body:
Bradypus wrote:

>You say Anthere is eccentric? :-o
>I think I agree with you, but Anthere had raised an interesting issue that
>was interesting.
>
Je n'ai pas dit qu'Anthere est excentrique, mais m?me si je ne l'aurais
pens? ?a ne serait que pour exprimer une forme conique parmi les plus
gentilles.

L'excentricit? dont je parlait s'appliquait ? une id?e et pas ? une
personne.  La personne qui se servait d'une interpretation excentrique
n'?tait pas Anthere.

>It is really all about what a court would think in front of an organisation
>that would at the same time say "I am not accountable for the content of
>Wikipedia" and "I am governing and managing Wikipedia".
>Do you want to test that?
>Not sure just looking at the Webster solves the issue: it can only be solved
>by the appropriate persons, i.e. US lawyers.
>I myself have a law degree, but a european one. And I heard such strange
>things about the legal system they have in the colonies ^_^
>
>Bradipus
>
Poursuivre une d?cision dans la cour ne serait pas ma fa?on pr?f?r? de
r?gler cette affaire.  Je pr?f?rerais un choix de mots plus sensible ?
la situation.  Effectivement en r?clamant le droit "to govern and
manage" on doit accepter une plus grande responsabilit? pour ce qui se
passe.  On ne peux plus prendre la position d'?tre un simple fournisseur
d'acc?s.  Il faut se rappeler que l'id?e du "free" telle qu'elle est
comprise par les "Libertarians" am?ricains reste toujours embourb?e dans
le paradoxe.  Elle na?t de la th?orie corporatiste que les am?ricains
sont les mieux dou? pour d?finir la libert? des autres.

Je doute que les avocats am?ricans seraient les meilleurs personnes pour
trouver une solution.  Rappellons nous qu'on peut toujours s'acheter un
avocat qui donnerait la r?ponse qu'on veut, surtout dans un syst?me
adversarial.

Si le statut ne donne pas de d?finition aux mots employ?s, il faut avoir
recours aux pr?c?dents.  Si les pr?c?dents nous servent pas il faut
regarder dans le dictionnaire pour avoir le sens ordinaire des mots.
J'admet que je n'ai pas fais de recherche dans les loi de la Floride, et
que je n'ai pas regard? dans les d?cisions judiciaires pour me
renseigner comment qu'ils ont interprt? "govern" et "manage"

Quand on consid?re le syst?me de lois inquisitorialles en Europe il est
difficile de le faire sans craindre l'influence de la main phantome du
pape. :-)

Ec

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>
>>It is inaccurate to cast this issue in the framework of false friends
>>that characterize a language based difference of meanings.  The
>>uncertain meaning is just as much there in English alone.
>>
>>As I quoted before:
>>
>>
>>>Thus according to the 2001 New Oxford Dictionary of English:
>>>   "govern": conduct the policy, action and affairs of; control,
>>>influence or regulate.
>>>   "manage": be in charge of, administer, run, regulate; maintain
>>>control or influence over.
>>>
>>>
>>When there is a possibility that future confusion would arise it is
>>better to find common ground on the meaning of words, rather than depend
>>on a single person's subjective and perhaps eccentric interpretation of
>>those words.
>>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] How not to manage opensource project


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > Xanga just got hit with big fines for "repeatedly allowing children
> > > under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's
> > > consent".  How does COPPA affect Wikimedia projects?
> >
> > The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
> > non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.  No Wikimedia site is
> > operated for a commercial purpose; therefore, the act has no
> > application to Wikimedia.
> >
> > Next time, read the statute before you spew FUD, ok?
>
> I asked a question.  You answered it.  Where's the FUD?
>
Here's another question.  If the Wikimedia Foundation is not engaged
in commerce, how come they can hold trademarks?  Don't you have to use
the mark in commerce in order to be granted a trademark?


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


list: wikien-l

from_name: Gregory Kohs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about "External links"

body:
I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day, on
average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
problem]].

--
Gregory Kohs
thekohser at gmail.com

Cell: 302.463.1354


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
2006/9/7, Tuvic <tuvic.tuvic at gmail.com>:

> Whatever you do, interwikilinking will be totally (and really totally)
> broken for the year-articles, and will probably take years to correct it. In
> my point of view, this is the most significant reason to not move the
> year-pages.

That's much less work than you think - if I set my interwiki bot to
work on it (it already has settings for it, actually), I will have
things fixed in about 2 days. Although I would suppose that some
languages would get angry with me for flooding recent changes....

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


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
> > non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.
>
> The US goverment would disagree:
>
The FTC seems to imply that Kelly is right.

http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm

18. Are websites run by nonprofit entities subject to the Rule?

The Act and the Rule expressly state that they apply to commercial
websites and not to nonprofits that would otherwise be exempt from
coverage under Section 5 of the FTC Act. Thus, in general, most
non-profits are not subject to the Rule. However, nonprofits that
operate for the profit of their for-profit members may be subject to
the Rule. See FTC v. California Dental Association 526 U.S. 756
(1999), for additional guidance on when nonprofits are subject to FTC
jurisdiction. Although true nonprofits are not subject to COPPA, we
encourage them to set an example by posting privacy policies and
providing the protections set forth in COPPA to children providing
personal information at their sites.


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
We don't collect userpages.  We allow people to create them.

COPPA is primarily an anti-data-mining regulation.

Kelly


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Example of a user who should have been banned a long
	time ago

body:
On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/7/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It sounds like OrphanBot may need a slight tweak to keep
> > track of how many unsources images a user is uploading, and then start
> > raising red flags if it exceeds a certain number.
>
> I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
> that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
> which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.

We don't allow unsourced images of any sort on Wikipedia.  That's as
much a moral issue as a legal one.

Kelly


subject:
[WikiEN-l] CC-SA (was: Example of a user who should have been
	banned a long time ago)

body:
On 9/8/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
> If nothing else, we'd want some sort of attempt to establish that it really was
> released into the public domain (or under CC-SA).
>
A name isn't going to do very much to establish that.  I could always
make up a fake name and say that's the author.  Or I could just lie
and claim that I'm the author.  Either way, you'd just have to take my
word for it.

But I'd rather not lie.

So I suppose anonymous works which aren't PD-OLD are prohibited?

Anthony


body:
On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mmm. I can't see e.g. Commons agreeing to allow images with no source
> indication.
>
So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.

Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?

Anthony


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] CC-SA

body:
> > If nothing else, we'd want some sort of attempt to establish that it really
> > was released into the public domain (or under CC-SA).
> >
> A name isn't going to do very much to establish that.  I could always
> make up a fake name and say that's the author.  Or I could just lie
> and claim that I'm the author.  Either way, you'd just have to take my
> word for it.
>

Some sort of attempt, not a foolproof attempt.

> But I'd rather not lie.

Exactly. I'd be happy to accept the claims of the uploader unless and until
there is reason to believe otherwise.

> So I suppose anonymous works which aren't PD-OLD are prohibited?

A really good question, Anthony. I don't know. On the other hand, an anonymous
work doesn't appear out of nowhere, either, does it. (Unless you yourself
created it and want to submit it anonymously, in which case why not just make a
throwaway account and use PD-SELF or something?)

Dan


body:
On 9/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Mmm. I can't see e.g. Commons agreeing to allow images with no source
> > > indication.
> > >
> > So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
> > awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
> > account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
> > doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
> > some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.
> >
> > Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?
> >
> > Anthony
>
> Just list the source as your grandmother. or as an anonymous donor.

I've been listing them as anonymous.  And I've been getting messages
from that stupid bot.

I guess I could create a sockpuppet and list the source as my
grandmother, if it was indeed my grandmother.  Do I need to do this,
or is "anonymous" OK?

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 38, Issue 42

body:
> So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
> awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
> account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
> doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
> some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.
>
> Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?
>

Why not? If you ask me, just say so. Good enough. If you don't want to use your
name either then use a throwaway account, and say so.

I'm pretty sure I've seen things like this (for public domain rather than CC-SA).

Dan


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEN-l posting] Re: Template usage?

body:
On 08/09/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Thankfully it's been of remarkably high standard of late. I'm tempted
> > to switch off the mod-for-first-post and see if we drown in crap
> > again, since it's making a bit much trouble for good posters. I think
> > I'll go do that, actually.

> Can't you just anoint a few more mods, I'm sure you could find a few
> guys you could trust. I like the mod-for-first-post thing.

It appears they burn out way quickly. We can always switch it back on
if we start drowning in crap.

- d.


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Something like this just requires trust. If you're an editor who has
been around a while and the things you are uploading look plausibly
like something you'd have the ability to say with confidence is CC-SA,
then I don't see why anyone would give you any real trouble. It's when
people upload a bunch of pictures obviously taken by Associated Press
and label them as GFDL without elaboration that people start to get
really suspicious.

