subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > On 5/19/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> >>
> >> >> As it is, it is easy for a company with
> >> >> a huge legal staff to shut down small "fair users" with the threat of
> >> >> endless, if futile, litigation. Lessig talks about a number of
> >> >> instances where this happened in his book, _Free Culture_.
> >> >
> >> > Only if the fair users roll over and die, like Wikimedia is doing.
> >>
> >> Since you seem completely unaware of the occasions where the Wikimedia
> >> Foundation has received complaints from copyright owners and told them,
> >> "Fair use, so buzz off" (couched in more polite terms, of course),
> >> perhaps you're not in a position to make informed comments on what
> >> Wikimedia is doing.
> >>
> >> --Michael Snow
> >
> > I really don't see what Wikimedia has done on other occassions has to
> > do with what they are doing on this occassion.
>
>  From the message to which I was replying, you appeared to be talking
> about fair use law overall, not any particular instance. There have been
> several specific situations mentioned in this discussion. Perhaps next
> time you might be more precise if you're talking about only one, instead
> of making comments that sound like sweeping generalizations.
>
> --Michael Snow

s/is doing/has done/.  OK?

Anthony


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false
	information

body:
On 17 May 2006 at 19:29, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> referencing is hard.

Is that what the Wikipedia Barbie says?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

body:
On 5/20/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Even if Harold Shipman was Jewish and there's a good source for it,
> there's no reason it should be in the intro. His ethnicity/religion
> wasn't in any way relevant to his notabilty.

I'm probably straying into dangerous territory here, but I do notice that
ethnic origin is very frequently cited in the intro for people with, shall
we say, more positive contributions to humanity. "Jim Smith was a Jewish
scientist of Polish origin best known for his studies of geraniums" seems
like something you would come across fairly often.

There's really no policy or guideline at all for what shouldn't go in the
lead section. There are vague guidelines for what *should* go in it, but
whether or not to mention a religion or ethnic origin is largely a question
of taste and common sense.

Steve


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Philip Welch wrote:

>On May 19, 2006, at 1:41 PM, maru dubshinki wrote:
>
>
>>From my own experience:
>>the Star Wars article. We only accept canon depictions- and because
>>canonicity policies say that only material authorized and licensed by
>>the copyright holders is canon, and because the copyright holders will
>>only do proprietary releases, we cannot, by definition, have free
>>images relating to Star Wars.
>>
>
>It seems like the "only accept canon depictions" is the rule to go,
>since it seems silly and arbitrary, and in any case, far less
>important than "only use free content". Artist depictions would be
>appropriate in this case, just like almost any other case where we
>only have fair use images to use.
>
Doesn't get you off the hook though, since an artist's depiction is
a derivative work. In fact, the more accurate the depiction, the more
of a copyright infringement it is. So you end up making a choice
between accuracy and freeness.

I have actually looked at de: Star Wars articles, and some play fast
and loose with freeness. For instance, [[Chewbacca]] is illustrated
with a picture of someone wearing a Chewbacca costume, but again,
such a picture would be not be possible without some use of George's
IP, so at least in that case de: is kidding themselves about
freeness of the image (it's possible that they're exploiting
Panoramafreiheit or some other German legal loophole not valid in
the US).

Stan


from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 5/20/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> On 17 May 2006 at 19:29, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > referencing is hard.
>
> Is that what the Wikipedia Barbie says?
>
> --
> == Dan ==

Ah, I see you've heard of our merchandising plans! See, the foundation
needs more money, and ads are unacceptable, so...
The awesome Wikipedia barbie will come with a basic userpage
(userboxes and the deluxe multi-page user space condo come extra), and
will say the following exciting phrases!
    *  "Referencing is hard!"
    * "I love adding cruft!"
    * "Will we ever have enough articles?"
    *"Wanna have a copyvio party?"
And of course, where would a up-and-coming It editor just trying to
make her way through the big world of Wikipedia be without her
boyfriend, the ruggedly handsome playboy, Jimbo?

~maru
no doubt Wikipedia barbie will one day break up with Jimbo, and take
up with a editor who edits surfing articles- the hussy!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
maru dubshinki wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>How about a Free photo of Harrison Ford and some image manipulation?
>>
>>--
>>Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
>>
>
>Heh. I'd like to see the caption for that: "This is an image of an
>20-years older Harrison Ford digitally manipulated to resemble the
>image of the digitally manipulated Harrison Ford as the interstellar
>soundrel Han Solo from the original film print of ''A New Hope''."
>
And after all that, it would *still* be a derivative work and still
not free!

People should stop and consider that half-billion-dollar grosses
per film pays for quite a lot of lawyers to think through the IP
loopholes that haven't even occurred to us amateurs yet.

Stan


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
In <b8ceeef70605201231u43b3b7f0idf7ecca1bbd6fbdb at mail.gmail.com>, you wrote:
> On 5/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> say the following exciting phrases!
>>     *  "Referencing is hard!"
>>     * "I love adding cruft!"
>>     * "Will we ever have enough articles?"
>>     *"Wanna have a copyvio party?"
>
> Can I add "We need more Pok?mon articles!"

Certainly also "Ooohh, I just found the most darling new pastel pink userbox!"


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Mark Wagner wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>I support serious action to ban people who commit copyvios.  We are
>>supposed to be using fair use only in certain very limited circumstances
>>and people who do not realize that should be banned from the project.
>>
>
>Can we also disable image uploading for new users?  Please?
>
It sounds like everybody is in agreement on this - it won't stop
all copyvios, but it will put a big dent in the uninformed
drive-by uploads, give us more time to work on hard cases. So what
does it take to make this happen? Bugzilla? Phone call to Brion? :-)

Stan


body:
On 5/20/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I agree that it's a matter of editorial common sense. If the ethnicity
> is relevant to the person's notability, it's fine to mention it in the
> intro. If it's harmless, ditto. But if it's irrelevant and arguably
> racist, anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic, then it's important not to
> mention it with unseemly haste. We shouldn't have articles starting
> with: "John Doe is a British Muslim convicted of child rape," or "Jane
> Doe is an Afro-American who murdered all four of her husbands."
> There's no harm in mentioning ethnic background in the bio section,
> but it shouldn't be used as a stick to beat people with (or to beat
> their ethnicity with).

What if they are famous rather than infamous? Is it ok to give the ethnicity
a bit of a "boost"? One such issue I recall seeing was on [[Freddie
Mercury]] - how important are his Indian or Persian origins?

I don't mind if the rules are different for "positive" vs "negative"
articles - it's a bit of a violation of NPOV, but not a major one.

Steve


body:
On 5/20/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > will say the following exciting phrases!
> > * "Referencing is hard!"
> > * "I love adding cruft!"
> > * "Will we ever have enough articles?"
> > *"Wanna have a copyvio party?"
>
>
> Can I add "We need more Pok?mon articles!"
>
> Steve

Certainly! This is the doll that anyone can edit, after all....

~maru


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 10:32 AM, Prasad J wrote:

> I was not trolling. I do not support Islamic fundamentalism. Neither
> do I support electrocuting hooded Iraqi POWs (in blatant violation of
> the Geneva Convention) and later taking photographs with the corpses
> to send home as postcards.

Yes, which is why I don't post here as "Lynndie England". But I
always enjoy your anti-American trolling.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> "John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960)
> is an American serial killer. Together with his younger partner Lee
> Boyd Malvo, he carried out the Beltway sniper attacks in an apparent
> attempt to extort $10 million dollars during his shooting spree."
>

Out of curiosity, why do you think nationality ("American") is relevant, but
not race, place of birth etc? Can we formalise some guidelines? When is race
relevant? Presumably if someone is the victim of a race hate crime...but
when else? I don't think in an encyclopaedia we can ever refrain from
mentioning something like that, but we can take "not relevant" to mean "not
in the lead".

Steve


body:
On 5/20/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I personally don't mind if it's a positive association, or a very
> interesting one, though again you have to be careful. Pointing out
> that someone is a British Muslim mathematician sounds a bit odd. And
> we wouldn't say a person was a Celtic scientist, so why a Jewish one?

You may be confused by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_mathematicians then.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 3:27 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

>> It seems like the "only accept canon depictions" is the rule to go,
>> since it seems silly and arbitrary, and in any case, far less
>> important than "only use free content". Artist depictions would be
>> appropriate in this case, just like almost any other case where we
>> only have fair use images to use.
>>
> Doesn't get you off the hook though, since an artist's depiction is
> a derivative work. In fact, the more accurate the depiction, the more
> of a copyright infringement it is. So you end up making a choice
> between accuracy and freeness.

Only if the artist chooses to reproduce one photograph or still.

If the artists references multiple photographs and produces an image
of Han Solo where Han is standing in a pose different from any of the
photographs, or in a different or neutral setting, then it's not a
derivative work of any one photograph.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Design for wikipedia's front page (and corporate)

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

>The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
>single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
>knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
>fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
>
Congratulations to your grand-mother.  It is encouraging to hear that
people of her generation have maintained sufficient mental alertness to
manage a wiki.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, advertising, websites and the lack of sources

body:
On 5/20/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> As a solution, I propose a system similar to {{prod}}, just for websites,
> weblogs, webcomics and various such internet things: a tag which says that
> if in 15 days no *reliable* sources are found and added, the article
> should be deleted. This is consistent with our Verifiability policy.

