from_name: Yorian

body:
Why don't we have some fun with it? Set up a page for ideas and try to
get it on Slashdot,, Digg, etcetera. What you'll get is attention for
the funddrive and great ideas :)

Yorian

Daniel Mayer schreef:
> The FundCom is developing ideas for a fundraising appeal to present to the Board. Please help us
> edit the text at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee/Fundraising_appeal to
> improve it, or create different versions to develop alternative texts.
>
> A good fundraising appeal succinctly presents some of the great things we previously have done
> (with an emphasis on what has been done since the last fundraiser) and presents some ideas on what
> can be done in the future with additional funds. The point is to impress potential donors on our
> track record and instill in them confidence that their support will be well spent and they can be
> part of something revolutionary.
>
> The final appeal will be created using ideas generated from this process. That document will then
> be translated.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Secretary PT and Organizer,
> Wikimedia Fundaising Committee
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Sponsored Link
>
> $200,000 mortgage for $660/mo - 30/15 yr fixed, reduce debt, home equity -
> Click now for info http://yahoo.ratemarketplace.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Help needed to develop fundraising appeal ideas


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image thumbnail (re)generation etc

body:
Hello,

Just wondering if some MediaWiki settings have been changed recently,
with regards to thumbnail generation. At the Commons we are getting a
lot more than usual complaints about thumbnails not being generated at
all, or not being purged when an image is updated. The most striking
example is here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg (see the Talk
page).

Some default category-size thumbnails are also not being generated:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_World_Centre
despite the fact that the troublesome images are not very big at all.

We mostly guess it is bug 2888, which is actually a mostly nonspecific
bug that amounts to "your thumbnail didn't generate correctly".

Are there some canonical instructions on how to purge thumbnails of a
specific size?

In general, it would be good if there was at least some way to warn
users as to why their thumbnail is not generating, at least when it is
because of the known reason of "too high resolution". I don't know if
that is possible.

Some other random comments:
1) Is it @wikipedia.org or @wikimedia.org ? The welcome message uses
both forms!
2) Can access to the EasyTimelines index (
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TimelinesIndex.htm ) pleeeeeeeeease be
restored?

thanks,

Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


list: wikien-l

from_name: Sean Black

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On 11/8/06, Osain Holmes <the.halo at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> I think (sorry if I'm wrong) that Kylu is female, and is running for the
> elections, so we do have one.

This is indeed true, but I don't think the gender disparity is all
that surprising or has anything to do with ArbCom specifically --
there are, overall, more male editors than there are female.

~~Sean


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
On 08/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 02:39:27AM +1100, Tim Starling wrote:

> > As for search and go, well my preference for a long time has been that we
> > should remove the "search" button from the sidebar, to make it harder to
> > find and thus reduce the request rate. Go is much faster than search, if it
> > manages to find a title match without sending you on to the full text
> > search. Most readers don't know the difference, and if they did, they would
> > click "go" in the great majority of cases.

> Second.
> All in favor?

Not quite - make it a "go" button, but still *call* it "Search."
Because something everyone looks for on coming to a site is where to
search.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
We could list the Top 5 donors in the watchlist and see if people feel they
can take the challenge to add themselves to that list. But that may be seen
as some sort of advertising... and companies won't like that individuals are
allowed yet they aren't, even though they have $1,000,000 to donate and the
wealthiest individual philanthropic benefactor only has $100,000 set aside.

On 11/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 08/11/06, James Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
>
> > I am aware that this may get derided as advertising, but I really
> > don't think it's true - this is merely an extended press release, as
> > it were. I think that a line (in the site notice), saying something
> > like "Foo have pledged to match up to US$200,000 in our [[current
> > fund-raising drive]]" instead of the current text ("Your [[continued
> > donations]] keep Wikipedia running!") would be appropriate and
> > understated (believe me, I'm British, "understated" is what we /do/).
>
>
> We wouldn't get away with naming the company in the sitenotice - it'd
> have to be a link to a page listing the matching donations. Think
> that'd work for anyone?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


subject: [Foundation-l] Is there a Foundation preferred license?

body:
To get technical, the public domain is not a license. It's a zone of
complete and utter freedom. The Public Domain is indeed great, but the
problem is is that people aren't kidding when they say "complete and utter
freedom." It allows your work to be plagiarized and used for money. Now, if
you want to perpetuate the idea of free works, you could use one of various
Creative Commons licenses, or the GFDL if you so wish.

On 11/8/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 11/8/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What would be the freest license for media, that still requires credit
> or
> > some sort?
>
> The best known would be cc-by, which is what I use.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Just wondering if some MediaWiki settings have been changed recently,
> with regards to thumbnail generation. At the Commons we are getting a
> lot more than usual complaints about thumbnails not being generated at
> all, or not being purged when an image is updated. The most striking
> example is here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg (see the Talk
> page).

I think the main thing that has changed is that error pages are now cached
in squid by default. If anything goes wrong with thumb.php, the result is
cached in squid for a week or so. I checked 3 of the broken images on the
category you linked to, and they were all "bad title" errors. I don't know
why these bad title errors occur, but before the squid change, we probably
wouldn't have noticed them, since they would have disappeared on the next
page view.

Last time I investigated this complaint, the problem was cached "file not
found" messages generated by thumb.php, so I configured it to send an
explict Cache-Control: no-cache header for that error. I'll do it for the
bad title error as well, but there may well be others.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Setting the preference "Justify paragraphs" to on
	by default

body:
Rotem Liss wrote:

> I propose to set the preference "Justify paragraphs" to on by default (for
> anonymous and new users - of course current users won't be affected, as usual),
> because it looks more professional on my opinion.
>
> Any objections?

This is just for the English Wikipedia, right? I'd imagine Wikipedias in
some other scripts might not appreciate the justification feature as
much. Before turning it on at en:, it might be a good idea to check
whether the justification interferes with taxoboxes and other floating
elements like images.

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/8/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be the freest license for media, that still requires credit or
> some sort?
>

Probably something along the lines of "I grant any entity the right to
use this work for any purpose as long as credit is given to X"

> Is PD-self the overall "freest" of licenses, in everyone's opinion?

Assumeing it is legal yes.

--
geni


from_name: Gregory Kohs

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
>Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2006 14:16:26 -0500
>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

>Gregory Kohs wrote:
> Seriously, I know I'm trolling, but come on -- can anyone else see the
> hypocrisy here?

>Hmm, a user banned for spamming wikipedia with pr puff pieces admits
>that he is trolling in making a silly complaint about nothing?  Yeah, I
>think I do see the hypocrisy.

>--Jimbo

I still maintain that the Wikipedia community, in its DRV discussion of the
needless delete of [[Arch Coal]] -- an article that nobody paid for at any
time, since it was just an experiment (ha ha!) in testing Jimmy Wales'
previous agreement with MyWikiBiz that content could be written
off-Wikipedia, then scraped in by independently-acting, volunteer editors
(which is exactly what happened) -- strongly suggests that the article was
NOT a "pr puff piece".  Why would independent editors in good standing
describe the original article as:

"The content was legitimate and the article was neutral"

"The article is written in what appear to me to be neutral terms. The
company itself is a shoo-in for WP:CORP, if the article is accurate, and if
this had been posted by any other editor we would surely never have noticed
it"

"It sounds partially like a paragraph at the end of press releases, but
those do not necessarily 'plug' the company, in fact are often quite factual
and NPOV"

"I've seen the article, it was a short informative and neutral article
(didn't exactly have enough length in it to be POV pushing) of an obviously
notable company.  ...I thought that for that length, that it covered the
most important aspects of the company. I know I can't have been the only one
to think that the article was adequate"

"I'm not sure I'm even looking at the right article... looks like a
perfectly acceptable Wikipedia article on a company to me. As for spam...
what, am I gonna go out and order a million tons of coal from them to feed
my power station because I've seen this humble piece on Wikipedia? Erm, no."

See for details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_October_5&oldid=80379872#Arch_Coal
Are each of the above quotes from people who are temporarily insane, or
something?

Therefore, Jimmy's ban may be illegitimate; but typical, nonetheless, of
someone ruling by fiat and unwilling to listen to the community.  In my
estimation, Wales is simply acting pious about Wikipedia being for
non-commercial use only, while he quietly supports all kinds of commercial
exploitation of the domain, as long as it goes into his pocket, or that of
his for-profit company.  Citing the various examples here would be a waste
of my energy.

I admit, I have been a royal pain since October 5th.  But, if you stop and
think, can you exactly blame me?  You may all consider this my parting shot
for the year, because there's apparently no intelligent way of getting most
readers of Wikien-L to see that there has been a very poor handling of a
potentially controversial subject; when, in reality, with some cooperation
and a lot of transparency, MyWikiBiz could have done a great deal to help
Wikipedia become a better encyclopedia.  I honestly don't think that's the
main mission any more.  I think most of you feel Wikipedia is a "good
enough" encyclopedia now, and the new mission is an elaborate game to
"protect" it from evolutionary forces.

