subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem with Klingon Wikipedia

references:
<99jnu0oxpVB@erik_moeller> <40B6DF07.8000302@cranbrook.edu>
	<40B70F73.3040803@telus.net>

body:
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> [...] Wikipedia should not reduce itself to being solely a refuge for
academic
> elitists.

Well said,
the Webby was after all for "community".
Have you ever met a person who is
an active learner or user of Klingon?
I have. Does 'he' look any different than
the regular Joe? Nope. And yet his
choice of 'hobby' is the study of an
artificial language inspired by a
SciFi show... :-\
But then again, have you met folks
who are so devoted to the idea that
a free online encyclopedia where
anyone can edit just about anything
can actually exist? And how!

I'm not a supporter of the Klingon
language. But I would support the
right of those who use the Klingon
language to exist and maybe thrive.
Otherwise the term "community"
may not have much meaning, really.
What can one lose? But it will mean
some links and visits by those in the
Klingon language community who
will find Wikipedia a tolerant and
welcoming project, indeed, Google
is a good example of how it does
no harm to include, but to exclude
would definitely be harmful to our
community.

Sincerely,
Jay B.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
 --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I guess this is my last attempt to talk about
> copyright issues in this place before deciding that
> - copyright discussions are obviously not
> interesting *anyone* here

There are still relatively few subscribers on this
list. Maybe it just needs more advertising on the
different wikis to encourage increased participation?

> ...the idea that all wikipedias would follow
> the english rules afterwards

I hope no one does have that idea! Even the Simple
English Wikipedia doesn't follow all the same rules as
the English one so I can't imagine other languages
would be expected to.

> We are setting the foundation status. The current
> status are indicating that ALL OF OUR CONTENTS
> (wikimedia projects) will be distributed under the
> gfdl license.

Currently, all our projects are under the GFDL.
However, there is no reason future projects need to
be. The bylaws state that content will be distributed
"under a free documentation license such as the Free
Documentation License written by the Free Software
Foundation Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or
similar licensing scheme". These "similar licensing
schemes" need to be considered when starting up new
projects, as there are quite likely advantages to not
using the GFDL in some cases. See
http://www.wikitravel.org/en/article/Wikitravel:Why_Wikitravel_isn't_GFDL
for example.

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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list: wikimedia-l


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] proposed policy change - allow
	*certain* CC-licensed images on Wikipedia...

body:
 --- Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
> > I wish to propose that images available under
> *some* of the Creative
> > Commons licenses, that offer equivalent (or even
> more permissive) use
> > than the GNU FDL, be permitted to be used in
> Wikipedia.

If we accept fair use images, I see no reason not to
accept CC-licensed ones as well. We already have a lot
of images used under various CC licenses. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=MediaWiki:Cc-by-sa
for example. Correct tagging of images used under
these licenses is very important so that reusers who
want only GFDL content can easily sort them out from
the rest. Adding a message such as {{cc-by-sa}} is the
easiest way of doing this. See [[Wikipedia:Image
copyright tags]] for more details.

Angela
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: PhatNav: "A Wikipedia"

body:
 --- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Only the very last line gives the
> final information.
> Am I the only one who thinks this is almost
> deliberately obfuscated?

It's far from ideal, but they do at least mention
Wikipedia and the GFDL, and they provide a link to the
article. There are other sites listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copies_of_Wikipedia_content_(low_degree_of_compliance)
which don't even manage to do that. It would be useful
if more people could contact the sites listed there to
convince them to better adhere to the GFDL.

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

____________________________________________________________
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Is patch-user-realname.sql being run?

body:
So, I'm guessing that the mediawiki servers don't use the in-place
installer for upgrades.

If so, there's a hairy bug somehow, since the user_real_name field
seems to be missing from some Wikipediae, per the discussion on meta:

      http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Vietnamese_Wikipedia

Any suggestions? I'd like to make it possible for people to, say,
login or create user accounts.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:05 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

> I guess this is my last attempt to talk about
> copyright issues in this place before deciding that
>
> - copyright discussions are obviously not interesting
> *anyone* here, so are not worth trying to be discussed
> since it raises absolutely no interest whatsoever
>
> - or that are not to be discussed in any other place
> than on the english wikipedia list (see Tomos
> discussion about changing our copyright license,
> discussion that is occuring in another place, with the
> idea that all wikipedias would follow the english
> rules afterwards)
>
> So, I'll ask just another time to be certain.
>
> I must say that I am currently very disappointed by
> lack of cooperation on the matter, because I do not
> think my question is very difficult for those working
> in the wikimedia projects other than wikipedia.
>
> We are setting the foundation status. The current
> status are indicating that ALL OF OUR CONTENTS
> (wikimedia projects) will be distributed under the
> gfdl license.

It doesn't say that, ant :

"WF have contents which are not protected by the provisions regulating the
the intellectual property, if such is the case freely distributed under the
conditions of a free licence of documentation of the type of the Free
Documentation License written by Free Software Foundation Inc, and in
particular its European branch with http://www.fsfeurope.org/"

No classical copyright, and a possibility of *a* free licence *of the type*
of GFDL. So that I can't see how it would be possibly wider. Did we read the
same text ? :-)

villy


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Anthere-
> We are setting the foundation status. The current
> status are indicating that ALL OF OUR CONTENTS
> (wikimedia projects) will be distributed under the
> gfdl license.

> Should we do that or not ?

No, please do not. We should have the option to decide for any new
Wikimedia project whether to use the FDL or another license.

Take the Wikinews project as an example. If successful, Wikinews will not
only compete with CNN but also with AP and Reuters. That means that
newspapers, magazines and websites may be interested in using our content
instead of the expensive AP feed. But the FDL with its long license text
and complicated terms is not very practical for that. There is even the
question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their
content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be
more practical in this instance.

I think we should keep our options open, for new and existing projects. So
I would instead prefer a phrase like

"All text on Wikimedia projects will be under a license which allows free
distribution and modification by anyone. The image copyright policies are
set by individual projects."

Regards,

Erik


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Greetings

body:
On 05/29/04 03:04, Timwi wrote:
> Geoffrey Burling wrote:

>> You will butt heads with other editors. You will have your writing
>> changed,
>> sometimes not for the better. You will discover that someone knows
>> things you
>> don't. You will sometimes feel that Wikipedia's not worth it, & want
>> to abandon
>> it to the trolls, fools & wackos who keep appearing here.

> I keep hearing this from a lot of people. Why has this never happened to
> me? I seriously wonder.

I discovered my crankmail went down in volume notably when I disabled
email being sent from my user page. My email address is really easy to
find, but wikicranks don't seem to be particularly persistent.

- d.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki editing for databases

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> 1. I've been working on a scheme to handle WP's thousands of
>> bibliographic references. The idea is to have a sort of combination of
>> BibTex and the Image namespace; each referenced work gets an entry
>> with a name, you fill in fields of the entry, then just mention the
>> name as something like [[Ref:Arnett2001]] in articles and the software
>> puts out formatted author/title/ISBN etc. However, the ability to
>> format consistently depends on the reference's data being stored in
>> database style, while still being available for editors to fix up.
>
>
> The idea is interesting, and the bibliography on many articles is weak
> to say the least.  Developing the data table will be the challenge.
> There may not be a conflict with Arnett2001 but [[Ref:Smith2001]]
> could apply to nearly any topic.
>
I figure on using something like the Bibtex fields, because they're
pretty well-developed. Titling of references is indeed an issue;
redirs and disambigs will likely be necessary.

>> 2. Wiktionary. Dictionary entries are database entries, not free
>> text. There should be a popup menu to add/choose the language for
>> which you're writing the definition, a list of definition numbers that
>> can be xref'ed properly, popups for parts of speech, and so on.
>
>
> That's the simplistic view of dictionaries.  The definition numbers
> should be soft numbered to allow for the insertion of additional
> definitions.  Some of it may work.  Understanding the definition of a
> word and all its many connotations is never just a black and white
> process.  One of the Wiktionarians who felt that Shakespeare quotes
> were out of date for understanding the meanings of words has
> introduced a list of words appearing in the Sherlock Holmes stories.
> I can envision eventual links between Wiktionary and Wikisource
> (perhaps the other projects too) that could give examples of actual
> usage.
>
I didn't mean to downplay the complexity, just wanted to observe
that much of the Wiktionary gruntwork with sections and subsections
amounts to an attempt to maintain a collection of data tables by hand.
That gruntwork takes away from content creation cycles, just as the
use of raw html instead of Wikisyntax would soak up a bunch of
time unnecessarily. Database format would also allow us to "skin"
Wiktionary entries into the more familiar form, where parts of speech
are abbreviated, etc.

>> 3. "Wikistamp". As part of my philatelic obsession, I've built up a
>> database of worldwide postage stamp data.  It now includes info on
>> about 150,000 types - about half of all in existence - but the details
>> are often incomplete, and wiki seems like a good way both to publish
>> what exists and to enlist others in filling in, plus links to WP could
>> have info on the stamps' subjects. However, I've only been able to do
>> this singlehandedly because I have custom C code that does extensive
>> validity checking - it knows that "ltolgrn" is a valid shorthand for
>> the color "light olive grenn" but "grnollt" is not, that "1sh6p" is
>> only valid for UK stamps before 1971, how to apply ranges of defaults,
>> and so forth. A wikified version of this data would need to have the
>> rules continue to be enforced by software.
>
>
> This one is a very interesting idea.  I've thought about it before.
> I've thought about it in terms of a whole new cataloging system that
> could challenge the proprietary and closely protected system that
> Scott uses in North America.  This would involve a three level system
> that would be suitable for beginning, intermediate and advanced
> collectors.  A Wikibook stamp catalog maybe?