I don't get it. {{prod}} labels are removed by anyone who disputes the
deletion - would this be like that? Otherwise, how would it differ from AfD
on the grounds of notabiilty? Sure, AfD has problems, but can you explain
why an AfD simulacrum would work perfectly?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Article surveys re-surveyed

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/20/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Many of the articles were unchanged since February: 23 articles had
>>zero edits, with three of them having not been edited since before
>>last November.  19 articles had ten or more edits, encompassing 80% of
>>all edits.  The ratio of trivial edits to major edits remains roughly
>>the same, at around 99% trivial.
>>
>>
>Thanks for the update. I hadn't picked up on this before 99% trivial? What
>do we have to do to get people to "be bold'?
>
Get rid of the culture of fear where an editor avoids being bold to
avoid arguments.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> He's using Wikipedia to promote his bias--trying to turn Wikipedia
> into propaganda for his cause. The cause of demolishing skyscrapers
> in Manhattan, slaughtering Indians in Kashmir, and trying to drive
> the entire nation of Israel into the sea.
>
> I'm glad you can tolerate that, because I can't.

With respect, lots of people attempt to achieve things on Wikipedia that I
don't agree with. Fortunately, in most cases, their efforts are futile. The
very fact that an editor is "trying to turn Wikipedia into propaganda for
his cause" should not cause us any alarm, unless he looks like he might
actually succeed.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW:  Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 10:20 AM, Earthhope Action Network wrote:

>
>     Sorry, but vigilante spies is the only term I can come up with
> that
>     describes these editors. Oh, I am taken seriously by many
> people on
>     Wikipedia, have no fear. Or then again, maybe have fear. The admin
>     cabal is doomed to extinction like most tyrannical regimes are.
> Note:
>     notice how Philip Welch defends the Chinese firewall. Jimmy Wales
>     went up against Philip on this. My email concerning this was
> blocked

That's a goddamn lie. I've expressed nothing but criticism and
contempt for the Chinese government on this list.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
> There's a line to be crossed here, Prasad. White supremacists aren't
> welcome on Wikipedia either, especially if they edit Wikipedia
> towards a white supremacy bias. This person and his anti-Semitic
> ideology is no different.

As always, Wikipedia is not concerned with the political views of its
contributors.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
	for no reason

body:
In the past few days we have seen some determined efforts, some
actually supported by administrators, to turn the administrators'
noticeboard into some kind of kangaroo court to try administrators.

It seems to me that we're seeing the same kind of trolling here.

I'm in favor of legitimate challenges to poor administrator actions.
Our dispute resolution process contains ample tools for achieving
this.  So do we need to have these clearly poor quality challenges
posted on wikien-l?


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
>
> I'm not saying it should be cause for alarm--I'm saying it should be
> cause for ban.

I'm unconvinced simply on the basis of what someone believes they are trying
to achieve. I'm talking in theoretical terms here, but let's call P their
positive contributions, W the work required by other Wikipedians to clean up
their negative contributions, and R the damage caused by the person to
Wikipedia's reputation by their participation in the project (and the damage
that isn't detected and fixed by other editors). If P > R + W, then it seems
they should stay. Particularly if, with a bit of rehabilitation, we can
reduce W and R.

I have no idea of those values for this particular case. I just have an
instinctive negative reaction to "He is trying to subvert the project! Block
him!" type reactions.

Steve


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
Wikipedia has a *very* good rank on google (PR 9 on main page), which
means that more and more webmasters want links from it. One way is to
add an external link, however, these are usually spotted by editors.

The alternate way is to create an article about the site itself. Yes,
this is very common: there are thousands of articles on websites on
wikipedia, most of them non-notable, without sources or simply spam.

Then, there is the kind of editors who visit some obscure website and
think "wow! this is a cool site, let's make an article about that
site", disregarding the verifiability policy.

I noticed a trend: on such articles about websites, when I ask for reliable
references, according to our policy, the answer is often: "why would we
need references for this article? the website itself is used as a reference".

As a solution, I propose a system similar to {{prod}}, just for websites,
weblogs, webcomics and various such internet things: a tag which says that
if in 15 days no *reliable* sources are found and added, the article
should be deleted. This is consistent with our Verifiability policy.

The problem with AfD is that even if it is absolutely clear that
the subject of the article has absolutely no reliable sources, (or
even more than three google hits), it may still be "kept" for various
reasons (cliques, not enough votes etc).


from_name: Sue Anne Reed

subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection policy

body:
> I have to disagree with you here. Wikipedia is famous as the
> Encyclopedia "anyone can edit". If a random anon sees a page and tries
> to edit it, and cannot (while the main page still proclaims how
> everyone can edit), they are going to be dreadfully confused- lord
> knows enough are confused by the basic idea without adding on a second
> level of possible confusion. Perhaps two templates: the scary one for
> temporary semiprotection, and another, more discreet one for the more
> permanent ones?
>

Given how many web sites require registration these days, I don't feel
there's a conflict between saying "anyone can edit" but you have to be
registered to edit to certain articles. It's not like we're saying that
only certain registered can edit, we would just be saying to you have to
register to edit.

Sue Anne


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
geni wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>> Mark Wagner wrote:
>>> On 5/19/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I support serious action to ban people who commit copyvios.  We are
>>>> supposed to be using fair use only in certain very limited circumstances
>>>> and people who do not realize that should be banned from the project.
>>>>
>>> Can we also disable image uploading for new users?  Please?
>>>
>>>
>> Seconded.
>>
>> -- Neil
>
> The effect will be limited. Even quite senior people don't appear to
> be able to follow our copyright policy.
>
>

And even those who claim they do still want to claim fair use in cases
where it's plainly not.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Ben Yates

subject: [Foundation-l] correcting a big usability problem

body:
A couple months ago, there was a formal usability test of wikipedia;
it turned up a few problems, one of which stood out as both severe and
easy to fix.

Quote from the pdf, minus graphics --
http://openusability.org/download.php/89/germanwikipedia_usabilitytest_edit.pdf
--

- - - - - - - - - -
Two users who started their first-time editing with a paragraph
instead of the whole page
were not confused by the syntax. However, they were faced another
problem: The location
of the "Edit" links seemed to relate them with the paragraph above,
not the one below.
Therefore, when clicking the "Edit" link below "Geschichte", they
expected to see the
heading "Geschichte" and its contents.

This expectation was not met, instead "Weblinks" appeared in the
editor window. They
were confused, did not know what to do. Finally, both participants
deleted (!) the existing
and valid text, and started to add their own text.
- - - - - - - - - -


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
> >> There's a line to be crossed here, Prasad. White supremacists aren't
> >> welcome on Wikipedia either, especially if they edit Wikipedia
> >> towards a white supremacy bias. This person and his anti-Semitic
> >> ideology is no different.
> >
> > As always, Wikipedia is not concerned with the political views of its
> > contributors.
>
> As always, Wikipedia is concerned with contributors editing Wikipedia
> to further a political agenda.

No.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 182

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Molu,
>
<snip>
>> P.S. I don't know what makes a top-posting or what doesn't. I don't
>> know many different ways of sending emails.
>
> Compare my message to yours.  I'm making my comments below those
> comments of yours that I'm replying to.  You're just throwing everything
> above the line, so that we have to scroll down to find out what on Earth
> you're talking about.
>
> Interleaving comments instead of top-posting is free, easy, and comes
> with a sense of moral satisfaction you'll be itching to feel.
>

Don't forget that:

> Top-posters don't snip.  Also, they eat kittens and have scaly skin.
> Bottom-bosters (also known as "interleavers" or "the chosen ones") snip,
> smell really nice, and are good friends in time of need.  Remember that.

Your good friend,
--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false
 information

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
> G'day Jimmy,
>
>> We are a massively powerful text generation engine.  People have to drop
>> the idea that every little tidbit is precious.  Crap is crap.  Yank it.
>
> Do you think I could get a framed and autographed copy of that paragraph?
>
>

Signed (or even written) in his own blood, of course.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> O RLY? is a copyvio, which weakend our fair use case even further.
>
> That's illogical.  When something is determined to be fair use it is by
> definition no longer a copyright violation.  Read the law.
>

Read further down the thread.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: nitin shantharam

subject: [Foundation-l] mindmap software

body:
Hey guys,

http://mindmap.code0.org/

      Take a look at this application I created - its called MindMap (at
least for now). What it does is connect concepts (nodes) together and you
can right-click on nodes for Wikipedia entries. There's a lot of work to be
done but I'm interested to look into possibilities. (Beware you need .NET
2.0 - I haven't tried it with Mono)

-thanks


subject: [Foundation-l] mindmap software


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Jimmy,

> We are a massively powerful text generation engine.  People have to drop
> the idea that every little tidbit is precious.  Crap is crap.  Yank it.