<On a Wikibreak until 2007>

--
Gregory Kohs
Cell: 302.463.1354


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 11/8/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be the freest license for media, that still requires credit or
> some sort?

The best known would be cc-by, which is what I use.

--
Sam


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
Did any of her edits constitute a violation of WP:NPOV?
The policy was created to avoid bad edits being made.
As long as the article remains okay, there's no problem.

On 11/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Angela Beesley wrote on Saturday, November 4th:
>
> >
> On 11/4/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at
> gmail.com<http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l>>
> wrote:
> >* I think that WP:COI (or Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest) is botched.
> *...
> >* If that's the case, why is it that:
> *>*
> *>* (1)  Angela Beesley has edited the article about Wikia.com
> *
> Because the policy didn't exist then. [[WP:COI]] was a guideline about
> not making vanity pages until October 10th.
>
> Angela.
>
> + + + + + +
>
> The Vice President of Wikia has been editing the Wikipedia article about
> Wikia again.  This time, November 8th:
>
> [
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikia&diff=86444818&oldid=86163187
> ]
>
> Now, as a reminder, WP:COI says:
>
> * * * * *
> If you have a conflict of interest, you should:
>
>   1. *avoid editing* articles related to your organization or its
>   competitors;
>   2. *avoid participating* in deletion
> discussions<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Deletion_processes
> >about
> articles related to your organization or its competitors;
>   3. *avoid linking* to the Wikipedia article or website of your
>   corporation in other articles (see
> Wikipedia:Spam<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Spam>).
>
>
> If you feel it necessary to make changes to Wikipedia articles, despite a
> real or perceived conflict of interest, we *strongly encourage* you to
> submit content for community review on the article's talk page, and to let
> one or more trusted community members judge whether the material belongs
> in
> Wikipedia.
> * * * * *
>
> I didn't see that Beesley submitted her content for community review on
> the
> article's talk page.
>
> I know that her edit was a trifling one, but considering all of the heat
> and
> light that's been generated in recent months about conflicts of interest,
> why is it that Beesley's account doesn't receive so much as a warning,
> especially when just 4 days ago, she was giving excuses as to why it was
> okay for her to edit Wikia PRIOR to WP:COI coming out.  Well, now WP:COI
> is
> out, but she's still editing.  Would it be so difficult for the Wikipedia
> community to expect that Beesley recuse herself of editing just ONE
> article
> -- the one about her own company?
>
> Seriously, I know I'm trolling, but come on -- can anyone else see the
> hypocrisy here?
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs
> Cell: 302.463.1354
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On 11/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> I know that her edit was a trifling one, but considering all of the heat and
> light that's been generated in recent months about conflicts of interest,
> why is it that Beesley's account doesn't receive so much as a warning,

Now, what kind of "warning" do you consider appropriate?  NPOV0 [1]?
Welcomeenpov [2]?

Or perhaps you'd advocate some kind of hand-written warning?

Whatever you consider the appropriate warning to give, your comment is
symptomatic of the terrible notion that giving a warning is a
punishment of some kind and should be doled out to any editor who
misbehaves somehow.  This is incivil, most of all when the editor in
question is a respected editor/admin (let alone a former board
member).  If you have a problem with someone's behaviour, let them
know about it in the nicest terms you can manage.  Even better, do it
in private, through email or IRC.  It isn't hard and it makes a far
more civil atmosphere.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:NPOV0
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Welcomenpov

--
Sam


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
> Arbitration Committee election.

It hasn't been announced on this list...

--
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: Rotem Liss

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Setting the preference "Justify paragraphs" to on by
	default

body:
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I propose to set the preference "Justify paragraphs" to on by default (for
anonymous and new users - of course current users won't be affected, as usual),
because it looks more professional on my opinion.

Any objections?

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body:
Wikinews is CC-BY. So I think they will generally pick the best "open
content" license that suits the project, with GFDL as the default
choice.

Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

On 08/11/06, luke brandt <shojokid at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, Does the Foundation have any preference for a particular open
> content license, eg GFDL ? Or is it strictly neutral on this 'legality'
> I just saw some thought seems to have been given to this question:-
>
> [ Bylaws of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
>
> ARTICLE I: NAME ...
>
> ARTICLE II: STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
> The general purpose and objectives of the Foundation shall be the
> following: Wikimedia Foundation is dedicated to the development and
> maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias, collections of
> quotations, textbooks and other collections of documents, information,
> and other informational databases in all the languages of the world that
> will be distributed free of charge to the public under a free
> documentation license such as the Free Documentation License written by
> the Free Software Foundation Inc. at http://www.fsf.org or similar
> licensing scheme, see http://www.wikimedia.org. The goals of the
> foundation are to encourage the further growth and development of open
> content, social sofware WikiWiki-based projects ... ]
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
I don't know exactly what thumb.php has to do with anything, but the
thumb.php versions of  Bl?cher.jpg don't match what shows up when you
try to actually use these thumbs. The old b&w ones still show up in
wiki pages, even though thumb.php shows the new colour ones.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg
cf.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg&w=150

thanks,
Brianna


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On 11/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/8/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
> > Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
> > them is female.
> >
> > In previous elections, we also had very few female candidates, yet one
> > of them finished either first or second in each of the last two
> > elections. I'm sure we have some female contributors who would be
> > well-qualified and bring a valuable perspective to the arbitration
> > process, and I would encourage them to consider running.
> >
> > --Michael Snow
>
> Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?
>
That's what I was thinking.

<sarcasm>How many of the arb com candidates are protestant?</sarcasm>
Who cares if an arb com candidate is male or female?

Anthony


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On Nov 8, 2006, at 1:47 PM, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

> While this is all kind of dull, WP:COI is being cited in a current
> ArbCom case, and a high profile deletion debate.

Could you please provide the links for the ArbCom case and the AfD? I
would like to take a look. Thanks

-- Jossi


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
On 11/8/06, James Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> One particularly powerful way in which we can increase funds is to see
> if we can get "matching donation" - that is for every x units,
> so-and-so promises to donate y, up to a limit. [snip]
>
> I am aware that this may get derided as advertising, but I really
> don't think it's true - this is merely an extended press release, as
> it were. I think that a line (in the site notice), saying something
> like "Foo have pledged to match up to US$200,000 in our [[current
> fund-raising drive]]" instead of the current text ("Your [[continued
> donations]] keep Wikipedia running!") would be appropriate and
> understated (believe me, I'm British, "understated" is what we /do/).
>
Sounds like a great idea, if you can get someone to donate the
$200,000.  It could also be arranged as a "challenge" ("if X people
donate $Y in $Z minutes, whoever has pledged to match it").  I find it
significant though that you didn't hyperlink "Foo".

Is it advertising?  I'd say not at all.  In fact, under IRS
regulations it would probably be considered a "qualified sponsorship
payment", and not an advertisement.  But other than the tax
implications, and as long as there was an easy way to turn it off, I
wouldn't care even it *were* advertising.

Anthony

-----------------
Disclaimer under IRS Circular 230: Nothing in this email is intended
or written to be used, and it cannot be used, by any taxpayer for the
purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer.
-----------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On 11/8/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Handwritten, always.  The warning templates are almost uniformly based
> around the assumption that a warning is a punishment, rather than an
> attempt to get someone to change their behavior.

My comment was actually aimed sarcastically...  (Or is this forbidden
as an act of gross incivility in itself?)  My complaint was both with
the pervading use of templates and the impression that "warnings" need
to be given, rather than "requests".

Thinking about it as a warning will make it seem a punishment.

--
Sam


from_name: James Forrester

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
I have been mulling-over an idea for fundraising, but I think that,
due to the details, it should probably be discussed here first, rather
than just get discussed inside the Foundation proper. Yes, this really
does mean "input welcome", not "isn't this a wonderful thought, all
supplicate afore me". :-)

One particularly powerful way in which we can increase funds is to see
if we can get "matching donation" - that is for every x units,
so-and-so promises to donate y, up to a limit. Although this increases
the value of donations to us (by a factor of x/y, obviously), which is
really great in and of itself, it actually works much more positively
to leverage donations, making people significantly more likely to
donate, and more likely to donate /more/. This means that (in the case
where x and y are both 1 - i.e., a direct matching donation) we
wouldn't just get twice as much (which would be fantastic), but thrice
or even more so (I've somewhat run out of superlatives).

There is a catch, however - this second effect only occurs if the
people donating are aware of it. The awareness cannot be achieved
through a press notice; it has to be displayed alongside the donation
request, and the display has to be rather prominent to have the best
effect.