I'm fine with trusting users who look like they deserve it. They are,
after all, the ones affirming the copyright status of the image;
unless I have a really good reason to doubt them I'm going to go with
their call on these things.

Bots obviously lack such ability for judgment, unless they are human-augmented.

FF

On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Mmm. I can't see e.g. Commons agreeing to allow images with no source
> > > > indication.
> > > >
> > > So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
> > > awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
> > > account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
> > > doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
> > > some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.
> > >
> > > Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?
> > >
> > > Anthony
> >
> > Just list the source as your grandmother. or as an anonymous donor.
>
> I've been listing them as anonymous.  And I've been getting messages
> from that stupid bot.
>
> I guess I could create a sockpuppet and list the source as my
> grandmother, if it was indeed my grandmother.  Do I need to do this,
> or is "anonymous" OK?
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] CC-SA

body:
> I'm fine with trusting users who look like they deserve it. They are,
> after all, the ones affirming the copyright status of the image;
> unless I have a really good reason to doubt them I'm going to go with
> their call on these things.
>
> Bots obviously lack such ability for judgment, unless they are human-augmented.

I'd even be fine with trusting an editor who hasn't been around a while, if the
rest is plausible. But something like "anonymous" without further comment makes
it look like "couldn't be bothered". Not knowing the bot, I'd have to guess it
keys into exactly that word.

Dan


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Global Text Project

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 9/8/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>For myself, I strongly suspect anything that starts with "students in
>>the developing world" and doesn't acknowledge disadvantaged individuals
>>even in supposedly "first world" countries to be more or less a scam and
>>something to stay away from.  If their overall goal is to bring benefits
>>to people in specific countries but also benefit other people in the
>>process, I'm much more likly to support such a general project.
>>
>>Of course, that is why I also consider the OLPC project to be something
>>of a scam as well, on the same grounds.
>>
>>
>
>I think that's an unhelpful position. When you start by calling a
>project "more or less a scam", you will be less likely to change
>hearts and minds than by simply stating your position clearly (if
>forcefully). The OLPC folks I know are good people who are likely to
>listen to constructive suggestions. Also, we're not above making
>similar mistakes. IMHO, the language in Jimmy's personal appeal for
>donations, for example, (literally: "I'm doing this for the child in
>Africa") could have used considerable polish.
>
>
By calling something like this a scam, I am refering to the fact that
there seem to be individuals acting supposedly on behalf of
underprivileged individuals with their hands out for money, time, and
other resources but seem to have a political agenda instead, not any
real attempt to do good in the world.  Or that the real agenda is not
clear and visible, and certainly not the formally stated public purpose.

And more to the point if I see words like I stated above, that some
project is for "people in the developing world", I start out
automatically suspicious that it is a scam and that such a group must
then prove it is something otherwise.  That is all I was trying to
imply.  I have seen far too many of these supposedly good project ideas
turn into ways to seperate people from their money than I can count.
 This is an opinion based on years of experience and seeing even
positive fundraising opportunities turn sour and offer far more benefit
to the individuals organizing the project than to the supposed targets
of the effort.

The real purpose, for example, that the OLPC folks don't want to deal
with EU or American states is because the laptop component
manufacturer's that are offering price breaks for the OLPC don't want a
competing computer product that would undercut their own sales in the
USA and EU.  If that isn't a political agenda, I don't know what one is.
 A very significant criticism that I have had about the OLPC is that
they are not planning on offering these laptops at Wal-mart (or other
1st world retailers), even for a moderate mark-up in price to help
subsidize their distribution to other countries.  And the reasons to not
offer them for sale in such a manner seem to ring very hallow and are
very POV and politically motivated.

I am not denying that there are certainly some varying personal
motivations for involvement in worthy projects like the Global Text
Project and Wikimedia projects.  If one of them happens to be an
altruistic belief that adding content to Wikipedia can help my
sister-in-law that lives in Accra, Ghana, then so be it.  But there are
other motivations beyond just working for 3rd world countries, and
selling a very cheap encyclopedia to people in Africa.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Textbook-l] Global Text Project

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>>The real purpose, for example, that the OLPC folks don't want to deal
>>with EU or American states is because the laptop component
>>manufacturer's that are offering price breaks for the OLPC don't want a
>>competing computer product that would undercut their own sales in the
>>USA and EU.  If that isn't a political agenda, I don't know what one is.
>>
>>
>
>Hmmm.... so, if a manufacturer is willing offer a donation in the form
>of a price break, so long as the product is sent somewhere else, then
>the OLPC should just give up and walk away?  I don't really understand
>this perspective.
>
We do this all of the time with Wikimedia projects, where good and
worthy contributions are turned away due to licensing conflicts.  We
just turned a substantial body of work away from Wikibooks because we
couldn't get copyright clearance due to a non-commercial use only
license, to use an example.  I could cite other significant examples,
but sometimes you need to identify what the goal could be and make sure
you havn't made too many compromises early on that would limit your true
potential.  BTW, I think selecting the GFDL as the target license for
Wikipedia was an incredibly fortunate accident by you Jimbo, and
something that has ultimately set the tone of all Wikimedia projects.

In the case of the OLPC folks, I think they are limiting themselves and
their vision of what could be accomplished, and limiting the potential
market of those who might both need and be able to pay for these
laptops.  They are also significantly restricting their development
community, as even software developers who would create content specific
for the OLPC won't have access to the equipment unless they obtain them
somehow from 3rd world governments directly.  I could cite numerous
issues that would come up trying to develop software for the OLPC, but
having actual working hardware makes the job of a software developer
significantly easier.  That people are willing to put in effort in spite
of these problems is more a testament to the volunteers than the OLPC
organizers.

The proposed distribution system for these laptops is something that
seems so prone to typical 3rd world graft and corruption that I don't
know how realistically these computers can get into the hands of
ordinary people of these countries except accidentally.  You can't even
move a shipping container of wheat or rice to these countries without
substantial quantities being diverted away from litterally starving
people and into the hands of multi-billionaires who stash all of their
money in Switzerland.  Why would electronic components be any different?

At least with Wikipedia, Donald Trump has just as much utility to the
content that I do.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day, on
> average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
> links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
> somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
> problem]].

You should know, you spammed your blog on a number of pages.

If your customers are really interested in this data, perhaps you
could fund wikimedia to perform a proper study.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Thankfully it's been of remarkably high standard of late. I'm tempted
> to switch off the mod-for-first-post and see if we drown in crap
> again, since it's making a bit much trouble for good posters. I think
> I'll go do that, actually.
>
>
> - d.

Can't you just anoint a few more mods, I'm sure you could find a few
guys you could trust. I like the mod-for-first-post thing.

-Oskar


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Right, but it doesn't protect against vandals who registered, didn't edit
for 4 days and the vandalized.  If they're vandalizing templates, they're
not just people who come to Wikipedia and say "wow, i can delete this entire
page lol!" - they're vandals who've been doing it for a while and are
familiar with Wikipedia, so they probably know how to get around
semi-protection.

On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, semi protection ensures that good users who aren't yet sysops
> can edit a template when they need to. We have a whole lot more than
> 1000 trusted editors who regularly edit templates.
>
> On 9/8/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I personally think that any template transcluded 80-100+ times or
> > > transcluded in 10+ feature articles / wikipedia space pages, or even
> > > transcluded in two policy pages (disclaimers etc.) should be semi
> > > protected, and really widely used templates that are vandalised
> > > despite semi protection should be fully protected.
> >
> > I agree, if not fully protected at least semi-protected.
> >
> > -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
> So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
> > awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
> > account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
> > doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
> > some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.
> >
> > Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?
> >
> I see no problems, just say "Created by my grandmother who agreed to
> license it as CC-SA-1.0."
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Textbook-l] Global Text Project

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>> For myself, I strongly suspect anything that starts with "students in
>> the developing world" and doesn't acknowledge disadvantaged individuals
>> even in supposedly "first world" countries to be more or less a scam and
>> something to stay away from.  If their overall goal is to bring benefits
>> to people in specific countries but also benefit other people in the
>> process, I'm much more likly to support such a general project.
>>
>> Of course, that is why I also consider the OLPC project to be something
>> of a scam as well, on the same grounds.
>
> I think that's an unhelpful position. When you start by calling a
> project "more or less a scam", you will be less likely to change
> hearts and minds than by simply stating your position clearly (if
> forcefully). The OLPC folks I know are good people who are likely to
> listen to constructive suggestions. Also, we're not above making
> similar mistakes. IMHO, the language in Jimmy's personal appeal for
> donations, for example, (literally: "I'm doing this for the child in
> Africa") could have used considerable polish.

It was my personal statement.  I meant it.  I don't think it needs
polish, thank you very much.

