subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions for handling geographical coordinates

body:
--- Egil Kvaleberg <egil at kvaleberg.no> wrote:
>
> The geo database keeps track of all articles in Wikipedia with
> geographic coordinates, and provides the data source for the
> neighborhood information, as well as the data source for other external
> mechanisms taking advantage of the Wikipedia geographical information,
> such as the NASA World Wind Wikipedia overlay.
>
> Additionally, the geo database will provide data for the future Wikimap,
> so that the maps produced by Wikimaps will contain all the relevant
> information from Wikipedia as clickable points. For this, geo attributes
> are crucial: Airports really should appear as airports on the map,
> mountains as mountains, and cities as cities, with the right magnitude.

I work with mappable data every day (I'm a GIS specialist) and I think what you
guys have so far in this set of features is way, way cool.

Which reminds me - I should take a closer look at Magnus' WikiGIS module to see
if it is going in the right direction.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: suggestion for coming fundraising drives

body:
--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Don't forget to remind us of this important point. Do you have links
> available or is it on your computer ?

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Bank_history/2004

That document is done as far as I'm concerned.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Egil Kvaleberg wrote:
> 1. How should translations for extensions be handled? It would of course
> not be a problem adding to the existing resources in phase3/languages,
> but does translations for extensions belong there?

You can hook in to the main localization system by defining messages
like this:
$wgMessageCache->addMessage("searchnumber", "Results $1-$2 of
$3");

but there afaik isn't a clean standard way of defining different
defaults for each language yet.

> 2. Should extensions be put in the extensions module or in the
> phase3/extensions directory?

Extensions that go into our main CVS should go in the extensions module.
The MediaWiki distribution bundle is built directly from the phase3
module and should have a clean, empty extensions subdirectory.

At some point it would be nice to have more accessible releases of
individual extensions...

> 3. Should these 3 extensions be put in the same place (requiring only
> one include in Localsettings.php to enable), or in 3 different
> directories?. I am currently using 3 different extensions, but I think
> having just one is better. I am also wondering about naming and policy.
> "Geo" seems to be taken.

If they go together well and you wouldn't expect to enable/disable them
separately (for instance, for different security needs etc) then it
might make sense to bundle them together for convenience.

extensions/geo currently holds some experimental stuff Magnus was
working on; I'm not sure if this is current.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
El C wrote:
> Indeed, there is no reason to have a purely intellectual impass,
> whereby one side consistently refuses to cite their sources, turn into
> a 'personal' dispute. I realize that, in a certain sense, when one
> fails to provide references after being requested to do so, might be
> counted as a form of misconduct; but that's really a stretch since it
> can take place with all due civility. Of course, when dragged for too
> long, the exchanges almost invariably turn uncivil, which, I think,
> Steve is alluding to as something that can, and should be, avoided.

Fine analysis.

> There is no need for such needless, eliptical stress, on the article
> and those editing it if the content policies (providing verifiable
> sources when requested to do so) are adhered to, as a matter of
> principle, not merely loose convention.

So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it.

*greetings*
elian


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5 work and general notes

body:
Tels wrote:
> With Perl v5.8.x there are now fixed release deadlines and they are
> strictly adhered to, which resulted in quite a bit of released versions -
> currently 5.8.7 is at the door.

Remember we've been doing two to three major version releases a year,
which is not absurdly slow. Fashionably 'aggressive' projects like
Gnome, Fedora Core, etc are generally targetting similar 6-month release
intervals, which people sometimes complain are too fast. :)

mediawiki-stable: 2003-08-29
1.1.0: 2003-12-08
1.2.0: 2004-03-24
1.3.0: 2004-08-12
1.4.0: 2005-03-20 [approx]

> That's IMHO much better than having v1.4 "nearly ready" since
> 2004-12-03 :)

Well, I wouldn't say it's been "nearly ready" since December 3. A *lot*
of important bug fixes got done over the next three months, fixes which
happened because we rolled it out into use in an environment where it
would get a lot of stress testing and where we could deploy our fixes
immediately at a point where we wouldn't dare declare it ready for the
public. :)

Many people don't keep up with releases well once they've set up their
sites, so I'm pretty leery about releasing a new 'stable' version too early.

However I had hoped to get a formal release out a bit earlier than this
(and would have done so last month, had I not run into security bugs I
wanted to do further testing and investigation on; that lead me to put
out a release candidate instead of a final release). I'll go ahead and
push out 1.4.0 tomorrow; I'm pretty happy with the current state.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Inability or refusal to provide sources is a violation of policy which is
compounded by failure to accept replacement of that material with sourced
material. It can, if one chooses, be handled through the dispute resolution
process. Or, if that process is not acceptable or unavailable for some
reason, be accepted.

Fred

> From: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:03:39 -0500
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
>
> Indeed, there is no reason to have a purely intellectual impass,
> whereby one side consistently refuses to cite their sources, turn into
> a 'personal' dispute. I realize that, in a certain sense, when one
> fails to provide references after being requested to do so, might be
> counted as a form of misconduct; but that's really a stretch since it
> can take place with all due civility. Of course, when dragged for too
> long, the exchanges almost invariably turn uncivil, which, I think,
> Steve is alluding to as something that can, and should be, avoided.
> There is no need for such needless, eliptical stress, on the article
> and those editing it if the content policies (providing verifiable
> sources when requested to do so) are adhered to, as a matter of
> principle, not merely loose convention.
>
> This is another instance in which Conduct/Community, by design,
> muddles and places Content/Encyclopedia to 2ndry role; in needlessly
> -driving- intellectual disputes towards the personal after much waste
> of genuine effort and potential (including amongst the content policy
> violators themselevs, who are, yes, encouraged, but not urged, to
> follow said policies) ensue. In short, it's not a republic.
>
> El_C
>
>> I  just don't want any personal arguments between me and RJII on the talk
>> pages to divert attention from, or overwhelm, these content-issues.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Under our current policy, the only way to enforce the policy requiring
providing sources is to use the dispute resolution policy. Perhaps
slrubenstein, or someone else, can offer an alternative...

I believe that is the point of this discussion.

Fred

> From: Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 05:30:53 +0100
> To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
>
> El C wrote:
>> Indeed, there is no reason to have a purely intellectual impass,
>> whereby one side consistently refuses to cite their sources, turn into
>> a 'personal' dispute. I realize that, in a certain sense, when one
>> fails to provide references after being requested to do so, might be
>> counted as a form of misconduct; but that's really a stretch since it
>> can take place with all due civility. Of course, when dragged for too
>> long, the exchanges almost invariably turn uncivil, which, I think,
>> Steve is alluding to as something that can, and should be, avoided.
>
> Fine analysis.
>
>> There is no need for such needless, eliptical stress, on the article
>> and those editing it if the content policies (providing verifiable
>> sources when requested to do so) are adhered to, as a matter of
>> principle, not merely loose convention.
>
> So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it.
>
> *greetings*
> elian
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
The content of Wikipedia articles ought not be decided by majority vote of
those who edit that particular article. For one thing, that policy would
encourage conflict. After all, who is interested and why?

It is not necessary for use of the dispute resolution procedure that there
be personal attacks or lack of civility. Simple persistance in violation of
a policy, however politely done, is enough. And, in my opinion, that does
include insistence on placing a kooky point of view in an article.

Fred

> From: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 07:03:20 -0500
> To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
>
> Most content disputes are associated with *behaviour* that oversteps
> one or more Wikipedia policies, and while there is no arbitration or
> mediation process for content, there are numerous dispute resolution
> systems that do focus on behaviour.
>
> A problematic editor who is "wrong", is also probably violating the
> policies on "no original research", "cite your sources", and "neutral
> point of view".    It also usually works out that a person who
> persists in adding invalid material to articles in violation of these
> policies will also violate the policies against "personal attacks" and
> on "civility".  This isn't always the case, and unfortunately it often
> happens that the dispute becomes so heated that nobody maintains the
> moral high ground on these points.
>
> Nevertheless, I think most content disputes can be treated as
> behavioural issues and resolved on the basis of existing policies
> without anybody needing to decide the actual content issue.   The
> [[Capitalism]] article is not a test case for content disputes because
> the problem editor has violated a number of Wikipedia policies, such
> as "cite your sources".
>
> A real test case would be one where a person was politely and civilly
> putting a kooky point of view into an article, while cheerfully
> admitting that it was only one of the valid points of view that must
> be presented under NPOV, and happily citing sources -- all kooky as
> well.   As long as it was not original research, and there were some
> sources for it, however laughable, such a dispute could not be
> resolved without a decision on the merits.  At present, the only
> mechanism for that is weight of numbers: the side with the most
> editors wins.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] GFDL violation - Laborlawtalk.com

body:
/http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/The_Foundation_Series
/
I wrote the vast majority of that article. (Seriously) That's my copyright they're violationg.

<sarcasm> Burn them to the ground and salt the earth!</sarcasm>

--Mark


from_name: Brian M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Most content disputes are associated with *behaviour* that oversteps
one or more Wikipedia policies, and while there is no arbitration or
mediation process for content, there are numerous dispute resolution
systems that do focus on behaviour.