I am aware that this may get derided as advertising, but I really
don't think it's true - this is merely an extended press release, as
it were. I think that a line (in the site notice), saying something
like "Foo have pledged to match up to US$200,000 in our [[current
fund-raising drive]]" instead of the current text ("Your [[continued
donations]] keep Wikipedia running!") would be appropriate and
understated (believe me, I'm British, "understated" is what we /do/).

I think actual advert-style copy would be a bad idea (and would
rupture the community, which is a no-no), and a logo (for example)
would be going too far, and be too flashy; it would distract readers,
suggest a stronger influence than many would be happy with, and on a
terribly practical level, companies might not be happy if we required
their logo to squish into a 30 by 100 pixel block, or whatever - and
are we sure that we'd have the strength of character not to allow a
20% increase in the sponsor logo box when they're offering so much
dosh?

In the end, we could allow only matching personal donations (from the
rich, obviously, but still), if people thought that corporate matched
giving was too far - but do recall that we already accept donations
from many companies, including really very large ones, so it might not
be that significant a step. However, for a non-profit, the image of
neutrality is king, and we would want to be careful not to do anything
to sully ours.

Obviously, we would carefully vet proposed individuals and
organisations for suitability, both on legal but perhaps more
importantly vision/moral grounds - it would be difficult were the so
very conspicuous supporter to have a significantly different view of
the purpose of copyright, or the goal of the Foundation and the
projects. The exact wordsmithery for the text of the hook-line would
have to be hammered out (ho-ho), too. But these are a procedural
issues, not a philosophical ones, and I trust us all to stick, at
least at first, to the more pressing demand before getting diverted
into the less critical matters.

So... what do you all think? Worth considering? And, if it is, what
boundaries should we (we the Foundation, that is) set?

*Please note* that I post this in no official capacity whatsoever,
merely as a guy with an idea who cares about the Foundation and our
projects, like the rest of you. :-)

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
james at wikimedia.org | james at jdforrester.org | jdforrester at gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
On 08/11/06, James Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:

> I am aware that this may get derided as advertising, but I really
> don't think it's true - this is merely an extended press release, as
> it were. I think that a line (in the site notice), saying something
> like "Foo have pledged to match up to US$200,000 in our [[current
> fund-raising drive]]" instead of the current text ("Your [[continued
> donations]] keep Wikipedia running!") would be appropriate and
> understated (believe me, I'm British, "understated" is what we /do/).

We wouldn't get away with naming the company in the sitenotice - it'd
have to be a link to a page listing the matching donations. Think
that'd work for anyone?

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On 11/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> So what!!!

Considering thr amount of problems we've had due to jimbo editing his
bio I would suggest it is less than idea.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On 11/8/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
> Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
> them is female.
>
> In previous elections, we also had very few female candidates, yet one
> of them finished either first or second in each of the last two
> elections. I'm sure we have some female contributors who would be
> well-qualified and bring a valuable perspective to the arbitration
> process, and I would encourage them to consider running.
>
> --Michael Snow

Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?

--
geni


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] new article tracker toy

body:
We already have Special:Recentchanges and Special:Newpages which shows
pretty much the same. Except that they're lists, not a single one.
Some bugs in your approach: you're listing redirects, which can show ugly.
Some titles show url-escaped (with % instead of parenthesis).
I guess the "nice" feature is the autoupdating. It can be implemented but
should be done on its own page (i.e. not on a section of the screen: many
users won't want it updating from the web, and it'd be tons of extra
bandwidth). Note this feature can be [externally] implemented with a 0%
extra load over wikipedia servers, problem is on being able to attend the
load (quite easy if you don't reveal it ;-)  ). Plus you should be aware of
people opening it on a tab and leaving it open (forgetting) on background so
it'd hit the server for nothing.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

> So a few people recently decided that they wanted a COI policy.  Let's
> not pretend that there was suddenly a groundswell in support of this policy.

Let's not pretend that's an accurate history.

Someone WAS BOLD and renamed the old WP:VAIN, which was about vanity editing, to WP:COI. David Gerard appealed for help here in getting the text more compatible with the title. Exit DG for a bit (Gothing it up on the Yorkshire coast, I surmise).

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, another guideline page (NB none, but none, of this is hard policy) has been  created by User:Eloquence. This is the one that lays down how editors on behalf of companies should comport themselves.

I only got involved when DG broadcast his appeal. I resisted the merge (now carried out) that created a composite page, for as long as I could, and until I could see how to fit the bits together.

We now do have a composite guideline, not obviously compatible with absolutely everything elsewhere written about autobiographical writing, not integrating in WP:SPAM, and with other potential weaknesses. It does however fill in gaping holes in previous material in this area, making explicit in particular some aspects of procedure at AfD and the implications if you 'declare an interest'.

While this is all kind of dull, WP:COI is being cited in a current ArbCom case, and a high profile deletion debate.

Charles

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from_name: henna

subject: [Wikitech-l] new article tracker toy

body:
On 11/8/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> We already have Special:Recentchanges and Special:Newpages which shows
> pretty much the same. Except that they're lists, not a single one.
> Some bugs in your approach: you're listing redirects, which can show ugly.
> Some titles show url-escaped (with % instead of parenthesis).
> I guess the "nice" feature is the autoupdating. It can be implemented but
> should be done on its own page (i.e. not on a section of the screen: many
> users won't want it updating from the web, and it'd be tons of extra
> bandwidth). Note this feature can be [externally] implemented with a 0%
> extra load over wikipedia servers, problem is on being able to attend the
> load (quite easy if you don't reveal it ;-)  ). Plus you should be aware of
> people opening it on a tab and leaving it open (forgetting) on background so
> it'd hit the server for nothing.

it would be quite easy to listen to the ircstream and update from there.

henna
--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
On 11/8/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> We could list the Top 5 donors in the watchlist and see if people feel they
> can take the challenge to add themselves to that list.

Watchlist is full on en.wikipedia and will be intill the second week
of december.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


subject: [Wikitech-l] new article tracker toy

body:
"henna" wrote:
> it would be quite easy to listen to the ircstream and update from there.
>
> henna

Right, that was my idea.


body:
>All thumbnails are generated by thumb.php. When you request a thumbnail
>which does not exist, the image server proxies the request to the main
>apache cluster, as a thumb.php request. If all goes well, thumb.php will
>create the relevant thumbnail file, so next time a request comes to the
>image server for that image, it will serve it directly.

>The difference between requesting a thumbnail in the ordinary way and
>requesting it via thumb.php is mainly just the URL. Squid caches a bad file
>under one URL, then you regenerate the image, but for some reason it fails
>to purge the squid cache. So the bad image will be served from squid if you
>use the normal URL, but if you use any other URL, you get the good image.
-- Tim Starling

The problem is that some cached thumbs seem 'unkillable'. At least i'd
expect when calling thumb.php and it generates the thumb, to replace the
previous generated thumb of that size so when calling the normal url with
no-cache, the squid would ask the backend image server to validate its local
copy, find there's a new one and give the updated one, but no way :-(

PS: I had made the 'bad title' error on thumbs  bug 7844


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 11/8/06, Rotem Liss <rotemliss_net at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> I propose to set the preference "Justify paragraphs" to on by default (for
> anonymous and new users - of course current users won't be affected, as usual),
> because it looks more professional on my opinion.
>
> Any objections?

Yes.  Justification on the Internet generally sucks, because there's
no hyphenation.  A ragged right border looks better than lines near
long words having way too much whitespace, which is why few sites use
justification.


from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/8/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
>> Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
>> them is female.
>>
>> In previous elections, we also had very few female candidates, yet one
>> of them finished either first or second in each of the last two
>> elections. I'm sure we have some female contributors who would be
>> well-qualified and bring a valuable perspective to the arbitration
>> process, and I would encourage them to consider running.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
> Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?
>

There's a WikiProject Gender studies or something somewhere.  Maybe they
started it? :)

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.409 / Virus Database: 268.14.0/524 - Release Date: 08/11/06


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 17:44:04 -0500, "Gregory Kohs"
<thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:

>I admit, I have been a royal pain since October 5th.  But, if you stop and
>think, can you exactly blame me?

Yes.

Thank you, though, for handing out the easiest question I've had to
answer this week.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
"Gregory Kohs" wrote

> I admit, I have been a royal pain since October 5th.  But, if you stop and
> think, can you exactly blame me?

Yes. In various email exchanges with you, I have detected nothing but a thoroughly self-centred approach.

>I think most of you feel Wikipedia is a "good
> enough" encyclopedia now, and the new mission is an elaborate game to
> "protect" it from evolutionary forces.