--Jimbo


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] proposed policy - Commons:Trademarks

body:
On 9/8/06, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
> I suggested elsewhere the following idea of a golden rule for commons:
> If an image is free in the US (physical place of the servers) and the
> coutry of origin, it should be accepted.  We should not care for the
> laws in saudi arabia or japan if the image is in no connection to those
> countries.

This is overly simplistic. Wikimedia's output is intended to be free
everywhere...  I don't think we should follow unusual and foolish laws
in places where we are not required to do so, but that is a long way
from only considering the law in the US and the uploaders location.

An example is Iran. Iran is not *currently* a party to most
international copyright treaties. As a result their copyrights are not
considered valid in most of the world. However their copyright law is
effectively equal to what is mandated by the Berne convention.

Today a US user could legally upload modern works published only in
Iran, and they would be legal in most of the world.... but they would
be illegal in Iran. If we fill the Persian language Wikipedia with
these images, would we be succeeding at producing a free content
encyclopedia in that language?    What happens next week if Iran signs
the Berne Convention?

Instead we should conform strictly to the laws of the uploaders
location and to the laws of where the servers are hosted... and then
attempt to conform to the laws of all places someone may wish to
publish or work to the extent that doing so is both reasonable and not
in strong conflict with or projects overall goals.


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> I personally think that any template transcluded 80-100+ times or
> transcluded in 10+ feature articles / wikipedia space pages, or even
> transcluded in two policy pages (disclaimers etc.) should be semi
> protected, and really widely used templates that are vandalised
> despite semi protection should be fully protected.

I agree, if not fully protected at least semi-protected.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Markus Krötzsch

subject: [Wikitech-l] customizing wiki search

body:
On Friday 08 September 2006 09:40, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Liz Kim wrote:
> > We have a wiki directory site which is a simple table with names, phone
> > numbers. ect..
> > I was thinking about creating a search script to do a look up, go through
> > this file and find by anything in the content.  I can think of two ways
> > to approach this..
> > 1. Somehow customize the search to ONLY search within the page for this
> > directory page.
> > 2. Write a script that goes into the database to do a search..
> > Any inputs/suggestions?
>
> If you use a MediaWiki template to enter the information in the
> tables, you get a kind of semantic markup of the data. This can
> then be harvested, either from an XML dump, or by modifying the
> MediaWiki software to do the harvesting when a page is saved.

Or you could use Semantic MediaWiki [1] to enter the data (this can also be
combined with a template, but need not -- so the syntax of the final pages
could be the similar to the Template-approach). The software then does the
extraction for you and provides the data in RDF/XML format. We have shown at
Wikimania2006 how 7 lines of PHP suffice to load data from this format, even
on the fly and over the web (some slides for the tutorial are at [2]). But
most other common programming languages have good RDF support as well.

But maybe you would not even need the extraction, since Semantic MediaWiki
already has some built-in search functions (which may or may not be useful
for your setting).

We also use Semantic MediaWiki in our group-wiki to store our telephone
numbers. We do it by putting the numbers on the user pages of our members. A
list with all telephone numbers is then created automatically elsewhere in
the wiki, and you can directly search for numbers by person. If you do not
want to have extra articles for everything that has a telephone number, then
Semantic MediaWiki can probably just help you in part of the extraction (e.g.
you could get strings of the form "Name: some number" and continue processing
these). At least you avoid parsing the wiki articles yourself.

Cheers,

Markus

[1] http://ontoworld.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki
[2] http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:MK1

--
Markus Kr?tzsch
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, D-76128 Karlsruhe
mak at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de        phone +49 (0)721 608 7362
www.aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de/WBS/     fax +49 (0)721 693  717
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060908/b7aed6a2/attachment.pgp>


body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day,
on
> average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
> links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
> somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
> problem]].

+++
Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 14:52:31 -0400
From: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com>

You should know, you spammed your blog on a number of pages.

If your customers are really interested in this data, perhaps you
could fund wikimedia to perform a proper study.

+++ +++
Surprise, surprise, that past mistakes would come back to haunt me.  Still,
I felt that the content so linked on my blog would be of informational use
to the community.  Being that the 3 or 4 inbound hits per day that I
received tended to spend an average of 1 to 5 minutes on the article, I
guess it actually was of some value to most people, until the links were
(appropriately) removed.  (Remember, even Jimmy Wales edited his own article
a number of times before "learning the rules".)

Anyway, you surely won't believe it, but my customers are not at all the
reason I'm asking this question.  Instead, I have a larger, more universally
interesting reason for asking; but I'm not quite ready to disclose my
agenda.  I will assure you, though, that it is in the interest of
underscoring a major "conflict of interest" problem within Wikipedia -- not
for my personal financial gain.

As for funding Wikimedia to get a legitimate answer to the question... since
I've already been a multi-time donor to Wikimedia fund drives, I would
certainly entertain that.  How much do you think it would cost to conduct
such a study?  Or, were you being facetious?

Greg


from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] How does living bio patrol actually work?

body:
Well, I know TehKewl / Simon managed to get it running on Linux, but
the code is VB6 for absolute simplicity and functionality. And since
I'm not familiar with Java, this may be a problem :)

On 9/7/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 6, 2006, at 11:16 PM, Akash Mehta wrote:
>
> >  I'll see if I can
> > hack away at the code and build a prototype with the latest stable
> > release.
> That will be great. And it would be greater yet, if it could be
> ported to Java so that your app could run on a Mac, Linux or other
> non-Windows OSes... :)
>
> -- Jossi
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Surprise, surprise, that past mistakes would come back to haunt me.  Still,
> I felt that the content so linked on my blog would be of informational use
> to the community.  Being that the 3 or 4 inbound hits per day that I
> received tended to spend an average of 1 to 5 minutes on the article, I
> guess it actually was of some value to most people, until the links were
> (appropriately) removed.  (Remember, even Jimmy Wales edited his own article
> a number of times before "learning the rules".)

There is no strict prohibition against editing your own biography, but
you are required to strictly conform to WP:V and WP:NPOV, and since
*outsiders* often don't understand, such edit is generally
discouraged.

I'm curious, how are you measuring how long people spent on your site?

 > Anyway, you surely won't believe it, but my customers are not at all the
> reason I'm asking this question.  Instead, I have a larger, more universally
> interesting reason for asking; but I'm not quite ready to disclose my
> agenda.  I will assure you, though, that it is in the interest of
> underscoring a major "conflict of interest" problem within Wikipedia -- not
> for my personal financial gain.

Honestly, it is highly variable. Although I don't have real data to
support that nor do I know what factors drive influence the numbers.

> As for funding Wikimedia to get a legitimate answer to the question... since
> I've already been a multi-time donor to Wikimedia fund drives, I would
> certainly entertain that.  How much do you think it would cost to conduct
> such a study?  Or, were you being facetious?

I'm not sure, but I was indeed being serious. It would be useful data
that we don't currently have.


subject: [Textbook-l] Global Text Project

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> By calling something like this a scam, I am refering to the fact that
> there seem to be individuals acting supposedly on behalf of
> underprivileged individuals with their hands out for money, time, and
> other resources but seem to have a political agenda instead, not any
> real attempt to do good in the world.  Or that the real agenda is not
> clear and visible, and certainly not the formally stated public purpose.

I am a little unsure why you think this about OLPC in particular.  I
think they have done amazing work so far, and their motivations seem
entirely and completely genuine.

> And more to the point if I see words like I stated above, that some
> project is for "people in the developing world", I start out
> automatically suspicious that it is a scam and that such a group must
> then prove it is something otherwise.  That is all I was trying to
> imply.  I have seen far too many of these supposedly good project ideas
> turn into ways to seperate people from their money than I can count.

Yes, I think such caution is always warranted in a general sort of way.

> The real purpose, for example, that the OLPC folks don't want to deal
> with EU or American states is because the laptop component
> manufacturer's that are offering price breaks for the OLPC don't want a
> competing computer product that would undercut their own sales in the
> USA and EU.  If that isn't a political agenda, I don't know what one is.

Hmmm.... so, if a manufacturer is willing offer a donation in the form
of a price break, so long as the product is sent somewhere else, then
the OLPC should just give up and walk away?  I don't really understand
this perspective.

 >  But there are
> other motivations beyond just working for 3rd world countries, and
> selling a very cheap encyclopedia to people in Africa.

Absolutely!  One of the great things about free licensing, of course, is
that my motivation and your motivation can be totally different and we
can still build on each other's work for our own ends.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] The creationists are coming ..

body:
I think they still don't have a point. So many people edit these
articles that sooner or later they have been NPOVed, cited, wikified
and brought to at least good article status. We have our standards,
and they're making very opinionative comments as if they were facts.