A problematic editor who is "wrong", is also probably violating the
policies on "no original research", "cite your sources", and "neutral
point of view".    It also usually works out that a person who
persists in adding invalid material to articles in violation of these
policies will also violate the policies against "personal attacks" and
on "civility".  This isn't always the case, and unfortunately it often
happens that the dispute becomes so heated that nobody maintains the
moral high ground on these points.

Nevertheless, I think most content disputes can be treated as
behavioural issues and resolved on the basis of existing policies
without anybody needing to decide the actual content issue.   The
[[Capitalism]] article is not a test case for content disputes because
the problem editor has violated a number of Wikipedia policies, such
as "cite your sources".

A real test case would be one where a person was politely and civilly
putting a kooky point of view into an article, while cheerfully
admitting that it was only one of the valid points of view that must
be presented under NPOV, and happily citing sources -- all kooky as
well.   As long as it was not original research, and there were some
sources for it, however laughable, such a dispute could not be
resolved without a decision on the merits.  At present, the only
mechanism for that is weight of numbers: the side with the most
editors wins.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again

body:
Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0503200191mar20,1,26199.story?coll=chi-techtopheds-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
/
/*...*
/ A similar hyperbole surrounds such projects as the Wikipedia, a free
online encyclopedia open to all. The Wikipedia's apologists emphasize
the great number of volunteers who have taken part in the project and
the number of entries they have contributed. They emphasize also the
communal nature of the undertaking, in which anyone with a better
understanding of a subject, or a bigger ax to grind, can edit what
someone else has created. Their prime article of faith is that this
openness will inevitably lead to a high level of accuracy and quality.
...
 ----------
Robert McHenry is former editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and is
the author of "How to Know."

/This is the same guy who called us the Faith-based encyclopedia and
compared us to a public toilet-
http://www.techcentralstation.com/111504A.html

--Mark


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
actionforum at comcast.net stated for the record:

> ... all published work is at the bleeding edge of the field.
>
>                    -- Silverback

I suspect that our salvation lies in that phrase.  I doubt that the grad
student exercise that you are suggesting would be hard to include can't
be found somewhere in print -- in physics, frex, we have the Feynmann
Lecture Series.

--
  Sean Barrett     | If I knew then what I know now, I would
  sean at epoptic.com | have said, 'I don't recall.' --Frank
                   | Doyle, FBI agent, testifying under oath
                   | about his previous deposition under oath.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on Answers.com and copyright conditions

body:
I think you are correct that there is possibly a problem as no where is
the author of the picture mentionned, nor a link available.

We should mention this to Jimbo

Ant

MacGyverMagic/Mgm a ?crit:
>>Is anyone else surprised that Answers.com doesn't seem to follow GFDL
>>or CCbySA conditions with regard to images used from Wikipedia, such as
>>crediting authors:
>>
>>http://www.answers.com/library/Wikipedia+Images
>>
>>Or am I misunderstanding the process?
>>
>>Christiaan
>
>
> Well, I could be misunderstanding the process myself, but aren't they
> following GFDL by telling us it's a Wikipedia article to start with?
>
> Mgm


body:
Daniel Mayer a ?crit:
> --- Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Would you think we can provide such information, particularly what
>>happend or would happen with the money ? I think it is worthy to
>>inform on the WMF site.
>
>
> I keep track of spending and do comparisons of actual vs budgeted spending. The
> board has simply not got around to approving what I've done so I can
> prominently link to it yet (probably since I haven't pushed much for that).

Don't forget to remind us of this important point. Do you have links
available or is it on your computer ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: uk.wikinews.org launched

body:
I prefer you go on spamming the list Erik, but it is just my opinion.
However, sorry for not giving feedback sooner, but I just wanted to say
I really appreciated the reports on Wikinews state and found in
particular the last one very informative. Thanks for doing that to keep
us up to date.

Ant

Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> As announced yesterday, I have set up http://uk.wikinews.org/
> (Ukrainian) in accordance with the existing language policy and notified
> the interested participants. This is also the first time the optional
> additional process at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch has been used.
>
> Related question: Should I continue announcing new Wikinews editions to
> foundation-l, or is it enough to post to wikinews-l? I don't want to
> spam the list with this. Coming up next is probably Italian.
>
> All best,
>
> Erik


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it.

That is an over simplification.  There is composition, explaining and summarizing in the introduction to a complex subject.   According to Jimbo, in his nature interview, the no original research was intended for things like keeping crackpot physics theories from getting into wikipedia.

Disallowing a particular word order or a dependent clause just because someone hasn't used it in a citation before is abusing the rule and results in a lot of the awkward language so many complain about in our articles.  I've read the proposed introductions to the capitalism article most have seemed good faith attempts to capture the various nuances.   Perhaps critics of capitalism want to keep the definitions fluid so that it can be used as a perjorative, but the very ways they use it, usually mean they have identified some negative property they want to claim is intrinsically associated with it, rather than merely co-existing with it anecdotally.

In its simplist form, capitalism is using tools to increase the productivity of labor, a rather intrinsic, almost definitional human characteristic.  Because this is not the direct use of labor to meet ones needs, it requires a little forsight, planning, investment, and even  the forgoing of some current consumption.   Because it flourishes so vibrantly in a system that rewards deferral of consumption with profit (surprise, surprise), the term capitalism has come to be associated and confused with and ultimately to actually MEAN those conditions which allow it to flourish, i.e., systems with low information and transaction costs (free markets, contract law, a culture of honesty and opposition to fraud) and which ease the raising of capital with limited liability artificial legal entities.

                    -- Silverback


from_name: Sj

subject: [Foundation-l] What is de.wikiversity.org?

body:
On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 09:24:01 +0100, Nicolas Weeger
<nicolas.weeger at laposte.net> wrote:
> > > The part I don't like is that there is no trace

It would be a nice optional feature to turn on database-auditing for
all changes to the database, which would provide a trace for such
things.   But that doesn't exist yet.  I agree that without such a
solution, it's most transparent to do such things as a logged-in user
(with sysop capacity, if neccessary) rather than as a developer.  +sj+


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Ticket#: 115103-FW] Just wondering

body:
On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 01:15:38 -0800, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Wikimedia Foundation wrote:
>
> >---- Forwarded message from "O'Neil, David MSER:EX"
> ><Dave.ONeil at gems8.gov.bc.ca> ----
> >
> >Date:
> >From: "O'Neil, David MSER:EX" <Dave.ONeil at gems8.gov.bc.ca>
> >To: "'board at wikimedia.org'" <board at wikimedia.org>
> >Cc:
> >Reply-To:
> >Subject: [Ticket#: 115103-FW] Just wondering
> >
> >
> >
> >>Hello,
> >>      Just wondering what the policy on materials that are embedded in
> >>your pages, when the material is taken from other sites?  I noticed a
> >>map on
> >>site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BCMap-doton-Victoria.png
> >><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BCMap-doton-Victoria.png> )  that
> >>originally came from our web site
> >>(http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/pop/maps/rdmap.htm
> >><http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/pop/maps/rdmap.htm> ).  The real
> >>source
> >>of this image really should be BC Stats, Ministry of Management
> >>Services.
> >>Descriptive bits were removed from the image, but I don't think it
> >>removes
> >>the reality of the actual source of the image.  I'm not that retentive,
> >>but
> >>we try to always properly attribute source, to avoid confusion (among
> >>other
> >>things).
> >>
> >>Cheers
> >>
> >>David O'Neil,  Manager
> >>Population Section, BC Stats
> >>Service BC
> >>Ministry of Management Services
> >>
> >>email: Dave.ONeil at gems8.gov.bc.ca
> >>tel: 250-387-0335    fax: 250-387-0329
> >>www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca <www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >---- End forwarded message ----
> >
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >Hello,
> >       Just wondering what the policy on materials that are embedded in
> >your pages, when the material is taken from other sites?  I noticed a map on
> >site (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BCMap-doton-Victoria.png
> ><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:BCMap-doton-Victoria.png> )  that
> >originally came from our web site
> >(http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/pop/maps/rdmap.htm
> ><http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/data/pop/maps/rdmap.htm> ).  The real source
> >of this image really should be BC Stats, Ministry of Management Services.
> >Descriptive bits were removed from the image, but I don't think it removes
> >the reality of the actual source of the image.  I'm not that retentive, but
> >we try to always properly attribute source, to avoid confusion (among other
> >things).
> >
> >Cheers
> >
> >David O'Neil,  Manager
> >Population Section, BC Stats
> >Service BC
> >Ministry of Management Services
> >
> >email: Dave.ONeil at gems8.gov.bc.ca
> >tel: 250-387-0335    fax: 250-387-0329
> >www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca <www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca>
> >
> >
> I have some serious doubts about the claims of the BC Government in this
> regard.
>     1. It is really unclear whether our contributor copied these maps
> (and similar ones at other articles that Mr. O'Neill did not mention)
> from the site in question.  True our version differs in that we do not
> include the names for the Regional Districts, but we also do not show an
> inset map from their site that gives greater detail ton the more heavily
> populated southwestern corner of the province.
>     2. The Regional Districts are a creation of legislation.  British
> Columbia does not have counties in the more traditional sense of that
> term.  These districts when they began to be created in 1965 were in
> some respects equivalent to the establishment.  In other jurisdictions
> Mr.O'neil's claim would be tantamount to claiming that a map of the
> counties there are not in the public domain.
>     3. It is not clear that legislative provisions can be copyrighted,
> and it would therefore seem that Mr. O'Neil's claims are ultra vires, no
> matter what is said ion the BC government website.
>
> Ec (a resident of BC)

I hope you're right about this.  However, when I mentioned the
complaint on the uploader (Denelson83)'s talk page, I received a most
unpleasant and uninformative response.  It would seem to be easy for
the uploader to help resolve the issue, rather than ranting about
it...

