from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of war criminals

body:
ScottL wrote:
> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>> Speaking of dubious lists, we also have:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_criminals
>>
>> The list currently contains people belonging to these categories:
>>
>> 1) people who were convicted for war crimes
>> 2) people who were charged but not convicted
>> 3) people who were never charged due to political reasons, but
>> the consensus is that they were involved in war crimes
>> 4) people whose involvement in war crimes is unclear or a matter
>> of debate.
>>
>> On the top of the list, it writes that:
>>
>> "This is a list of formally charged and/or convicted war criminals"
>>
>> which means 1) and 2). What about people who were formally charged,
>> but later found not guilty? They would be included by the current
>> criteria.
>>
>> What about people who were convicted for "war crimes" by an unfair
>> mock trial in a country under a dictatorship?
>> Should we list them, too?
>
>    Seems to me that NPOV would dictate that all articles here be placed
> in less ambiguous subcategories.
>
> [[People convicted of War crimes by XXX]]
> [[People charged with war crimes by YYY but not convicted]]
> [[People absolved of having commited war crimes by ZZZ]]
> [[People acused of warcrimes by GROUP/GOVERNMENT]]
>
> SKL

   On second thought I wanted to also add.  In addition to splitting
everything out into less ambiguous sub-categories the parent
category-probably the point of the original post-is still a bit POV.
The sub-categopries should be placed under [[Category: War crimes]].

SKL


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-05

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

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

Passed 420 of 437 tests (96.11%) FAILED!


list: wikien-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] templates for country-centric POV?

body:
tsk tsk, not all of us.  I travel the world, and trust me, there are
good people and idiots everywhere.  In France the other day, when I was
on my way to Bangalore, the woman checking me in said "Bangalore?
Where's that?"

France, obviously, is quite cosmopolitan.  This is not a slam against
France!  The point is, please don't bash Americans or anyone else. :)

Mark Wagner wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>> What is it about Americans, seriously?  I mean, Australians are arrogant
>> (well, we are): tell us we do something differently from the rest of the
>> world, we'll say, "Gosh, we must be weird.  Still, it's probably because
>> we're so much cooler."
>>
>> Tell an American that he does something differently from the rest of the
>> world, and it's a case of, "Gosh, the rest of the world is so weird."
>> (Of course, that Americans are cooler than the rest of the world goes
>> without saying; in fact, to point it out would imply the possibility
>> that this state of affairs could change, so it's best not to.)
>
> It's very simple: most Americans don't really believe that the rest of
> the world exists.  There's a place down south of Texas where farm
> labor comes from, and the fifty-first state up north of the Great
> Lakes is a good place to shop, but that's it, really.
>
> --
> Mark
> [[User:Carnildo]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the
> encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives
> behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve
> articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to
> avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial
> companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for
> Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good
> article that I can think of.

No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> If you want to go the bad-ass evil & sneaky route, simply tag all of
> the unsourced items with {{fact}} (an edit which, granted, would take
> some time), let them be for a week and then summarily remove them. If
> it is as bad as you say (which I don't doubt, after a quick look at
> it), raze and rebuild from the ground up is a very sensible option.

In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia.  A
better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is
warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea.  But it is overdone.

I very often see completely preposterous claims tagged with {{fact}},
usually because an editor is being excessively cautious.  Be bold. :)

--Jimbo


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007

body:
Oops, it seems my messages were been queued by the server and now they are
coming to the mailing list now!!

I'm sorry if you get duplicated messages and I think I need to apologize for
that. I will make sure to send the message only once next time.

Regards,
H.T.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Hsiang-Tai Chien
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 11:47 AM
To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007

Hi Anthere, sorry for the late reply since I have some daily job need to be
done. Please see my reply as HT> below.

___________________________________________________
 ??????? ? ????????????????
 http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
G'day geni,

> On 10/2/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
>> The [[List of banned books]] is a mess, and the way people have
>> added challenged books to the list (ALA_2000 entries) and the
>> clogging up with many doubtful entries (just listed without
>> explanations etc) has made it the target of creationists who try to
>> get a book listed that a book that they claim is banned, but which
>> in fact is far from that (if their rational holds, the bible is
>> banned book).
>
> I would not be suprised to find that the bible has been banned at
> some point in histoty.

The Bible *has* been banned, at several points in history.  For example,
it was banned during the Cultural Revolution in China, and its sale
remains regulated today.  And, as we all know, individual translations
of the Bible (e.g. into German or English) were frequently banned in
Mediaeval Europe.

The world is very big and very old.

<snip />

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts."
  -- Calvin & Hobbes


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia.  A
> better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is
> warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea.  But it is overdone.

Personally, I tag something with {{fact}} when I believe it to be
correct but it's unsourced and I don't know where to verify it myself.
 If I believe it's actually wrong, I prefer to move it to the talk
page pending verification.

-Matt


from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikitech-l] mail-eater refusing mail from ctelco.net (was
	failurenotice)

body:
"David Gerard" wrote:
> See, that'll be yer problem: mail-eater.wikimedia.org (66.230.200.215)
> doesn't like rad0.ctelco.net. But the ctelco.net server won't take a
> 4xx (permanent) error seriously (it's treating it like a 5xx temporary
> error - see [[Bounce message]]), so keeps trying for a couple of days
> before bouncing the mail.
>
> wikitech - Fred discovered this trying to email arbcom-l. Does
> mail-eater really think ctelco.net sucks, or is the breakage at the
> ctelco.net end worse than just treating a 4xx as a 5xx?
>
>
> - d.
They don't like each other. It seems that, when sending recipients, albert
(i.e. mail-eater.wikimedia.org) checks before that the host given on the
smtp helo is valid. As it's an invalid hostname it gets rejected.
   looking up host rad0.ctelco.com...
   cannot locate host

ctelco.com should at least make that subdomain the mailserver identifies
with, as albert config doesn't seem too bad. Note it only wants the hostname
to exist, doesn't need to match the querying ip.

Platonides


from_name: Angela

body:
On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_privacy
>
> It's all US POV. It's not immediately clear how to remedy this. I know
> de: has templates for country-centric POV, does en:?

{{Globalize/USA}}

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Globalize for related templates.

Angela

--
Angela Beesley
http://wikia.com | http://a.nge.la


body:
G'day David,

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_privacy
>
> It's all US POV. It's not immediately clear how to remedy this. I know
> de: has templates for country-centric POV, does en:?

I believe it's {{globalize}} (ironic, no?).  It seems some busy bees
have gone and put together a bunch of more specific templates: "This
article is too Australian", "This article is too Muslim", etc.  Given
that 98% of the time you'd be using the "This article is too American"
template, I'm not sure that this is an entirely efficient use of resources.

What is it about Americans, seriously?  I mean, Australians are arrogant
(well, we are): tell us we do something differently from the rest of the
world, we'll say, "Gosh, we must be weird.  Still, it's probably because
we're so much cooler."

Tell an American that he does something differently from the rest of the
world, and it's a case of, "Gosh, the rest of the world is so weird."
(Of course, that Americans are cooler than the rest of the world goes
without saying; in fact, to point it out would imply the possibility
that this state of affairs could change, so it's best not to.)

A relevant quotation: "Remember, in Italy they drive on the wrong side
of the road."

--
Mark Gallagher
"I've got to start listening to those quiet, nagging doubts."
  -- Calvin & Hobbes


from_name: Colin Delacroix

subject: [Wikitech-l] [mediawiki][bug] is_redirect not reliable

body:
Hello,

in at least the 20060915 frwiki dump, the is_redirect column (in the
page table) is 0 for a wide variety of articles where it should be 1
(first one of them is page_id=204, then 758, 917, ...).

These articles all have in common that they had a life before being
declared as redirects, and when they were, the is_redirect field was
apparently not updated to reflect the new state.

Sorry if it is a known bug (is there a public BTS for mediawiki?).

Regards,
Colin


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of Gileki
 wikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
The fact that some number of hobbyists want to put attention into a test
WP doesn't change the fact that the language has no native readers.  As
long as the purpose of Wikipedia is to make knowledge available to the
world, just what knowledge is being made available to what people?

It should not be up to us to generate the notability for this material.

Ec

Mark Williamson wrote:

>Well, it was justified on the following grounds:
>
>1) It was one of the "original" IntAuxLangs
>2) It has enjoyed a recent revival of interest
>3) Its test WP grew to a considerable size.
>
>I imagine the debate over Klingon would've been a bit less one-sided
>if the Klingon WP had had more articles.
>
>Mark
>
>On 30/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I think we can do without Novial in the same way we can do without
>>Klingon.  The arguments in its favour seem to give it an importance that
>>is not matched with reality.  The inclusion of Novial words in the
>>English Wiktionary does not imply that a full project for this language
>>is warranted.  The Wikibook about Novial quite properly explains the
>>language; it does nothing to establish that there is anything other than
>>translations or books about Novial written about the language.  Who is
>>the audience for this language?
>>
>>I would even question the legitimacy of many of the votes in support of
>>the language.
>>
>>Ec
>>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Fwd: whom I have to ask for approval of Gileki
	wikipedia?how find a developer?

body:
Novial is already notable.