What I have is indeed a whole new catalog system, built "clean" from
multiple sources, not using anybody else's numbering system. I could
use it with the current MediaWiki to make a Wikibook stamp catalog
about a day. (The long list of postal entities in WP was just a
dump of all the countries in the database.) But stamp data is complex
to manage - consider Armenian overprints or 1940s China - and a plain
text dump would be corrupted within days of being subjected to the
editing process. If you're interested, I can send you more detail;
the only people to have looked at it so far are stamp dealers who are
bemused by seeing a world catalog / want list that fits on a Palm...

Stan


from_name: Martin Harper

body:
On 29 May 2004 at 14:09, Ulrich Fuchs wrote:

> It's a pity that we
> can't change the Wikipedia licence any more. We would need something
> that would allow to copy more freely within the wikis, something which
> is more suitable for collaborative writing. However if the content is
> to be taken "outside", authors should be named as indicated by the
> version history.
>
> Uli

One partial solution is to have contributors grant a license to license under the GFDL.
We have a modest proposal at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Submission_Standards ...

First, "by contributing to Wikipedia you grant Wikipedia users a perpetual, royalty-free,
non-exclusive right and license to edit your text on Wikipedia. You agree that your
submission may be changed, modified, edited, moved, extended, deleted or combined
by subsequent users of Wikipedia."

Second, "by contributing to Wikipedia, you grant the Wikimedia Foundation a perpetual,
royalty-free, non-exclusive, right and license to publish your submission, before or after
being modified as described above, under the GNU Free Documentation License
(GFDL)."

That doesn't permit free copying of text between wikipedia and its sister projects, but I
expect addresses some concerns. It's basically how we treat submissions already - a
formalisation of "edited mercilessly and redistributed at will".

-Martin


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikitech-l] I want to generalize the displayed default system
	messages

body:
There are still way too many Wikipedia-specific references (such as the use of
"article" and "encyclopedia").

Also, this bug report:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_1.3_comments_and_bug_reports#Wikibooks_title_bar

brought to my attention that 'MediaWiki' is being used as some kind of stand in
for a generic project name, leading to such absurd message as:

'MediaWiki is powered by MediaWiki, an open source wiki engine.'

The default messages in the below list each have at least one 'MediaWiki' that
needs to be changed to {{SITENAME}}:

*[[MediaWiki:Aboutwikipedia]]
*[[MediaWiki:Anonymous]]
*[[MediaWiki:Booksourcetext]]
*[[MediaWiki:Copyrightpagename]]
*[[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]]
*[[MediaWiki:Defemailsubject]]
*[[MediaWiki:Loginprompt]]
*[[MediaWiki:Loginsuccess]]
*[[MediaWiki:Logouttext]]
*[[MediaWiki:Nocookieslogin]]
*[[MediaWiki:Nocookiesnew]]
*[[MediaWiki:Pagetitle]]
*[[MediaWiki:Passwordremindertitle]]
*[[MediaWiki:Passwordremindertext]]
*[[MediaWiki:Poweredby]]
*[[MediaWiki:Searchingwikipedia]]
*[[MediaWiki:Searchresulttext]]
*[[MediaWiki:Sitestatstext]]
*[[MediaWiki:Sitetitle]]
*[[MediaWiki:Siteuser]]
*[[MediaWiki:Siteusers]]
*[[MediaWiki:Wikititlesuffix]]
*[[MediaWiki:Welcomecreation]]

Could somebody either email me the current Language.php (or whatever is being
used for this now) or provide me a link to it?

I would look for it myself but http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ isn't working
right now (installing a wiki there perhaps wasn't the greatest of ideas).

I should be done with the needed mods an hour or two after I get the file, so
this should not stop any development (assuming somebody with CVS access
installs the file soon after I submit it to this list).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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list: wiktionary-l

from_name: cookfire at softhome.net

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Case - Sensitivity for Wiktionaries

body:
Hi,

A few months ago I asked a developer on the chat channel whether case
sensitivity in the links would be possible to implement. He said it would be
way to complicated to do so. Especially considering that a lot would be
broken.
That's when I started fervently to add an ''example'' under the part of
speech headers. This seemed redundant at first, but it was quickly accepted
nonetheless. In fact, I think we are very happy with this solution and there
is no reason why the German Wiktionary couldn't solve the problem in the
same way. The English Wiktionary also describes German words and that's part
of the reason this solution was adopted. The software was initially written
for an encyclopedia and we got to use it as it was. I must say, I like the
solution as it elegantly makes the pages self-contained.
So now, the story is, that it would be possible to make things
case-sensitive. As I said, a few months ago, it was me asking the very same
question as, obviously, case matters for a dictionary. Not only for a German
version of it. If it does happen, I'm sure the English Wiktionary will be
adapted pretty quickly (It's relatively easy to write a script to achieve
it, exactly thanks to the solution we started using). Somebody needs to
write it though, and I would rather write a script to copy entries from one
Wiktionary to another, once I get the time to write it. (I'll start from the
pyWikiBot scripts)
If this is a vote though, I tend to be against it, at this moment in time.
What was a workaround for a problem we struggled with, has become an elegant
solution. Behind the example there is room for the word gender, if
appliccable, and then there is room for plurals and diminutives in the case
of Nouns and comparatives and superlatives in the case of Adjectives.
Conjugations of verbs and further flexion of words in languages like Polish,
Russian etc. go under their own heading in table format.

Polyglot

Member of Linux MandrakeClub
http://www.mandrakeclub.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Greetings

body:
On 05/29/04 14:32, Rick wrote:
> */David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>/* wrote:

>>     I discovered my crankmail went down in volume notably when I disabled
>>     email being sent from my user page. My email address is really easy to
>>     find, but wikicranks don't seem to be particularly persistent.

>   I did that, and people complain on my Talk page that it's an attempt
> at avoiding conversation with them.

"WELL SPOTTED!!"

Perhaps that's insufficiently loving.

I do point it out on [[User:David Gerard]], FWIW ...

(You nice people are welcome to email me. It's *those* people who aren't.)

- d.


from_name: Ronny Raschkowan

body:
Hello.

On the german Wiktionary, we have discussed about the case sensitivity
for our Wiktionary and the purpose was voted pro.

I asked TimStarling if it would be possible to convert then the de:
Wiktionary to case-sensitivity, that means to  turn the automatic
capitalisation off. He said, he wouldn't do that for only one
Wiktionary, but for all at a time.

So I went here to ask you, what you would think about an case
sensitivity for _all_ Wiktionaries. Sure, there would be a huge of
broken links, but as the Wikis are still little and only have a few
articles, it is not a big problem to repair this. Except the en:
Wiktionary, of course, as a special case, who would need long to be
converted/ to  repair the broken links.

Why all this: Most of latin languages have most words with lowercase
letters (ex.: german, french, english, ....). In the Wikipedia, it is
not a big problem to have only uppercase letters. But in a dictionary,
it's very important to have and to see a / the difference between upper-
and lowercase words.

What do you think about that idea? Should it be voted on all the local
Wiktionaries or only discussed here? Which shouldn't be converted?

Sincerly yours,
Ronny Raschkowan
[[u:Fire]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Case - Sensitivity for Wiktionaries

body:
Hello.

On the german Wiktionary [1], we have discussed about the case
sensitivity for our Wiktionary and the purpose was voted pro.

I asked TimStarling if it would be possible to convert then the de:
Wiktionary to case-sensitivity, that means to  turn the automatic
capitalisation off. He said, he wouldn't do that for only one
Wiktionary, but for all at a time.

So I went here to ask you, what you would think about an case
sensitivity for _all_ Wiktionaries. Sure, there would be a huge of
broken links, but as the Wikis are still little and only have a few
articles, it is not a big problem to repair this. Except the en:
Wiktionary, of course, as a special case, who would need long to be
converted/ to  repair the broken links.

Why all this: Most of latin languages have most words with lowercase
letters (ex.: german, french, english, ....). In the Wikipedia, it is
not a big problem to have only uppercase letters. But in a dictionary,
it is very important to have a difference between upper- and lowercase
words.

What do you think about that idea? Should it be voted on all the local
Wiktionaries? Which shouldn't be converted?

Sincerly yours,
Ronny Raschkowan
[[u:Fire]]

--
[1]: http://de.wiktionary.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki:copyright

body:
 --- Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro> wrote:
> ...I think it would be better if administrators
> were able to direct users to translated versions
> of the license.

Any sysop on the Romanian Wikipedia can change this.
They just need to edit
http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyright and
overwrite the $1 with whatever they like. There is no
technical reason the $1 has to stay as part of the
message.