Some of us put in many hours on the project. This does not disqualify us from also wishing to have a steering role, and having a discrinating eye for exactly what type of evolution would marry the best of our 'old school' tradition to the acquisition of ever-wider content.

Charles

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body:
On 11/9/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Plus, you need to set some sort of threshold; a line which only has a
> few words on it ends up
> looking        very         spaced        out,        like       this.

Not possible to specify an explicit threshold on our side
(<http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/text.html#alignment-prop>).  Browsers
will of course pick some sensible value, but that traditionally
applies only to lines immediately preceding a line break, not lines in
the middle of text.  Those can consist of even two words, I think,
separated by nearly a line of whitespace, if sufficiently long words
came before and after.  Again, that's what hyphenation is for, but no
browser I know of hyphenates in real time as of now.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-09

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test __NOEDITSECTION__ keyword... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Fuzz testing: Parser14... FAILED!
Running test Fuzz testing: Parser14-table... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 414 of 439 tests (94.31%) FAILED!


body:
I'm not entirely sure that a random user of an online site qualifies as an
employee of any site, so I don't think that *workplace* sexual harassment
laws have anything to do with this case. After all the commotion lately with
MySpace, it seems quite real that these situations do have some sort of
legal backing under some sort of sexual harassment statute, although IANAL.
In many of these cases, it is just safer to report the case, and if the
police asks for anything, just provide them access to the Apache and Recent
Changes logs.

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jeffrey V. Merkey
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 1:29 AM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia

THD wrote:

>Hi, Everyone,
>
>Yesterday, one guy registered an offensive username, "Rape XXX" (XXX is a
>female wikipedian's name in real life, but I want to kept the victim
>anonymous here) in Chinese Wikipedia, and this guy left a message on the
>female's user talk page: "You are in my sexual fantasy. Are you a virgin?"
I
>was furious about this guy's action and sexual harassment speech. I have
>blocked this id forever, and I also suggested the female user to report to
>police office. I want to know is there any policy on this issue? In this
>kind of situation, will the Foundation cooperate with different countries'
>police authority, and reveal the user log record to the authority?
>
>Thanks.
>
>THD
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
In the United States, sexual harassment and sexually hostile work
environment claims require that:

1. The company/organization have more than 15 employees or its exempt
from compliance with Federal EEOC Laws.
2. The subject of the harassment must be an employee who reports to the
person doing the harassment.
3. Any employee, irregardless of reporting structure can make claims of
sexually hostile work environment, but the damages
are a lot less.
4. Damages are statutory for sexual harassment claims.

An online forum cannot make claims of sexual harassment or enforce such
claims. If anything, its a violation of site policy and may
qualify as stalking or obscenity, but its not sexual harassment under US
Law.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia


subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Links?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 11/3/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It's not recommended since it won't work in all browsers, but you can
>> find it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Click
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Click has an example of using
>> this with an image.
>
> At one stage it looked like this was going to actually get implemented
> properly, then it got shot down in a war over attributing people's
> copyright correctly.
>

Oh, and how do you do the thing where the thumbnail picture is different
to the picture itself?

--
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: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Links?

body:
On 11/3/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not recommended since it won't work in all browsers, but you can
> find it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Click
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Click has an example of using
> this with an image.

At one stage it looked like this was going to actually get implemented
properly, then it got shot down in a war over attributing people's
copyright correctly.

:/

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
On 11/8/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> We've now dedicated a server to search index updates. I've got them running
> in two threads, one for enwiki and one for everything else. Each one is a
> loop, we should get a complete index update once every 30 hours or so.

Would now be a good time to ask questions about what the search index
algorithm is and possible improvements to it? It works okay, but
sometimes the bleedingly obvious match isn't even on the first page.

Example: Search for "tchaikovsky's piano concerto" (before I put the
redirect in). The correct match "Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)"
is miles down the page, even though it has the three search terms
(minus an 's) in the title. Search still seems to miss pages where the
title is the *exact* search term, too.

"Sounds-like" searches would be nice too - very often you look up
stuff that you don't know how to spell, but may get the pronunciation
close.

Accentless searches would be great, too. It gets really tedious making
redirects like "Spisska Kapitula -> Spi?sk? Kapitula".

And of course, resolving this whole distinction between "searches" and
"gotos" would be nice :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Arbitration nominee statement censored

body:
On 11/8/06, Dan Collins <en.wp.st47 at gmail.com> wrote:
> and now this is getting crazy. It is accepted, if not written down, that
> using another account or editing anonymously while banned is ban evasion,
> and can get you banned. Second, I believe that editcounts are by account not

Editing anonymously to evade blocks can get you banned even worser,
yes. See [[WP:BLOCK]].

Steve


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image Links?

body:
On 09/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Oh, and how do you do the thing where the thumbnail picture is different
> to the picture itself?

That's been implemented, although it seems to be poorly documented
(ie, I can't find any page on meta describing it -- except for this
note http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Thumbnails#Manually_generated_thumbnails
).

regards,
Brianna


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

body:
THD wrote:

>Hi, Everyone,
>
>Yesterday, one guy registered an offensive username, "Rape XXX" (XXX is a
>female wikipedian's name in real life, but I want to kept the victim
>anonymous here) in Chinese Wikipedia, and this guy left a message on the
>female's user talk page: "You are in my sexual fantasy. Are you a virgin?" I
>was furious about this guy's action and sexual harassment speech. I have
>blocked this id forever, and I also suggested the female user to report to
>police office. I want to know is there any policy on this issue? In this
>kind of situation, will the Foundation cooperate with different countries'
>police authority, and reveal the user log record to the authority?
>
>Thanks.
>
>THD
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
In the United States, sexual harassment and sexually hostile work
environment claims require that:

1. The company/organization have more than 15 employees or its exempt
from compliance with Federal EEOC Laws.
2. The subject of the harassment must be an employee who reports to the
person doing the harassment.
3. Any employee, irregardless of reporting structure can make claims of
sexually hostile work environment, but the damages
are a lot less.
4. Damages are statutory for sexual harassment claims.

An online forum cannot make claims of sexual harassment or enforce such
claims. If anything, its a violation of site policy and may
qualify as stalking or obscenity, but its not sexual harassment under US
Law.

Jeff


body:
It certainly falls under a variety of state laws regarding stalking and
online harrassment, and possibly solicitation as well.

Jeff

Titoxd at Wikimedia wrote:

>I'm not entirely sure that a random user of an online site qualifies as an
>employee of any site, so I don't think that *workplace* sexual harassment
>laws have anything to do with this case. After all the commotion lately with
>MySpace, it seems quite real that these situations do have some sort of
>legal backing under some sort of sexual harassment statute, although IANAL.
>In many of these cases, it is just safer to report the case, and if the
>police asks for anything, just provide them access to the Apache and Recent
>Changes logs.
>
>Titoxd.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
>[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jeffrey V. Merkey
>Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 1:29 AM
>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Sexual harassment in Wikipedia
>
>THD wrote:
>
>
>
>>Hi, Everyone,
>>
>>Yesterday, one guy registered an offensive username, "Rape XXX" (XXX is a
>>female wikipedian's name in real life, but I want to kept the victim
>>anonymous here) in Chinese Wikipedia, and this guy left a message on the
>>female's user talk page: "You are in my sexual fantasy. Are you a virgin?"
>>
>>
>I
>
>
>>was furious about this guy's action and sexual harassment speech. I have
>>blocked this id forever, and I also suggested the female user to report to
>>police office. I want to know is there any policy on this issue? In this
>>kind of situation, will the Foundation cooperate with different countries'
>>police authority, and reveal the user log record to the authority?
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>THD
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>In the United States, sexual harassment and sexually hostile work
>environment claims require that:
>
>1. The company/organization have more than 15 employees or its exempt
>from compliance with Federal EEOC Laws.
>2. The subject of the harassment must be an employee who reports to the
>person doing the harassment.
>3. Any employee, irregardless of reporting structure can make claims of
>sexually hostile work environment, but the damages
>are a lot less.
>4. Damages are statutory for sexual harassment claims.
>
>An online forum cannot make claims of sexual harassment or enforce such
>claims. If anything, its a violation of site policy and may
>qualify as stalking or obscenity, but its not sexual harassment under US
>Law.
>
>Jeff
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject:
[Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced to
	MediaWiki

body:
On 10/22/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> The best I could come up with was to move everything back to the old
> layout, but wrap headings in a div and change h#'s to display inline,
> then shift all padding/border/margin rules to affect the wrapper div
> rather than the h#.  That makes the section edit link look good in
> Monobook, but for some reason it does basically nothing for other
> layouts.

