from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>> 6) AOB
>>
>> Jimbo will contact a German lawyer regarding the registration of the
>> Wikimedia trademark in Germany, which someone else is currently
>> attempting to register.
>>
> This is the first I've heard about this attempt. If it's not too much
> trouble, I would be interested to get some more information about it
> (off-list is fine). I might also be able to help with the communications
> if necessary, since I speak German, though I have no particular training
> in German law.

First, it's about Wikipedia, not Wikimedia.
Date of application is 08.03.2004, so we missed already the 3 month
period where we can object.

Raw data in German is attached, short abstract:
application is filed as a word mark by Joerg Nagel, Legan promotion
(http://www.legan.de), for three classes:
22, 25, 28: (long list abbreviated: f.e. textiles, toys, games, tents,
sports wear, christmas decorations)

greetings,
elian

UG01 - Kurzer ?berblick Markentext: WIKIPEDIA Markenform: Wortmarke
Inhaber: Nagel, J?rg, Reutlingen Leitklasse: 22 Klassen: 22; 25; 28
Letzter Verfahrensstand: Empfangsbescheinigung mit Veroeffentl.d.Anmeldung

UG10 - Allgemeine Angaben Markentext: WIKIPEDIA Markenform: Wortmarke
Letzter Verfahrensstand: Empfangsbescheinigung mit Veroeffentl.d.Anmeldung

UG15 - Inhaber, Vertreter Name und Wohnort/Sitz des Anmelders/Inhabers
der Marke: Nagel, J?rg, Reutlingen Zustellungsanschrift: Legan promotion
GmbH & Co. KG Auchtertstr.4 72770 Reutlingen
http://www.legan.de/legan_d.html

UG20 - Waren/Dienstleistungen (gegenw?rtiger Stand) Leitklasse: 22
Klassen: 22; 25; 28 Erfassung / Umklassifizierung gem?? Nizzaer
Klassifikation (NCL 8) Datum der Erfassung / Umklassifizierung: 18.03.2004

UG30 - Verfahren (Chronologie) Anmeldetag: 08.03.2004

     * Klasse 22: Seile, Bindfaden, Netze, Zelte, Planen, Segel, S?cke
(soweit sie nicht in anderen Klassen enthalten sind); Polsterf?llstoffe
(au?er aus Kautschuk oder Kunststoffen); rohe Gespinstfasern
     * Klasse 25: Bekleidungsst?cke, Schuhwaren, Kopfbedeckungen
     * Klasse 28: Spiele, Spielzeug; Turn- und Sportartikel, soweit sie
nicht in anderen Klassen enthalten sind; Christbaumschmuck.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July 2004


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Angela_ <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>>An opt-in checkbox to receive such a newsletter for each new user account
>>
>>on any Wikimedia wiki might also be a good idea.
>>
>>I agree. This could be checked the same time as people check the box
>>to say they want to become Wikimedia members. How about having
>>checkboxes in user preferences:
>>*Become a Volunteer Active Member [ ]
>>*Receive Wikimedia emails [ ]
>>*Become a Contributing Active Member [ ] (leads to a form where you
>>can pay dues)
>>
>>Links should be given on that part of the user preferences page to
>>terms and conditions, the bylaws, the privacy policy etc.
>
> All good ideas. A page on meta to synthesize this might be a good idea. I
> especially like the idea of a quarterly newsletter.

I second this idea - and for German wikipedia we've already found
someone who is willing to write the monthly newsletter. The change for
the newsletter seems the smallest to me (membership requires a little
bit more data) and for the beginning we could mention in the first
e-mail a user receives (with a short introduction and general help to
wikipedia) that there is also a foundation to contribute to.

Could we realize this feature soon?

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: fundraising proposal #1

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> Given the increasing costs of hardware in Mav's report, it seems as if
> we have to begin taking drastic measures to keep up to speed withour
> growth. One possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of
> potential donors, to whom we begin sending out solicitations. Donation
> requests would be small ($5-$50), but this might provide some income
> over the coming months. Of course, printing and postage would be costly,
> but this would be an initial investment with hoped-for returns. Costs
> would include printing of a letter, postage, and a postage-paid return
> envelope and form.
>
> While I am not enthralled with this idea, it does work with other
> charities. What do other people think?
>
> Danny

Why not a neat online request ? Such as an email ? It would certainly
lower the costs and allow to contact people from several countries.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Hunter Peress

subject: [Wikitech-l] going contract rate for a server admin

body:
I think the servers are in florida?

So, given this, I would say to look at some apartment rental costs and
other employment ads to see what the local economy is like.

However, with $500,000  from the NEH, a different colo location is possible.

For the purposes of the grant, this new idea doesnt matter too much,
but its now on the table.

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 19:19:11 -0700 (PDT), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> As part of the NEH grant proposal I would like to budget the hiring of a full
> time on-site server admin/PHP software coder (his/her time would be split
> between babysitting the servers, installing/troubleshooting servers,
> recommending new server purchases, and improving parts of MediaWiki that no
> volunteer wants to touch much - esp in the area of performance bottlenecks).
>
> But since even thinking about setting up benefit packages gives me a major
> headache, I would like to first see us hire a person on a limited term but
> renewable contract. For example, I'm currently under such contract doing GIS
> work for 30 dollars an hour. I'm an independent contractor and thus am
> responsible for my own benefit package (or lack thereof), business license,
> insurance, and taxes. The local government I work for is therefore not
> responsible for any overhead other than the small amount of work that my
> contract manager has to put into processing my invoices.
>
> So my question is: What is the going hourly rate for a server admin with
> Brion-level knowledge under such a contract?
>
> I will also be researching how much a small office near the colo would cost. A
> full time secretary/receptionist could be hired through a temp agency. It will
> probably be some time before we could have real employees.
>
> I also plan to budget $2000 for relocation costs in case anybody is interested
> (perhaps a bit more for international relocation). :)
>
> Important note: So far all of the above is contingent on getting the grant. The
> deadline for submitting that grant is also fast approaching.
>
> Daniel Mayer,
> Wikimedia CFO
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1

body:
Just as a point of reference, I do keep a list like this of every
paper check that I have received, and the additional data is available
from paypal on everyone else.

It is my intention at year end to send a professional thank-you letter
to everyone who has donated in the past, telling them what we did with
the money, and include a self-addressed envelope to the Foundation in
case they are happy enough to donate again.

--Jimbo

daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> Given the increasing costs of hardware in Mav's report, it seems as if we
> have to begin taking drastic measures to keep up to speed withour growth. One
> possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of potential donors, to
> whom we begin sending out solicitations. Donation requests would be small
> ($5-$50), but this might provide some income over the coming months. Of course,
> printing and postage would be costly, but this would be an initial investment
> with hoped-for returns. Costs would include printing of a letter, postage, and a
> postage-paid return envelope and form.
>
> While I am not enthralled with this idea, it does work with other charities.
> What do other people think?
>
> Danny

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


subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1


subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> We have more traffic than Slashdot. I think reaching our goals will not be
> as difficult as some people appear to think. It's just a matter of
> exposure.

One thing to remember is that people won't give unless we let them
know of our needs.  Today we are doing that, because we expect to be
slashdotted later today.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: https

body:
Hi,

In order to secure usernames/passwords, some other use of TLS/SSL may apply. The AAA work may be done on

https://login.wikipedia.org/wikiname, also giving a .wikipedia wide security token in that place and not messing with that in clear-text connections.

That's how large sites handle authentication/authorization. Isn't wiki a large site? :)

Domas


from_name: reflection at gmail.com

body:
Michael,

There are a few pictures of me in my photo gallery which I believe is
linked to on my Wikipedia user page.  Here you go:
http://www.br1an.net/alterego/  As you can tell I like photography and
I travel a lot.
I am also a Journalist in the Navy stationed in Naples, Italy.  I work
on my Admiral's staff so perhaps I am a little desensitized to working
with rank as well as people I don't know well (or at all, most of the
time). In addition I am attending UoMaryland European Division (just
working on my requirements, it's hard to be in the military and
school).

So, I don't think I am your bird, (but I do have a picture of a pigeon
in my gallery).  I was asked to help out with the Staff section and I
did my best considering the time constraints.  I received a rather
decent lambasting publicly and privately for my effort.  My apologies.

