from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
On 9/27/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I'm talking to some Tor people, trying to explain to them why Tor
> servers are so often blocked from editing wikipedia.  I'd like to
> collect some information (horror stories) about it...

Jimbo, one Tor horror story was [[User:Enviroknot]], who also edited
as [[User:KaintheScion]] and [[User:ElKabong]], He used Tor to post
anonymous Islamophobic abuse of Muslim editors, and managed to turn
Islam-related talk pages into toxic waste dumps for weeks before the
arbcom banned him, and before we had blocked all the open proxies we
knew he was using. At least in part because of him, one Muslim editor
started responding in kind, and is now up before the arbcom for it, so
the fallout isn't over yet.

Sarah


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Traroth

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: No more new Wikipedias !

body:
--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> a ?crit :

> I think you're correct, to a certain extent.
>
> I don't like the current setup of the board, I don't
> think it's
> representative enough, and that irritates me.
>
> But I am unlikely to complain unless it threatens
> one of my "pet projects". Hm
>
> Mark

No complaint, no change...

Traroth

___________________________________________________________________________
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] FW: Re: Uses of your strips on Wikipedia.

body:
On 9/27/05, Zachary Harden <zscout370 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> For your information, we have permission to use a Foxtrot strip that was
> made in May of 2005 related to us.

Please see <http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-May/023760.html>.
Images with permission for use on Wikipedia only are not permitted.
The permission must grant use of the image under a free license. There
is a letter at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Boilerplate_request_for_permission>
which can be used to explain this when asking for an image or other
work.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Released to Wikipedia

body:
On 9/26/05, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Geoffry Philp page was a copyvio, but the anon who wrote it has posted
> the following material on the talk page.
>
> "I, Geoffrey Philp, am the holder of the copyright to
> geoffreyphilp.com<http://geoffreyphilp.com>and I grant Wikipedia all
> rights to use the information contained on the
> page".

This is one area where I tend not to assume good faith without
evidence. How do you know this anonymous user is really Geoffrey
Philp? They should email permissions at wikimedia.org from a
geoffreyphilp.com email address or from the email address mentioned on
that website, stating that they release the work under the GFDL
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GFDL>). An alternative would be for
them to make a note on the website itself that the content is GFDL.

Angela.


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
I'm talking to some Tor people, trying to explain to them why Tor
servers are so often blocked from editing wikipedia.  I'd like to
collect some information (horror stories) about it...

I've blogged about my own proposed solution to the problem.
http://blog.jimmywales.com/

--Jimbo


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fair Use suppression getting silly

body:
"Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:2ed171fb05092701414ca01dbd at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> If you write an article on the [[Ford Mustang]] and you use a photo
> from ford.com claiming fair use, that's one thing.
> If you use that same (or smaller) Ford Mustang picture on the
> [[Category:Rear wheel drive vehicles]] page as an icon for the page,
> that is gratuitous use.

No argument.

However this is not what I am referring to.

If you add [[Category:Pictures of Ford cars]] to that page, the picture will
then appear on the appropriate page **as a member of that category**. Not
illustrating the category...not describing it...simply as a **member** of
the category.

Some people seem to think that our Fair Use policy should be so draconian
that this kind of picture should not be allowed to belong to any category,
simply because the automatic display of the image's thumbnail on the
associated category page constitutes violation of Fair Use.

So if we attach a category to the {{Fair Use}} template (say [[Category:Fair
Use Images]] for the sake of argument), we are apparently committing an
offense by simply retrieving the category to inspect what images have been
described as "Fair Use" for the purpose of verifying that the description is
correct.

This is the kind of nonsense up with which I am not inclined to put.

I would like clarification or I will have to stamp my foot and pout.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Justin Cormack

references:
<dhaodu$usu$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2ed171fb05092701414ca01dbd@mail.gmail.com>
	<dhb73c$5ti$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Tue, 2005-09-27 at 11:30 +0100, Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Andrew Lih" <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:2ed171fb05092701414ca01dbd at mail.gmail.com...
> [snip]
> > If you write an article on the [[Ford Mustang]] and you use a photo
> > from ford.com claiming fair use, that's one thing.
> > If you use that same (or smaller) Ford Mustang picture on the
> > [[Category:Rear wheel drive vehicles]] page as an icon for the page,
> > that is gratuitous use.
>
> No argument.
>
> However this is not what I am referring to.
>
> If you add [[Category:Pictures of Ford cars]] to that page, the picture will
> then appear on the appropriate page **as a member of that category**. Not
> illustrating the category...not describing it...simply as a **member** of
> the category.
>
> Some people seem to think that our Fair Use policy should be so draconian
> that this kind of picture should not be allowed to belong to any category,
> simply because the automatic display of the image's thumbnail on the
> associated category page constitutes violation of Fair Use.

Its a process of working out a policy, rather than the current no policy
at all. No one is deleting stuff yet, just small amounts of things being
experimented for discussion reasons.

Some legal input would be very helpful right now.

The current situation is that fair use has got silly. And it has caused
a culture of pretty much anything is fair use. This has led to the
situation where even if you argue individually that one item is fair
use, you have now collected a database that in its entirety cannot be
argued to be fair use.

Justinc


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimentaries and multimedia collaboration

body:
Just to remember you that you can always see the wikimentary I did at
wikimania :

http://soufron.free.fr/soufron-spip/article.php3?id_article=99

Cormac Lawler wrote:
> On 9/26/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Some documentarists who came to Wikimania last month are interested in
>> developing ways for community members to develop their own
>> documentaries and shorts from their raw footage. (~20 hours of film,
>> including many interviews)  They are also developing a piece of their
>> own, but are increasingly excited about the idea of a "wikimentary" --
>> seeing what the community would do with the material.
>>
>> On top of their material, Fuzheado captured a number of interviews
>> with Wikimedians around the world, we have full video capture of
>> around 20 sessions, we have a Public-Domain micro-documentary from
>> Soufron, et al...
>>
>> Some early discussion about a wikimentary :
>>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimentary
>>
>> There are lots of technical and interface issues to work out, some of
>> which touch on boundaries we are already pushing when we share and
>> collaborate on images and sound files.  What audio/video projects on
>> the projects should be alerted to this?
>>
>> ++SJ ,  filmmaker wannabe
>
>
> Thanks for pointing this out, Sj. I talked about a Wikimentary and the
> logistics thereof at Wikimania with Rory O'Connor (Globalvision) - but
> I'm just wondering, where has the talk taken place since then?
> Privately? Or on-wiki/list (commons-l)..?
>
> Cormac / [[User:Cormaggio]], eh, ditto ;-)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fair Use suppression getting silly

body:
On 27/09/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Who is advocating this? I haven't seen anybody saying this on the talk
> pages for WP:FU or WP:WPFU. None of the people I've seen who have been
> involved in discussing fair use policy and tagging seem to be
> advocating this in the slightest.

It seems to have been a passing comment on WP:CP - end of the Sept.25 entry.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Internet Rules in China

body:
On 9/27/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Caroline Ford wrote:
> >Let's wait until we hear from the Chinese users, rather than filtered via
> >foreign media..
>
> Well, you can get it confirmed by Xinhua, the official state media:
>  http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/26/content_3544488.htm
>
> Although they spin it as a way to crack down on "fabricated information,
> pornography, gambling, or violence", the most relevant paragraph
> confirms the widely reported new registration requirements:
>
> "News sites set up by news organizations but publishing not just their
> own stories, and sites by other organizations featuring news stories
> must get approval from the State Council Information Office. Sites by
> news organizations that only carry their own stories should register at
> the main office or provincial information offices."

It has been the buzz for the last few days in this region, but it's
unlikely Wikipedia will be directly affected by this, English or
Chinese. However, if there was a Chinese Wikinews, it would likely be
affected.

When the authorities say "news sites," that's a precise term. Most
knowledgeable watchers feel it targets bloggers and second tier news
providers, namely Sina.com, Sohu.com that over the years have inserted
more of their own a-la-carte commentaries alongside "approved" news
sources like Xinhua, even though they are not officially allowed to do
so. In the end, there is nothing earth shattering about the guidelines
- they are reinforcements of existing policies. But restating them so
emphatically means folks will cut back to more safe policies in the
near term.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Proposing New Projects (was Proposal for a new
	project: Wikisomething)

body:
--- Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>
a ?crit :