On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 07/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Guettarda wrote:
> > > > On 9/7/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
> > > >>> http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/wikipedia_youre_on_notice.html
>
> > > >>> It would be nice to get some evolutionary biologists to review our
>
> > > >> It would also be nice to get some creationists to review our entries on
>
> > > > There is constant "creationist review" of these articles; new people
>
> > > Oh right, so the whole thing's an astroturfing campaign.
>
> > Sorry, I don't follow what you're saying
>
>
> I don't know that it's so much [[astroturfing]] as the typical
> activist call to arms: POV activist sees carefully referenced
> as-neutral-as-reasonably-achievable Wikipedia article, gets upset,
> posts to list or blog about opposite-POV bias. That this one is on the
> Discovery Institute's news blog is a little more corporate affiliated,
> but it's not covert or done by deception. (Any more than anything the
> DI does is.)
>
> Usually what happens is: there's an issue, the activists are called to
> Wikipedia, and ... being activists, i.e. sincere people working to
> make the world better, they often like the idea of Wikipedia and try
> to work with it properly. So we get new editors and better articles.
> Win-win.
>
> *Maybe* this will happen in this case :-)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki for Project management

body:
On 9/7/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikis probably aren't the best choice for that.  You might want to
> look into bug trackers like Bugzilla: there are things like priority,
> release deadlines, blocking, assignment, etc. that it handles natively
> but no wiki software would normally do.

This is true, but I think there are advantages to use a wiki in
conjunction with bugzilla to get the best of both worlds. We've been
using mediawiki internally to draft specs, organize workplans and keep
track of worklogs for about 2 years now and it's pretty great. All the
advantages of a wiki come into play, there's no need for sending back
and forth Word docs when everyone can participate in one central
place.

I'm sure with a little bit of elbow grease, the proper extensions
could be developed to provide a free (if scaled down) version of
basecamp, which would be great. The Tasks extension is a good start,
but is pretty limited in what it can do.

Travis


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/8/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 *requires* attribution.
> In fact, all the Creative Commons licenses require attribution.
>

Not so:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] New language proposals and vandalism from Node ue
	in incubator

body:
Psh, I haven't even been on Meta for a few weeks.

And as I noted, it's not my opinion, but rather previous norms -- for
example, that you don't delete votes (as was done at the Zazaki vote,
but when I was banned for reverting it, I invited others to do it as
well and now it is widely accepted that one may delete whatever votes
one wishes), that versions need at least one native or fluent speaker
to be "approved" (as Taichi did with Old Norse and Old Church
Slavonic, which I reverted, and Taichi banned me for, but for which I
was unbanned by Jon Harald Soby, and then was threatened to be banned
for again by Amgine).

The fact is, Jay, you are for some reason biased against me. You hate
me for no logical reason. In all my previous encounters with you, you
have been extremely hostile towards me.

Mark

On 08/09/06, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey fellow wikipedians,
> The situation at the pages fro new language proposals
> is growing very hot and troublesome.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Node_ue
>
> Mostly due to Mark's abuse. He is very opinionated
> and supports one language and not another and he
> has been asked by several people to stop messing
> up efforts to get new proposals and incubator pages
> going but he insists in exerting his own point of view.
>
> Especially troubling for me is the issue with the
> Andalusian incubator page. It seems to have been
> deleted. There are several wikipedians interested
> and there is a test wiki at Wikia. The Test-wp page
> in Incubator was different and offered some solutions
> to the divisiveness that arose in considering this
> language.
>
> I'm asking for your help in looking into this matter.
> We need to provide a non-opinionated and slanted
> solution to the issue of dealing with new proposals.
> If Wikipedia gives the impression of being slanted
> and non-NPOV it stops being Wikipedia.
>
> Mark needs some scolding, and whoever is purposely
> attacking the proposal of an Andalusian Wiki should
> be warned to stop as well.
>
> With sincere regards,
> Jay B.
> User:ILVI
>
>
>
>
> 2006/8/28, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> --
>
> ?lv!
>
> ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: George Chriss

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
"If your site has a chat room and no one in your organization sees or is

alerted to the post, then you do not have the requisite actual knowledge

under the Rule. You may be considered to have actual knowledge with respect

to that child: (1) if someone from your operations sees the post in a chat

room; or (2) if someone alerts you to the post."

For the record, I believe I have triggered this rule:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Privacy_policy#Lack_of_COPPA

Thanks, George

en|meta|commons: [[User:GChriss]]

On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 11:41:18 -0700  "George Herbert"  wrote:

On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
> >>children?
> >>
> >>Ec
> >>
> >>
> >the content of userpages.
> >
> A new user page is blank.  It has no questions asking for personal
> information, or, for that matter, questions of any sort.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

From:
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/coppafaqs.htm
-----

*38. I operate a general audience site and don't ask visitors to reveal
their ages. However, I do have a number of chat rooms. *

*(a) What happens if a child visits my site and posts personal information
in a chat room but doesn't reveal his age?*

The Rule is not triggered. It applies to general audience websites if they
have *actual knowledge* that a particular visitor is a child. If such a site
knows that a particular visitor is a child, then the Rule must be followed
with respect to that child. If a child posts personal information on a
general audience site, but doesn't reveal his or her age and you have no
other information that would lead you to know that the visitor is a child,
then you would not have "actual knowledge" under the Rule and would not be
subject to its requirements. Collecting a child's age, however, does provide
"actual knowledge."

*(b) What happens if a child visits my chat room and announces his or her
age?*

If your site has a chat room and no one in your organization sees or is
alerted to the post, then you do not have the requisite actual knowledge
under the Rule. You may be considered to have actual knowledge with respect
to that child: (1) if someone from your operations sees the post in a chat
room; or (2) if someone alerts you to the post. At that point, you should
delete any personal information that has been posted and either ask the
child for a parent's email address for purposes of providing notice and
obtaining consent to future postings, or take reasonable steps to block that
child from returning to the chat area of the site, whether through screen
name blocking, a cookie, or some other means.

If you have monitored chat rooms where the monitors can delete information
from posts *before* they are made public, then your monitors can simply
strip the child's posts of any personal information before they are publicly
posted, thus permitting children to participate in the chat room without the
need for obtaining parental consent. This practice is easily applied to
"auditorium" style chat in which children pose questions which are screened
to a moderator or guest celebrity.
-----

It would appear on first glance that though Wikipedia is probably exempt due
to being a nonprofit, but that if we were a for-profit then a child posting
their own info in a user page (or anywhere else) would fall under the
Question 38 examples above.

Though this is undoubtedly a foundation business/legal decision, it would
make sense to me that Wikipedia might want to follow that recommended
general purpose website guideline above, even if it doesn't apply as a legal
requirement because WP is nonprofit.  It would seem to be a good general
policy.

The FAQ also recommends that general (non child-oriented) and nonprofit
sites have privacy policies, even if we aren't required to.  That sounds
good to me.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


body:
Where exactly are my personal attacks?

On 08/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> You know, looking at the situation from a neutral perspective, I'd be
> suggesting a 1 month block for node ue for policy violations and
> personal attacks, but thats just my opinion.
>
> Seriously though, guys, can you just learn to solve your differences
> on your own? Its bad enough having just about every topic raised on
> wikien-l. Sure, CC your communications to the mailing list as you go,
> but really you should be contacting each other and working out your
> dispute like human beings. Of course, thats just my opinion too.
>
> And Mark, you clearly aren't helping, with personal attacks all over
> the place. If you could just calm down, it would solve a lot of
> problems.
>
> On 9/9/06, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2006/9/8, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > Psh, I haven't even been on Meta for a few weeks.
> >
> > Mark, as you'll note if you re-read my posting
> > there are others, and it is very obvious to me you
> > have 'other' identities on Wikipedia. So maybe you
> > haven't logged in as Node ue but it seems someone
> > with your m.o. is at work.
> >
> > > The fact is, Jay, you are for some reason biased against me. You hate
> > > me for no logical reason. In all my previous encounters with you, you
> > > have been extremely hostile towards me.
> > > Mark
> >
> > Not at all Mark. Not personal, only I don't agree
> > with your methods and your efforts to impose your
> > opinions over others.
> >
> > Why is the Andalusian test wiki deleated from Incubator?
> > Why were you banned several times in different guises
> > from several language wikis?
> >
> > Definitely not personal, but maybe against some of your
> > personae which to me seem to be very biased and slanted
> > towards one opinion.
> >
> > I ask that the issue of the deletion of the Andalusian Test
> > wiki be looked into. My feeling is you had something to
> > do with this as you've been warned before for vandalizing
> > the efforts to establish a wiki in Andalusian.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Jay Bowks
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > ?lv!
> >
> > ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: C.J.Fryer at lse.ac.uk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Long delay after submitting an edit

body:
Wotcher

I've been experiencing major delays on our MediaWiki 1.6.7 and 1.7.1
installation when submitting edits.  After clicking "Save Page", there's
a delay of around 16 seconds before the user is redirected to the edited
page.

I've enabled profiling (logs attached), and it looks like the submission
of the edit and the generation of the newly-created page take a total of
0.8 seconds. I'm wondering what the sam hell the thing is up to for the
other 15.2.

I'm running Windows 2003 x64 R2, Apache 2.0.58, PHP 5.1.4 and MySQL
5.0.19.  Things I've tried:

    PHP 5.1.6 (apache2handler)
    MySQL client 4.1.7 and 5.0.24a
    Win32DisableAcceptEx in Apache
    Enabled transactions
    Disabled ENOTIF
    $wgNoOutputBuffer = true
    Disabled $wgCheckDBSchema
    Changed $wgArticlePath to the querystring style and back again

Nothing helps.  I've added a timestamp to the "Start Request" profiling
function, and if you examine the log, you'll notice the delay seems to
come at "User::loadFromSession() successfully saved user", after which a
new GET request starts.

If anyone can shed any light on what's happening here, I'd be grateful.

TIAFYT,

Chris

-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: wikilog.txt
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060908/8b798213/attachment.txt>


body:
On 08/09/06, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/9/8, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > Psh, I haven't even been on Meta for a few weeks.
>
> Mark, as you'll note if you re-read my posting
> there are others, and it is very obvious to me you
> have 'other' identities on Wikipedia. So maybe you
> haven't logged in as Node ue but it seems someone
> with your m.o. is at work.

My mo? Are you kidding me? Since I get off on trying to kill languages! Yee-haw!

Also, I have been accused of sockpuppetry many times before. If you're
going to accuse me, request a sockcheck.

> > The fact is, Jay, you are for some reason biased against me. You hate
> > me for no logical reason. In all my previous encounters with you, you
> > have been extremely hostile towards me.
> > Mark
>
> Not at all Mark. Not personal, only I don't agree
> with your methods and your efforts to impose your
> opinions over others.

...right.

> Why is the Andalusian test wiki deleated from Incubator?
> Why were you banned several times in different guises
> from several language wikis?

1) I don't know. Replace it, ask an admin to lock it.
2) Well, it varies from wiki to wiki. On yi.wp I was banned because
danny doesn't like me. Currently, my reputation there is very good and
people are constantly requesting that I return and that I edit more
often, and at least one person said I should be admin and didn't know
why Danny blocked me. His specific reason was that I was adding
{{delete}} templates to pages, although none of them was even a
sentence long, and adding a template isn't exactly vandalism. I don't
recall being banned on any other wiki (except for en and meta) for a
particularly long period of time that wasn't immediately lifted, with
the exceptions of ks.wp and Toki Pona; at ks.wp a radical Hindu
nationalist was trying to write the Wiki in Devanagari script, when
anybody literate in the language uses Perso-Arabic, and he banned me
for speaking out. Toki Pona was a long time ago, and you can find the
arguments about that in the archives of wp-l.

Also, I am sysop at several Wikis, and my influence and/or help has
been greatly welcomed or appreciated at several others, including but
not limited to Sicilian, Friulian, Haitian Creole, and Yiddish. I have
invited contributors to or created logos for many dozens of other
Wikipedias.

> Definitely not personal, but maybe against some of your
> personae which to me seem to be very biased and slanted
> towards one opinion.

I only have two accounts on en:, one on meta:, two on kl:, 4 or 5 on
yi: (most to try to circumvent Danny's ban), and 3 on one other Wiki
which is quite inactive right now.

I haven't even visited yi.wp in ages; I haven't used my second account
on en.wp for nearly a year (and even then I believe it has less than
50 contribs).

> I ask that the issue of the deletion of the Andalusian Test
> wiki be looked into. My feeling is you had something to
> do with this as you've been warned before for vandalizing
> the efforts to establish a wiki in Andalusian.

I never "vandalised" it. I simply didn't agree with your orthography,
and as the case turns out to be, nobody else does either. Changing
orthography to something a bit more kosher is not "vandalism".

Mark

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Living bio patrol on en:wp [[WP:BLPP]]

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:BLP_Patrol

Shortcut: [[WP:BLPP]]

There's a talk page with lots and lots of discussion. I've just added
to WP:BLPP an outline of the simple patrolling process we've been
discussing on WP:BLPN and on wikien-l. I've broken it down into:

1. Simple edit patrolling (like RC patrol/vandal patrol, except for
living bios) - catch suspect unreferenced changes - "related changes"
on [[Category:Living people]] runs about 10 edits/minute.
2. Simple category maintenance (making sure every living bio in en: is
in [[Category:Living people]] and has {{WPBiography}} on the talk
page), so as to make 1. easier.
3. More difficult cases (possible problematic content it would take
too long for a patroller to deal with on the spot)

1 and 2 could benefit from software assistance (hence this being cc'd
to wikitech-l) - the edit patrolling could likely use similar tools to
present RC/vandalism patrol, and a bit of javascript to add the
category and template with one click would be useful.

Any ideas? Does this look good/bad?

On one end I haven't time to patrol and on the other I'm not a coder,
but I have an interest in that this comes up in *every* media contact
I've had recently ... so getting something effective into place that's
simple enough to be workable would be very good for us and our
readers!

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Living bio patrol on en:wp [[WP:BLPP]]


body:
Do we have a way where we can scan talk pages for such warnings and
come up with a record of those with 20+? I know AmiDaniel's
vandalproof can look for warnings, and I'm sure there could be a
similar function implemented. Unfortunately, VP is closed source and
AmiDaniel is particularly busy with VP2, so unless he's willing to
release that portion of his source (I can hard code it into an MWT
port to check for warnings) we don't have a suitable system available.

On 9/8/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Sep 7, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > Why was this user not banned months ago?
> It is blocked for 1 month now, and copyvio images being deleted.
>
> -- Jossi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
1) Not a personal attack. Also, it pales in comparison to the stuff
Bonaparte has said to me, including slurs against my ethnic
background, national origin, and sexual orientation, for which he has
been banned indefinitely on en.wp.

2) That was partly forged, was in private correspondence (to which
such rules don't apply), and pales in comparison to the e-mail to
which it was in response, which called all Moldovan women whores.

3) Yes, a warning that cited no incidences.

Mark

On 08/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AFratele_lui_Bonaparte%2C_il_cunosti%3F&diff=378367&oldid=370448
>
> and
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Offensive-email.jpg
>
> would be a start. You've been warned on your talk page about a month
> ago on the issue of personal attacks
> (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Node_ue#I_see_you_are_circumventing_the_community_again.).
>
> On 9/9/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Where exactly are my personal attacks?
> >
> > On 08/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You know, looking at the situation from a neutral perspective, I'd be
> > > suggesting a 1 month block for node ue for policy violations and
> > > personal attacks, but thats just my opinion.
> > >
> > > Seriously though, guys, can you just learn to solve your differences
> > > on your own? Its bad enough having just about every topic raised on
> > > wikien-l. Sure, CC your communications to the mailing list as you go,
> > > but really you should be contacting each other and working out your
> > > dispute like human beings. Of course, thats just my opinion too.
> > >
> > > And Mark, you clearly aren't helping, with personal attacks all over
> > > the place. If you could just calm down, it would solve a lot of
> > > problems.
> > >
> > > On 9/9/06, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > 2006/9/8, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> > > > > Psh, I haven't even been on Meta for a few weeks.
> > > >
> > > > Mark, as you'll note if you re-read my posting
> > > > there are others, and it is very obvious to me you
> > > > have 'other' identities on Wikipedia. So maybe you
> > > > haven't logged in as Node ue but it seems someone
> > > > with your m.o. is at work.
> > > >
> > > > > The fact is, Jay, you are for some reason biased against me. You hate
> > > > > me for no logical reason. In all my previous encounters with you, you
> > > > > have been extremely hostile towards me.
> > > > > Mark
> > > >
> > > > Not at all Mark. Not personal, only I don't agree
> > > > with your methods and your efforts to impose your
> > > > opinions over others.
> > > >
> > > > Why is the Andalusian test wiki deleated from Incubator?
> > > > Why were you banned several times in different guises
> > > > from several language wikis?
> > > >
> > > > Definitely not personal, but maybe against some of your
> > > > personae which to me seem to be very biased and slanted
> > > > towards one opinion.
> > > >
> > > > I ask that the issue of the deletion of the Andalusian Test
> > > > wiki be looked into. My feeling is you had something to
> > > > do with this as you've been warned before for vandalizing
> > > > the efforts to establish a wiki in Andalusian.
> > > >
> > > > Sincerely,
> > > > Jay Bowks
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > >
> > > > ?lv!
> > > >
> > > > ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: [LiM] Manop

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Please check [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your
	project

body:
Hello,

I'm an admin of Thai WP. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me how to
translate the announcment. I could not find where I can edit.

Thank you,
Manop

On 9/8/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
> now all active members of Wikimedia projects are invited to vote in
> the 2006 Election to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
> Foundation. After one week from the beginning, we have over 1,000
> votes. Thank you for your interest!
>
> On most projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, it is advertised at the
> top of website. On some projects, it hasn't yet. According my
> presumption 8-10% projects hasn't recognized now they are invited to
> give voices (see below).
>
> Hence, local sysops are highly expected to ensure their wiki to be
> informed this Election, and if not yet, please modify
> [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] and put a brief notice about it. If you are
> not a sysop but visit such a project frequently, please let the local
> sysops know about that.
>
> You may want to render meta version or other projects'.
> Here are some examples you can reuse:
>
> En:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Fr:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Es:
> http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Ru:
> http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Id:
> http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
> Zh:
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
>
> I found by chance  some projects not informed yet, and checked some
> projects including
> - 25 largest Wikipedias +1 I visited by chance; 3 Wikipedias lacked
> information
> -  5 large Wiktionaries; all had sitenotice
> - 3 relatively large Wikinews; all had sitenotice
>
> 3/31 = 10% projects had no news about Election; I feel unease with
> this result.  One of the reasons would be that they optimized the
> sitenotice for other purposes. In some projects, it was just only the
> former news (like Wikimania scholarship) remained. Anyway, there would
> be terra incognita from several reasons, which all of us are invited
> to develop to assure the integrity of our global community.
>
> --
> Kizu Naoko
> Wikimedia Election Committee, 2006
> * vox pubuli, vox dei *
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
(LiM) Manop Kaewmoracharoen
427 Town Engineering Bldg.
Iowa State University


body:
I am not prejudiced against starting a Zazaki Wiki in particular. In
case you didn't notice, User:Maviulke13 deleted many "oppose" votes
from that page, and that is what I oppose. But apparently vote
tampering is allowed, so I no longer really care. Let them have their
Wiki, fraudulent vote or not. It's clear they will resort to whatever
tactics necessary to get it, and it's not *that* big of a deal to me.

Mark

On 08/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> I understand, and its fairly obvious that he's prejudiced against
> starting a Zazaki wiki, which is why I suggest a 1 month block from
> meta, if not 3mths - indef.
>
> On 9/9/06, ilooy <ilooy.gaon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2006/9/8, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com>:
> > > You know, looking at the situation from a neutral perspective, I'd be
> > > suggesting a 1 month block for node ue for policy violations and
> > > personal attacks, but thats just my opinion.
> >
> > I appreciate your opinion, Akash,
> > and I agree it would be better to
> > resolve differences this way.
> >
> > But... stuff is getting deleted, and
> > Marks behavior is unchanging. The
> > last run in I had with him concerning
> > Ladino was a bad ordeal for me. I don't
> > wish to have to fight with Mark, I don't
> > enjoy it at all. And I'm asking for community
> > support and request that the deletion of
> > the Andalusian Test wiki be resolved as
> > a matter of good policy and fairness in
> > NPOV standards.
> >
> > With regards,
> > Jay Bowks
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> > ?lv!
> >
> > ilooy.gaon at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
I personally think that any template transcluded 80-100+ times or
transcluded in 10+ feature articles / wikipedia space pages, or even
transcluded in two policy pages (disclaimers etc.) should be semi
protected, and really widely used templates that are vandalised
despite semi protection should be fully protected.

On 9/8/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
> > before, but never implemented; after I mentioned these attacks on
> > WP:AN, someone protected all three. Is anyone capable of coming up
> > with a list of all individual templates transcluded on, say, more than
> > a couple of hundred pages? Even if we don't *protect* these (I
> > strongly suggest we do - they mostly shouldn't be edited without a
> > good reason, much like the MediaWiki messages), having a few dozen
> > admins watchlisting them would be helpful.
>
> See [[WP:HRT]] (1). I put together some stats on high volume templates
> when I first drafted that page (2), but they're wildly out of date by
> now. Hopefully when the toolserver is working properly again for en,
> we'll be able to update those statistics.
>
> --
> (1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:High-risk_templates
> (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_templates_by_usage
>
> --
> Stephen Bain
> stephen.bain at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
On 08/09/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:

> > I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
> > before, but never implemented;
>
> This is not true. We have protection for several high use templates
> ([[template:cite web]] for example). And I was quite closely watching a
> couple of them. But it was sometimes difficult to convince admins to
> protect some stuff.

Sorry, I meant "implemented as a rule" rather than implemented at all
- there's been ad hoc permanent or semipermanent protection here and
there.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Wikimedia Foundation is exempt from COPPA due to its status as a
> non-profit organization not engaged in commerce.

The US goverment would disagree:

Who Must Comply

If you operate a commercial Web site or an online service directed to
children under 13 that collects personal information from children or
if you operate a general audience Web site and have actual knowledge
that you are collecting personal information from children, you must
comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.htm

The actual text of the law is complex and I would not venture an
opinion on what effect it should have on the current activites of the
foundation

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Tuvic

subject: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> That's much less work than you think - if I set my interwiki bot to
> work on it (it already has settings for it, actually), I will have
> things fixed in about 2 days. Although I would suppose that some
> languages would get angry with me for flooding recent changes....

Indeed, you'll probably get blocked, most likely somewhere halfway.
Also, you take to take into account that a lot of interwikilinks are
pointing to the wrong things. For example, the Japanese articles about
years have a Japanese character after the name, but in som wiki's, all
interwikilinks are pointing to the wrong articles, the ones about
numbers. Also, some wikis have turned the years into redirects to
decades, and some of those decades are already spread around in the
years.

I did a bot-run on the years (a lot of small ones actually) in july,
ranging from -500 up to 2060, and I found a lot of really stupid
mistakes and silly things: like making an typo, which off course makes
it ambigious. I fixed a lot of things, but there's still a lot of
mistakes out there...

Greetings, Tuvic

P.S. This might be a little off topic.


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
IP addresses are not personal information. Oh my no.

On 9/8/06, Bradypus <Bradypus_wp at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
> >>
> > Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
> > children?
>
> The IP ?
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day, on
> average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
> links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
> somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
> problem]].
>

Depends on the article they are on but I've seen over 100 claimed on SEO forums.
--
geni


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 08/09/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:

> Right, the (disused) CC-SA doesn't have the full attribution requirements of
> CC-BY-SA.
> Nevertheless, I think some indication of source is, if not legally required,
> then a really good idea, and I think this is true even for works explicitly
> released into the public domain (as opposed to, say, trivial ones ineligible for
> copyright, or stuff with obviously expired copyright).
> If nothing else, we'd want some sort of attempt to establish that it really was
> released into the public domain (or under CC-SA).

Mmm. I can't see e.g. Commons agreeing to allow images with no source
indication.

- d.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sure it wouldn't be very expensive. All that needs to be done is
> that the external (non-interwiki) link code passes URLs through a
> script on a server that counts the number of clicks to that particular
> link and then passes the user on to the appropriate site, which would
> probably be specified through GET. I'll code it if I have time today,
> its very simple in php, and using a database means that statistics can
> be generated VERY easily.

Turning every external link follow into a database write on Wikipedia
is simply not going to be acceptable.

We don't currently log HTTP GETs for a reason...


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Machine translation, Wikipedia and WiktionaryZ

body:
Dearest Sabine,

All rights under the identified word listings are hereby released under
the GFDL for use in
machine translation and language preservation efforts of the WikiMedia
Foundation and
the Wikipedia Community. This release includes but is not limited to:

lexicons, word lists, thesaraus, rule sets for mahcine translation,
grammar references, and any materials
created or contributed which originate under the the terms of the GFDL.

This release DOES NOT apply to any proprietary language materials not
released into the
public domain which comprise lexicons, word lists, grammar references,
thesaurus, or rule sets
which are subject to separate confidentiality agreements and which have
not been placed into the public
domain by interested parties for any Native American Languages or
Language Contributors who choose
to keep their proprietary materials protected. This applies to those
languages and groups who may
have cultural basis for protecting their languages due to religious or
other concerns.

Those lexicon and word lists identified by Sabine and uploaded to:

http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_1
http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_2
http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_3
http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_4

are hereby forever irrevocably released under the GFDL and WiktionaryZ shall serve as the repository for not only
these lists, but also the rule set and grammar parsing rule scripts for the Wikitrans program for any identified
target languages.

Completed word lists will be used to perform Machine Translation runs against the English Wikipedia on a regular basis.
Sabine is hereby appointed as coordinator on behalf of the Wolf Mountain Group to manage any and all Wikimedia and Wikipedia
coordination efforts for this program on behalf of the Community and may request access to WMG servers and facilties
for maintenance and coordination efforts.