As to native readers -- close down the Interlingua, Lojban,
Interlingue, etc. Wikipedias before trying to stop the creation
(belatedly) of new Wikipedias in conlangs with no native readers.

Mark

On 05/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> The fact that some number of hobbyists want to put attention into a test
> WP doesn't change the fact that the language has no native readers.  As
> long as the purpose of Wikipedia is to make knowledge available to the
> world, just what knowledge is being made available to what people?
>
> It should not be up to us to generate the notability for this material.
>
> Ec
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>
> >Well, it was justified on the following grounds:
> >
> >1) It was one of the "original" IntAuxLangs
> >2) It has enjoyed a recent revival of interest
> >3) Its test WP grew to a considerable size.
> >
> >I imagine the debate over Klingon would've been a bit less one-sided
> >if the Klingon WP had had more articles.
> >
> >Mark
> >
> >On 30/09/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I think we can do without Novial in the same way we can do without
> >>Klingon.  The arguments in its favour seem to give it an importance that
> >>is not matched with reality.  The inclusion of Novial words in the
> >>English Wiktionary does not imply that a full project for this language
> >>is warranted.  The Wikibook about Novial quite properly explains the
> >>language; it does nothing to establish that there is anything other than
> >>translations or books about Novial written about the language.  Who is
> >>the audience for this language?
> >>
> >>I would even question the legitimacy of many of the votes in support of
> >>the language.
> >>
> >>Ec
> >>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject:
[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print
	sources

body:
--- Valentina Faussone <valentina_faussone at yahoo.it>
wrote:

> > WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable
> > printed sources in
> > different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a
> given
> > source.
>
> Sound like "L'indice dei libri proibiti", the list
> of
> forbidden books that catholic church used for
> centuries.
> It became famous for considering unreliable and
> wicked
> books from authors like Honor? de Balzac, Cartesio,
> Daniel Defoe, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Immanuel
> Kant, Voltaire, ?mile Zola (and many others), thus
> forbidding them. ... Yours seems to me a optimistic
> dream hard to make true.
>
> > In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are
> > vivacious and full of
> > "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be
> > directed towards
> > WikiProjects for verification.
>
> Plus, will these guys from the wikiprojects be able
> to
> be both expert AND npov? Or will they give their
> opinion in all the matters in wich there isn't just
> *true* way to solve the problem?
>
> Please note that mine are just questions, I'm not
> polemizing for the sake of it...
>
> Tinette

I agree these are good questions for an ambititous
project.  I do not think there are easy answers.  I
really think it is premature to rely so heavily on
Wikiprojects ability as experts as well as being
neutral.  They are not matured enough yet, but maybe
some day we will be able to do this.  Perhaps a good
question for right now is how could we identify a
Wikiproject which has matured to such a level?  How
can we encourage Wikiprojects to develop into
something we can put so much trust in?

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007

body:
I don't know what happened with snipping of this
message but I did not write the text in support of
rotating Wikimania.  I don't have a firm opinion on
that issue.

Birgitte SB

--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
> > I strong support three different Wikimania: one
> for Europe/Africa,
> > one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
> >
> > The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania
> cannot solve them,
> > but also the core of Wikipedians are in the
> Europe, but also the
> > Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
> >
> > Any choose will be always a "long long"
> discussion.
> >
> > Ilario
> >
> >
> > ----Messaggio originale----
> > Da: saintonge at telus.net
> > Data: 02.10.06 2.19
> > A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing
> List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> > Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host
> Wikimania 2007
> >
> > Birgitte SB wrote:
> >
> >
> > I support the principle of rotating Wikimania
> around three broad
> > geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas,
> Asia/Australia),
> > but
> > this should not create a situation where we must
> accept a city's
> > clearly
> > inferior bid just because it is the only one from
> its region.
> Hoi,
> Apparently Wikimania is only for Wikipedians or
> people with an interest
> in Wiktionary, Wikinews or Wikibooks have more money
> to spend. Truly
> Wikimania is NOT about Wikipedia. Both Frankfurt and
> Boston welcomed the
> other projects as warmly..  I am sure they will be
> as warmly welcomed in
> Taipei.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 05/10/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> > On 5 Oct 2006 at 01:11, Mark Gallagher
> > <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

> > > Tell an American that he does something differently from the rest of the
> > > world, and it's a case of, "Gosh, the rest of the world is so weird."

> > That's because the rest of the world *is* so weird!

> Oh, come on. The rest of the world isn't really *weird*. The rest of the
> world is just *foreign*!

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Foreigner

- d.


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
> c) On Wikipedia, America is King.  The rest of the world finds itself having
> to explain why such-and-such article should be written from a NPOV rather
> than an American one. This is not deliberate, there is no organised campaign
> by Americans to corrupt the encyclopaedia, it's entirely unintentional ...
> and that's even worse.
>

The Wikipedia has problems, of course, like Parisian Pedants who have something
against good old Qu?becois, but I've not noticed the bias you're talking about.

Maybe you mean the english-language Wikipedia.

Cheers,
Daniel


from_name: roc

body:
Sorry but I cannot enjoy more Eurocentric languages. You may say as
well the first two Wikimanias are only for a few richer Asians.

Regards,

roc
--

2006/10/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
> > I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
> > one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
> >
> > The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
> > but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
> > Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
> >
> > Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.
> >
> > Ilario
> >
> >
> > ----Messaggio originale----
> > Da: saintonge at telus.net
> > Data: 02.10.06 2.19
> > A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> > Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
> >
> > Birgitte SB wrote:
> >
> >
> > I support the principle of rotating Wikimania around three broad
> > geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas, Asia/Australia),
> > but
> > this should not create a situation where we must accept a city's
> > clearly
> > inferior bid just because it is the only one from its region.
> Hoi,
> Apparently Wikimania is only for Wikipedians or people with an interest
> in Wiktionary, Wikinews or Wikibooks have more money to spend. Truly
> Wikimania is NOT about Wikipedia. Both Frankfurt and Boston welcomed the
> other projects as warmly..  I am sure they will be as warmly welcomed in
> Taipei.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
Gallagher Mark George wrote

> a) A far greater proportion of Americans seem to show this attitude than seen in other countries today

{{fact}}!

I don't think parochialism is limited to any one group - that defies my sense of how things are around the world. How people express it: yes, but that's a different kind of cultural matter.

A thread on this is almost inevitably going to end up causing offence. There's a more interesting discussion to be had, I think, about 'founding assumptions' from 1776, 'American' thought being characteristically that you can divide the European heritage as signal+noise, and the having of the signal alone.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: Kpjas

body:
On 10/3/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> As Erik pointed out, it is very easy to make a hoax seem legitimate if you
> cite a phony print source. What's not needed is new rules involving the use
> of print sources, but to utilise something we had all along: Google.
> Something we could do is Google the title of the book being referenced, and
> then see if it exists (beyond being mentioned in wiki mirrors). If it
> doesn't exist, then we take further action. One thing we could do is for
> every print source approved in an article, we can note that said print
> sources have been verified to be true on the talk page (via some sort of
> yellow talk page box). Comments?
Hi,

I've followed closely the thread about verifying content and citing
(book) sources.

My comment would be that obviously not all (book) sources that have
even been proven to exist are credible and reputable.

As I am a believer in "Work through WikiProjects" motto I think
WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable printed sources in
different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given source.

In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are vivacious and full of
"experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be directed towards
WikiProjects for verification.

Best regards,
Kpjas.

--
Wikipedia - World's Greatest http://www.wikipedia.org


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>
>>Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the
>>encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives
>>behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve
>>articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to
>>avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial
>>companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for
>>Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good
>>article that I can think of.
>>
>>
>
>No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
>unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
>they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
>FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
>
>
I guess I don't see what's wrong with that.  We've said in the past that
we would support organizations paying people to write Wikipedia articles
on under-covered subjects, so long as they are NPOV (i.e. cover the
subject, but don't *promote* it, which is a fine line since some of
these "raising awareness" groups really do mean to raise awareness in
order to promote particular subjects, and are likely to be loathe to
cover viewpoints that directly oppose theirs).  Companies paying people
to write articles seem likely to have many of the same advantages and/or
pitfalls.