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Wikinews would have two primary goals:
> * summarizing news
> * original reporting
>
> Wikipedia does none of the latter, so the only potential for redundancy is
> with news summarizing, currently done on Wikipedia on the [[current
> events]] page.

It also happens in actual articles. [[Nick Berg]] and [[Abu Ghraib prisoner
abuse reports]] for example. But I do see a distinction: Articles on Wikipedia
would synthesize the whole topic while Wikinews articles would just cover the
breaking news on that topic. However I'm skeptical that the average user will
grep this distinction, resulting in a content fork for recent history.
Wikipedia's ability to be up-to-date is one of the most cited good things about
us and we should be "very" careful not to jeopardize that.

Dividing recent history update work between two projects does not seem to be a
good idea - unless true Wikijournalism develops. If and when we get a problem
with people giving first hand reports, then we can seriously think about
starting Wikinews, IMO. I'm sure that will happen someday, but I don't think
that will be a problem until Wikipedia.org is in the top 100 or so list of
websites on the Internet. We should by then have dozens of Wikimedians in each
large city of the world and thus have a large potential pool of journalists on
the ground.

>...
> > But placing Wikinews text under a
> > license that is incompatible with Wikipedia is way over the top.
>
> You appear to be under the misconception that a license different from the
> FDL would automatically mean license incompatibility. While this is, to
> some extent, true in the direction ''FDL text'' => ''text in another
> license'' (because the FDL requires that all derivative works are FDL-
> licensed), it is not necessarily true in the direction ''text in another
> license'' => ''FDL text''.

Free content is not free when it cannot be freely copied back and forth between
the source and the derivative work.

> ...
> This specifically addresses your concern of using Wikinews content to
> update Wikipedia articles. Given that Wikinews is not intended to be an
> encyclopedia, I think that background information from Wikipedia is best
> provided using links, which is not a problem.

This would be different from a great many news articles I read - the good ones
always include background information.

> ....
> I think you overestimate the flexibility of the Free Software Foundation
> :-).

Jimmy already mentioned he was going to have a meeting with them on this topic.

> Of course the "any higher version number" clause of the FDL allows us
> to make some improvements in future versions of the license, but these
> improvements depend entirely on how much the FSF is willing to accommodate
> our position. Given that the FSF has a significant number of documents
> licensed under the FDL which would be affected by such a change, the
> resistance to drastic changes - which are needed to address the problems
> of the FDL - will be strong. Keep in mind that the FDL was originally
> designed for print documents, and that existing print documents by the
> FSF, if they do not refer to a specific version number of the FDL, will
> also be affected by any changes.

That is why I am proposing the creation of a GNU Free Content License that
invariant-free GNU FDL text can be migrated to. Then the only change in the GNU
FDL 2.0 that would need to be made is a clause stating that:

"Any document licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License version 2.0 or
any later version that does not contain Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts,
or Back-Cover Texts, can be licensed under the GNU Free Content License version
1.0 or any later version."

And the GNU FCL would be a stripped down and simplified rewrite of the GNU FDL
that would not have any provision for the much-maligned Invariant Sections,
Front-Cover Texts, or Back-Cover Texts and would be compatible with the
Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (along with other changes).

> Nevertheless, this is of course a road which we shall travel. Its mere
> existence should, however, not preclude us from contemplating the
> exploration of other paths.

Nothing wrong with exploring new options but old objections will still keep
coming up and will often still be relevant.

>...
> By the definition of the Free Software Foundation, that is correct.
> However, that definition is not the only one. In fact, most people have an
> entirely different understanding of "free content."

I think it would be fair to say that most people don't understand the concept
at all.

> Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution-
> only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of
> content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people
> as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?"  The possibility
> that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia
> projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

The point is to expose as many people as possible to the content, yes. But that
can only be done by having it under a free content license. If we release into
the public domain, then work on the content gets forked and improvements made
to the forks can not be back-ported to the original. Then, unless the person
tracks down each version fork, they are exposed to *less* content.

> Make no mistake - the originally free content will always remain free in
> both instances.

I'm thinking of the larger picture here.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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body:
In my mind when I wrote it, it doesn't limit anything. Now my wording can be
improved if it's unclear or ambiguous.
Villy

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 3:21 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

>
> --- Jean-Christophe Chazalette
> <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Anthere" <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> > To: <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> > Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:05 PM
> > Subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of
> > wikimedia projects
> >
> >
> > > I guess this is my last attempt to talk about
> > > copyright issues in this place before deciding
> > that
> > >
> > > - copyright discussions are obviously not
> > interesting
> > > *anyone* here, so are not worth trying to be
> > discussed
> > > since it raises absolutely no interest whatsoever
> > >
> > > - or that are not to be discussed in any other
> > place
> > > than on the english wikipedia list (see Tomos
> > > discussion about changing our copyright license,
> > > discussion that is occuring in another place, with
> > the
> > > idea that all wikipedias would follow the english
> > > rules afterwards)
> > >
> > > So, I'll ask just another time to be certain.
> > >
> > > I must say that I am currently very disappointed
> > by
> > > lack of cooperation on the matter, because I do
> > not
> > > think my question is very difficult for those
> > working
> > > in the wikimedia projects other than wikipedia.
> > >
> > > We are setting the foundation status. The current
> > > status are indicating that ALL OF OUR CONTENTS
> > > (wikimedia projects) will be distributed under the
> > > gfdl license.
> >
> > It doesn't say that, ant :
> >
> > "WF have contents which are not protected by the
> > provisions regulating the
> > the intellectual property, if such is the case
> > freely distributed under the
> > conditions of a free licence of documentation of the
> > type of the Free
> > Documentation License written by Free Software
> > Foundation Inc, and in
> > particular its European branch with
> > http://www.fsfeurope.org/"
> >
> > No classical copyright, and a possibility of *a*
> > free licence *of the type*
> > of GFDL. So that I can't see how it would be
> > possibly wider. Did we read the
> > same text ? :-)
> >
> > villy
>
> We read the same text but do not understand it the
> same way. Does this allow contents under public
> domain, does it allow contents over other types of
> free licenses, does it allow contents under fair use
> and so on ?
>
> In short, does it limit our future abilities to
> distribute content depending on future choices ?
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
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from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feed for current events?

body:
Rad Geek schrieb:

> <http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss>), and is
> much more flexible.

Thank you for this link.

> Why? Well, because
> delivery  mechanisms for syndicated feeds are currently *terrible*.

This is not an argument. Since there is no dynamic content, putting it
somewhere else is quite easy. I could host those files, htat's not a prolby.

> WikiPedia has  enough load-related performance problems as it is;

Wikipedias fine servers would not be affected.

Yours,
Mathias

--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: RSS feed for current events?

body:
Rad Geek wrote:
> On Sat, 29 May 2004 11:16:28 +0200, Mathias Schindler
> <neubau at presroi.de>  wrote:
>
>> At de.wikipedia, we are using the MediaWiki namespace for things like
>> current events.
>
>
>> Has anyone tried to export those parts into a rss/rdf file, i.e.
>> [[MediaWiki:Hauptseite Aktuelle Ereignisse]] on de or [[MediaWiki:In
>> the  news]] on en?
>
>
>> I think there might be some useful purpose for this file for external
>> web sites and this could also help wikipedia.
>
>
> [... de-lurking, since I have worked on various RSS and Atom
> syndication  projects before.]
>
> 1. Not to start a holy war or anything, but if you are going to be
> syndicating, you really should use Atom. Most major newsfeed readers
> support it; those that don't yet, most likely will soon, and in the
> interim people can run scripts which convert Atom to RSS using a simple
> XSLT transformation. Atom is *more* flexible, has a single standard
> (rather than 9 different, ad hoc, and incompatible versions--see
> <http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss>), and is
> much more flexible.
>
> 2. That said, you may very well *not* want to do any syndication on
> WikiPedia at the moment, whatever the format. Why? Well, because
> delivery  mechanisms for syndicated feeds are currently *terrible*.
> WikiPedia has  enough load-related performance problems as it is;
> imagine the same  situation, except with a significant portions of your
> users reloading one  page over and over again every 10 minutes to see if
> something has changed  (most newsreaders *default* to polling somewhere
> around every 5-15  minutes).
>
> -C

On fr; there is now both RSS and Atom...

Is that risky in terms of load ?


subject: [Foundation-l] A question to all board candidates...

body:
 --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote: ...
> A user from a rather minor wikipedia contact the
> foundation mailing list, to ask for help on setting
> a local association ...
> Question : what do you do ?

I would suggest she read [[m:Starting up a local
Wikimedia chapter]].

Oh... except that page doesn't exist yet. :)

It would be great if those who have been working on
starting up the French and German associations could
help to create such a page. It could be a record of
their experiences and a collection of advice for all
future users wanting to set up chapters in their own
local area.

I don't yet know how much influence the board will
need to have in setting these up. Should they have
rules on exactly what the associations are allowed to
do? How can these be enforceable? Perhaps a discussion
on this list on what the relationship between board
and association should be might help such a page to
develop. The [[m:Starting up a local Wikimedia
chapter]] page also needs to include the Foundation's
principles and advice on what associations need to do
to meet those. How detailed should these be? I would
not like to see the board have an undue amount of
influence over these. I see it more as something to
support them where needed rather than being there to
determine exactly what a chapter should do.