Signed,

Jeffrey Vernon Merkey
Chairman
Wolf Mountain Group, LLC

Sabine Cretella wrote:

>Well this is on one hand to inform you about what we are going to do/try
>to do and on the other to tell people: if you want to do the same, just
>do it.
>
>Jeff has this wordlist he uses for the machine translation of the
>Cherokee wikipedia. Well, since I want to try to do the same for
>Neapolitan he told me to download it and substitute the Cherokee words
>with Neapolitan words. Said and done :-) I downloaded the list. Talking
>with GerardM about uploading it I sent him the list and he put it on
>WiktionaryZ (thank you!):
>
>http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_1
>http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_2
>http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_3
>http://www.wiktionaryz.org/index.php?title=MachineTranslation_preparation_4
>
>Jeff: could you please confirm that we may use the list in this way
>under GFDL and CC-BY?
>
>Well, what will happen now: I will start to create the needed entries in
>English and add the Neapolitan translations to it. Probably also Italian
>and as soon as we have Cherokee online I'll copy and paste these words
>there as well (always if I get the OK for it).
>
>Once that is done we can go on with teaching the translation engine the
>grammar rules :-)
>
>Now people will say and if it does not work ... well something tells me
>it will work ... and besides creating a basis for Machine Translation in
>this way also a dictionary is created. So one effort with double result.
>
>Therefore I invite all that are interested in doing similar things to
>follow us in our adventure ... well yes, that's how I consider it: a
>huge adventure in the world of languages. Probably some that will start
>after me to work on this list will be faster ... it would be great to
>see that - there is always that time problem (at least for me).
>
>Well this is the first time when we will see one of the WiktionaryZ
>features in action: reusability for other projects - in this case for
>our wikipedias.
>
>Thank you Jeff for taking the time to work on our languages.
>
>Ciao, Sabine
>Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
> http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: ScottL

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Bill Clark wrote:
> On 9/5/06, ScottL <scott at mu.org> wrote:
>>   Technical solution anyone?
>
> Well, there is the patch I submitted that started this whole argument..
>
> The only issues I can see are:
>
> 1) What to do about AD/CE, and wikilinked dates with explicit display
> text in general, e.g. [[July 4]], [[1776|AD 1776]] -- the existing
> code won't reformat such dates according to user preferences as it is,
> so this isn't just a problem with the patch.

   While I do not like the idea of someone using AWB to go through and
change one to the other.  If the feature works well enough in the
preferences they could go through and rewikify the dates to make the
feature detect them (leaving the displayed version alone).  I think that
is what is currently done when someone wikifies [[June 22, 2005]] a bot
of some sort comes and changes it.

> The default setting in my patch is to simply leave BC/BCE as they are,
> i.e. "No Preference."  If people think it'll become a point of
> contention, then we can simply wait a while and look at the statistics
> of what preferences people actually set.  If 90% of the English
> Wikipedia users set their preference to BCE, well then that would be a
> good argument in favor of making that the default.  At least we'd
> actually have some numbers to go on, rather than just arguing about
> whether BC is religious POV or BCE is Political Correctness run amock
> or an Americanism or what.
>
> -Bill

    Well outside of defaults and policy I think the data itself would be
interesting.

SKL


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Well, semi protection ensures that good users who aren't yet sysops
can edit a template when they need to. We have a whole lot more than
1000 trusted editors who regularly edit templates.

On 9/8/06, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I personally think that any template transcluded 80-100+ times or
> > transcluded in 10+ feature articles / wikipedia space pages, or even
> > transcluded in two policy pages (disclaimers etc.) should be semi
> > protected, and really widely used templates that are vandalised
> > despite semi protection should be fully protected.
>
> I agree, if not fully protected at least semi-protected.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

>
>Thank you Jeff for taking the time to work on our languages.
>
>Ciao, Sabine
>
>
>
And you are most welcome, and thanks.

:-)

Jeff


body:
On 9/8/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mmm. I can't see e.g. Commons agreeing to allow images with no source
> > indication.
> >
> So let me give a hypothetical.  Say my grandmother takes a really
> awesome photograph.  She doesn't want to create a Wikipedia or Commons
> account.  In fact, she doesn't even have a computer.  Furthermore, she
> doesn't want her name up on the Internet.  But she is willing, after
> some persuasion from me, to license her photo under Sharealike 1.0.
>
> Can I put this image in Wikipedia and/or Commons without lying?
>
> Anthony

Just list the source as your grandmother. or as an anonymous donor.
--
geni


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in
 fact	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
Sage Ross wrote:
>>> Answering "Who Writes Wikipedia?" in terms of number of surviving words is,
>>> no doubt, better than using edit counts.  But it is also may not be the best
>>> approach for the future, if we are really switching to a "quality over
>>> quantity" mentality.  At the least, there should be careful choices about
>>> what kinds of articles to analyze, before we put too much weight on results
>>> like these.  My intuition is that Featured Articles and Good Articles have a
>>> significantly larger portion of established editors as the main
>>> contributors, even by the word count metric.
>>>
>>> -Ragesoss
>>    FA's and to some extent Good Articles are not the reason that we are
>> #17 on the most visited sites.  If those were the only articles we had I
>> doubt we would have 1% of the readership that we currently enjoy.  I
>> think articles past a specific size or maybe size and age woudl be a
>> better metric, though a random sampling of 10k non-stub articles woudl
>> probbly give us what we want.
>>
>> SKL
>
> I think (as I said in the reply that seems to have gotten lost in the
> flood) that level of citation (citations per unit length, or similar)
> would be a good parameter for choosing the sample.  With regard to
> what makes us the #17 most-visited site, you are right (of course).
> It's defintely not the FA's and GA's.  But high-quality articles (by
> whatever idiosyncratic measure each reader uses) are going to be
> responsible for future growth in readership and attracting the the
> most capable  and knowledgable editors, (probably) more so than
> continued growth in the number and size of the unverified articles and
> content that good anons typically add.
>
> As anecdotal evidence, I was talking to a new professor at my school
> yesterday (a historian of molecular biology) who was gushing over the
> Rosalind Franklin article (props to User:Wobble).  He's now thinking
> about coordinating some of his course assignments with WikiProject
> History of Science.
>
> To repeat what I say on the "expert rebellion" pages, I think we are
> handling the transition from a quantity-emphasis to a quality-emphasis
> the right way (i.e., slowly).  The leaving experts either have a
> different set of priorities (i.e., they think that the real-life
> authority of editors should matter), or are leaving because of
> problems that we are working on (i.e., edit creep and the inability to
> preserve a "good" version).  But metrics like AaronSW's are important
> for determining how fast we should change policy/software to favor
> ease of participation vs. verifiability and/or stability.
>
> I guess ideally, we could have a measure based on each type of sample:
> random articles, FA's, GA's, long articles, old articles,
> high-citation articles, most-visited articles.
> -Ragesoss

   I cannot disagree with anything you have said, and for the long term
I think you are right about the focus and what is important.  I would
add however, that I think a very significant portion of our popularity
is totally unrelated to verification and the accuracy to the finest
detail of our articles.  About 80% of the searches I do when looking on
wikipedia are only for reading the first 1-5 sentences.  I encounter a
name or a term or a place that I do not recognize and I want to find out
what it is.

   This is obviously not something that we should take to mean that the
criticisms about fact checking and references should be disregarded, but
I think it is worth keeping in mind (especially when editing opening
paragraphs).

SKL


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
Friday, September 8, 2006, 2:01:13 PM, you wrote:

> I just wish the bot would stop telling me that the images Ive uploaded
> that dont have a known source (and were released under Sharealike 1.0
> which doesnt require a source) are candidates for deletion.

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0 *requires* attribution.
In fact, all the Creative Commons licenses require attribution.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Question about "External links"

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm sure it wouldn't be very expensive. All that needs to be done is
>> that the external (non-interwiki) link code passes URLs through a
>> script on a server that counts the number of clicks to that particular
>> link and then passes the user on to the appropriate site, which would
>> probably be specified through GET. I'll code it if I have time today,
>> its very simple in php, and using a database means that statistics can
>> be generated VERY easily.
>
> Turning every external link follow into a database write on Wikipedia
> is simply not going to be acceptable.
>
> We don't currently log HTTP GETs for a reason...

   I was going to suggest log parsing when I first saw this then I
realized from my own work how unrealistic it would be to do very much
logging on wikipedia.

SKL


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA

body:
On 9/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Did I miss something?  What personal information are we collecting from
> children?
>
> Ec

the content of userpages.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] COPPA


from_name: Richard Holton

body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Turning every external link follow into a database write on Wikipedia
> is simply not going to be acceptable.
>
> We don't currently log HTTP GETs for a reason...
>
> Yeah, I can see that may be troublesome. It might be interesting to do it
for a subset of pages...like the featured articles, for instance. I'm not
sure how difficult it would be to implement, though...