Here is a segment of e-mail I sent to Anthere:

"I think it would be a wise move to take one of the Board members or
Bureaucrats and put them in charge of keeping a grant file on hand.
Some sort of generic representation of things normally asked for in a
grant application that could easily be modified.  You would also need
to make this person responsible for standing a Grant Watch.  What
grants are commonly divvied out that we would qualify for and what are
their deadlines and how often?  A calendar could be put on WikiMedia
for this."

So perhaps we won't get this grant application in on time, but perhaps
we can in the future.  In regards to resumes, we should probably have
someone keep some on file.  They are going to be needed in the future.

If I can be of any help, just let me know.  For now I am ducking out.
I will forward anymore correspondences regarding resumes to Danny.

Brian

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 22:02:42 +0000 (UTC),
foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org
<foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Send foundation-l mailing list submissions to
>         foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>         http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>         foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>         foundation-l-owner at wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of foundation-l digest..."
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>    1. fundraising proposal #1 (daniwo59 at aol.com)
>    2. Re: NEH Grant r?sum?s (Michael Snow)
>    3. Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July 2004 (Michael Snow)
>    4. Re: fundraising proposal #1 (Erik Moeller)
>    5. Re: fundraising proposal #1 (Daniel Mayer)
>    6. Re: fundraising proposal #1 (Daniel Mayer)
>    7. Re: fundraising proposal #1 (Angela_)
>    8. Re: fundraising proposal #1 (Daniel Mayer)
>    9. Re: Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July 2004
>       (Elisabeth Bauer)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 09:41:41 EDT
> From: daniwo59 at aol.com
> Subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <2b.5bd56514.2e229d95 at aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Given the increasing costs of hardware in Mav's report, it seems as if we
> have to begin taking drastic measures to keep up to speed withour growth. One
> possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of potential donors, to
> whom we begin sending out solicitations. Donation requests would be small
> ($5-$50), but this might provide some income over the coming months. Of course,
> printing and postage would be costly, but this would be an initial investment
> with hoped-for returns. Costs would include printing of a letter, postage, and a
> postage-paid return envelope and form.
>
> While I am not enthralled with this idea, it does work with other charities.
> What do other people think?
>
> Danny
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040711/cc7b30f5/attachment-0001.htm
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 08:52:33 -0700
> From: Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH Grant r?sum?s
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <40F16241.3010309 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> reflection at gmail.com wrote:
>
> >I have taken up the /Staff section of of the grant application.
> >Having consulted with others the best way to do this seems to be for
> >anyone willing to help with the grant to send a r?sum? to
> >reflection at gmail.com.  I will compile them.  Please tailor your
> >experiences/education towards relevancy to WikiMedia.
> >
> >We are especially interested in r?sum?s from developers and
> >bureaucrats, but all are necessarily welcome. All Board members are
> >asked to submit.  In addition, we need as many people as possible to
> >answer the following questions.  Please do not reply to the mailing
> >list, but to reflection at gmail.com  This will prevent clutter and will
> >maintain your privacy/anonymity.
> >
> >1) What is your full name and nickname? (Include a URL to your user page).
> >
> >2) Describe your duties at Wikipedia and qualifications for those
> >duties.  If you have a title what is your title, and how long have you
> >held it.
> >
> >3) Indicate the amount of time that you, the projects staff,
> >anticipate committing to the project on a monthly basis (hours), and
> >for how many months, years.
> >
> If the author of this email is not willing to even identify themselves
> to us, I don't see why any of us would want to send them a r?sum?. Also,
> I can't understand why r?sum?s from bureaucrats would be requested in
> this context.
>
> Note that the Staff section of the grant page was only just made into a
> subpage by an IP address. It has since been edited only by that same IP
> address and a user named Alterego (except for one minor edit by
> Eloquence). The username, plus Alterego's extremely short contribution
> history on Meta and en:, sets off all my sockpuppet alerts. In fact, my
> initial impulse is to attribute this to Bird, given that user's peculiar
> interest in "exposing" Wikipedia as a front for who knows what. No doubt
> Bird could concoct all kinds of conspiracy theories out of our
> collective r?sum?s.
>
> If the request is legitimate, and I'm the one spinning conspiracy
> theories, then two (actually, three) requests. One, could you please
> tell us who you really are? Two, would somebody who's a little more "in
> charge" of the grant process, like Danny or one of the board members,
> confirm that soliciting this information is actually necessary and
> appropriate at this time? Finally, when you reply to a digest version of
> this list, please do not include the entire digest in your reply. Thank you.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 09:17:06 -0700
> From: Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net>
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July 2004
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <40F16802.1090706 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Angela_ wrote:
>
> >5) Board members
> >
> >Tim and Michael will have less active involvement than the other
> >members of the Board but Jimbo stated that their presence on the Board would not mean the votes of Angela and Anthere would be automatically overridden. It was suggested that the Board should be enlarged at some point, possibly later this year, and that prominent people external to Wikipedia could be invited to hold positions on the Board.
> >
> While it might be nice to recruit prominent Board members from outside
> Wikipedia (this could help with visibility and fundraising), we also
> need to be sure that people on the Board are willing to be actively
> involved. Tim Shell and Michael Davis are okay for now, as associates of
> Jimbo, but without a professional staff to run the Foundation we can't
> afford to have most of our Board members at that level of involvement.
> One possibility is to include additional community representation as
> part of any Board expansion. Another idea is that these prominent
> people, if they can't make the commitment necessary to serve on the
> Board, might be given other advisory roles instead.
>
> It's also possible for the Board to get too big, so that it's no longer
> effective or able to make decisions when needed. At five members, we're
> certainly not in danger of that yet, but it's something that must be
> considered if we expand the Board.
>
> >6) AOB
> >
> >Jimbo will contact a German lawyer regarding the registration of the
> >Wikimedia trademark in Germany, which someone else is currently
> >attempting to register.
> >
> This is the first I've heard about this attempt. If it's not too much
> trouble, I would be interested to get some more information about it
> (off-list is fine). I might also be able to help with the communications
> if necessary, since I speak German, though I have no particular training
> in German law.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: 11 Jul 2004 22:00:00 +0200
> From: erik_moeller at gmx.de (Erik Moeller)
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <9CgE7JtCpVB at erik_moeller>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> daniwo59-
> > Given the increasing costs of hardware in Mav's report, it seems as if we
> > have to begin taking drastic measures to keep up to speed withour growth.
> > One possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of potential
> > donors, to whom we begin sending out solicitations.
>
> I don't think this is the best approach. We're an online project and we
> should do our fundraising online. One key factor in raising money is
> making it as simple as possible so the amount of inhibition people have to
> overcome is minimal. The other factor is keeping people updated about the
> progress of the fundraising and giving them credit. We're an international
> project and we want to reach the maximum number of people on the planet.
> Finally, we want to encourage random acts of kindness. The Internet allows
> all this.
>
> What I think we should do is have a fundraiser twice a year, with a
> dynamically updated progress bar (we can get this developed now by putting
> a bounty on it), a list of recent donors and a list of top donors. During
> the time of the fundraising (a week or so every year), this progress bar
> would occupy the top 10-20% of screen space on all Wikimedia projects. It
> should be possible to directly make a donation from any Wikimedia page
> during the fundraising - just a single click. We would specify the goal
> beforehand and link to the detailed budget.
>
> We have more traffic than Slashdot. I think reaching our goals will not be
> as difficult as some people appear to think. It's just a matter of
> exposure.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 13:24:29 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20040711202429.34462.qmail at web51603.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> --- daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
> > Given the increasing costs of hardware in Mav's report, it seems as if we
> > have to begin taking drastic measures to keep up to speed withour growth.
>
> Yep - we seem to have started to enter the vertical part of J curve growth.
> Notice the jump from 4900K hits/day in May to 12100K hits/day in June. Did we
> have any extraordinary media attention in June to explain that?
>
> > One possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of potential
> > donors, to whom we begin sending out solicitations. Donation requests would
> > be small ($5-$50), but this might provide some income over the coming
> > months. Of course, printing and postage would be costly, but this would be
> > an initial investment with hoped-for returns. Costs would include printing
> > of a letter, postage, and a postage-paid return envelope and form.
>
> Ick! I throw out at least a few of those every week. Opt-in email lists would
> be a better place to start, IMO. We could spend out a quarterly newsletter to
> past donors who agree to receive such a document and also make a donation pitch
> in the same email. An opt-in checkbox to receive such a newsletter for each new
> user account on any Wikimedia wiki might also be a good idea.
>
> IIRC, Jimbo mentioned having advertisements in that type of thing not-unlike
> National Geographic. Heck, we could also include quarterly WikiReader
> selections in such a newsletter and make it *become* a lot like National
> Geographic.
>
> In addition, we need to set-up a membership fee structure so that recurring
> donations can be collected.
>
> Once all that is in place and is successful we can think about also printing
> hardcopies and sending them to recurring donors who give at least a certain set
> amount of money. Everybody else would receive a pdf.
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 13:45:15 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20040711204515.84139.qmail at web51607.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> --- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > ...
> > What I think we should do is have a fundraiser twice a year, with a
> > dynamically updated progress bar (we can get this developed now by putting
> > a bounty on it), a list of recent donors and a list of top donors. During
> > the time of the fundraising (a week or so every year), this progress bar
> > would occupy the top 10-20% of screen space on all Wikimedia projects. It
> > should be possible to directly make a donation from any Wikimedia page
> > during the fundraising - just a single click. We would specify the goal
> > beforehand and link to the detailed budget.
>
> This is all a great idea, but I would have such a fund drive every quarter
> since projecting our budgetary needs out half a year involves a bit of hand
> waving since our growth is neither linear nor that predictable.
>
> > We have more traffic than Slashdot. I think reaching our goals will not be
> > as difficult as some people appear to think. It's just a matter of
> > exposure.
>
> Actually we are *way* ahead of Slashdot and now even occasionally pass up
> FoxNews.com on a daily basis (CNN.com is still out of reach). Not to mention
> the fact that we have left NPR.org, Reuters.com, AP.org, MSNBC.com, Salon.com,
> WSJ.com and other multi-million dollar media outlets who have a very important
> web presense in the dust.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_is_more_popular_than...#News_and_Media_sites
>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 22:01:06 +0100
> From: Angela_ <beesley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <8b722b800407111401568fe24b at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
> Danny wrote:
> > One possibility is that we begin compiling a snail mail list of potential donors, to whom we begin sending out solicitations.
>
> I've created a page at meta for comments, and also for suggestions of
> potential donors if people think this is the right approach. Please
> see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Potential_donors_to_Wikimedia
>
> Eloquence wrote:
> >I don't think this is the best approach. We're an online project and we
> should do our fundraising online.
>
> I don't see a need to limit ourselves to this. If we can reach people
> through alternative, offline means, such as direct solicitations, or
> Wikimedia fairs (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_auf_Messen),
> then I think this could be a good way of attracting funds from people
> who wouldn't otherwise see the site, and also raises our profile
> outside of the existing pool of donors.
>
> > What I think we should do is have a fundraiser twice a year...
>
> I was thinking quarterly, or would that be too often?
>
> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > An opt-in checkbox to receive such a newsletter for each new user account on any Wikimedia wiki might also be a good idea.
>
> I agree. This could be checked the same time as people check the box
> to say they want to become Wikimedia members. How about having
> checkboxes in user preferences:
> *Become a Volunteer Active Member [ ]
> *Receive Wikimedia emails [ ]
> *Become a Contributing Active Member [ ] (leads to a form where you
> can pay dues)
>
> Links should be given on that part of the user preferences page to
> terms and conditions, the bylaws, the privacy policy etc.
>
> Angela.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 14:54:02 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fundraising proposal #1
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20040711215402.59549.qmail at web51606.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> --- Angela_ <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > > An opt-in checkbox to receive such a newsletter for each new user account
> > on any Wikimedia wiki might also be a good idea.
> >
> > I agree. This could be checked the same time as people check the box
> > to say they want to become Wikimedia members. How about having
> > checkboxes in user preferences:
> > *Become a Volunteer Active Member [ ]
> > *Receive Wikimedia emails [ ]
> > *Become a Contributing Active Member [ ] (leads to a form where you
> > can pay dues)
> >
> > Links should be given on that part of the user preferences page to
> > terms and conditions, the bylaws, the privacy policy etc.
>
> All good ideas. A page on meta to synthesize this might be a good idea. I
> especially like the idea of a quarterly newsletter.
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:02:35 +0200
> From: Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation Meeting, 4 July
>         2004
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <40F1B8FB.8070904 at djini.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Michael Snow wrote:
>
> >> 6) AOB
> >>
> >> Jimbo will contact a German lawyer regarding the registration of the
> >> Wikimedia trademark in Germany, which someone else is currently
> >> attempting to register.
> >>
> > This is the first I've heard about this attempt. If it's not too much
> > trouble, I would be interested to get some more information about it
> > (off-list is fine). I might also be able to help with the communications
> > if necessary, since I speak German, though I have no particular training
> > in German law.
>
> First, it's about Wikipedia, not Wikimedia.
> Date of application is 08.03.2004, so we missed already the 3 month
> period where we can object.
>
> Raw data in German is attached, short abstract:
> application is filed as a word mark by Joerg Nagel, Legan promotion
> (http://www.legan.de), for three classes:
> 22, 25, 28: (long list abbreviated: f.e. textiles, toys, games, tents,
> sports wear, christmas decorations)
>
> greetings,
> elian
>
> UG01 - Kurzer ?berblick Markentext: WIKIPEDIA Markenform: Wortmarke
> Inhaber: Nagel, J?rg, Reutlingen Leitklasse: 22 Klassen: 22; 25; 28
> Letzter Verfahrensstand: Empfangsbescheinigung mit Veroeffentl.d.Anmeldung
>
> UG10 - Allgemeine Angaben Markentext: WIKIPEDIA Markenform: Wortmarke
> Letzter Verfahrensstand: Empfangsbescheinigung mit Veroeffentl.d.Anmeldung
>
> UG15 - Inhaber, Vertreter Name und Wohnort/Sitz des Anmelders/Inhabers
> der Marke: Nagel, J?rg, Reutlingen Zustellungsanschrift: Legan promotion
> GmbH & Co. KG Auchtertstr.4 72770 Reutlingen
> http://www.legan.de/legan_d.html
>
> UG20 - Waren/Dienstleistungen (gegenw?rtiger Stand) Leitklasse: 22
> Klassen: 22; 25; 28 Erfassung / Umklassifizierung gem?? Nizzaer
> Klassifikation (NCL 8) Datum der Erfassung / Umklassifizierung: 18.03.2004
>
> UG30 - Verfahren (Chronologie) Anmeldetag: 08.03.2004
>
>      * Klasse 22: Seile, Bindfaden, Netze, Zelte, Planen, Segel, S?cke
> (soweit sie nicht in anderen Klassen enthalten sind); Polsterf?llstoffe
> (au?er aus Kautschuk oder Kunststoffen); rohe Gespinstfasern
>      * Klasse 25: Bekleidungsst?cke, Schuhwaren, Kopfbedeckungen
>      * Klasse 28: Spiele, Spielzeug; Turn- und Sportartikel, soweit sie
> nicht in anderen Klassen enthalten sind; Christbaumschmuck.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> End of foundation-l Digest, Vol 4, Issue 7
> ******************************************
>