--
+sj+


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] speakers list nl:Media:Cat-v2.sxi.pdf

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>>
>> In a message dated 3/19/2005 3:42:35 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>> elian at djini.de writes:
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations
>>
>> It may be a good idea to make a powerpoint presentation or short dvd
>> available to potential speakers
>
>
> If you look at the top of the page, you'll find more than just one
> powerpoint presentation (Most are openoffice, though ;-).
>
> Anyway, the persons adding themselves to the list should be able to
> create a presentation on their own. To draw inspirations from others
> is of course not bad, either.
>
> greetings,
> elian

Hoi,
At this moment the list is only about Wikipedia. There is also a
presentation about Wiktionary that I gave in the wiki-meet in Rotterdam
.. Both ppt and OO They can be found here
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary_presentations It may be a good
idea to include them in the "Presentations" page as well  Another
presentation about categorisations also given at the Rotterdam meet can
be found here nl:Afbeelding:Cat-v2.sxi.pdf. It is a ppt presentation
with a wrong extension..

For the record, as I have not had any ack about this. I want to give at
least two presentations; a workshop on soundrecording for the projects
(pronunciations) and a presentation about Wiktionary, this will be
mainly about the Ultimate Wiktionary and how it differs from Wiktionary.
I cannot give a precise outline as it does not exist as such yet.
Another presentation that I think we should have because of it being new
is one about Wikidata. Erik will be propably the best person to give
this presentation/workshop.

Thanks,
    Gerard


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Congratulations are in order (an
	overlooked	milestone)

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikipedia.org_template/temp
>(preview of actual appearance:
>http://portal-test.mediawiki.org/extract2.php?template=Www.wikipedia.org_template/temp
>)
>
>I have received mostly positive feedback for the minor design
>modifications I made. A comment regarding the Cyrillic version of the
>name used in the background: it is intentionally based on the
>Ukrainian version rather than the Russian version because at the
>moment Ukrainian is higher in the list of largest Wikipedias. For the
>same reason, the Hebrew name instead of the Yiddish name, the Arabic
>name instead of the Farsi or Urdu names, etc.
>
>Mark
>
>
Hoi,
I have had a look at the proposed change to the portal page and I do not
like the background with all the languages. It is too cluttered to my
taste. It is also a distraction from the 10 big languages that are being
obscured in this way. I appreciate the effort but I do not like it.
Thanks,
    GerardM

>On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 01:27:54 +0000, David Gerard
><fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
>>Mark Williamson wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>At about the same time, the Georgian Wikipedia grew from around 17
>>>articles to well over 100, and the Armenian Wikipedia grew from about
>>>3 articles to well over 100. The Breton Wikipedia grew from 57 or so
>>>articles to well over 100.
>>>Other Wikipedias had a similar sudden growth just a little bit prior,
>>>such as the Aragonese and Limburgish Wikipedias.
>>>All of this growth occurred in the space of 1-3 weeks, and sometimes even less.
>>>
>>>
>>If someone could go and update the www.wikipedia.org template page
>>accordingly ...
>>
>>- d.
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] no need to remove the article nor the chapter

body:
Yes, we are talking about an existing article to which a copyvio is
added. The proposal we are talking about is:

"Reverting to the point where a substantial amount of infringing text
was added, and deleting *all* modifications after that point..."

That's clearly something for the case where a copyrighted piece is
*added* to an article. Not that I would agree to it for wholly new
copyright violations either. I still see no reason for dumping
additional paragraphs as well.

Andre Engels

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:40:27 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't believe we're referring to existing articles to which
> copyrighted text is added, but rather articles that were 100% copyvio
> but which are edited and thus become "derived works".
>
> Mark
>
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 15:34:18 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Soufron
> <jbsoufron at free.fr> wrote:
> > I agree with you but not for the same reasons.
> >
> > Inserting a copyrighted text in an article is not creating a derivative
> > work from the insterted text, but a derivative work from the original
> > article.
> >
> > The use of the copyrighted text is prohibited, that's for sure.
> >
> > But the article is not a derivative work of this copyrighted text. It
> > is a derivative work of the original article, including a copyrighted
> > work without proper authorization. This derivative work is not
> > forbidden because it derivates of a copyrighted text, but because it is
> > a derivative work including a copyrighted text.
> > Then, removing this part should be far enough.
> >
> > I will provide some jurisprudence about this when I can.
> >
> > > I disagree with this. Do you really intend to allow that if you add
> > > something to an article that has later found to have a bit of text
> > > that is copyrighted, your text should be removed because it 'could be
> > > derived from the copyrighted work'? But what then with using a source?
> > > That 'could be derived' too. Wikipedia is very pro-active when there
> > > are copyright violations, and I think rightfully so. But to delete
> > > non-violating pieces of texts because they appear in one article with
> > > violating pieces is a level of destruction that even as a rather
> > > strong deletionist I find abhorrent.
> >
> > >
> > > Now, if I were to *change* a paragraph that later appeared to be a
> > > copyright violation, that's another issue. But adding something
> > > separate or changing another part of the article are changes I don't
> > > think should be undone. We might as well rollback the whole Wikipedia
> > > (what if we consider Wikipedia as a single work, then it is derived
> > > too, right?)
> > >
> > > Andre Engels
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 23:25:23 -0500, Gregory Maxwell
> > > <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> I am concerned that the current handling of copyright problems on
> > >> wikipedia may be insufficient.  As it stands, after detection the
> > >> offending text is completely removed.
> > >>
> > >> Unfortunately, if there has been a long time span since the insertion
> > >> of the infringing text there may have been a substantial number of
> > >> valuable contributions to the article. With the way that  most content
> > >> grows organically over time, it may be very difficult to say if the
> > >> new text would have been created without the infringing text with any
> > >> certainty.
> > >>
> > >> In the United States the recent tendency in court appears to be to
> > >> favor the most expansive definition of a derived work possible.
> > >> Because of this, I suspect that it would be likely that at least some
> > >> of the contributions made to an article after the insertion of
> > >> infringing text would be found by a US court to be derived, thus
> > >> placing their ownership in question.  This interpretation of derived
> > >> isn't necessitated by current international treaty, and would likely
> > >> be different (and possibly more sane) in other locations, but I
> > >> suspect that US legality is a substantial concern.
> > >>
> > >> Determining if a piece of text is derived from another, at least in
> > >> the over broad sense favored by US courts, is an intractable problem,
> > >> but the policy could do a better job of avoiding these concerns.
> > >> Reverting to the point where a substantial amount of infringing text
> > >> was added, and deleting *all* modifications after that point would be
> > >> much more certain to avoid impinging on the intellectual property
> > >> rights of others.
> > >>
> > >> The cost of destroyed improvements might be mitigated by the benefit
> > >> of creating a greater incentive for frequently contributors to quickly
> > >> catch and remove violating text.
> > >>
> > >> Of course, none of this is legal advice...
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > >> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >>
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Congratulations are in order (an overlooked
	milestone)

body:
Is there a place where I can see the current sizes of the various
languages? The statistics page is still showing the situation of late
December, and going through about 150 languages by hand is an awful
lot of work (I use a list of 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 'largest' languages
for the bot).

Andre Engels

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:46:38 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> At about the same time, the Georgian Wikipedia grew from around 17
> articles to well over 100, and the Armenian Wikipedia grew from about
> 3 articles to well over 100. The Breton Wikipedia grew from 57 or so
> articles to well over 100.
>
> Other Wikipedias had a similar sudden growth just a little bit prior,
> such as the Aragonese and Limburgish Wikipedias.
>
> All of this growth occurred in the space of 1-3 weeks, and sometimes even less.
>
> Mark
>
> On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 21:53:42 EST, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> > With all the hype about English hitting 500k, I just want to point out
> > another milestone that is being overlooked.
> >
> > A while back, Amikeco and some others began pressing for an Ossetian
> > Wikipedia. It took a while, but they finally got it, and in a very short time,  they
> > passed the 100 article mark. This is especially impressive for a language
> > that few people have heard of. Great work for a small group of committed
> > editors.
> >
> > I just want to congratulate them on this achievement, and hope that it
> > inspires some of the other small Wikis to pick up speed and grow.
> >
> > Good work.
> >
> > Danny
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stepanek, George

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Re: I have unblocked Blair P. Houghton.

body:
From: <jfdwolff at doctors.org.uk>
>This is getting ridiculous.
>This issue has now generated close to 60 messages. I urge Blair, his
>detractors and everyone else to stop this discussion.

I apologise for adding to an already overlong debate, but my name has
been mentioned many times, motivations have been attributed to me, and I
would just like an opportunity to respond to the allegations, and to
clear my name. Apart from this one email, I will not post further to
this mailing list. Even if Blair responds--and I have no doubt he
will--I will not be responding.

