hands off of it) , and there were a bunch of them (di) that
>>>>>dwell in a large area.
>>>>>
>>>>>In other words, its current name implies "negative place to keep your
>>>>>hands off of and there's a whole bunch of us here".
>>>>>
>>>>>Based on the edit history of the site, seems to have been the course
>>>>>followed.  Perhaps we should change its name?
>>>>>
>>>>>Jeff
>>>>>
>>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>>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
>
>