subject: Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH Grant r?sum?s


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> May I suggest that next time we are slashdotted,

Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
slashdot is in it?

I have noticed that several people now link to wikipedia as a
reference and in their sig in article comments on slashdot.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising

body:
I agree with Ant - we have spent lots of time making Wikipedia look so
slick, we've lost our boldness for conversing with visitors. There was
a time when we were more willing to put solicitations and "You can
edit this page now" messages on the site.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 17:47:30 -0700 (PDT), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> May I suggest that next time we are slashdotted,
> someone please add a highly visible link at the TOP of
> the main page, at least on the english wikipedia, for
> say 2 or 3 days, so that perhaps some visitors feel
> like making a small donation ?
>
> The events are very demanding on servers, last week,
> we were all slowed down a lot for 2 days, so visitors
> might understand the need for more hardware.
>
> Besides, given the number of discussions last week on
> slashdot, about donation issues, that is perhaps best
> to show clearly where donations could be made :-)
>
> So, slashdot events would be beneficial both in terms
> of contributors and in terms of revenue ?
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
> http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
University of Hong Kong
andrew.lih at gmail.com


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fundraising


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BCE vs. BC preference for DateFormatter

body:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 11:50:19 +1000, Tim Starling
<ts4294967296 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Bill Clark wrote:
> If the user has the "no preference" (DF_NONE) preference selected, if it
> was up to me I would ignore the BC/BCE checkbox and preserve whatever
> format is in the text. Use your judgement on that, people will complain
> either way.