Before I begin, may I first thank Blair for his recent attempts to
discuss the issues at hand on the Weight Training talk page. I hope that
a compromise can be achieved that will be satisfactory to all parties
concerned.

The fact is that the first revert was made by Blair, not myself. I'm
sorry if this sounds like a kindergarten justification ("he started it",
"no he did"), but this fact sheds light on what follows, so please bear
with me. Here are Blair's original changes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weight_training&diff=11090304&
oldid=11088511

I left the bulk of the changes as they were, and only undid changes to
the lead section that I felt removed information, or put in information
that had already been disputed by three other editors (Sfahey, Taxman
and myself):
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weight_training&diff=11158163&
oldid=11090304

The information that was removed was:
* that whether weight training is effective at building strength depends
upon how it is done
* that weight training provides functional benefits (etc.) only via
increases to strength and muscle size
* that the progressive overload principle is essential to building
strength via weight training

The disputed fact was Blair's assertion that weight training is aerobic
if done at a sufficiently low intensity. I explained my reasoning on the
talk page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Weight_training#Article_summary

This was, at least, an opportunity for Blair to discuss the proposed
changes, and seek consensus before putting in place an agreed text, but
instead he simply reverted my last edit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weight_training&diff=11159169&
oldid=11158163

Why did I revert his revert? Because I didn't want to see one stubborn
individual override the consensus that had been achieved by the other
interested parties.

Why did I count my reverts (first, second, third) in the edit summaries?
Because I didn't want to break the 3RR myself, or give Blair any
opportunity to accuse me of doing so. And because I knew that the revert
war was futile, since we were both limited by the 3RR, and I wanted to
make this fact totally obvious. After my third revert, Blair made the
following changes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weight_training&diff=11177874&
oldid=11171514

While not exactly the same as his previous edits, this edit implemented
all four of the changes that I had discussed on the talk page. I felt
that this was an attempt to subvert the 3RR. I therefore flagged it as a
possible 3RR violation, while mentioning the fact that the 4 edits were
not exactly alike. I left the matter to the discretion of the admins
monitoring the 3RR page.

I mentioned the potential 3RR violation to Taxman while asking his
advice whether to open an RfC. He suggest not to do so yet, and to "try
as hard as you can to see what part of what he has to say is helpful and
incorporate those changes." Being an admin Taxman could have blocked
Blair at that point, but he chose instead to merely revert once more,
and leave it to another admin to block Blair. Taxman's behaviour has
been beyond reproach at all times.

After Taxman's last revert, I attempted to create a compromise version
that included as many of Blair's grammatical and phrasing changes as
possible, but including all of the information that Blair had removed,
and without the disputed assertion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Weight_training&diff=11226439&
oldid=11185482

From: Blair P. Houghton <blair at houghton.net>
>It was a trap.  GeorgeStepanek accepted almost all of my edits, but
>only after I was blocked.
>Clearly he wasn't disagreeing with everything I was saying, he was just

>reverting the page to goad me into re-reverting it.

This is simply not true. I did not, and still do not agree with the four
changes described above, and that I have discussed at some length on the
talk page. I utterly reject the insinuations that I somehow "tricked"
Blair into breaking the 3RR. Indeed, by counting the reverts, I was
making it as obvious as possible just how many reverts we were each
doing.

From: John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com>
>If you would stop blabbing about Taxman and George for a minute to
>understand this, we might get somewhere. Just because they are the
>aggressors does not give you the right or privilege to go ahead and
>participate in the fight.

I hope that the above evidence is sufficient to show that I was not "the
aggressor" in this "fight". I do not wish to have such aspersions
against my name left on the record.

I am aware that this issue has become a political football between those
who support the 3RR, and those who oppose it. I do not wish to enter
this debate, except to mention some aspects that no-one has yet
mentioned:

1. Yes, Cecropia had every right to unblock Blair. But think about it:
isn't this just reverting CryptoDerk's actions? What efforts did
Cecropia make to discuss the issue with CryptoDerk, and achieve
consensus? As the admin community grows, are we going to see more and
more "admin revert wars" pitting one admin against another? Isn't this
just going to motivate troublemakers to try to exploit differences of
opinion between admins?

2. Yes, a 24-hour block is ineffective in itself at resolving ongoing
disputes between long-time users. But a 3RR sanction is not ipso facto
meaningless in such cases. To compare it to a real-world example, why do
we have $50 parking fines if most people can easily spare $50? A
sanction like this is effective because it unequivocally conveys the
message that you have broken the rules. It also serves as evidence of
poor conduct for any future investigation of the dispute.

3. The 3RR prevents edit wars with hundreds of reverts on each side.
Does anyone seriously want to go back to that? It's an arbitrary rule,
to be sure, but rules help people to work together by clearly indicating
where the boundaries of acceptable conduct lie.

4. Does a paraphrase count as a revert? If not, then won't we see
edit-warriors adding and removing the same information over and over
again in slightly different words? A strict interpretation of the 3RR
rule will simply convert revert-wars to paraphrase-wars. It will be just
another way to game the system.

5. No-one can build the Wikipedia alone. Indeed, given how hard it is to
write to a strict NPOV, I would argue that no-one can even create a
single article alone. Jimbo's primary goal--creating an encyclopedia--is
impossible without a community that can work together effectively. We
should find ways to identify, sanction and eliminate any and all forms
of disruptive behaviour, simply because they just stop us from achieving
our primary goal.

From: JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com>
>>Am I the only one who feels that the 3RR is making life harder for
>>admins?
>
>I'm sure you're not the only one, but I feel quite the opposite.  More
>importantly, I think it's made it less likely for regular (i.e. non
>edit-warrior) editors to be scared away from Wikipedia.

May I note some of Blair's assertions that no-one has yet challenged. He
refers to me as one of the "Evil Ones", disparages my appearance and
compares my actions to "rape". Is this kind of language and conduct
acceptable in Wikipedia?

I have found this dispute to be deeply unpleasant and stressful, and I
really do not wish to find myself in this kind of situation again. I am
therefore withdrawing from Wikipedia. I will still read articles, and
fix typos when I find them, but I will no longer be working seriously on
any more Wikipedia articles.

Thank you for reading my comments.

George Stepanek


from_name: Richard Holton

body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 08:57:06 -0500, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I hope you're right about this.  However, when I mentioned the
> complaint on the uploader (Denelson83)'s talk page, I received a most
> unpleasant and uninformative response.  It would seem to be easy for
> the uploader to help resolve the issue, rather than ranting about
> it...
>

Denelson83's expressed attitude on his/her talk page seems to be in
direct contradiction to the Wikipedia policy on
[[Wikipedia:Civility]]. His/her talk page says, in part:

"any time I am sent a message with regard to bad edits, copyright
violations, or any other alleged negative contributions, it is
involuntarily interpreted as either an assault on my intelligence, an
action I take extremely personally, or a pure threat..."

Taken at face value, this leads me to believe that Denelson83 has
issues that preclude civil participation on a collaborative project
such as Wikipedia.

Also, Denelson83 is not the first user I've come across who insists on
maintaining a blank user page. It seems that one likely motive for
this is the desire for their user name to "stand out" in various
listings. Another possibility is the desire to discourage the use of
their talk page. Either way, I think this is a practice that we should
actively discourage, with changes to the software if necessary.

-- Rich Holton
en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: kylelutze

subject: [Foundation-l] speakers list

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

If people would like these presentations streamed live, freematrix radio
is willing to work with the event managers and setup a way to do this.
For more information you can bug Apple in #freematrix on
irc.freenode.net, email me, or visit http://freematrix.us

Kyle

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
| Hiho,
|
| Since we quite often receive more or less important requests for
| wikipedia presentations, I am compiling a speakers' list on
| http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Presentations
|
| I already added some people where I have reason to believe that they
| will do this
| Please
| a) add yourself if you are willing and feel qualified to hold talks
| about Wikipedia with
| * your area of expertise (general, technical, scientific studies etc.)
| * the languages in which you can speak
| * your area
| and
| b) provide me with a contact address so that I can mail such requests
| around
|
| It would be especially nice to have some of the developers there.
|
| greetings,
| elian
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCPbUHqTDXh8jUGRYRAsGZAJ9ZWBaTLbftecEoBsUv0rp03Aa1tACeNRc5
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subject: [Foundation-l] speakers list


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit speed choking

references:
<d8b8be2d0503151025d7b28ad@mail.gmail.com>
	<4239e035.23eb7a3f.05a4.ffffdda6SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.gmail.com>
	<d8b8be2d050317165050e4ee14@mail.gmail.com>
	<423AC0D1.5040105@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<d8b8be2d05031902526c6784d2@mail.gmail.com>
	<cc4d4bcb96bf31aa3df2611c18eea8a4@sbcglobal.net>

body:
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:10:39 -0600, Phil Sandifer
<sandifer at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> What would be the result/problem/whatever of an edit speed throttle on
> new accounts. I'm thinking an edit a minute for the first 100 edits. I
> know edit count is a resource intensive query,

This sounds like a great idea.  It's important precisely because it
increases the leverage serious contributors have over repeat vandals.