Do you think I could get a framed and autographed copy of that paragraph?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>>You are starting to speak like a repetative record. A bit more respect
>>in your tone could well get us somewhere. A person interested in
>>wikipedia. I have spend more fucking hours in the past 2,5 years for
>>wikimedia FOR FREE then you will ever do on your salary! Without people
>>like me contributing to these projects there wouldn't be any money to
>>pay for your cushy job earning topdollars over my back. So a bit more
>>respect and a more normal tone should be warranted. Also you are not on
>>the board as far as I know.
>>
>>Waerth/Walter
>
>
>
> Walter,
>
> you're misinterpreting what Brad said - he simply pointed out that
> you're not (legally) authorised to speak for the foundation - which is
> true. The fact that you're interested in pursuing a collaboration is
> great - he even said this (read it again - it's below).
>
> I'll also repeat what Michael pointed out in that Brad has done *huge*
> amounts of work for the foundation, behind the scenes, *for free*.
> Really, huge. He really believes in our ideals - and he knows how the
> community works. But the fact that not many people know him possibly
> isn't such a surprise :-)
>
> If this collaboration goes well, you're welcome to pass it on to the
> Special projects committee
> <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> - we're
> here to help out in any way.
>
> All the best,
>
> Cormac (Cormaggio)

hmmm, tiny correction Cormac (I know it is just an issue of phrasing it
more clearly). If the collaboration goes well, Waerth should not *pass*
it on the committee. He should goes on working on this collaboration and
consider the committee as his contact (rather than the board's). The
committee is not meant to take over what editors are trying to organise.
It is meant to "second/replace" the board in helping the collaboration
to become official. Cormac knows this very well, but I think the words
used may be confusing :-)

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
G'day Phil W,

> On May 19, 2006, at 4:33 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>>I support serious action to ban people who commit copyvios.  We are
>>supposed to be using fair use only in certain very limited
>>circumstances
>>and people who do not realize that should be banned from the project.
>
> This seems overly aggressive to me. It's better to re-educate than to
> ban whenever possible.

I agree.  Re-educate first.  However, *aggressive* copyright violators,
especially people advocating (and agitating!) we relax our guard against
copyvios, are making our life harder and potentially causing serious
damage to the project, all for the sake of a few unnecessary but pretty
pictures.  Such people (and most copyvio fans are not in this league,
and should be re-educated, not banned) fall well and truly into the
"more heat than light" category and shouldn't be pandered to.

If people want a fight on copyright issues, they should understand ahead
of time that they'll lose, and they'll lose *big*.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock Request

body:
G'day Jerry,

> My account, User:j.sweeton at wnri.com (IP 24.248.57.133), has recently
> been blocked by User:Cyde.  Uses:Cyde alleges that I have been party to
> "personal attacks and disruption".  In addition, he has also deleted my
> user page. He did all this without warning.
>
> I fail to see where I have attacked someone.

<snip/>

After taking a look:
a) I would have deleted your userpage as well.  It was utterly
    inappropriate and when you create a new one we will expect you to do
    so without trolling.

b) The comment Cyde cited[0] *was* a personal attack.  On the assumption
    that this is your first offence (you have not been blocked before, at
    least), I would not have blocked you simply for that.  However, since
    your block has now expired, there's really nothing I can do about
    that except to ask Cyde to be more receptive to the idea of warning
    people first (which I shall do).

In short: you're both wrong, but you're more wrong than he is.  I'll be
speaking to him about the block, but you will find yourself on the
receiving end of many more blocks from many different admins if you
don't pull your head in and work on being a bit more civil.

[0]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ATemplates_for_deletion%2FLog%2F2006_May_13&diff=53684390&oldid=53683651

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


body:
G'day Alphax,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
>> G'day Jimmy,
>>
>>> We are a massively powerful text generation engine.  People have
>>> to drop the idea that every little tidbit is precious.  Crap is
>>> crap.  Yank it.
>>
>> Do you think I could get a framed and autographed copy of that
>> paragraph?
>
> Signed (or even written) in his own blood, of course.

A message in Jimbo Wales' blood?  I'd make a fortune on Ebay!

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
Also out of interest, what is the reason behind your interest?  Hope
it is nothing ulterior.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Message: 8 Unblock Request

body:
Maggie, I suggest you peruse the e-mail I addressed to you earlier.
You will find therein certain suggestions which you might find
productive. Again, I have to bring to your notice the fact that this
constant complaining is not proving to be to your, or anyone else's,
benefit.
                                                                     Prasad.


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>>
>>The photographer created the photo and held copyright to it, and then
>>someone else came along and created a derivative work out of it. As a
>>derivative work, the copyright is jointly owned - both the photographer
>>and the ORLY-writer hold copyright over the resulting image and so the
>>permission of both is needed for it to be copied (unless such an
>>addition is too trivial to warrant a copyright in the first place, in
>>which case the photographer's the sole copyright holder to Orly.jpg. I
>>don't think this changes anything as far we're concerned, though).
>
> The problem here is that the O RLY website was claiming copyright over
> their image and not acknowleding the original author - kind of like what
> Baidupedia are doing.

Sorry for intruding on the conversation, but I fail to see how that is
relevant to anything.  We know their claim is bogus.  Surely they could
just as well claim they were the King of the United States and that the
image was beamed down by space aliens, and it would have just as much
effect on what the _real_ copyright status of the image is.

Similarly, if someone downloads Wikipedia content from Baidupedia, that
doesn't give him any more _or_ any less rights to it than if he had got
it straight from us, regardless of what Baidu may claim.

So the question is: Do we, under fair use, have the right to distribute,
without permission from the copyright holder, a (low-resolution,
defaced) copy of the original owl photo in an article describing the
(illegal) use of said photo on internet fora?

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: SCZenz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
A reminder to everyone about speedy deletions...

It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion criteria are
being applied rather loosely in some cases.  Especially unfortunate are
articles that are nominated for being "non-notable"; there is no such speedy
criterion, there is only the criterion that articles about people/groups may
be deleted if they have "no assertion of notability" whatsoever.  This is
not just process wonkery--it is fundamendal to WP:CSD that the reason for
deletion be totally uncontroversial, as the process is almost entirely
without review.

I have encountered many speedy-tagged articles that, upon a careful look,
were either good articles or worthy of further consideration (e.g. through
PROD).  It is incumbent on administrators who do speedy deletions to take
such careful looks at every article; there are enough of us to take the time
to do it right.  It would also be helpful if those tagging pages would take
some care in what they tag, although I do understand that new pages patrol
(for example) is a thankless and rushed job which is very important.

In cases I've seen where I think mistakes were made, I have tried to start
discussions with the individual editors involved.  My intention in sending
this email is not to single them out, but just to bring this issue to
everyone's attention.  In many cases where an article is clearly unsuitable,
but doesn't clearly fit the speedy criteria, using the WP:PROD process is a
good substitute for speedy deletion, and I urge everyone to use it more
often.

Thanks,
SCZenz


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
Ok, this is well and truly off topic now, don't you agree?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
Quote from Philip's last message:

"So he publicly identifies with a notorious Islamist and anti-Semite.
>3,000 people in my country were murdered five years ago in the name
>of those attitudes. He should be banned indefinitely just as we would
>ban a neo-Nazi who made similar anti-Semitic edits. These people do
>not belong in our community."

1)"Notorious Islamist"-are you implying that Islamists (as in
Muslims)are notorious?

2) 3000 people died on 9/11. Sorry about that. But scores of my
countrymen in Kashmir are murdered on a daily basis by fundamentalists
in that state. Do you see me condemning Abu because of that? He can
symathise with whoever he wants- he has a right to do that, provided
he does not vandalise Wikipedia.

3) "People like
you aren't welcome in civil society, and you know it, so you try to
hide behind excuses and rationalizations and straw men. It's not
going to work."
It is not upto you Philip, to unilaterally pass judgement on who
belongs in civil society.

I suggest you calm down and be more civil toward Abu. Treating him
with disdain based on his religion or his beliefs (though these might
not be acceptable to you) will only make you seem like a bigoted
Islamophobe-which I am sure you are not.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 8:32 PM, Prasad J wrote:

> There is really no point in trying to converse with people who term
> any viewpoint which is against theirs as "trolling".

I don't even disagree with you about Abu Ghraib. I just think it's
completely off-topic to bring it up. It *is* trolling.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 7:37 PM, SCZenz wrote:

> A reminder to everyone about speedy deletions...
>
> It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion
> criteria are
> being applied rather loosely in some cases.

If they weren't, we'd be deluged with crap.

As Jimbo says, "We are a massively powerful text generation engine.
People have to drop
the idea that every little tidbit is precious.  Crap is crap.  Yank it."

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
Philip Welch wrote:

>On May 20, 2006, at 6:11 AM, Sarah wrote:
>
>
>>>If it was reliably established that he was Jewish, there would be no
>>>problem. Since it isn't reliably established, reporting that he was
>>>Jewish, or that he might be Jewish, constitutes anti-Semitism.
>>>
>>>
>>The only reference I've found to Harold Shipman being Jewish is a BBC
>>news site reporting a comment by [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]], an Islamist
>>cleric in the UK, who was convicted in February of racial hatred and
>>incitement to murder. Abu Hamza told the court that the British
>>Foreign Office and media are controlled by Jews, and part of his
>>evidence was that, referring to Harold Shipman, "If a doctor kills 250
>>of his patients there is not a single word about his religion."
>>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4644030.stm
>>
>>
>
>So he publicly identifies with a notorious Islamist and anti-Semite.
>3,000 people in my country were murdered five years ago in the name
>of those attitudes. He should be banned indefinitely just as we would
>ban a neo-Nazi who made similar anti-Semitic edits. These people do
>not belong in our community.
>
I just look through [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]] and find no mention of a
connection with the 9/11 incident.  Your reference to it appears to be
for no other purpose than incitement.  Admittedly bombs or planes rigged
to be bombs can kill people, but attitudes do not.