Before Christ, or Before Christian Era? Decisions decisions. ;)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
> slashdot is in it?

That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/f3935c21/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
> slashdot is in it?

That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/f3935c21/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
> slashdot is in it?

That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/f3935c21/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
> slashdot is in it?

That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/f3935c21/attachment-0001.pgp>


from_name: Bill Clark

body:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:11:38 -0400, Fennec Foxen <fennec at gmail.com> wrote:

> Before Christ, or Before Christian Era? Decisions decisions. ;)

Believe it or not, there are a great many people who get deeply
offended by one or the other of the conventions.  (And BCE is also --
and probably more often -- taken to mean "Before Common Era".)  Also,
just FYI, the "BCE" usage stems back to at least the 17th century
(Rabbinic scholars) so this isn't just modern Political Correctness
run amok.

Note: wikitech-l is almost certainly NOT the place to discuss the
relative merits of the BCE convention... if you want to do that, I'd
suggest doing so here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_%28dates_and_numbers%29

Personally, I don't really care one way or the other (I have all my
dates formats set to ISO anyway).  But I do care about letting OTHER
people choose to view dates using the format that is most preferable /
least offensive to them.

In any event, I've completed the task of creating the necessary
redirects from the BCE versions of dates to the appropriate articles
for their BC counterparts.  I'm currently going through the several
hundred pages I've found so far that use the old-style [[301 BC|301
BCE]] date links and converting them to use the new-style [[301 BCE]]
method.  (If anyone wants to help with that, you can find the list at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wclark/BCE_fix )

Once I have some time (probably next couple days) I'll start poking
through the code more so that I can create some diffs to implement the
BCE option for date formatting.

-Bill Clark


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
>> slashdot is in it?
>
> That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

Hmm, actually you could probably do a JavaScript hack. Wouldn't reach
everyone, but it wouldn't bust caches since the check would be client-side.

if (document.referrer.match(/slashdot.org/)) {
   // stick a <div> into the document tree
}

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/a96e296f/attachment.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
>> slashdot is in it?
>
> That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

Hmm, actually you could probably do a JavaScript hack. Wouldn't reach
everyone, but it wouldn't bust caches since the check would be client-side.

if (document.referrer.match(/slashdot.org/)) {
   // stick a <div> into the document tree
}

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/a96e296f/attachment-0001.pgp


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
>> slashdot is in it?
>
> That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

Hmm, actually you could probably do a JavaScript hack. Wouldn't reach
everyone, but it wouldn't bust caches since the check would be client-side.

if (document.referrer.match(/slashdot.org/)) {
   // stick a <div> into the document tree
}

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/a96e296f/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
>> Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
>> slashdot is in it?
>
> That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

Hmm, actually you could probably do a JavaScript hack. Wouldn't reach
everyone, but it wouldn't bust caches since the check would be client-side.

if (document.referrer.match(/slashdot.org/)) {
   // stick a <div> into the document tree
}

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/a96e296f/attachment-0001.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: https

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> In order to secure usernames/passwords, some other use of TLS/SSL may
> apply. The AAA work may be done on
>
> https://login.wikipedia.org/wikiname, also giving a .wikipedia wide
> security token in that place and not messing with that in clear-text
> connections.

Could be done, though you'll want to make sure the token isn't
plaintext-equivalent.

You'll also have to provide a secure channel for changing passwords.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040712/9d91eb6b/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Bill Clark wrote:
> I'd like to propose that an option be added to display years according
> to the BCE convention rather than the current BC one.
>
> It looks like within DateFormatter.php,
>
> NormalYear() will need to understand the extra option,
>
> the switch statement within replace() will need to have a case for it,
>
> and a new regex/key/target/rule will need to be added into DateFormatter().
>
> Also, wfMsg("dateformat") will need to be updated appropriately.
>
> Is there anything else I'm missing?  Would anyone be willing to help
> me with this (I'm really loathe to start creating diffs until I
> understand the code better).
>

You could add another character to indicate BCE years instead of BC
years, to replace "Y", and then you could add another date format for
each of the 4 formats containing Y.

Another option, which may or may not be easier, would be to allow the Y
character to indicate either BC or BCE. You could change the year regex
to match either. You'd have another member variable in addition to
mTarget to indicate which year format is desired. Then you could add
code to the "Y" case in replace() to convert to the desired format.

Note that you'll need to change SpecialPreferences.php to add a checkbox
and to set the option in User. You could probably put both date
preferences into a single option field in User.

If the user has the "no preference" (DF_NONE) preference selected, if it
was up to me I would ignore the BC/BCE checkbox and preserve whatever
format is in the text. Use your judgement on that, people will complain
either way.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
It should be easy to get good feedback since I emptied the paypal
account (in preparation of buying some new servers) just a little
while before the story appeared.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
An accusation of lack of reliability -- http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/07/12/one_great_source____if_you_can_trust_it/

An accusation of failing to explain "Islamic terrorism" - http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/8148/

RickK

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20040712/644fe467/attachment.htm


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising

body:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:43:10 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Christopher Mahan wrote:
> > Can we not find a way to find the referer and add a fundraiser if
> > slashdot is in it?
>
> That would kill caching, which would kill our servers.

Kill our servers? No. Vaporize our servers into a fine quantam mist?
Certainly. :)

Would it be thoroughly impossible to stick on another (hackish)
low-overhead layer that did nothing if the referrer was not Slashdot,
but otherwise would redirect to a specially cached version of the
page? Would it be possible to intercept Slashdot to a temporary quick
hi-welcome-slashdotters-give-us-money page before forwarding the user
on to the real article (automatically or via a link)?


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Rick wrote:

>An accusation of lack of reliability -- http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/07/12/one_great_source____if_you_can_trust_it/
>
Jimbo is being a little too modest when he says that scholars haven't
picked articles for fact-checking - we have a number of scholars and
other authorities who are WPers, the articles in their areas get pretty
thoroughly fact-checked, and they watch those articles closely to see
that new errors don't get in. The only thing that hasn't happened yet
is a large-scale systematic review.

As a future response to news queries, I suggest "de-personalizing"
a bit; Wikipedia's authority should rest on the published body of
knowledge, not individual expertise. Part of how we're able to
leverage non-experts is that if an article references an authoritative
source, anybody can compare the two. I have no personal experience of
aircraft carriers, but I can make sure a launching date matches what
the Royal Navy says it is.

Conversely, if random Nobelists were to get on WP and add unpublished
bits, I would expect those to get smacked down as quickly as the latest
crackpot ranting. It's also a feature that we're not held hostage to
(almost-)dead-white-guy viewpoints, which as we know sometimes lack,
uh, "neutrality". :-)

The Britannica guy should read a little more Linux history, so he
doesn't embarass himself by saying exactly the same things that
Microsoft said about Linux years ago. Hundreds of professional
programmers were working on GNU and Linux as part of their day jobs
while most of the world still thought it was a "hobby operating
system" - we didn't advertise it so much at the time, so as avoid
getting squashed by MS while we were still vulnerable.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Jimbo is being a little too modest when he says that scholars haven't
> picked articles for fact-checking - we have a number of scholars and
> other authorities who are WPers, the articles in their areas get pretty
> thoroughly fact-checked, and they watch those articles closely to see
> that new errors don't get in. The only thing that hasn't happened yet
> is a large-scale systematic review.

Me?  Modest?  Never.  ;-)

The actual question was about a systematic review; I did emphasize
exactly what you did -- it's false to assume that Wikipedians aren't
scholars and authorities, many of us are, and lots of quality review
and comparisons to other reference works goes on all the time.

> source, anybody can compare the two. I have no personal experience of
> aircraft carriers, but I can make sure a launching date matches what
> the Royal Navy says it is.

That's an excellent example.

> The Britannica guy should read a little more Linux history, so he
> doesn't embarass himself by saying exactly the same things that
> Microsoft said about Linux years ago.

There's a huge difference, too, between Microsoft and Britannica.
With software, there are network externalities and "lock-in", and it
is taking time for free alternatives to overcome that.  But Britannica
enjoys no such natural advantages -- it's quite easy for anyone to
"switch" which encyclopedia they use, as opposed to being a slight
nuisance (or worse) to "switch" operating systems.