On a more practical level, it's impossible for me to determine as a
Wikipedia editor whether the person writing an article is being paid to
do so or not, nor do I much care---it's either a good article or it
isn't, and I edit it or don't accordingly.  Seems a lot easier than
trying to track down who wrote it.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


body:
Gallagher Mark George wrote:

>c) On Wikipedia, America is King.  The rest of the world finds itself having to explain why such-and-such article should be written from a NPOV rather than an American one.  This is not deliberate, there is no organised campaign by Americans to corrupt the encyclopaedia, it's entirely unintentional ... and that's even worse.
>
>
It may be which articles I read/edit, but I tend to see more of an
Anglocentric POV rather than an US-centric one, which is perhaps
unsurprising since more English-speakers than non-English-speakers edit
the English Wikipedia.  In particular, having way more detail on the UK
than there should be in a general article is nearly as common as having
way more detail on the US than there should be (though not *quite* as
common).  This is particularly true in anything related to legal
topics---there's typically piles of text on the UK and the US legal
systems, sometimes with a separate section about how Canada has its own
take on the topic, followed by a token nod that other legal systems also
exist and might do things differently.

-Mark


from_name: Valentina Faussone

body:
> WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable
> printed sources in
> different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given
> source.

Sound like "L'indice dei libri proibiti", the list of
forbidden books that catholic church used for
centuries.
It became famous for considering unreliable and wicked
books from authors like Honor? de Balzac, Cartesio,
Daniel Defoe, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Immanuel
Kant, Voltaire, ?mile Zola (and many others), thus
forbidding them. ... Yours seems to me a optimistic
dream hard to make true.

> In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are
> vivacious and full of
> "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be
> directed towards
> WikiProjects for verification.

Plus, will these guys from the wikiprojects be able to
be both expert AND npov? Or will they give their
opinion in all the matters in wich there isn't just
*true* way to solve the problem?

Please note that mine are just questions, I'm not
polemizing for the sake of it...

Tinette

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Poco spazio e tanto spam? Yahoo! Mail ti protegge dallo spam e ti da tanto spazio gratuito per i tuoi file e i messaggi
http://mail.yahoo.it


body:
Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On 10/4/06, Colin Delacroix <colin+news at zoy.org> wrote:
> > Sorry if it is a known bug (is there a public BTS for mediawiki?).
>
> Bug-tracker is at http://bugs.wikimedia.org/.

Created a bug there, thank you.

<http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7497>
--
Colin


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 05/10/06, P. Birken <pbirken at gmail.com> wrote:
> Some of this can be done by checking the ISBN. If it exists, the ISBN
> should be mentioned. If it is there, it can be checked. We had several
> cases with fake ISBNs which led to the discovery of fake articles.

Bear in mind that the average moderately-obscure English-lanugage book
has at least two ISBNs, four is very common, and cases of several
dozen are known. Requiring an ISBN is in many ways misleadingly
precise...

(but I concur that a broken ISBN is a good trap for silliness)

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


body:
On 03/10/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> For those books not mentioned in Google, we would of course do our best to
> compile a list. Then once the list is made, knowing Google, it would only be
> a matter of time that the list of old books would be listed on Google,
> therefore making my testing mechanism work.

It would be simpler just to toss the name into copac.ac.uk or
catalog.loc.gov and see if it appears! But this still doesn't tell us
anything beyond "I am claiming this book supports me".

It still doesn't get past the fact that I belive David when he says
"This band does indeed appear on page seventeen of Australian Indie
Rock Monthly, August 1979", but am slightly less inclined to believe
the unknown chap claiming he's found something earthshattering in a
1937 issue of a Russian underground newspaper...

Fundamentally, use of an offline (or subscription, etc) source is a
good and sensible thing, but it requires a modicum of trust that we're
getting a reliable link between the page and the information quoted;
we can't get around this by preparing lists of reliable and unreliable
texts, we can only get around this by someone "trusted" saying yes,
I've looked at that, it's there.

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


from_name: Chris Keating

subject: [WikiEN-l] No references in the 'end product'?

body:
In a perfect world we would automate references to a higher degree. An idea
I've just thought of is introducing reference-space to Wikipedia, in a broad
parallel to image-space. We currently have images with a separate existence
 from articles, and each image can be used on many articles. This system
means that image copyright is centralised and anyone happening upon a useful
image can include it without needing to upload the image again, provide
license info, and so on.

Why not streamline referencing by having a page for each reference, which
provide full cite information and external links, and a MediaWiki trick to
 mean a full reference can be supplied with three or four words rather than
(as currently) writing out a long string of author name, title, publication
details and index numbers.

To give an example, instead of having

Sen, A: "On the Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal", Journal of Political
Economy, date,volume, issue number

incorporated separately into every one of a dozen different articles, we
 would have a page called

Reference:Paretian Liberal (Sen)

which would have the full details of the source, in a standard format,
details of any duplicates (e.g. hardback/softback and domestic/international
editions of books), and links to whatever online searchable databases were
available (similar to the current ISBN search facility for books). It would
also have a list of 'articles that reference this work" and possibly a brief
user-contributed summary.

When referencing that particular article, one would be able to wikilink to
[[R:Paretian Liberal (Sen)]]. A wikilink to reference-space would appear as
an inline reference and, if it were the first use of the source,
automagically add the full cite to the References section at the bottom of
the page. The full cite would link to the reference-space page.

What d'you reckon? Clearly it would need a lot of developer time but would
make exhaustive referencing much, much easier if that is where we need to
 be.

Chris


from_name: P. Birken

body:
Some of this can be done by checking the ISBN. If it exists, the ISBN
should be mentioned. If it is there, it can be checked. We had several
cases with fake ISBNs which led to the discovery of fake articles.

Philipp

2006/10/5, Valentina Faussone <valentina_faussone at yahoo.it>:
> > WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable
> > printed sources in
> > different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given
> > source.
>
> Sound like "L'indice dei libri proibiti", the list of
> forbidden books that catholic church used for
> centuries.
> It became famous for considering unreliable and wicked
> books from authors like Honor? de Balzac, Cartesio,
> Daniel Defoe, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Immanuel
> Kant, Voltaire, ?mile Zola (and many others), thus
> forbidding them. ... Yours seems to me a optimistic
> dream hard to make true.
>
> > In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are
> > vivacious and full of
> > "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be
> > directed towards
> > WikiProjects for verification.
>
> Plus, will these guys from the wikiprojects be able to
> be both expert AND npov? Or will they give their
> opinion in all the matters in wich there isn't just
> *true* way to solve the problem?
>
> Please note that mine are just questions, I'm not
> polemizing for the sake of it...
>
> Tinette
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Poco spazio e tanto spam? Yahoo! Mail ti protegge dallo spam e ti da tanto
> spazio gratuito per i tuoi file e i messaggi
> http://mail.yahoo.it
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the
> > encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives
> > behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve
> > articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to
> > avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial
> > companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for
> > Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good
> > article that I can think of.
>
> No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
> they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
> FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
>
So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
the award payment?

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
> I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
> one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
>
> The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
> but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
> Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
>
> Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.
>
> Ilario
>
>
> ----Messaggio originale----
> Da: saintonge at telus.net
> Data: 02.10.06 2.19
> A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
>
> Birgitte SB wrote:
>
>
> I support the principle of rotating Wikimania around three broad
> geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas, Asia/Australia),
> but
> this should not create a situation where we must accept a city's
> clearly
> inferior bid just because it is the only one from its region.
Hoi,
Apparently Wikimania is only for Wikipedians or people with an interest
in Wiktionary, Wikinews or Wikibooks have more money to spend. Truly
Wikimania is NOT about Wikipedia. Both Frankfurt and Boston welcomed the
other projects as warmly..  I am sure they will be as warmly welcomed in
Taipei.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Gallagher Mark George

body:
G'day Matt,

> On 10/4/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
> wrote:> A relevant quotation: "Remember, in Italy they drive on
> the wrong side
> > of the road."
>
> Um, but Italy drives on the same side of the road as the US does.
> That statement would have to have been uttered by a resident of a
> nation that drives on the left.

It's a quotation from /The Italian Job/, showing the boorishness of the film's characters.  A British gangster, standing in Italy, reminds his group that the weirdos in this foreign country do things wrong.

This sort of thing occurs with every nationality, which is why I chose a quotation from a British film.  It's not that the USA is the only nation whose people are stunningly ignorant and rude when confronting those of different viewpoints, just that:
a) A far greater proportion of Americans seem to show this attitude than seen in other countries today
b) The USA is more powerful and more resented, so ordinary, everyday ignorance which would be overlooked in a Canadian becomes a grievous sin when displayed by an American
c) On Wikipedia, America is King.  The rest of the world finds itself having to explain why such-and-such article should be written from a NPOV rather than an American one.  This is not deliberate, there is no organised campaign by Americans to corrupt the encyclopaedia, it's entirely unintentional ... and that's even worse.