Have the people working on the French and German ones
got any views on whether board input would have helped
them? Or is it felt that the board should just be
there to officially approve them after the details
have been finalised on the local Wikimedia project?

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
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references:
<40B854EC.4040907@presroi.de>
	<opr8rlg9zs6og2kp@smtp.1and1.com>	<40B8A09D.1020107@presroi.de>
	<opr8rn3lca6og2kp@smtp.1and1.com>

body:
Rad Geek schrieb:

> How would users be directed to the right server? Would they just go to
> the  front page of the data that the feed is syndicating, and find a
> link to  the (offsite) URI? Or would there be some other mechanism?

This reply here from me might reveal me as the greatest greenhorn in IT
world ever but I wasn't thinking of load balancing at all. I have some
gigabyte of traffic per month to spend and some hard disk space and the
feed file from current headlinews would be less than 5 KByte. A refresh
rate of 5-15 Minutes does make use of the HTTP 304 status code, doesn't it?

Yours,
Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Gutza

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki:copyright

body:
The current copyright notice reads "Content is available under $1." and
can be localized. $1 however can't be localized, it's invariably "GNU Free Documentation
License".

While I agree this is a touchy issue, I think it would be better if
administrators (or whetever you call people who perform the interface
localization these days) were able to direct users to translated
versions of the license. Please bear in mind that GNU does not link to
any translations which are not prefaced with a disclaimer which states
that only the English text of the license is valid and can bind users,
so that's not an issue.

Why I personally would prefer to point to the localized version of the
license in the Romanian Wikipedia is because the "semi-official but
unofficial" (as in "linked to by GNU") Romanian version of the GFDL
license was translated and is hosted on... the Romanian Wikipedia (see
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/copyleft.html#translationsGFDL).

Is this somehow possible? If not, will it be in the future?

Thanks,
Gutza


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki:copyright

body:
Angela wrote:

> --- Gutza <gutza at moongate.ro> wrote:
>
>
>>...I think it would be better if administrators
>>were able to direct users to translated versions
>>of the license.
>>
>>
>
>Any sysop on the Romanian Wikipedia can change this.
>They just need to edit
>http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Copyright and
>overwrite the $1 with whatever they like. There is no
>technical reason the $1 has to stay as part of the
>message.
>
>
Technical - no, I agree. But I tend not to override developer's logic
without raising the issue, since I expect they do things the way they do
for a reason. Anyway, I will follow your advice, and will also follow
this thread -- in case there is some esoteric legal reason for this,
then I'll revert.

Thanks,
Gutza


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Who is this editorial group?

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_22/b3885044.htm:
>
>> WIKIPEDIA IS ONE of the more remarkable projects on the Web. The
>> online encyclopedia (www.wikipedia.com) is the work of 6,000-odd
[cut]
> Uh, who is this "editorial group"?  This wouldn't disturb me so much
> if I hadn't sent a letter to another columnist recently about almost
> the same language.  I supposed the WikiWay is just too hard for some
> people to believe, but who is this "editorial group"?
>
> Peter

The also think, like many other journalists, that Wikipedia is a .com

I would be funny if users who go to www.wikipedia.com get a big white
page whit the message;

"Wikipedia is a .ORG, not a .COM (and proud of it)"

"You will be redirected in 10 seconds to www.wikipedia.org"

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia PUNT be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: phil hunt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: bans and vandalism (was Wik)

body:
On Thu, 27 May 2004 20:08:11 +0100, Martin Harper
<martin at myreddice.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>A) A ban of one month lasts one month, regardless of attempts at evasion.
>C) Evading a ban is itself a bannable offence - doing so automatically triples the ban
>length

Aren't these rules contradictory?

--
"It's easier to find people online who openly support the KKK than
people who openly support the RIAA" -- comment on Wikipedia
(Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk)


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need your advice!

body:
--- Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net> wrote:

> I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I
> can't
> make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't
> have
> to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but
> writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!

absolutely unrelated to the subject:

Please, please, native english writers: a lot of people who read
these lists are from foreign countries/languages. Keep things simple,
and don't use strange words or constructs just to be cute.

Thank you in advance.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
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from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Locked

body:
On Sat, 29 May 2004 19:51:24 +0200, K Forstner <kurt.forstner at chello.at> wrote:
>
> It's nice to see people discuss all sorts of things here on the mailing
> list, but have I again missed out on something essential such as when the
> database is going to be unlocked (and what the "software upgrade" is all
> about)? All I found -- and I had to try to edit something before I
> discovered the message -- is the text below. How long is it going to take?
> All day? All week?

In case you haven't noticed by now (and I don't see any replies here
yet) it's all done now. The most visible new feature is the new
MonoBook skin, though categorizations and revamped templates are also
of note. Someone will post a URL with the details before long, I
assume...


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon Wikipedia

in_reply_to:
<99joShiCpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "28 May
	2004 19:43:00 +0200")

body:
>>>>> "EM" == Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> writes:

    >> I don't see what a vote there would accomplish.  The criterion
    >> for acceptance should be the presence of a significant minority
    >> in support.

    EM> We are not a wiki hosting provider.

Amen. It's just too easy to start a wiki on your own. There are a few
Wiki farm providers who give free or paid service.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel - http://wikitravel.org/en/
The free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide


subject: [Wikitech-l] Language.php

body:
>Hello Daniel,
>
>You can get the lastest language.php at:
>http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/languages/
>
>click on the version number to get the full file content (1.225 for en:
>actually).
>
>Please note that web based cvs is not refreshed as soon as a developer
>make a modification, but it should give you a good base.
>
>:)

Thanks. Attached is the new language.php. If the email system does not allow
that, then the complete text is here:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Daniel_Mayer/sandbox

Somebody already changed all the inappropriate uses of 'MediaWiki' so I just
went ahead and did the same thing for inappropriate uses of 'article', changing
it to 'page' (this was the most often fix since the functions described work
the same no matter what namespace the page is in) or 'content page' (in the few
cases where a distinction between a main namespace page and a non-main
namespace page is needed). Alternatively, 'content page' could be changed to
'main namespace', but that term seems a bit too techy for me. What would really
help is setting up a {{mainnamespacename}} variable so that each project can
name its own content page (entry, article, module, whatever) and have that be
consistent throughout the wiki.

I also caught a couple of uses of 'encyclopedia' that I nixed (either deleting
it or replacing it with 'project' as appropriate).

Could somebody with CVS access commit this?

-- Daniel Mayer

PS And yes, I agree to license these edits under the GNU GPL.

__________________________________
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from_name: K Forstner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Locked

body:
It's nice to see people discuss all sorts of things here on the mailing
list, but have I again missed out on something essential such as when the
database is going to be unlocked (and what the "software upgrade" is all
about)? All I found -- and I had to try to edit something before I
discovered the message -- is the text below. How long is it going to take?
All day? All week?

"The database is currently locked to new entries and other modifications,
probably for routine database maintenance, after which it will be back to
normal. The administrator who locked it offered this explanation:

The database is temporarily locked for a software upgrade"

KF


subject: [Wikitech-l] Language.php

body:
>Hello Daniel,
>
>You can get the lastest language.php at:
>http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/languages/
>
>click on the version number to get the full file content (1.225 for en:
>actually).
>
>Please note that web based cvs is not refreshed as soon as a developer
>make a modification, but it should give you a good base.
>
>:)

Thanks. My last email has not posted yet, so I assume including the .php file
as an attachment caused a filter to do its thing. Here is a link to the
complete text:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Daniel_Mayer/sandbox&action=edit

Somebody already changed all the inappropriate uses of 'MediaWiki' so I just
went ahead and did the same thing for inappropriate uses of 'article', changing
it to 'page' (this was the most often fix since the functions described work
the same no matter what namespace the page is in) or 'content page' (in the few
cases where a distinction between a main namespace page and a non-main
namespace page is needed). Alternatively, 'content page' could be changed to
'main namespace', but that term seems a bit too techy for me. What would really
help is setting up a {{mainnamespacename}} variable so that each project can
name its own content page (entry, article, module, whatever) and have that be
consistent throughout the wiki.

I also caught a couple of uses of 'encyclopedia' that I nixed (either deleting
it or replacing it with 'project' as appropriate).

Could somebody with CVS access commit this?

-- Daniel Mayer

PS And yes, I agree to license these edits under the GNU GPL.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Friends.  Fun.  Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger.
http://messenger.yahoo.com/


from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Re: Case - Sensitivity for Wiktionaries

body:
 Ronny Raschkowan wrote:

> I asked TimStarling if it would be possible to convert then the de:
> Wiktionary to case-sensitivity, that means to  turn the automatic
> capitalisation off.

 Are we talking about full case-sensitivity (User:Aa being a different
 account that User:aa; special:recentchanges not found, etc) or simply
 about case-preservation in titles?

 Would the change mean that the already existing articles stay capitalised,
 or would they be converted to lower case? Would the existing links be
 converted as well?

> What do you think about that idea? Should it be voted on all the local
> Wiktionaries or only discussed here? Which shouldn't be converted?