As for Shipman, I agree that his religion in probably irrelevant to his
notoriety.  Whether he follows Judaism or the Anglican state
superstition should not matter.

Ec


body:
The only thing that gives me pause about completely removing the templates
is that they are useful for referring very new users to where they can ask
that an article be unprotected. Without that pointer, I doubt most very new
users would know such a thing as RFP exists.

k

On 5/20/06, Sue Anne Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I have to disagree with you here. Wikipedia is famous as the
> > Encyclopedia "anyone can edit". If a random anon sees a page and tries
> > to edit it, and cannot (while the main page still proclaims how
> > everyone can edit), they are going to be dreadfully confused- lord
> > knows enough are confused by the basic idea without adding on a second
> > level of possible confusion. Perhaps two templates: the scary one for
> > temporary semiprotection, and another, more discreet one for the more
> > permanent ones?
> >
>
> Given how many web sites require registration these days, I don't feel
> there's a conflict between saying "anyone can edit" but you have to be
> registered to edit to certain articles. It's not like we're saying that
> only certain registered can edit, we would just be saying to you have to
> register to edit.
>
> Sue Anne
> _______________________________________________
> 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: maru dubshinki

body:
On 5/20/06, Sue Anne Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Given how many web sites require registration these days, I don't feel
> there's a conflict between saying "anyone can edit" but you have to be
> registered to edit to certain articles. It's not like we're saying that
> only certain registered can edit, we would just be saying to you have to
> register to edit.
>
> Sue Anne

Semi-protection doesn't block just anons- it also blocks new users.
And having to wait four days really kills the whole wikiwiki thing.

~maru


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/20/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I agree that it's a matter of editorial common sense. If the ethnicity
>>is relevant to the person's notability, it's fine to mention it in the
>>intro. If it's harmless, ditto. But if it's irrelevant and arguably
>>racist, anti-Semitic, or Islamophobic, then it's important not to
>>mention it with unseemly haste. We shouldn't have articles starting
>>with: "John Doe is a British Muslim convicted of child rape," or "Jane
>>Doe is an Afro-American who murdered all four of her husbands."
>>There's no harm in mentioning ethnic background in the bio section,
>>but it shouldn't be used as a stick to beat people with (or to beat
>>their ethnicity with).
>>
>>
>What if they are famous rather than infamous? Is it ok to give the ethnicity
>a bit of a "boost"?
>
That reminds me of the incident in the movie, "The Mouse on the Moon,"
in which the British TV commentators made a big deal of the fact that
the watch worn by the astronaut was made in Britain. :-)

Ec


from_name: Earthhope Action Network

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Post: Apology to Philip Welch

body:
Apology to Phil Welch from thewolfstar

>  notice how Philip Welch defends the Chinese firewall. Jimmy Wales
>  went up against Philip on this. My email concerning this was
> blocked
        That's a goddamn lie. I've expressed nothing but criticism and
       contempt for the Chinese government on this list.

          Philip, I owe you an apology. I miss read some posts and thought
you
          were saying that the firewall should be up and we should defend
it.
           I am really sorry for making this accusation Maggie thewolfstar

This is what really was said:
 Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Tearing down the Chinese Firewall

On May 14, 2006, at 6:05 AM, Prasad J wrote:

> Helping people circumvent the Chinese firewall is tantamount to
> abetting a crime-and thereby unethical, unless a competent
> international body (like the U.N) officially makes a statement to the
> effect that China is a fascist state where citizens are brutally
> oppressed by the Government and denied any human right whatsoever.
>   J Prasad

I simply cannot understand this standpoint. First off with describing
the UN as "competent", but let's move past that.

The determining factor to you about whether to (non-violently!)
resist an oppressive government isn't whether it is, in fact,
oppressive, but rather whether or not it's officially designated
"oppressive" by the UN?

Did Gandhi wait for the British colonization of India to be
designated "oppressive" by foreigners before he began his resistance?
    Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

        Again I apologize for not reading those posts right and for accusing
       you of something that was just not true. Maggie thewolfstar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
We are losing worthwhile articles because people don't take 30 seconds to
read them and evaluate the claims they make.  Isn't that bad?

On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
> On May 20, 2006, at 7:37 PM, SCZenz wrote:
>
> > A reminder to everyone about speedy deletions...
> >
> > It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion
> > criteria are
> > being applied rather loosely in some cases.
>
> If they weren't, we'd be deluged with crap.
>
> As Jimbo says, "We are a massively powerful text generation engine.
> People have to drop
> the idea that every little tidbit is precious.  Crap is crap.  Yank it."
>
> --
> Philip L. Welch
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>
>
>>"John Allen Muhammad (born John Allen Williams on December 31, 1960)
>>is an American serial killer. Together with his younger partner Lee
>>Boyd Malvo, he carried out the Beltway sniper attacks in an apparent
>>attempt to extort $10 million dollars during his shooting spree."
>>
>>
>Out of curiosity, why do you think nationality ("American") is relevant, but
>not race, place of birth etc? Can we formalise some guidelines? When is race
>relevant? Presumably if someone is the victim of a race hate crime...but
>when else? I don't think in an encyclopaedia we can ever refrain from
>mentioning something like that, but we can take "not relevant" to mean "not
>in the lead".
>
In this case it is probably harmless.  It localizes events in the
killer's own country.  It would be a little trickier if the killer were
not American.

The fact that he adopted the name Muhammad (a typically islamic name)
could be problematical.

Ec


body:
Also, to moderators, many of my posts have been held back for no
reason. These same posts were never included in the list posts.  I
expect the same respect on this list that anyone else gets.

It is highly likely that your messages were held back because they
were trollish in nature. As you had been informed earlier, sufficient
explanation for your block had already been provided.
I was,frankly, one of those who requested that you be moderated on
this list.  As I have told you Margie, you may feel free to contact
users in private about your problems since, as must be apparent to
you, no-one on this mailing list really seems to be in a mood to
listen to constant complaining.


from_name: Raphael Wegmann

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking opponent in disputes

body:
wikien-l at wikipedia.org wrote:
>
> Raphael Wegmann wrote:
>
>> I wonder why the policy says, that blocks to gain an advantage in a
>> content dispute is strictly prohibited, when administrators are
>> accepted to decide that a position, they disagree with, is questionable.
>>
>>
>>
>
> How about this then:  I don't believe we've ever edited the same article
> and I agreed with the block.
>

May I ask you what reason you'd have stated for your block?
I'd like to state beforehand, that "Image removal" is not part
of the Blocking policy, and ignoring content suggestions
(resp. orders) from administrators (or block warnings for
not to obeying to them) is neither.

--
Raphael


body:
On 5/20/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> will say the following exciting phrases!
>     *  "Referencing is hard!"
>     * "I love adding cruft!"
>     * "Will we ever have enough articles?"
>     *"Wanna have a copyvio party?"

Can I add "We need more Pok?mon articles!"

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
As always, Wikipedia is not concerned with the political views of its
> > contributors.
>
> As always, Wikipedia is concerned with contributors editing Wikipedia
> to further a political agenda.

Good point. We need to keep in mind the important distinction between
the two. Especially one Mr. Bhadani who accused a user named Anwaat
Saadat of committing treason against India by supporting the concept
of Kashmiri independemce. Infact Mr. Bhadani even went so far as to
threaten to inform the authorities about this "traitor". Or a certain
Administrator who is prone to accuse anyone who (on his/her userspace)
voices his/her opinion againt the war in Iraq of being a "childish
bigot".


from_name: Johan Bos

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

body:
Dear Jimbo,

You should know one thing. I am a native Dutch speaker, so I could perfectly
follow all the communication around the troubles with Waerth. I also read
some of the communications towards you and I concluded that you have been
misinformed a bit. The internation messages which I read did totally not
represent the matter in a righteous way. Let me state one thing quite clear:

?Waerth would never have abused his stewardship or his being a press
contact!

Your conclusions are at least partly based on false information and you have
been impeded too much by your disability of understanding Dutch.

Regards,

Johan Bos (Jcb)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 6:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

> Waerth wrote:
>> I am still disappointed in the way people get purged if they are to
>> critical even if they never abuse the responsabilities
>
> You have hardly been purged.  You are welcome to contribute in the
> projects, and it has always been my hope that your issues with various
> things can be resolved in a positive manner!
>
> Your stewardship and status as press contact were both revoked after you
> threatened to abuse both of them.  When you were desysopped in the Dutch
> community following a community process, you threatened to use your
> steward status to make yourself a sysop again, as I understand it.  When
> you were unhappy with something about the formation of the dutch
> chapter, rather than coming to me or the board with a complaint, you
> threatened to go to the press with your complaints.
>
> --Jimbo
>

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

body:
On 5/20/06, Earthhope Action Network <contact at earthhopenetwork.net> wrote:
>
> ps Many of my posts do get included in the mailing list.