Of course, we, too, enjoy no such "lock-in" -- so if proprietary
publishers figure out a way to produce content as comprehensive as
ours, as accurate as ours, and at a lower cost, then they will
outcompete us.

But, fat chance of that.

--Jimbo


from_name: Gregor J.Rothfuss

subject: [Wikitech-l] RFP for OSCOM.4

body:
hello wikimedia devs,

i wanted to draw your attention to the RFP for OSCOM.4, a conference about open
source content management. a talk about wikimedia would be most welcome.

the RFP is at http://www.oscom.org/events/oscom4/rfp

OSCOM.4 with ApacheTracks
ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich, Switzerland
Wednesday, Sept 29 - Friday, October 1, 2004

Important Dates

Proposals Due: July 15, 2004
Registration Opens: August 1, 2004
Speaker Notification: August 1, 2004
Presentation Files Due: September 1, 2004

sorry about the late heads up...

best,

-gregor


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > May I suggest that next time we are slashdotted,
> > someone please add a highly visible link at the TOP of
> > the main page, at least on the english wikipedia, for
> > say 2 or 3 days, so that perhaps some visitors feel
> > like making a small donation ?
>
> Thank you to the person who added the fundraising link at the top of the
> main page :-)
>
> I would be happy to know the figures afterwards. I am sure it would have
> been a good move to do so just a few days ago :-( but well...
>
> Mav, could you give us a feedback on this ?

Jimbo moved all the PayPal money to the SunTrust account about the same time
that the message was put up. So whatever amont is in the PayPal field at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/fundraising can be considered part of this fund
drive.

I still do not have the ability to check the MoneyBookers numbers but will
update the PayPal ones every few hours while I'm awake.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] phase3/includes Parser.php, 1.199,
	1.200

body:
Timwi wrote:
> This fixes the issue that something like [http://url/ link]s (i.e. text directly following
> the closing square bracket) would produce something ugly in printing:
>   link (http://url/)s
> Now it finishes the word first:
>   links (http://url/)
> The given example seems pointless, but in languages other than English this happens more
> frequently.

Make sure you use the established linktrail; some languages don't use
spacing between words as a separator.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040712/7e14e351/attachment.pgp>


list: textbook-l

from_name: Kit Langton

subject: [Textbook-l] Please help right away -- we've got to stick together

body:
Dear whomever,

  Congress is about to vote on amending the U.S. Constitution to deny
marriage equality to same-sex couples.

  Never before has our Constitution been amended to take away anyone's
rights. Yet our Senators will vote on this amendment in the next 48
hours.

  It's urgent that we speak up now. This hateful divisiveness has no
place in America. Please join me in saying so, at:

  http://www.moveon.org/unitednotdivided/

Equality in marriage is the civil rights issue of our generation. We
can't let anyone, or any group, be singled out for discrimination based
on who they are or who they love.

  Thank you.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 716 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/textbook-l/attachments/20040712/3dda0647/attachment.bin


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Showing causation among articles

body:
> Wikipedia has proven itself as an effective process for creating
> encyclopedia articles.  But, there's an easy way to give Wikipedia the
> ability to to show causal relations among articles.

It's a great idea, although for it to be useful for any kind of analysis
we would have to work out a system to show the extent and type of
relationships involved.  More importantly, however, how many people
would be willing to put the time into cataloging our existing (now
more 300,000 on en, for instance) articles?  The kind of study you
propose wouldn't be useful unless the information were reasonably
complete.

It may be "easy" to implement technologically (a new namespace and a
minor UI change), but building it up to the point of usefulness is
another story entirely.

> Abe

--
Austin D. Hair <austin at austinhair.org>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Callidus
http://www.austinhair.org/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20040712/8a1d10ce/attachment.pgp


from_name: Slow Poke

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categorization

body:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:21:03 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about a new __CAT__ display command?
snip
> you would still have [Category:xxx] somewhere in the article to define
> the category, but it would also show up anywhere in the article where
> __CAT__appeared... I can't tell whether or not you would like it to
> /also/ show up at the very bottom of the article, but either way seems
> doable.
>
> +sj+

I'd be more interested in a __NOCAT__ feature. The stubs look really
ugly, and there is no reason we should have even more metadata in the
main namespace.

--
[[en:User:Dori]]


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH Grant résumés

body:
reflection at gmail.com wrote:

>There are a few pictures of me in my photo gallery which I believe is
>linked to on my Wikipedia user page.  Here you go:
>http://www.br1an.net/alterego/  As you can tell I like photography and I travel a lot.
>I am also a Journalist in the Navy stationed in Naples, Italy.  I work on my Admiral's staff so perhaps I am a little desensitized to working with rank as well as people I don't know well (or at all, most of the time). In addition I am attending UoMaryland European Division (just working on my requirements, it's hard to be in the military and school).
>
Thanks for telling us a little about yourself, Brian. It helps overcome
the barrier some of us may feel because we haven't had a chance to
observe or interact with you before.

>So, I don't think I am your bird
>
Yes, I think it's probably safe to conclude that you aren't User:Bird.
It's just your choice of Alterego as a username, combined with the fact
that Bird and some other disruptive people here have a habit of misusing
sockpuppet accounts, that made me suspicious.

>(but I do have a picture of a pigeon in my gallery)
>
Indeed, from my experience with some of the sites you visited, I would
be surprised if you managed to take all of those photographs entirely
pigeon-free.

>I was asked to help out with the Staff section and I
>did my best considering the time constraints.  I received a rather
>decent lambasting publicly and privately for my effort.  My apologies.
>
Likewise, my apologies for contributing to the lambasting. I was trying
to warn people on the list of my concerns about sharing this kind of
information with someone we don't know, rather than condemning you for
making a good faith effort to help. In the rush created by the grant
deadline, you got put in a difficult position. Your calm response to the
problems this created is commendable, and should make it easier for
people to trust you more in the future. I hope you will not hold this
experience against us, and continue contributing to the project in
whatever way you can. We have a principle of "not biting newcomers", but
sometimes we're not as good at that as we should be.

>So perhaps we won't get this grant application in on time, but perhaps we can in the future.  In regards to resumes, we should probably have someone keep some on file.  They are going to be needed in the future.
>
I agree, all of the work put into this grant application needs to be
preserved for future applications. For any r?sum?s we've collected, we
should keep them unless the individual in question requests that we not
do so.

By the way, it would still be nice if you don't reply to this list by
including a copy of every message in the digest, since it wastes a lot
of space.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: NEH Grant résumés


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categorization

body:
How about a new __CAT__ display command?

On Sun, 11 Jul 2004 11:04:55 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Wikisource has been working on its own way of dealing with categories,
> and we would like to integrate them with the development of infoboxes.
> We would (1) like the categories to be listed in the infobox, but we
> would also (2) like the article to be listed along with the other
> articles in that category.  See
> http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe  Using [Category:xxx]
> accomplishes (2) but not (1), while using [:Category:xxx] reverses these
> results.
>
> In other words, what is the best way to have an article listed in its
> proper category, while having the link appear right where we want it on
> a page?

you would still have [Category:xxx] somewhere in the article to define
the category, but it would also show up anywhere in the article where
__CAT__appeared... I can't tell whether or not you would like it to
/also/ show up at the very bottom of the article, but either way seems
doable.

+sj+


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
Anthere wrote:
> May I suggest that next time we are slashdotted,
> someone please add a highly visible link at the TOP of
> the main page, at least on the english wikipedia, for
> say 2 or 3 days, so that perhaps some visitors feel
> like making a small donation ?

Thank you to the person who added the fundraising link at the top of the
main page :-)

I would be happy to know the figures afterwards. I am sure it would have
been a good move to do so just a few days ago :-( but well...

Mav, could you give us a feedback on this ?

Ant


from_name: Abe

body:
Wikipedia has proven itself as an effective process for creating
encyclopedia articles.  But, there's an easy way to give Wikipedia the
ability to to show causal relations among articles.

For example, all articles could have a tab called "influences".  In the
case of the article on Copernicus, users would be free to list hyperlinks
to other articles that complete the sentence

   "Copernicus influenced_____."

and articles that complete the sentence

     "______influenced Copernicus".

If users did this for many articles, then a network of causation would
emerge, where the nodes of the network are articles and the links are
"influences".  This network could be exploited through a search tool that
finds paths of articles between article A and B.