 At this moment there's enough confusion with 1.3 intruduction and fixing;
 perhaps we should wait with the case-sensitivity issue until the new interface
 problems are resolved and there's time to deal with the situations the new case
 treatment might cause?

--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki
 (Polish Wiktionary, 6100 pages, 5600 entires)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Klingon Wikipedia

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> However, given that all notable arguments have already been exchanged, I
> think the best way to go about this is to simply start a vote on Meta on
> whether we want a Klingon Wikipedia. I suggest you do it.

There was never a vote on Meta on whether to start a Wikipedia in
German, Polish, Swedish or Norwegian.  They were just started, and
then it turned out that they attracted volunteers.  I fail to see the
harm in starting a Klingon Wikipedia.  If it fails to attract
volunteers, it is no worse than a Wikipedia in Latvian (96 articles)
or Volapuk (44 articles) that also fail to attract volunteers. Nobody
says Wikipedia as a whole is a fiasco because it has a Lativan
"encyclopedia" that only contains 96 articles.  (For comparison, the
Kashubian Wikipedia started on April 1st already has 130 articles,
apparently written by 3 volunteers.) On the other hand, if the Klingon
Wikipedia does attract volunteers, it can develop into a unique
resource for people who are interested in that language, just like the
Esperanto Wikipedia has become.

In this case I don't want a vote, so I guess I'm "not a democrat",
right?

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


from_name: Marcos Cramer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Swahili interface

body:
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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Swahili interface

body:
"Marcos Cramer" <marcos.cramer at balliol.oxford.ac.uk> schrieb:
> I want to translate the interface of the Swahili interface, and for this purpose have already translated parts of LanguageSw.php. However, I don't know how I get it uploaded. Can someone please clarify to me, what I have to do in order to get the translation uploaded, or where I should ask for help.
> Or is it possible to translate the interface using the MediaWiki namespaces? How do I edit the protected pages though?

I don't really know what is the preferred way to work with the language file,
but: Yes, you can do it with the MediaWiki namespace (with a few exceptions).
To edit the protected pages, you must become a sysop on the Swahili Wikipedia.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki editing for databases

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Has anybody thought about wiki databases? By these I mean applying the
> wiki idea to data that is most naturally organized as a database
> rather than as plain text. In practice, I visualize the edit page as
> resembling a list of smaller text boxes, and then having one or more
> display formatters to build a readable page from the raw database
> entry.

Already today, a Wikipedia page can contain subsections that are
edited independently.  What you suggest is in a way an extension of
this, with individual database fields being editable.  Another way to
solve the user interface is to mine (parse) database fields out of the
plain text.  This is already done for [[links]], but could be done for
other kinds of syntax as well.  I have a wiki with a reg.exp that
parses dates written in plain text (January 17, 1948) without having
to put them in brackets.  The dates found by this reg.exp are put in a
database table that can be used to extract timelines across articles.

Apart from plain text wiki articles and the database tables you are
talking about, a third data structure is the spread sheet.  Each wiki
page could be like an Excel sheet with values and formulas in a grid.
Wiki links could reference values from cells on the same page or other
pages, e.g. [[C,5]] * 17 + [[budget:A,3]].

There are a lot of new ways to try.  Too few are doing this.

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


from_name: Pochung Chen

subject: [Wikitech-l] About zh-cfr.wikipedia.org

body:
*First of all, we would like to thank you for the creation of min-nan
wikipedia. We have begon to do the interface translation.

*The users on holopedia, http://www.holopedia.net/
, a wikipedia like project for min-nan language, have decided to migrate
to the newly created min-nan wikipedia. We would like to transfer the
articles in holopedia to the wikipedia. Following is the link to the mysql
dump of holopedia, which is running MediaWiki 1.1.x .
http://tmjiang.dyndns.org/wikipedia/wikipedia-backup.sql
Can anybody help to merge the article in this database to the min-nan
wikipedia?

*Finally, it seems that SIL's language code="cfr" bears no meaning to the
native speaker. While in RFC 3066, "zh-min-nan" is used. "min-nan" means
southern min, which is the region where this language is centered. The
community hence would like to suggest to rename the zh-cfr to zh-min-nan
or zh-minnan.

Thanks for your help

Pektiong


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Daniel-
> Would it not be much more important to make sure that Wikinews text can be
> used to *update* the corresponding Wikipedia articles? I've been very
> skeptical of the Wikinews idea due to the fact that it may reduce the rate
> at which Wikipedia is kept up to date.

Wikinews would have two primary goals:
* summarizing news
* original reporting

Wikipedia does none of the latter, so the only potential for redundancy is
with news summarizing, currently done on Wikipedia on the [[current
events]] page. This page provides one paragraph summaries with links to
external news sources. In the future, instead of linking to external
sources, these one paragraph summaries could link to detailed Wikinews
articles instead, which would include Wikinews original reporting as well
as a complete analysis of all sources.

I see no reason why Wikinews in one capacity or another should reduce the
rate of updates on Wikipedia. As a matter of fact, I believe it will
increase it, as a large number of additional links to current topics will
point from Wikinews to Wikipedia.

> But placing Wikinews text under a
> license that is incompatible with Wikipedia is way over the top.

You appear to be under the misconception that a license different from the
FDL would automatically mean license incompatibility. While this is, to
some extent, true in the direction ''FDL text'' => ''text in another
license'' (because the FDL requires that all derivative works are FDL-
licensed), it is not necessarily true in the direction ''text in another
license'' => ''FDL text''.

Said other license can set a minimum set of restrictions and allow an
optional specific set of additional restrictions to be imposed for the
purpose of license compatibility. Dual-licensing, e.g. CC-SA/FDL, would
have the same effect.

This specifically addresses your concern of using Wikinews content to
update Wikipedia articles. Given that Wikinews is not intended to be an
encyclopedia, I think that background information from Wikipedia is best
provided using links, which is not a problem.

But I agree with you absolutely that we should carefully consider such a
deviation from our standard license, even in the form of dual licensing. I
just do not think that local Wikimedia chapters, or the mother
organization, should set the FDL into stone as the only license we want to
use for our projects. Wikinews is just one example where I think that we
need to look at the alternatives before making a decision.

>> But the FDL with its long license text
>> and complicated terms is not very practical for that.

> Then let's work on reducing the FDL down to its essentials, call that the
> FCL, have the FSF adopt it and create a FDL 2.0 that allows direct
> compatibility with invariant-section-free FDL content and the FCL (the FCL
> would in turn be compatible with the CC by-sa).

I think you overestimate the flexibility of the Free Software Foundation
:-). Of course the "any higher version number" clause of the FDL allows us
to make some improvements in future versions of the license, but these
improvements depend entirely on how much the FSF is willing to accommodate
our position. Given that the FSF has a significant number of documents
licensed under the FDL which would be affected by such a change, the
resistance to drastic changes - which are needed to address the problems
of the FDL - will be strong. Keep in mind that the FDL was originally
designed for print documents, and that existing print documents by the
FSF, if they do not refer to a specific version number of the FDL, will
also be affected by any changes.

Nevertheless, this is of course a road which we shall travel. Its mere
existence should, however, not preclude us from contemplating the
exploration of other paths.

>> There is even the
>> question if we really want to force Wikinews users to copyleft their
>> content, or if the public domain or an attribution license wouldn't be
>> more practical in this instance.

> Then that project would not be free content.

By the definition of the Free Software Foundation, that is correct.
However, that definition is not the only one. In fact, most people have an
entirely different understanding of "free content."

> Public domain and non-share-alike attribution licenses encourage mutually
> incompatible content forks where improvements that create derivative
> works cannot be re-incorporated back into the original - meaning there
> is no positive feeback loop.

Indeed, and the main question of copyleft vs. public domain / attribution-
only licenses is "What is more important to me - enlarging the body of
content available under a free license, or making sure that as many people
as possbile will be exposed to the content in question?"  The possibility
that we may want to answer this question differently for some Wikimedia
projects than for others should not be discounted out of hand.

Make no mistake - the originally free content will always remain free in
both instances.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: [WikiFR-l] Wikipedia en Brezhoneg / Breton]

body:
"Luc Van Oostenryck" <luc.vanoostenryck at easynet.be> schrieb:

> Je r?it?re ma question qui ?tait de savoir si il
> serait possible de contribuer ? cr?er wikipedia en
> breton, car ca me tien vraiment ? coeur. Je ne sais
> pas comment m'y prendre pour lancer le processus, ce
> serait sympat si je pouvais avoir de l'aide pour le
> faire concr?tement. Je crois au multilinguisme dans
> wikpedia et j'aimerais qu'il s'?tende aussi au breton.

The ISO 639-1 code for Breton is br.

Andre Engels


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On a dit:
> Je r?it?re ma question qui ?tait de savoir si il
> serait possible de contribuer ? cr?er wikipedia en
> breton, car ca me tien vraiment ? coeur.

Yes, sorry! We should have done that a long time ago (add a Breton
wikipedia), but we dropped the ball. I'll put it up right away...

Will be http://br.wikipedia.org/

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> brought to my attention that 'MediaWiki' is being used as some kind of stand in
> for a generic project name, leading to such absurd message as:
>
> 'MediaWiki is powered by MediaWiki, an open source wiki engine.'