I was wondering about that yes. List admins........

Garion


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Kiryl Nieviarouski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Classical Belarusian in Wikipedia

body:
Dear All, Dear Mark,

Belarusian Classical Grammar (sometimes called Tarashkievitsa)is used by
   Belarusian Language Society
[http://www.tbm-language.com/eng/about.html], by Belarusian PEN Centere
[http://www.pen-centre.com/eng/pen_about.html], by most important
belarusian writers and free media (newspapers, magazines, radio) to name
just some: Nasa Niva Newspaper [http://arche.home.by/], ARCHE Magazine
[http://arche.home.by], Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
[http://www.svaboda.org], by main belarusian political parties and Non
Government Organisations: Party of Belarusian Popular Front
[http://www.pbnf.org], United Civil Party [http://www.ucpb.org],
Viasna'96 [http://www.spring96.org], by Civil Society Center
[http://www.cacedu.unibel.by/cscsc/], by belarusian Dictionary Project
[http://slounik.org], by Litara.net Webzine [http://www.litara.net], by
Belarusian Legal Portal [http://www.praunik.org], by Belarusian Students
Portal [http://studenty.by] by many belarusian bloggers from LiveJournal
Community and in particulary by Rydel's blog [http://www.br23.net/] wich
won this year the 4th National Belarusian Web Content Contest, organized
by prominent belarusian portal TUT.BY [http://www.tut.by].

All of above mentioned organisations and individuals use CLASSICAL grammar.

Most localisation and internationalisation job of free and open source
software (GNU/Linux)in belarusian is done according to classical grammar.

As you see, it's not just "some of belarusian nationalists" which want
to return to older belarusian, but intellectuals, writers, journalist,
students, politicals, translators and policymakers who use it.

It is not true, that  "By sheer chance, the proponents of the
alternative style were the first to arrive at be.wikipedia[...]" this is
because major part of BYnet (belarusian part of the web) uses classical
grammar.

In such situation I belive it is inappropriate to create an alternative
wikipedia for authors who want to write in official, imposed by soviet
regime grammar rules (which are still obligatory).

If someone want create article in "Narkamauka", should be allowed to do
so in the belarusian wikipedia.

PS Sorry for my English.

--
With best regards, Kiryl Nieviarouski


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
On 5/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > On 5/19/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> >
> >>You are starting to speak like a repetative record. A bit more respect
> >>in your tone could well get us somewhere. A person interested in
> >>wikipedia. I have spend more fucking hours in the past 2,5 years for
> >>wikimedia FOR FREE then you will ever do on your salary! Without people
> >>like me contributing to these projects there wouldn't be any money to
> >>pay for your cushy job earning topdollars over my back. So a bit more
> >>respect and a more normal tone should be warranted. Also you are not on
> >>the board as far as I know.
> >>
> >>Waerth/Walter
> >
> >
> >
> > Walter,
> >
> > you're misinterpreting what Brad said - he simply pointed out that
> > you're not (legally) authorised to speak for the foundation - which is
> > true. The fact that you're interested in pursuing a collaboration is
> > great - he even said this (read it again - it's below).
> >
> > I'll also repeat what Michael pointed out in that Brad has done *huge*
> > amounts of work for the foundation, behind the scenes, *for free*.
> > Really, huge. He really believes in our ideals - and he knows how the
> > community works. But the fact that not many people know him possibly
> > isn't such a surprise :-)
> >
> > If this collaboration goes well, you're welcome to pass it on to the
> > Special projects committee
> > <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> - we're
> > here to help out in any way.
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > Cormac (Cormaggio)
>
> hmmm, tiny correction Cormac (I know it is just an issue of phrasing it
> more clearly). If the collaboration goes well, Waerth should not *pass*
> it on the committee. He should goes on working on this collaboration and
> consider the committee as his contact (rather than the board's). The
> committee is not meant to take over what editors are trying to organise.
> It is meant to "second/replace" the board in helping the collaboration
> to become official. Cormac knows this very well, but I think the words
> used may be confusing :-)
>
> ant

Yes, very well said Anthere. That is indeed what I meant - even though
that is not what I said :-)

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


from_name: Philip Welch

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 8:37 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I just look through [[Abu Hamza al-Masri]] and find no mention of a
> connection with the 9/11 incident.

"Hamza has publicly expressed support for al-Qaeda [and] Osama bin
Laden."

Again, I'm not claiming he was connected to 9/11, only that he
supports that kind of violence. Consider:

"John Doe has publicly expressed support for the Khmer Rouge [and]
Pol Pot."

If anyone came on this listserv publicly identifying with such a John
Doe, I'd want to run him out for the same reason.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: sannse

body:
Johan Bos wrote:
> Dear Jimbo,
>
> You should know one thing. I am a native Dutch speaker, so I could perfectly
> follow all the communication around the troubles with Waerth. I also read
> some of the communications towards you and I concluded that you have been
> misinformed a bit. The internation messages which I read did totally not
> represent the matter in a righteous way. Let me state one thing quite clear:
>
> ?Waerth would never have abused his stewardship or his being a press
> contact!

"Would not"? or "did not threaten to"?  Because if you just mean the
first, then I'm afraid I have to say the actions taken in removing
Waerth as steward and press contact were 100% correct.

--sannse


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
On 5/19/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Ryan,
>
> > On 5/19/06, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>So why is his indefinite block being
> >>reversed.
> >
> > Because he's a newbie and no one bothered to give him short blocks. This
> > isn't simple vandalism and he's not willy on wheels.  Someone
> > misunderstanding our policies doesn't give anyone precedent to railroad him
> > rather than giving him a chance. We tell people to be bold, and then
> > indefinite block them for doing it?
>
> While I wouldn't have unblocked this user myself, I appreciate your
> sincerity and your reasoning is fine.  If we have to block him again in
> a week, so be it ... at least he's been given a chance.
>
> You've done what you feel is the Right Thing, and you've done it with
> sensitivity, explaining your reasons and making sure everyone
> understands why you did it.  Well done.
>
> There's no need for people to start throwing about epithets like "wheel
> war" about this.

"Wheel war" is not an epithet, it is a description of an activity.
When you undo an admins actions without first discussing it with him,
or getting broad consensus for doing so, you are wheel warring.  That,
in fact, is what happened here.  And since *everyone* is agreed that
Saladin1970 deserved *at least* a 1 week block, any discussion
regarding the appropriateness of an indefinite block could have taken
place during that week.  There was no pressing need to immediately
undo the block and impose a different one.  Wheel warring is bad.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 9:40 PM, Dan Rosenthal wrote:

> With all apologizes for top-posting, and with no discussion or
> position
> to/on the merits of this debate (if any):
>
> In my time spent in the middle east, I've met a large number of men
> with the
> nickname Abu Hamza. I'm no arabic naming expert, but from what I
> understand,
> Abu _________ is a common nickname scheme over there. I wouldn't be
> surprised to find multiple Abu Hamzas in the arabic wikipedia
> community.
> Coincidence in name is just that: coincidence, AFAICT

You might have a point there. But if you (a) call yourself Abu Hamza,
(b) have an obsession with the idea that Harold Shipman was Jewish,
(c) denounce Israel/Zionism, and (d) the notorious Abu Hamza in
England *also* has the same Harold Shipman obsession and denounces
Israel, I think enough of a pattern has been drawn.

"Benito" is not an uncommon Italian name, but if I called myself
Benito and came to Wikipedia making biased edits in favor of fascism,
you'd draw connections to other Benitos too.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
sannse wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>>On 5/19/06, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>On 5/19/06, sannse <sannse at tiscali.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>It's your idea, why don't you set it up?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>No.  The ball is firmly in your court.  Put up or shut up.
>>>
>>>--sannse
>>>
>>>
>>LOL, OK, you make up some hypothetical offer on behalf of the
>>Wikimedia Foundation, and it's my responsibility to contact them to
>>find out that your offer was complete nonsense.
>>
>>
>Why on earth do you think I made a offer on behalf of the Foundation? I
>don't have the authority to do that.  I said that /I/ felt it was a good
>idea, and that I'm sure Danny would be able to arrange anything
>necessary... obviously that would be /if/ the Board agreed.  I don't see
>any reason why they wouldn't - you'll have to ask and find out.
>
Sounds like you were baiting your trolling rod with a red herring.

>>I notice you haven't addressed the part of my post where I said that
>>fair use *is* a right.  Probably because you now realize that there
>>have been Supreme Court cases which have explicitly stated that it is.
>>
>>
>I won't argue particular points of law, because I am not a lawyer or an
>expert in law.  Perhaps a position you should consider taking yourself.
>
Maybe his view of the law is not founded in idolatry.