-Rich
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Please check [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your project

body:
Hello all,
now all active members of Wikimedia projects are invited to vote in
the 2006 Election to the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia
Foundation. After one week from the beginning, we have over 1,000
votes. Thank you for your interest!

On most projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, it is advertised at the
top of website. On some projects, it hasn't yet. According my
presumption 8-10% projects hasn't recognized now they are invited to
give voices (see below).

Hence, local sysops are highly expected to ensure their wiki to be
informed this Election, and if not yet, please modify
[[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] and put a brief notice about it. If you are
not a sysop but visit such a project frequently, please let the local
sysops know about that.

You may want to render meta version or other projects'.
Here are some examples you can reuse:

En:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
Fr:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
Es:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
Ru:
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
Id:
http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice
Zh:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Sitenotice

I found by chance  some projects not informed yet, and checked some
projects including
- 25 largest Wikipedias +1 I visited by chance; 3 Wikipedias lacked information
-  5 large Wiktionaries; all had sitenotice
- 3 relatively large Wikinews; all had sitenotice

3/31 = 10% projects had no news about Election; I feel unease with
this result.  One of the reasons would be that they optimized the
sitenotice for other purposes. In some projects, it was just only the
former news (like Wikimania scholarship) remained. Anyway, there would
be terra incognita from several reasons, which all of us are invited
to develop to assure the integrity of our global community.

--
Kizu Naoko
Wikimedia Election Committee, 2006
* vox pubuli, vox dei *


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Please check [[MediaWiki:Sitenotice]] on your project


subject: [Foundation-l] Use of Wikimedia-Logo's in articles

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Uh, no. I noticed it.
> I just have no idea what to say. The logo is copyright. Period.
> It is correct that using it is "with permission", so by some standards,
> not allowed (not free content).
>
> I have no comment to make on this, because I think it would be stupid to
> remove it as obviously the Foundation is not gonna argue, nor sue.
> On the other hand, if we follow the will of our most convinced editors,
> indeed the logo should not be there.
>
> I will propose a rule of thumb. If the logo is in an article, who may be
> published or republished by any website without us feeling unconfortable
> with, then do publish it.
> If the logo use is of such type we would prevent reuse by legal means or
> ask money for the re-use, then do not put in the encyclop?dia.
>
> but well...

Ok. I already suspected the Foundation wasn't going to sue themselves
for use of the logo in an article about Wikipedia (for example).

The rule of thumb you're proposing actually says it can be used, but
not to damage the Foundation, and not to make money from its use
alone.
I'll mention your mail in the village pump at nl-wiki, but the most
convinced editors probably won't agree with the image being in the
article.
Maybe it's an idea to discuss this and make an offical policy about
it, but in the mean time we'll try to cope with it as good as it gets.

Greetings, Tuvic


from_name: ilooy

body:
Hey fellow wikipedians,
The situation at the pages fro new language proposals
is growing very hot and troublesome.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Node_ue

Mostly due to Mark's abuse. He is very opinionated
and supports one language and not another and he
has been asked by several people to stop messing
up efforts to get new proposals and incubator pages
going but he insists in exerting his own point of view.

Especially troubling for me is the issue with the
Andalusian incubator page. It seems to have been
deleted. There are several wikipedians interested
and there is a test wiki at Wikia. The Test-wp page
in Incubator was different and offered some solutions
to the divisiveness that arose in considering this
language.

I'm asking for your help in looking into this matter.
We need to provide a non-opinionated and slanted
solution to the issue of dealing with new proposals.
If Wikipedia gives the impression of being slanted
and non-NPOV it stops being Wikipedia.

Mark needs some scolding, and whoever is purposely
attacking the proposal of an Andalusian Wiki should
be warned to stop as well.

With sincere regards,
Jay B.
User:ILVI

2006/8/28, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
--

?lv!

ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template usage?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 08/09/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>>> I've seen protection for high-profile templates like this mentioned
>>> before, but never implemented;
>> This is not true. We have protection for several high use templates
>> ([[template:cite web]] for example). And I was quite closely watching a
>> couple of them. But it was sometimes difficult to convince admins to
>> protect some stuff.
>
> Sorry, I meant "implemented as a rule" rather than implemented at all
> - there's been ad hoc permanent or semipermanent protection here and
> there.
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:High-risk_templates

But we don't need a rule to do the right thing. A lot of people ignore
rules anyway.

--Ligulem


from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEN-l posting] Re: Template usage?

body:
:D

I remember when my posts took days to get on to wikien-l. Now I've got
my moderated flag dropped too :) Shouldn't there be a page on en:wp or
meta where people can request their moderate flag on a mailing list to
be dropped? And from memory, wikipedia-l doesn't auto-moderate.

On 9/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 08/09/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
>
> > May I ask you to approve my last posting shown below to WikiEN-l?
>
>
> Your posts are through and you're unmoderated. I forgot to check
> wikien-l this week and it looks like everyone else did too ...
>
> Our apologies to all those whose messages have been held up in the
> queue, I'm applying the plunger now.
>
> (wikien-l mods! There's less completely fucked-up penis spam! Really!
> Well, a bit less! Come on in, the sewage is fine!)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
2006/9/8, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> Psh, I haven't even been on Meta for a few weeks.

Mark, as you'll note if you re-read my posting
there are others, and it is very obvious to me you
have 'other' identities on Wikipedia. So maybe you
haven't logged in as Node ue but it seems someone
with your m.o. is at work.

> The fact is, Jay, you are for some reason biased against me. You hate
> me for no logical reason. In all my previous encounters with you, you
> have been extremely hostile towards me.
> Mark

Not at all Mark. Not personal, only I don't agree
with your methods and your efforts to impose your
opinions over others.

Why is the Andalusian test wiki deleated from Incubator?
Why were you banned several times in different guises
from several language wikis?

Definitely not personal, but maybe against some of your
personae which to me seem to be very biased and slanted
towards one opinion.

I ask that the issue of the deletion of the Andalusian Test
wiki be looked into. My feeling is you had something to
do with this as you've been warned before for vandalizing
the efforts to establish a wiki in Andalusian.

Sincerely,
Jay Bowks

--

?lv!

ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] draft of WikiCreole 0.1 available for comment

body:
On 9/8/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is the wikipedia equivalent of allowing the en.wikipedia front page to
> be world-anon-editable.
>
> We all know how long *that* would last as an experiment...
>
> That large parts of it should be editable doesn't mean that all of it should
> be all the time to just anyone...

Aren't the main pages of most WIkipedia's editable? Or are you making
some distinction between "editable" and "writable"?

Steve


body:
2006/9/8, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com>:
> You know, looking at the situation from a neutral perspective, I'd be
> suggesting a 1 month block for node ue for policy violations and
> personal attacks, but thats just my opinion.

I appreciate your opinion, Akash,
and I agree it would be better to
resolve differences this way.

But... stuff is getting deleted, and
Marks behavior is unchanging. The
last run in I had with him concerning
Ladino was a bad ordeal for me. I don't
wish to have to fight with Mark, I don't
enjoy it at all. And I'm asking for community
support and request that the deletion of
the Andalusian Test wiki be resolved as
a matter of good policy and fairness in
NPOV standards.

With regards,
Jay Bowks

--

?lv!

ilooy.gaon at gmail.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/8/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am curious if there is any factual data about how many clicks per day, on
> > average, that a run-of-the-mill outbound link receives in the "External
> > links" section of a typical Wikipedia article?  My guess is that it's
> > somewhere around 3 or 4, but that's just me looking at it as a [[Fermi
> > problem]].
>
> You should know, you spammed your blog on a number of pages.
>
> If your customers are really interested in this data, perhaps you
> could fund wikimedia to perform a proper study.

Could be tricky. The other comment from SEO forums is that their links
keep getting removed.

--
geni


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] current categories and subcategories

body:
You could try Special:Allpages and select the category namespace. If that
doesn't serve your needs. Check out the toolserver.

On 9/8/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/7/06, karen marcelo <karen at radarnetworks.com> wrote:
> > hi all
> >
> > i just joined this list so i'm not sure if this is the correct forum to
> > ask this, but how do i get a master list of
> > all wikipedia categories and sub-categories? i looked a the database
> > download page and took a peek at
> > pages_articles.xml and see that one can parse out Categories from the
> > mediawiki tags embedded in the
> > text. but is there some other dump with all the categories (even ones
> > that may not have articles) as well as their
> > subcategories available somewhere?
> >
> > apologies in advance if this was the wrong list to post this question
> > to, but if someone could direct me to the right one
> > it would be most appreciated.
> >
> > thanks much!
>
> Isn't one of the dumps offered something like "categorylinks"?
>
> ~maru
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>