As to the technical aspect: if a separate table like "user_data" has a
field "edit_count" that is updated every time the user makes an edit,
it will not be so expensive to record (on-edit actions are
comparatively reasonable), and will be cheap to query.  That would not
even be a particularly difficult database-change to make, since it
could be a new table, rather than a new column in an old one.

SJ

> I don't know the tech answers here as I'm not a dev. My main two
> questions are:
>
> 1) Is an edit throttle feasable?
> 2) What good reasons are there to not throttle contributors for their
> first 100 edits so that they cannot launch widespread  changes? (That
> is, does anything that people tend to do in their first 100 edits
> actually require editing more than once a minute?)

None that I can think of.   While we're at it, we could disable the
"move page" tab for the same period of time.  As you(?) mentioned
elsewhere, a site like slashdot has a permanent edit throttle, without
noticeably dampening user enthusiasm..

--
+sj+


subject:
[Wikitech-l] You have lots of money to spend ;
	time to get to it! :-)

body:
Doors keep slamming of late...  Alex, you were less abrasive and far
more helpful than a lot of people who troll the mailing lists, but it
did feel as though you were trolling for a while there.

Don't have such a thin skin!  I'm not a dev, but I was excited to see
your energetic input.  There are many people who are thinking about
ways to improve the site's performance -- people who spend hours a day
doing exactly that.  If you make your suggestions politely, especially
if you do so on-wiki where they will outlive temporary local disputes,
they will be heard loud and clear.

SJ


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Spelling -
	http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niedziela_Palmowa

body:
Hi since today is Palm Sunday I am creating this on it.wiktionary.org
[[Domenica delle Palme]]

Now I had a look at the different wikipedias linked and I found a
difference in Spelling on the Polish wikipedia.

The name of the page is:

  Niedziela Palmowa

The use in te text is:
*Niedziela palmowa

So which writing is right - or maybe all are correct?

Or does it have to be writte like this:
**niedziela palmowa

I'll send you a second - and maybe third mail later on as there will be
some more questions.

Ciao, Sabine
*

--

Sabine Cretella
Translations
s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
Meetingplace for translators
http://www.wesolveitnet.com
*****
Vuoi la parola del giorno nella tua casella di posta?
Invia un'e-mail vuota a:
laparoladelgiorno-subscribe at yahoogroups.com


from_name: MaPhi Werner

body:
Thanks a lot for all this information!

Brion Vibber wrote:
>> Is the HEAD branch in CVS the one which will become REL1_5? (I don't
>> understand CVS very much)
>
> Right; at some point we'll create a REL1_5 branch which will freeze the
> state of the trunk.

Do you have a rough plan how long implementations of new features will
be accepted before 1.5 goes into strict bug-fixing mode?

Thanks,

MaPhi


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
actionforum at comcast.net wrote

>  I've read the proposed introductions to the capitalism article most have
> seemed good faith attempts to capture the various nuances.

Generalising from a couple of cases (republic, capitalism)  is not much
better than generalising from a single example.  But perhaps the area of
political science (plus socio-economic whatever) is particularly subject to
this sort of definitional snarl.  Anyway, 'definition of capitalism' sounds
like an essay topic to me.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Elisabeth Bauer wrote

> So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it.

Doesn't that go too far?

Charles


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: no need to remove the article nor the chapter

in_reply_to:
<6faf39c905032000226eb6dace@mail.gmail.com> (Andre Engels's
	message of "Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:22:38 +0100")

body:
Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> writes:

> That's clearly something for the case where a copyrighted piece is
> *added* to an article. Not that I would agree to it for wholly new
> copyright violations either. I still see no reason for dumping
> additional paragraphs as well.

As long as someone can claim the additional paragraphs are "derived"
from the copyvio, you would better remove the additional paragraphs as
early as possible.

--
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                           |      ,__o
                                                        |    _-\_<,
                                                        |   (*)/'(*)
Key fingerprint = F138 B28F B7ED E0AC 1AB4  AA7F C90A 35C3 E9D0 5D1C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Fred, I wasn't suggesting that the "weight of numbers" mechanism
method of dispute resolution is *desirable* in the case of content
disputes.

However, I'm afraid that is effectively the mechanism we have today,
as long as everyone stays within such policies as NPOV, NOR, civility,
etc, which define proper behaviour.

By the way, "weight of numbers" doesn't necessarily translate to a
vote.  Despite no vote being taken,  a single editor --  even one who
right and truth on his side (as he will generally believe) --  cannot
maintain his position against a larger number of editors on the other
"side",  unless he violates the behavioural policies, such as 3RR.  A
single editor insisting on his position against the consensus of other
editors will generally be considered to be edit-warring, even if he
happens to be right.   Wikipedia policies generally work when truth
aligns with the numerical majority.   Our policies have problems when
this is not the case.   I think, fortunately, our policies generally
do work -- especially in the long run.  But it isn't hard to find
exceptions in the short run.

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 06:44:14 -0700, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The content of Wikipedia articles ought not be decided by majority vote of
> those who edit that particular article. For one thing, that policy would
> encourage conflict. After all, who is interested and why?
>
> It is not necessary for use of the dispute resolution procedure that there
> be personal attacks or lack of civility. Simple persistance in violation of
> a policy, however politely done, is enough. And, in my opinion, that does
> include insistence on placing a kooky point of view in an article.
>
> Fred
>
> > From: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>
> > Reply-To: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> > <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 07:03:20 -0500
> > To: El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
> >
> > Most content disputes are associated with *behaviour* that oversteps
> > one or more Wikipedia policies, and while there is no arbitration or
> > mediation process for content, there are numerous dispute resolution
> > systems that do focus on behaviour.
> >
> > A problematic editor who is "wrong", is also probably violating the
> > policies on "no original research", "cite your sources", and "neutral
> > point of view".    It also usually works out that a person who
> > persists in adding invalid material to articles in violation of these
> > policies will also violate the policies against "personal attacks" and
> > on "civility".  This isn't always the case, and unfortunately it often
> > happens that the dispute becomes so heated that nobody maintains the
> > moral high ground on these points.
> >
> > Nevertheless, I think most content disputes can be treated as
> > behavioural issues and resolved on the basis of existing policies
> > without anybody needing to decide the actual content issue.   The
> > [[Capitalism]] article is not a test case for content disputes because
> > the problem editor has violated a number of Wikipedia policies, such
> > as "cite your sources".
> >
> > A real test case would be one where a person was politely and civilly
> > putting a kooky point of view into an article, while cheerfully
> > admitting that it was only one of the valid points of view that must
> > be presented under NPOV, and happily citing sources -- all kooky as
> > well.   As long as it was not original research, and there were some
> > sources for it, however laughable, such a dispute could not be
> > resolved without a decision on the merits.  At present, the only
> > mechanism for that is weight of numbers: the side with the most
> > editors wins.
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Setting up a Scots Wikipedia

body:
Derek Ross wrote:

> I'd like to request that a Scots language Wikipedia be set up.
 > There are estimated to be around 1.6 million Scots speakers
 > together with at least another 2 million Scots who passively
 > understand the language to some extent.  This must make it
 > one of the largest European languages for which we do not have
 > a Wiki. The 3 letter language code for Scots is sco so the URL
 > should be http://sco.wikipedia.org/ since there is no two
 > letter code. I am a native speaker and am more than willing to
 > start the necessary translation and configuration work once the
 > initial site has been created.

Do you know the guy who does http://www.scotstext.org/ ? If he can
be enticed along, he'd be great for the job. That site scans and
puts up old texts in Scots, inconsistent orthography and all; he'd
be good for sorting that out too.

- d.


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Hi Derek (and Angela),

So far, while the requests have been piling up, there have been some
new Wikipedia creations, especially in cases where there was no ISO
code ambiguity (Tumbuka, Friulian, Ossetic).

My reccommendation, Derek, is to start a Scots Wikipedia at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/test-wp/sco/ , and once you have the
mainpage and perhaps a couple of articles, it won't be hard to get a
developer to create the Scots Wikipedia for you.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 11:29:43 +0100, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 02:37:11 -0500 (EST), Derek Ross <derekrss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> > I'd like to request that a Scots language Wikipedia be set up.
>
> I suggest you add the request to
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages but until
> there is a policy for whether or not these can be created, the
> requests are likely to just keep mounting up.
>
> A proposed policy is at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages
>
> Do you know if any other people are interested in contributing to this wiki?
>
> Angela.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Charles Matthews wrote:
> Elisabeth Bauer wrote

>> So there is a policy to provide sources when requested? Then enforce it.

> Doesn't that go too far?

It would mostly be enforced by peer pressure, i.e. "provide something
plausibly a source and that goes in. If you can't manage that after
repeated requests, it's original research and we're removing it."
Presumably this is failing in this case.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Translations of [[Palm Sunday]]

body:
As many of you might know I have an Italian mailing list where I send in
a word a day together with related links - this not only to promote
wiktionary, but the wikimedia projects in general.

This includes links to wikipedia, commons, wikibooks (always if I find
ressources that are available or if someone tells me). Yesterday Saturn
for example was also linked to the pictures on commons.

Now to day we have Palm Sunday for many people in the world, in two
weeks this recurrence is for the orthodox church - and of course
whenever there are special days I try to send in the translation of just
this day.