>I simply repeat what I've been told, and I chose carefully who I
>decide to take clarification from
>
ROTFL

Ec


from_name: Humus Sapiens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
Let's respect everyone's privacy please.
I find an inquiry to reveal the real name too personal for a public forum.
Thanks
Humus sapiens

On 5/20/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 20 May 2006, at 02:01, abu hamza wrote:
>
> Out of interest, is your name actually Abu Hamza?
>
> Justinc
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
Maggie,
In case you were unable to comprehend what Sean meant, he was implying
that you are not respected on this list because of your constant
trolling. This is a view which I second. Unless you become less
aggressive and cease your pointless whining I doubt whether the
moderators will tolerate your posts any longer. Also, Mr. Sidaway is
an Arbitrator and if your accusations againt Administrators were
legitimate, he would have had you unblocked. Since there is no
evidence that he or anyone else on this list supports such an unblock
I think it is time you realised the futilility of trying to achieve
your objectives through this mailing-list.
                                                             Regards.

PS-Can someone please block Margie from trolling this list with her
seemingly endless list of (mostly unfounded) grievances?


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
>
>
>>There is also an IRC channel for en.wikipedia admins.
>>
>>
>>
>
>There are at least two non-en-admins in it quite regularly.
>
>
>
I know of the existance of at least 3 secret IRC channels for subgroups
of wikimedians. For all three I was invited, I have joined one. It is
unfortunately but true. Many groups select themselves and the people
they want to be with. It is like political party forming. Is it a good
thing? I do not know. Is it a human nature thing ...... yes certainly!

There are probably many channels and mailinglists around and on all
there will be discussing about fellow wikipedians, with reputations
being broken and careers being made. I am sometimes surprised what
bullshit I here about my own person making the rounds..

As wikimedia has grown a lot of politics is going on on the background.
X hates Y behind his/her back. Y hates X back, but publically they will
appear to be buddies. There is so much of this kind of shit going on, it
is astonishing and repulsive. Offcourse when you confront people with it
in public ..... like I have a habit of doing sometimes it is not
welcomed. Which is kinda one of the reasons I am currently in paria
status at this moment I guess. You better get used to this. This is how
things work in big organisations like the foundation is becoming. Even
all the people who reacted surprised and even condemning in this thread
are known to me as people who tried to tell me their opinion of other
wikimedians behind their backs. There are no saints within the wikimedia
community no matter how nice they write. The nicer and more eloquent the
typed message the more forked the fingers typing them. This is why I
hate political correctness it creates this kind of incrowds
gossipcircuits. I prefer my own style more. Direct. Not behind peoples
backs even though I insult/shock people with it from time to time. Then
again ..... I am no saint either.

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Message: 8 Unblock Request

body:
G'day Maggie,

> From: Jerry Sweeton <j.sweeton at wnri.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock Request
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <446E0E3A.9090708 at wnri.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> My account, User:j.sweeton at wnri.com (IP 24.248.57.133), has recently
> been blocked by User:Cyde.  Uses:Cyde alleges that I have been party to
> "personal attacks and disruption".  In addition, he has also deleted my
> user page. He did all this without warning.

<snip/>
-----

> This clearly goes against Wikipedia policy. There was a vote a couple
> of weeks ago concerning whether there should be off-wiki PA policy.
> It was voted down strongly, as it should have been. Not only should
> this block be moved immediately, but Cyde should be blocked for
> breaking policy. That's a fact.

Nonsense.  The personal attack cited by Cyde when he blocked Jerry was
*on*-wiki, and on-wiki personal attacks can and do result in a block.
Please do not attempt to advise people of Wikipedia policies and
practices when you don't actually know what they are.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
On 5/20/06, abu hamza <abuhamza1970 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> just for the record, and for all of those who have suggested it is wrong to
> use a controversial name. My name is abu hamza..

That's as believable as your claims that your friends at work and home
simply reverted for you as IPs.  It wasn't you at all, it was all your
"friends".

>However it is not my wiki
> name, it is the name on the email.

Right.  Your wiki name is Saladin1970, Saladin being the Muslim
conquerer who drove the Crusaders out of Palestine.  I suppose that's
your real name too, and there's no political implication there?

> of jaygy and then slimline saying i have written copyright infringments -
> yet are unable to produce any evidence.

Nonsense; your copyright infringements on Alan Hart (where you
repeatedly inserted large amounts of text copied verbatim from
http://zionism-realenemyofthejews.com/ ) have already been shown.

Even a modicum of verisimilitude on your part would be quite helpful;
so far your posts have failed dismally in this respect.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
... and don't forget our old friend the redirect.

k

On 5/20/06, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/21/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > A reminder to everyone about speedy deletions...
> >
> > It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion criteria are
> > being applied rather loosely in some cases.  Especially unfortunate are
> > articles that are nominated for being "non-notable"; there is no such
> > speedy
> > criterion, there is only the criterion that articles about people/groups
> > may
> > be deleted if they have "no assertion of notability" whatsoever.  This
> is
> > not just process wonkery--it is fundamendal to WP:CSD that the reason
> for
> > deletion be totally uncontroversial, as the process is almost entirely
> > without review.
> >
> > I have encountered many speedy-tagged articles that, upon a careful
> look,
> > were either good articles or worthy of further consideration (e.g.
> through
> > PROD).  It is incumbent on administrators who do speedy deletions to
> take
> > such careful looks at every article; there are enough of us to take the
> > time
> > to do it right.  It would also be helpful if those tagging pages would
> > take
> > some care in what they tag, although I do understand that new pages
> patrol
> > (for example) is a thankless and rushed job which is very important.
> >
> > In cases I've seen where I think mistakes were made, I have tried to
> start
> > discussions with the individual editors involved.  My intention in
> sending
> > this email is not to single them out, but just to bring this issue to
> > everyone's attention.  In many cases where an article is clearly
> > unsuitable,
> > but doesn't clearly fit the speedy criteria, using the WP:PROD process
> is
> > a
> > good substitute for speedy deletion, and I urge everyone to use it more
> > often.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > SCZenz
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> That is what I try and do when I do speedy deletions. I try to follow the
> general principle of if in doubt, don't delete. Generally, there is no
> reason why they can't be kept around for a few days with the exception of
> copyvios.
>
> If necessary, I will even rewrite the article as a stub myself if the
> subject of the article warrants it and I have enough information.
>
> Regards
>
>
> Keith Old
>
> Keith Old
> User:Capitalistroadster
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
I was not trolling. I do not support Islamic fundamentalism. Neither
do I support electrocuting hooded Iraqi POWs (in blatant violation of
the Geneva Convention) and later taking photographs with the corpses
to send home as postcards. I also do not support court-martialling the
accused and shortly afterward issuing a statement claiming that
"prisioners are trained to lie about being tortured". The prisoners
may lie but the photographs of "naked pyramids" do not. Especially
since the aforementioned atrocities were commited by the soldiers of a
nation which has always claimed that it will stand up for justice and
freedom. Not to mention Guatanamo Bay or CIA torture-flights across
Europe, or the "hunt" for "WMDs" in Iraq or the subsequent Operation
Iraqi Liberation (O.I.L).

PS- I don't think this is necessary in your case , but since it has
occured with another person on a previous occasion, let me assure you
that the PATRIOT Act does not apply to me (since I am not a U.S
citizen) so there is really no point in your threatening to report me
to any American law-enforcement agency!


from_name: abu hamza

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
just for the record, and for all of those who have suggested it is wrong to
use a controversial name. My name is abu hamza.. However it is not my wiki
name, it is the name on the email. Several people have drawn attention to
the fact that i am called abu hamza as a mechanism to accuse me of
supporting 911, being anti semetic, of flying to the moon and wearing green
pants, or whatever other obscure accusation that can be made at me.

i am quite shocked at the lack of redress when certain people are allowed to
fling false statements around . such as welch calling me anti semetic. Shame
on you.
of jaygy and then slimline saying i have written copyright infringments -
yet are unable to produce any evidence.

so for now , i will await my 10 day. Any questions can be directed to my
email at abuhamza1970 at hotmail.com

salaam

>From: Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] 911
>Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 16:05:56 -0700
>
>On May 20, 2006, at 10:32 AM, Prasad J wrote:
>
> > I was not trolling. I do not support Islamic fundamentalism. Neither
> > do I support electrocuting hooded Iraqi POWs (in blatant violation of
> > the Geneva Convention) and later taking photographs with the corpses
> > to send home as postcards.
>
>Yes, which is why I don't post here as "Lynndie England". But I
>always enjoy your anti-American trolling.
>
>--
>Philip L. Welch
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch
>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
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7.5 today! http://join.msn.com/messenger/overview


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>On 5/19/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Interesting.  I tried looking this up, because hey, if it's repeated
>>over and over it shouldn't be hard to find.  The first Google hit I
>>found was http://www.eff.org/cafe/gross1.html - Understanding Your
>>Rights:  The Public's Right of Fair Use.  But I guess the EFF has no
>>clue what they're talking about.
>>
>>
>If you want to play "find the source", we can do that, but I don't see
>the value in it.
>
WP:V is not binding on the mailing list, but it sure helps.

