from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] internal communications issues

body:
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This post is related to the not so recent posts "Communications issues".
And especially now with the appointment of a communication manager this
seems relevant.

The issue was raised that the communication is not so good. I would like
to explain the factors involved with the internal communication. And
some points where and how to improve it. This is my POV of things.

=== Our galaxy ===

Our community exist out over 700 wikis, 9 different projects and +/- 250
languages, +/- 70,000 people. Having real and full internal
communication in two directions is nearly impossible.

It is possible to get news to and from some of the projects in some of
the languages.

Besides the community there is also the Foundation/chapters pillar and
the technical news.

=== Goal of internal communication ===

To make it possible for information to reach people on all levels of the
hierarchy including the editor on there home wiki actually doing the
work. And for information from all corners of the wikimedia digital
village to get to all other people.

The end result must be that who cares to be informed can be informed
about the most important issues that are relevant for the global
community. And also to keep the Wikimedia community together by sharing
some local information from different language community's. This to
share knowledge but also to keep the feeling of one Wikimedia family
that exceeds the different independent projects and languages.

=== Foundation level ===

News on the foundation level circulates often first in the internal
confidential channels. That is normal, not everything should be made
public or not directly. The problem is that sometimes news gets stuck at
this level and is not released even when it is not (longer) confidential.

But more often it is released but in a to late stadium so that there is
not enough time for the information to spread across the community.
Announcing something a day or two up to some hours in advance is better
then not. But it makes a wide downstream information flow nearly impossible.

In general is the information flow from this level is the best from all
levels. This is because it is the only level where any form of
organization exist.

=== Technical information level ===

The wikis, how those work and all supporting webbased services are after
the community the most important asset of the Wikimedia family. As a
virtual community the software and systems are our land, city's,
highways, towns and houses.

The system administrators are the ones who prevent the heavens from
failing down (wikidown). And also are working almost constantly on the
system to modify and improve the system. Some changes are noticeable for
the end users, some are not.

All changes who have a noticeable effect for the users of the system are
relevant news for the internal communications structures. Getting
(timely) information about planed changes is nearly impossible. Getting
information about implemented changes is not always easy.

Internal reporters know where to look and can find most changes done to
the systems. But from own experience I can tell that the information
found is sometimes cryptic. It is difficult to explain something if it
not clear to yourself how something works exactly.

And also a fair amount of luck is necessary to discover by accident some
changes. Not everything is listed where it is supposed to be listed.

Luckily the changes are mostly changes that are not extremely important
so it is not a disaster if its discovery is delayed.

The problem is that if there is something important that will change it
is very doubtful of the community will be  informed  timely. The because
of lack of information well in advance or even after the facts.

Better reporting or reporting at all of changes who have an impact for
the end users by the technical staff would be useful. And providing
information in advance for larger changes.

=== The community ===

This is the most difficult one. There is not one community. There are
language community's and those are divided in to different projects.
Even between one language the information does not flow good between the
different projects in those languages.

To get news from a wiki out to the wikimedia-community there are several
options;

- - someone of those community's reports it to the internal media
- - someone who works for a internal news media (1) is active on that wiki
and so can notice it

In practice this goes very difficult. The internal news media staff is
very small and can only pick up news from a few wikis and languages.
Reports of news from the community's itself to the internal news media
are (very) rare.

The only way to improve the upstream information flow from the wikis is
if people from those wikis are interested in reporting news from there
community.

People who especially can help with this are the ambassadors (2) of the
wikis who have them,  (who until now are very inactive regarding this),
people from the chapters about the wikis who fall under there natural
field of interest. And the readers of the internal media publications
(in practice wikizine for now) who can report news about there home wiki.

=== Spreading the news ===

Finding news is one thing. Then the information must be filtered and
presented in a form suitable for distribution to the community. This can
take a written form like the Wikipedia Signpost (3) (wiki-based) and
Wikizine (4) (email/blog) or audio (WikipediaWeekly) (5).

Because of the editing process necessary to get a newsbuiliton ready
news must be known in advance to give time to be discovered and included
in a bulletin. Also the publication date is a factor. It is difficult to
spread news when there is just a news builiton send out.

When created the news builtion must try to reach as much of the
community as possible. Distribution can be done by posting the news on a
website/blog, reading by email or RSS/Atom-feed.

But first people must know of its existence. For Wikizine I have some
numbers about its audience; 590 email subscribers and 300 a 350 readers
weekly on the website. For the RSS feed it could be 1200 a week but I do
not trust those figures.

Even so;
let assume the numbers are correct then there is an audience for
wikizine of 2140 readers weekly. There are +/- 70,000 active wikimedians
(at least 5 edits a month) and 10,000 very active (at least 100 edits a
month).

This gives a reach of 21,4% of the very active wikimedians. Without the
RSS readers it drops to 9,4% of the very active wikimedians.

But the ethnic diversity is limited. A very large part of the email
subscribers come from the US and a large part of the visitors of the
website from Italy.

=== Babel ===

A major problem in internal communication are the language barriers. The
can stop or slow down communication. And can also created mistakes
because of translations mistakes or confusion.

Until now internal communication is done in English. This is the
language that gives the best hope of being useful as a bridge language
between many wikis. Nevertheless English is far from universal usable to
inform everybody. It excludes communication with large parts of the
wikimedia community.

Currently there is no multi-lingual internal communication channel
active. The only one "Wikimedia Quarto" (6) is long dead.

Several people have made attempts to create translations of Wikizine in
the last year. The all failed after a couple of weeks to continue the
translation work. Just today a new attempt is done to make a
translation. This time in German by [[w:de:Benutzer:Mbimmler]]. (7) If
it will fail or not will depend of the perseverance of this user and
(lack off) support from the DE community.

The only wiki where is a form of systematic translation of Wikizine is
the Italian Wikipedia. There is posted every time there is a new edition
of Wikizine a notice in there village pump about it with the translation
in Italian of the topic keywords and link to the English language
version. Even this minimalistic form of translation has a large impact
in exposure to the information according to the visitor stats.

Creating systematic and durable translations done by dedicated people is
probably the best hope to inform as many people as possible of the
global community. This will also increase the flow of upstream
information from those community's.

That is all.

Walter

Communications committee,
Internal communications subcommitte

editor Wikizine.org

1. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internal_news_media
2. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Embassy
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/en:Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost
4. http://www.wikizine.org/
5. http://www.wikipediaweekly.com/
6. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Quarto
7. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Mbimmler/Wikizine/2007_58
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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox


list: foundation-l

from_name: Tangotango

subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software

body:
Ironically, I'm currently in the process of developing a full-text (i.e.,
image titles and descriptions) gallery-based search engine for images on
Commons. The code and interface has been there since December, it just needs
frequent updating of the index and moving to the toolserver, and a few more
tweaks. Although I can't make any promises, I expect the tool to be up and
running by mid-February.

As an alternative, you can try Duesentrieb's highly versatile MediaSearch
<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~daniel/WikiSense/MediaSearch.php>, which
searches inside categories and can filter by license, type, and image size,
etc.
, but doesn't do full-text description searches.