> Elisabeth Bauer wrote:
>
> > I want to propose a new idea for a new project:
> Wikisomething.
> > Wikisomething is dedicated to contain multilingual
> somethings of all
> > different sorts, therefore it spares us the need
> to found any new
> > different projects for speficic things. Moreover,
> we could also
> > integrate our current projects into Wikisomething.
> >
> > cordially,
> > Elian
>
> I know this was in jest, but I would like to know if
> people on this
> mailing are fed up with all of these sort of
> proposals or if they need
> to be encouraged more.  I've been vocal about this
> in the past, but my
> impression is that no new major project will ever be
> started.  Period.
>  If you take a look at the "No" votes for
> Wikiversity, for example
>
> (see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Vote
> )
>
> the #1 reason I find credible is that there are some
> technical issues
> that seem to be preventing new projects from being
> started.  What are
> those incredible technical issues that are going to
> force any new
> project from starting for more than a year from now?
>  Is there any
> reason at all to even encourage anybody to start a
> new project of any
> kind?  Is a general concensus that new proposals
> should not even be
> brought up on Foundation-l?
>
> I do believe that at the very least there needs to
> be a few more steps
> in the development process of a new project proposal
> before it gets to
> Foundation-l.  I've been a regular contributor to
> this mailing list now
> for close to a year, and I've seen a dozen or so new
> project proposals
> get posted, most by very well-meaning people and
> some of them are very
> well thought out.  There are some proposals that are
> "not ready for
> prime-time" and perhaps they should be more thought
> out before they come
> up here.  For most new project ideas, Foundation-l
> is the very last
> place that anything will be heard about the idea,
> not the first.
>
> Another related issue is more along the lines of how
> to publicize the
> kernel of an idea that may be useful but needs a bit
> more work, such as
> the Wikimemory proposal that has been debated
> recently.  Requesting help
> for such proposals on this mailing list is throwing
> the idea before a
> very hostile audience, perhaps unwittingly and
> certainly without the
> knowledge of new Wikimedia users who happen to come
> across this mailing
> list as suggested by the New Project Policy.
> Perhaps instead of
> announcing the formal new project proposal here,
> there should be some
> development effort at some Wikiproject or some other
> sub-community of
> Wikimedia users that are much more receptive of the
> idea, and can give
> some depth to the idea before it comes here.
>
> At the very least, if there is to be a moritorium on
> new sister
> projects, please make that official policy on the
> part of the Wikimedia
> Foundation Board and get that stated on the New
> Project page, and
> perhaps even on the front page of Meta as well.  On
> the other hand, if
> the board does intend to allow some new projects to
> be started if they
> are well thought out and have a support community
> behind them, there
> should be an official policy to silence the critics
> who seem to speak in
> a semi-official capacity on behalf of the board
> (even though I know they
> are not board members).
>
> If there are genuine technical issues that need to
> be addressed so that
> starting en.wikiversity.org is somehow harder than
> to.wikibooks.org, I
> would like to know what those issues are that
> developers seem to be
> screaming about.  Get technical and don't sugar coat
> it either, and if
> possible give hard examples.  If the concern is
> purely social and
> getting the new project community organized, that
> may be a legitimate
> concern.  I don't think it is in as many cases as
> the critics seems to
> believe it may be, and most new projects tend to
> recruit more people
> than would normally be participating with Wikipedia
> alone, so I don't
> think it necessarily bleeds other projects dry from
> volunteers.  This is
> also an issue I would be more than willing to debate
> as well.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning

I don't think people are against new projects, but
that people are searching for newness in the proposed
project. What is interesting in a project which
actually means to split Wikipedia in a lot of thematic
encyclopedies, like this "Wikicracy" or even
Wikispecies do ? does it do any sense ? I don't think
so. If anybody has a real new idea what can be done
with wiki-technology (the technology most easily
available for our projects, but other things must be
doable. Some kind of atlas could be great, but doesn't
seam to be doable for the moment), it should be great.
But wikicracy already exists : it's called wikipedia,
and it's collecting much more knowledge (except
politics, I mean) at the same time.
Interdisciplinarity is one of the things making
wikipedia so cool, in my opinion, so 'm not for
splitting it in subprojects, because this aspect will
else be lost.
Wikiversity is a great idea, and I voted for it, even
if it's maybe not doable with the means we have today.
It's an exciting project, and if we are able to do it,
it will be fantastic ! People learning freely and
efficiently knowledge able to change their life, maybe
one day acquiring a degree by that way, all over the
world.
The same for Wikimemories : a mankind rich of all
human experience. Long term consequences overstep
imagination.

Traroth

___________________________________________________________________________
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list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
On 9/27/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> What I recommend is that Tor resolve this problem in this way:
>
> user -> tor cloud -> tor authentication -> tor trusted cloud -> website
>
> If a website complains about a particular ip at a particular time, in
> the trusted cloud, then tor retains enough information to track it back
> to the authentication server account.  They still have no clue who the
> original user is, but they can then use whatever methods they want to
> keep jerks off the trusted cloud -- and then we could treat the trusted
> cloud like any other dynamic ip range.

I have my doubts that Tor is going to want to get into the business of
policing its user base for "appropriate conduct", or even get into the
business of credentialling its users at all.  Also, an abusive user
could easily create a new identity whenever his old one gets banned;
there'd be no way for Tor link the new identity to the old, banned
one.

No matter how you slice it, if the default trust level allows edits,
then we'll get vandalism; if the default trust level does not allow
edits, we'll never learn whether any particular identity should be
trusted.  There's simply no way with Tor in the picture that we can
reliably link an identity at the server end with a specific end user
without issuing credentials via some outside channel that the user has
to validate after they connect.   As long as trustable credentials are
available anonymously and automatically, vandals will continue to
acquire and use them.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Regarding Tor, does anyone have, or has anyone considered, an
> auto-discovery robot to find Tor proxies?
>
> This would be a Tor client which would connect to Tor at regular
> intervals and hit a special URL with a magic authenticating token in it,
> that would automatically ban the IP in question.
>
> Sooner or later, it would work its way through all, or almost all, of
> the proxies in the Tor cloud.

This is unnecessary since Tor is happy to give us the list.  What I'm
looking to persuade them is simply that we aren't being Chinese censors
by blocking these, but that there are legitimate difficult issues here,
and as much as we love privacy, we need them to help us work out a way
to handle this.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Administrators of wikis, forums, webmail and IRC all use IP blacklists
> as a means to enforce a code of behaviour. Roger counters that server
> administrators should move from IP-based access control to more secure
> identification methods such as PKA coupled with credit card
> authentication. But would that really be a step forward for privacy?

Your answer is precisely correct.  We could even require Chinese
dissidents (or similar) to fax in a copy of their passport to validate
their user account.  We could do a lot of things to prevent Tor abuse,
but the point is we want to be as open as possible, and we want people
to be as private as they need to be, without having grief.

What I recommend is that Tor resolve this problem in this way:

user -> tor cloud -> tor authentication -> tor trusted cloud -> website

If a website complains about a particular ip at a particular time, in
the trusted cloud, then tor retains enough information to track it back
to the authentication server account.  They still have no clue who the
original user is, but they can then use whatever methods they want to
keep jerks off the trusted cloud -- and then we could treat the trusted
cloud like any other dynamic ip range.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>
>
>> At least my proposal serves to highlight our differences in
>>viewpoint. Tor supporters like to justify their existence from the moral
>>high ground of protection against government persecution or industrial
>>espionage. But what the bulk of Tor users are really interested in is
>>obscuring their identity server administrators, and that carries with it
>>a different set of ethical implications.
>
> I can see the place of anonymity on Wikinews, for example - reporting
> about something you don't want your name linked to as yet. But I
> really cannot see that a case has been made for Tor-level anonymity if
> the mission statement is "We're here to write an encyclopedia." Even
> for regular open proxy anonymity.

You have a point, but I like to think of people in mainland China being
able to edit [[Falun Gong]] without feeling a cloud of worry.  Even NPOV
editing might be misconstrued by some authority somewhere, and people
have kids, jobs, families, and might prefer to just stay away rather
than take a risk.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com

body:
Hi,

I've downloaded the nightly tarball since my company's firewall doesn't allow me to use a CVS client.
I found out that the sourcefiles had added a ",v" to each extension like cs,v and also contained some versioning info.
So I renamed them and deleted the versioning info.
I have also searched for the libraries and copied them into \wikipedia\mwsearch\libs\
I've downloaded and installed mono.

But now I don't know how to compile it. The sources seem to be builded with monodevelop.
Since I'm using Windows XP, I don't know how to proceed.
I've also a MS Visual Studio .NET 2003 available, if this helps.

Any help how to compile the necessary dlls and exes is very welcome.
I really want this Wikipedia search engine up and running.

Greetings
Markus

> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Brion Vibber
> Gesendet: Montag, 26. September 2005 21:19
> An: Wikimedia developers
> Betreff: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: lucene search doesn't work with my wiki
>
> Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com wrote:
> > Hi Brion,
> >
> > thank you for your fast answer.
> >
> > where do i get the c# version of lucene search?
>
> mwsearch in our CVS. You need to obtain libraries separately. The
> updater interface is in extensions/MWSearch.
>
> This is not a supported product and I make no guarantees whatsoever on
> its suitability or usefulness for anyone at all. I would recommend
> against attempting to use our Lucene search tools for your own site at
> this time.
>
> > Does WikiPedia also use this c# version?
>
> Currently yes.
>
> > Why is WikiPedia using version 1.6alpha of the mediawiki engine?
>
> Wikipedia is using our current development tree of MediaWiki while we
> continue to stabilize it and streamline new improvements.
> (MediaWiki is
> written specifically for Wikipedia.)
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> I'm talking to some Tor people, trying to explain to them why Tor
> servers are so often blocked from editing wikipedia.  I'd like to
> collect some information (horror stories) about it...

I frequently trip over Tor servers doing CheckUser. It's a favourite
for anon vandals and banned editors (Enviroknot is particularly keen
on them), much like the usual Googlable open proxy lists. If I have
time (insert hollow laugh here) I'll find some that are unbanned and
see what sort of crap comes through them.

- d.


from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia and OmniGraffle

body:
> I don't know how many people have seen this, but in the October 05
> issue of ''[[MacAddict]]'' magazine, there is an add for
> ''[[OmniGraffle]]'', at the top of which contains a link to
> Wikipedia ([[The Game (game)]]).