Okay, I've finally done this, r17507.  Let me know if the problem goes
away whenever the next scap happens (probably a few days from now at
most).  Sorry it took so long.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 11/8/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> We've now dedicated a server to search index updates. I've got them running
>> in two threads, one for enwiki and one for everything else. Each one is a
>> loop, we should get a complete index update once every 30 hours or so.
>
> Would now be a good time to ask questions about what the search index
> algorithm is and possible improvements to it? It works okay, but
> sometimes the bleedingly obvious match isn't even on the first page.
>
> Example: Search for "tchaikovsky's piano concerto" (before I put the
> redirect in). The correct match "Piano Concerto No. 1 (Tchaikovsky)"
> is miles down the page, even though it has the three search terms
> (minus an 's) in the title. Search still seems to miss pages where the
> title is the *exact* search term, too.
>
> "Sounds-like" searches would be nice too - very often you look up
> stuff that you don't know how to spell, but may get the pronunciation
> close.
>
> Accentless searches would be great, too. It gets really tedious making
> redirects like "Spisska Kapitula -> Spi?sk? Kapitula".
>
> And of course, resolving this whole distinction between "searches" and
> "gotos" would be nice :)

Yes, this is a good time to ask about it. I've been thinking about this
myself for the last few days, and I'm glad to hear a different perspective
on it.

The main question in my mind is what to index. Currently, there's a function
in the updater called StripWiki(), which appears to be based on the wikitext
stripping function from the MediaWiki core. It strips out things like
tables, the target half of piped links, a few random HTML tags and lots of
punctuation. I suspect this whole process is entirely unnecessary. I'm
considering removing StripWiki altogether, and just indexing the raw
wikitext. The tokenizer will strip punctuation characters by itself. There's
lots of useful data in tables, I don't see why you would want to stop people
from searching in them. And stripping out everything from [[Image:]] tags
except for the caption seems like a waste of time.

There are two other benefits from getting rid of StripWiki: firstly, 45% of
index update time is currently spent in StripWiki(). This is partly due to
its inefficient implementation, but I don't want to have to rewrite it if
it's useless. The second benefit is that you can use lucene to do hit
context highlighting. Currently, we have our own context highlighter in
MediaWiki, which doesn't match up at all well with what Lucene is actually
matching. It doesn't understand phrase searches, for instance.

There are some potential problems, such as trying to find the word "span" in
a document without getting lots of hits from syntax, or phrase searching
across piped links.

Another quite different option is to index the HTML. This is potentially
more expensive, but avoids the complexity of reimplementing half the parser
to strip wikitext. It allows you to search documents with templates
expanded, and markup can easily be stripped out with a stock HTML filter.

Accentless search should be easy, assuming mono has an NFKD implementation
or something similar. I believe fuzzy search is similar, although I'm not as
familiar with the specific technology. Scoring problems (such as your
Tchaikovsky example) and missing hits should be dealt with as bugs, please
report them. Most complaints of missing hits in the past have been due to
slow index updates, so be careful to rule that out before you make a report.

As for search and go, well my preference for a long time has been that we
should remove the "search" button from the sidebar, to make it harder to
find and thus reduce the request rate. Go is much faster than search, if it
manages to find a title match without sending you on to the full text
search. Most readers don't know the difference, and if they did, they would
click "go" in the great majority of cases.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> I don't know exactly what thumb.php has to do with anything, but the
> thumb.php versions of  Bl?cher.jpg don't match what shows up when you
> try to actually use these thumbs. The old b&w ones still show up in
> wiki pages, even though thumb.php shows the new colour ones.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg
> cf.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Bl%C3%BCcher.jpg&w=150

All thumbnails are generated by thumb.php. When you request a thumbnail
which does not exist, the image server proxies the request to the main
apache cluster, as a thumb.php request. If all goes well, thumb.php will
create the relevant thumbnail file, so next time a request comes to the
image server for that image, it will serve it directly.

The difference between requesting a thumbnail in the ordinary way and
requesting it via thumb.php is mainly just the URL. Squid caches a bad file
under one URL, then you regenerate the image, but for some reason it fails
to purge the squid cache. So the bad image will be served from squid if you
use the normal URL, but if you use any other URL, you get the good image.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
On 09/11/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 09, 2006 at 02:39:27AM +1100, Tim Starling wrote:
> > As for search and go, well my preference for a long time has been that we
> > should remove the "search" button from the sidebar, to make it harder to
> > find and thus reduce the request rate. Go is much faster than search, if it
> > manages to find a title match without sending you on to the full text
> > search. Most readers don't know the difference, and if they did, they would
> > click "go" in the great majority of cases.
>
> Second.
>
> All in favor?

I am not sure it would be a good idea for Commons - although I guess
most searches would not have a direct match in the main namespace, so
maybe the end result would be the same - but I think that Commons is
different enough to the other Wikimedia wikis to need a specialised
search function. Can we plead a special case? :)

Maybe it would be better to wait for the "image implementation
overhaul" to happen, no idea when that might be. But even a gallery
for search results could be useful. Some functionality like
MediaSearch [1] would be a godsend...

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

[1]: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/MediaSearch.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org


from_name: niht-hræfn

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On Nov 8, 2006, at 1:21, Michael Snow wrote:

> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
> Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
> them is female.

Kylu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kylu) is female.

--Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On Nov 9, 2006, at 6:24, niht-hr?fn wrote:

> On Nov 8, 2006, at 1:21, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
>> Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
>> them is female.
>
> Kylu (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kylu) is female.
>
Oops, already been said... but would being female change one's
chances of being elected? Or change anything really....

--Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sourcing "popular culture" items

body:
That doesn't prove that there are plenty of sources for popular culture
material.  That proves that there is a source for some specific popular
culture material.

To go from the existence of this magazine to a claim that popular culture is
so well-covered by magazines of this type that no other sources are needed is
an incredible leap.


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
geni wrote:

> On 11/8/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> We have, so far, twenty announced candidates for next month's
>> Arbitration Committee election. To the best of my knowledge, none of
>> them is female.
>>
>> In previous elections, we also had very few female candidates, yet one
>> of them finished either first or second in each of the last two
>> elections. I'm sure we have some female contributors who would be
>> well-qualified and bring a valuable perspective to the arbitration
>> process, and I would encourage them to consider running.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
> Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?

Since we started using personal pronouns, whenever that was. I wasn't
around then, but I suspect it was fairly early on.

--Michael Snow


from_name: lars

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea

body:
James Forrester wrote:

> One particularly powerful way in which we can increase funds is
> to see if we can get "matching donation" - that is for every x
> units, so-and-so promises to donate y, up to a limit.

> [...] I think that a line (in the site notice), saying something
> like "Foo have pledged to match up to US$200,000 in our
> [[current fund-raising drive]]" instead of the current text
> ("Your [[continued donations]] keep Wikipedia running!") would

First Jimbo's $100 million and now this.  I must warn against
spending too much time thinking about money.  If you like money,
do business.  Money is not what brought me here.  Money is an idea
that infests your brain, and after a while you start to think that
you cannot do anything if you don't have money.  That is a trap.
Wikipedia is and should be a monument to how much good can in fact
be done with almost no money.

I do not agree that matching donations increase funds.  If someone
has $200 thousand to spend, let them donate it without waiting for
a match.  Their donation is added to everybody else's.  That's
simple addition, not a multiplication.

So, why would anybody want to do a matching donation rather than
just silently submit what they have?  To get their name and
logotype displayed?  If they want this kind of display, tell them
to buy advertising from companies that sell advertising space.
If they want to help Wikipedia, the way to do so is to donate.
There are lots of people who silently donate.  Why should WMF give
special treatment to people who want to make this process more
complicated?  If silent donors don't get this special treatment,
why should they continue to be silent?

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising idea


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

body:
I recently, on a whim, picked up a copy of a magazine called "Filmfax
Plus: The Magazine of Unusual Film, Television, and Retro Pop
Culture." I was quite struck by the depth, detail, and maturity of
writing in this rather schlocky-looking periodical.

This particular periodical is at issue number 111. There are stories
in it about Chesley Bonestell, the artist who almost single-handedly
created the visual experience of space travel in dozens of science-
fiction magazines, SF movies, and a museum diorama or two; on Kirk
Alyn, an early film portrayer of Superman; on the making of Walt
Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea;" on John Belushi; and a host
of others. The articles in it are highly detailed, factual,
apparently nonpromotional, and generally written at an intelligent
adult level. (Their greatest weakness is that it is not clear what
the writers' credentials are or what sources they used for the
article; in the case of the Belushi article, it was an interview with
Belushi's widow).

This underlines my belief that there are plenty of good, verifiable
sources for popular culture material.

This cuts both ways, of course. On the one hand, I believe it is
_quite possible_ to write good, well-sourced, encyclopedic articles
on popular culture. On the other hand, I believe that such articles
should be held to exactly the same standards as any other Wikipedia
article, including deletion of material that cannot be sourced after
sources have been requested and the requests have been outstanding
for a reasonable length of time.


from_name: Gatto Nero

subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA

body:
2006/11/9, Saqib Saeed Ch <nutron at wol.net.pk>:
> TO ALL MEMBERS / FREIENDS / BROTHERS AND SISTERS

> SAQIB CHAUDHARY

Hi Saqib.
No idea if you knew it, but writing in CAPS - on internet - is
considered unpolite.
Just like someone is shouting in your hear.

I think it's better, the next time, to write it in small letter, if you can.
Thank you.


subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA

body:
I could add that it's a phishing.

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: gattonero at gmail.com
Data: 09.11.06 10.06
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA

2006/11/9, Saqib Saeed Ch <nutron at wol.net.pk>:
> TO ALL MEMBERS / FREIENDS / BROTHERS AND SISTERS

> SAQIB CHAUDHARY

Hi Saqib.
No idea if you knew it, but writing in CAPS - on internet - is
considered unpolite.
Just like someone is shouting in your hear.

I think it's better, the next time, to write it in small letter, if
you can.
Thank you.
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/9/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> On 11/9/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It depends how you define free. One problem with PD is that it doesn't
> > guarantee the work will remain free, whereas a [[share-alike]] license
> > will.
>
> To be perfectly accurate, the original work will remain freely
> licensed in both cases. Copyleft/share-alike applies to derivatives.

True, but thats immaterial if someone else manages to monopolize
control of the only copies of the original (free) work.

There are a great many public domain audio recordings locked away for
which only copyrighted 'remastered' versions are available.

The same is also true with sheet music. There are some old scores
where the original now public domain orchestrations are nearly
impossible to obtain, and yet you can buy copyrighted versions at any
music store. (Contact the mutopia folks if you don't want to take my
word for it, http://www.mutopiaproject.org/ )

We'd like to think this is less likely to happen in the digital world,
but there is no real evidence that this will be the case.

Although it's easier to copy and preserve a unit of information there
is much more information that needs to be preserved.

Who outside of the employ of Wikimedia has a current copy of all the
commons images? (Jeff? anyone else?) Because we haven't done a dump in
nearly 1 year it's hard to get all of them (must spider).  Who even
has the year old image dump other than me (it's 300gb)?

I don't think it's inconceivable that we could have a serious failure
(chopper flies into datacenter? :) ) which results in some number of
images being lost. At that point, I could take my copies of the
non-copyleft material and make some them unfree through various means.

Also, with the legal enforcement (DMCA) of technological copyright
wrappers it is even conceivable that a PD work can become unfree
without first falling out of circulation. Is a work free if it can
only be redistributed after someone has been brought up on criminal
charges and jailed for removing it from its wrapper?

The first point I made is real and is already happening, it wouldn't
be unfair to call it common.. the second point depends a little on
speculation regarding the willingness of the courts to enforce DMCA
like laws in violation of we would consider common sense, but the
current trends are not positive.

So I think it's clear that copylefts have merit even without
considering derivative works.

It might be interesting if a half-copyleft existed, whereby you could
create non-free derivative works but you always had to include a copy
or an offer to provide a copy of the original free work under its
original free license.  This would close my concerns about
non-copyleft content being locked up without taking the step of
encumbering derivatives which is opposed by some (generally people who
advocate "PD" on Wikimedia projects, or people who advocate BSD
licenses in the software world).

That said, there is already enough lack of clarity.. and the last
thing the world needs is another license or, worse, another confusing
CC-foobar modifier.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
> Lower priority than defamation, to be sure.  But I think this is a
large
> and growing problem.
>
> Here is a typical example:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeli_Mateo
>
> This is someone who *lost* on Philippine Idol, the Philippines
version
> of "Pop Idol" or "American Idol".  The entire bio has no references,
the
> photo is almost certainly a copyvio (I would delete it now, but I
want
> people to take a quick look at it first).  "Greenarcher" claims to
have
> created it, but unless he is the official photographer for the show,
> this seems quite unlikely.
>
> As it stands, I don't think there is much that can be done about this
> article other than deletion.

Because a verifiable stub isn't worth it?  I mean, seriously.  There's
little I dislike more about the current Wikipedia line of thinking like
this one, where we predict that an article can't possibly be expanded,
and then decide to remove the article based on that.  Never mind how
well known the person is, forget that there's almost certainly local
papers and sources that we may not be able to read right at the moment,
but certainly have the information to flesh this out.  No, we'll just
dismiss it as "fancruft" (a word I never thought I'd hear you use) and
go along on our merry way.

Yikes.

-Jeff

--

If you can see this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> Low priority, for me, except in cases of defamation. But it also
> depends on other things. [[Bob Dylan]] should have everything nailed
> down with sources. The latest boy band - not so clear.

Lower priority than defamation, to be sure.  But I think this is a large
and growing problem.

Here is a typical example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeli_Mateo

This is someone who *lost* on Philippine Idol, the Philippines version
of "Pop Idol" or "American Idol".  The entire bio has no references, the
photo is almost certainly a copyvio (I would delete it now, but I want
people to take a quick look at it first).  "Greenarcher" claims to have
created it, but unless he is the official photographer for the show,
this seems quite unlikely.

The text is very much non-NPOV, and I have not yet done a check, but if
I had to guess, it is a straight ripoff from another website.

This is a classic example of fancruft of the worst sort.  There is
virtually no chance that this article will ever improve, unless Ms.
Mateo becomes actually famous.  (This could happen!  And if it did, we
could have a good article about her.)

As it stands, I don't think there is much that can be done about this
article other than deletion.

--Jimbo


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On 11/9/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> --- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> >
> > > Since when did we care about gender on wikipedia?
> >
> > Since we started using personal pronouns, whenever that was. I wasn't
> > around then, but I suspect it was fairly early on.
>
> Granted, we are sometimes -- but only sometimes -- aware of another editor's
> gender on Wikipedia, but does it make a big difference? Do I know (say)
> [[User:SpLoT]]'s gender? Should I care? If I did, would it make much difference
> to how I would interact with that person? For me, the answer is "no".
> Admittedly I don't edit articles like [[feminism]], but my experience is that
> Wikipedia is a place where gender is relatively unimportant. Maybe your
> experience is different.

It *is* relatively unimportant, I think; certainly it doesn't come up
on a regular basis in arbcom or elsewhere. But it's just an
interesting observation. Certainly, to echo Charles' point a bit, all
other things being equal I'd rather see sane, reasonable people from
many different perspectives than from all the same one, and gender is
one of the most obvious differences (when the user chooses to tell!).

Perhaps most women are simply smart enough to avoid putting themselves
up for a crappy job. ;-)

-Kat
whose college quiz bowl nickname, as president, was "token chick"

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:
> Because a verifiable stub isn't worth it?

I did not say that.  The point is, it is NOT verifiable.  It is likely a
copyvio, and the amount of information known about this woman from
reliable third party sources is about as close to zero as you can get.

It was written by someone who appears to have a serious problem with
respect to uploading copyvio images and claiming he took them.  I see no
reason to trust anything about the article at all.

In the meantime, we have an article that is most likely a copyvio, and
in any event contains a number of totally unverifiable sources.  And any
movement to do something about this sort of nonsense is met with the
view that people are out to censor pop culture or something like that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> But even a gallery
> for search results could be useful. Some functionality like
> MediaSearch [1] would be a godsend...
> [1]: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/MediaSearch.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org

Wow, that is a really nice tool. Being able to put in your username and see a table of images in a gallery layout, all nicely tagged
with licence information, is great.

Only things I'd like to see changed or added are:
* Some of the "orphan" tags aren't 100% right (I know some of the images listed as orphans aren't).
* I'd like it to allow searching the image file name, and image description text as well, as I have in the past had difficulty
finding images when I only had a rough idea of their name.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On 11/8/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no conflict of interest in me correcting a factual inaccuracy
> in the location of Wikia's main office, and the edit has nothing to
> with NPOV.
>
> Angela.

Agreed.  It's not a conflict of interest, and it's not a matter of
POV.  It would have been nice if you had cited a source, though (at
least in the edit summary).  But hindsight is 20/20.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
On 11/8/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now, as a reminder, WP:COI says:
>
> * * * * *
> If you have a conflict of interest, you should:
>
>    1. *avoid editing* articles related to your organization or its
>    competitors;
>    2. *avoid participating* in deletion
> discussions<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Deletion_processes>about
> articles related to your organization or its competitors;

Am I the only one who thinks point #2 is ridiculously stupid?  I think
it's a great thing to hear from an officer of an organization when
considering whether or not to delete an article about the
organization.

Does this carry over to people too?  Should Angela not have
participated in the discussion over whether or not to delete the
article on her?  Or is there something in particular about
organizations here, that I'm not thinking of?

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
> As for search and go, well my preference for a long time has been that we
> should remove the "search" button from the sidebar, to make it harder to
> find and thus reduce the request rate. Go is much faster than search, if it
> manages to find a title match without sending you on to the full text
> search. Most readers don't know the difference, and if they did, they would
> click "go" in the great majority of cases.

Agreed, most of the time people are searching on article title name, and they don't know the exact name, or they have misspelt it.

Alternatively, keep the "search" function, but before the search results, have a "Did you mean?" section, like a google search,
where the did-you-mean suggestions are based on similarity of search words to known article titles and/or dictionary words. Further,
if enough people click a "did you mean" suggestion for the same search term, then that's probably a good hint that we need to add a
redirect from that search term to what they actually wanted.

All the best,
Nick.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Search update frequency

body:
On 09/11/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Brianna Laugher wrote:
> > But even a gallery
> > for search results could be useful. Some functionality like
> > MediaSearch [1] would be a godsend...
> > [1]: http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/MediaSearch.php?wikifam=commons.wikimedia.org
>
> Wow, that is a really nice tool. Being able to put in your username and see a table of images in a gallery layout, all nicely tagged
> with licence information, is great.
>
> Only things I'd like to see changed or added are:
> * Some of the "orphan" tags aren't 100% right (I know some of the images listed as orphans aren't).

That is only on Commons. Therefore please add any such images to
galleries or categories, on Commons. :)

Brianna


body:
> The vast majority of these topics I think would be better suited for a
> merge. As for Ms. Mateo, for example, I don't see why it wouldn't be
> more appropriate to say whatever there is to say about her in the
> Phillipine Idol article.

Because, for instance, if I'm searching for Mateo, I'm not looking for
information on Phillippine Idol.  I'm looking for information on her.

> Merging *improves* these articles for that reason, but people seem to
> be offended by the suggestion that their pet topic doesn't deserve an
> independent article.

Is it worth improving one article by ruining 8?

> I believe in splitting off articles only when you
> have to, when it wouldn't make sense not to, rather than independent
> articles as the default. Encouraging new writers to add to existing
> articles rather than start new ones may help.
>

Well, we both have very different feelings on this.  I think more
topics should be split off, not less.  We have the ability to be
specific, we should be using it, instead of creating a redirect on an
article that is 95% irrelevant to the actual subject it's being
redirected from.  The Emmalina -> YouTube situation that's been
crerated is an excellent example of this.

-Jeff

--

If you can see this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
A couple of questions here, because they're issues that are important
elsewhere in popular culture sourcing...

On Nov 9, 2006, at 12:09 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

>
> I did not say that.  The point is, it is NOT verifiable.  It is
> likely a
> copyvio, and the amount of information known about this woman from
> reliable third party sources is about as close to zero as you can get.
>

1) Are third party sources required here? The classic definition of
NOR said that primary sources could be used so long as they were not
used for "novel" claims. Surely the basics of this article are thus
verifiable via the primary source of the show: her status as a
contestant, when she lost, and a good chunk of her bio were all no
doubt covered.

2) Does this cause problems with systemic bias, whereby American,
Canadian, and British popular culture will all be far easier to write
about than other countries due to the prevalence of English-language
fandoms that generate sources?

3) Is the problem with the article that it is a crappy article that
is not worth developing from its current state, or that at present
the topic cannot be written about? I can see the former, but I'm
honestly skeptical about the latter. And in the case of the former,
perhaps we need to start coming up with solutions other than
deletion. Something like, perhaps, deletion and replacement with a
template along the lines of "This topic may well be notable, but past
efforts to write articles on it have failed to meet basic standards
of quality. Please help Wikipedia by starting a well-sourced, NPOV
article on this topic."

> In the meantime, we have an article that is most likely a copyvio, and
> in any event contains a number of totally unverifiable sources.
> And any
> movement to do something about this sort of nonsense is met with the
> view that people are out to censor pop culture or something like that.

As one of the people cautious about this, I (unsurprisingly) object
to that claim. I think most of our popular culture articles are
complete crap, to be sure. Well over 50% require some version of the
{{cleanup fiction-as-fact}} tag, there's insane resistance within a
given subject to paring back fancruft, and a complete lack of
understanding of the idea that Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia,
and that X, Y, and Z aspects of the article might be better suited to
a fan encyclopedia. But the problems with these articles are too
often attributed to the topics (non-notable, unverifiable, etc)
instead of to the editors who fundamentally misunderstand the purpose
of the articles.

The question then becomes how we can help editors who want to write
good articles on these topics (and there are many) without letting
articles like this one run amok. The answer has, it seems to me,
manifestly shown itself NOT to be draconian sourcing policy that
defies the common sense of anyone familiar with the topic and
aggressive deletion.

The important question, to my mind, is this: how can we give good
editors the tools they need to write good popular culture articles
while actively discouraging and reducing crap articles?

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


references:
<E1GiDEX-0005AK-Ks@cpanel6.fuitadnet.com>	<455360D3.7020909@wikia.com>
	<7960D6DF-5F3B-445A-BF44-D25CC911C6FC@gmail.com>

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> On Nov 9, 2006, at 12:09 PM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> I did not say that.  The point is, it is NOT verifiable.  It is
>> likely a
>> copyvio, and the amount of information known about this woman from
>> reliable third party sources is about as close to zero as you can get.
>>
>
> 1) Are third party sources required here? The classic definition of
> NOR said that primary sources could be used so long as they were not
> used for "novel" claims. Surely the basics of this article are thus
> verifiable via the primary source of the show: her status as a
> contestant, when she lost, and a good chunk of her bio were all no
> doubt covered.

Perhaps, although caution is warranted here.  The bios of people on such
shows are PR puffery at its worst.  Only the most basic facts can be
considered true, I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe is a good article about the
phenomena with respect to wrestling, where the intermingling of reality
and storyline is well known.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_McGee is a friend of mine, and her
story should set off alarm bells for anyone writing about "reality
television".  The mixing of fact and fiction is substantial in these
shows, and generally speaking, the websites of such shows should be
regarded in much the same way as websites of fictional shows.  The
people appearing on the shows are characters in a storyline.

> 2) Does this cause problems with systemic bias, whereby American,
> Canadian, and British popular culture will all be far easier to write
> about than other countries due to the prevalence of English-language
> fandoms that generate sources?

This is an interesting but separate question.  Will a high quality
encyclopedia always be biased towards things that have high quality
sources?  Yes, I hope so. :)

But, I think there is no reason to think that fandoms don't exist
equally well in all cultures.

> 3) Is the problem with the article that it is a crappy article that
> is not worth developing from its current state, or that at present
> the topic cannot be written about? I can see the former, but I'm
> honestly skeptical about the latter. And in the case of the former,
> perhaps we need to start coming up with solutions other than
> deletion. Something like, perhaps, deletion and replacement with a
> template along the lines of "This topic may well be notable, but past
> efforts to write articles on it have failed to meet basic standards
> of quality. Please help Wikipedia by starting a well-sourced, NPOV
> article on this topic."

I think there are cases of both.... topics where *in theory* we could
have a good article, but due to the limited number of quality
wikipedians, and the incredible number of POV fancrufters who want to
write hagiography, we as a practical matter can't... AND topcis where,
even in theory, we can't write a good bio, because there is frankly not
enough information of any kind which can be trusted.

This one probably falls just barely in the camp of "We could easily have
a stub, but nothing more, because we only know about 3 facts about this
person which can be verified.  Her name.  That she appeared on this
show. That she did not win.  Most of the rest of it is impossible to
properly source.

> As one of the people cautious about this, I (unsurprisingly) object
> to that claim. I think most of our popular culture articles are
> complete crap, to be sure. Well over 50% require some version of the
> {{cleanup fiction-as-fact}} tag, there's insane resistance within a
> given subject to paring back fancruft, and a complete lack of
> understanding of the idea that Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia,
> and that X, Y, and Z aspects of the article might be better suited to
> a fan encyclopedia. But the problems with these articles are too
> often attributed to the topics (non-notable, unverifiable, etc)
> instead of to the editors who fundamentally misunderstand the purpose
> of the articles.

I would tend to agree with this, and if I said anything which suggested
differently, I take it back. :)

Non-notable is a value judgment which I find to be problematic in many
ways, although with WP:BIO, I think it is increasingly useful as a way
to keep people from writing really problematic articles.  Non-verifiable
generally can be relied upon to do the heavy lifting for us.

But there is an interaction.  If someone fundamentally misunderstands
the purpose of the articles, and they try to write something about
George W. Bush, we can deal with it.  If they try to write about obscure
reality television characters, we can't very well deal with it... we end
up with copyvios and fancruft hagiography.

> The important question, to my mind, is this: how can we give good
> editors the tools they need to write good popular culture articles
> while actively discouraging and reducing crap articles?

Yes.

--Jimbo


body:
Platonides wrote:
>> All thumbnails are generated by thumb.php. When you request a thumbnail
>> which does not exist, the image server proxies the request to the main
>> apache cluster, as a thumb.php request. If all goes well, thumb.php will
>> create the relevant thumbnail file, so next time a request comes to the
>> image server for that image, it will serve it directly.
>
>> The difference between requesting a thumbnail in the ordinary way and
>> requesting it via thumb.php is mainly just the URL. Squid caches a bad file
>> under one URL, then you regenerate the image, but for some reason it fails
>> to purge the squid cache. So the bad image will be served from squid if you
>> use the normal URL, but if you use any other URL, you get the good image.
> -- Tim Starling
>
> The problem is that some cached thumbs seem 'unkillable'. At least i'd
> expect when calling thumb.php and it generates the thumb, to replace the
> previous generated thumb of that size so when calling the normal url with
> no-cache, the squid would ask the backend image server to validate its local
> copy, find there's a new one and give the updated one, but no way :-(

If there is no image, MW assumes there is no cache, which previously (before
the error page caching problem) was a fair assumption. So thumb.php does not
purge the cache when it is generating a new image. You have to generate the
new thumbnail with thumb.php, then run action=purge, which will clear the
caches for the thumbnail files which now exist, then generate the thumbnail
again by viewing the page.

-- Tim Starling


references:
<E1GiDEX-0005AK-Ks@cpanel6.fuitadnet.com>
	<455360D3.7020909@wikia.com>
	<7960D6DF-5F3B-445A-BF44-D25CC911C6FC@gmail.com>

body:
On 11/9/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> The question then becomes how we can help editors who want to write
> good articles on these topics (and there are many) without letting
> articles like this one run amok. The answer has, it seems to me,
> manifestly shown itself NOT to be draconian sourcing policy that
> defies the common sense of anyone familiar with the topic and
> aggressive deletion.

The vast majority of these topics I think would be better suited for a
merge. As for Ms. Mateo, for example, I don't see why it wouldn't be
more appropriate to say whatever there is to say about her in the
Phillipine Idol article. (Should it get too large, Phillippine Idol
contestants or something similar.) If nothing else it brings it to a
wider audience of those who are interested in the show, and so may
have seen her in her only really notable act, rather than those
interested only in her specifically -- probably a much smaller group.
It also gives the information context to start from, which is useful
for minor topics and even more beneficial for fictional subjects.

Merging *improves* these articles for that reason, but people seem to
be offended by the suggestion that their pet topic doesn't deserve an
independent article. I believe in splitting off articles only when you
have to, when it wouldn't make sense not to, rather than independent
articles as the default. Encouraging new writers to add to existing
articles rather than start new ones may help.

But I said something similar a year ago too, on this very list
(reproduced at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage/mergism
for what it's worth), and I've mostly given up this issue...

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
On Nov 9, 2006, at 1:32 PM, geni wrote:

> On 11/9/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Since we started using personal pronouns, whenever that was. I wasn't
>> around then, but I suspect it was fairly early on.
>>
>> --Michael Snow
>
>
> Agressive use of singular they generaly solves that proble,

And, before anyone complains, it's tacitly endorsed by the Chicago
Manual of Style!

It notes that "it is unacceptable to a great many reasonable readers
to use the generic masculine pronoun," whereas objectors to the
singular they are merely referred to as "a great many readers,"
clearly implying that such objections are unreasonable.

-Phil


from_name: shi zhao

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [GFW] Https for Chinese Wikipedia is also
	blocked

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com>
Date: 2006-11-9 ??1:33
Subject: [GFW] Https for Chinese Wikipedia is also blocked
To: greatfirewall at googlegroups.com

Some user reported that https for Chinese Wikipedia is also blocked.
http://www.douban.com/group/topic/1276600/

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
For more exploration on GFW, please visit http://del.icio.us/tag/gfw

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups "Great Firewall" group.
To post to this group, send email to greatfirewall at googlegroups.com
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--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]


from_name: Angela

body:
On 11/9/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be the freest license for media, that still requires credit or
> some sort?
>
> Is PD-self the overall "freest" of licenses, in everyone's opinion?

It depends how you define free. One problem with PD is that it doesn't
guarantee the work will remain free, whereas a [[share-alike]] license
will.

Angela

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


from_name: Saqib Saeed Ch

subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA

body:
TO ALL MEMBERS / FREIENDS / BROTHERS AND SISTERS

I HAVE A BRIELENT FUND RAISING IDEA  WHICH IS AS FOLLOWS
IF OUR ORGANIZATION / FOUNDATION CAN HELP ME GETTING THE ORDERS OF GARMENTS SALES WE CAN GENERATE MILLIONS OF US $ IN A YEARS TIME. FOR INSTANCE LETS DISCUSS ONLY ONE ITEM JEANS PENTS AND SHIRTS

IF FOUNDATION CAN OPEN THE LETTER OF CREDITS OF NON BRANDED JEANS THE MANUFACTURING COST OF A GOOD QUALITY JEANS OF ONLY US$ 4.5/= PER PCS AND 54 US$ A DOZEN. AND WILL BE SOLD OUT AT 6.5 USD$ WHICH IS 78 DOLLARS A DOZEN THE DONATION PER PCS WILL BE 2 USD$ A PCS AND 24 USD$ A DOZEN MIN ORDER WILL BE 200,000 PCS A MONTH AND OUR FOUNDATION WILL SAVE UP TO 400,000 USD$ EVERY MONTH WHICH MEANS WE CAN GENERATE 4.8 MILLION US $ EVERY YEAR.

4.8 MILLION US $ IN ONLY ONE ITEM IF WE INCREASE ITEMS THE DONATIONS WILL ALSO INCREASE.

IF OUR FOUNDATION CAN HELP ME GETTING THE LETTER OF CREDITS FROM BIG BUYERS IT WILL GENETARE HUGE FUNDS FOR OUR FOUNDATION

PLEASE LET ME KNOW HOW YOU LIKE THE IDEA OR NOT.

REGARDS

SAQIB CHAUDHARY


subject: [Foundation-l] FUND RAISING IDEA


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:COI violation

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote

>> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>
> > While this is all kind of dull, WP:COI is being cited in a current
> > ArbCom case, and a high profile deletion debate.
>
> Could you please provide the links for the ArbCom case and the AfD? I
> would like to take a look. Thanks

I was thinking of [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience/Proposed decision]] and [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gary Weiss]]

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] An observation

body:
niht-hr?fn wrote

>... but would being female change one's
> chances of being elected?

Might well do. Much of the ArbCom work involves judgement calls. Having a variety of approaches on the AC beats having a uniform view.

Charles

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from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dispute Resolution

body:
I have a question regarding Wikipedia's official dispute resolution
process: Flcelloguy made a statement in an Arbcom case, "I will be
more than happy to detail the mediation more clearly or to clarify any
questions that Arbitrators may have regarding this mediation"

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration&diff=prev&oldid=28530991

Flcelloguy further stated, "The mediation is on Wikipedia and is
available at Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01 and
its corresponding subpages."

When a party to the ArbCom case attempted to place the Summary of
Dispute in evidence, he was rebuffed by the Chairman, "Material from
the mediation is confidential."

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others&diff=next&oldid=28881480

Now which is it? Is Mediation material (a) available for Arbitrators
to review (b) confidential and not allowable in evidence (c) another
example of who you and your friends are in getting a fair hearing?

nobs01


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The bios of people on such shows are PR puffery at its worst.  Only the most basic
> facts can be considered true, I think.

In some ways, best handled by treating such bios in classic NPOV
fashion - 'According to the show's website, <person> ...'

These biographies are probably semi-fiction, but in some ways should
be handled like pro-wrestlers' official biographies - important in the
context of the fictional character they play, but should be separated
from the real-life person.

-Matt


from_name: THD

body:
Hi, Everyone,

Yesterday, one guy registered an offensive username, "Rape XXX" (XXX is a
female wikipedian's name in real life, but I want to kept the victim
anonymous here) in Chinese Wikipedia, and this guy left a message on the
female's user talk page: "You are in my sexual fantasy. Are you a virgin?" I
was furious about this guy's action and sexual harassment speech. I have
blocked this id forever, and I also suggested the female user to report to
police office. I want to know is there any policy on this issue? In this
kind of situation, will the Foundation cooperate with different countries'
police authority, and reveal the user log record to the authority?

Thanks.

THD