>"Fair Use is not a right...it is a defense to an infringement claim"
>http://library.case.edu/copyright/fairuse.html
>"Another way of putting this is that fair use is a defense against
>infringement." http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter9/9-a.html
>
>Anyway, I was just trying to explain the origin of the terminology and
>what was meant by it. Yes, some groups consider it a "right", but
>since you cannot sue somebody for infringing upon your "fair use
>rights", it is a pretty empty designation, IMO.
>
The first of those references does indeed say that fair use is not a
right, but not the second.  Nobody is disputing that it is a defence.

Your argument that a right depends on being able to institute a court
action as plaintiff seems very weak.  For me what supports a right is
its statutory expression.  I think you are confusing between a right and
the enforcement of that right.  For many rights a survey of the cases is
likely to determine that the person proclaiming the right is the
defendant.  We exercise free speech by saying what we want to say until
someone objects and hauls us into court.  We don't go to the national
censor asking for permission to publish.  (In countries where that
permission is needed free speech may not be a right after all.)  Can you
cite cases where the claimant to free speech was the plaintiff?

>>Anyway, actual written publications are a better search.  But
>>books.google gives me "Fair use is the right to use copyrighted
>>material..."  "Under the right of fair use..."  "But the precious fair
>>use right is under attack today..."
>>
>>
>Yes, and a search for "fair use is a defense" will come up with a
>number of law textbooks too, i.e.:
>
>"It's important to understand that fair use is a defense rather than
>an affirmative
>right."
>"...fair use is a defense against charges of infringement, not an
>affirmative right possessed by members of the public."
>
OK.  So it's a defensive right, but a right nonetheless.

>>What would it mean to sue somebody for violating your fair use rights?
>> Moreover, what does it mean to violate someone's fair use rights in
>>the first place?
>>
>>
>Among the lawyers and law students I chatted with about the idea, the
>basic idea was that if any big company threatened to sue you for what
>was obviously fair use, you could sue them instead. I don't know how
>the details would work -- I'm not a lawyer or a law student -- but the
>goal was to prevent the threat of lawsuit itself to prevent fair use
>from functioning effectively. As it is, it is easy for a company with
>a huge legal staff to shut down small "fair users" with the threat of
>endless, if futile, litigation. Lessig talks about a number of
>instances where this happened in his book, _Free Culture_.
>
A lawsuit and a threat of a lawsuit are two different things.  Depending
on the circumstances a threat of a lawsuit could itself be criminally
illegal as abuse of process, extortion or intimidation.  The threat
works more often than not because people are so deathly afraid of going
to court.

Ec


from_name: JERRY SWEETON

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock Request

body:
Mark,

Thank you for taking the time to look at the situation.

Is there anyway to restore my userpage long enough to remove offending
remarks?

--
Jerry G. Sweeton Jr.
News/Talk 1380 WNRI
Traffic Director

Voice:  401-769-6925
Fax:    401-762-0442

j.sweeton at wnri.com
www.wnri.com

...-.-

>
> G'day Jerry,
>
> > My account, User:j.sweeton at wnri.com (IP 24.248.57.133), has recently
> > been blocked by User:Cyde.  Uses:Cyde alleges that I have been party to
> > "personal attacks and disruption".  In addition, he has also deleted my
> > user page. He did all this without warning.
> >
> > I fail to see where I have attacked someone.
>
> <snip/>
>
> After taking a look:
> a) I would have deleted your userpage as well.  It was utterly
>     inappropriate and when you create a new one we will expect you to do
>     so without trolling.
>
> b) The comment Cyde cited[0] *was* a personal attack.  On the assumption
>     that this is your first offence (you have not been blocked before, at
>     least), I would not have blocked you simply for that.  However, since
>     your block has now expired, there's really nothing I can do about
>     that except to ask Cyde to be more receptive to the idea of warning
>     people first (which I shall do).
>
> In short: you're both wrong, but you're more wrong than he is.  I'll be
> speaking to him about the block, but you will find yourself on the
> receiving end of many more blocks from many different admins if you
> don't pull your head in and work on being a bit more civil.
>
>
> [0]
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3ATemplates_for_deletion%2FLog%2F2006_May_13&diff=53684390&oldid=53683651
>
> --
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse
>
>
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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:
I do mean both. And Jimbo wrongly states that it has anything to do with de
desysop procedure. As you can read yourself in the logs at meta, Waerth
desysoped HIMSELF at 24 January. After that he stayed Steward for two
months, without resysoping himself at NL. At 24 March he has been
de-stewarded, based on false information provided by Oscar.

Johan Bos (Jcb)

----- Original Message -----
From: "sannse" <sannse at tiscali.co.uk>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

>
>
> Johan Bos wrote:
>> Dear Jimbo,
>>
>> You should know one thing. I am a native Dutch speaker, so I could
>> perfectly
>> follow all the communication around the troubles with Waerth. I also read
>> some of the communications towards you and I concluded that you have been
>> misinformed a bit. The internation messages which I read did totally not
>> represent the matter in a righteous way. Let me state one thing quite
>> clear:
>>
>> ?Waerth would never have abused his stewardship or his being a press
>> contact!
>
> "Would not"? or "did not threaten to"?  Because if you just mean the
> first, then I'm afraid I have to say the actions taken in removing
> Waerth as steward and press contact were 100% correct.
>
> --sannse
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Harish Ganesan

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits...

body:
Well I'm not surprised some guy has been blocked for a
week for what seems to be no reason, it happened to me
too. That's what happens when admins team up and don't
agree with your legitimate posts, and want to mess you
over to save their own povs and bias, and keep
wikipedia full of bias.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
Anthere wrote:

>Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
>
>>On 5/19/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>You are starting to speak like a repetative record. A bit more respect
>>>in your tone could well get us somewhere. A person interested in
>>>wikipedia. I have spend more fucking hours in the past 2,5 years for
>>>wikimedia FOR FREE then you will ever do on your salary! Without people
>>>like me contributing to these projects there wouldn't be any money to
>>>pay for your cushy job earning topdollars over my back. So a bit more
>>>respect and a more normal tone should be warranted. Also you are not on
>>>the board as far as I know.
>>>
>>>Waerth/Walter
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Walter,
>>
>>you're misinterpreting what Brad said - he simply pointed out that
>>you're not (legally) authorised to speak for the foundation - which is
>>true. The fact that you're interested in pursuing a collaboration is
>>great - he even said this (read it again - it's below).
>>
>>I'll also repeat what Michael pointed out in that Brad has done *huge*
>>amounts of work for the foundation, behind the scenes, *for free*.
>>Really, huge. He really believes in our ideals - and he knows how the
>>community works. But the fact that not many people know him possibly
>>isn't such a surprise :-)
>>
>>If this collaboration goes well, you're welcome to pass it on to the
>>Special projects committee
>><http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special_projects_committee> - we're
>>here to help out in any way.
>>
>>All the best,
>>
>>Cormac (Cormaggio)
>>
>>
>
>hmmm, tiny correction Cormac (I know it is just an issue of phrasing it
>more clearly). If the collaboration goes well, Waerth should not *pass*
>it on the committee. He should goes on working on this collaboration and
>consider the committee as his contact (rather than the board's). The
>committee is not meant to take over what editors are trying to organise.
>It is meant to "second/replace" the board in helping the collaboration
>to become official. Cormac knows this very well, but I think the words
>used may be confusing :-)
>
>ant
>
>
Thank you Anthere for this. This does give a person a smile :) I had a
quick introduction today with 2 other persons from the Thai side and I
basically had to tell all over again what wikimedia is and is
doing/tries to accomplish (sometimes things go very slow in this part of
the world). Good thing is I had a free lunch :) And tomorrow we will
speak again, again around lunchtime. The young people are convinced
(were already convinced before meeting me) that wikimedia is the
solution for them. Now we need to convince the older decision people.
And we need to convince them in such a way that it looks like the idea
is theirs! And not from some foreigner and their juniors. This is a
difficult process and if they loose face because it looks like the
foreigner and/or their juniors came up with it ........ well then forget
about it. This is why I am non to thrilled if people from other parts of
the world not knowing the local culture (which is even less than the
tiny bit I understand of Thai culture) announce they want to take over.
No pun intended, but this ain't the States nor Europe. Things work
differently here. And like I said I cannot afford loosing my own face
amongst these people. I am but a foreigner here. My next re-entry in
Thailand I can be refused on whatever grounds people like and no lawyer
who would get me out of that mess.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unblock request

body:
On 5/20/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Humus Sapiens wrote:
> [fixed top posting]
> > On 5/20/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >> On 20 May 2006, at 02:01, abu hamza wrote:
> >>
> >> Out of interest, is your name actually Abu Hamza?
> >>
> >
> > Let's respect everyone's privacy please.
> > I find an inquiry to reveal the real name too personal for a public forum.
> >
> >
>
> It's a relevant question. If I were to post under the name "Richard
> Stallman", you'd want to know if it were really *the* Richard Stallman
> or not, wouldn't you?
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

I didn't realize from your initial wording it was a notable name. In
that case, sorry, a totally legit question. I guess need to read
wikipedia more.
Thanks
HS


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>>>"Fair Use is not a right...it is a defense to an infringement claim"
>>>http://library.case.edu/copyright/fairuse.html
>>>
>>>
>>Searching google for "fair use is a right" I get 200 hits.  Searching
>>for "fair use is not a right" I get 99.  Do we need to start going
>>through and evaluating the credibility of the sources?  Maybe see
>>which ones are more impartial?
>>
>>
>Google is not a reliable source.
>
True enough, but neither is the index of a book.  Google is just one big
index whose elements need to be pursued and evaluated individually.