So starting from the English wikipedia I added translations to the
article - searched for the French version with google etc. and added the
Italian and German Pronunciation.

The result is here:

http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Domenica_delle_Palme

What I would like to ask you now is to check, if the copied and pasted
names are really correct, add pronuciation-files to meta and link it
here (or just tell me how the file on meta is called - I can then link it).

If you have languages to add, please do so - at this moment there is

:*{{cs}}: [[Kv?tn? ned?le]]
:*{{de}}: [[Palmsonntag]] {{m}}
[[Media:de-Palmsonntag.ogg|<small>''Ascolta la pronuncia''</small>]]
:*{{en}}: [[Palm Sunday]]
:*{{fi}}: [[palmusunnuntai]]
:*{{fr}}: [[dimanche des Palmes]]
:*{{nl}}: [[Palmzondag]], [[Palmpasen]], [[Passiezondag]]
:*{{no}}: [[Palmes?ndag]]
:*{{pl}}: [[Niedziela palmowa]]

And who is worrying about the user interface: if you are logged in you
can set the language of the ui by clicking on "preferenze" in the line
where your user name is and set it to the desired language. If you don't
want to do this, just klick on "modifica" when you have the Italian user
face.

If someone is worrying that he/she doesn't know the language name in
Italian to insert the translation: no problem - just insert the language
code like shown above (e.g. {{de}} for German) - when you save your
changes the language name will show up.

I'll send another mail today referring to Persian New Year, so please be
patient :-) It's a special day and the word of the day list today will
receive two words of the day.

Thanks!

Ciao, Sabine

--

Sabine Cretella
Translations
s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
Meetingplace for translators
http://www.wesolveitnet.com
*****
Vuoi la parola del giorno nella tua casella di posta?
Invia un'e-mail vuota a:
laparoladelgiorno-subscribe at yahoogroups.com


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Translations of [[Palm Sunday]]


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
The single editor needs to stop when he realizes the situation and use the
dispute resolution procedure rather than reverting and edit warring. And the
case needs to be taken up on that basis alone, not rejected until there are
a bunch of reverts and personal attacks.

By only taking cases which exhibit an emotional blowup, we, in effect,
demand that as a threshold requirement.

Fred

> From: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Brian M <brian1954 at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 10:38:58 -0500
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content
>
> Fred, I wasn't suggesting that the "weight of numbers" mechanism
> method of dispute resolution is *desirable* in the case of content
> disputes.
>
> However, I'm afraid that is effectively the mechanism we have today,
> as long as everyone stays within such policies as NPOV, NOR, civility,
> etc, which define proper behaviour.
>
> By the way, "weight of numbers" doesn't necessarily translate to a
> vote.  Despite no vote being taken,  a single editor --  even one who
> right and truth on his side (as he will generally believe) --  cannot
> maintain his position against a larger number of editors on the other
> "side",  unless he violates the behavioural policies, such as 3RR.  A
> single editor insisting on his position against the consensus of other
> editors will generally be considered to be edit-warring, even if he
> happens to be right.   Wikipedia policies generally work when truth
> aligns with the numerical majority.   Our policies have problems when
> this is not the case.   I think, fortunately, our policies generally
> do work -- especially in the long run.  But it isn't hard to find
> exceptions in the short run.


from_name: Angela

body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 02:37:11 -0500 (EST), Derek Ross <derekrss at yahoo.ca> wrote:
> I'd like to request that a Scots language Wikipedia be set up.

I suggest you add the request to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages but until
there is a policy for whether or not these can be created, the
requests are likely to just keep mounting up.

A proposed policy is at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages

Do you know if any other people are interested in contributing to this wiki?

Angela.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 17:40:27 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't believe we're referring to existing articles to which
> copyrighted text is added, but rather articles that were 100% copyvio
> but which are edited and thus become "derived works".

Well that was the issue that I brought up, existing articles where a
substantial amount of copyvio text is added.

Consider an entirely new section, all copyvio.  I think it's unlikely
that additions, even fairly substantial ones in that section could be
considered anything but derived works.

It becomes difficult to judge which edits are derived works,
ultimately you can't tell without a court opinion ... and since we'd
rather not go there, I contend that the only sure course of action
would be destroy all updates to an article past the point in time a
copyvio was added.

That might not be the best thing to do, but I think it's important to
discuss the risks of doing anything less.

Just like those running the big content distribution houses are
attempting to stop the all use of p2p applications because even
completely legal p2p use puts their business model at risk, wikipedia
will likely find itself threatened by content hoarders whom we are
outcompeating.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edit speed choking

references:
<d8b8be2d0503151025d7b28ad@mail.gmail.com>
	<4239e035.23eb7a3f.05a4.ffffdda6SMTPIN_ADDED@mx.gmail.com>
	<d8b8be2d050317165050e4ee14@mail.gmail.com>
	<423AC0D1.5040105@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<d8b8be2d05031902526c6784d2@mail.gmail.com>
	<cc4d4bcb96bf31aa3df2611c18eea8a4@sbcglobal.net>
	<742dfd0605032006481504e3f7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 09:48:20 -0500, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 12:10:39 -0600, Phil Sandifer

> > 2) What good reasons are there to not throttle contributors for their
> > first 100 edits so that they cannot launch widespread  changes? (That
> > is, does anything that people tend to do in their first 100 edits
> > actually require editing more than once a minute?)
>
> None that I can think of.   While we're at it, we could disable the
> "move page" tab for the same period of time.  As you(?) mentioned
> elsewhere, a site like slashdot has a permanent edit throttle, without
> noticeably dampening user enthusiasm..
>
As a new user, you might want/need to edit the same page several times
in succession to get things right. Any edit count based throttling
should take that into account.

-- Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Egil Kvaleberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Extensions for handling geographical coordinates

body:
Based on the experience learned from WikiProject Geographical
coordinates, I have prepared three Wikimedia extensions that you may
find useful. The extensions can be enabled individually, but the concept
is certainly more powerful when they are all enabled. I will briefly
outline the extensions here:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A. The geo tag extension

The <geo> tag allows entry of geographical coordinates something in
style with RFC1876. For example:

    <geo>48 46 36 N 121 48 51 W</geo>.

It is designed to be flexible, and easy to use.

Variations of the above allows specification with decimals in various
form, allowing less or more precision.
Additional meta-data can also be specified as attributes for the
location, like this:

        <geo>48 46 36 N 121 48 51 W type:mountain region:US
scale:100000</geo>

In the rendered article, the tag will be replaced with 48*?*46'36''N
121*?*48'51''W, which is also a Wikilink to a page of map resources for
that point.

The main geo tag advantages are:

1. Consistent markup for coordinates.
2. Consistent rendering of coordinates.
3. Wikipedia articles with coordinates will get a 'geo.position' meta
tag, making it compatible with Internet geographic resources, such as
geourl.org.
4. Serves as an enabler for the two other extensions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B. The map sources extension

The map sources extension is the target of the <geo> tag wikilink, and
provides a page of available Internet map resources, in a manner much
like the ISBN resource page. The extension provides functionality to
'preload' external URLs with coordinates, so that most maps are
essentially one click away.

There are currently 30 different built in replacement strings,
supporting various form of specification of scaling and coordinates,
such as UTM, OSGB36 and CH1903.

There exists specialized versions of the map sources page for various
regions (like US and GB). For the global version, there are at present
preloaded pointers to around 20 different map engines.

In addition to the maps, there is a pointer to GeoURL.org, which lists
nearby resources on the Internet.

There is also a direct link for the open source NASA World Wind
software, allowing a new, interactive way of experiencing for aerial
imagery and topological data. World Wind has a plug-in layer for
Wikipedia articles that are tagged with a geographic coordinate.

Assuming the enabling of extension C, there is also a pointer to
neighborhood articles in Wikipedia, listing the articles with Wikilinks,
and their distance and direction from the present point.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C. The geo database extension

The geo database keeps track of all articles in Wikipedia with
geographic coordinates, and provides the data source for the
neighborhood information, as well as the data source for other external
mechanisms taking advantage of the Wikipedia geographical information,
such as the NASA World Wind Wikipedia overlay.

Additionally, the geo database will provide data for the future Wikimap,
so that the maps produced by Wikimaps will contain all the relevant
information from Wikipedia as clickable points. For this, geo attributes
are crucial: Airports really should appear as airports on the map,
mountains as mountains, and cities as cities, with the right magnitude.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For further information, see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geographical_coordinates

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Status

Currently extensions A and B are quite well developed, and have been
tested for a time on an external server. Additionally, a few thousand
articles in the en: Wikipedia are marked with geographic coordinates
using an interim solution with templates, as a proof-of-concept.  They
will be converted to the geo tag if this extension gets enabled for the
English Wikipedia. That will also solve the current problem with
coordinates as arguments for infobox templates. Collection of data
points have been done with an interim, external solution based on some
Perl scripts.

Extension C has also been implemented, but I would want to discuss a few
issues of performance and security before committing the code. More
about this later.

Magnus Manske has been extremely helpful in the work on integration with
Wikimaps, and that work will continue.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Questions

Starting with extensions A and B, I have some questions:

1. How should translations for extensions be handled? It would of course
not be a problem adding to the existing resources in phase3/languages,
but does translations for extensions belong there?