Correction, it was [[Tie game (game)]].


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I'm talking to some Tor people, trying to explain to them why Tor
>servers are so often blocked from editing wikipedia.  I'd like to
>collect some information (horror stories) about it...
>
>I've blogged about my own proposed solution to the problem.
>http://blog.jimmywales.com/
>
>--Jimbo
>
>
Regarding Tor, does anyone have, or has anyone considered, an
auto-discovery robot to find Tor proxies?

This would be a Tor client which would connect to Tor at regular
intervals and hit a special URL with a magic authenticating token in it,
that would automatically ban the IP in question.

Sooner or later, it would work its way through all, or almost all, of
the proxies in the Tor cloud.

-- Neil


from_name: geni

references:
<dhaodu$usu$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<2ed171fb05092701414ca01dbd@mail.gmail.com>
	<dhb73c$5ti$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<eecbb0630509270648446f158a@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 9/27/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> Again, fair use law has nothing to do with what we, personally, find
> unreasonable or draconian. If it is the case that having images listed in a
> category is incompatible with the law, then we shouldn't do it, period. You
> would have to show why this practice constitutes a fair use and the burden
> of proof would be squarely on you. As it happens, I think that whoever is
> raising this issue is making a pretty good point.
>
> - Ryan

Isn't there a way to use the softwear to prevent the images appearing
in catigories?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: New Internet Rules in China

body:
On 9/27/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm so happy I'm not Chinese.

Perhaps you mean, "I'm glad I'm not residing in the People's Republic of China."

> I would hate to be restricted like that.

Then again, you have people living in the good old free US, and wind
up choosing Fox News Channel anyway.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
On 27/09/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I frequently trip over Tor servers doing CheckUser. It's a favourite
> for anon vandals and banned editors (Enviroknot is particularly keen
> on them), much like the usual Googlable open proxy lists. If I have
> time (insert hollow laugh here) I'll find some that are unbanned and
> see what sort of crap comes through them.

On the matter of open proxies generally, someone's brought up the
matter of resurrecting the open-proxy-blocker bot (if that's a
misrepresentation of what it did/does I apologise; not completely au
fait with this). Some comments are at [[Wikipedia talk:Bots]] if
anyone feels strongly about this...

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

> Regarding Tor, does anyone have, or has anyone considered, an
> auto-discovery robot to find Tor proxies?
> This would be a Tor client which would connect to Tor at regular
> intervals and hit a special URL with a magic authenticating token in it,
> that would automatically ban the IP in question.
> Sooner or later, it would work its way through all, or almost all, of
> the proxies in the Tor cloud.

The list is public :-)

    http://tor.noreply.org/tor/

That said, http://forum.lucsociety.org/read.php?2,252,253,report=1
caught my eye.

- d.


body:
On 9/27/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can understand that using images willy-nilly in articles to which they
> bear only the most lateral of relationships might well give rise to a real
> problem, and I have no argument with the idea of removing such uses.
>
> However it would appear that some people are taking the argument to rather
> silly extremes. I have just discovered the school of thought that believes
> that including an image in a category contravenes the "Fair Use" principle
> because displaying the image on the category page amounts to using the image
> in an unfair way!
>
> Is it me, or is this just plain silly? A category is simply an
> organisational tool, not an article. Surely a case can be made that the
> proper categorisation of images within an encyclopedia is essential to using
> those images correctly.
>
> I was under the impression that ideally, **all** images should belong to at
> least one category, depending upon their licensing status. Obviously there
> are those who disagree.

Hi, it's sometimes confusing since "fair use" is something only the US
and Philippines has. One of the provisions for fair use is - "purpose
and character of the use."

If you write an article on the [[Ford Mustang]] and you use a photo
from ford.com claiming fair use, that's one thing.

If you use that same (or smaller) Ford Mustang picture on the
[[Category:Rear wheel drive vehicles]] page as an icon for the page,
that is gratuitous use. When used a navigation aid, a badge or a
symbol for Wikipedia's sake, we are appropriating their work for our
convenience, and not to educate.

And because this is case law, there are no precise guidelines about
this, but the precedent for this is pretty substantial.

As an aside, I'm heartened to see photos tagged with "Fair use image
replacement request" to try to be less dependent on their use.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
Look at the history for [[Wikipedia:Requests for
arbitration/KaintheScion et al./Proposed decision]]

Enviroknot (aka, Kain the Scion) didn't like the decision we had in
progress, so he decided to vandalize the decision page by hopping TOR
proxies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/KaintheScion_et_al./Proposed_decision&limit=500&action=history

While this was a relatively backwoods out-of-the-way page, it could very
well have been any article or articles.

-Mark


from_name: GraemeL

subject: [WikiEN-l] Tor horror stories

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I'm talking to some Tor people, trying to explain to them why Tor
> servers are so often blocked from editing wikipedia.  I'd like to
> collect some information (horror stories) about it...
>
> I've blogged about my own proposed solution to the problem.
> http://blog.jimmywales.com/

I've done some quick and dirty analysis. WP access is pretty slow for me
at the moment, but if my methodology seems useful, I'll run a larger
sample later.

I grabbed the perl script here:
http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Feb-2005/msg00009.html

Running this script produced a list of 364 Tor exit points.
Running grep to find those with port 80 enabled resulted in a list of
198 exit points.

I then picked 10 of those allowing port 80 at random and queried their
contributions to en.wikipedia.org.

6 of the 10 exit points had no contributions. The remaining 4 exit
points accounted for a total of 44 edits. 18 of those edits could
immediately be classed as vandalism, the remaining 26 were not obviously
vandalism, though some of them could have been revert wars.

Of the 18 obviously bad edits, 6 were part of an attack on the user page
of an admin. That attack is still ongoing, though it now seems to be
originating from open proxies and not Tor nodes.

On a personal note, as somebody who does frequent bouts of RC patrol,
the proxies of major ISPs produce orders of magnitude more disruption
than Tor nodes. Then again, Tor is probably easier to deal with.

Please let me know if this was useful. If so, I will run a larger
sampling when things recover from the crash of ariel.

GraemeL


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>On 9/27/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I'm so happy I'm not Chinese.
>>
>>
>Perhaps you mean, "I'm glad I'm not residing in the People's Republic of China."
>
>
>>I would hate to be restricted like that.
>>
>>
>Then again, you have people living in the good old free US, and wind
>up choosing Fox News Channel anyway.
>
:-)
Some people are trapped by a closed system; others are trapped by a
closed mind.  Controls are most effective when the target does not know
that he is being controlled.

Ec


list: commons-l

from_name: Benjamin Esham

subject: [Commons-l] {{flickr}} tag (was Re: FlickrLickr slice done)

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

[I'm cc'ing this to commons-l, as it should be seen/discussed by the
community.]

On Sep 27, 2005, at 12:20 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:

>  I've assigned you a couple of new slices.

OK, thanks!

> Benjamin Esham wrote:
>
>> Also, I was thinking... should we have a tag (probably {{flickr}}) to
>> mark images that have been taken from Flickr?  That would make the
>> FlickrLickr images a lot easier to find, and I think that having a
>> consistent template for information like original image URL, original
>> uploader, etc. would be a good idea.
>
> Yes, feel free to give it a try. The important thing, I think, is
> to keep it
> simple so it remains pleasant to edit through the FlickrLickr UI.
> But [...]
> seems simple enough.

I've created a template {{Flickr}} (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Template:Flickr).  There's an example up at <http://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Bdesham/temp>.  It would be nice if
the Flickr logo were included, but we can't use fair-use images on
Commons AFAIK.  Here's the template syntax:

{{Flickr|
| photographer = [<user's url> <user's name>]
| photographer_location = <location>
| title = <title>
| description = <description>
| taken = <date>
| flickrurl = <image url>
}}

This seems like it should be reasonably easy to edit with
FlickrLickr; if you got really crazy, you could use a text box for
each value and have the script assemble them.  That's probably
overkill, though.

How does this template look?

- --
Benjamin D. Esham
bdesham at gmail.com  |  http://bdesham.net  |  AIM: bdesham128
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia  ?  http://en.wikipedia.org

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: What "community" ?

body:
Poe, Marshall wrote:
> Re Angela's mention of the "community" discussing and deciding things.
>
> Just how many folks are subscribed to Foundation-l?  What percentage of
> them actually contribute to Foundation-l when a new project is proposed,
> or a question is raised?  I've spent a lot of time on a lot of lists
> (founded and moderated one for three years), and this one is, well,
> quite inactive.  And not only that, it's sometimes not very civil (e.g.
> "Do it yourself").

The Foundation doesn't have significant human resources at its disposal.
It provides hosting, and then relies on the work of interested but
otherwise unaffiliated volunteers to promote the formation of a
community, which will then do the required work.

This is the nature of the organisation: if you don't do it, who will?
Enthusiasm is valuable, not ideas. An industrious, maybe even
entrepreneurial attitude is required to found a successful wiki project.
Enthusiasm rarely comes from the upper management -- their enthusiasm is
thinly spread and probably biased towards their Wikipedia background.
That's why you have to have it yourself.

> Communities are groups of individuals with common interests who unite to
> further those interests.  They have to contribute.  They have to be
> helpful.  Do the subscribers to Foundation-l contribute?  Are they
> helpful?  A more basic question: do they even have common interests?

Yes they contribute, but no, they don't have common interests. The
Wikimedia community is really a diverse set of communities, each working
on their own project and only occasionally contributing the Foundation
as a whole or to its management. The Board is unsure of its mandate as a
decision making body, and the Wikimedia community lacks the cohesiveness
required to make its own decisions.

That's why if you want to start a new project, you have to make your own
community. You have to identify people with common interests and draw
them together. Then you have to be prepared to start work with or
without the Board's approval.

A quick introduction since I gather you don't know who I am: I'm mainly
interested in Wikipedia, which I've been contributing to since before
Wikimedia was invented. I know the three most active Board members
pretty well, thanks to IRC. I'm not interested in any Wikimedia project,
active or proposed, other than Wikipedia and MediaWiki.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: What "community" ?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>  At least my proposal serves to highlight our differences in
> viewpoint. Tor supporters like to justify their existence from the moral
> high ground of protection against government persecution or industrial
> espionage. But what the bulk of Tor users are really interested in is
> obscuring their identity server administrators, and that carries with it
> a different set of ethical implications.

I can see the place of anonymity on Wikinews, for example - reporting
about something you don't want your name linked to as yet. But I
really cannot see that a case has been made for Tor-level anonymity if
the mission statement is "We're here to write an encyclopedia." Even
for regular open proxy anonymity.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] FlickrLickr: the first 10,000 images

body:
A total of 14,000 CC-BY-licensed photos on Flickr has now been reviewed
using the collaborative process described at:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr

A total of 1,284 photos has been uploaded to the Commons so far, i.e.,
less than 10% of the reviewed photos on Flickr have been deemed useful.
I have collected some of my personal favorites on

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr/Highlights

We're splitting the ~500,000 CC-BY images into slices of 1,000 each,
which are reviewed one by one by different people. The reviewers so far:

	- Andre Engels: 5 slices
	- Angela: 1 slice
	- Benjamin Esham: 1 slice
	- myself: 7 slices

We need more FlickrLickr reviewers! Just email me to get an account for

http://epov.org/cgi-bin/flickrlickr.pl

and I'll set you up. It's very easy: All you need to do is select the
images you want, and edit the descriptions and categories.

The decision what photos to keep is often very subjective, of course. I
think the best approach is to take into account
- uniqueness
- usefulness for Wikimedia
- technical quality.

If a photo shows a very common object, animal, place or process, then it
should probably only be picked if it is of very high quality. If it
shows  something more unusual, the first question is whether it is at
least theoretically identifiable, and potentially useful for one of our
projects. Technical quality isn't quite as important for these.

We also need to be careful not to let mood affect our judgment. For
example, if you're very hungry, you might select hundreds of photos of
food ;-). So far I'm acting as a final reviewer on all slices, but I'd
like to delegate that role to someone else at some point.

Again, if you're interested, please email me and I'll give you a slice
to look over. It can be very addictive.

Best,

Erik


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Fair use is not a question of whether it is a black and white
"compatible with the law" or "incompatible with the law". Fair use
comes down to a weighing of factors and intent by a judge, and that
only if you end up court. Hence I sometimes find it more useful to
think about "fair use" in terms of "risk factors", for lack of a
better phrase. "High risk" fair use claims are ones which could easily
incite a copyright holder to sue Wikipedia, in part because the
copyright holder would have a good reason to think a judge would be
sympathetic to them. "Low risk" fair use claims are one which are not
likely to ever get in front of a judge, because a copyright holder
would find our fair use claims sufficiently robust as to not guarantee
any easy legal battle. Hence the goal of articulating clearly our fair
use rationale and claims -- the better articulated they are, and the
more legally savvy they are, the more work they will do for us in
reducing our general risk.

I see this as pretty low risk, myself, for reasons already
articulated. We are not using them in a way which generates us any
profit; our use of them is strictly for indexing and sorting purposes;
and the thumbnail images are of such low resolution that they, in and
of themselves, could not possibly compete with any existing market. A
better cause for argumentation (one which I think is still not a
problem) would be image description pages, which can be accessed as
"separately published content" from the article pages themselves,
devoid of content alltogether in many cases. But I feel this is
getting all too academic; none of this takes into account that most
likely any judge would be quick to recognize that such things are
simply technical hurdles necessary for the primary and most important
use of the copyright image, which is part of our self-described
"content". The low resolution of the thumbnail images would also
surely be considered enough of a transformation to render them grossly
less useful than the original copyrighted work in every respect. There
has been at least one case which, though its circumstances were in
some ways different, had this as an important element in the granting
of a "fair use" decision.

If there are reasons to think that this would not be a very "low risk"
fair use claim, I'd be interested in hearing them. So far I've only
seen "used in an article about the subject of the image" invoked which
is less of a legal stricture than a Wikipedia policy used to make sure
that "fair use" images are not applied willy nilly to things they
should not be. It is a nice conservative policy which I on the whole
support, but I think this interpretation of it is a little batty.
Another similar Wikipedia policy which is not directly a legal one is
the "don't use fair use if there are free alternatives." This is not
because there is any law which says "if there were alternatives, you
get no fair use claim," it is because if possible we'd like to avoid
being at any risk at all, avoid even asking the question.

I wanted to also note that most of the fair use image categories are
not oriented around a single copyright holder, as "Pictures of Ford
cars" would likely be. They are things such as "Pictures of political
posters" or "Pictures of DVD covers" and things of that sort. Whether
or not this difference is substantive or not depends on how you reason
it, but I think it makes it clear that their arrangement in the
category pages is simply indexical and is not about any systematic
attempt to make further copyright violations easier.

Again, this is just my reasoning on it. Not a lawyer, etc.

FF

On 9/27/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/27/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If you add [[Category:Pictures of Ford cars]] to that page, the picture
> > will
> > then appear on the appropriate page **as a member of that category**. Not
> > illustrating the category...not describing it...simply as a **member** of
> > the category.
> >
> > Some people seem to think that our Fair Use policy should be so draconian
> > that this kind of picture should not be allowed to belong to any category,
> > simply because the automatic display of the image's thumbnail on the
> > associated category page constitutes violation of Fair Use.
>
>
> Again, fair use law has nothing to do with what we, personally, find
> unreasonable or draconian. If it is the case that having images listed in a
> category is incompatible with the law, then we shouldn't do it, period. You
> would have to show why this practice constitutes a fair use and the burden
> of proof would be squarely on you. As it happens, I think that whoever is
> raising this issue is making a pretty good point.
>
> - Ryan
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
On 9/27/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:

> > I can see the place of anonymity on Wikinews, for example - reporting
> > about something you don't want your name linked to as yet. But I
> > really cannot see that a case has been made for Tor-level anonymity if
> > the mission statement is "We're here to write an encyclopedia." Even
> > for regular open proxy anonymity.

> You have a point, but I like to think of people in mainland China being
> able to edit [[Falun Gong]] without feeling a cloud of worry.  Even NPOV
> editing might be misconstrued by some authority somewhere, and people
> have kids, jobs, families, and might prefer to just stay away rather
> than take a risk.

Yeah. I'll see if I can gather actual data, not just an impression.

- d.


from_name: Anthere

body:
Right

Time for me to say something here.

Angela is essentially right about myself not being willing to get
involved in the decision of a new language creation.

I consider the board is not here to micromanage things and that natural
leaders or natural groups of decision makers should appear to make the
final decision on whether to open a new language or not.

The board must certainly be involved in the deciding whether to create a
NEW PROJECT (such as Wikiversity or others), because this decision is
*strategic* to our whole organisation.

But once a project has be agreed upon, I do not see the decision of
opening one language or not being the job of board members, EXCEPT for
decision such as whether to work in real languages only, or to accept
constructed languages, because again, it might be a strategic decision.
My opinion on the matter is simply that languages such as Klington are
not welcome. And it seems the other board members agree with this.

However, collecting and offering knowledge to the largest number of
people on earth is our mission. And it makes sense that knowledge is
offered in the language people know best. So, I consider that by
default, as a board member, I agree with the creation of any (real and
used) language.
It also makes sense to ME, to help sustain endangered languages; so I
see no limit to our possibilities here.

However, AS A PERSON, I try to be practical and realistic.
Practically, a project with only one editor working on it, has high
chances to be crap or pov. It is NOT a 100% certain, but chances are high.
The problem with new languages is not only workload for the developers,
the problem with a new language with very few participants is simply a
project which is most of the time of poor quality. The QUANTITY of
information in the small wiki is NOT an issue for me. These projects
will NEVER be 100 000 articles big. It does not really matter. Even if
it contains only 5000 great quality stuff, it is WORTH it. Because good
quality content is worth.
But most small projects usually are of poor quality. And this is not
very good for our image.
Some will argue that as long as they are small, they are not very
visible, so it might not matter much. To a certain extent, this is true.
However, each time I visit the french wikinews, my heart grieves,
because though small, though demo, it is visible. And poor quality is
noticed.

So as a person, I would prefer that all the small languages future wiki
only start if they can show a significant group of editors involved and
motivated. However, some would also argue that if new languages REQUIRE
5 editors motivated at the same time to start... some encyclopedias such
as Bambara would NEVER start. And THIS would be a disastrous decision.

So, here is my handle.
If more than 5-10 real and motivated people are asking for a new
language, by all means, let's start the new language. Why on Earth would
you need a board decision to do this ? These guys are real, with real
needs and real motivation and real language. The project is approved. So
? Why not creating it ?
If only 1 or 2 people are asking for the language, then we should
discuss the reality of the language proposed and the opportunity of the
opening. If the language is spoken by 10 millions of people, by all
means, we should open it. 10 millions readers/editors IS significant. If
spoken by only 200 people, then we might decide to get to know the only
interested editor a bit more ... so delay the creation a little bit.

By the way, it would be nice that small new languages make the effort to
make short reports from time to time, so that any major difficulty does
not go unnoticed (such as a pov domination).

Anthere

Traroth wrote:

> That you don't want to make the work to create new
> wikipedias is something I can understand, but why
> destroy existing one ? 'Beats me !
> What I cannot understand is : except the workload
> problem, where is exactly the problem with new
> languages ? Do you want to say which language people
> have to speak ? Or what ?
>
> Traroth
>
>
> --- Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> a
> ?crit :
>
>
>>Arbeo M wrote:
>>
>>>... at least not for the past three months or so.
>>>
>>>In the past you only had to drop the name of some
>>>language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
>>>language was created right away. This surely
>>
>>wasn't a
>>
>>>very intelligent approach, for it left us with
>>
>>quite a
>>
>>>number of inactive Wikipedias.
>>>
>>>Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are
>>
>>heaps
>>
>>>of requests that have been discussed very
>>
>>thoroughly
>>
>>>by the community (cf.
>>>
>>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages).
>
>>>Some of them are pretty well-qualified and
>>
>>supported
>>
>>>by numerous native speakers willing to contribute.
>>>However, not a single new Wikipedia has been set
>>
>>up
>>
>>>for quite a while now.
>>>
>>>Some time ago there had been a remark that it was
>>
>>hard
>>
>>>for our developers to recognize which new language
>>>proposals can be considered as accepeted by the
>>>community (and therefore created). That's why I
>>
>>made a
>>
>>>separate page intended to list languages that
>>>unambiguously qualify for a new wiki (cf.
>>>
>>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages).
>
>>>Since this can be a controversial question I only
>>>placed those cases there that are 100 %
>>
>>unequivocal
>>
>>>(at least 5 supporters, at least 2 native
>>
>>speakers,
>>
>>>ISO code, no objections, etc.).
>>>
>>
>>I've stated my position on new language wikis, and
>>we've been through
>>all the arguments before. Just because I'm no longer
>>interested in
>>arguing every case, or putting my name on the oppose
>>votes, doesn't mean
>>I've changed my mind.
>>
>>I created 5 new Wikipedias in June because I
>>received a request from a
>>Wikimedia Board member. If I receive another such
>>specific request, I'll
>>carry it out. I do that out of loyalty to them, not
>>because I think it
>>contributes to our mission.
>>
>>The problem with voting on the matter is that it is
>>a vote to expand the
>>community. It should come as no surprise that those
>>people who are on
>>the outside are voting to be on the inside. As I've
>>previously said, we
>>should judge the value of a wiki by the number of
>>readers, and by the
>>information it brings to those readers, not by the
>>number of editors. A
>>Wikipedia in Anglo Saxon is a failure regardless of
>>how many articles or
>>editors it has. I know Anglo Saxon is an extreme
>>case, but I'm not
>>prepared to argue about every point in between,
>>especially not when a
>>certain annoying person dominates every discussion.
>>I tired of the
>>repetitive debate long ago, so I'm happy to consider
>>the current set of
>>languages sufficient. Hopefully if there's any
>>really important
>>languages that we've missed, a Board member will let
>>me know.
>>
>>
>>>[...]
>>>Before any misunderstandings might arise: I know
>>
>>that
>>
>>>our developers are extremely busy (and AFAIK
>>
>>unpaid,
>>
>>>too - good gosh...). I was just wondering if
>>
>>somebody
>>
>>>has an idea how we could remedy this situation and
>>>maybe have, like, one new WP per month (so we
>>
>>don't
>>
>>>lose too many potential new contributors)?
>>
>>If those potential new contributors only want to
>>write articles in some
>>little-known conlang, I won't shed any tears if they
>>stay away.
>>
>>-- Tim Starling
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
> T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] request regarding deleted page

body:
Hi,

It seems that a user on Wikipedia named Kelly Martin decided to delete a
page I had put up as a subpage of my Wikipedia page and the talk page of
that page. Also, an additional user deleted a couple images I uploaded.

I have no idea what the current rules of Wikipedia are, and whether or not
an admin has the authority to do such a thing, but I really don't care about
that. What I care about is that I don't have a copy of this content and I'd
really like to get it back. Can someone please send me a copy of this via
email or temporarily undelete these items?

Thanks,
Anthony


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to build mwsearch under windows XP?

body:
Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com wrote:
> i've allready asked the following questions.
> But the topic of the other thread doesn't fit anymore.
>
> I've downloaded the nightly tarball since my company's firewall doesn't
> allow me to use a CVS client.
> I found out that the sourcefiles had added a ",v" to each extension like
> cs,v and also contained some versioning info.
> So I renamed them and deleted the versioning info.

This is not a supported or end-user ready product; you should probably
not attempt to use it unless you know a lot more about it than you
indicate. If you are having trouble getting files out of CVS, this
software IS NOT READY for you and you should not attempt to use it.

If you need to get the source, you should use a CVS client -- the CVS
repository snapshots are copies of the *repository* itself, not of the
current contents. You can google up documentation on various CVS clients
for Windows easily enough.

> I have also searched for the libraries and copied them into
> \wikipedia\mwsearch\libs\
> I've downloaded and installed mono.
> But now I don't know how to compile it. The sources ought to be builded
> with monodevelop.

There is a Makefile, which should work with GNU make. It is designed to
run on Linux/Unix and there is no support for Windows. If you have
difficulty writing an alternate build script, this software IS NOT READY
FOR YOU.

> Since I'm using Windows XP, I don't know how to proceed.

The search code in its current state is not a supported product, and I
recommend against trying to use it as is, particularly if you're
uncertain what to do with the code. There is no known support for
running on Windows (it might work, god knows; never been tested).

> I really want this Wikipedia search engine up and running.

Unless you know what you are doing and are working on developing the
lucene search engine itself, I strongly recommend you use MediaWiki's
built-in search that uses MySQL's fulltext search engine.

This is not a supported or complete product. It is not ready for
third-party use. It's barely ready for our own use. There are known
serious problems with the updater. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE IT.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
> Regarding Tor, does anyone have, or has anyone considered, an
> auto-discovery robot to find Tor proxies?
>
> This would be a Tor client which would connect to Tor at regular
> intervals and hit a special URL with a magic authenticating token in it,
> that would automatically ban the IP in question.
>
> Sooner or later, it would work its way through all, or almost all, of
> the proxies in the Tor cloud.

It's not necessary, Tor have a public exit node list. See for example
http://serifos.eecs.harvard.edu:8000/cgi-bin/exit.pl . The Tor
developers are actually very sympathetic to our situation... or at least
they became sympathetic after a series of conversations between our
developer Domas Mituzas and Tor developer Roger Dingledine, starting at
the CCC last December.

My question to Roger at his CCC lecture was "are you going to provide us
with a client library for automated blocking of Tor exit nodes?" to
which his answer was no, but several months later we received this:

http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/contrib/exitlist

and the Tor developers even made plans to integrate it into MediaWiki
for us. That hasn't eventuated, but I appreciate the gesture.

Roger's preferred solution in MediaWiki is to enable admins to make
short-duration blocks (say 15 minutes) of all Tor exit nodes
simultaneously. My preferred solution is to delay edits:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/18932

...although that is quite a bit more complicated and thus less likely to
get done. At least my proposal serves to highlight our differences in
viewpoint. Tor supporters like to justify their existence from the moral
high ground of protection against government persecution or industrial
espionage. But what the bulk of Tor users are really interested in is
obscuring their identity server administrators, and that carries with it
a different set of ethical implications.

Administrators of wikis, forums, webmail and IRC all use IP blacklists
as a means to enforce a code of behaviour. Roger counters that server
administrators should move from IP-based access control to more secure
identification methods such as PKA coupled with credit card
authentication. But would that really be a step forward for privacy?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I think that with the exception of Wikipedia in Klingon, and perhaps
Old English and Latin, having a Wikipedia in a language has never hurt
our image.

The Klingon Wikipedia was the object of ridicule sometimes. I would
suspect that occasionally, in places with whose press I am not
acquainted, they also find it silly that we have Wikipedias in
regional minority languages. But so far, they don't seem to cause an
image problem.

Mark

On 28/09/05, Traroth <traroth at yahoo.fr> wrote:
> I completly agree with this, even if seem to
> presuppose that *image* is a main issue, what may be,
> if we look at what image implies (public interest,
> donation, number of contributors and so on), but it is
> certainly not so obvious you seem to think.
>
> Traroth
>
> --- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :
>
> > Right
> >
> > Time for me to say something here.
> >
> > Angela is essentially right about myself not being
> > willing to get
> > involved in the decision of a new language creation.
> >
> > I consider the board is not here to micromanage
> > things and that natural
> > leaders or natural groups of decision makers should
> > appear to make the
> > final decision on whether to open a new language or
> > not.
> >
> > The board must certainly be involved in the deciding
> > whether to create a
> > NEW PROJECT (such as Wikiversity or others), because
> > this decision is
> > *strategic* to our whole organisation.
> >
> > But once a project has be agreed upon, I do not see
> > the decision of
> > opening one language or not being the job of board
> > members, EXCEPT for
> > decision such as whether to work in real languages
> > only, or to accept
> > constructed languages, because again, it might be a
> > strategic decision.
> > My opinion on the matter is simply that languages
> > such as Klington are
> > not welcome. And it seems the other board members
> > agree with this.
> >
> >
> > However, collecting and offering knowledge to the
> > largest number of
> > people on earth is our mission. And it makes sense
> > that knowledge is
> > offered in the language people know best. So, I
> > consider that by
> > default, as a board member, I agree with the
> > creation of any (real and
> > used) language.
> > It also makes sense to ME, to help sustain
> > endangered languages; so I
> > see no limit to our possibilities here.
> >
> >
> >
> > However, AS A PERSON, I try to be practical and
> > realistic.
> > Practically, a project with only one editor working
> > on it, has high
> > chances to be crap or pov. It is NOT a 100% certain,
> > but chances are high.
> > The problem with new languages is not only workload
> > for the developers,
> > the problem with a new language with very few
> > participants is simply a
> > project which is most of the time of poor quality.
> > The QUANTITY of
> > information in the small wiki is NOT an issue for
> > me. These projects
> > will NEVER be 100 000 articles big. It does not
> > really matter. Even if
> > it contains only 5000 great quality stuff, it is
> > WORTH it. Because good
> > quality content is worth.
> > But most small projects usually are of poor quality.
> > And this is not
> > very good for our image.
> > Some will argue that as long as they are small, they
> > are not very
> > visible, so it might not matter much. To a certain
> > extent, this is true.
> > However, each time I visit the french wikinews, my
> > heart grieves,
> > because though small, though demo, it is visible.
> > And poor quality is
> > noticed.
> >
> > So as a person, I would prefer that all the small
> > languages future wiki
> > only start if they can show a significant group of
> > editors involved and
> > motivated. However, some would also argue that if
> > new languages REQUIRE
> > 5 editors motivated at the same time to start...
> > some encyclopedias such
> > as Bambara would NEVER start. And THIS would be a
> > disastrous decision.
> >
> >
> >
> > So, here is my handle.
> > If more than 5-10 real and motivated people are
> > asking for a new
> > language, by all means, let's start the new
> > language. Why on Earth would
> > you need a board decision to do this ? These guys
> > are real, with real
> > needs and real motivation and real language. The
> > project is approved. So
> > ? Why not creating it ?
> > If only 1 or 2 people are asking for the language,
> > then we should
> > discuss the reality of the language proposed and the
> > opportunity of the
> > opening. If the language is spoken by 10 millions of
> > people, by all
> > means, we should open it. 10 millions
> > readers/editors IS significant. If
> > spoken by only 200 people, then we might decide to
> > get to know the only
> > interested editor a bit more ... so delay the
> > creation a little bit.
> >
> >
> > By the way, it would be nice that small new
> > languages make the effort to
> > make short reports from time to time, so that any
> > major difficulty does
> > not go unnoticed (such as a pov domination).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Anthere
> >
> >
> >
> > Traroth wrote:
> >
> > > That you don't want to make the work to create new
> > > wikipedias is something I can understand, but why
> > > destroy existing one ? 'Beats me !
> > > What I cannot understand is : except the workload
> > > problem, where is exactly the problem with new
> > > languages ? Do you want to say which language
> > people
> > > have to speak ? Or what ?
> > >
> > > Traroth
> > >
> > >
> > > --- Tim Starling
> > <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> a
> > > ?crit :
> > >
> > >
> > >>Arbeo M wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>... at least not for the past three months or so.
> >
> > >>>
> > >>>In the past you only had to drop the name of some
> > >>>language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
> > >>>language was created right away. This surely
> > >>
> > >>wasn't a
> > >>
> > >>>very intelligent approach, for it left us with
> > >>
> > >>quite a
> > >>
> > >>>number of inactive Wikipedias.
> > >>>
> > >>>Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are
> > >>
> > >>heaps
> > >>
> > >>>of requests that have been discussed very
> > >>
> > >>thoroughly
> > >>
> > >>>by the community (cf.
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages).
> > >
> > >>>Some of them are pretty well-qualified and
> > >>
> > >>supported
> > >>
> > >>>by numerous native speakers willing to
> > contribute.
> > >>>However, not a single new Wikipedia has been set
> > >>
> > >>up
> > >>
> > >>>for quite a while now.
> > >>>
> > >>>Some time ago there had been a remark that it was
> > >>
> > >>hard
> > >>
> > >>>for our developers to recognize which new
> > language
> > >>>proposals can be considered as accepeted by the
> >
> === message truncated ===
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
> T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] institutional participation

body:
Are there any success stories where established institutions,
associations, companies, etc. have decided to contribute to
Wikipedia instead of publishing information on their own website?

Of course Wikipedia shouldn't be used for spam or promotion, but
if you are an association for Michigan heritage, set out to
document the history of the cities and governors of that state,
then you can do this by extending the Wikipedia articles rather
than putting the information elsewhere.  But does this happen?
To what extent, and what are the experience from that?

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


from_name: James D. Forrester

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

For the benefit of the list, I have carried out Anthony's request to
have the content, such as it still exists, emailed to him.

Yours sincerely,
- --
James D. Forrester
Wikimedia : [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]
E-Mail    : james at jdforrester.org
IM (MSN)  : jamesdforrester at hotmail.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDOgttkn3kUxZyJx0RAnO0AJ9yXi14Ckxu8ca6o8DFswVqwuH3nwCggXe8
FibPVS2MMWlU9fcMIb1r4Aw=
=OFVQ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
What about we block tor, and have an appeal system, with a committee
that you appeal to, to be allowed to make an account and use tor. Of
course, you would be at a much higher risk of being blocked, even
accidently. But, I see no serious abuse of tor, that you can't do with
an isp proxy (AOL et al), or that
goofy-one-IP-address-for-all-of-Serbia-thing.

And, Tim is correct about tor's security. No anonymity service is
completely secure, never will be. And unfortunately goofy people
continue to suppress free thought. :(


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
Jayjg set an IP block on this range for one month, which I think was a huge
mistake since it appears to be a dialup pool and a lot of people were
affected. I didn't find out about it until a few hours before the block
expired though, or I would have reversed it. Sorry about the throuble.

- Ryan

On 9/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/25/05, Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:
> > Can anybody get me unblocked? I have made changes to Wikipedia, but
> > all of them have been positive and good!
>
> The block was set on the 26 of august and set to expire after one
> month. Going by th blocked ip list they have expired.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com

body:
Hi,

i've allready asked the following questions.
But the topic of the other thread doesn't fit anymore.

I've downloaded the nightly tarball since my company's firewall doesn't
allow me to use a CVS client.
I found out that the sourcefiles had added a ",v" to each extension like

cs,v and also contained some versioning info.
So I renamed them and deleted the versioning info.
I have also searched for the libraries and copied them into
\wikipedia\mwsearch\libs\
I've downloaded and installed mono.
But now I don't know how to compile it. The sources ought to be builded
with
monodevelop.
Since I'm using Windows XP, I don't know how to proceed.
I've also a MS Visual Studio .NET 2003 available, if this helps.
Any help how to compile the necessary dlls and exes is very welcome.
I really want this Wikipedia search engine up and running.

Greetings
Markus


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia legal threat (forwarded email now sent)

body:
Gods no. Mathematicians are relatively sane. This is about physics.
--jpgordon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jpgordon>????<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jpgordon>

On 9/28/05, Nathan Reed <nathanreed at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is about math, right?
>
> =N.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Traroth

body:
I completly agree with this, even if seem to
presuppose that *image* is a main issue, what may be,
if we look at what image implies (public interest,
donation, number of contributors and so on), but it is
certainly not so obvious you seem to think.

Traroth

--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> a ?crit :

> Right
>
> Time for me to say something here.
>
> Angela is essentially right about myself not being
> willing to get
> involved in the decision of a new language creation.
>
> I consider the board is not here to micromanage
> things and that natural
> leaders or natural groups of decision makers should
> appear to make the
> final decision on whether to open a new language or
> not.
>
> The board must certainly be involved in the deciding
> whether to create a
> NEW PROJECT (such as Wikiversity or others), because
> this decision is
> *strategic* to our whole organisation.
>
> But once a project has be agreed upon, I do not see
> the decision of
> opening one language or not being the job of board
> members, EXCEPT for
> decision such as whether to work in real languages
> only, or to accept
> constructed languages, because again, it might be a
> strategic decision.
> My opinion on the matter is simply that languages
> such as Klington are
> not welcome. And it seems the other board members
> agree with this.
>
>
> However, collecting and offering knowledge to the
> largest number of
> people on earth is our mission. And it makes sense
> that knowledge is
> offered in the language people know best. So, I
> consider that by
> default, as a board member, I agree with the
> creation of any (real and
> used) language.
> It also makes sense to ME, to help sustain
> endangered languages; so I
> see no limit to our possibilities here.
>
>
>
> However, AS A PERSON, I try to be practical and
> realistic.
> Practically, a project with only one editor working
> on it, has high
> chances to be crap or pov. It is NOT a 100% certain,
> but chances are high.
> The problem with new languages is not only workload
> for the developers,
> the problem with a new language with very few
> participants is simply a
> project which is most of the time of poor quality.
> The QUANTITY of
> information in the small wiki is NOT an issue for
> me. These projects
> will NEVER be 100 000 articles big. It does not
> really matter. Even if
> it contains only 5000 great quality stuff, it is
> WORTH it. Because good
> quality content is worth.
> But most small projects usually are of poor quality.
> And this is not
> very good for our image.
> Some will argue that as long as they are small, they
> are not very
> visible, so it might not matter much. To a certain
> extent, this is true.
> However, each time I visit the french wikinews, my
> heart grieves,
> because though small, though demo, it is visible.
> And poor quality is
> noticed.
>
> So as a person, I would prefer that all the small
> languages future wiki
> only start if they can show a significant group of
> editors involved and
> motivated. However, some would also argue that if
> new languages REQUIRE
> 5 editors motivated at the same time to start...
> some encyclopedias such
> as Bambara would NEVER start. And THIS would be a
> disastrous decision.
>
>
>
> So, here is my handle.
> If more than 5-10 real and motivated people are
> asking for a new
> language, by all means, let's start the new
> language. Why on Earth would
> you need a board decision to do this ? These guys
> are real, with real
> needs and real motivation and real language. The
> project is approved. So
> ? Why not creating it ?
> If only 1 or 2 people are asking for the language,
> then we should
> discuss the reality of the language proposed and the
> opportunity of the
> opening. If the language is spoken by 10 millions of
> people, by all
> means, we should open it. 10 millions
> readers/editors IS significant. If
> spoken by only 200 people, then we might decide to
> get to know the only
> interested editor a bit more ... so delay the
> creation a little bit.
>
>
> By the way, it would be nice that small new
> languages make the effort to
> make short reports from time to time, so that any
> major difficulty does
> not go unnoticed (such as a pov domination).
>
>
>
>
> Anthere
>
>
>
> Traroth wrote:
>
> > That you don't want to make the work to create new
> > wikipedias is something I can understand, but why
> > destroy existing one ? 'Beats me !
> > What I cannot understand is : except the workload
> > problem, where is exactly the problem with new
> > languages ? Do you want to say which language
> people
> > have to speak ? Or what ?
> >
> > Traroth
> >
> >
> > --- Tim Starling
> <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> a
> > ?crit :
> >
> >
> >>Arbeo M wrote:
> >>
> >>>... at least not for the past three months or so.
>
> >>>
> >>>In the past you only had to drop the name of some
> >>>language you'd heard of and a new wiki for that
> >>>language was created right away. This surely
> >>
> >>wasn't a
> >>
> >>>very intelligent approach, for it left us with
> >>
> >>quite a
> >>
> >>>number of inactive Wikipedias.
> >>>
> >>>Nowadays, it's the opposite extreme: there are
> >>
> >>heaps
> >>
> >>>of requests that have been discussed very
> >>
> >>thoroughly
> >>
> >>>by the community (cf.
> >>>
> >>
> >
>
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages).
> >
> >>>Some of them are pretty well-qualified and
> >>
> >>supported
> >>
> >>>by numerous native speakers willing to
> contribute.
> >>>However, not a single new Wikipedia has been set
> >>
> >>up
> >>
> >>>for quite a while now.
> >>>
> >>>Some time ago there had been a remark that it was
> >>
> >>hard
> >>
> >>>for our developers to recognize which new
> language
> >>>proposals can be considered as accepeted by the
>
=== message truncated ===

___________________________________________________________________________
Appel audio GRATUIT partout dans le monde avec le nouveau Yahoo! Messenger
T?l?chargez cette version sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
Does our software automatically block users by IP - when their only
crime is to share an IP address with a vandal?

It should be possible for a trusted user (like me for example! ;-) to
log in from a banned IP range - as long as I can prove it's really me by
typing in my secret password.

Should we talk to the development team about this?

Ed Poor
Developer Emeritus

> >Jayjg set an IP block on this range for one month, which I
> think was a
> >huge mistake since it appears to be a dialup pool and a lot
> of people
> >were affected. I didn't find out about it until a few hours
> before the
> >block expired though, or I would have reversed it. Sorry about the
> >throuble.
> >
> >- Ryan
>
> Ryan, how would you suggest dealing with a banned user who
> has, in the 6
> months since his ban, been continually coming back to Wikipedia and
> disruptively editing using almost 50 different sockpuppets
> (some extremely
> sophisticated) and almost 20 different IP addresses?  I refer you to
> [[User:Jayjg/Alberuni]] for more detail.
>
> Jay.


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
>From: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
>On 9/28/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/25/05, Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:
> > > Can anybody get me unblocked? I have made changes to Wikipedia, but
> > > all of them have been positive and good!
> >
> > The block was set on the 26 of august and set to expire after one
> > month. Going by th blocked ip list they have expired.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
>Jayjg set an IP block on this range for one month, which I think was a huge
>mistake since it appears to be a dialup pool and a lot of people were
>affected. I didn't find out about it until a few hours before the block
>expired though, or I would have reversed it. Sorry about the throuble.
>
>- Ryan

Ryan, how would you suggest dealing with a banned user who has, in the 6
months since his ban, been continually coming back to Wikipedia and
disruptively editing using almost 50 different sockpuppets (some extremely
sophisticated) and almost 20 different IP addresses?  I refer you to
[[User:Jayjg/Alberuni]] for more detail.

Jay.


from_name: Nathan Reed

body:
This is about math, right?

=N.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
JAY JG wrote:

> Ryan, how would you suggest dealing with a banned user who has, in the
> 6 months since his ban, been continually coming back to Wikipedia and
> disruptively editing using almost 50 different sockpuppets (some
> extremely sophisticated) and almost 20 different IP addresses?  I
> refer you to [[User:Jayjg/Alberuni]] for more detail.
>
> Jay.

Contact his ISP. If that doesn't work, do our best to block individually
and revert the damage. Innocent people shouldn't be blocked for a month
because of what one person did.

- Ryan


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked, but did nothing wrong

body:
The idea to have IP bans not affect innocent users is currently being discussed.
However, this probably requries a big change to the software, so
implementation may take a while.

--Mgm

On 9/26/05, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't do much editing. Occasional spelling corrections and a few
> entries on talk pages and what have you. However, a few weeks ago I
> found out that I was blocked. This means that not only can't I edit
> articles but I can't take part in discussions on talk pages, make
> suggestions on the village pump, or even edit my own user page. What
> did I do wrong? Absolutely nothing.
>
> It seems that my entire dialup range was banned because of one
> butthead called Alberuni who likes to evade bans by creating sock
> puppet accounts and apparently the only way to deal with this loser is
> by banning any IP address he has access to which also happens to be
> any IP address I have access to since we both seem to either share the
> same ISP or he uses another ISP that uses the same Level3 Rent-a-pop.
> I contacted Jayjg who placed the ban and he unbanned what was then my
> current IP address but this only lasted until I hung up. The next time
> I connected to the net, I was banned again.
>
> Here's the ban in question...
>
> # 20:32, 26 August 2005, Jayjg blocked 4.153.192.0/19 (expires 20:32,
> 26 September 2005) (contribs) (massive vandalism from this range from
> banned User:Alberuni; we apologise for the inconvenience)
>
> Even though it expires tomorrow I think this sets a bad precedent. Is
> it really necessary to block such a large range of IP addresses for a
> month to deal with one problem user? There has to be some other way to
> deal with trolls that doesn't impact innocent users.
>
> If it turns out that there is no other way to deal with trolls and
> vandals then one idea might be to exempt logged in users from such
> bans after a "probation period" of let's say 30-90 days. (or upon
> request in some cases) This would minimize the impact of broad IP bans
> on non-troublemakers but still allow you to catch sock puppet
> accounts.
>
> PS. My real name and WP account are the same.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] I can't have links to online articles I've written on
	my user page?

body:
Have you asked Taxman and Jmabel why they removed the links and blocked you?
They probably know their own reasoning best.

--Mgm

On 9/26/05, Brandon Hansen <buhansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been involved in a dispute with Taxman and others about posting any
> links to articles on the OmniNerd domain. I have been blocked twice
> concerning the issue and finally agreed with Taxman to follow his OmniNerd
> gag order, meaning I can't even suggest an OmniNerd article be listed in a
> WP article as an external link - no matter how the suggestion is worded.
>
> After my block expired, I made some significant edits to WP pages (not
> OmniNerd related) and also decided to put some effort into my user page
> (Uriah923). I noticed that other users - even an admin, Jmabel - included
> links to writings they had online. I did the same. Taxman then erased the
> links and blocked me again because the articles I've written are on
> OmniNerd.
>
> If Taxman and others don't want OmniNerd mentioned in WP articles because it
> is not "worthy", so be it. But, preventing me from listing the articles I've
> written on my own user page is going too far. The articles listed there do
> not have to be worthy of an encyclopedia article reference, or even of an
> external link - they are just listed because I wrote them. Having the links
> on my page might affect the PR of the articles, but if this alone is enough
> to erase them then any external link on anyone else's user page needs to be
> deleted also - and we all know that's just silly.
>
> So, I hope someone who reads this will be able to look at the case and
> recognize the abuse. My recent edits (since the gag-order agreement) have
> been constructive and I plan on doing many more of them. I see nothing wrong
> with having links to external articles I've personally written on my user
> page as I do so.
>
> -Brandon (Uriah923)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
On Sep 28, 2005, at 12:03 PM, Josh Gordon wrote:

> Gods no. Mathematicians are relatively sane. This is about physics.