Such a tool would allow for a fascinating study of history.  For instance,
Wikipedia currently has an article on the Cold War and an article on the
Attacks on Sept. 11.  But, what if you want to see if there's a causal
relationship between the two events?  Neither article mentions the other,
and rightly so, since any causal relation between them is too indirect for
the scope of an encyclopedia article.  Also, you won't find one article
titled "How the Cold War Influenced 9/11" because encyclopedias typically
provide information that fills the middle space of the spectrum between
history books on one end, and the daily newspaper on the other.  This
question would usually be a question for history, because normal methods
of tackling such questions require: analysis and time.

But the system I describe above can compress the analysis. Each
influence-link between articles would be one tiny piece of
analysis between events that happpened close together in time.  By drawing
a path through these small links of analysis and time, you can connect
events that happen farther apart in time, thereby automating the analysis.

There are a lot of other uses of this kind of "influence
mapping".  And, you could get a lot of fun data to play with, as
well.  But, that's the main idea I wanted to throw out.  Any thoughts?

Abe


from_name: Philip Newton

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: https

references:
<3312661.6QDcuGLpZV@mobil.md-d.org> <ccn48o$bic$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<5086636.gSrsNgYLy7@mobil.md-d.org> <40F04714.3090108@pobox.com>

body:
On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 12:44:20 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
wrote:

> Further there's the certificate issue; would we be content with a
> self-signed certificate (BIG WARNINGS in your browser every time you
> login) or will we spend the foundation's money for a big fancy
> corporation's stamp of approval?

Though arguably, those who will want to use the optional HTTPS login
will be prepared to install the Wikimedia SSL certificate the first time
they connect.

Having said that, Domas Mituzas' proposal sounded interesting.

Cheers,
Philip


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Table markup eats initial attribute (patch)

body:
Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
>
> A patch to correct [ 980312 ] Table markup eats initial attribute.

Thanks. I've checked in your change. Apparently the programmer thought
that people would always put a space after the "{|", and personally, I'd
prefer if you did for readability :)

In future, please use diff -u to create patches. Thanks!

Timwi


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Thank you to the person who added the fundraising link at the top of the
> main page :-)

We really really seriously need to make these messages wiki-editable.
For some reason, I *always* find something wrong with them ;-)


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Fundraising


from_name: Emmanuel Engelhart

subject: [Wikitech-l] [PATCH] [ 980312] Table markup eats initial attribute

body:
Hi

A patch to correct [ 980312 ] Table markup eats initial attribute.
As attacment the diff (Parser.php)
That's my first patch, I hope it will solve the problem correctly :)

Emmanuel Engelhart
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Il faut ?tre ?conome de son m?pris, en raison du grand nombre de
n?cessiteux.
	-- Chateaubriand
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: Parser.php.diff
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040712/2843beb4/attachment.ksh>


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikipedia trademark registration in Germany

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark
>> application should keep us from being able to register our own
>> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a
>> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.
>
>I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online &
>print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches
>these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.
>
Is anybody monitoring this, in case somebody does try to register one of
our trademarks? I'm only familiar with the US Patent & Trademark Office,
which allows you to search online for pending and registered marks. I
haven't tried to check for competing registrations in other countries.

Wacht irgendjemand darauf, falls jemand zuk?nftig versucht, noch eine
von unseren Marken einzutragen?

>> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at
>> least this J?rg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It
>> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related
>> merchandise in Germany, though.
>
>A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
>necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
>T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
>lawyers always have "opinions")
>
In my opinion, it's because when lawyers explain the law to people, they
often keep in mind that in spite of their professional training, lawyers
do not get to decide what the law *is*. Definitive interpretation
generally belongs to the courts. So this formulation is common in the
profession due to a variety of motivations (trying to be precise, not
wanting to be proved wrong, avoiding liability for malpractice, etc.).
But this is all just my opinion.

>this trade mark doesn't prevent us from producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
>name on it.
>
Maybe or  maybe not, depending on the details of German trademark law,
so I'll defer to people with more expertise on that. But even if this
was ultimately legal to do, I have to assume the similarity to Nagel's
trademark would make it more difficult for us if he raised objections.

>> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
>> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
>> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.
>
>Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.
>
Genau das hatte ich bemerkt.

--Michael Schnee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/107cf4bd/attachment.htm


body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark
>> application should keep us from being able to register our own
>> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a
>> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.
>
>I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online &
>print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches
>these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.
>
Is anybody monitoring this, in case somebody does try to register one of
our trademarks? I'm only familiar with the US Patent & Trademark Office,
which allows you to search online for pending and registered marks. I
haven't tried to check for competing registrations in other countries.

Wacht irgendjemand darauf, falls jemand zuk?nftig versucht, noch eine
von unseren Marken einzutragen?

>> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at
>> least this J?rg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It
>> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related
>> merchandise in Germany, though.
>
>A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
>necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
>T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
>lawyers always have "opinions")
>
In my opinion, it's because when lawyers explain the law to people, they
often keep in mind that in spite of their professional training, lawyers
do not get to decide what the law *is*. Definitive interpretation
generally belongs to the courts. So this formulation is common in the
profession due to a variety of motivations (trying to be precise, not
wanting to be proved wrong, avoiding liability for malpractice, etc.).
But this is all just my opinion.

>this trade mark doesn't prevent us from producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
>name on it.
>
Maybe or  maybe not, depending on the details of German trademark law,
so I'll defer to people with more expertise on that. But even if this
was ultimately legal to do, I have to assume the similarity to Nagel's
trademark would make it more difficult for us if he raised objections.

>> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
>> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
>> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.
>
>Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.
>
Genau das hatte ich bemerkt.

--Michael Schnee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/attachments/20040712/107cf4bd/attachment-0001.htm


body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark
>> application should keep us from being able to register our own
>> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a
>> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.
>
>I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online &
>print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches
>these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.
>
Is anybody monitoring this, in case somebody does try to register one of
our trademarks? I'm only familiar with the US Patent & Trademark Office,
which allows you to search online for pending and registered marks. I
haven't tried to check for competing registrations in other countries.

Wacht irgendjemand darauf, falls jemand zuk?nftig versucht, noch eine
von unseren Marken einzutragen?

>> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at
>> least this J?rg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It
>> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related
>> merchandise in Germany, though.
>
>A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
>necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
>T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
>lawyers always have "opinions")
>
In my opinion, it's because when lawyers explain the law to people, they
often keep in mind that in spite of their professional training, lawyers
do not get to decide what the law *is*. Definitive interpretation
generally belongs to the courts. So this formulation is common in the
profession due to a variety of motivations (trying to be precise, not
wanting to be proved wrong, avoiding liability for malpractice, etc.).
But this is all just my opinion.

>this trade mark doesn't prevent us from producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
>name on it.
>
Maybe or  maybe not, depending on the details of German trademark law,
so I'll defer to people with more expertise on that. But even if this
was ultimately legal to do, I have to assume the similarity to Nagel's
trademark would make it more difficult for us if he raised objections.

>> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
>> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
>> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.
>
>Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.
>
Genau das hatte ich bemerkt.

--Michael Schnee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/107cf4bd/attachment.html>


body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark
>> application should keep us from being able to register our own
>> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a
>> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.
>
>I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online &
>print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches
>these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.
>
Is anybody monitoring this, in case somebody does try to register one of
our trademarks? I'm only familiar with the US Patent & Trademark Office,
which allows you to search online for pending and registered marks. I
haven't tried to check for competing registrations in other countries.

Wacht irgendjemand darauf, falls jemand zuk?nftig versucht, noch eine
von unseren Marken einzutragen?

>> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at
>> least this J?rg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It
>> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related
>> merchandise in Germany, though.
>
>A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
>necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
>T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
>lawyers always have "opinions")
>
In my opinion, it's because when lawyers explain the law to people, they
often keep in mind that in spite of their professional training, lawyers
do not get to decide what the law *is*. Definitive interpretation
generally belongs to the courts. So this formulation is common in the
profession due to a variety of motivations (trying to be precise, not
wanting to be proved wrong, avoiding liability for malpractice, etc.).
But this is all just my opinion.

>this trade mark doesn't prevent us from producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
>name on it.
>
Maybe or  maybe not, depending on the details of German trademark law,
so I'll defer to people with more expertise on that. But even if this
was ultimately legal to do, I have to assume the similarity to Nagel's
trademark would make it more difficult for us if he raised objections.

>> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
>> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
>> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.
>
>Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.
>
Genau das hatte ich bemerkt.

--Michael Schnee
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/attachments/20040712/107cf4bd/attachment-0001.html>


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Emmanuel Engelhart wrote:
>
>>
>> A patch to correct [ 980312 ] Table markup eats initial attribute.
>
>
> Thanks. I've checked in your change. Apparently the programmer thought
> that people would always put a space after the "{|", and personally,
> I'd prefer if you did for readability :)

I vaguely remember that there was a reason for it; probably compensating
for a bug elsewhere that is now fixed :-)

Magnus


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Solution ?] [ 983680 ] username starting with :

body:
hi

bug:
https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=983680&group_id=34373&atid=411192

The Problem comes from this lines in Title.php

<<
# Initial colon indicating main namespace
if ( ":" == $t{0} ) {
			$r = substr( $t, 1 );
			$this->mNamespace = NS_MAIN;
}
else {
(...)
}
>>

I removed all this code portion (not (...)), and it seems to work.  I
don't understand why an initial colon should indicate the
mainspace... and why an article can't start with ":" ? But I'm a newcomer :)

So I hope that's an acceptable solution, otherwise a message on the
loginform with login rules could be appropriate ?

Cordialy

Emmanuel Engelhart

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ne prenez pas la vie trop au serieux :
De toute facon vous n'en sortirez pas vivant.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emmanuel Engelhart      ICQ UIN : 53388731   TEL (+49)(0)6.22.15.88.03.31


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
How can you tell who was influencing whom?  Most of the time these
influences are tenuous and speculative.  Perhaps the greatest influence
on someone's life was his kindergarten teache, but no-one can know for
sure.  If someone worked with another for some time it's easy to
conclude that the older had influence on another.  I noted somewhere
that there was a famous black widow murderess in the 1930s Balkans.  She
had managed to stow 40 bodies in her cellar.  It would be pure
speculation to suggest that this influenced Kesslring when he wrote his
play, "Arsenic and Old Lace."  The chronology seems right, but it's
still speculation.

Ec

Abe wrote:

>Wikipedia has proven itself as an effective process for creating
>encyclopedia articles.  But, there's an easy way to give Wikipedia the
>ability to to show causal relations among articles.
>
>For example, all articles could have a tab called "influences".  In the
>case of the article on Copernicus, users would be free to list hyperlinks
>to other articles that complete the sentence
>
>   "Copernicus influenced_____."
>
>and articles that complete the sentence
>
>     "______influenced Copernicus".
>
>If users did this for many articles, then a network of causation would
>emerge, where the nodes of the network are articles and the links are
>"influences".  This network could be exploited through a search tool that
>finds paths of articles between article A and B.
>
>Such a tool would allow for a fascinating study of history.  For instance,
>Wikipedia currently has an article on the Cold War and an article on the
>Attacks on Sept. 11.  But, what if you want to see if there's a causal
>relationship between the two events?  Neither article mentions the other,
>and rightly so, since any causal relation between them is too indirect for
>the scope of an encyclopedia article.  Also, you won't find one article
>titled "How the Cold War Influenced 9/11" because encyclopedias typically
>provide information that fills the middle space of the spectrum between
>history books on one end, and the daily newspaper on the other.  This
>question would usually be a question for history, because normal methods
>of tackling such questions require: analysis and time.
>
>But the system I describe above can compress the analysis. Each
>influence-link between articles would be one tiny piece of
>analysis between events that happpened close together in time.  By drawing
>a path through these small links of analysis and time, you can connect
>events that happen farther apart in time, thereby automating the analysis.
>
>There are a lot of other uses of this kind of "influence
>mapping".  And, you could get a lot of fun data to play with, as
>well.  But, that's the main idea I wanted to throw out.  Any thoughts?
>
>


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikipedia trademark registration in Germany

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Well, nothing in the classes of goods covered by this trademark
> application should keep us from being able to register our own
> trademark. So this seems to be more a minor nuisance, rather than a
> fraudulent registration we would *need* to get overturned promptly.

I agree. To register the trademark for our own "business" (online &
print publications, CD-editions) is much more urgent. If someone catches
these fields before us, we _really_ have a problem.

> I'm assuming that German trademark practices aren't that different
> from the US, since international agreements in the field mean that at
>  least some basic principles should be consistent.

> It still would have been nice to make a timely objection, but at
> least this J?rg Nagel isn't blatantly infringing our trademark. It
> does make it difficult if we want to distribute Wikipedia-related
> merchandise in Germany, though.

A colleague of mine who is a lawyer told me that even this would not
necessarily constitute a problem. We would not be allowed to found a
T-Shirt company "Wikipedia sports wear", but in his opinion (why do
lawyers always have "opinions") this trade mark doesn't prevent us from
producing t-shirts and other merchandise with the wikipedia logo and
name on it.

> I wonder if that's what he had in mind, and what he intends to do
> with the trademark. Make a profit by selling it to us, or by forcing
> us to use his firm's services for merchandising?

One or the other IMO.

> I'd be a little surprised if he intends to start a Wikipedia brand of
> clothing on his own. Was this application triggered by some of our
> German publicity, I wonder? Just some random thoughts.

Seems so - the application was just one week after the big media echo.

greetings,
elian


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> This fixes the issue that something like [http://url/ link]s (i.e.
>> text directly following the closing square bracket) would produce
>> something ugly in printing:
>>   link (http://url/)s
>> Now it finishes the word first:
>>   links (http://url/)
>> The given example seems pointless, but in languages other than English
>> this happens more frequently.
>
> Make sure you use the established linktrail; some languages don't use
> spacing between words as a separator.

Oh, heh. Of course. Gimme a minute.


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Make sure you use the established linktrail

Done, thanks :)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: CVS as Newsgroup?

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Does mediawiki-cvs at wikimedia.org have a corresponding gmane newsgroup? I
> couldn't find one.

Since nobody replied to this, I'll assume such a newsgroup doesn't yet
exist, and so I have contact Gmane about it.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Showing causation among articles

body:
Abe wrote:

> For example, all articles could have a tab called "influences".  In the
> case of the article on Copernicus, users would be free to list hyperlinks
> to other articles that complete the sentence
>
>    "Copernicus influenced_____."
>
> and articles that complete the sentence
>
>      "______influenced Copernicus".
>
> [...] Any thoughts?

It's an original idea, but I'm afraid I don't really see the major
usefulness in it. It sounds like little more than a funny toy, and for
that I doubt it's worth the implementation effort.

How do you define "influenced" anyway? Just about everyone and
everything has in some way influenced some broad subject, say [[Art]] or
[[Mathematics]], and Art and Mathematics in turn have in some way
influenced just about everything...

Timwi


from_name: Stevertigo

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising

body:
I had thought the convention was to add it to the From
Wikipedia template....

S

--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
> > Thank you to the person who added the fundraising
> link at the top of the
> > main page :-)
>
> We really really seriously need to make these
> messages wiki-editable.
> For some reason, I *always* find something wrong
> with them ;-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category pruning

body:
Is there someone operating a CatBot for deleting
things like [[Category:FHM 100 Sexiest Women List]]
from all the entries (more than 100 ironically,
because its "retroactive". I created
[[Category:Hustler Asshole of the Month]], to help
make my point, but this is being ignored in favor of a
typically tittilating TNA trajectory, so... before I
go ahead and populate it... some ideas are welcome.
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Categories_for_deletion

Geeks being largely guys, there seems to be a pass
given to this one policy-wise, but that's unrelated to
the need for pruning categories, IMHO.

s

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Fennec Foxen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Categorization

body:
On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 18:43:16 -0500, Slow Poke <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd be more interested in a __NOCAT__ feature. The stubs look really
> ugly, and there is no reason we should have even more metadata in the
> main namespace.

How about several features all at once? (fun fun :)
1) Ability to change the displayed-title of an article in a category
(not just the sort key). For cases where you want to kill parentheses.
2) Ability to surpress display of a certain category (the pages can
thus be in Category:Stub without displaying the category message, and
yet be in other useful categories).
3) Ability to cancel automatic display of all categories (the box at the bottom)
4) Ability to force display of all categories at a specific spot in the page.