That was a configuration error. That's been corrected, but the messages
need to be either manually or automatically updated.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Luc Van Oostenryck

body:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [WikiFR-l] Wikipedia en Brezhoneg / Breton
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 22:38:58 +0200 (CEST)
From: lozach gurvan <tralach152 at yahoo.fr>
Reply-To: Liste de diffusion de la Wikip?dia francophone <wikifr-l at Wikipedia.org>
To: wikifr-l at Wikipedia.org

Je r?it?re ma question qui ?tait de savoir si il
serait possible de contribuer ? cr?er wikipedia en
breton, car ca me tien vraiment ? coeur. Je ne sais
pas comment m'y prendre pour lancer le processus, ce
serait sympat si je pouvais avoir de l'aide pour le
faire concr?tement. Je crois au multilinguisme dans
wikpedia et j'aimerais qu'il s'?tende aussi au breton.

                                     Mersi


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Mathias Schindler wrote:
>> Has anyone tried to export those parts into a rss/rdf file, i.e.
>> [[MediaWiki:Hauptseite Aktuelle Ereignisse]] on de or [[MediaWiki:In
>> the news]] on en?
>
> Somebody's running an RSS feed from [[Wikipedia:Announcements]] on en;
> this is done with a scraper and the file hosted on an external site:
> http://jeays.net/wikipedia/announcements.xml

He's added a Current Events feed now too:
http://jeays.net/wikipedia/current.xml

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dan Miller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 10, Issue 75

body:
> In case you haven't noticed by now (and I don't see
> any replies here
> yet) it's all done now. The most visible new feature
> is the new
> MonoBook skin, though categorizations and revamped
> templates are also
> of note. Someone will post a URL with the details
> before long, I
> assume...
>

I just wanted to send out a huge thanks to everyone
who put time and effort into this.  The new servers
are humming along, the place looks great, and I'm
already drooling over the uses I can think of for
categories.  Thanks, all.  It was even worth the
cold-turkey approach to locking the database.

Meelar

=====
"The difference between extra-marital sex and extra marital sex is not to be sneezed at."

--George Will, on hyphen use

__________________________________
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from_name: Nikola Smolenski

body:
On Saturday 29 May 2004 16:06, Rad Geek wrote:
> On Sat, 29 May 2004 11:16:28 +0200, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de>
> wrote:
> > At de.wikipedia, we are using the MediaWiki namespace for things like
> > current events.
> >
> > Has anyone tried to export those parts into a rss/rdf file, i.e.
> > [[MediaWiki:Hauptseite Aktuelle Ereignisse]] on de or [[MediaWiki:In the
> > news]] on en?
> >
> > I think there might be some useful purpose for this file for external
> > web sites and this could also help wikipedia.
>
> [... de-lurking, since I have worked on various RSS and Atom syndication
> projects before.]
>
> 1. Not to start a holy war or anything, but if you are going to be
> syndicating, you really should use Atom. Most major newsfeed readers
> support it; those that don't yet, most likely will soon, and in the
> interim people can run scripts which convert Atom to RSS using a simple
> XSLT transformation. Atom is *more* flexible, has a single standard
> (rather than 9 different, ad hoc, and incompatible versions--see
> <http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss>), and is
> much more flexible.
>
> 2. That said, you may very well *not* want to do any syndication on
> WikiPedia at the moment, whatever the format. Why? Well, because delivery
> mechanisms for syndicated feeds are currently *terrible*. WikiPedia has
> enough load-related performance problems as it is; imagine the same
> situation, except with a significant portions of your users reloading one
> page over and over again every 10 minutes to see if something has changed
> (most newsreaders *default* to polling somewhere around every 5-15
> minutes).

I wonder could a site such as www.myrss.com do the job?


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki content no longer visible on new template!

body:
James Munroe wrote:
> Urgent:
>
> All pages with the new template (containing '<body class="ns-4">' without
> the single quotes) have content that is invisible under IE5 running under
> the Mac Classic OS, and possibly other OS'es as well.

Works for me in IE 5.2.3 on Mac OS X 10.3.4... 5.0 in Classic seems to
be broken, though.

Thanks for being specific about Classic! We really, *really* *really*
need details to track down compatibility problems.

I'll work on it...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki editing for databases

body:
On Saturday 29 May 2004 18:08, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Nikola Smolenski wrote:
> >On Friday 28 May 2004 22:30, Stan Shebs wrote:
> >>Has anybody thought about wiki databases? By these I mean applying the
> >
> >Yes, me. I am still thinking would it be better to insert it to Wikipedia,
> > or to write everything from scratch.
>
> Could you expand on this please? It's not clear to me what you're
> trying to say.

I am thinking about wiki databases. Currently I am thinking whether it would
be better to write a wiki database from scratch, or to expand Wikipedia's
code with support for wiki databases.


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need your advice!

body:
Hello!

The German-language Wikipedia is more and more facing the same problems
as the English one. We seldom used to have more than one troll at a
time, but times they are changing, and we are a bit concerned about the
future. At the moment we have to deal with a very persistent troll and
another user who has been banned and keeps coming back. In addition to
that we have a few long enduring edit-wars. I think we have to create
new policies and develop processes to handle theses problems.

The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and
bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very
helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your
experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban,
and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees
is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might
have already made.

I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't
make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have
to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but
writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!

Kurt

P.S.: Any advice is welcome, but personally I'd be especially interested
in the opinion of Cunc and Ray about these issues.

--
  http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
  http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
  Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: I want to generalize the displayed default system
	messages

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

<snip>

> Could somebody either email me the current Language.php (or whatever is being
> used for this now) or provide me a link to it?
>
> I would look for it myself but http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/ isn't working
> right now (installing a wiki there perhaps wasn't the greatest of ideas).
>
> I should be done with the needed mods an hour or two after I get the file, so
> this should not stop any development (assuming somebody with CVS access
> installs the file soon after I submit it to this list).
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Hello Daniel,

You can get the lastest language.php at:
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/wikipedia/phase3/languages/

click on the version number to get the full file content (1.225 for en:
actually).

Please note that web based cvs is not refreshed as soon as a developer
make a modification, but it should give you a good base.

:)

--
Ashar Voultoiz


from_name: Tomos at Wikipedia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from
	an outside GFDL source?

body:
Well, I think many people, including I, want to see GFDL changed and/or
becoming compatible with CC-by-sa. The reason is just as you cited: We are
stuck with it.

But such a change might take a long time (it has been already taking for a
long time), while somewhat questionable practices (copying and pasting of
texts or images without preserving history) are happening day by day. And
that is where a quick temporary fix like the introduction of the PD license
can help. Probably I was not clear on this, but it is not contradictory to
the change to GFDL, (or drafting of GFCL) as I understand.

Also, if you are concerned about the importing of GFDL'd contents from
outside sources, the PD license could specify that contents in the article,
image, and media namespaces are not dual-licensed, but simply GFDL'd. But
then, again, we are doing something questionable when we translate an
article containing such a text from one language to another without
preserving its history.

Like I suggested in the other email, it seems that the American Wikipedans
are reasonably safe. Court may find, even in case a lawsuit happens for some
reasons, not preserving history here and there is not a problem. And maybe
other en. Wikipedians are as safe (or maybe not. That part is something I
really don't know). So I am not urging that en. should adopt such a license.

But like I said, the license has its own benefits, both for en. wikipedians
and potentially for others who copy contents (text or image) from en.
without preserving history.

Regards,

Tomos

>From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
>To: foundation-l at Wikimedia.org
>CC: wiki_tomos at hotmail.com
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL
>source?
>Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 12:56:27 -0700 (PDT)

>--- Tomos at Wikipedia <wiki_tomos at hotmail.com> wrote on WikiEN-l:
> > Mav, you are right in that the effect is limited because we cannot
> > retroactively apply the second license to past edits. But if we consider
>the
> > effect, it seems it is still better to introduce it than not, and we
>would
> > do just as Electicology suggested:
>
>Sorry, it is simply not possible to create a derivative dual licensed work
>from
>a GFDL-only licensed article. Doing so would be a violation of the
>copyright of
>everyone who submitted the GFDL-only text. Dual licensing would also make
>it
>impossible to accept any new GFDL-only text.
>
>We are stuck with the GFDL as is until the FSF makes changes to that
>license.
>Let's concentrate on improving the license we have - Jimmy has already
>stated
>that the FSF and CC people are interested in this type of thing.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

_________________________________________________________________
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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> James Munroe wrote:
>> Urgent:
>>
>> All pages with the new template (containing '<body class="ns-4">' without
>> the single quotes) have content that is invisible under IE5 running under
>> the Mac Classic OS, and possibly other OS'es as well.
>
>
> Works for me in IE 5.2.3 on Mac OS X 10.3.4... 5.0 in Classic seems to
> be broken, though.

Fixed.

You may have to force it to reload the style sheet (try clearing the
cache if necessary).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
To Ulrich Fuchs  and Anthere:

Just to clarify - on WikiEN-l, I was introducing an idea that has been
discussed on japanese wikipedia, and that could be of an interest of en.
wikipedians.

And I wrote in the first email:

>If English Wikipedia can also introduce similar license, that would make
>things more convenient.