2. Should extensions be put in the extensions module or in the
phase3/extensions directory?

3. Should these 3 extensions be put in the same place (requiring only
one include in Localsettings.php to enable), or in 3 different
directories?. I am currently using 3 different extensions, but I think
having just one is better. I am also wondering about naming and policy.
"Geo" seems to be taken.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally, I would like to give a big thank you to all participants in
WikiProject Geographical coordinates who have helped immensely with
suggestions practical work.

Regards,
Egil Kvaleberg
en:User:Egil


body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 10:35:38 +0100, Karl Eichwalder <ke at gnu.franken.de> wrote:
> As long as someone can claim the additional paragraphs are "derived"
> from the copyvio, you would better remove the additional paragraphs as
> early as possible.

Right.   Keeping all changes in a publicly accessible version control
system is beyond fantastic, but it's also a liability.

Elseware the past expansive definition of derived works has been
tolerable largely because normal writing models don't have so much
copyvio risk, and the lack of (open) version control makes proving a
transitory risk near impossible.

I think I would have a good chance, equipped with a video like the
'heavy metal umlat', of convincing a court in the US that years of
wikipedia contributions on an article are the derived works of a
couple of paragraphs of copyvio that spent a few months in the text
early on and then were surgically removed.

I agree that this makes no sense, but thats what intellectual property
law has become in the US.  At wikipedia we have two additional
complicating factors as well, a public history that makes making the
case easy, and a court system which is likely to view the work of
wikipedia as unimportant compared to the properties of, say, corbis
because we don't charge for it, but they charge for their content.


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5 work and general notes

body:
>
>
Tels schrieb:
 >Maybe it would be a good idea to put a roadmap or "planned release date"

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roadmap


from_name: Craig Franklin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:WikiIndex (idea)

body:
You know, the more I hear about this idea, the more I enjoy it.  Personally,
I don't really see the point of the categories system - you get everything
mixed together with no context that way, and I don't see any way it can be
made to work so that you can do a search for multiple keywords, like
"Jewish", "Authors", "Died 1945", "Females".  Heck, I imagine that if you
tried to put a category of any of those together, some well-meaning person
would probably delete them anyway, claiming they weren't specific enough.

The only thing is that it should be kept as simple as possible, some of the
proposals I see are too complicated for "ordinary" users to understand.  We
shouldn't require that a user be familiar with complex metadata tagging
schemes just to write articles - even if those schemes are the widely
adopted standards on the Internet at large.

Regards,
- Craig Franklin

-------------------
Craig Franklin
PO Box 764
Ashgrove, Q, 4060
Australia
http://www.halo-17.net - Australia's Favourite Source of Indie Music, Art,
and Culture.


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject:
[Wikitech-l] You have lots of money to spend ;	time to get to
	it! :-)

body:
Alex J. Avriette wrote:
>>How about current versions of relevant software that we use in
>>production? Since you don't even care enough to check whether MySQL
>>ships compiled for AMD64 before spouting off, I guess I shouldn't be
>>surprised.
>
>
> Brion, if you don't want me here, please tell me so, and please
> indicate to jwales and chaper that you felt this pissing contest of
> yours was more important than my input -- which both requested.

I'd be happy for help with discussing and researching options from
anyone with some knowledge in the area.  You offered help, I accepted
the offer as an individual, hopefully with the understanding I wasn't
doing so as a representative of anyone else.  Among the many things that
puzzle me about this entire episode, there are three in particular that
stand out:

1.  I haven't received a reply to my last email to you directly.

2.  Someone else contacted me to let me know that he/she had the
distinct impression that you thought the two of us (you and I) were on
bad terms personally, now, for some reason.  I made a couple of informal
inquiries, but haven't gotten any information and decided to just let
that go for now as rumor.

3.  Your references to me and to Jimbo seem to indicate that you feel
like you've been appointed some semi-official task, which strikes me as
odd.  Your reference to both of us requesting your help ("my input --
which both requested") is a good example of that.  In your position, I
would have phrased that a little more like this:  "my input -- which I
offered to both, and both accepted the offer."  This may seem like a
trivial detail at first glance, but the fact of the matter is that you
volunteered and we said to ourselves "Hey, another volunteer should be a
good thing!"  Nobody solicited you as a volunteer.  That doesn't make
your help less valuable, where it's offered, but your apparent belief
that you have some kind of official sanction and that there's a
precedence of importance assigned to your input is, as I indicated,
puzzling to me.

I'd still like to have your input, where it's thoughtful and free of
abrasive qualities that are likely to put off the devs doing sysadmin tasks.

That's just me, though.  I don't speak for anyone else in this.

--
Chad
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


body:
Sj wrote:
> Doors keep slamming of late...  Alex, you were less abrasive and far
> more helpful than a lot of people who troll the mailing lists, but it
> did feel as though you were trolling for a while there.
>
> Don't have such a thin skin!  I'm not a dev, but I was excited to see
> your energetic input.  There are many people who are thinking about
> ways to improve the site's performance -- people who spend hours a day
> doing exactly that.  If you make your suggestions politely, especially
> if you do so on-wiki where they will outlive temporary local disputes,
> they will be heard loud and clear.
>

It seems to me that perhaps we need a "wikidev" equivalent of ESR's
essay "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" on one of the wikis, in an
appropriate location.  Perhaps it could be called "How To Volunteer The
Smart Way".  A few of the most important points should be these:

* Rather than telling us your qualifications and how you'll change
things around here, tell us your skills and make it clear that these
skills are available at the discretion of those who come before.  If
that isn't acceptable to you, consider that you might not be a good fit
for this volunteering effort.

* Be humble.  We want helpers, not managers.

* Start by asking questions, rather than issuing recommendations.  Many
recommendations made by people new to volunteering here have already
been considered and discarded for entirely sensible, but not immediately
obvious, reasons.  Many such recommendations are redundant, because
we're already considering how best to implement them, or whether
implementing them is feasible at this time.  Many such recommendations
have already been implemented or are being implemented now, and you just
don't know about it.

I'm not sure where exactly such a document would go, or I might start
working on it myself, but if it never surfaces anywhere else I'll at
least stick it on my Wikipedia page eventually to give people an idea of
how to approach me, personally, about offering help.

--
Chad
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Tels

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Sunday 20 March 2005 11:59, Thomas Gries wrote:
> Tels schrieb:
>  >Maybe it would be a good idea to put a roadmap or "planned release
>  > date"
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roadmap

Duh! :) (A more prominent link at www.mediawiki.org would be a good idea,
though)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sun Mar 20 12:35:13 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad
 across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at
 them from behind rocks then say things like, 'Oh. Sorry. I thought you
 were someone else.'" -- Terry Pratchett

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from_name: Blair P. Houghton

body:
No, George, the page history shows Sfahey and I were working on it,
including one revert that I made on 10 March, then on 11 March you made
several edits that removed the facts I'd installed, then on 13 March I
edited again, and you reverted it and the actual edit war began.

BTW, the link you posted to what you claim was my first revert went to
the last edit on the page.  I don't know why and I don't care.

Yes, I compared your actions to a rape, and I explained right along with
the comparison why taking that personally would be inane.  That you
would take it out of context in order to grandstand is telling.  Learn
the difference between an analogy and an attack.

I was not acting unilaterally, I was imbuing the article with factual
truth and including some of the elements of the discussion.  I wasn't
participating in the discussion initially because I assumed reasonable
people would accept the facts.  You don't seem to be a reasonable
person, preferring to use your revert to try to hold me hostage in the
talk page.

Your desire to pretend to be the owner of the page precipitated what
followed.  Both Dan100 and I have called you on that.  I am happy to see
that you have taken a step back from the page, but not happy that you
spent the time to create this laughable case.  You persistently force
people into unnecessary discussion of innocuous edits.  The fact that
you reverted then later included all of my additions, but refused to
elide any of yours, is the most telling evidence of all.  You just don't
understand how Wikipedia works.

And if you don't think that embargoing the truth and twisting the facts
and playing politics are less civil than using figurative language to
point out someone else's flawed reasoning, then you don't understand
yourself.

--Blair


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Blair witch-hunting project

body:
"I have found this dispute to be deeply unpleasant and stressful, and I
really do not wish to find myself in this kind of situation again. I am
therefore withdrawing from Wikipedia. I will still read articles, and
fix typos when I find them, but I will no longer be working seriously on
any more Wikipedia articles."

Having been through this kind of crap myself (c/o net-you-know-who) I know how he feels.

This whole affair has been yet another bit of public muckraking sand brawling that has resulted in a longterm contributor leaving (how long has jdwolff been here?) I haven't followed this saga closely, but this certainly stands out as another example of why this kind of dispute needs to be contained and resolved immediately, especially if real names are involved.

--
_______________________________________________
NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at once.
http://datingsearch.lycos.com


body:
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Moin,

On Sunday 20 March 2005 12:35, Tels wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Sunday 20 March 2005 11:59, Thomas Gries wrote:
> > Tels schrieb:
> >  >Maybe it would be a good idea to put a roadmap or "planned release
> >  > date"
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roadmap
>
> Duh! :) (A more prominent link at www.mediawiki.org would be a good
> idea, though)

Btw, roadmap says:

"Note: This page is out of date and was never very accurate."