Cheers,

Tangotango

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Husky [mailto:huskyr at gmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:32 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software
>
> Many of these have already been mentioned, but just to sum it up:
>
> * Better search functionality (esp. with images, some kind of gallery
> view),
> maybe on the basis of tagging or category keywords.
> * A more user-friendly editing interface. This might need some serious
> interaction models to avoid a WYSIWYG interface that doesn't quite work.
> Having a nifty AJAX editing interface might be pretty cool, but it will
> probably need some serious work to make it as responsive as Writely /
> Google
> Docs. However, it could really enable less tech-savvy people to write
> more
> and better formatted texts.
> * A simpler system for templates/themes. Maybe not necessary for
> Wikimedia-related projects (because they are all using Monobook anyway),
> but
> for customization of other users a template system such as in Wordpress
> (
> www.wordpress.org) would be handy.
>
> -- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]
>
> On 1/23/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 23/01/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Speaking from the technical side, there is a hurdle with the
> "vastly
> > > improved searches" that are requested, at least on one aspect.
> >
> > Retrieving the results is one thing. Improving how they are displayed
> > is something that could be improved on too. For example we lack a
> > gallery-based search. (Special:Newimages only searches on image
> > titles. The functionality is there, so why not extend it to image
> > descriptions?)
> >
> > > As for categories: date of page creation is not stored in the
> tables
> > right
> > > now; that would be ideally something for the page table. The time a
> page
> > > included in a category is already stored (or at least, there is
> room for
> >
> > > it), so that may be easier to do in the future. Dynamic sort tables
> have
> > > issues with older browsers, but maybe a sortby can be done by the
> server
> > as
> > > well. These things do require a considerable amount of coding and
> > testing,
> > > though.
> >
> > Well, that's why it's my vision, and not my requests for next
> week. ;)
> >
> > cheers,
> > Brianna
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >


subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Frederick Noronha

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia... what the others say (a forward)

body:
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 10:50:38 +0100
From: Geert Lovink <geert at xs4all.nl>
Subject: Re: <nettime> shocklogs wikipedia entry

Update: Wikipedia editors are again considering to delete the shocklog
entry. Interesting remark is this context is their suspicion of
'foreign language' blogs being involved as references. But who is
foreign in this case? English for those write Dutch? Or Dutch for those
know only English? Interesting to see how Larry Singer's Citizendium is
putting pressure on Wikipedia to get rid of 'neologisms' and barbarian
non-Anglo knowledge... Best, Geert

- --

An editor has nominated the article Shocklog for deletion, under the
Articles for deletion process. We appreciate your contributions, but
the nominator doesn't believe it satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for
inclusion, and has explained why in the nomination (also see What
Wikipedia is not and Deletion policy). Your opinions on why the topic
of the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with
the article are welcome: participate in the discussion by editing
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shocklog. Add four tildes like this
???????? to sign your comments. You can also edit the article Shocklog
during the discussion, but do not remove the "Articles for Deletion"
template (the box at the top of the article), this will not end the
deletion debate. Jayden54Bot 13:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

seemingly a violation of Wikipedia:Avoid neologisms Cornell Rockey
02:00, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge with Blog, as a "Shocklog" is a type of blog. Flakeloaf 04:10, 21
January 2007 (UTC)
Delete Lacks sources demonstration sufficient use to satisfy WP:NEO.
Sources consist of a couple of foreign-language blogs and an on-line
Master's thesis. Need published sources complying with WP:RS
- --Shirahadasha 04:52, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Delete, basically a neologism, and an imprecise one at that. Is Stile
Project a "shocklog"? Lankiveil 05:16, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

- --

On 17 Jan 2007, at 11:54 AM, Geert Lovink wrote:

> (dear nettimers, together with students of the masters-of-media blog at
> the university of amsterdam i have been working on a wikipedia entry
> about so-called shock logs or shock blogs. it is been an interesting
 <...>

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo at bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime at bbs.thing.net
--
FN M: 0091 9822122436 P: +91-832-240-9490 (after 1300IST please)
http://fn.goa-india.org  http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com
http://www.goa-india.org http://feeds.goa-india.org/index.php


list: wikien-l

from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:50 PM, geni wrote:
>
> That differes from our copyright policy how?

Our copyright policy is mostly intuitive, and can be explained in a
sentence in such a way that an average person can understand it. It's
slightly trickier with images, but only slightly since we've been
cracking down pretty hard on "fair use" of late. Copyvio is not
nearly as widespread as lack of sourcing. Copyvio is not a newbie-
unfriendly concept.

-Phil


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
	those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
On 1/24/07, Parker Peters <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a stupid suggestion.
>
> Code it so that *NEW* links are nofollow by default (thus stopping
> linkspammers from being rewarded for linkspamming), but allow a process
> (request to an admin or something) whereby a link can simply be followed and
> then the "nofollow" tag removed from it if it's verified to not be a spam
> link.
>
> Wouldn't that be better than uniformly tagging all links Nofollow?
>

DMOZ is that way

> Unless of course the goal isn't really about stopping spammers, but about
> trying to game Google's algorithm because someone got jealous that someone
> else's site came up before en-wikipedia's in a google search somewhere.
>

Somewhat unlikely. Do you enjoy makeing random acusations like that?

> I'll note that Nofollow was uniformly rejected by the community in previous
> discussions.

not quite true.

In any case I'm trying to keep my notes up to date. Are you still
trying to pretend to be an admin or not?

--
geni


body:
On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:54 PM, bbatsell wrote:

>
> Sorry to quote the whole thing, but there weren't really any sections
> I felt I could snip.
>
> I'm not sure I understand what your reasoning behind this is.  You
> say that [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are "not actually useful pages"
> and "cannot be honestly implemented."  To your first statement, I
> think they're incredibly useful and I didn't see a shred of letters
> exhibiting why they are not in your e-mail.  As to your second
> statement, that's true of nearly all (if not all) of our policies.
> Those are *goals*.  Of course it's not feasible that every single
> sentence in every single article across every localized Wikipedia be
> sourced from reliable sources.  That's ridiculous.  But in order for
> an article to be a good one, it must be sourced from reliable
> sources, and that's what those policies state.
>

Our policies should not be goals - they should be policies. If we
cannot meaningfully implement the policy across all of our pages then
it's a bad policy. This isn't actually a problem for most of our
policies. [[WP:NPOV]] is actually basically understandable by any
reasonably intelligent person, can be kept in mind, doesn't really
require extra work. As a result, most of our pages do make a passing
effort on NPOV. That is not true for sourcing.
> Encyclopedias are tertiary sources; if they're good, they provide an
> adequate summation, but hardly the whole picture.  Encyclopedias,
> when used correctly, are merely a "jump-off point" for new reading
> and learning.  If we alter our goals so that we do not strive for
> providing sources and references, then not only will we have failed
> in providing a credible encyclopedic article, we will have failed in
> providing an article that serves any sort of purpose for our readers.
>

There's a difference between having sourcing policies and making it a
goal that we have sources and references. A good encyclopedia article
should point towards further reading, yes. That's not what
[[WP:CITE]] or [[WP:RS]] say, though. This should be something akin
to adding images to an article - something we like to do, but not
something that we freak out over.

> I have no idea where the idea that all WP:CITE and WP:RS do is cause
> debates among editors, because I personally have seen nothing of the
> sort.  I'd really appreciate some background perhaps to better
> understand where you're coming from.

Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or
[[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both
with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being
well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of
deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are
complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the
sources are bollocks.

-Phil


from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA CLUB OF NEW YORK - 31 January 2007 - UPDATE

body:
One week from today, Wikipedia's own Jimmy Wales is giving a talk
entitled *Free
Culture, Transparency, and Search* for the Free Culture Club at New York
University, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. to be held at the Courant Institute,
251 Mercer Street, Room 109, in New York City. More details can be found at
www.freeculturenyu.org.

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme
Wikipedia Club of New York - Unofficial Social Chair


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:04:52 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in
reply to "Parker Peters":

>I'm trying to keep my notes up to date. Are you still
>trying to pretend to be an admin or not?

More to the point, how come he's still here after being put on mod
under two successive addresses?  I thought he was leaving anyway?

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


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from makingattack
 articles on us

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Parker Peters [mailto:parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 01:22 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from making	attack articles on us
>
>On 1/24/07, . <aroquk at juno.com> wrote:
>>
>> As you know, Encyclopedia Dramatica has attack articles on many
>> Wikipedians. Well, they changed hosts so maybe their new host will care
>> more about abuse reports.
>>
>> They used to be hosted by DreamHost who was unhelpful about abuse
>> complaints. Dreamhost now only their DNS now.
>>
>> Their server IPs are:
>> encyclopediadramatica.net 72.249.60.226
>> pr0n.encyclopediadramatica.com 72.249.60.227
>>
>> A whois lookup on these shows they comes from colo4dallas.com and a
>> traceroute finds cogentco.com as the next closest hop. This means the
>> email addresses to report abuse to are now: abuse at colo4dallas.com,
>> support at colo4dallas.com, abuse at cogentco.com
>>
>> If we get enough reports in, they may shut down their site.
>>
>
>Attempting to set up an organized attack, especially by filing what may
>arguably false reports, isn't going to help anyone's cause.
>
>In fact, it could leave Wikipedia open to some legal troubles.
>
>Parker

Besides that, it is wrong. Best just to leave them alone.

Fred


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [19651] trunk/phase3

body:
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simetrical wrote:
> Incidentally, should we maybe use set_exception_handler()?

We do -- it's what prints the pretty backtraces for unhandled exceptions.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] MD5 Password Encryption

body:
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Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> I find it interesting that you're advocating moving away from MD5 in a
> situation where the known collision weaknesses aren't relevant, yet you
> personally are still using SHA1 (which was broken about two years ago)
> in a situation which *is* susceptible to collision -

First of all, SHA1 is not *broken*: although cryptographers have
discovered ways to force collisions at a rate lower than brute-force,
the attack is still not practical. Furthermore, in a message signing
context, you would need to trick me into signing a doctored message,
which would be pretty much impossible as I almost always only use GPG to
sign plaintext.

Furthermore, I'm currently using a DES signature, which uses 160 bits
and thus does not support SHA-256. I could use RSA, but then encryption
would be out of question.

What you SHOULD be asking is why I'm using an old version of GnuPG (the
current version is 1.4.6).

> and your signature
> didn't verify on that message (<ep65i0$496$1 at sea.gmane.org>).

Don't know why, my archived copy gives similar results. Maybe
Thunderbird did something to it.
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from_name: Omegatron

body:
On 1/24/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.

I have seen [[WP:RS]] used a lot lately.  I have yet to see it
actually improve anything.  It's predominantly used to remove
information that the remover knows is true but personally dislikes.

> And
> we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over
> the objections of other editors.

And then there are the overzealous ones who remove encyclopedic
information that they agree with and know to be true, simply because
it isn't sourced.

This is not how you improve quality.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from
 makingattackarticles on

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tony Jacobs [mailto:gtjacobs at hotmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2007 04:03 PM
>To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from makingattack	articles on
>
>>From: Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net>
>>
>>Tony Jacobs wrote:
>> >   As someone who appreciates both wikis, I continue to explain to each
>> > that the editors of the other are actually human beings, and not some
>> > kind of monsters.
>>Sure they're humans - average-age-14 humans, from the looks of it.
>
>I don't know of any that young.  The ones I know range in age from 19 to 30.
>  I think a lot are college age.
>
>> > If they stop making fun of Wikipedians, it'll be because they decide
>> > we're cool after all, not because we declare war on them and somehow
>> > win.
>>I *so* don't care whether 14-year-olds think I'm cool or not.
>>
>
>Then you're contributing to a conversation about "how to stop" them... for
>what reason?  You're making a point here?  Are you advocating anything I'm
>not?  You think we shouldn't ignore them?  You think we should go ahead and
>generate lots of drama in some kind of wiki-war?
>
>I find your reply puzzling.
>
>
>Tony/GTBacchus

No, he's not. He's just had enough. Best to mind our own business.

Fred


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [19612]
	trunk/phase3/maintenance/cleanupSkin.php

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> I would strongly recommend generalizing this to update any given option,
>> rather than skins and nothing but skins.
>
> Duesentrieb asked for it too. I quickly wrote it to help an user on
> #mediawiki (he wanted to remove a skin).
>
> I think I will code another script that gives out statistics about
> option usage then generalize cleanupSkin.php to something like
> changeUserOptions.php adding filters (by groups, by last logged in, by
> creation date ...).

Committed in r19648. Experimental quality at best.

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
On 1/24/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> > I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating
> > experience I have.  My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few
> > are interested in.  It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on
> > one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who
> > were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that
> > another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback.  I
> > doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the
> > mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your
> > grammar, let alone improve something.
>
> Yeah, I tend to be in obscure places too. Mostly because I start
> articles when I see redlinks, so by definition if no one has created
> an article in the 5+ years that Wikipedia has been going, it's going
> to be fairly obscure.

There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek
technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.

Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite
materials, others.  I went through and it seemed like doubled the
structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I
haven't even gotten started properly...

Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from
school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP
coverage.

This is just off the top of my head.  I've got a to-do list somewhere else.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] License status of MW screenshots.

body:
On 24/01/07, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Look at it this way: If I take the latest MTV hit single, play it in the
> background while recording myself repeating "Yo!" over and over again,
> and release the recording as my own song, I *will* get sued and probably
> lose no matter how hard I might claim that the song is merely incidental
> background to my creative rapping.

Isn't this how most of our modern music is made?

Rob Church


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> However, when you create a "perfect" article in one go (referenced,
> with categories, links and incoming links), you actually get no
> feedback. No one is drawn there to fix some automatically detected
> fault. In short, no one even seems to see it.

You can try putting an {{expand}} tag on it, but it probably won't
help much. Your alternative is Peer Review, but it would be nice to
have something between "desperate need for cleanup" and "almost ready
for FAC". I think there is a page for requesting feedback on new
articles... can't remember what it's called though.


body:
On 24/01/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Right, but they license the music.

Ah, yes.

Anyway, I believe the original question was relating to the licencing
status of MediaWiki screenshots, no?

I'm of the opinion that distributing a simple, cropped screenshot of
the MediaWiki interface, taken in a common browser such as Firefox is
unlikely to upset anyone. I have, personally, absolutely no problem
with anyone taking pictures of any of the forms I've put *so much*
creative thought and expression into[1] because it's all a matter of
making our software easier to understand through documentation.

*Unfortunately*, there's this horrible and stupid bloody viral GPL
crap in the way of all that, and I expect there's some cretin who
won't agree with my line of thinking, above. So I guess we're back to
square one.

[1] Obviously, MakeBot encapsulates the emo in me.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Extension request: Greenlist

body:
On 24/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> If every bug or even patch in bugzilla were closed the world would be
> a very different place.

We'd have no users, for a start.

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Preloading template in new articles

body:
> This was, in fact, the original intended process for writing articles, no?
> With enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow?  That's the whole concept behind
> the wiki/open source thing that the project is based on.  References were an
> afterthought, as indicated by our horrible kludgy support for them.

Absolutely - that *was* the whole idea. Unfortunately, that idea
didn't lead to an encyclopedia people trusted, so now, in order to be
credible, we have to reference everything. It's unfortunate, but
unavoidable, I think.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Using external peer review for articles with COI aura

body:
Hi,

I need your feedback about a scenario that could be useful especially
for articles with lots of people prevented from editing it because auf
conflicts of interests. Assuming that employees from a company would
have a look at all the articles about them, their products, their
projects,  biographical articles about their board members and so on,
would it make sense to put all these collected comments to a single
site accessible to Wikipedians?

En.wp has sites such as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_peer_review where
(mostly journalistic / scientific) statements about wikipedia articles
are collected. When Nature released the list of feedback on 42
articles, the result was amazing. Currently, External peer review has
nothing to do with COI, of course.

Mathias


from_name: Angela

body:
On 1/24/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:

> Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.

Yes, but it got {{rejected}}.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone

Angela


body:
On 1/24/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek
> technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
>
> Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite
> materials, others.  I went through and it seemed like doubled the
> structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I
> haven't even gotten started properly...

I recall saying this before in a prior thread, too, and it didn't
prompt anyone to show up and help with the subject matter, either.
;-)

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
geni wrote:

>On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously
>>futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
>>but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
>>Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
>>
>>We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
>>
>>
>Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and
>keep some form of them arround
>
:-D   Some would say that they continue to exist despite the peopl.

Ec


from_name: Walter Vermeir

body:
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Gregory Maxwell schreef:
> On 1/24/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/24/07, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
>>> "sysop approved" links?
>>>
>>> Sysops are choosen by consensus. How can that consensus be expanded to
>>> "can choose external non-nofollow links by own discretion"?
>> They already choose whether to spam-blacklist particular links.
>
> Wiki admins don't.
> Meta admins do.

But local sysops can override again that blacklist by including that
domain on the local whitelist.

And it seems that there will also come a local blacklist active;
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8492

- --
Contact: walter AT wikizine DOT org
Wikizine.org - news for and about the Wikimedia community
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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
If you leave off things that have obvious fixes, people tend to fix those,
but writing imperfect articles doesn't often attract new content. If I
compare my new articles, the ones that tend to get attention are the ones
that have been featured on the main page or in some other high-profile
visible spot somewhere.

Mgm

On 1/24/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have noticed that when you create an imperfect article (no stub tag,
> no categories, or something badly wrong), someone tends to show up and
> fix it. Often they add something else in the process. But at least you
> get a tiny bit of feedback.
>
> However, when you create a "perfect" article in one go (referenced,
> with categories, links and incoming links), you actually get no
> feedback. No one is drawn there to fix some automatically detected
> fault. In short, no one even seems to see it.
>
> This strikes me as slightly sad. But then, I haven't had my coffee yet.
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-25

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19651).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.

Passed 489 of 507 tests (96.45%)... 18 tests failed!


from_name: Mark Clements

body:
"Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com> wrote in
message news:20070125000104.GB10932 at cgi.jachomes.com...
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 11:36:46PM +0000, Rob Church wrote:
> > Anyway, I believe the original question was relating to the licencing
> > status of MediaWiki screenshots, no?
>
> No, actually.  At least when I arrived, it was "posting screenshots to
> Commons", which is, obviously, a larger topic.
>

The original question (which I asked) was a very specific one regarding the
legal status of screenshots of the MediaWiki software.

My specific reason for asking was to find out whether it is possible to
distribute such screenshots as part of the public domain help we are
developing at mediawiki.org.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
 those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> on 1/24/07 8:50 PM, Geoffrey Burling at llywrch at agora.rdrop.com wrote:
>
>
>> Three or four years ago, Jimbo ranted about all of the external links he
>> was finding in articles. IIRC, his point was that we didn't need any external
>> links, that a Wikipedia article ought to stand on its own, and be better
>> than any other website on the subject.
>>
>> Maybe we should have listened to him.
>>
>
> At least one value of external links that I can think of is that they
> provide access to additional information which, for a variety of reasons,
> cannot be included in the Article's text.
>
Yes, I think this is important, but I also think external links are
overused.  It would be weird to have an article on Amazon without a link
to amazon.com, or an article on the Embassy of France in the United
States without a link to ambafrance-us.org.  But that doesn't mean the
article on the card-game hearts should link to some random website
giving opinions on good and bad strategies (as it did until recently).

-Mark


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>
> I might, in fact, be wrong.  I've tried to avoid speaking
> authoritatively *about the law* as opposed to what I think is
> reasonable and just.

Fair enough.  Of course, that may also be part of the reason why there's
been so much confusion over this: in copyright law, and especially with
regard to derivative works, there's a broad category of things that are
_in principle_ illegal, except that a) no-one will probably bother to
sue you, making it effectively OK until and unless they do, and b) if
they do, the judge is likely to find no actual harm and let you off with
a slap on the wrist and an admonition not to do it again.

Many of these technically illegal uses (a prime example being the use
and distribution of "abandoned" works) fall squarely in the "reasonable
and just" camp.  Of course, there are also things that are so reasonable
and just that they actually qualify as legal fair use -- but you can't
tell for sure where the line between the two actually lies until the
dispute has gone to court, a judge has ruled on it and all appeals have
been exhausted.  And in many instances this is unlikely to happen,
precisely because, even if a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff, they
couldn't really expect to get enough out of it to justify the cost of a
lawsuit.

I've actually read quite a lot on the subject too, and most of the
sources I've seen tend to say that the first question you should ask in
practice isn't "is it legal?" but "will I probably get away with it?".
However, the Commons, like Wikimedia in general, doesn't operate on that
principle; for them, the question is closer to "is it 99.9999% certain
that not only I, but also anyone else reusing this, will get away with
it?"  Which is about as close to "is it legal?" as you can get.

> To use my example, above, my taking a photograph of an artist posing
> next to his painting does *not*, to me, seem to meet the description
> there, quoted from the statute, of a derivative work, as it's not
> *based* on the original painting: he could have been standing next to
> *anything*.

You know, you could turn that around and claim equally well that the
photograph isn't based on the likeness of the artist, since *anyone*
could've been standing there next to the painting.

Your claim seems to be that the inclusion of the painting in the photo
is only incidental.  Depending on the actual circumstances, this might
in fact be the case, if the main subject of the photo actually was the
artist and not the painting.  Depending on other factors, such as
whether the painting was shown in its entirety or not, and whether your
photo might compete with the original painting or other works (such as
posters) based on it, you might be able to claim the use as fair -- or
you might not.

Look at it this way: If I take the latest MTV hit single, play it in the
background while recording myself repeating "Yo!" over and over again,
and release the recording as my own song, I *will* get sued and probably
lose no matter how hard I might claim that the song is merely incidental
background to my creative rapping.

> *Specifically* though, what troubles me is the approach to the
> characterization on Commons:Licensing.  It seems to be making legal
> assertions that may not actually be valid, when perhaps what it ought
> to be saying is that the issue is not entirely clear, and Commons
> chooses to err on the side of (over-)caution.

If you think this is the case, feel free to fix it (or suggest
improvements).  Just try to be careful not to replace any existing legal
assertions with other equally dubious ones, express or implied.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] New Test Templates

body:
Eugene van der Pijll wrote:
> Rory Stolzenberg schreef:
>> On 1/22/07, Myles Gray <MylesGray_33 at msn.com> wrote:
>>> Will someone please explain to me why the new test templates have a number
>>> one in front of it?
>> See
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_on_user_warning_layout_standardisation&oldid=92676384
>
> Right. So it is to make these templates more useful for book-keeping, and
> to make them look less like personal communication.
>

Of course, in the Good Old Days, they were SUPPOSED to look like
personal communication, for those of us too lazy to write custom
messages each time...

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Fastfission wrote:
>
>> On 1/18/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> If America
>>> is indeed the great melting pot, what indeed is the point of classifying
>>> African-American literature as something separate from plain old
>>> American literature.
>>>
>>>
>> Well, nobody has really called America the great melting pot earnestly
>> for some time now (see [[melting pot]]).
>>
> What does it say now that Bush used the term in his State of the Union
> speech? ;-)
>

Eh, so long as nobody calls America a wok...

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

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Nofollow back on URL links on
 en.wikipedia.org	articles for now

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/23/07, Sage Ross <sage.ross at yale.edu> wrote:
>> I like this one:
>> http://www.smomashup.com/how-wikipedia-killed-the-internets/2007/01/23/
>>
>> The complaint is that, once the (barely notable) entry on [[Social
>> Media Optimization]] stops giving PageRank value to the blog-post
>> origin of the term, then the Wikipedia article will surpass the blog
>> entry as the first Google result for "social media optimization".
>> Breaks my heart.
>>
>
> It's not quite that simple. It is true that our actions are likely to
> be mildly dissruptive on the wider net but even our more power mad
> admins generaly don't think we should be policeing the web.
>
> We are not a links directory which is one of the problems with various
> ideas to selectively turn off no follow. If we do that we are basicaly
> admiting we are a links directory and we would gain very little for
> doing so.
>

Indeed, the argument "Wikipedia is not a web/links directory" has always
been followed up with "...that's what DMOZ is for". Logically, we should
check what they do, and do the exact opposite of it... :)

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

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from_name: geni

body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously
> futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
> but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
> Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
>
> We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.

Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and
keep some form of them arround

>They
> have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
> to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
> never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
> result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
>

That differes from our copyright policy how?

--
geni


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping
> WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up,
> because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.

Verifiability is a goal, citations and sources are means to achieving
that goal. Getting rid of CITE and RS does not necessarily imply getting
rid of the goal of verifiability, it merely means changing the means by
which it is achieved. It doesn't even mean getting rid of citations, I
don't think anyone's suggesting that they be forbidden.

> A while back I said that I think sources by an article's subject are
> perfectly when they're used to back up content rather than the subject's
> claim of notability, which is basically a comment on reliable sources too.
>
> I think that shows the page needs to be altered.

I suspect the "nuke CITE/RS" suggestion comes out of the same sort of
desire to loosen the current rules, just a little more extreme. I think
the "nuke the policy" position comes from the feeling that incremental
changes to existing policy will be too hard to pull off effectively and
so it's better to start from a clean slate.

I just spent two days trying to preserve a 1911 Britannica citation that
was removed because it wikilinked to [[Encyclopedia Britannica]] and
"Wikipedia is not a reliable source". When I finally managed (I think)
to convince the other editors that it wasn't actually meant to reference
our article about EB but rather the encyclopedia itself they removed it
anyway because it didn't specify which page in the encyclopedia was
being referenced. So I can definitely sympathize with this level of
frustration. :)


body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 05:45:51PM -0500, Anthony wrote:
>>> To use my example, above, my taking a photograph of an artist posing
>>> next to his painting does *not*, to me, seem to meet the description
>>> there, quoted from the statute, of a derivative work, as it's not
>>> *based* on the original painting: he could have been standing next to
>>> *anything*.
>>>
>> Whether or not it's a derivative work is largely irrelevant, because a
>> photograph of a painting definitely *is* a copy.
>
> Well, that's largely a strawman, since 3 lines earlier I made it clear
> that I was *not* discussing merely "a photograph of a painting" in the
> Bridgeman sense.

The way I see it, Bridgeman vs. Corel is pretty much irrelevant here.  A
work can be subject to multiple copyright claims.  Bridgeman is about
whether a person making a copy gets to claim copyright on it.  The issue
we're discussing is whether the person who made the original gets to
enforce their copyright on the derivative work.  The two issues are more
or less orthogonal -- all the four possible combinations can and do occur.

Examples:

1. Person A paints a picture.  Person B scans it.  Per Bridgeman, the
copyright on the scan belongs to person A only.

2. Person A paints a picture.  Person B takes it to their studio and
photographs it in a carefully chosen artistic setting.  The photograph
incorporates creative work by both A (the painting) and B (the scene it
is set in), and both thus have copyright on it.

3. Person A paints a picture and makes posters of it.  Person B takes a
photo of a busy street where one lamppost in the background happens to
have one of A's posters glued to it.  Since the inclusion of A's picture
in the photo is incidental and quite insignificant, it counts as fair
use and/or _de minimis_.  Even if the photo technically counted as a
derivative work (which is a matter of definition), A would not be able
to enforce their copyright on it.

4. Person A paints a picture.  Person be uses a spectrometer to analyze
a spot on the painting and to determine the chemical composition of the
paint there.  Since the resulting dataset bears no traces of creativity
by either A or B, it is ineligible for copyright.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject:
[Wikitech-l] KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of
	MW	screenshots.)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> Guys, can we please take it off-list or find an amateur legal arguments
> list to duke it out in?
>
> Thanks.

Oops, sorry, didn't notice this sooner.  Will stop.

--
Ilmari Karonen


list: commons-l

from_name: Jan Urbánek

subject: [Commons-l] Speedy categories need attention

body:
Hi people,

I am constantly working on Speedy categories, but now I need your help. At
the moment there is almost 1000 images in Duplicate category and circa 200
in Incorrectly named. These are images that need to be replaced with other
ones. Since there is not all-wiki-projects-bot for this, it have to be
replaced manually.

This can be done by everbody, you not need to be an admin! I am now asking
you for help. Please help unlink duplicate images.

Cordially,
Zirland
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
Ilmari is quite right. Nuking policy is not going to help if you have
nothing to replace it with. If you think it's badly worded, you should
attempt to reword it rather than nuking. It's rather like RS being used to
delete material an editor dislikes.

"Our policies should not be goals - they should be policies. If we
cannot meaningfully implement the policy across all of our pages then
it's a bad policy. This isn't actually a problem for most of our
policies. [[WP:NPOV]] is actually basically understandable by any
reasonably intelligent person, can be kept in mind, doesn't really
require extra work. As a result, most of our pages do make a passing
effort on NPOV. That is not true for sourcing."

I disagree with this. Reliable Sources is also basically understandable to a
reasonably intelligent person (if they bother to read it) and really doesn't
require all that much extra work. Typing in the URL or title for the book
you used to create something should only take about 1 or 2 minutes for a
short entry. If we enforce the policy better, we can actually catch up. How
are we supposed to know if something is accurate when there's nothing to
check against? I often tell people who question the accuracy of Wikipedia to
check the sources of an article like you should do with any source of info;
it doesn't reflect well on Wikipedia if it turns out there's nothing there
to check. Should we really kill off a core policy to accomodate the lazy
editors among us?

No, Jimbo himself said we should focus more on quality than quantity at
Wikimania. The only way we are going to know something is of high quality is
when we can check it.

Mgm


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] school articles : enough

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 25/01/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>> In any case, I think the Foundation should issue a clear statement that
>> admins, especially from OTRS, can CSD:A7 school articles that do not
>> demonstrate notability. Otherwise it's not manageable.
>
>
> The purpose of Wikipedia is not to make OTRS happy, any more than it
> is to make Articles For Deletion happy.

A7's being abused enough already, thanks.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously
> futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
> but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
> Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
>
> We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working. They
> have never worked. It is not a feasible project to go and add sources
> to everything, and new contributors who are editing casually are
> never going to be willing to do the extra work of having sources. The
> result is a rule where we are always going to be playing catch-up.
>
> Nor do the pages prevent incidents like Siegenthaler, which was a
> problem with exactly one cause, which is that nobody had ever
> actually looked at that page after it was created. No policy in the
> world will fix a page that nobody is editing.
>
> Yes, we need to ensure that people do not add crap information. This
> can be covered easily with "Information that people doubt the
> validity of should be sourced." And we can then leave the community
> to deal with issues on a case by case basis with the direction that
> they should be careful to make sure that information is accurate. And
> we should shoot people who continue to add dubious information over
> the objections of other editors. Which is basically how we wrote an
> encyclopedia that has proven pretty trustworthy, and, more to the
> point, is how we actually operate now on the vast majority of our
> articles, since [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]] are not actually useful pages.
>
> But to have a pair of policies that cannot be honestly implemented
> serves only one purpose: causing debates among editors that waste
> time and good faith.
>
> Nuke them.

You know, having read this through, I do believe I agree.

Mind you, we do need _something_ to fill the policy vacuum that nuking
them would leave.  I think your "Information that people doubt the
validity of should be sourced" is a good starting point.  Add to it
"Information that could be libelous if false must be sourced", to cover
the BLP angle, and we're starting to get somewhere.

Of course, this current drive towards sourcing everything to the hilt
does have some positive aspects; we really _could_ use a lot more
sources in a lot of articles.  It's just the common sense "the color of
the sky on a clear day does not need sourcing" aspect that is missing.
Of course, reasonably interpreting the current policies also achieves
this goal quite well -- at least until a non-reasonable person shows up.

As for the Seigenthaler incident, I still believe it was and is
fundamentally a technical problem.  We simply shouldn't have live
articles that at least two or three established users haven't checked.
Some combination of patrolling and stable versions might do it, although
over time I've started to think more and more that it really needs some
other, truly out-of-the-box solution.

--
Ilmari Karonen


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria of notability for web

body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:

> I have a blog on Blogger, which is a medium both well known and
> independent of me.
>
> According to the criterion, my blog is notable. Actually, all the
> blogs from Blogger are notable, only the blogs hosted by their owners
> fail this criterion of notability.

The language probably needs to be tightened up a bit, but the intent and
the way it's been read (and I don't disagree) is that "independent of
the subject" means that the subject is controlled editorially somewhat
from the place hosting it.  Thus, a blog on blogger isn't, but a
webcomic on Keenspot generally is.

I'm ham-fisted in my explanation this morning.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 24/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm generally against making the SBL a local decision.. if a URL is
> being spamvertised and it is without value, and the spamming can't be
> stopped via less aggressive means, then all the wikis should be
> protected from it.  Although for non-spamming related uses, a local
> URLBL makes sense.

On en:, the problem is finding a Meta admin in less than geological time.

- d.


from_name: Omegatron

body:
On 1/25/07, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>
> The same holds for RS and CITE: they don't magically guarantee quality by
> themselves, but they are great tools for doing so if not abused.

But they are only used for abuse.  A simple sentence or two in WP:V and a
dose of consensus is sufficient.


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any
> abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these
> policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going
> to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
>

Please do.  While you're there, take a look at the talk page.  An easy
way to make WP:RS more useful would be to break down the sourcing by
subject as opposed to thinking that the same style of sources for
historical figures is needed for an internet meme.  Not surprisingly,
there's some vocal opposition to it, and the problem persists.

-Jeff
--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


body:
On 25/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am almost always on line. Then again I am not on en. I can be found on
> IRC easily. The same is true for so many other Meta admins. If finding
> things means that they have to be on the project itself, try finding a
> Meta admin on the Swahili wikipedia .. :)

If you don't mind having the en:wp spamfighters messaging you lots,
then good :-)

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [19651] trunk/phase3

body:
On 25/01/07, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> We do -- it's what prints the pretty backtraces for unhandled exceptions.

*sob*

I suppose the days of lovely old wfDebugDieBacktrace() are long gone...

Rob Church


body:
Francis Tyers wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any
>> abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these
>> policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going
>> to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
>>
>> Mgm
>
> Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a
> problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying
> a source.

It's more a little bit of both.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


from_name: Ken Arromdee

body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping
> WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up,
> because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.

Perhaps true if you completely nuke them, but to say that they need to be nuked
is really an exaggeration for effect.

We don't need to nuke CITE and RS.  What we do need is to be less extreme
about when they are used.


body:
On Thu, 25 Jan 2007, Matt R wrote:
> > [[WP:FAC]]. Sourcing disputes are a more or less constant din - both
> > with articles that are accurate being taken to task for not being
> > well-sourced enough (This has become a pernicous flavor of
> > deletionism in the past year or so) and with articles that are
> > complete shit getting a pass because they have sources, even if the
> > sources are bollocks.
>
> Even for the best policies and guidelines, there'll always be some people who
> try to abuse, wikilawyer, or generally twist them to their own ends. NPOV
> disputes are more or less a constant din, too, but that's no reason to nuke
> NPOV.

While all policies can be abused, some are easier to abuse than others.
Some are even attractive nuisances.

WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse, and should be fixed so they
are less so.  Just because they cannot be perfect doesn't mean we should
leave gaping flaws in them.

Of course, we don't really need to nuke them, just fix them.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Gosh darn it,
	those spammers^Wmarketers will show us what for

body:
On 24 Jan 2007 at 11:24, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 1. Wikipedia is a give / take thing. you give your effort and in
> return you are rewarded with something which will help you in the
> search engine rankings with Google and possibly the other major
> engines.
>
> http://www.sepguy.com/2007/01/23/5-reasons-wikipedia-is-doomed.html

That page is a real "How many errors can you find in this page?"
brainteaser.  The author's attribution of WikiSeek as having been
launched by Jimbo Wales (it's actually by a company named Searchme,
Inc., unconnected with the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikia, or any other
Jimbo Wales venture) is the most glaring error I noticed.

The site also refers to "wiki Nazis", thus triggering Godwin's Law.
Then the author links to a personal anecdote of "Wikipedia hell"
which turns out to simply be the fact that he once added a lengthy
section on "Search Engine Prominence" to an article and had it
removed and criticized by another editor on the grounds of the
terminology being "not really standard".  Interesting definition of
"hell" as being a place where not everybody always agrees with you
all the time.  (It kind of reminds me of the Twilight Zone episode
where hell turned out to be a place of eternal boredom where
everything you try to do works perfectly with no conflict of any
sort.)

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


from_name: Michael

subject: [Wikitech-l] help

body:
-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
wikitech-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: 25 January 2007 08:16
To: wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 81

Send Wikitech-l mailing list submissions to
	wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
	http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
	wikitech-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org

You can reach the person managing the list at
	wikitech-l-owner at lists.wikimedia.org

When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
than "Re: Contents of Wikitech-l digest..."

Today's Topics:

   1. KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of MW	screenshots.)
      (Brion Vibber)
   2. Re: KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of MW
      screenshots.) (Jay R. Ashworth)
   3. Re: License status of MW screenshots. (Ilmari Karonen)
   4. Re: KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of	MW
      screenshots.) (Ilmari Karonen)
   5. Re: MD5 Password Encryption (Alphax (Wikipedia email))
   6. Re: License status of MW screenshots. (Alphax (Wikipedia email))
   7. Re: MD5 Password Encryption (Edward Z. Yang)
   8. Re: [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [19651] trunk/phase3 (Brion Vibber)
   9. Re: Extension request: Greenlist (David Gerard)
  10. MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-25 (brion at pobox.com)

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

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:23:54 -0800
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Subject: [Wikitech-l] KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of MW
	screenshots.)
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <45B7F89A.4000704 at pobox.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

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

Guys, can we please take it off-list or find an amateur legal arguments
list to duke it out in?

Thanks.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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XC9Ied1bM3Y7Lajh7DCMAjE=
=zgqL
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:45:46 -0500
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra at baylink.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of
	MW	screenshots.)
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <20070125004546.GA10994 at cgi.jachomes.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 04:23:54PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
> Guys, can we please take it off-list or find an amateur legal arguments
> list to duke it out in?

O*kay*, dad.  :-}

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth
jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC
2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87
e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647
1274

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

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:37:05 +0200
From: Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] License status of MW screenshots.
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <45B809C1.2080107 at vyznev.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 05:45:51PM -0500, Anthony wrote:
>>> To use my example, above, my taking a photograph of an artist posing
>>> next to his painting does *not*, to me, seem to meet the description
>>> there, quoted from the statute, of a derivative work, as it's not
>>> *based* on the original painting: he could have been standing next to
>>> *anything*.
>>>
>> Whether or not it's a derivative work is largely irrelevant, because a
>> photograph of a painting definitely *is* a copy.
>
> Well, that's largely a strawman, since 3 lines earlier I made it clear
> that I was *not* discussing merely "a photograph of a painting" in the
> Bridgeman sense.

The way I see it, Bridgeman vs. Corel is pretty much irrelevant here.  A
work can be subject to multiple copyright claims.  Bridgeman is about
whether a person making a copy gets to claim copyright on it.  The issue
we're discussing is whether the person who made the original gets to
enforce their copyright on the derivative work.  The two issues are more
or less orthogonal -- all the four possible combinations can and do occur.

Examples:

1. Person A paints a picture.  Person B scans it.  Per Bridgeman, the
copyright on the scan belongs to person A only.

2. Person A paints a picture.  Person B takes it to their studio and
photographs it in a carefully chosen artistic setting.  The photograph
incorporates creative work by both A (the painting) and B (the scene it
is set in), and both thus have copyright on it.

3. Person A paints a picture and makes posters of it.  Person B takes a
photo of a busy street where one lamppost in the background happens to
have one of A's posters glued to it.  Since the inclusion of A's picture
in the photo is incidental and quite insignificant, it counts as fair
use and/or _de minimis_.  Even if the photo technically counted as a
derivative work (which is a matter of definition), A would not be able
to enforce their copyright on it.

4. Person A paints a picture.  Person be uses a spectrometer to analyze
a spot on the painting and to determine the chemical composition of the
paint there.  Since the resulting dataset bears no traces of creativity
by either A or B, it is ineligible for copyright.

--
Ilmari Karonen

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

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 03:38:45 +0200
From: Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] KILL THIS THREAD (was Re: License status of
	MW	screenshots.)
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <45B80A25.6020901 at vyznev.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed

Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> Guys, can we please take it off-list or find an amateur legal arguments
> list to duke it out in?
>
> Thanks.

Oops, sorry, didn't notice this sooner.  Will stop.

--
Ilmari Karonen

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

Message: 5
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 11:38:09 +1030
From: "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] MD5 Password Encryption
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <45B802F9.6030500 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Aw, come on, why is there so much contention about such a simple issue?
> And yes, I did slip when I started talking about birthday attacks. Sorry
> about that.
>

I find it interesting that you're advocating moving away from MD5 in a
situation where the known collision weaknesses aren't relevant, yet you
personally are still using SHA1 (which was broken about two years ago)
in a situation which *is* susceptible to collision - and your signature
didn't verify on that message (<ep65i0$496$1 at sea.gmane.org>).

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

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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 12:46:58 +1030
From: "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] License status of MW screenshots.
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID: <45B8131A.1020707 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 23, 2007 at 04:03:55PM +1100, Stephen Bain wrote:
>> When you start mixing stuff you complicate things. If I were to take a
>> screenshot of a page on Wikipedia, for example, the text of the page
>> would be GFDL (unless there are some quotes or something in the text,
>> which would be fair use), the MediaWiki elements would be GPL, the
>> browser window could be anything (if you're in Firefox, for example,
>> then the picture of the browser interface is under the Mozilla Public
>> Licence). The skins that come with MediaWiki are GPL just like the
>> rest of MediaWiki.
>>
>> So unfortunately you can't get PD screenshots of MediaWiki. The best
>> you can do is GPL screenshots, but only if you show only GPL content
>> in it and either cut out the browser interface or use a GPL browser.
>
> Someone vastly misunderstands the nature of copyright law, I think.
>
> (Though, admittedly, IANAL, either.  I just play on on the net.)
>
> If I create a screenshot of a browser page on my computer displaying
> wikipedia, there is *one* copyright involved: *mine*.  The image is not
> a derivative work of the browser, the OS, or the website.  Therefore,
> none of those people's copyrights apply, and therefore by induction, no
> licenses are necessary.  I created an image, and I own its copyright.
>

Really? So, you can override any and all copyrights of anything, just by
taking your own picture of it? I find your ideas intriguing and wish to
subscribe to your newsletter.

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

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

Message: 7
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:49:28 -0500
From: "Edward Z. Yang" <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] MD5 Password Encryption
To: wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <ep99bg$ca3$1 at sea.gmane.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> I find it interesting that you're advocating moving away from MD5 in a
> situation where the known collision weaknesses aren't relevant, yet you
> personally are still using SHA1 (which was broken about two years ago)
> in a situation which *is* susceptible to collision -

First of all, SHA1 is not *broken*: although cryptographers have
discovered ways to force collisions at a rate lower than brute-force,
the attack is still not practical. Furthermore, in a message signing
context, you would need to trick me into signing a doctored message,
which would be pretty much impossible as I almost always only use GPG to
sign plaintext.

Furthermore, I'm currently using a DES signature, which uses 160 bits
and thus does not support SHA-256. I could use RSA, but then encryption
would be out of question.

What you SHOULD be asking is why I'm using an old version of GnuPG (the
current version is 1.4.6).

> and your signature
> didn't verify on that message (<ep65i0$496$1 at sea.gmane.org>).

Don't know why, my archived copy gives similar results. Maybe
Thunderbird did something to it.
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FgrpUFydo2NL18SMVoCH7+8=
=kaJr
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------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:47:13 -0800
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [19651] trunk/phase3
To: wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <45B85271.7000009 at pobox.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

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

simetrical wrote:
> Incidentally, should we maybe use set_exception_handler()?

We do -- it's what prints the pretty backtraces for unhandled exceptions.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 08:06:23 +0000
From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Extension request: Greenlist
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Message-ID:
	<fbad4e140701250006t36984b8bxd2ebec9cea7d2920 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

On 24/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm generally against making the SBL a local decision.. if a URL is
> being spamvertised and it is without value, and the spamming can't be
> stopped via less aggressive means, then all the wikis should be
> protected from it.  Although for non-spamming related uses, a local
> URLBL makes sense.

On en:, the problem is finding a Meta admin in less than geological time.

- d.

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

Message: 10
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:15:58 -0800 (PST)
From: brion at pobox.com
Subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-25
To: wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Message-ID: <20070125081558.548C438821A at leuksman.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19651).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug
4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug
4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or
name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra
trailing slashes.

Passed 489 of 507 tests (96.45%)... 18 tests failed!

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

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End of Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 42, Issue 81
******************************************


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 3:37 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in
> keeping
> WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well
> give up,
> because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.

Not true. There is a difference between "all information must be
verifiable" and "all information must be cited." One refers to a
potential, the other to an actual fact and outcome.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

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

 >


body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 8:16 AM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be
> any
> abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with
> these
> policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think
> I'm going
> to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.

But this is one of the problems. The burden of citing everything is
larger than our editors, especially our casual editors, are willing
to undertake. We will never reach a point where people will cite
their sources in the first place. Hence the prospect of eternally
playing catch-up.

-Phil


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from making
	attack articles on us

body:
Indeed, quite on the contrary, as someone who is also targetted. Just ignore
them. We leave tthem alone, they leave the rest of us alone, then there's
nothing more to pursue.

On 25/01/07, Kurt Maxwell Weber <kmw at armory.com> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 12:32, Will wrote:
> > Any reason to take ED down would be good, although it probably won't
> > happen.
>
> Oh, grow up.
> --
> Kurt Weber
> <kmw at armory.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 1/25/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are well over 8 million external links in enwiki alone,
> including well over a half million distinct domains via HTTP.
>
> A greenlist is not a remotely sane solution because of this...
>
> Sane solutions are, however, possible.

I was thinking the simplest (from a user perspective) solution would
be to designate any external link that had survived some given time
frame (e.g., a week) as a non-spam link, and thus to switch off
nofollow for it.

Obviously it wouldn't be perfect, but it might be close. Driveby
spamming would have no effect, but useful links added by Wikipedians
would, after a week, be considered real links.

I imagine this would be fairly difficult to implement though.

Steve


from_name: Jonathan Buck

subject: [Commons-l] Login

body:
I have set up mediawiki locally, on sign-in the user is authenticated,
however when navigating to any other page (my preferences, my watchlist,
main page), the user is no longer logged in.  A cookie is being created and
I have allowed all cookies.  My only guess is that the session is being lost
somehow.  I am using the apache2 server on windows XP.  Any suggestions as
to where this problem can be troubleshot from or what is going on?
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from_name: Parker Peters

body:
See also: [[Lone wolf (terrorism]].

And I'm disgusted to see one of our members making this kind of call. You do
realize this does more damage to us, because it's an outright call for
people to try to disguise their connection to Wikipedia when filing
fraudulent claims.

Plus, I thought you were better than that, Luna.

Parker

On 1/24/07, Luna <lunasantin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> At this point, I would strongly oppose attaching Wikipedia's name to any
> action of this nature, except in the most dire circumstances. If this is
> done, let it be done by individuals who represent themselves and their own
> interests.
> <snip>
> Just a few thoughts,
> -Luna
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 24/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I'm generally against making the SBL a local decision.. if a URL is
>> being spamvertised and it is without value, and the spamming can't be
>> stopped via less aggressive means, then all the wikis should be
>> protected from it.  Although for non-spamming related uses, a local
>> URLBL makes sense.
>>
>
>
> On en:, the problem is finding a Meta admin in less than geological time.
>
>
> - d.
>
Hoi,
I am almost always on line. Then again I am not on en. I can be found on
IRC easily. The same is true for so many other Meta admins. If finding
things means that they have to be on the project itself, try finding a
Meta admin on the Swahili wikipedia .. :)
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
I accepted the bad-faith accusations, I've put up with your and others'
rampant personal attacks.

I'm working under the onus of moderation, and apparently my messages were
let through the moderation queue.

The fact that I have to work under that, and put up with your personal
attacks and nonsense, is galling but I deal with it.

Oh, and I'm still an admin. Nothing, thankfully, that you can do will change
that.

Parker

On 1/24/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:04:52 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in
> reply to "Parker Peters":
>
> >I'm trying to keep my notes up to date. Are you still
> >trying to pretend to be an admin or not?
>
> More to the point, how come he's still here after being put on mod
> under two successive addresses?  I thought he was leaving anyway?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 25/01/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I am almost always on line. Then again I am not on en. I can be found on
>> IRC easily. The same is true for so many other Meta admins. If finding
>> things means that they have to be on the project itself, try finding a
>> Meta admin on the Swahili wikipedia .. :)
>>
>
>
> If you don't mind having the en:wp spamfighters messaging you lots,
> then good :-)
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
Depends what a lot means. When there is a need for a Meta admin because
someone wants to do such a thing, I am sure that he/she can become a
Meta Admin fairly quickly. Your notion that people cannot be found is
wrong. There are sufficient of them about. They just do not need to hang
out on en.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA CLUB OF NEW YORK - 31 January 2007 - UPDATE

body:
Jimbo, keep your eyes open.

I'll be there.

Oh, and I need some advice: do I wear the Statler or the Waldorf mask?

Parker

On 1/24/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One week from today, Wikipedia's own Jimmy Wales is giving a talk
> entitled *Free
> Culture, Transparency, and Search* for the Free Culture Club at New York
> University, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. to be held at the Courant
> Institute,
> 251 Mercer Street, Room 109, in New York City. More details can be found
> at
> www.freeculturenyu.org.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> Wikipedia Club of New York - Unofficial Social Chair
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Also, if CITE and RS were to be nuked, there's not much point in keeping
WP:V; and if verifiability goes out of the window, I might as well give up,
because then Wikipedia will never be a accurate encyclopedia.

A while back I said that I think sources by an article's subject are
perfectly when they're used to back up content rather than the subject's
claim of notability, which is basically a comment on reliable sources too.

I think that shows the page needs to be altered.

Mgm

On 1/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously
> >>futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
> >>but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
> >>Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)
> >>
> >>We should nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]. They are not working.
> >>
> >>
> >Niether do most forms of goverment but people still tend to try and
> >keep some form of them arround
> >
> :-D   Some would say that they continue to exist despite the peopl.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
Have you ever tried to get feedback through relevant WikiProjects?

Mgm


from_name: Earle Martin

body:
On 24/01/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
> Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.

See also: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WabiSabi

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
I have noticed that when you create an imperfect article (no stub tag,
no categories, or something badly wrong), someone tends to show up and
fix it. Often they add something else in the process. But at least you
get a tiny bit of feedback.

However, when you create a "perfect" article in one go (referenced,
with categories, links and incoming links), you actually get no
feedback. No one is drawn there to fix some automatically detected
fault. In short, no one even seems to see it.

This strikes me as slightly sad. But then, I haven't had my coffee yet.

Steve


body:
On 1/24/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Links don't make Wikipedia great, the encyclopedic content within
> Wikipedia itself makes it great. Most of the time the stuff in the
> external links section could vanish without diminishing the value of the
> article in a significant way.

Depends on the field. Very frequently a stub with a couple of well
chosen links is incredibly useful. Far more than the stub without the
links would be.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

body:
On 1/25/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
> purpose of the project:
>
>     Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
>     free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
>     person on the planet in their own language.
>
> Does this still hold true?

No, and it hasn't for a long while. I'll explain below.

  There have been a lot of major changes in
> policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
> fundamental goals.

"Months"? Try Years.

  I think almost everyone who contributes to the
> project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.

Even those who've given up bothering with the drama, nonsense, and futility
of trying to actually improve it by editing, yes.

But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
> goals:
>
> * free
> * (create an) encyclopedia
> * of the highest possible quality
> * (distribute) to every single person on the planet
> * in their own language
>
> In fact, these goals occasionally conflict.

They are also conflicted by other "goals." Primarily, "of the highest
possible quality" is the first thing sacrificed, which is very sad.

"Of the highest possible quality" is regularly circumvented by the myth of
"consensus", which is the method by which organized large groups of POV
pushers destroy content that they don't like and make our articles less than
encyclopedic, less than accurate, and less than truthful.

"Of the highest possible quality" is also hamstrung by users who feel they
should "own" an article after writing all and/or a large portion of it, by
people associated with various products or companies who have more of an
emotional attachment than they should writing articles that are lifted
directly from the company's PR, and by the deletionists who feel that
anything they personally don't have experience with should be removed (even
if the article is well sourced and well written).

"Of the highest possible quality" ought to be our first priority, but it has
been left out, abused, and turned into a joke by wikipedia policies. In its
stead is "consensus", "respect for process" calls by people who have no
respect for processes themselves, jerks who feel that "2+2=5" has to be
sourced, jerks who will attack any source they disagree with and try to get
it disallowed, and by a defeatist attitude by those who claim that wikipedia
will "eventually" become quality while refusing to actively do anything to
improve its quality themselves.

If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> priority?

"Consensus" trumps factual accuracy, quality, and pretty much anything else
it seems.

Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> changed?

Already has been.

  Who has the power to change it?

Jimbo did when he declared "Consensus" the guiding principle.

  Is this simply a top-down
> authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> priorities of the project?

You think you actually have a say? Look what happens to anyone who doesn't
drink the group kool-aid.

Parker


body:
geni wrote:

> False.
>
> It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
> construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface

False.  Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.

-Jeff

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


from_name: SJ

body:
On 1/24/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/24/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> > Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
>
> Yes, but it got {{rejected}}.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone

Not before it was merged with a somewhat unrelated idea, about what to
do if you don't know a relevant piece of information.

This touches on a basic contradiction that we haven't really come to
terms with -- on the one hand, this is an open collaboration, intended
to let people see when something is unfinished, help them verify its
accuracy, and quickly contribute what they know.  On the other hand,
many want the project to "look professional", to have a certain
polish, to be respected as a brilliant resource.

It would be awfully nice if there were some simple differentiation in
skin that could distinguish articles at different stages of
development, so that leaving questions and unfinished statements in an
article would not be unexpected or 'unprofessional' in an article
written on lightly crumpled recycled paper; and unfinished ideas would
not be unespected on some slightly grenapkin paper...

++SJ


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
On 1/24/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> One week from today, Wikipedia's own Jimmy Wales is giving a talk
> entitled *Free
> Culture, Transparency, and Search* for the Free Culture Club at New York
> University, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. to be held at the Courant
> Institute,
> 251 Mercer Street, Room 109, in New York City. More details can be found
> at
> www.freeculturenyu.org.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
> Wikipedia Club of New York - Unofficial Social Chair

Grr, I'll be home in NY just one day later (Feb 1), and I missed the last
one by just a week. :(