The Internet is a global medium.  Articles on the Internet, and particularly on Wikipedia, that talk about "domestic" vs "international" (where America is domestic and everyone else is weird); or "the phenomenon" vs "the version of the phenomenon seen in other countries" (where America is the norm and everyone else is weird); or even "This is what occurs in the world" (while speaking exclusively of American issues - see old versions of our articles on sound mergers or whatever the term is for examples, e.g. cot-caught merger) are no better than a non-Italian man standing in Torino and announcing that, "In Italy they drive on the wrong side of the road."

(I'd be grateful if David could pick up this thread by talking about how other phrases, like "You're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off", "I used a machine gun", and "Hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea!", have deep cultural meaning.)

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parse Error using rebuildtextindex.php

body:
Mike O wrote:
> I'm trying to run the rebuildtextindex.php or rebuildall.php scripts
> (preferably the latter one) and when I try an error is generated:
>
> Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or
> T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in
> /home/.test/whatever/localhost/wiki/includes/Exception.php on line 114

As 'php -v' will show, you're most likely running the script through PHP 4.x.
This will fail, as MediaWiki 1.7 and above requires PHP 5.x.

If PHP 4 and 5 are installed in different paths, or with different binary names
('php5' or 'php5-cli' perhaps?), ensure that you're running the PHP 5 version.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Mirror

body:
> http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/index.php/Remote_control_frequencies
> I see these errors on the right hand side.
> How can this be fixed?

That URL should be:
http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/enwiki/index.php/Remote_control_frequencies

In the "Remote control frequencies" article, we can see it's using a template, specifically [[Template:Infobox musical artist]] to
display the musical artists background info. It's this template that seems to be playing up.

So therefore we go to http://freeknowledge.dyndns.org/enwiki/index.php/Template:Infobox_musical_artist ; and we can see there that
the example artist entry ("The Five Heartbeats") is also displaying wrong.

For some reason it's escaping the
 as
 on your wiki when they're used in Parser Functions, whereas it's
treating them as table tags on the Wikipedia.

>From here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Parser_functions#Tables the only difference mentioned that I can see is that the Wikipedia
has $wgUseTidy turned on, where as probably you don't. Maybe try setting $wgUseTidy=true; in your LocalSettings.php.

If that doesn't work, someone else may have some suggestions.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Jim

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
On 10/1/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> On 10/2/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Some way of adding attribution on the history page (which isn't
> > indexed by Google and therefore useless to spammers) may be a better
> > solution than adding these to the article. It probably also makes more
> > sense in terms of the GFDL if the history is all on the history page
> > and not partly there, partly on the talk page, and partly on the
> > article itself.
>
> Perhaps, if it is only and very specifically used for contributions
> from external sources. A sort of "External History:" namespace whose
> contents are shown and linked to on top of the history might be
> workable.  Right now I'm not sure the problem is prevalent enough to
> justify prioritizing such a change.
>
> I see another potential use for this - and that is finding reference that
have been deleted. Unfortunately, new editors will remove <ref> tags. I hate
going to an article, and not finding a reference that was there before - if
I added it then it is not too difficult to find it in the history, but on
some articles it is difficult to find the prior reference. If this feature
could do two things: allow one to include a reference for GFDL material, and
provide a list of links that have been used in the article (along with the
linked text) - then that would be very helpful in identifying prior
reference material.

I always thought this would not work because it would be something else to
attract link-spammers - but if the link history page is not indexed, then
that seems to mitigate potential negative effects.

Jim


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
On 10/5/06, HeinzJ <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> geni schrieb:
> >> very useful for increasing the Google PR)
> >
> > Since the authoy is credited in our history there is no need for a
> > link to the external site how much you want to push this point is up
> > to you.
> >
> So if i use text from wikipedia in an other wiki i only have to write a
> comment ("from ... ") into the history when adding it ?

If the other wiki is also licensed under the GFDL, then yes, pretty
much. The GFDL has more complicated attribution requirements (i.e. the
last five authors, or the most prominent five authors, or something
like that) but to my knowledge very few people follow them or take
them seriously in the context of community-edited documents, and
attribution to Wikipedia itself is probably the most anyone can
expect.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] template for country-centric POV?

body:
> tsk tsk, not all of us.  I travel the world, and trust me, there are
> good people and idiots everywhere.  In France the other day, when I was
> on my way to Bangalore, the woman checking me in said "Bangalore?
> Where's that?"
>

Oh, come on. Yes, I realize it has an "international airport", but really, why
would she know about a small city in Maine?

Cheers,
Daniel


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject:
[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print
 sources

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

> Requiring an ISBN is in many ways misleadingly precise...

Is this a strawman argument?  Is anybody requiring ISBNs today?

Since many books don't have ISBNs, always requiring an ISBN would
be misguided.  But giving ISBNs should in general be encouraged.

ISBNs are very useful, even if they aren't unique identifiers for
a source.  The same source, or an equally good source, such as
later editions or translations of the same book, can have many
different ISBNs.  Often times, a page number (as given in the
{{cite book}} template), are relevant only with one ISBN, since
later editions or translations might offset the pagination.

Detailed and correct bibliographic references don't guarantee that
the cited source supports the reported facts, but it makes it so
much easier to look it up.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/5/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> > > unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
> > > they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
> > > FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
> > >
> > So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
> > the award payment?
>
> Methinks there's a slight difference between being paid by a neutral
> third party to write an article and being paid by an interested party
> to write an article.
>
> In the one, the focus is on promoting article quality and Wikipedia;
> in the other, the focus is on promoting a company.
>
> Big, big difference.
>
I absolutely agree, and that's why I think what should matter is the
resulting article, and not whether or not someone was paid to write
it.

Jimbo seemed to be going further than that, though.  He certainly
implied that editing Wikipedia for pay is per se a bad idea.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


subject: [WikiEN-l] List of banned books

body:
On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> > If you want to go the bad-ass evil & sneaky route, simply tag all of
> > the unsourced items with {{fact}} (an edit which, granted, would take
> > some time), let them be for a week and then summarily remove them. If
> > it is as bad as you say (which I don't doubt, after a quick look at
> > it), raze and rebuild from the ground up is a very sensible option.
>
> In general, I find the {{fact}} tagging to be overdone in Wikipedia.  A
> better option is to nuke the unsourced material. Sometimes {{fact}} is
> warranted, I don't mean that it is always a bad idea.  But it is overdone.
>
> I very often see completely preposterous claims tagged with {{fact}},
> usually because an editor is being excessively cautious.  Be bold. :)
>
But log in first.  Being bold while being logged out generally amounts
to being reverted.

Anthony


from_name: Justin Anthony Knapp

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Test Wikipedia

body:
What happened to test.wikipedia.org? When? Why? Thanks.
-JAK

--
o______
| \_____|
|  )_(*__|
| /_____|
|
|

http://wsahara.net

For Taiwan (ROC), Tibet, West Papua, and Western Sahara


from_name: Maury Markowitz

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Any suggestions for editing refs?

body:
I'm trying to be the good wikipedian and adding lots of on-topic refs, but I
find editing them to be extremely difficult and error prone. IMHO the actual
"body" of the ref should definitely not be placed in the article body, where
it is now, as this makes reading the source difficult, to say the least.
Click edit on Zune some time...

Is there some alternate format? Can I use the <ref name=gizifa/> and then
place the actual contents later in the article, like in the actual reference
section? All of my attempts to date have failed.

If not, is there some sort of editor that makes this easier?

Maury


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] *spork*

body:
Jason Potkanski wrote:

>As the creator of the brainstorming page, I must first apologize for
>dare thinking about tinkering with the anarchist's prime directive.
>
>The policy is a philosophical policy, not a literal one. I don't
>expect the average wikipedia editor to understand philosophy. It is
>much harder to explain than NPOV and NPOV goes to great lengths to
>explain it.
>
>Leaving IAR as a piece of scripture is unacceptable. When looking at
>religious text, most people do not take the bible literally but
>figuratively. We can not just say it has "deep and subtle meaning," we
>must also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own
>conclusions.
>
>This isn't "instruction creep" ... it is basic education.
>
>Save the holy verses for religious texts and rhetoric for dev/null .
>On Wikipedia, sane consensus-built uniform policy pages please.
>
I must commend the writer for confessing to his inability to understand
philosophy.

"Ignore All Rules" is not a policy; it is a principle.  This is not a
matter of taking the WikiBible literally or figuratively.  The most
profound biblical principles or those of other religions are said in
very simple words that get right to the point.  To say that "we must
also offer a context that guides a reader to make their own
conclusions," creates a paradox, because by offering a guide to
interpreting the principle we put the reader on the way to reaching the
conclusions that we want him to reach.  We do much better by stating a
principle, guiding the reader by our actions, and being willing to
adjust our views if the newbie presents a good idea.

Uniform policy pages impose stagnation, they make change with the times
very difficult, and they insult the intelligence of those who may not
yet have contributed to Wikipedia.  In another context that kind of
thing gave us the copyright laws that we all love so well.

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: bawolff

body:
sorry wasn't registered

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Brian W <bawolff at gmail.com>
Date: Oct 5, 2006 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] [Foundation-l] UMP Convention - what about
semantic mediawiki
To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>

On wikinews, we were talking about using semantic mediawiki a bit ago
[ http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/semantic_MediaWiki and
http://wiki.ontoworld.org/index.php ] . I think that, that extention
would be perfect for commons and would fix many issues you talked
about, specificly picture keyword (bearing in mind that I have very
limited knowladge about the
extention and may be wrong on that)

--
- Bawolff
Caution: The mass of this product contains the energy equivalent of 85
million tons of TNT per net ounce of weight.

On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just wrote the following in a message on Wikimedia/Wikipedia
> popularity to foundation-l:
>
> > In stock photos: Commons has I understand plans for much better
> > categorisation. The plans to make categories in MediaWiki work more
> > like tags will help (if they can ever work around MySQL being
> > basically crap at it without reworking the entire wiki engine). You
> > describe Commons to a journalist and they go "oh, like Getty Images?"
> > and you answer "yep, we're nothing like there yet but we want
> > something that good." Where "good" means an editor in a hurry can
> > search Commons, find a pic and slap it in the paper labeled "(c)
> > Photographer, reusable under cc-by-sa." You would, with a moment's
> > thought, see just *how much* press editors would love something like
> > that they don't have to pay Getty Images rates for.
>
>
> The conversation came from one particular journalist and watching his
> eyes light up at the idea of a free photo repository that was any
> bloody good.
>
> So. I've never used Getty Images or a similar stock photo database.
>
> * What does Commons need in terms of indexing to be that *usable*?
> * How are we for subject area coverage? (I have no idea what searches
> are popular.)
> * Do we have a list of taglines print editors can slap on photos and
> be working within the licence? Shorter the better, obviously.
> ("Working within the license" here meaning that it would be clear to a
> judge that when the paper put the photographer's name and "Reusable
> under Creative Commons cc-by-sa 1/2/2.5" they were communicating it
> enough for any sensible person and not even the most querulous
> cc-by-sa user would have a real case. Though that's  verging on
> lawyering without a licence. But anyway.)
>
> etc. What question have I missed? What do we need to be a useful image
> repository for consumers such as commercial print media? Imagine that
> much open content circulating, and spreading the notion of openness
> ...
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Porchesia

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 04/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>geni wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Problem is that people would rather ah read about dancing pigs. Well
>>>that an the issue that the various cleanup lists are insanely
>>>backloged.
>>>
>>>
>>The ones who believe an article about dancing pigs may have problems
>>that are beyond the scope of this mailing list.
>>
>>
>Hey, [[Dancing pigs]] is a great article!
>
O:-)    I admit that computer security is not a big topic for me.  Even
there I rely on common sense.  My wife is more concerned about such
things than I am.  She spends less then 10% of the time on line that I
do, and is far more likely to get stung by some random virus or
spyware.  Spouses should not share the same computer.

Ec


from_name: Markus Sz

subject: [Foundation-l] New Project proposal

body:
Hi @ all!

I have just added a new Project proposal called WikiTimeScale (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTimeScale) and as the help page for new project proposals suggest I am now sending an email to this mailing list informing all of you about this new project proposal. Maybe someone can also add it to the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Goings-on page since the help page suggests that to, but the page is protected and therefor I am not able to add it to the Goings-on

greetings,
Markus


subject: [Foundation-l] New Project proposal


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
On 10/5/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> > unethical if they do.  They are free to pay someone to write whatever
> > they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
> > FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
> >
> So is it unethical for the person who wins Danny's contest to accept
> the award payment?

Methinks there's a slight difference between being paid by a neutral
third party to write an article and being paid by an interested party
to write an article.

In the one, the focus is on promoting article quality and Wikipedia;
in the other, the focus is on promoting a company.

Big, big difference.

--
Sam


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Using the self-selected and inherently bogus Alexa numbers, Wikipedia
> is still slowly climbing in page rank and steadily increasing in page
> views per million. Are you quite sure about that slowing? Is it the
> first derivative or the second derivative that's going down?
>
> (I mention only Wikipedia here, not any other project, because Alexa
> goes by domain.)

Speaking of which: our daily page rank seems to have jumped up to 11 today. ;-)

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
On 10/5/06, HeinzJ <h-j.luecking at t-online.de> wrote:
> So if i use text from wikipedia in an other wiki i only have to write a
> comment ("from ... ") into the history when adding it ?
>
> HeinzJ

That would depend on the  number of authors and if you were following
the other terms of the lisence.

--
geni


from_name: HeinzJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL link spam

body:
geni schrieb:
>> very useful for increasing the Google PR)
>
> Since the authoy is credited in our history there is no need for a
> link to the external site how much you want to push this point is up
> to you.
>
>
So if i use text from wikipedia in an other wiki i only have to write a
comment ("from ... ") into the history when adding it ?

HeinzJ


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> > Not in all that detail, no.  But that would be judged by the
> > encyclopedic qualities of the text, not by the commercial motives
> > behind it.  There certainly are notable hotels that deserve
> > articles of their own, even if it's almost always a good idea to
> > avoid writing about yourself.  What I wrote is that commercial
> > companies are free to pay someone to write *good* articles for
> > Wikipedia.  And prices and phone numbers are not part of any good
> > article that I can think of.
>
> No, actually, they are not free to do that, and I consider it deeply
> unethical if they do.

Sorry Jimmy, but yeah they are so long as what is contributed follows our content policies (NPOV
being the most important). Remember NPOV? It was developed as a social mechanism to allow
reasonable people of different POVs to work together. Getting paid to edit does not necessarily
mean a person can't be NPOV or follow our policies.

That said, it does at least have the appearance of impropriety when a person is editing an article
about their employer or a client. That should be frowned on for sure. But banned? Even if it were
possible to do that I think it would be bad in that it tends to give-up on the concept of NPOV as
a social construct.

We should *certainly* NOT at all try to create a culture where users start to which hunt for
people who get paid to edit. A great many organizations could help us attain our goals by hiring
people to add content in areas where we are now weak. Heck, I think the foundation should do that
for some smaller languages and even in certain areas in larger languages where our coverage
currently sucks. All editors need do is follow our content and social policies. That is it.

> They are free to pay someone to write whatever
> they like, and put it on their own website, and release it under the GNU
> FDL.  They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.

I'm sorry, but that stance is not at all something that will help us attain our goals.

We should embrace good content at face value and not question the motives for its creation.
Questioning people's motives is placing ideology over substance.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Reports of AFP using Wikipedia content without
	attribution

body:
I just received an Email from AFP. They are retracting the story
because they still don't want to attribute the source.

USA/Schulen/Kriminalit?t/Gewalt/HINTERGRUND
+++ DRINGENDER HINWEIS +++
Achtung Redaktionen, =

bitte verwenden Sie unseren Hintergrund "Pazifisten mit Abneigung
gegen Fortschritt - Die Bewegung der Amish in den USA" von Montag, 2.
Oktober, 21.03 Uhr nicht mehr; l?schen Sie bitte zudem diesen
Hintergrund aus Ihren Archiven. Aufgrund einer individuellen
Fehlleistung sind mehrere Passagen des Hintergrunds nahezu w?rtlich
dem Online-Lexikon Wikipedia entnommen worden, ohne die Quelle zu
benennen.

Zwar sind in dem fraglichen Hintergrundartikel (der als
Feiertagswiederholung auch am Dienstag, 3. Oktober, um 10.20 Uhr
ausgesendet wurde) nach unserem Kenntnisstand keinerlei falsche
Informationen verbreitet worden - die Fakten stimmen mit den Angaben
in einer bereits vorliegenden entsprechenden AFP-Dokumentation
?berein, die ebenfalls Basis des fraglichen Artikels war. Ein Sprecher
der betroffenen Wikipedia-Autoren besteht jedoch darauf, dass bei
einer erneuten Verwendung des Artikels neben der Quellennennung auch
auf die Lizenz, auf der der Artikel ?ber Amische basiert, hingewiesen
wird. Zudem soll ein Link zur Versionsgeschichte bzw. zur Liste der
Autoren dieses Artikels genannt werden. Da diese Angaben in unserem
Hintergrund nicht vorhanden sind, bitten wir Sie darum, den Text so
nicht mehr zu verwenden.

Diese einmalige Verwendung von Teilen eines Wikipedia-Stichworts war
ein grober Versto? gegen die redaktionellen Richtlinien von AFP: Es
wurden nicht die eigenen, verifizierten Informationen der
AFP-Dokumentationsabteilung verwendet. Zudem wurde das Recht auf
geistiges Eigentum verletzt, weil nicht nur Fakten, sondern auch
Formulierungen ?bernommen wurden, und es wurde gegen die (durchaus
liberalen) Quellennennungs- und Lizenzbestimmungen von Wikipedia
versto?en.

Die AFP-Chefredaktion hat auf dieses individuelle Fehlverhalten
entsprechend reagiert. Wir sind uns sicher, dass es sich hier um einen
Einzelfall handelt, der ohne Wiederholung bleibt.

akr/ncw


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.
>
> This comes as news and a surprise to me.  Is it a new rule, or has
> this been stated before?  What is the motivation?  How do you
> detect when people edit Wikipedia for pay, and what sanctions do
> you have against them?  Is this a rule only for the English
> Wikipedia or a Foundation-wide policy?

No it is not a policy and it never will if I have anything to do with it. I'm sure Jimmy was
talking about companies paying PR firms and similar ilk to promote them by writing sanitized and
glowing Wikipedia articles about the company paying the bill. At least, I hope that is the case.
If not, then I am deeply disappointed in Jimmy and think he has started to lose sight of his own
dream. But I'm sure that is not the case.

I would *love* to see many groups pay or otherwise get people to edit Wikipedia to add NPOV and
verified content; esp in areas and in languages we now have poor coverage in.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.2.0RC5 Testing

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

Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we
hope to make sure that you are either aware of things that might
break, or to make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions.
With this effort we hope to build a better relation between the PHP
Team and the major projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to
me personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that
you want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable tool.

The 5th and final (this time we really mean it ;-)) release candidate
of PHP 5.2.0 was released today, it can be downloaded from http://
downloads.php.net/ilia/. If you discover any problems with this
release please notify PHP's QA team at "php-qa at lists.php.net".

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds
of emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the
list of projects to contact.

Best Regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.2 Release Master

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFFJW1qLKekh381/CERAgOZAJ91FwPca7xKf9FaQjE8QfJa0soYVgCdH+bp
GTs39aSkveZeTJl8TDbAY48=
=FDmc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> They are not free to edit Wikipedia for pay.

This comes as news and a surprise to me.  Is it a new rule, or has
this been stated before?  What is the motivation?  How do you
detect when people edit Wikipedia for pay, and what sanctions do
you have against them?  Is this a rule only for the English
Wikipedia or a Foundation-wide policy?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Mywikipediaspace


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
Hello,

A very short word to say that yesterday I attended a convention in
Paris, organised by the UMP
(http://www.u-m-p-paris.org/article.php3?id_article=454).

UMP is the first (as far as I know) political party in France, leader
being Mr Sarkozy, current minister of interior in France and a leading
candidate for the future presidential elections.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarkozy

The convention was focused on education and research
(http://www.u-m-p-paris.org/article.php3?id_article=454) I was speaking
in a panel along with french internet entrepreneurs, the idea of the
panel not being to "inform" people, but rather to tell them about what
we were expecting/hoping from this party (and likely, ahum, well,
possibly, from the next government...).

After a short introduction to Wikipedia, with proper figures ("4,4
millions of french electors are visiting Wikipedia every month" - I
could see every one bending to write down the scary fact that 1/10
french electors was a Wikipedia user), I insisted on two facts.

First is the DADVSI law (which was supported by UMP - making them the
real bad guys for free software supporters) - please see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI with this relevant bit

	"The law was highly controversial within France for it could
significantly hamper free software, and also may significantly restrict
the right to make copies of copyrighted works for private use.

Second was to talk about the fact USA releases information in Public
Domain, versus our government (and more generally the EU, or most public
organisations) under classical cp. I mentionned as examples
* most pictures of french politicians on wp being from the US
governement (not the french gvt)
* Spatial research images from the NASA rather than ESA
* Etc

The whole convention was *extremely* interesting (which actually amazed
me, because it is rather unusual to attend a convention and be
interested all along). I was in particular amazed at how understandable
people were (very little political talk), how specific and how ready to
state what was not working. It was very refreshing...

In terms of audience, well, I'd say a quite decent part of it was
parliament members and current or ancient ministers. Others being
typically presidents of universities etc... In short, powerful people.

I was very glad to finally meet Loic Lemeur, probably the famous blogger
in France, and who I read occasionnally but never had the opportunity to
meet. Also the creator of several internet success.

I was invited to later talk privately to the person in charge of ict et
al from the office of Mr Sarkozy. I'll try to take care of that in november.

Guys, I hope you all feel the power of what we are building. This is HUGE.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


from_name: Kpjas

body:
On 10/5/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Valentina Faussone <valentina_faussone at yahoo.it>
> wrote:
>
> > > WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable
> > > printed sources in
> > > different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a
> > given
> > > source.
> >
> > Sound like "L'indice dei libri proibiti", the list
> > of
> > forbidden books that catholic church used for
> > centuries.
> > It became famous for considering unreliable and
> > wicked
> > books from authors like Honor? de Balzac, Cartesio,
> > Daniel Defoe, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Immanuel
> > Kant, Voltaire, ?mile Zola (and many others), thus
> > forbidding them. ... Yours seems to me a optimistic
> > dream hard to make true.
> >
> > > In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are
> > > vivacious and full of
> > > "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be
> > > directed towards
> > > WikiProjects for verification.
> >
> > Plus, will these guys from the wikiprojects be able
> > to
> > be both expert AND npov? Or will they give their
> > opinion in all the matters in wich there isn't just
> > *true* way to solve the problem?
> >
> > Please note that mine are just questions, I'm not
> > polemizing for the sake of it...
> >
> > Tinette
>
> I agree these are good questions for an ambititous
> project.  I do not think there are easy answers.  I
> really think it is premature to rely so heavily on
> Wikiprojects ability as experts as well as being
> neutral.  They are not matured enough yet, but maybe
> some day we will be able to do this.  Perhaps a good
> question for right now is how could we identify a
> Wikiproject which has matured to such a level?  How
> can we encourage Wikiprojects to develop into
> something we can put so much trust in?

I personally don't think we could have problems with WikiProjects as
POV pushers. They are managing hundreds/thousands of articles already
and we don't see any POV problems
(do you agree?) Something to be wary of is scientific/expertly/group
bias that can creep in at some point.

WikiProjects could in a longer perspective become valuable in many
respects, especially content quality and verification. Perhaps a kind
of interWikiProject Workgroups might be needed for interdisciplinary.

Some WikiProjects like Biography are bustling with activity, I'm not
sure about others and some WikiProjects have turned inactive. I hope
WikiProject Council will become a means for organising and promoting
new WikiProjects as well as expanding/invigorating existing ones.

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council

Regards,
Kpjas.

--
Wikipedia - World's Greatest http://www.wikipedia.org


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

body:
Hi everyone,

to those I've known at Wikipedia and worked well with, thanks for the good
times. I used to believe in Wikipedia. It was worth a lot to me, it was fun,
it was good to work on articles.

But I'm quitting. It's sad to say, I know, and even sadder that due to my
reasons for quitting, I can't trust leaving a goodbye message on my user
page or mailing from my normal account. But for the things I am about to
say, I know that several admins and possibly those higher up in the project
would ban me just for saying it. I know this message may never reach this
list either, but I'm at least going to try. I'm doing it this way because
someday, I might want to come back, and I'd like to be able to come back
under the same username I left.

I'm quitting wikipedia because I don't like what I've seen too many admins
become. Self-righteous, arrogant, self-centered, conceited... jerks.

I've seen too many admins who believe that our civility policies only apply
to the normal editors. Too many admins whose first course is to insult a new
user in order to see if they get a "reaction" so that they can spank the new
user for talking back to an admin.

I've seen too many admins block accounts for infinite duration on flimsy
evidence or mere whim.

I've seen admins block accounts with the reason of "name..", and then block
another account for the reason that it was a "suspected sockpuppet" - of the
offensive username block.

I've seen more accusations thrown around of someone being a "sockpuppet" of
another user. Time and again, I looked through the edits, and I didn't see
it. Instead, what I saw were users who were systematically hounded until
they finally broke down and broke the civility rules, and then as an
afterthought someone came up and said "oh, it doesn't matter, they were a
sockpuppet of X anyways", thereby removing all culpability on the part of
the abusive users who had spent time hounding and abusing the newbie to the
point of cussing or vandalizing.

I've seen the way accusations of "sockpuppet" have become a way of life in
content disputes, and I've see how the admins on wikipedia do absolutely
nothing about it. Too many despicable pov warriors spend their time accusing
anyone they disagree with on one article or another of being a "sockpuppet",
and never does a CheckUser come back innocent. The one time I ever saw CU
come back inconclusive, the admin blocked them for being a sockpuppet
anyways, claiming they had "proof" in the form of edit summaries, which is
to say that the user was editing on the same article where the admin's
friends had previously harassed someone.

I saw a thread earlier today which I thought was monstrous - a user whose
talk page was locked for "unblock template abuse", whose only crime or
"abuse" of the template was removing the template after the blocking admin
consistently and maliciously removed it. This thread was stopped by the
assertion of David Gerard that the person who started the thread was
"Enviroknot." I don't give a damn who started the thread, if the question is
valid, the question is valid. I looked at the user in question, and I see
plenty of problems with the way it was handled, and at least two admins who
deserve at the least a stern censure and at the most, de-adminning for
abusive behavior. We NEED users to bring these problems up. We NEED to cull
the herd of abusive administrators.

But there's no way in hell I can say that with my normal username, because
David's terms are clear: the usage of the term "sockpuppet" stops all
rational discussion, and anyone disagreeing with David gets banned.

Anyone who says that there are abusive administrators out there, or speaks
out against a specific one they've had a run-in with? The cry of "Rouge
Admin lololol lets see how can I pwn this noob today, take that and stop
annoying the admins" is the cry that goes out, not "that sounds serious,
I'll take a look."

We are too arrogant. I've seen Jimbo use the excuse of "well troll X doesn't
like it so they are doing right" or "well you must be correct because the
wikipediareview crowd doesn't like you" as a way to justify bad behavior in
the wikimedia IRC room and even on this list. I've seen countless times
where good users are attacked for speaking up and saying this same thing:
We, the overwhelming number of admins on the project, are too arrogant. Too
self-centered.

We spend too much time "defending" wikipedia and not enough time bringing
new users into the fold, being polite, being nice. Teaching them about
policies, about the manual of style. Editing alongside them. Admins are
supposed to be "just another editor with a few extra buttons", but too many
admins today get drunk on that power. They insist that normal editors are
"beneath" them, that they should be able to own articles and give their
friends a hand up when content disputes arise. If you're friends with an
admin, rest assured that your buddies will call someone a name, get one
called back, and then ask you to punish the other guy for "incivility." And
you'll do it, too, without a moment's hesitation, simply because you have
the power to do it.

I've sat in the IRC channel watching a user come in to ask for help only to
be rebuffed, attacked, insulted, and finally booted because "no new user
could ever find the IRC chat room, they are obviously a sockpuppet of some
disruptive user." I sat by silently because I knew if I spoke out, they'd
just boot me too for being "disruptive."

And you know what? I'm tired of it. Our articles are suffering because even
the good edits of supposed "sockpuppets" are being reverted by
overly-zealous admins who believe that they have to hunt for every edit made
by someone they think is banned - even if it's just a typo fix - and revert
it. Yes, I have watched this in action. I have watched admins put obvious
page-tagging edits like an insertion of "joe is a fag" back because the user
who reverted the vandalism was someone deemed a "sockpuppet" by our
completely erroneous and pointless system.

The Wiki is broken. It's not the vandals who broke it. Those we could
handle. It's not the edit warriors who broke it. Those we can handle.

WE, the admins of wikipedia, broke it. We broke it by being stuck-up jerks.
We broke it by thinking we are better than normal editors, by getting full
of ourselves.

And every one of the admins on wikipedia, myself included, has been guilty
of it at one point. Some are more guilty than others. Some are jerks 100% of
the time. Some have become so obsessed with their pet sockpuppet, be it
Enviroknot, Freestylefrappe, Willy on Wheels,  Entmoots,  Pigsonthewing,
JarlaxleArtemis, Karmafist, Lir, PoolGuy, or whatever else their pet
sockpuppet of the week is that they are no longer useful.

Some never should have passed RFA to start with. Some deliberately gamed the
system and pulled support from a specific interest group to get passed, then
turned around and started immediately abusing their power to help the
interest group and haven't stopped since. Some are likely sockpuppets of
serial edit warriors.

Some are just insane.

And some of us just are human, and fail to appreciate that, and fall victim
to power tripping behavior. I think that the admin behavior which made this
list moderation-default falls under that. But that's another of those things
that is "not up for discussion."

Too many things are not open for discussion. Too many of the verboten topics
center around people who are on power trips, or were at the time they took
some action. Too many times admins seeking to consolidate their power bases
or trading favors with other admins have stood up for improper, abusive
behavior.

So, I'm out. As long as the cult of adminship reigns here, wikipedia's not
going to improve. New articles may come and edits might be made eventually,
but the state of wikipedia, our accuracy, our reliability, WILL fail as long
as admins are allowed to champion abusive users or be abusive themselves and
simply get away with it time and again, rubber stamped by secret evidence
and higher-ups who are more interested in their own power than making a
better encyclopedia.

Jimbo, this might as well be an open letter to you too. None of the rest of
these spineless yes-men will ever say these things to your face. Hell, I
couldn't at the last meetup, because I was so afraid that you or Danny or
one of the other high-ups would note down my username and ban me. That's the
atmosphere you've cultivated.

Peace out.


from_name: Mike O

body:
I'm trying to run the rebuildtextindex.php or rebuildall.php scripts (preferably the latter one) and when I try an error is generated:

Parse error:  syntax error, unexpected T_STRING, expecting T_OLD_FUNCTION or T_FUNCTION or T_VAR or '}' in  /home/.test/whatever/localhost/wiki/includes/Exception.php on line 114

This happens on Mediawiki 1.7.1 with PHP 5.1.2.

All extensions were unloaded before testing.

Anybody know why this happens or how to get around it?

Mike O

--
_______________________________________________
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Powered by Outblaze


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> After a short introduction to Wikipedia, with proper figures ("4,4
> millions of french electors are visiting Wikipedia every month" - I
> could see every one bending to write down the scary fact that 1/10
> french electors was a Wikipedia user), I insisted on two facts.
> First is the DADVSI law (which was supported by UMP - making them the
> real bad guys for free software supporters) - please see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DADVSI with this relevant bit
>         "The law was highly controversial within France for it could
> significantly hamper free software, and also may significantly restrict
> the right to make copies of copyrighted works for private use.
> Second was to talk about the fact USA releases information in Public
> Domain, versus our government (and more generally the EU, or most public
> organisations) under classical cp. I mentionned as examples
> * most pictures of french politicians on wp being from the US
> governement (not the french gvt)
> * Spatial research images from the NASA rather than ESA

Oh, that's excellent! Well done!

> I was invited to later talk privately to the person in charge of ict et
> al from the office of Mr Sarkozy. I'll try to take care of that in november.
> Guys, I hope you all feel the power of what we are building. This is HUGE.

Indeed.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


from_name: roc

body:
I probably have misunderstood GerardM, and I would like to retract my
previous message and offer my apologies.

Indeed, as an international conference for an international
organization and its global projects, attending Wikimania in person
would always be expensive for some of us.

Best regards,

roc
--

2006/10/5, roc <sdnyroc at gmail.com>:
> Sorry but I cannot enjoy more Eurocentric languages. You may say as
> well the first two Wikimanias are only for a few richer Asians.
>
> Regards,
>
> roc
> --
>
> 2006/10/5, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
> > valdelli at bluemail.ch wrote:
> > > I strong support three different Wikimania: one for Europe/Africa,
> > > one for Asia/Australia, one form America.
> > >
> > > The Asia has got many problems and one Wikimania cannot solve them,
> > > but also the core of Wikipedians are in the Europe, but also the
> > > Digital Divide is a big problem in Africa, etc.
> > >
> > > Any choose will be always a "long long" discussion.
> > >
> > > Ilario
> > >
> > >
> > > ----Messaggio originale----
> > > Da: saintonge at telus.net
> > > Data: 02.10.06 2.19
> > > A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> > > Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Taipei chosen to host Wikimania 2007
> > >
> > > Birgitte SB wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I support the principle of rotating Wikimania around three broad
> > > geographical regions (Europe/Africa, The Americas, Asia/Australia),
> > > but
> > > this should not create a situation where we must accept a city's
> > > clearly
> > > inferior bid just because it is the only one from its region.
> > Hoi,
> > Apparently Wikimania is only for Wikipedians or people with an interest
> > in Wiktionary, Wikinews or Wikibooks have more money to spend. Truly
> > Wikimania is NOT about Wikipedia. Both Frankfurt and Boston welcomed the
> > other projects as warmly..  I am sure they will be as warmly welcomed in
> > Taipei.
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>


body:
> If PHP 4 and 5 are installed in different paths, or with different
> binary names
> ('php5' or 'php5-cli' perhaps?), ensure that you're running the PHP 5 version.

Thanks Brion, that was indeed the problem: Two versions of PHP on the server. I found the path to PHP5 and now the script is running.