I think it would be a very good idea to have a fixed release date for
version X and then strictly stick to it instead ofhaving prolonged "beta"
seasons.

The situation is a bit like with Perl 5.8.0 - it got pushed farther and
farther away and meanwhile everybody shipped v5.6.x because 5.8.0 was
still labeled as experimental/beta/not read yet.

With Perl v5.8.x there are now fixed release deadlines and they are
strictly adhered to, which resulted in quite a bit of released versions -
currently 5.8.7 is at the door.

That's IMHO much better than having v1.4 "nearly ready" since
2004-12-03 :)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sun Mar 20 12:38:09 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone." --
 Unknown

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Karl Eichwalder wrote:

>Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>That's clearly something for the case where a copyrighted piece is
>>*added* to an article. Not that I would agree to it for wholly new
>>copyright violations either. I still see no reason for dumping
>>additional paragraphs as well.
>>
>>
>As long as someone can claim the additional paragraphs are "derived"
>from the copyvio, you would better remove the additional paragraphs as
>early as possible.
>

Anybody can "claim" anything.  That does not make it so.  The
information is not copyright.  Only the way of expressing it is
copyright.  Thus if someone uses all the information from a copyright
source, but tells it in his own way that work may be derived from the
original but it is not legally a derivative work.  Rewriting the
material would be more appropriate.

Ec


from_name: actionforum at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
------------- Original message --------------
> A real test case would be one where a person was politely and civilly
> putting a kooky point of view into an article, while cheerfully
> admitting that it was only one of the valid points of view that must
> be presented under NPOV, and happily citing sources -- all kooky as
> well. As long as it was not original research, and there were some
> sources for it, however laughable, such a dispute could not be
> resolved without a decision on the merits. At present, the only
> mechanism for that is weight of numbers: the side with the most
> editors wins.

Nah, the kooky view is too easy.  A better case would be a passage in a scientific article written by one of our inhouse experts that correctly states the basic concept of a scientific field, but in a way that hasn't been "published" because it is trivial grad student exercise the derive it, and all published work is at the bleeding edge of the field.  Imagine his/her frustration at being asked for a citation for something that is obvious, and not being able to provide one, even though he can explain it so well that even the arbitrators understand it.

Sorry, no original research,  no insightful explanations and yes, a big hole in making the subject more accessible.

                   -- Silverback


body:
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Moin,

On Sunday 20 March 2005 11:13, Brion Vibber wrote:
> MaPhi Werner wrote:
> > Do you have a rough plan how long implementations of new features
> > will be accepted before 1.5 goes into strict bug-fixing mode?
>
> Perhaps as long as a month.

Will v1.4 be released as a final before that? I am just asking because I
hold of a (internal) wiki for updating because I don't want to update it
to a beta/rc version only to find the stable version released the next
day :)

(Maybe it would be a good idea to put a roadmap or "planned release date"
on www.mediawiki.org)

Best wishes,

Tels

PS: Brion, and everybody else, thanx for all your work, very much
appreciated!

- --
 Signed on Sun Mar 20 13:06:24 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 I'm a Wei-wei-wei-wei-wei-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wizzzaahrd...

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:WikiIndex (idea)

body:
Craig Franklin wrote:

>But to show how this is inadequate, can you produce me a list of... say...
>Polish-born Jewish authors who died in the United Kingdom in 1897?  That's
>what I feel this tool would be really useful for, and the existing
>categories system is pretty much inadequate for that (I suppose if you
>looked at all of the relevant categories and returned a list of links that
>appeared in EVERY one that'd work, but there's currently no tool for this,
>and I imagine that it'd be fairly expensive in terms of CPU cycles.
>
>I suppose that adding a tool that would do what I proposed above would be an
>acceptable compromise, but I figure if we're going to do such a thing, then
>we may as well do it properly ;-)
>
Yes.  Our search system was written when the 'pedia was much smaller
(less than 10% of its present size).  I suppose that our developpers
must be aware of the needs of our more sophisticated information pile.
They just need a bit of free time to do it.  :-)

> Oh, I didn't mean it in the sense of "we should invent our own metadata
>
>tagging scheme".  Such a thing would be overkill.  I think the best solution
>would be to have a relatively simple tagging scheme like this:
>
>[{Died: 1945}]
>[{Nationality: Dutch}]
>[{Religion: Jew}]
>[{Profession: Author}]
>
>...and then automagically convert that into RDF, or some other mutually
>agreed-upon metadata scheme.  That way casual writers don't have to worry
>about the intricate details of such a system, and anyone who wants to get at
>the actual real RDF can, presumably through a direct database call of some
>description.  Of course, I know very little about RDF or how it works, so I
>don't know how much of a problem automated translation like this would be.
>
[[Category:  ]] should be quite adequate for these.  Introducing an
open-ended system of name-spaces gives that many more opportunities for
things to go wrong.  [[Category:d1945]] would be better than [[Died:1945]]

>Your post also brings up another interesting point - the metadata will have
>to be almost or totally complete to be useful.  There's little point in
>doing searches on "Author" if only 20% of the authors in the database are
>tagged as such.  How we can quickly go through a half-million articles
>quickly and tag them is beyond me.
>
Everything takes time.  Since categories were introduced some
contributors have shown great enthusiasm for the simple task of adding
categories.  It's a fast and easy way to build up one's article count.
If your idea were implemented this would only be a temporary problem.

Ec


from_name: Marc O'Morain

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re:WikiIndex (idea)

body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 21:28:27 +1000, Craig Franklin <craig at halo-17.net> wrote:

> There's little point in
> doing searches on "Author" if only 20% of the authors in the database are
> tagged as such.  How we can quickly go through a half-million articles
> quickly and tag them is beyond me.

There are loads of pages of 'Lists of Authors' 'List of Jews' and such
- it would be very easy to write a little perl script, that takes the
URL of list and an attribute, and tags them all.

So, given "List of Irish Poets" and [[Category:Irish]] and
[[Category:Poet]], it could very quickly tag all the pages in the
list.

--
Marc O'Morain


from_name: Derek Ross

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Setting up a Scots Wikipedia

body:
Angela said...
>I suggest you add the request to
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages but until
>there is a policy for whether or not these can be created, the
> requests are likely to just keep mounting up.

Yes, I've already done that. It's supposed to be part of the standard procedure for setting up a Wiki.

>A proposed policy is at
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy_for_wikis_in_new_languages

Yes, I read that. I also read the current policy on the same page which states that any new wiki can be created upon request by a developer.

>Do you know if any other people are interested in contributing to this wiki?

:See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages for currently interested parties. And I would be surprised if there aren't more. I held off making this request until there were a reasonable number of registered Scottish contributors to the English Wikipedia, otherwise I would have made it in 2002. I expect several of them to sign up.  We have had a small but steady response on the Gaelic Wikipedia with 55,000 speakers. I would expect more on the Scots with 1.5 million speakers.

Cheers

Derek

---------------------------------
Post your free ad now! Yahoo! Canada Personals


body:
Dear Tels,

>roadmap says:
>"Note: This page is out of date and was never very accurate."
>
I just wanted to point you and the other developers to update this page
- if there is time

>I think it would be a very good idea to have a fixed release date for
>version X and then strictly stick to it instead ofhaving prolonged "beta"
>seasons.
>
Strict planning is very difficult because of the many issues whithin
this multi-site international development.


body:
I'd just like to add that I wish they'd never named that movie that.

--Blair


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Everyone's favorite FUD-master is at it again

body:
> And the same guy that is going to have dinner with Jimbo soon. I'd like to
> be a
> fly on a wall in that room (or is it, a spider under the table?). :)
>
> -- mav

You could volunteer as a food-taster for Jimbo.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] Test case: policing content

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>Under our current policy, the only way to enforce the policy requiring
>providing sources is to use the dispute resolution policy. Perhaps
>slrubenstein, or someone else, can offer an alternative...
>
>I believe that is the point of this discussion.
>
The other thing that can happen is that if a contributor can't provide
sources when asked and nobody else wants to add them within a reasonable
time the questionable material is simply deleted.  At the same time
there should not be an extremist interpretation of "no original
research".  In some instances a basic textbook can be used as a
resource, and a reasonable level of interpretation should be acceptable.

I consider citing sources to be far more important that no original
research.  I view this mostly from a Wiktionary context where in their
attempt to avoid infringing copyrights contributors tend to write their
own definitions, and these can be far from accurate.

Ec


body:
On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 19:03:06 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Soufron
<jbsoufron at free.fr> wrote:
> You can use your addition by itself if you want. It's not a derived
> work in itself, only the combination of the 2 texts is.

Unfortunately this isn't the case.... Check out the numerous cases of
fan fiction that don't use a single word of the copyrighted work, but
have still been ruled to be derived works.

Inspired works are now starting to fall under copyright protection.
This trend started with the inclusions of translations under the
definition of derivative works and has been expanding since then....

Enforcement has been previously limited to things like fan-fiction
since it's so difficult to prove if original text was derived or not,
but the history in wikipedia make it pretty easy to make a good
argument where previously it would have been near impossible.

Copyright law in the US needs to be reformed,  but the current trends
are not heading in the right direction yet.