Regardless of the decisions made in en., ja. will make its own decision.
Your inputs are welcome, as always. I suppose the English wikipedia has the
same stance to an input from a wikipedian like me (who is primarily active
at other wikipedia.)

So, don't be disappointed about that, please. :-)

If you are interested in the idea I was talking about, I am more than happy
to inform you. The basic stuff is already posted at wikiEn-l:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/012970.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/012992.html
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-May/012993.html

Cheers,

Tomos

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects


from_name: Anthere

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > Question : what do you do ?

Thanks for answering Mav

> We need to first look at the formation of the German
> chapter/association in
> order to develop rules and procedures for setting up
> chapters. Once that is
> done we could refer the person to that documentation
> and provide assistance as
> needed.

Nod. That rejoin Angela suggestion to set a page on
meta to "start a local chapter".

This said, that seems to imply that the German
association is a good model.

There would, at the least, have to be enough
> dues-paying Wikimedia
> members in that person's area in order to make it
> possible to have a viable
> chapter.

That is an interesting point.
Is it mandatory that there are enough dues-paying
members, or would not it be more important that there
are enough motivated people in that country ?
It is not necessary mandatory that money is collected
from members, however, it is essential that enough
motivated people set and manage the association
properly ihmo

Once that is the case, and enough of those
> members indicate a
> willingness to actually participate in a chapter,
> then the foundation could
> provide some seed money to set-up the legal
> framework.

Yes, I fully agree with this.
It would be good that Wikimedia foundation provides
the starting money, rather than that foundators of the
association are asked to pay on top of their free work
for this to proceed.
I am dubious of the move that *requires* people to pay
to participate to Wikimedia distribution

Then to stay a Wikimedia
> chapter a *minimal* set of guidelines must be
> adhered to (such as keeping a
> certain set number of active chapter members and
> reporting chapter-specific
> finances and activities to the foundation).

It would be probably enough to have all associations
agree to follow Wikimedia mission status. Which is why
I proposed that this one is carefull reviewed, so that
we could weave proper links between all associations

I would
> also like to see each
> chapter president have at least a honorary role in
> the foundation itself
> (perhaps even as honoray trustees).

I think it would be correct that some of the money
collected by the chapter goes to the Foundation, if
only to participate to our common frame (servers,
bandwith...). But then it is certainly fair, that
local chapter participate to the decisions in terms of
budget.

__________________________________
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>...
> Fixing the GFDL would be a perfect solution, but until
> that happens, I don't think we should rule out the
> possibility that future projects should be allowed to
> take an alternative route.

And the inability to use the GFDL would be a strong argument against such a
project because of the interim incompatibility and/or adhering to a non-free
license (not to mention inter-project confusion) - as I've already stated. But
I don't forsee any such projects in the immediate pipelime. Wikinews seems to
be a mid to long term goal - 2 to 4 years or until Wikipedia.org is in the top
100 websites (whichever comes first). We should have the license situation
fixed by then.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
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body:
--- Angela <sloog77 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>  --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote: ...
> > A user from a rather minor wikipedia contact the
> > foundation mailing list, to ask for help on
> setting
> > a local association ...
> > Question : what do you do ?
>
> I would suggest she read [[m:Starting up a local
> Wikimedia chapter]].
>
> Oh... except that page doesn't exist yet. :)
>
> It would be great if those who have been working on
> starting up the French and German associations could
> help to create such a page. It could be a record of
> their experiences and a collection of advice for all
> future users wanting to set up chapters in their own
> local area.
>
> I don't yet know how much influence the board will
> need to have in setting these up. Should they have
> rules on exactly what the associations are allowed
> to
> do? How can these be enforceable? Perhaps a
> discussion
> on this list on what the relationship between board
> and association should be might help such a page to
> develop. The [[m:Starting up a local Wikimedia
> chapter]] page also needs to include the
> Foundation's
> principles and advice on what associations need to
> do
> to meet those. How detailed should these be? I would
> not like to see the board have an undue amount of
> influence over these. I see it more as something to
> support them where needed rather than being there to
> determine exactly what a chapter should do.
>
> Have the people working on the French and German
> ones
> got any views on whether board input would have
> helped
> them? Or is it felt that the board should just be
> there to officially approve them after the details
> have been finalised on the local Wikimedia project?
>
> Angela.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

On one hand, I think the foundation board should have
little influence in local chapter daily activity, once
the chapter has agreed to follow some common
principles.

However, there are some areas of overlapping, as the
financial ones. And there is currently little
discussion about this, that I would like to see appear
in time. Donations collected by local associations, in
the name of Wikimedia, should also participate in
part, to the maintenance of our technical framework,
or purchase of domain names for example. This
financial relationship should be established quite
early on in the association life.

I also think we should be globally aware of efforts
made world wide and try to have balance. For example,
should money collected in a french association be only
used in France, or try to finance for example
distribution in a country such as Switzerland. I would
say "yes". But then, a distribution in Switzerland (or
promotion or whatever) should be for efficiency a
collaboration with projects in italian and german as
well perhaps (for example). Hence, it is a project
wide issue.

Another point I can think of, is the relationship
between a paying member in a local chapter and a
paying member in the foundation. Should they
participate twice ? Just mentionning as well, that
should fees be established, they should take into
account the png and financial level of each country.
16 dollars is fine in many countries, it is not in
many others.

Incidently, all this would highly require help from
professional translators, who would be able to help
local chapter and Foundation communicate with
certainties on legal issues.

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body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>...
> Another point I can think of, is the relationship
> between a paying member in a local chapter and a
> paying member in the foundation. Should they
> participate twice ? Just mentionning as well, that
> should fees be established, they should take into
> account the png and financial level of each country.
> 16 dollars is fine in many countries, it is not in
> many others.

I really think that be a chapter member a person would first have to be a
dues-paying Wikimedia member. We could have membership dues start at $10 a year
- less than the cost of a cheap lunch for two. The amount a chapter member has
to pay to a chapter is really up to the chapter.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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body:
Brion wrote:
>That was a configuration error.

Fair enough.

>That's been corrected, but  the messages  need
>to be either manually or automatically updated.

I've already fixed Meta and Wikibooks. However I was more concerned with
releasing 1.3 to the rest of the world. So if you could commit my changes to
CVS, then that would be great.

-- mav

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from_name: James Munroe

body:
Urgent:

All pages with the new template (containing '<body class="ns-4">' without
the single quotes) have content that is invisible under IE5 running under
the Mac Classic OS, and possibly other OS'es as well.

This means that, when I look up, for example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X I can see only the template, but
nothing whatever referring to Malcolm X -- I have to view the HTML source to
read even a cumbersome version of that. This applies to the Wikipedia:About
page as well as all pages appearing as ordinary topics under the /wiki/
subdirectory.

I'm sure it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway: fancy style sheets that
render pages unreadable on some common browser-OS combinations are a really,
really bad idea, especially for an open-source, user-editable knowledge
repository.

Please, let's do something to fix this!!!

Thank you in advance.

James Munroe

P.S. Apologies if this should have been addressed elsewhere, but the choices
of where to send on the mailing lists are, as William Peter Blatty would put
it, "too numerous to enumerate."


subject: [Foundation-l] Board vote translations needed

body:
--- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> The interface text for the upcoming Wikimedia Board of Trustees election
> needs to be translated into as many languages as possible. Instructions can
> be found at:

I'm really confused. You gave a list of 22 edit links with one page of text
below that. Which one of those 22 edit links does the translated text go?? Does
the same text get posted in each of the 22 MediaWiki pages?

-- mav

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from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] DMA

body:
On Monday, I'm planning to go into the colocation facility sometime
around noon my time (New York City time, Eastern time zone) to try to
upgrade to the 'ricky special' kernel to get DMA working on the
remainder of the older 1U machines.

To do this, I have to reboot the machines in turn, changing a bios
setting, and then booting into the proper kernel.

As I understand it, on the apaches when I do this, it will be more or
less seamless for website users.

But for other machines (zwinger, for example) it's more complex.  What
should I do?  Can someone help me?

--Jimbo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki content no longer visible on new template!

body:
This has not been fixed. Netscape 7 works but Internet Explorer 5.1 doesn't
from Macintosh 9 OS (and classic OS).

Fred

> From: James Munroe <james at jamesmunroe.com>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 03:51:49 -0400
> To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiki content no longer visible on new template!
>
> Urgent:
>
> All pages with the new template (containing '<body class="ns-4">' without
> the single quotes) have content that is invisible under IE5 running under
> the Mac Classic OS, and possibly other OS'es as well.
>
> This means that, when I look up, for example,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_X I can see only the template, but
> nothing whatever referring to Malcolm X -- I have to view the HTML source to
> read even a cumbersome version of that. This applies to the Wikipedia:About
> page as well as all pages appearing as ordinary topics under the /wiki/
> subdirectory.
>
> I'm sure it's obvious, but I'll say it anyway: fancy style sheets that
> render pages unreadable on some common browser-OS combinations are a really,
> really bad idea, especially for an open-source, user-editable knowledge
> repository.
>
> Please, let's do something to fix this!!!
>
> Thank you in advance.
>
> James Munroe
>
> P.S. Apologies if this should have been addressed elsewhere, but the choices
> of where to send on the mailing lists are, as William Peter Blatty would put
> it, "too numerous to enumerate."
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Angela

body:
 --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is a tremendously important reason why all our
> text-based projects should
> be under the same (or at least compatible) license:
> To alow inter-project
> copying. It would be absurd to not be able to copy
> text back and forth between
> Wikibooks and Wikipedia, for example.