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>> In any case we have located the original high res version:
>>
>> http://animalpicturesarchive.com/animal/ViewImg.cgi?img=a7/Snowy_Owl_Nyctea_scandiaca_005-by_John_White.jpg
>>
>> We link to it in the article.
>>
> It's an ugly picture.  I'm sure we could find better.
>

A cropped, low-res version of this with text over the top and a wrongful
copyright claim was removed from the article, because that very picture
happens to be the basis of an internet meme.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/20/06, abu hamza <abuhamza1970 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> the evidence for shipman eing jewish is greater than the evidence for him
>> not being jewish.
>
>
>
> I haven't been following this conversation much, but in general if the
> statement you make is true, then it's appropriate in an article to make a
> similar statement: "Doubts over X's ethnic origins remain, but certain
> writers (A, B) offer evidence to suggest that he was Jewish"...
>

... unless it's a minority POV.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
geni wrote:

>On 5/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Geni, I have to ask you to please stop opining on matters outside your
>>professional expertise.
>>
>>
>Claiming fair use on a non copyright image strikes me as a tricky
>concept and one that is rather pointless in any case. Fair use images
>are copyvios. At best they are just copyvios that are allowed within
>the US. They are still however copyvios. If they were not you would
>not bother trying to claim fair use.
>
You may be surprised to read where the copyright law says that fair use
is not an infringement of copyright.

There may be disputes over just what fair use is, but that's a
different, and very much fact driven  matter.

Ec


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
In message <D9BCB5E9-F76A-401E-830B-3EDB22236C87 at philwelch.net>, Philip
Welch <wikipedia-RE/bwZxTIQaLZ21kGMrzwg at public.gmane.org> writes
>On May 20, 2006, at 2:13 AM, abu hamza wrote:
>
>> hi Philip,
>> like i said, the few references we have on shipmans background
>> claim him to
>> be jewish
>
>Those references are *not reliable*.  It's unacceptable to put
>unreliable information in the wiki, period.
>
>If it was reliably established that he was Jewish, there would be no
>problem. Since it isn't reliably established, reporting that he was
>Jewish, or that he might be Jewish, constitutes anti-Semitism.
>
>Why are you so hell-bent on making this poorly-supported case that he
>is Jewish, anyway?

Indeed, I live in the same TV broadcast area as Hyde, where Shipman
committed his murders, so it was BIG news locally - and as far as I can
recall Shipman's religious affiliation if any was NEVER mentioned in the
exhaustive reporting of his crimes, the trial, and the public enquiry.
It simply was completely irrelevant to the commission of his crimes and
anyone seeking to introduce this religious/ethnic characterisation into
his article should be required to prove relevance as well as
incontrovertible prove the truth of the assertion with high-quality
references.

--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
Pawe? Dembowski wrote:
> There is also an IRC channel for en.wikipedia admins.
>

There are at least two non-en-admins in it quite regularly.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>If people want a fight on copyright issues, they should understand ahead
>of time that they'll lose, and they'll lose *big*.
>
That statement is best classified as wild speculation.  If I'm going to
look for such a fight, I will choose my battles to win.  If something
for which I am responsible becomes the subject of a takedown order, I
will fully review the situation before I take the next step.  If I feel
there is little chance of winning I am not obliged to take the matter
further.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand re:Michael

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>Delirium wrote:
>
>
>
>>Patrick, Brad wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Don't assume anything.  If you are speaking as a person interested in
>>>Wikipedia, great.  I'm sure you have good things to say about Wikipedia
>>>in Thailand.  Good for you.  All I am saying is that you do *not* have
>>>the authority to speak on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>>>
>>>
>>I'm not sure if you're new here or what, but this isn't how we do
>>things at the Wikimedia Foundation.  We discuss politely, if sometimes
>>heatedly, on the mailing list, not brusquely and dictatorially.
>>
>>Waerth asked if the Foundation had confidence in him to discuss with
>>this organization; not if he legally has the authority to enter into
>>commitments on behalf of the foundation, which is quite a different
>>matter.  In short, his question did not call for a legal opinion, and
>>offering one unsolicited was unhelpful, misrepresenting the matter,
>>and impolite.
>>
>>
>
>This criticism is totally misplaced. Note that Brad addressed whether
>Waerth could *speak* on behalf of the Foundation, responding directly to
>Waerth's question. The issue is not limited to whether Waerth is
>authorized to act as an agent of the Foundation to enter into agreements.
>
>
>
Lawyers are not restricted to giving legal opinions and nothing else,

>sometimes they need to represent their clients in communicating with
>third parties, as Brad did here. Brad's intervention was helpful
>(because it got across his client's position), misrepresented nothing,
>and if it wasn't as polite as suits your tastes, it's because more
>polite ways of communicating this hadn't yet gotten the message across.
>
>
>
You do not know when to stop insulting do you?? Third party. Are you
deliberately trying to hurt someone and chase him away? As far as I knew
we had lawyers to talk with non wikimedians. Since when does a
wikimedian have to speak with the lawyer before he gets to speak with
the board. Fuck this.

Waerth/Walter


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand reply:Jimbo

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Waerth wrote:
>
>
>>I am still disappointed in the way people get purged if they are to
>>critical even if they never abuse the responsabilities
>>
>>
>
>You have hardly been purged.  You are welcome to contribute in the
>projects, and it has always been my hope that your issues with various
>things can be resolved in a positive manner!
>
>Your stewardship and status as press contact were both revoked after you
>threatened to abuse both of them.  When you were desysopped in the Dutch
>community following a community process, you threatened to use your
>steward status to make yourself a sysop again, as I understand it.
>
Nope when I was blocked for a week without any good reason I said that,
I wasn't a sysop anymore already for a few weeks, as I was desysopped by
a 28% ''Majority'' (meant ironically 72% supported me) But it was merely
said in anger. Nothing more. I didn't do it. So I didn't abuse anything.

> When
>you were unhappy with something about the formation of the dutch
>chapter, rather than coming to me or the board with a complaint, you
>threatened to go to the press with your complaints.
>
Because when things were discussed here on these mailinglists I didn't
get any reactions and people ignored things, other Dutch people also
mentioned it on this very same list. RonaldB the main person responsible
for this mess who has given himself leadershipfunctions in both
organizations that were founded (why 2 and not 1 as in all other
countries .... I know what was said secretly on private channels when I
still was in favour with people, but people will deny it when I give the
reasons out loud) and who registered both organisation near his own
hometown instead of a central location in the Netherlands as was asked
for, still refuses to answer all questions asked to him by Dutch editors
about why and how. If he answers it is like air, whole skies of text,
but so thin that it is meaningless, no straight answers. So when we did
not get any answers about a Dutch chapter and RonaldB seems to want to
use the name of wikimedia for projects nothing to do with wikimedia. As
RonaldB put it: collect money and put it in projects which have nothing
to do with current wikimediaprojects! Then I have serious doubts yes,
extremely serious doubts, because that means (selfish mode) taking my
work flaunting with it for the promotion and financing of non-relevant
things this is even harder for me to swallow as I am once again facing
quiet months in my work and I haven't paid rent for 2 months, after
three months I get thrown out. Untill this day RonaldB has answered NILL
questions, although Oscar has answered some and Delphine gave me certain
guarantees. I am still astonished that RonaldB gets rewarded for staying
silent and not answering questions. A desysop procedure was started
against him in which many people raised doubt about what he did and
asked him to start answering! But they didn't feel it was enough to
desysop him for. Still a majority did fill in in their comments they
want RonaldB to open up, and he never responded. I still want clarity
and certainly from someone who has taken a mandate given to him and a
group of people by a group of editors to form a Dutch chapter and they
came back with something we never asked for and now that it is a faith
accompli refuses any form of communication!

You are right this pisses/pissed me of. It still does. But just to make
things clear I would have never ever walked to the press as a
representative of the foundation. I would have gone as a private person.
Thinking that I would have done else is presuming. As a
pressrepresentative just as as a steward I have a total clean sheet!
Check my interviews both radio and paper. By taking both of them away
from me. People assumed. I was tried without a lawyer without even a
crime that had happened. I was never asked anything by you. You assumed.
This has hurt me both inside and outside, as people have presumed I have
committed wrongs I have never committed. And I had to listen to that
shit and defend myself.

Also a private chat with Danny on IRC hasn't done any good as to my
faith in the board as I was let known I am considered to be one of the 2
idiots from nl.wikipedia. So there goes assuming good faith. I am still
awaiting apologies for that! Certainly since it came from the same
person that took my stewardship. Promised it would be temporarily,
promised it would be discussed. And nothing happened! Nothing!

I am happy you have finally responded in the open so I can finally
answer in the open.

pissed off, and disillusioned
Waerth/Walter


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

> Yes, very well said Anthere. That is indeed what I meant - even though
> that is not what I said :-)
>
> Cormac

Je parle tr?s mieux anglais que toi :-)


subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand