subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Fallujah]]

body:
On Apr 30, 2004, at 7:00 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I fail to see how this set of facts could possibly warrant any sort of
> disclaimer.  Bomis hosts a blog which links to other blogs, which run
> ads for a charity, which assists members of the military.

Chad gad-yo-o-o-o, chad gad-yo.

;)

Peter

                               -- ---<>--- --
                     A house without walls cannot fall.
        Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                               -- ---<>--- --


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Reponse to troll [[The Enforcer]]

body:
On May 1, 2004, at 10:25 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:

> 2.  Second, there are no plans of any kind to release a 'for-profit'
> version of the Wikipedia, for the separate benefit of me or Bomis or
> any other company that I own, control, work for, etc.  We *will* be
> working to release Wikipedia on CD-ROM, in paper format, etc., but
> these will be projects *of the foundation*, carried out with perfect
> consistency with our nonprofit mission.

It may be worth reminding people of the obvious: that the copyright to
entire contents of the Wikipedia is held by the individual contributors,
and licensed under the GFDL.  It's not owned by Bomis, Jimbo, or even
the
Wikimedia Foundation.

Peter

                               -- ---<>--- --
                     A house without walls cannot fall.
        Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                               -- ---<>--- --


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Graph drawing plugin

body:
Last time I used graphviz, it didn't do any kind of anti-aliasing, so
the graphs quickly became ugly/illegible if you tried cramming too much
information in too small a space. Where there is enough space to render
things comfortably, graphviz does quite nicely. For instance, take a
look at:

http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/examples/directed/fsm.gif
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/examples/directed/datastruct.gif
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/examples/directed/world.gif
http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/graphviz/examples/undirected/process.gif

I think my solution for bigger graphs at the time was to render them in
graphviz, and then resize using ImageMagick. A bicubic resize manages to
keep the graphs at least decent - nearest neighbor and bilinear make
things *really* ugly (lines will no longer be, er, lines).

Cheers,
Ivan

Brion Vibber wrote:
> I've never used it before, but the sample graphs on the above-linked
> website are mostly illegible.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] short domain name please.

body:
Hunter,

to my knowledge, all 2- and 3- letter .{org|com|net} domain names are
taken. This is certainly the case with wp.org/com/net, and also with
wiki.com/net/org. If you really wanted to shorten things,
wikip.com/net/org are available.

Cheers,
Ivan

Hunter Peress wrote:
> can someone act quickly before an enterprising punk reads this ;-)
>
> just like sourceforge.net has sf.net   we should have wp.org for wikipedia.org
>
>
> eg:  bittorrent.sourceforge.net ->  bittorrent.sf.net
>
> i dream of :  mail.wp.org
>               it.wp.org    ,  ko.wp.org,  en.wp.org  de.wp.org ,  download.wp.org


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Legal challenge from Enforcer

body:
Gabriel Beecham wrote:
> He says he has done research finding that the
> foundation is breaking the law, and appears to have
> groomed "potential complainants" to file lawsuits
> against the Wikimedia Foundation in their respective
> states. I'm no legal person, so could anyone tell me
> whether what he is saying is correct, whether anything
> needs to be rectified, who he really is (in terms of a
> user), and how he can be dealt with?

What he is saying is not correct, and who he is, I don't really know,
other than that he's most likely the same person as EntmootsOfTrolls,
"24", etc.  The writing style is essentially similar, and his uniform
hatred of me and the Wikipedia project is identical.

As to the question he's raising -- whether we need to register in all
the states, it's pretty much a gray area of the law.  As I understand
it, we are *not* soliciting people for donations -- to do that, we'd
have to be approaching them, as opposed to them approaching us.  And
if we *were* soliciting people for donations, we would be doing it
*here* in Florida.  But there is apparently very little precedent in
this area, because as a matter of fact, these laws are not always
vigorously enforced anyway.

Nonetheless, I have said for a long time now that I think we should
eventually get registered in all the states, as well as in any nations
where this sort of things seems important, if for no other reason than
to eliminate even the possibility of someone making this accusation.

The separate accusation that he made -- that we are not disclosing
everything that we legally need to disclose to donors, is absurd.  We
don't just disclose everything that we legally need to disclose, we
disclose just about *everything* period.  The only thing that I do
keep private is the personal information of contributors, which is not
only within our rights, but is also the right thing to do.

--Jimbo


list: foundation-l

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Registering Wikimedia trademarks

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

> On Apr 29, 2004, at 1:32 AM, Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Pepsi would probably try all kinds of things to make you stop, but
>> I'm much more skeptical about whether they could win a lawsuit.
>> Trademark protection is normally denied for terms that are merely
>> descriptive of the goods or services involved. I'm not a trademark
>> examiner, but my conclusion would be that "light, crisp, and
>> refreshing" are simply descriptive terms, so they can't be a trademark.
>
> Sort of like "fair and balanced?"

Trademark protection is not available for merely descriptive terms, or
for deceptively misdescriptive terms. So regardless of whether you
actually believe this particular network's slogan, it shouldn't be a
trademark, right?

As it turns out, "fair & balanced" is a registered trademark (actually a
service mark, since news broadcasts are a service and not a commodity).
One thing I neglected to discuss is that descriptive terms can become
trademarks if they acquire "secondary meaning". This pretty much means
that the term becomes so closely connected with the product or service
that the public automatically associates the two. You may note that I
have been coy about identifying the owner of this mark, but I expect
that most people reading this have already recognized that it belongs to
Fox News. I think that illustrates my point about secondary meaning, and
gives Fox a decent argument for trademark status.

Anyway, this prompted me to look up whether Pepsi has actually filed
"light, crisp, and refreshing". Well, they have, but only as part of the
Diet Pepsi logo, and in this filing they disclaimed any exclusive right
to use "light", "crisp", or "refreshing" aside from the logo. I don't
think Pepsi would have a good argument, because when I read the phrase,
I don't immediately think of Diet Pepsi. But Pepsi does have a
registered trademark for "SO LIGHT. SO CRISP. SO REFRESHING."

--Michael Snow


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grubby spam mail

body:
Has anyone else been getting messages like the one
below in their e-mail accounts?

"Just got this from CNN Osama Bin Laden has just been captured! A video
and some pictures have been released. Goto the link below for pictures,
I will update the page with the video as soon as I can"

A link then is then given, which contains the
expression God Bless America.

However, if you click on it, you'll get a Hungarian
porn site showing pictures of silly young women with,
well, I don't think that's condensed milk that's been
splattered on their faces.

The reason why I suspect a connection with this chat
site is that it's the only place where my e-mail
address appears. Maybe someone who uses it got a virus? Alternately, some spammer found a way of bypassing the user-at-website format.

BTW, the e-mail address where this message comes from
is phony. It supposedly comes from yahoo, but yahoo
says that the address is a spoof one.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Grubby spam mail

body:
In a professional weekly post I received yesterday, we were warned about
such a message, which contains this type of text, plus a link the a web
site. The post indicated that when we click on the link, a virus is
automatically activated.

Arno M a ?crit:
> Has anyone else been getting messages like the one
> below in their e-mail accounts?
>
> "Just got this from CNN Osama Bin Laden has just been captured! A video
> and some pictures have been released. Goto the link below for pictures,
> I will update the page with the video as soon as I can"
>
> A link then is then given, which contains the
> expression God Bless America.
>
> However, if you click on it, you'll get a Hungarian
> porn site showing pictures of silly young women with,
> well, I don't think that's condensed milk that's been
> splattered on their faces.
>
> The reason why I suspect a connection with this chat
> site is that it's the only place where my e-mail
> address appears. Maybe someone who uses it got a virus? Alternately, some spammer found a way of bypassing the user-at-website format.
>
> BTW, the e-mail address where this message comes from
> is phony. It supposedly comes from yahoo, but yahoo
> says that the address is a spoof one.
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
> http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Submitting a "print" (linear text) version of Wikipedia
	to PG?

body:
Forgive me if this has been discussed umpteen times... has any
consideration been given to (periodically) submitting some kind of
print-like version of Wikipedia to Project Gutenberg?

What brought this to mind was running across Jimbo's statement that
"I'd like to distribute cheaply-printed paperback copies of Wikipedia
to every school in every country in Africa, in English or French as the
local circumstances dictate," and thinking how concordant that was with
Michael Hart's visions for Project Gutenberg.

BTW, I don't know all the ins and outs but, for the record, although PG
has traditionally (in IMHO very, very, VERY wisely) concentrated on
"plain vanilla ASCII" format, they do ''not'' limit themselves to that
format. So  other formats would be negotiable. It would of course be
sensible to consult with PG directly on this. I believe they have the
Distributed Proofreaders working on the 11th edition of the Britannica,
BTW. There might be some issues about reconciling the GFDL with the
Project Gutenberg "Fine Print" notice, which they are very, very, VERY
picky about. However, PG distributes a few copyrighted items, so there
must be a way to work such things out.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate:
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Gabriel Beecham

subject: [Foundation-l] Legal challenge from Enforcer

body:
I have just come across the user page of
Enforcer(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Enforcer),
a troll who has today challenged the right of
Wikimedia to seek charitable donations outside of
Florida .

He says he has done research finding that the
foundation is breaking the law, and appears to have
groomed "potential complainants" to file lawsuits
against the Wikimedia Foundation in their respective
states. I'm no legal person, so could anyone tell me
whether what he is saying is correct, whether anything
needs to be rectified, who he really is (in terms of a
user), and how he can be dealt with?

- Gabriel Beecham / Kwekubo

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Legal challenge from Enforcer

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>"Enforcer" appears to be Bird, not 142. And as far as I can see he's not
>making a legal challenge or encouraging anyone to do the same, he's
>encouraging people to complain to the relevant regulatory body. That's his
>right and I wish him luck. Wikimedia is a serious organisation and can't be
>intimidated every time some disgruntled user calls the cops. If Wikimedia
>really was breaking the law (and I accept Jimbo's assurance that it is not),
>then that is a problem that I hope we would all be interested in seeing
>addressed.
>
Like Tim, I find Jimbo's assurances completely satisfactory.

Regulation of charitable solicitations is primarily designed to prevent
deceptive practices. The reason states require nonprofits to register
and report is to discourage unscrupulous and fraudulent organizations
from preying on people's charitable impulses. They don't care about
where you register, or what exactly constitutes "solicitation", except
as a means to that end. The laws would be more "vigorously enforced" if
some Attorney General had credible information indicating that Wikimedia
was seriously misusing funds.

Jimbo's detailed response covers most of the ways donations could be
misused, and shows that Wikimedia is not doing anything remotely
fraudulent with the money. The other major concern of regulators is the
proportion of charitable donations that is actually used for charitable
functions. The issue here is primarily professional solicitors, who may
take a huge chunk of the money they raise for a charity. As I understand
it, Wikimedia uses no such services, and the only portion of donations
not used directly for the foundation's objectives are the fees deducted
by PayPal for contributions made using that service. This is a small
percentage, and really more in the nature of administrative expenses. If
you compared Wikimedia to almost any other nonprofit, I believe it would
come out way ahead in the percentage of donations that actually served
their intended purpose.

By the way, would it be appropriate to check if Enforcer/Bird is also
the same as the users who were trying to add the Bomis disclaimer to the
Fallujah article? Those users were TruthSayer, JillP, and SaltyDog.

--Michael Snow


from_name: sannse

body:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2004-May/015211.html

answers most of those questions

-s

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gabriel Beecham" <gabriel_beecham at yahoo.co.uk>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>; <foundation-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 01, 2004 9:59 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Legal challenge from Enforcer

> I have just come across the user page of
> Enforcer(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Enforcer),
> a troll who has today challenged the right of
> Wikimedia to seek charitable donations outside of
> Florida .
>
> He says he has done research finding that the
> foundation is breaking the law, and appears to have
> groomed "potential complainants" to file lawsuits
> against the Wikimedia Foundation in their respective
> states. I'm no legal person, so could anyone tell me
> whether what he is saying is correct, whether anything
> needs to be rectified, who he really is (in terms of a
> user), and how he can be dealt with?
>
> - Gabriel Beecham / Kwekubo
>
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
> your friends today! Download Messenger Now
> http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Martin Mewes

subject: [Wikitech-l] short domain name please.

body:
Howdy,

Am Freitag, 30. April 2004 20:52 schrieb Hunter Peress:

> just like sourceforge.net has sf.net   we should have wp.org for
> wikipedia.org

Please point your browser to
http://www.mewes.tv/cgi-bin/whois.cgi
and test yourself, as

wp.com is taken by Yahoo!
wp.net is taken by NA Global Link LTD
wp.org is taken by Name-4-Sale, Div. of QBX INC

As alomost nearly all twi digit domain names will be taken at the moment.

btw ... wp.tv is free ;-) (1)

Martin

(1) For just as little as $1,000.00 / year

--
Debian GNU/Linux	http://www.debian.org/
SuSE Linux		http://www.suse.de/
RedHat Linux		http://www.redhat.com/
Fedora Project		http://www.fedora.us/
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from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

subject:
[Wikitech-l] 3 x problem (Database download, Wiktionary,
	Mailing List)

body:
 1) sql dumps have been updated at download.wikimedia.org - however,
    the dump of the Polish Wiktionary is no longer available. Why?
    We need these dumps to update our word indices, see
    http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indeks:Has%C5%82a_w_j%C4%99zyku_polskim
    http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Indeks:Wg_j%C4%99zyk%C3%B3w

 2) Are there any plans to develop some sort of interwiki links for
    Wiktionaries? Apparently something is being done; yesterday
    [[pl:entry]] pointed to 'entry' on pl.wikipedia.org - today it
    points to 'entry' on pl.wiktionary.org. Not very useful, esp. since
    [[en:entry]] still points to -pedia, not -tonary.

 3) The PL mailing list wikipl-l seems to have broken down. People
    complain their messages never get delivered, the list is dead.

 It might be a wrong place to post these questions (well, requests
 actually ;-) In such case please direct me to the appropriate forum.

 Thanks,
--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki
 Talk: http://pl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Dyskusja_wikipedysty:Tsca


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
For the record, User:Enforcer has now been banned. I blocked the original
account and several other users blocked reincarnations.

Aside from the fact that he made several completely false claims
(something which we know 142.177 AKA Craig Hubley is quite fond of), he
solicited support for his crusade from three known trolls (JRR Trollkien,
Pooya and Plato).

Whether he is talking to himself or trying to build some kind of troll
network I don't know or care, I do know that he's a returning troll whose
only intent is to disrupt the community and that was justification enough
to block him. He made no actual contributions to Wikipedia.

FWIW, I also think JRR Trollkien should be banned, but that case should at
least go through arbitration as JRR has made some article edits (mostly to
trolling-related articles, of which we have alarmingly many). I don't know
how much good blocking him will do, really, as he'll probably just keep
coming back under different names.

I've suggested some kind of special quickpoll where we would force a
suspected troll to only make meaningful edits to serious encyclopedia
articles under penalty of a hardban. I don't know if this would be a way
to reform trolls, or a recipe for disaster, but it might be worth trying.
Most trolls seems to concentrate on the Wikipedia: namespace, talk pages,
trolling articles, and their user pages.

Sigh. Why do people have to be such jackasses? Maybe we really *do* need
wikicops in all world regions.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Gabriel Beecham wrote:

>He says he has done research finding that the
>foundation is breaking the law, and appears to have
>groomed "potential complainants" to file lawsuits
>against the Wikimedia Foundation in their respective
>states. I'm no legal person, so could anyone tell me
>whether what he is saying is correct, whether anything
>needs to be rectified, who he really is (in terms of a
>user), and how he can be dealt with?
>
No matter what one does to comply with laws, regulations, rules, etc.
there will always be individuals willing to sue based solely on the
evidence found in their delusions.

Ec


body:
Tim-

> "Enforcer" appears to be Bird, not 142.

Which would make him a banned user and justify instant re-banning. If he
wants to engage in reasonable dialogue, that has always been possible.
Wikipedia is not, however, a forum for trolls to publish their conspiracy
theories or outright libel.

As your example [[Bomis]] shows, I am hardly a subservient sycophant, as
is not a single Wikipedian I know. In fact Wikipedia is the most self-
critical online project I have ever been part of, sometimes to the point
of temporary paralysis. Critical dialogue on all aspects of our community
is not simply tolerated, it is encouraged.

This openness has led some trolls to try to disrupt our community
systematically, feeling emboldened by the occasional cry of censorship
that echoes back from the larger community. These trolls are the people
who would like to see Wikipedia fail, most of them because we don't (and
cannot) allow them to publish their convulsive ravings as gospel, or
because they want the attention that their mother or their girlfriend
apparently didn't give them.

Can you reform someone whose goal is to destroy the very thing you are
creating? Should you even try? I remain ambivalent on this question as I
can't think of a single success story in that department. Even Lir, whom
we accepted back into our community in spite of his terrible track record
and lack of a public apology, left weeks ago, insulting the entire
community one last time and calling several individuals "fuckwits" and
"assholes" on their talk pages before his departure. It says a lot about
our pain tolerance that he was not instantly banned for that, and that
some users in fact asked him to come back. I for one am happy if he keeps
doing whatever he's doing right now.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

in_reply_to:
<986d1j2hpVB@erik_moeller> (Erik Moeller's message of "02 May
	2004 03:56:00 +0200")

body:
erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller) writes:

> Sigh. Why do people have to be such jackasses? Maybe we really *do* need
> wikicops in all world regions.

They also help to make this world a better world (even if they do not
know it).  Recommended reading ?Faust? by Goethe:

   Des Menschen T?tigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen,
   er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh;
   Drum geb ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu,
   Der reizt und wirkt und mu? als Teufel schaffen.

Translation (http://www.gutenberg.net/etext02/faust10.zip):

   Ever too prone is man activity to shirk,
   In unconditioned rest he fain would live;
   Hence this companion purposely I gives,
   Who stirs, excites, and must, as devil, work.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
                                                         |    _-\_<,
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |   (*)/'(*)


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
"Enforcer" appears to be Bird, not 142. And as far as I can see he's not
making a legal challenge or encouraging anyone to do the same, he's
encouraging people to complain to the relevant regulatory body. That's his
right and I wish him luck. Wikimedia is a serious organisation and can't be
intimidated every time some disgruntled user calls the cops. If Wikimedia
really was breaking the law (and I accept Jimbo's assurance that it is not),
then that is a problem that I hope we would all be interested in seeing
addressed.

The idea that Bomis has editorial control over Wikipedia sounds bizarre to
most of us. Witness the edit war conducted between Erik Moeller and Tim
Shell over [[Bomis]] in mid-January 2004. Bomis can't even exert significant
editorial control over the article on itself, let alone an article about an
advertiser on a blog which is linked to by Bomis.

And I'd like to extend my thanks to Jimbo for the extraordinary amount of
time, money and effort he has put into Wikipedia. It has become a truly
extraordinary resource.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
<b>. Is this right or wrong?

Arguments against are presented by one of our own Wikipedians, claiming
it's an abuse of semantic markup:
http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i

About the only argument in favor is "that's what UseMod did, and Wiki
before it".

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
On May 2, 2004, at 15:33, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> Did UseMod actually do it ? As far as I remember, UseMod did <i> and
> <b>,
> and it was changed to <em> and <strong> in Phase II.

I just checked on MeatBall, '' and ''' do produce <em> and <strong>.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
On May 2, 2004, at 15:38, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
>> <b>. Is this right or wrong?
>
> <b> and <i> are deprecated; neither exists in XHTML 1.0 basic or XHTML
> 2.0.

That doesn't make a case in favor of <em> and <strong>; the newer XHTML
standards recommend the use of style sheets for non-semantic
formatting, and many (most?) of the '' and '''s appearing on Wikipedia
are not "emphasis" or "strong emphasis", but ship names, species names,
foreign words, minor headings in tables, parenthetical text (like stub
footers), mathematical variables, quotations, defining instances, etc.

Also note that XHTML 2.0 is incomplete. The working draft online
indicates that there is not consensus on whether <strong> will be kept,
deprecated, or even removed outright:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-inline-text.html#sec_9.11.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> By the way, would it be appropriate to check if Enforcer/Bird is also
> the same as the users who were trying to add the Bomis disclaimer to the
> Fallujah article? Those users were TruthSayer, JillP, and SaltyDog.

Yes, they are all AOL client addresses. I'm not sure how one gets an AOL
client address, most AOL users access the internet via proxies. But it seems
to be reasonably rare, so I'd say, considering the human evidence also, that
it's very likely they are all the same person.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Alex Regh

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: The proliferation of article series boxes,
	and other sundries

body:
Hi!

On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 17:48:50 +0100, Timwi wrote:

>I quite agree with some of the sentiments brought up that an
>article on a Belgian mathematician would look rather silly if it had a
>list of all mathematicians as well as another list of all famous
>Belgians in it. But who's doing that, anyway? Nobody is seriously
>considering creating such boxes because by all measurements of common
>sense they would be way too large and there would be way too many of
>them. By contrast, the boxes on things like [[Greater Cleveland]] are
>perfectly fine.

Unfortunalely, relying on common sense might be asking a wee bit too much. It
usually is.

Right now the argument often goes that well, right now, there is only one box
or two, so who'd mind. Problem is, if some of those boxes stay, others will be
created simply because putting *this* box in means that the relation of the
article to *that* is drowned. So *that* needs another box as well. See the
discussion about [[Heteronormativity]] again. Two already turned up, two more
would be definitely needed, if they'd stay, and maybe even three. Not
desirable.

Also, it is extremly optimistic to assume that people won't create boxes for
rather obscure series. After all, they created lists. Now the lists become
ignored (or at least that is feared) so everybody will run to create a box out
of the list. Anybody can check how many "List of"s the Wikipedia has? And
imagine that, say, half of them become boxes.

Also, even if people would only create boxes on "relevant" subjects - well,
who will decide what is relevant? Somebody interested in history of
mathematics will consider a list of all famous mathematicians very relevant,
and a Belgian person might feel that most people just undervalue their
country, and that therefore the list is sorely needed. Then the links to the
lists get drowend by whatever box in *whatever* article - and boom, the box is
dropped into any article that previously had links to lists. Which in turn
will lead to more boxes, because other people will feel the new box drowns
their link to the list. Which will get droppen into every ... I think you get
the idea.

Let's keep this the Wikipedia, not the Box-o-pedia.

Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
> <b>. Is this right or wrong?

<b> and <i> are deprecated; neither exists in XHTML 1.0 basic or XHTML 2.0.

Cheers,
Ivan


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Bah. I just checked my facts; it seems that XHTML 1.1 restores <b> and
<i>, and so does 1.0 strict. Apparently no one feels strongly either way.

Cheers,
Ivan

Ivan Krstic wrote:
[...]
> <b> and <i> are deprecated; neither exists in XHTML 1.0 basic or XHTML 2.0.


from_name: Camille Constans

subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!

body:
On Mon, 3 May 2004 03:26:36 +1000
"Tim Starling" <ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I've set up Wiktionaries for all 146 languages that have a Wikipedia.
> There's known teething problems, however they should be good be working well
> enough now for people to get started. The most important problem is that
> many languages have a project namespace of "Wikipedia" (or the
> transliterated equivalent), but the interface messages point to
> "Wiktionary". I suggest that for the time being, people should put pages in
> the real Wikipedia: namespace, and set up redirects from the Wiktionary:
> pseudo-namespace where necessary. Wiktionaries with no language file, or
> with language files which use $wgMetaNamespace, do not suffer this problem.

Dump of wiktionaries can be found on http://download.wikimedia.org/index_wiktionary.php
I put a link from download.wikimedia.org

I will set up another page for 'special' wikis like quote, meta later.

Shaihulud


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!


from_name: Peter Jaros

subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!

body:
On May 2, 2004, at 1:26 PM, Tim Starling wrote:

> I've set up a few basic kinds of interwiki links, which may be
> expanded or
> modified in the future. The "w:" prefix should link to the Wikipedia
> in the
> same language. Language prefixes link to other language Wiktionaries.
> To
> link to a different language Wikipedia, use [[Wikipedia:xx:Page]].

How do we link to the Wiktionaries?

Peter

                               -- ---<>--- --
                     A house without walls cannot fall.
        Help build the world's largest encyclopedia at Wikipedia.org
                               -- ---<>--- --


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
"Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> schrieb:
> For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
> <b>. Is this right or wrong?
>
> Arguments against are presented by one of our own Wikipedians, claiming
> it's an abuse of semantic markup:
> http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
>
> About the only argument in favor is "that's what UseMod did, and Wiki
> before it".

To give another argument: '' is also used for example for book titles.
In that case making it <em> is simply wrong, it should become <cite>
instead. Because the software is unable to see when <em> and when <cite>
is meant, we might as well make it <i>.

Andre Engels


subject: [Foundation-l] Information

body:
When I joined Wikipedia more than 2 years ago, I
remember much unhappiness due to lack of information
of some parts of the project. For those who may not
have this memory (omg, I feel old in saying this),
lack of information lead to a fork. Though a fork is
certainly very unlikely these days, I believe the
growing feeling that fair process is not respected, is
bad for general spirit.

I remember that situation improved a lot, partly
because mailing lists were reorganised, partly because
meta became multilingual, and mostly partly because
people made an effort to
1) give information and
2) give it at the right place
3) discuss things before deciding it (or at least gave
people the opportunity to discuss it)

Sorry to say that, but I think we are on the bad slope
again. And I think we should seriously think about it.

Typical signs which I believe show information flow is
broken again ?
-> I hear people complain on irc
-> We start mail crossing again in an attempt to
restructure mailing flow
-> Things are learned again, not by regular channel,
but by personal information network.

Couple of points

* I think that software improvement should follow
needs, not  the reverse. It may be either because
there is open and pressing request from users, or
because there was a suggestion and a developer had a
great idea. But it is curious that soft improvements
are made without users knowing (ie, without the
improvement been mentionned elsewhere than on
wikitech). Could soft improvement be mentionned on
wikipedia-l then ?

* When a soft improvement is done to fit legal
requirements, please, could it be discussed on
foundation-l to check if that complies with the legal
requirements ?

* When a hardware update is being done, please, could
it be announced on wikitech, or on meta, so that when
users wonder what is going on, there is something else
to answer than "no idea"

* When a change is made in the purpose of donations,
could it be mentionned on foundation-l (rather than
only on en:) so that all projects could change the
initial purposes given by Jimbo ?

__________________________________
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Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
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subject: [Foundation-l] Information


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information


subject: [Wikitech-l] Information


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
On Sun, May 02, 2004 at 02:49:32PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
> <b>. Is this right or wrong?
>
> Arguments against are presented by one of our own Wikipedians, claiming
> it's an abuse of semantic markup:
> http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i
>
> About the only argument in favor is "that's what UseMod did, and Wiki
> before it".

Did UseMod actually do it ? As far as I remember, UseMod did <i> and <b>,
and it was changed to <em> and <strong> in Phase II.


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.2.5 released

body:
Changes since 1.2.4:
* Fixed install problem with blank root password
* Fixed Special:Emailuser/Username links
* Fixed main-page edit links on fuzzy search results
* Fixed wikipedia-interwiki.sql
* Fixed install with apache2filter (ugly URLs)
* IP in 'go' search brings up contributions
* Switch from broken & to ? on top-level wiki URL hack
* Fix for moved pages in enhanced Recentchanges
* Initial main page on new installs links to the online documentation

There are no database format changes.

Release notes:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=235603

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.2.5.tar.gz?
download

If you encounter a problem in the installation process, please include
*all* of the output under the 'Checking environment' heading with your
report!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Decumanus

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kenneth Alan has returned

body:
User:Kenneth Alan (formerly User:Kenne(Icelandic-edh)) has returned,
after leaving in a huff several weeks ago while on the verge of
inevitable banning for his profane insults and dubious edits (see
[[Requests for Comment/Kenneth Alan]]). It didn't take him long to
start throwing out insults and profanities again, after inserting a
long rant against Mediterranean-centric history at [[Vinland]] (see
[[Talk:Vinland]]). I see the cycle starting anew. He is now signing
all his comments simply as "anonymous" now, after wiping out all his
Talk comments the last time he left (leaving ghost one-sided
dialogs).

I also notice he left an interesting comment on Jimbo's page
regarding how he sees Wikipedia's purpose, that somewhat explains his
"creative" edits about history.

Obviously the heat of passion that was about to get him kicked out
has subsided somewhat and will take some time before it inevitably
builds up a head of steam again.

My question is: was this user previously banned as User:Kenne(edh)?
If so, was the ban lifted? If it wasn't, why are we are letting this
go on?

Matthew Trump


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!

body:
I've set up Wiktionaries for all 146 languages that have a Wikipedia.
There's known teething problems, however they should be good be working well
enough now for people to get started. The most important problem is that
many languages have a project namespace of "Wikipedia" (or the
transliterated equivalent), but the interface messages point to
"Wiktionary". I suggest that for the time being, people should put pages in
the real Wikipedia: namespace, and set up redirects from the Wiktionary:
pseudo-namespace where necessary. Wiktionaries with no language file, or
with language files which use $wgMetaNamespace, do not suffer this problem.

The MediaWiki namespaces have been copied from the associated Wikipedias,
with the local term for "Wikipedia" replaced by "Wiktionary".

To request adminship or bureaucratship on the new wiktionaries, go to:

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_Wiktionary_permissions

I've set up a few basic kinds of interwiki links, which may be expanded or
modified in the future. The "w:" prefix should link to the Wikipedia in the
same language. Language prefixes link to other language Wiktionaries. To
link to a different language Wikipedia, use [[Wikipedia:xx:Page]].

This brings the total number of wikis to 298. There's a few technical and
administrative changes which occurred to make this happen. Stewards should
know that they can change the rights of users on the wiktionaries by
appending "wiktionary" to the language code, e.g. "Tim
Starling at frwiktionary" . Wikis such as sources and sep11 can now only be
accessed by appending "wiki", i.e. metawiki, sourceswiki, quotewiki,
sep11wiki and textbookwiki.

Another change is that the English Wiktionary has moved from wiktionary.org
to en.wiktionary.org, bringing it into line with the rest of the
wiktionaries and with Wikipedia. There are redirects of course, so links
won't be broken. The only links that were broken during the construction of
these wikis were images uploaded to the English, French or Polish
Wiktionaries. The directory layout was rearranged to minimise the overhead
per wiki.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Wiktionaries for all!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionaries for all!


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> For '' and ''' we produce <em> and <strong> tags rather than <i> and
> <b>. Is this right or wrong?

Considering how our end users use them, it probably is wrong now that
you mention it.  People use them just for italics and bold, they don't
reallly mean "em" or "strong" by them, not usually anyway.

I've always thought (and we used to talk about it more) that it'd be
cool if wiki markup supported just a touch more semantics.  For
example, it'd be nice to have a way to do

<person>Thomas Jefferson</person>
<nation>Germany</nation>
<book>Gone With the Wind</book>
<movie>Gone with the Wind</movie>

just because there would be a lot of neat stuff that could be
automated if we had that.

But the hairy problem, as yet unsolved, is how to do that in a manner
that is sane, consistent, easy to learn, etc.

---

Another thought -- in most cases, when we have semantic markup, we are
probably also desirous of linking to another article.  The remaining
cases, where we want to do something in the text but *not* link to
another article, are probably almost all purely presentational.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Information

body:
Anthere wrote:
> * When a change is made in the purpose of donations,
> could it be mentionned on foundation-l (rather than
> only on en:) so that all projects could change the
> initial purposes given by Jimbo ?

Can you explain what you mean here?  There has been no change made in
the purpose of donations, and there is no change planned.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Oh, Lars, that would never work.  If you let people just edit
a website, it would go to hell!  ;-)

Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
> >
> > <person>Thomas Jefferson</person>
> > <nation>Germany</nation>
> > <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
>
> The way to do this markup, of course, is to write
> [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
>
> These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase",
> out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that
> describes the subject of those words.  For example, the page on Gone
> With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of
> a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics.  Just like
> the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red
> one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
>
> This is just an idea.  I don't know if this is a good one.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Ooops, I thought Lars was just teasing!  I didn't read closely
enough, there is an actual good idea here.  Sorry!  :-)

Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
> >
> > <person>Thomas Jefferson</person>
> > <nation>Germany</nation>
> > <book>Gone With the Wind</book>
>
> The way to do this markup, of course, is to write
> [[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
>
> These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase",
> out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that
> describes the subject of those words.  For example, the page on Gone
> With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of
> a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics.  Just like
> the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red
> one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
>
> This is just an idea.  I don't know if this is a good one.
>
>
> --
>   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grubby spam mail

body:
Anthere seems to be quite right.

As this story demonstrates,
http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/3344641 , this is indeed a
trojan virus-type spam mail.

And an ugly one at that.

____________________________________________________________
Find what you are looking for with the Lycos Yellow Pages
http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Michael Snow wrote in part:

>Anyway, this prompted me to look up whether Pepsi has actually filed
>"light, crisp, and refreshing". Well, they have, but only as part of the
>Diet Pepsi logo, and in this filing they disclaimed any exclusive right
>to use "light", "crisp", or "refreshing" aside from the logo. I don't
>think Pepsi would have a good argument, because when I read the phrase,
>I don't immediately think of Diet Pepsi. But Pepsi does have a
>registered trademark for "SO LIGHT. SO CRISP. SO REFRESHING."

Interesting.  I just looked at the bottle to get a working example,
and I assumed that the "TM" referred to the phrase that it was next to;
when in fact it looks like it was intended to refer to the entire logo.
I'm not sure what that tells us ... that companies can be misleading
about what claims they're making?

-- Toby


subject: [Foundation-l] Registering Wikimedia trademarks

body:
Peter Jaros wrote:

>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>pushes the issue to register?

I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.

OTOH, waiting to register until the issue comes up will delay the process.
That's why I agree that we should get all of the relevant information now,
so that we can decide what to do and how best to proceed.

-- Toby


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wiktionaries for all!

body:
 Tim Starling wrote:

>  I've set up a few basic kinds of interwiki links, which may be expanded or
>  modified in the future. The "w:" prefix should link to the Wikipedia in the
>  same language. Language prefixes link to other language Wiktionaries. To
>  link to a different language Wikipedia, use [[Wikipedia:xx:Page]].

 While it works on some wiktionaries, it doesn't on pl.wiktionary.org

 [[w:entry]] points to www.wikipedia.org (should be pl.wikipedia)
 [[de:entry]] points to de.wikipedia (should be de.wiktionary)
 [[Wikipedia:de:entry]] does not work at all

 Also, the updated lng file for the Polish Wiktionary was uploaded to
 http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/LanguageWiktionaryPL.php a month ago.

 Thanks,
--
 tsca * Tomasz Sienicki


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] WiktionaryDE-l mailing list created

body:
For those of the Deutsch persuasion:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionaryde-l

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hardware upgrades, downtime

body:
We'll be doing further maintenance on the database server tomorrow,
circa 19:00 UTC (noon PDT, 3pm EDT, 9pm CEST). Hopefully won't be
offline too long; we're shuffling data to a larger hard drive so the
thing doesn't explode when we use up the last couple of gigabytes. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Hardware upgrades, downtime


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information

body:
Anthere wrote:

> * When a change is made in the purpose of donations,
> could it be mentionned on foundation-l (rather than
> only on en:) so that all projects could change the
> initial purposes given by Jimbo ?

Can you explain what you mean here?  There has been no
change made in
the purpose of donations, and there is no change
planned.

--Jimbo

I mean this

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&diff=3428085&oldid=3418941

which led to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Wikipedia:Donations&action=history

-----

Now, I support paper edition entirely, but till now,
it was not written that donations would support making
paper edition. Some people also told me that paper
edition could be supported by publishers, not by
donations.
So, I would like that this is confirmed before we add
to main pages that donations will (for example) be
used for such a purpose.

For this reason, I removed the notes both from the
main page and the donation page.

-----

Whatever the use made of donations, it would be best
that all wikipedias display the same type of messages
(ie, that we do not have one wikipedia saying
donations are used for hardware, while another says
that donations are used to purchase domain names, and
a third that it is for print editions.

When I set the french page, I strictly translated the
information you gave by email. It is here
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikip%C3%A9dia%3ADonations#Objectifs_d'utilisation_%C3%A0_court_terme

Perhaps we need a central template for this; because
this is external information, one that is a display of
our professionalism and seriousness and reliability.
It is best that we show consistent information on all
wikipedias.

------

imho.
Sorry for having been upset this morning, but I am a
bit disappointed that we can't succeed to improve our
communication all together :-( I think this is
important. But right, I know, we are all volunteers
and we just try to do our best :-) Sorry for my bad mood.

__________________________________
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Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information

body:
Eloquence wrote in part:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:

>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."

Ah, but he has not yet put out that call; thus current donations
will not go towards that. ^_^  We should place it under
"Future plans for which we are not yet raising money" or some such.

-- Toby


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HTML to wiki(pedia) toy

body:
I want to try to connect this somehow to a CGI to make a webpage where
people can paste in HTML and get wikitext out by clicking a button. This
would make it easy to convert HTML tables I run across to wikitables
quickly, by just a couple copy and pastes. However, I seem to be
completely inept at compiling this. I tried "cc main.cpp" but I get
complaints about errors from ld about Undefined symbols: std:: ....

I apologize for seeming clueless but my only C++ experience is with
Visual C++. Is my build environment messed up or do I need to be
compiling differently? Perhaps a makefile would be helpful here. I'm
running Mac OS X 10.3 with the developer tools installed.

- David

Magnus Manske wrote:
> I hacked a little C++ utility (hereby under GPL, source files attached)
> that converts HTML to wiki markup. A few points:
> * It should compile on any Windows/*nix system (you might have to turn
> off warnings, though)
> * Pipe the HMTL in, and get wiki markup out
> * Shouldn't touch existing wiki markup
> * Keeps HTML if there's no wiki markup defined for it
> * Other wiki markup (for other wikis) can be added with only a few lines
> of source
> * Internally uses a new string class with 32-bit-chars (potential for
> unicode there, also it should work with unicode "as is")
>
> Downsides:
> * Doesn't check HTML/wiki markup validity (broken HTML will become
> broken wiki markup, which might be less bad though)
> * Ignores <nowiki> (though I don't think that matters)
>
> Idea: Have a checkbox on the edit page (or maybe on preferences instead)
> that says:
> "Convert HTML to wiki markup on preview"
>
> Conversion *should* only take place prior to preview, so a human can
> make certain nothing's broken.
>
> Magnus
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
David,

I haven't looked at the source, but try 'g++ main.cpp'; it's a C++
program (std is a namespace, a feature that C doesn't know about).

Cheers,
Ivan

David Friedland wrote:
> I want to try to connect this somehow to a CGI to make a webpage where
> people can paste in HTML and get wikitext out by clicking a button. This
> would make it easy to convert HTML tables I run across to wikitables
> quickly, by just a couple copy and pastes. However, I seem to be
> completely inept at compiling this. I tried "cc main.cpp" but I get
> complaints about errors from ld about Undefined symbols: std:: ....
>
> I apologize for seeming clueless but my only C++ experience is with
> Visual C++. Is my build environment messed up or do I need to be
> compiling differently? Perhaps a makefile would be helpful here. I'm
> running Mac OS X 10.3 with the developer tools installed.
>
> - David
>
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> I hacked a little C++ utility (hereby under GPL, source files
>> attached) that converts HTML to wiki markup. A few points:
>> * It should compile on any Windows/*nix system (you might have to turn
>> off warnings, though)
>> * Pipe the HMTL in, and get wiki markup out
>> * Shouldn't touch existing wiki markup
>> * Keeps HTML if there's no wiki markup defined for it
>> * Other wiki markup (for other wikis) can be added with only a few
>> lines of source
>> * Internally uses a new string class with 32-bit-chars (potential for
>> unicode there, also it should work with unicode "as is")
>>
>> Downsides:
>> * Doesn't check HTML/wiki markup validity (broken HTML will become
>> broken wiki markup, which might be less bad though)
>> * Ignores <nowiki> (though I don't think that matters)
>>
>> Idea: Have a checkbox on the edit page (or maybe on preferences
>> instead) that says:
>> "Convert HTML to wiki markup on preview"
>>
>> Conversion *should* only take place prior to preview, so a human can
>> make certain nothing's broken.
>>
>> Magnus
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


body:
Following Ivan's instructions, I got it to compile. I guess I was
mistaken in assuming that "cc" auto-detects the language based on file
type and calls the correct compiler. The --help was needless to say
misleading. However, the resulting executable seems to be broken. The
following inputs produce the following outputs:

input:
day
output:
''dayday

input:

 eI	 eI	  day

output:
{| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
|eIeI<||eIeI<|| ''dayday<  <  <

I appreciate your hard work in coding this, Magnus. I find it hard to
believe the code you wrote is this profoundly broken. Perhaps I didn't
compile it correcty? I haven't analyzed the code at all (that's my next
step), but it looks to me like the parsing is (mostly) correct, but the
wrong variables are being output, or something. Thanks in advance for
anyone's help.

- David


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionaries for all!

body:
Tim,

Thanks.

On Mon, May 03, 2004 at 03:26:36AM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:

> The MediaWiki namespaces have been copied from the associated Wikipedias,
> with the local term for "Wikipedia" replaced by "Wiktionary".

Please fix MediaWiki:All messages generator script as it links to
wikipedia.org and not wiktionary.org.

cya,
grin


body:
New wikitask: transform the 698 lines of C++ into 15 lines of Perl :)
Any takers? I'm too busy at the moment.

(With sincere apologies to Magnus)

Cheers,
Ivan

David Friedland wrote:
> Following Ivan's instructions, I got it to compile. I guess I was
> mistaken in assuming that "cc" auto-detects the language based on file
> type and calls the correct compiler. The --help was needless to say
> misleading. However, the resulting executable seems to be broken. The
> following inputs produce the following outputs:
>
> input:
> day
> output:
> ''dayday
>
> input:
>

>
 eI	 eI	  day

>

> output:
> {| border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0"
> |eIeI<||eIeI<|| ''dayday<  <  <
>
> I appreciate your hard work in coding this, Magnus. I find it hard to
> believe the code you wrote is this profoundly broken. Perhaps I didn't
> compile it correcty? I haven't analyzed the code at all (that's my next
> step), but it looks to me like the parsing is (mostly) correct, but the
> wrong variables are being output, or something. Thanks in advance for
> anyone's help.
>
> - David


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
>>
>><person>Thomas Jefferson</person>
>><nation>Germany</nation>
>><book>Gone With the Wind</book>
>>
>>
>
>The way to do this markup, of course, is to write
>[[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].
>
>These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase",
>out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that
>describes the subject of those words.  For example, the page on Gone
>With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of
>a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics.  Just like
>the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red
>one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.
>
>This is just an idea.  I don't know if this is a good one.
>
>
>
>
And this, of course, will fit in perfectly with the category mechanism,
which is an ideal lightweight way to specify these kinds of properties
by writing [[category=person]] on Jefferson's page, [[category=nation]]
on the Germany page, and [[category=book]] on the ''Gone With the Wind''
page.

-- Neil


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] em & strong

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> example, it'd be nice to have a way to do
>
> <person>Thomas Jefferson</person>
> <nation>Germany</nation>
> <book>Gone With the Wind</book>

The way to do this markup, of course, is to write
[[Thomas Jefferson]] and [[Gone With the Wind]].

These brackets mean "there is something special about this phrase",
out of which the software can create a link pointing to a page that
describes the subject of those words.  For example, the page on Gone
With the Wind could contain information that the phrase is a title (of
a book and a movie) and thus should be rendered in italics.  Just like
the existence of the page results in a blue link rather than a red
one, the italics could be derived from the contents of that page.

This is just an idea.  I don't know if this is a good one.

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wiktionaries for all!

body:
[about links from wikipedia to wiktionaries]

How am I supposed to link from hu.wikipedia to hu.wiktionary? I'd say
[[wiktionary:word]] but it links to http://wiktionary.org/..word instead.

Additionally [[wiktionary:fi:kukkala]] should redirect to fi.wiktionary
which it doesn't do yet.

Which language.php does it use? It should be updated as well.

Which list shall I use for further questions?

Hope it helps. (For me it would :))
Peter


from_name: Anti Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] irresponsible practices, vandalism by sysops,
	misleading funding calls re: "third world" wikipedia

body:
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles & vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all this?  Vandalism, basically:

These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly directed towards developing-world users. Bad policy decisions were made, such as failing to recognize the most common 2000 words as a desirable threshold (this is the threshold used by idiom dictionaries which are explain English culture, there is no evidence that any FEWER words suffices to overcome cultural biases - sticking to fewer words will always create interpretation errors and so is suitable only for the most basic subjects).   These too were made by Angela.  The deletions may or may not be visible in the log of the Simple English Wikipedia since they occurred around the time that it changed software from usemod to mediawiki.

These readings should simply be undeleted, and Angela banned from any involvement.  She certainly has proven to be capable of generating unlimited hostility in any project, in large part due to this kind of behaviour.  However she is not the only one abusing powers:

> to fund such a reader (on the subject "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS
>conference in June
is obviously an abuse of donated funds.  The people who attend this conference certainly do not have any need whatsoever for printed copies.  They need no subsidies of any sort.  It is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to an already over-represented audience on an already over-covered topic and so further bias Wikipedia away from users in need.  It is particularly disturbing that funds would be abused this way given the following goal:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:
>
>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

If this were in fact genuinely the mission, then other Simple English material regarding the demographic and linguistic profile of all potential users/readers, required vocabulary, and cultural issues would also not have been unilaterally deleted by User:Angela.

This "call for funds" is in bad faith as long as there is no practical plan or parameters for the creation of these "paper copies", no integration with NGO work in those countries, nor even an independent board to supervise the material and free it of the editors' cultural bias.  Until such an independent board exists, expect strong resistance at every level to such a plan.

>It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
>in this fashion beforehand.

It would be better stewardship to actually study the needs of the users you claim to want to serve, to direct work towards topics that are actually relevant to their lives (not yours), and put yourselves in an editorially subservient position to those that understand those needs and work in those regions.  It is unacceptable to solicit donations to replace work that has already been contributed, or print botched copies produced without any serious attempt at assessing the language and topic needs of the actual end users of the "paper wikipedia" you propose.  And why should it be in English?  This is just more cultural bias and imperialism, akin to the University of Nebraska's printing of textbooks for Afghanistan in the 1980s that stated math problems in terms of hand grenades and dead infidels.  That at least had the merit of being obvious.  While Wikipedia's articles on "Gross Domestic Product" that contain not a hint of criticism of that measure, and on "Easter Island" that have
 no links to "deforestation", despite being the prime example of that phenomena, are deliberately from a neoclassical economic perspective, the same that people riot to oppose in the streets in Argentina.

The day may come when they are rioting against the distribution of an English Wikipedia.  That will certainly occur if the project is governed as it is at present.

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to promote the potential for such a developing world focused project on the one hand, but sabotage every sincere effort to move it forward.  If you think that you can create and distribute something that meets only your own standards of relevance and neutrality in the developing world, you are certainly stupid.  This is the only warning you are likely to get before the backlash against your practices becomes unavaoidable, and sinks your plans to send your English-culture-centric pro-neoclassical-economics high-consumption-lifestyle biased propaganda to helpless folk.

You could always change your organizational culture, but that would require you to admit that many "trolls" are absolutely right, and your working assumptions are totally wrong - and that most of you who are involved in "the foundation" are not qualified to work on this.

---------------------------------
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body:
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles & vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all this?  Vandalism, basically:

These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly directed towards developing-world users. Bad policy decisions were made, such as failing to recognize the most common 2000 words as a desirable threshold (this is the threshold used by idiom dictionaries which are explain English culture, there is no evidence that any FEWER words suffices to overcome cultural biases - sticking to fewer words will always create interpretation errors and so is suitable only for the most basic subjects).   These too were made by Angela.  The deletions may or may not be visible in the log of the Simple English Wikipedia since they occurred around the time that it changed software from usemod to mediawiki.

These readings should simply be undeleted, and Angela banned from any involvement.  She certainly has proven to be capable of generating unlimited hostility in any project, in large part due to this kind of behaviour.  However she is not the only one abusing powers:

> to fund such a reader (on the subject "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS
>conference in June
is obviously an abuse of donated funds.  The people who attend this conference certainly do not have any need whatsoever for printed copies.  They need no subsidies of any sort.  It is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to an already over-represented audience on an already over-covered topic and so further bias Wikipedia away from users in need.  It is particularly disturbing that funds would be abused this way given the following goal:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:
>
>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

If this were in fact genuinely the mission, then other Simple English material regarding the demographic and linguistic profile of all potential users/readers, required vocabulary, and cultural issues would also not have been unilaterally deleted by User:Angela.

This "call for funds" is in bad faith as long as there is no practical plan or parameters for the creation of these "paper copies", no integration with NGO work in those countries, nor even an independent board to supervise the material and free it of the editors' cultural bias.  Until such an independent board exists, expect strong resistance at every level to such a plan.

>It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
>in this fashion beforehand.

It would be better stewardship to actually study the needs of the users you claim to want to serve, to direct work towards topics that are actually relevant to their lives (not yours), and put yourselves in an editorially subservient position to those that understand those needs and work in those regions.  It is unacceptable to solicit donations to replace work that has already been contributed, or print botched copies produced without any serious attempt at assessing the language and topic needs of the actual end users of the "paper wikipedia" you propose.  And why should it be in English?  This is just more cultural bias and imperialism, akin to the University of Nebraska's printing of textbooks for Afghanistan in the 1980s that stated math problems in terms of hand grenades and dead infidels.  That at least had the merit of being obvious.  While Wikipedia's articles on "Gross Domestic Product" that contain not a hint of criticism of that measure, and on "Easter Island" that have
 no links to "deforestation", despite being the prime example of that phenomena, are deliberately from a neoclassical economic perspective, the same that people riot to oppose in the streets in Argentina.

The day may come when they are rioting against the distribution of an English Wikipedia.  That will certainly occur if the project is governed as it is at present.

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to promote the potential for such a developing world focused project on the one hand, but sabotage every sincere effort to move it forward.  If you think that you can create and distribute something that meets only your own standards of relevance and neutrality in the developing world, you are certainly stupid.  This is the only warning you are likely to get before the backlash against your practices becomes unavaoidable, and sinks your plans to send your English-culture-centric pro-neoclassical-economics high-consumption-lifestyle biased propaganda to helpless folk.

You could always change your organizational culture, but that would require you to admit that many "trolls" are absolutely right, and your working assumptions are totally wrong - and that most of you who are involved in "the foundation" are not qualified to work on this.

---------------------------------
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body:
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles & vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all this?  Vandalism, basically:

These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly directed towards developing-world users. Bad policy decisions were made, such as failing to recognize the most common 2000 words as a desirable threshold (this is the threshold used by idiom dictionaries which are explain English culture, there is no evidence that any FEWER words suffices to overcome cultural biases - sticking to fewer words will always create interpretation errors and so is suitable only for the most basic subjects).   These too were made by Angela.  The deletions may or may not be visible in the log of the Simple English Wikipedia since they occurred around the time that it changed software from usemod to mediawiki.

These readings should simply be undeleted, and Angela banned from any involvement.  She certainly has proven to be capable of generating unlimited hostility in any project, in large part due to this kind of behaviour.  However she is not the only one abusing powers:

> to fund such a reader (on the subject "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS
>conference in June
is obviously an abuse of donated funds.  The people who attend this conference certainly do not have any need whatsoever for printed copies.  They need no subsidies of any sort.  It is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to an already over-represented audience on an already over-covered topic and so further bias Wikipedia away from users in need.  It is particularly disturbing that funds would be abused this way given the following goal:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:
>
>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

If this were in fact genuinely the mission, then other Simple English material regarding the demographic and linguistic profile of all potential users/readers, required vocabulary, and cultural issues would also not have been unilaterally deleted by User:Angela.

This "call for funds" is in bad faith as long as there is no practical plan or parameters for the creation of these "paper copies", no integration with NGO work in those countries, nor even an independent board to supervise the material and free it of the editors' cultural bias.  Until such an independent board exists, expect strong resistance at every level to such a plan.

>It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
>in this fashion beforehand.

It would be better stewardship to actually study the needs of the users you claim to want to serve, to direct work towards topics that are actually relevant to their lives (not yours), and put yourselves in an editorially subservient position to those that understand those needs and work in those regions.  It is unacceptable to solicit donations to replace work that has already been contributed, or print botched copies produced without any serious attempt at assessing the language and topic needs of the actual end users of the "paper wikipedia" you propose.  And why should it be in English?  This is just more cultural bias and imperialism, akin to the University of Nebraska's printing of textbooks for Afghanistan in the 1980s that stated math problems in terms of hand grenades and dead infidels.  That at least had the merit of being obvious.  While Wikipedia's articles on "Gross Domestic Product" that contain not a hint of criticism of that measure, and on "Easter Island" that have
 no links to "deforestation", despite being the prime example of that phenomena, are deliberately from a neoclassical economic perspective, the same that people riot to oppose in the streets in Argentina.

The day may come when they are rioting against the distribution of an English Wikipedia.  That will certainly occur if the project is governed as it is at present.

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to promote the potential for such a developing world focused project on the one hand, but sabotage every sincere effort to move it forward.  If you think that you can create and distribute something that meets only your own standards of relevance and neutrality in the developing world, you are certainly stupid.  This is the only warning you are likely to get before the backlash against your practices becomes unavaoidable, and sinks your plans to send your English-culture-centric pro-neoclassical-economics high-consumption-lifestyle biased propaganda to helpless folk.

You could always change your organizational culture, but that would require you to admit that many "trolls" are absolutely right, and your working assumptions are totally wrong - and that most of you who are involved in "the foundation" are not qualified to work on this.

---------------------------------
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body:
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles & vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all this?  Vandalism, basically:

These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly directed towards developing-world users. Bad policy decisions were made, such as failing to recognize the most common 2000 words as a desirable threshold (this is the threshold used by idiom dictionaries which are explain English culture, there is no evidence that any FEWER words suffices to overcome cultural biases - sticking to fewer words will always create interpretation errors and so is suitable only for the most basic subjects).   These too were made by Angela.  The deletions may or may not be visible in the log of the Simple English Wikipedia since they occurred around the time that it changed software from usemod to mediawiki.

These readings should simply be undeleted, and Angela banned from any involvement.  She certainly has proven to be capable of generating unlimited hostility in any project, in large part due to this kind of behaviour.  However she is not the only one abusing powers:

> to fund such a reader (on the subject "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS
>conference in June
is obviously an abuse of donated funds.  The people who attend this conference certainly do not have any need whatsoever for printed copies.  They need no subsidies of any sort.  It is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to an already over-represented audience on an already over-covered topic and so further bias Wikipedia away from users in need.  It is particularly disturbing that funds would be abused this way given the following goal:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:
>
>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

If this were in fact genuinely the mission, then other Simple English material regarding the demographic and linguistic profile of all potential users/readers, required vocabulary, and cultural issues would also not have been unilaterally deleted by User:Angela.

This "call for funds" is in bad faith as long as there is no practical plan or parameters for the creation of these "paper copies", no integration with NGO work in those countries, nor even an independent board to supervise the material and free it of the editors' cultural bias.  Until such an independent board exists, expect strong resistance at every level to such a plan.

>It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
>in this fashion beforehand.

It would be better stewardship to actually study the needs of the users you claim to want to serve, to direct work towards topics that are actually relevant to their lives (not yours), and put yourselves in an editorially subservient position to those that understand those needs and work in those regions.  It is unacceptable to solicit donations to replace work that has already been contributed, or print botched copies produced without any serious attempt at assessing the language and topic needs of the actual end users of the "paper wikipedia" you propose.  And why should it be in English?  This is just more cultural bias and imperialism, akin to the University of Nebraska's printing of textbooks for Afghanistan in the 1980s that stated math problems in terms of hand grenades and dead infidels.  That at least had the merit of being obvious.  While Wikipedia's articles on "Gross Domestic Product" that contain not a hint of criticism of that measure, and on "Easter Island" that have
 no links to "deforestation", despite being the prime example of that phenomena, are deliberately from a neoclassical economic perspective, the same that people riot to oppose in the streets in Argentina.

The day may come when they are rioting against the distribution of an English Wikipedia.  That will certainly occur if the project is governed as it is at present.

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to promote the potential for such a developing world focused project on the one hand, but sabotage every sincere effort to move it forward.  If you think that you can create and distribute something that meets only your own standards of relevance and neutrality in the developing world, you are certainly stupid.  This is the only warning you are likely to get before the backlash against your practices becomes unavaoidable, and sinks your plans to send your English-culture-centric pro-neoclassical-economics high-consumption-lifestyle biased propaganda to helpless folk.

You could always change your organizational culture, but that would require you to admit that many "trolls" are absolutely right, and your working assumptions are totally wrong - and that most of you who are involved in "the foundation" are not qualified to work on this.

---------------------------------
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body:
> WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians,

This is false.  "Simple English Readings in SUBJECT" were being written on the Simple English Wikipedia before they appeared in German.  They covered such subjects as Cosmology & Health, and were designed to be useful as staged readings for people who were learning English - proceeding from simpler to more complex articles & vocabulary.  Some "Simple English User Stories" were included, a standard technique to illustrate some ways in which the articles might be used by real developing-world end users.  So, what happened to all this?  Vandalism, basically:

These were unilaterally deleted by "User:Angela" as part of a "clear cut" of policy issues and staging and other material that was clearly directed towards developing-world users. Bad policy decisions were made, such as failing to recognize the most common 2000 words as a desirable threshold (this is the threshold used by idiom dictionaries which are explain English culture, there is no evidence that any FEWER words suffices to overcome cultural biases - sticking to fewer words will always create interpretation errors and so is suitable only for the most basic subjects).   These too were made by Angela.  The deletions may or may not be visible in the log of the Simple English Wikipedia since they occurred around the time that it changed software from usemod to mediawiki.

These readings should simply be undeleted, and Angela banned from any involvement.  She certainly has proven to be capable of generating unlimited hostility in any project, in large part due to this kind of behaviour.  However she is not the only one abusing powers:

> to fund such a reader (on the subject "Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS
>conference in June
is obviously an abuse of donated funds.  The people who attend this conference certainly do not have any need whatsoever for printed copies.  They need no subsidies of any sort.  It is a fairly transparent attempt to appeal to an already over-represented audience on an already over-covered topic and so further bias Wikipedia away from users in need.  It is particularly disturbing that funds would be abused this way given the following goal:

>Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
>bring Wikipedia into the third world:
>
>"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
>paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
>the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

If this were in fact genuinely the mission, then other Simple English material regarding the demographic and linguistic profile of all potential users/readers, required vocabulary, and cultural issues would also not have been unilaterally deleted by User:Angela.

This "call for funds" is in bad faith as long as there is no practical plan or parameters for the creation of these "paper copies", no integration with NGO work in those countries, nor even an independent board to supervise the material and free it of the editors' cultural bias.  Until such an independent board exists, expect strong resistance at every level to such a plan.

>It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
>in this fashion beforehand.

It would be better stewardship to actually study the needs of the users you claim to want to serve, to direct work towards topics that are actually relevant to their lives (not yours), and put yourselves in an editorially subservient position to those that understand those needs and work in those regions.  It is unacceptable to solicit donations to replace work that has already been contributed, or print botched copies produced without any serious attempt at assessing the language and topic needs of the actual end users of the "paper wikipedia" you propose.  And why should it be in English?  This is just more cultural bias and imperialism, akin to the University of Nebraska's printing of textbooks for Afghanistan in the 1980s that stated math problems in terms of hand grenades and dead infidels.  That at least had the merit of being obvious.  While Wikipedia's articles on "Gross Domestic Product" that contain not a hint of criticism of that measure, and on "Easter Island" that have
 no links to "deforestation", despite being the prime example of that phenomena, are deliberately from a neoclassical economic perspective, the same that people riot to oppose in the streets in Argentina.

The day may come when they are rioting against the distribution of an English Wikipedia.  That will certainly occur if the project is governed as it is at present.

It is the worst kind of hypocrisy to promote the potential for such a developing world focused project on the one hand, but sabotage every sincere effort to move it forward.  If you think that you can create and distribute something that meets only your own standards of relevance and neutrality in the developing world, you are certainly stupid.  This is the only warning you are likely to get before the backlash against your practices becomes unavaoidable, and sinks your plans to send your English-culture-centric pro-neoclassical-economics high-consumption-lifestyle biased propaganda to helpless folk.

You could always change your organizational culture, but that would require you to admit that many "trolls" are absolutely right, and your working assumptions are totally wrong - and that most of you who are involved in "the foundation" are not qualified to work on this.

---------------------------------
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information

body:
Anthere-

> I mean this

> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page&diff=3428085&oldid=3418
> 941

I made this edit to reflect plans to fund a printed "WikiReader" (a
compilation of selected articles on a topic) from foundation money. These
WikiReaders are an invention of the German Wikipedians, and Jimbo and
TomK32 have been in discussions to fund such a reader (on the subject
"Internet"), primarily for the Wizards of OS conference in June. The last
result of these discussions was that this was pretty firmly planned, but
Jimbo obviously hasn't announced it yet.

Jimbo has also publicly stated that he wants to use foundation money to
bring Wikipedia into the third world:

"The day will come when I will put out the call for funds to distribute
paper copies of Wikipedia to every child in every third world country in
the world. This, too, is our mission."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Webby_Awards

It seems like good stewardship to announce our intent to use donated money
in this fashion beforehand.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Re:Information


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.

And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.

--Michael Snow
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Toby Bartels wrote:

>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.

And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.

--Michael Snow
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body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.

And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.

--Michael Snow
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body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.

And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
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URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040503/c1e0e6e1/attachment.html>


body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>Peter Jaros wrote:
>
>
>>Then (realizing YANAL) is there any risk in waiting until someone truly
>>pushes the issue to register?
>>
>>
>I don't believe that waiting weakens our claim, so long as it's true in fact
>that the name "Wikipedia" is associated with us and that we defend this.
>I mean that we would have to prove these facts regardless of whether we wait.
>
One potential risk in waiting is that we could be denied registration
because somebody else had already registered the trademark themselves.
The US Patent & Trademark Office generally will only check that there
are no conflicting registered marks. They will not investigate to make
sure that nobody else is using the mark. Instead, they provide "notice"
to the public by publishing applications, and if someone raises
legitimate objections, then the mark is not registered.

This may not be all that likely, but the possibility should at least be
considered. Hopefully anyone using the term "Wikipedia" in a way that
would conflict with our trademark will come to our attention pretty
quickly. And they would almost certainly not be using the term in good
faith. But if somebody did manage to register "Wikipedia" ahead of us,
while the registration might eventually be overturned, it would take a
lot more effort, including almost certainly a lawsuit.

And yes, I have checked for wiki-related trademarks. There are actually
several, mostly around the term "wiki wiki". Nothing I could find
conflicts with anything we could claim right now. The only
computer-related filing was "Wikipad" for software, and that seems to
have been abandoned without becoming registered.

--Michael Snow
-------------- next part --------------
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