I'm sure you can come up with an [[Image:]]-like syntax of some sort :)


body:
Hemanshu Desai wrote:

>On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 19:59:55 -0400 (EDT), Abe <arafi at umich.edu> wrote:
>
>
>>If users did this for many articles, then a network of causation would
>>emerge, where the nodes of the network are articles and the links are
>>"influences".  This network could be exploited through a search tool that
>>finds paths of articles between article A and B.
>>
>>
>Interesting but how do we resolve the POV problem? do we want endless
>arguments over whether America influenced the Taliban; George Bush
>influenced oil markets; oil influenced Gulf war.... to name a few?
>
YES!

That's the small enough price of  neutrality.  No article is sacred, and
that's healthy. People on both sides of these issues are enraged  when
they see the blatant POVism of their opponents destroying their own very
neutral views.  The control freaks worry me a lot more than the trolls,
because they use a patina of legitimacy to impose their POV.

Resolving  "POV problem"s will be an incremental process that may take
years.

Ec.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>>
>>> Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random page" link a few times.
>>> Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of which had frequent
>>> grammatical errors. [...]
>>> My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as the basis for any
>>> conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are grammatically-flawed
>>> stubs, [...]
>>
>> Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical
>> imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.
>
> On the contrary, it is a safe assumption that someone who is careless
> about grammar and spelling is also careless about factual accuracy.

There's nothing safe about that assumption at all.  Perhaps the writer
is not a native English speaker.  Written output disorder is also very
common.  A person with that may have his substantive facts perfeclty
straight, but be completely clueless about proper grammar.  There are
also places where the educational system disastrously allows any way of
writing and spelling to be taken as correct.

Ec


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
>
>> Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random page" link a few times.
>> Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of which had frequent
>> grammatical errors. [...]
>> My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as the basis for any
>> conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are grammatically-flawed
>> stubs, [...]
>
>
> Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability from mere grammatical
> imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.

On the contrary, it is a safe assumption that someone who is careless
about grammar and spelling is also careless about factual accuracy.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Guns cause crime like garbage causes flies.
  sean at epoptic.com |


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Jimbo is being a little too modest when he says that scholars haven't
>picked articles for fact-checking - we have a number of scholars and
>other authorities who are WPers, the articles in their areas get pretty
>thoroughly fact-checked, and they watch those articles closely to see
>that new errors don't get in. The only thing that hasn't happened yet
>is a large-scale systematic review.

But that wasn't the question. The article asked if Wikipedia had
tested its reliability by taking a number of RANDOMLY-SELECTED
articles and submitting them to scholars for fact-checking, to which
Jimbo admitted that they hadn't.

It's certainly true that some individual articles in the Wikipedia
have been carefully vetted for accuracy by "scholars and other
authorities," but that doesn't mean that all or even most articles
meet that standard.

Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random page" link a few times.
Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of which had frequent
grammatical errors. The remaining five included one article that
seemed strongly opinionated about the [[Nintendo Seal of Quality]],
and four articles of varying length that appear from what I can tell
to be accurate and appropriate for their topics. (Of course, I'm not
really qualified to judge the accuracy of some of the articles which
discuss topics outside my areas of interest.)

My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as the basis for any
conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are grammatically-flawed
stubs, it would seem to support the article's contention that
Wikipedia doesn't yet meet the quality-control standards of a
commercial encyclopedia like Encyclopedia Britannica.

On the other hand, Wikipedia beats Britannica with regard to sheer
NUMBER of articles.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: https

body:
The idea would be very very easy.

Use mod_rewrite on apaches for mapping
https://login.wikipedia.org/{countrycode}/wiki/Special:UserLogin into http://{countrycode}.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:UserLogin.

You've got to use domain-wide cookies for that, but that may be ok, though some user code has to be reviewed (I wasn't hacking it too much before, but as far as I remember, there may be some places, requiring attention, as well as some security issues may exist).

And certificates (with intermediate CA) cost ~40euros/year. Unless you feed Verisign. For one virtual server it isn't too costly, is it?

Domas

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Philip Newton
Sent: Monday, July 12, 2004 9:04 PM
To: wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: https

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 12:44:20 -0700, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
wrote:

> Further there's the certificate issue; would we be content with a
> self-signed certificate (BIG WARNINGS in your browser every time you
> login) or will we spend the foundation's money for a big fancy
> corporation's stamp of approval?

Though arguably, those who will want to use the optional HTTPS login will be prepared to install the Wikimedia SSL certificate the first time they connect.

Having said that, Domas Mituzas' proposal sounded interesting.

Cheers,
Philip

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Matthew Trump

subject: [WikiEN-l] Categories for images?

body:
I'm not sure if this has been discussed in the past, but I have been
wondering about categories for images.

I have been wanting to categorize some of the images I've contributed
(mostly home-made maps). It seemed highly desirablet o me to create
separate categories, for images only, so that we don't have "mixed"
categories of both articles and images, which would be quite ugly and
not very useful at all.

There is no "Category:Maps" right now. I thought of making one, with
subcategories such as "Category:Historical maps" etc. Then it occured
to me that those categories might be best used for *articles* about
well-known maps (such articles exist), like the [[Zeno map]] article
for exaple.

So what do people think about this situation. I think images are
worth categorization. Should there be a separate namespaces, or
should this done within the current system of categorization (I would
prefer the latter personally). A bit of policy would be helpful here.

Matt [[User:Decumanus]]


from_name: Mark Richards

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
I don't think so, although, of course, the two
sometimes do go together. We have some contributors
for whom English is not their first language. Grammar
and spelling are an issue for them where facts are
not. Mark

--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
> > Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> >
> >> Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random
> page" link a few times.
> >> Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of
> which had frequent
> >> grammatical errors. [...]
> >> My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as
> the basis for any
> >> conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are
> grammatically-flawed
> >> stubs, [...]
> >
> >
> > Concluding factual inaccuracy or unreliability
> from mere grammatical
> > imperfection is fallacious and prejudicial.
>
> On the contrary, it is a safe assumption that
> someone who is careless
> about grammar and spelling is also careless about
> factual accuracy.
>
> --
>   Sean Barrett     | Guns cause crime like garbage
> causes flies.
>   sean at epoptic.com |
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia in the news

body:
Sheldon Rampton wrote:

> But that wasn't the question. The article asked if Wikipedia had
> tested its reliability by taking a number of RANDOMLY-SELECTED
> articles and submitting them to scholars for fact-checking, to which
> Jimbo admitted that they hadn't.
>
> Just out of curiosity, I clicked the "Random page" link a few times.
> Out of ten articles, I found five stubs, two of which had frequent
> grammatical errors. The remaining five included one article that
> seemed strongly opinionated about the [[Nintendo Seal of Quality]],
> and four articles of varying length that appear from what I can tell
> to be accurate and appropriate for their topics. (Of course, I'm not
> really qualified to judge the accuracy of some of the articles which
> discuss topics outside my areas of interest.)
>
> My little experiment isn't sufficient to serve as the basis for any
> conclusions, but if two out of ten articles are grammatically-flawed
> stubs, it would seem to support the article's contention that
> Wikipedia doesn't yet meet the quality-control standards of a
> commercial encyclopedia like Encyclopedia Britannica.

This kind of sampling technique is certainly valid as a measure of
quality, though I think that the sample size may be too small.  If we
take a sample of 25 articles and rate them on a zero to four scale (for
a maximum score of 100) it will give us some idea of quality levels.
The first time that it is done it will give us base-line data.  Doing it
again after three months or a year will let us know if we have made any
progress.  To improve objectivity the testing should be done by several
people, and their scores averaged.

One possible general scale:
    0.  A stub or little more than a stub.
    1.  A short incomplete article; this may indicate that it should be
merged with something else.  A stable POV article that everyone has ignored.
    2.  An average article.  It may be POV, but it has a lot of
activity, or even in the middle of an edit war.  The current POV phase
is not relevant since that is likely to change within the next five
minutes.  The writing style may be awkward.
    3.  A good quality article may still have some uncertain material,
or faulty grammar but these can probably be fixed with ease.
    4.  A superior article that provides a comprehensive and neutral
approach to the subject.  The reading of the text flows with ease, and
there are very few minor spelling errors or typos.

Of course similar scales could be established that focus solely on such
things as factual accuracy, grammar, etc.

Another technique might be to sent randomly selected articles to
sympathetic professors who do not for themselves write for Wikipedia,
and ask them to rate the articles as they would term papers.  It does
not matter if the sample includes articles outside of that professor's
field since an encyclopedia might be a place that they would look if
they were trying to inform themselves about it.

Ec