There may be situations where using a different
license would be provide more advantages than the
possibility of copying between projects would. As Erik
has already mentioned, a Wikinews project is far less
likely to be successful if bound by the GFDL. Another
example is Wikitravel, who have already decided that
the GFDL is unsuitable for a travel guide. I expect
there are many more examples where having to include a
full copy of the GFDL would provide a major
disincentive to re-users of our content. Having one
license across all projects makes it easier for
editors, but it certainly is not always going to be
the best option for re-users. We need to consider both
when making licensing decisions.

Fixing the GFDL would be a perfect solution, but until
that happens, I don't think we should rule out the
possibility that future projects should be allowed to
take an alternative route.

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Language.php

body:
 --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote: >
> Here is a link to the complete text:
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User:Daniel_Mayer/sandbox&action=edit
> ... Could somebody with CVS access commit this?

I've committed this to CVS. I replaced
MAG_END => array( 0,    "__END__" which I assume you
hadn't really meant to remove.

Angela.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Angela

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subject: [WikiEN-l] We need your advice!

body:
A few thoughts. Clearly communicate with those who are "trolling" or
edit-warring the nature of your difficulties with whatever they are doing.
Give them a fair opportunity to change what they are doing, with edit
warriors generally that involves them communicating better with their
opponents and getting down to the business of looking up the facts, trying
to find ways to satisfy both viewpoints, etc.

With respect to mediation, you can start with one or two of you offering
informal mediation, you probably have at least one person with training in
mediation, perhaps someone with union experience.

Arbitration is slow and rather unsatisfying to the participants since their
doctrinal disputes are not settled; rather an inquiry results into whether
they have followed the rules, usually neither have. It turns out that there
is reluctance to enforce some things that have been thought to be rules and
conversely new "rules" develop as a practical remedy is sought for some
variety of intolerable refractory behavior.

Fred

> From: Kurt Jansson <jansson at gmx.net>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 00:33:20 +0200
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] We need your advice!
>
> Hello!
>
> The German-language Wikipedia is more and more facing the same problems
> as the English one. We seldom used to have more than one troll at a
> time, but times they are changing, and we are a bit concerned about the
> future. At the moment we have to deal with a very persistent troll and
> another user who has been banned and keeps coming back. In addition to
> that we have a few long enduring edit-wars. I think we have to create
> new policies and develop processes to handle theses problems.
>
> The English Wikipedia has much more experience in these things, good and
> bad, and we would very much like to profit from that. It would be very
> helpful if some of you could write a few paragraphs about your
> experience with trolls, how you handle them, how you enforce a user ban,
> and what your experience with the mediation and arbitration committees
> is. We could adopt mechanisms that work and avoid mistakes you might
> have already made.
>
> I think the best thing would be to put you reports on meta, but I can't
> make up a good name for the page at the moment. Of course you don't have
> to write in German, most of us have no problem reading English, but
> writing is a different matter. Thanks for your effort!
>
>
> Kurt
>
> P.S.: Any advice is welcome, but personally I'd be especially interested
> in the opinion of Cunc and Ray about these issues.
>
> --
> http://leihnetzwerk.de -- Teile B?cher, Videos und CDs mit anderen!
> http://wikipedia.de    -- Arbeite mit bei der freien Enzyklop?die!
> Kurt Jansson, Wiener Str. 7, 10999 Berlin, http://jansson.de
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au>
> wrote:
> > The interface text for the upcoming Wikimedia
> Board of Trustees election
> > needs to be translated into as many languages as
> possible. Instructions can
> > be found at:
>
> I'm really confused. You gave a list of 22 edit
> links with one page of text
> below that. Which one of those 22 edit links does
> the translated text go?? Does
> the same text get posted in each of the 22 MediaWiki
> pages?
>
> -- mav

the text given is the entirety of the content

go to meta page
copy the content of the first line
example :"Wikimedia Board of Trustees election",

Click on the first red link
example :  MediaWiki:boardvote

you get the edit page
http://meta.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:Boardvote&action=edit

change it to another language
example :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=MediaWiki:Boardvote&action=edit

edit the content (translate) then save
you get this
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki%3ABoardvote

repeat for each message

ideally, those messages for admin are not necessary
since danny and imran are english speakers
but these messages are also very very short :-)

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body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >...
> > Another point I can think of, is the relationship
> > between a paying member in a local chapter and a
> > paying member in the foundation. Should they
> > participate twice ? Just mentionning as well, that
> > should fees be established, they should take into
> > account the png and financial level of each
> country.
> > 16 dollars is fine in many countries, it is not in
> > many others.
>
> I really think that be a chapter member a person
> would first have to be a
> dues-paying Wikimedia member. We could have
> membership dues start at $10 a year
> - less than the cost of a cheap lunch for two. The
> amount a chapter member has
> to pay to a chapter is really up to the chapter.
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

Dear Daniel,

> $10 a year
> - less than the cost of a cheap lunch for two.

In Madagascar, 10 dollars is feeding a full family for
several months.

Set the amount of the annual fee at 10 dollars
whatever the nationality of the member will ensure
that the participation to Wikimedia information
spreading *all over the world* is an activity limited
to "rich members" living in developped countries
members.

Most french people from France could afford 10
dollars/euros a year. But I would be *embarassed* to
request that amount to an Algerian student, and I
would *blush in shame* to request that to a person in
Madagascar.

That goes for local chapter as well as Foundation.

Our participation from third world countries is
currently terribly low. Many of those people are among
those who lack terribly of information. You and I, do
not need *more* information really, we need perhaps
better information, we need less biaised information,
but not *more*. Actually, we have often too much
information.

And as for myself, I consider that the most important
role Wikipedia in particular, could have, is to bring
information to those who do not have access to it. In
our countries, the information will very likely be
distributed through the internet mostly. That is the
best way to keep it updated. And that will be cheap.

In less developped countries, the issue is not even
daily updated information, it is just information in
itself. And it is more relevant to think that part of
the distribution will be paper or cd.
Which means we need people to BE in the country of
distribution probably. We need physical persons over
there. These people will have to be members of the
Foundation so as to participate a minimum to
discussion and votes on these distribution projects.

I would blush in shame to ask them 10 dollars to have
the opportunity to help when 10 dollars is the average
monthly revenue of a person in that country.

Ihmo (but I am aware it is likely to be
controversial); no participant willing to help
*should* have to pay money to do so. People already
give a lot of their time, energy and such. That is
enough that they do not need to pay on top. We are
such an organisation that I am sure we could make it
without forcing people to pay to help. That is a very
capitalist approach to do so. I am sure that people
would just make donations naturally if they feel it
can help.

And last winter donation call support this.

That is what is done in my kids school, which is
catholics, and ask money to help. It is not mandatory;
people are suggested to help, they are suggested a
certain amount, if they give that amount, they perhaps
receive 4 times a year a report paper, and that is it.
People can give recommanded amount. People can give
more. People can give nothing. They are still part of
us.

And that works quite well.

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references:
<40B854EC.4040907@presroi.de>
	<opr8rlg9zs6og2kp@smtp.1and1.com>	<40B8A218.1030800@yahoo.com>
	<opr8rttvcs6og2kp@smtp.1and1.com>

body:
I am glad there is all that discussion anyway (thanks for your answer
Rad and others). I hope there is a technical solution to potential
issues of load. I am convinced that at least right now, for journalists
and documentation experts, syndicating is getting a major issue and I am
glad we participate to that evolution.

Rad Geek wrote:
> On Sat, 29 May 2004 16:45:44 +0200, Anthere
> <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> . . .
>
>> On fr; there is now both RSS and Atom...
>
>
>> Is that risky in terms of load ?
>
>
> Probably not just *yet*, but it could become risky *soon*, and it's
> hard  to predict just how quickly it will.
>
> The problem is that the way feeds are delivered right now is by polling
> with an HTTP GET according to an interval set by the newsreader. The
> way  that this is implemented, in every newsreader that's available
> right now,  so far as I know, is by using a fixed interval, which
> usually defaults to  somewhere between 5 and 15 minutes, and which the
> user can manually set to  something else (so that, for example, they're
> not wasting cycles checking  in on a site that never updates more than
> once daily). Of course, most  users *don't* bother to change the
> interval, so most feed readers end up  polling your site every 5-15 minutes.
>
> This isn't a big deal if you've got relatively few
> visitors--particularly  if the server is set up to just send a 304 if
> there have been no  modifications. But it doesn't scale very well at
> all: in terms of load,  it's not much different form having one user
> press the "Reload" button  every few minutes to see whether there have
> been any changes. As RSS and  Atom syndication become more ubiquitous,
> and feed readers become more  popular, more and more users are going to
> want to use services like this  on highly trafficked sites such as
> WikiPedia. So there's a distinct risk  that the current model won't be
> sustainable for very much longer.
>
> -C
>