Mike O

--
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Surf the Web in a faster, safer and easier way:
Download Opera 9 at http://www.opera.com

Powered by Outblaze


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Second was to talk about the fact USA releases information in Public
> Domain, versus our government (and more generally the EU, or most public
> organisations) under classical cp. I mentionned as examples
> * most pictures of french politicians on wp being from the US
> governement (not the french gvt)
> * Spatial research images from the NASA rather than ESA
> * Etc

As well as being a detriment to us in that we only have a limited
amount of resources to play with, this sort of thing can lead to
interesting unintentional biases - a disproportionately high number of
images on en.wp have uniformed US servicemen in them, often in the
most unexpected contexts. I wonder if we can use this sort of thing to
our advantage? "Look how many of the freely-available images of major
humanitarian operations have American flags all over them. Yes, I know
the French government gave more aid after the tsunami than the
Americans. But they didn't release ten thousand photographs of it all
as part of their normal practice. This sort of thing can pay off."

> In terms of audience, well, I'd say a quite decent part of it was
> parliament members and current or ancient ministers. Others being
> typically presidents of universities etc... In short, powerful people.

(...)

> Guys, I hope you all feel the power of what we are building. This is HUGE.

It's very easy to forget, sometimes. Thanks for reminding us that we
get taken seriously...

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


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


body:
On 05/10/06, Maury Markowitz <maury_markowitz at hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to be the good wikipedian and adding lots of on-topic refs, but I
> find editing them to be extremely difficult and error prone. IMHO the actual
> "body" of the ref should definitely not be placed in the article body, where
> it is now, as this makes reading the source difficult, to say the least.
> Click edit on Zune some time...
>
> Is there some alternate format? Can I use the <ref name=gizifa/> and then
> place the actual contents later in the article, like in the actual reference
> section? All of my attempts to date have failed.

cite.php currently requires you to have the first <ref
name="whatever"> tag contain the reference data, which can also pose a
problem if you're moving sections of an article around and  you
suddenly find all your references break. It might be worth filing a
bug request addressing this, which would go some way towards
alleviating your problem...

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


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 10/5/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> As well as being a detriment to us in that we only have a limited
> amount of resources to play with, this sort of thing can lead to
> interesting unintentional biases - a disproportionately high number of
> images on en.wp have uniformed US servicemen in them, often in the
> most unexpected contexts. I wonder if we can use this sort of thing to
> our advantage? "Look how many of the freely-available images of major
> humanitarian operations have American flags all over them. Yes, I know
> the French government gave more aid after the tsunami than the
> Americans. But they didn't release ten thousand photographs of it all
> as part of their normal practice. This sort of thing can pay off."
>

The problem is that most goverments hold the copyright on things of
significant value and as such are unlikely to release them directly
into the public domain. Most will consider it enough to allow use for
non comercail uses or for educational uses. Or will produce something
like the british crown copyright system.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/5/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wonder if we can use this sort of thing to
> > our advantage? "Look how many of the freely-available images of major
> > humanitarian operations have American flags all over them. Yes, I know
> > the French government gave more aid after the tsunami than the
> > Americans. But they didn't release ten thousand photographs of it all
> > as part of their normal practice. This sort of thing can pay off."
>
> The problem is that most goverments hold the copyright on things of
> significant value and as such are unlikely to release them directly
> into the public domain. Most will consider it enough to allow use for
> non comercail uses or for educational uses. Or will produce something
> like the british crown copyright system.

Yes, but there's no requirement for anyone to go as far as the US and
release *everything* regardless. It wouldn't be impossible to come up
with some kind of a system where copyright was disclaimed on routine
work and most publications, with the government retains the right to
assert copyright at its discretion where it felt it would be
beneficial to do so.

(I think I remember seeing a study once, prepared by HMSO, about the
amount of money made by the UK government through copyrighted
material. It'd be interesting to see what proportion of that comes in
from trivial things)

The trick is arranging a system where it isn't worth their while to
copyright all the photographs and reports churned out by government
workers ;-)

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


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Guys, I hope you all feel the power of what we are building. This is HUGE.

> It's very easy to forget, sometimes. Thanks for reminding us that we
> get taken seriously...

We're a top-20 website, and the only one that's run on a shoestring.
This is barely the beginning.

("Google? ... Oh, yes. We were going to use their ads but their
servers couldn't possibly send them fast enough.")

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 05/10/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem is that most goverments hold the copyright on things of
> significant value and as such are unlikely to release them directly
> into the public domain. Most will consider it enough to allow use for
> non comercail uses or for educational uses. Or will produce something
> like the british crown copyright system.

The results of this approach was, I thought, the precise point Anthere
was making to quite a lot of the members of the very popular
centre-right political party in France. After catching their attention
with 10% of French voters being Wikipedia users. (Must find out the UK
numbers.)

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention

body:
On 10/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/10/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 05/10/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > > Guys, I hope you all feel the power of what we are building. This is HUGE.
>
> > It's very easy to forget, sometimes. Thanks for reminding us that we
> > get taken seriously...
>
>
> We're a top-20 website, and the only one that's run on a shoestring.
> This is barely the beginning.
>
> ("Google? ... Oh, yes. We were going to use their ads but their
> servers couldn't possibly send them fast enough.")

We've leveled off in terms of growth (it's still there but not at the
rate it used to be). Unless we come up with something new (a way to
make commons effectively searchable might be one) we may have pretty
much reached our natural level of webpresence.

If that is the case it may be time to look to other areas. Mobile
phones. Book form. Provideing stock photos and information for non
profits (and to a degree profits).

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] UMP Convention


from_name: Platonides

body:
Have you checked the dates?
If they weren't redirects when the page table is dumped, and they were
redirected at the time the article gets into the articles dump... well, it
would only be dump desyncronization.

page.sql is 2006-09-15 04:53:37
pages-articles.xml.bz2 is 2006-09-15 20:51:41
pages-meta-current.xml.bz2 2006-09-16 01:00:59
pages-meta-history.xml.bz2 2006-09-17 03:51:10
pages-meta-history.xml.7z 2006-09-17 20:25:41

There're several days of desyncronization from table to articles, depending
on which dump you're looking at.

However, checking those pages, they seem quite old, so this shouldn't be the
case:  :S

Id 204 is Auteurs_par_ordre_chronologique  23 avril 2005 ? 10:59
Id 758 is Calcul_Parasitaire 28 ao?t 2003 ? 10:07
Id 917 is Dynastie Yi 31 ao?t 2006 ? 01:21

so it's more probably what Brion pointed of not having an space between
'#REDIRECT' and '[['


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Test Wikipedia

body:
"Justin Anthony Knapp" wrote:
> What happened to test.wikipedia.org? When? Why? Thanks.
> -JAK

Works for me.


subject: [Wikitech-l] routing problem in Amsterdam; world cut off

body:
$ ping en.wikipedia.org
PING rr.knams.wikimedia.org (145.97.39.155) 56(84) bytes of data.
>From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=1 Time
to live exceeded
>From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=2 Time
to live exceeded
>From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=3 Time
to live exceeded
>From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=4 Time
to live exceeded
>From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=5 Time
to live exceeded

Firefox comes back unable to resolve the name quicker than a quick thing!

- d.


body:
On 05/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> $ ping en.wikipedia.org
> PING rr.knams.wikimedia.org (145.97.39.155) 56(84) bytes of data.
> From AT-500.XSR01.Amsterdam1A.surf.net (145.145.80.5) icmp_seq=1 Time
> to live exceeded

And of course it's fine now.

- d.


from_name: David Alexander Russell

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

Delirium wrote:
> It may be which articles I read/edit, but I tend to see more of an
> Anglocentric POV rather than an US-centric one, which is perhaps
> unsurprising since more English-speakers than non-English-speakers edit
> the English Wikipedia.  In particular, having way more detail on the UK
> than there should be in a general article is nearly as common as having
> way more detail on the US than there should be (though not *quite* as
> common).  This is particularly true in anything related to legal
> topics---there's typically piles of text on the UK and the US legal
> systems, sometimes with a separate section about how Canada has its own
> take on the topic, followed by a token nod that other legal systems also
> exist and might do things differently.
>
> -Mark

People can only write about what they know about. Of course a Wikipedia
in a particular language will have a greater coverage of topics related
to countries which use that language - for example (it isn't the best
one, but it was quick to check) the dewiki article on Berlin is longer
than than enwiki article on Berlin. Just because we can't write good
articles about, say, the Russian legal system (which, in an ideal world,
we would have) doesn't mean that we should be upset that we have good
articles about, say, the English or Scottish or American or Canadian
legal systems.

A short-term solution would be to translate from other language wikis. A
machine translation (Google, Babelfish, whatever, take your pick) might
not be good enough to transfer an entire article from another language,
but it should be more than enough (at least if the person doing it is
vaguely familiar with the topic) to provide a couple of sentences to a
paragraph in an '... in the xx legal system' so that we have more than
the 'token nod that other legal systems also exist and might do things
differently' which you mention.

Cynical
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