We're doomed.

-Snowspinner


body:
 Hi Brion,

thank you for your answer.

> indicate. If you are having trouble getting files out of CVS, this
> software IS NOT READY for you and you should not attempt to use it.

I am a software engineer and I know how to use CVS.
I have a running tortoise CVS installation at home.
We use PVCS at work and I'm also familiar with clearquest.
So I know what a versioning system is.
Unfortunately the IP traffic of CVS is blocked by our company's firewall.

I were able to compile most of the modules with Visual Studio .NET 2003.
But I still have some problems.

I need a wiki for my department at work. I've set one up basing on mediawiki.
Unfortunately the mediawiki's own search functions are not strong enough.
I need a full text search with substrings and wildcards.
If you discourage me to use mwsearch,
how can I have such a fulltext search with wildcards in combination with mediawiki?

Greetings
Markus

> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] Im Auftrag von Brion Vibber
> Gesendet: Mittwoch, 28. September 2005 09:41
> An: Wikimedia developers
> Betreff: Re: [Wikitech-l] How to build mwsearch under windows XP?
>
> Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com wrote:
> > i've allready asked the following questions.
> > But the topic of the other thread doesn't fit anymore.
> >
> > I've downloaded the nightly tarball since my company's
> firewall doesn't
> > allow me to use a CVS client.
> > I found out that the sourcefiles had added a ",v" to each
> extension like
> > cs,v and also contained some versioning info.
> > So I renamed them and deleted the versioning info.
>
> This is not a supported or end-user ready product; you should probably
> not attempt to use it unless you know a lot more about it than you
> indicate. If you are having trouble getting files out of CVS, this
> software IS NOT READY for you and you should not attempt to use it.
>
> If you need to get the source, you should use a CVS client -- the CVS
> repository snapshots are copies of the *repository* itself, not of the
> current contents. You can google up documentation on various
> CVS clients
> for Windows easily enough.
>
> > I have also searched for the libraries and copied them into
> > \wikipedia\mwsearch\libs\
> > I've downloaded and installed mono.
> > But now I don't know how to compile it. The sources ought
> to be builded
> > with monodevelop.
>
> There is a Makefile, which should work with GNU make. It is
> designed to
> run on Linux/Unix and there is no support for Windows. If you have
> difficulty writing an alternate build script, this software
> IS NOT READY
> FOR YOU.
>
> > Since I'm using Windows XP, I don't know how to proceed.
>
> The search code in its current state is not a supported product, and I
> recommend against trying to use it as is, particularly if you're
> uncertain what to do with the code. There is no known support for
> running on Windows (it might work, god knows; never been tested).
>
> > I really want this Wikipedia search engine up and running.
>
> Unless you know what you are doing and are working on developing the
> lucene search engine itself, I strongly recommend you use MediaWiki's
> built-in search that uses MySQL's fulltext search engine.
>
> This is not a supported or complete product. It is not ready for
> third-party use. It's barely ready for our own use. There are known
> serious problems with the updater. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE IT.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
On 9/25/05, Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:
> Can anybody get me unblocked? I have made changes to Wikipedia, but
> all of them have been positive and good!

The block was set on the 26 of august and set to expire after one
month. Going by th blocked ip list they have expired.

--
geni


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:

> >From: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
> >
> >JAY JG wrote:
> >
> >>Ryan, how would you suggest dealing with a banned user who has, in the 6
> >>months since his ban, been continually coming back to Wikipedia and
> >>disruptively editing using almost 50 different sockpuppets (some extremely
> >>sophisticated) and almost 20 different IP addresses?  I refer you to
> >>[[User:Jayjg/Alberuni]] for more detail.
> >>
> >>Jay.
> >
> >Contact his ISP.
>
> ISPs don't appear to care.

ISPs care more than they might appear/you might think. The secret is finding
the person at a given ISP who will do something about it.
>
> >If that doesn't work, do our best to block individually and revert the
> >damage. Innocent people shouldn't be blocked for a month because of what
> >one person did.
>
> He was able to get new IPs every couple of minutes; at one point he was
> blocked over a dozen times in a couple of hours.  Individual IP blocks
> weren't working.
>
Well, next time you (or anyone else for that matter) need to ban an entire
range of IP addresses, please leave a note explaining why you did this
either here on WikiEN-L or at WP:AN/I. That way when reasonable people
complain that they can't edit (you usually tell that they're reasonable
because they don't claim to be the wronged victim of a "rogue admin" or
whatever phrase strikes their fancy), we can explain to them what the
problem is & to put the pressure on their ISP to drop the problem user.

Note: I am not condemning Jay for his actions: I think they fall under
the "Be bold" guideline, & at most he should be given a warning. If I had
been playing a drawn-out game of whack-a-mole with someone like Alberuni,
I'd likely ban one or more ISPs to put an end to the fun. But if you do
something bold like this, tell the rest of us so we can act appropriately.
At the worst, another Admin will then revert your actions -- & if that
happens, it becomes Someone Else's Problem, leaving you free to work on
other & more important things.

Geoff


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia legal threat (forwarded email now sent)

body:
On 9/28/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> So WhoTF is "Chris Hillman" anyway? I must have taken my eye off the ball,
> this came out of nowhere...
> --

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Sarfatti - there's some stuff at AN/I
too

Ian


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Markus.Herb at de.TRUMPF.com wrote:
>>indicate. If you are having trouble getting files out of CVS, this
>>software IS NOT READY for you and you should not attempt to use it.
>
> I am a software engineer and I know how to use CVS.

Given what you wrote about downloading the CVS tarball, it's very easy
to assume the opposite. ;)

> I were able to compile most of the modules with Visual Studio .NET 2003.
> But I still have some problems.

Perhaps there's a reason I've been saying it's not ready for third-party
use...

> I need a wiki for my department at work. I've set one up basing on mediawiki.
> Unfortunately the mediawiki's own search functions are not strong enough.
> I need a full text search with substrings and wildcards.
> If you discourage me to use mwsearch,
> how can I have such a fulltext search with wildcards in combination with mediawiki?

You might try reading the relevant messages on mediawiki-l, where just
in the last couple days someone with a similar problem has investigated
what was preventing wildcard matches from working for them and posted
some code to work around the problem.

(Since you're not developing MediaWiki itself, and you're not working on
Wikimedia's servers, wikitech-l is really pretty offtopic for this. The
MediaWiki third-party user support and configuration help list is
mediawiki-l.)

For future reference, also see:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Phil Boswell

body:
"Fl Celloguy" <flcelloguy at hotmail.com> wrote in
message news:BAY22-F101D1F56DD82DF907A29B4C7890 at phx.gbl...
[snip]
> From: JackSarfatti <sarfatti AT pacbell DOT net>
> To: Flcelloguy <---->
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 01:23:58 GMT
> I am starting legal action against Wiki this Monday

OK, so that was last Saturday, this is now Wednesday.

Any movement?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Fl Celloguy stated for the record:

> Oops, seems like the forwarded message didn't get sent by the system.
> Here it is:
>
> ----
> From: JackSarfatti <sarfatti AT pacbell DOT net>
> To: Flcelloguy <---->
> Subject: Wikipedia e-mail
> Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 01:23:58 GMT
>
>
> I am starting legal action against Wiki this Monday with IRS
> Attorney General & Registry of Charitable Trusts in Florida to
> have tax exemption of Wiki removed because it is a vehicle for
> domestic terrorists (invoke Patriot Act). I consider Chris Hillman such
> a terrorist. At this point it will be up to FBI et-al to decide that.
> His repeated vicious smearing of me at this particular moment in time
> suggests he is a terrorist because of other stuff happening with me
> right now you are, I assume, not involved with. Rita may delay me a few
> days if Florida is hit hard.

Oh, you can be sure that Florida will be hit hard.  We terrorists have
no qualms about taking out an entire state to silence a person as
important as Mr. Sarfatti, whose consideration is all that is necessary
to determine that someone is a domesticated terrorist.

Crank up the Hurricane Machine, Eager Young Mindless Follower!

What?  The servers are /where/?  Dammit!  Shut it down!  Shut it down
NOW!  We can't wipe out Florida, the Cabal won't like it!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
>From: Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com>
>
>JAY JG wrote:
>
>>Ryan, how would you suggest dealing with a banned user who has, in the 6
>>months since his ban, been continually coming back to Wikipedia and
>>disruptively editing using almost 50 different sockpuppets (some extremely
>>sophisticated) and almost 20 different IP addresses?  I refer you to
>>[[User:Jayjg/Alberuni]] for more detail.
>>
>>Jay.
>
>Contact his ISP.

ISPs don't appear to care.

>If that doesn't work, do our best to block individually and revert the
>damage. Innocent people shouldn't be blocked for a month because of what
>one person did.

He was able to get new IPs every couple of minutes; at one point he was
blocked over a dozen times in a couple of hours.  Individual IP blocks
weren't working.

Jay.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Tor horror stories

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> You have a point, but I like to think of people in mainland China being
> able to edit [[Falun Gong]] without feeling a cloud of worry.  Even NPOV
> editing might be misconstrued by some authority somewhere, and people
> have kids, jobs, families, and might prefer to just stay away rather
> than take a risk.

You cannot edit [[Falun Gong]] from China using Tor and feel safe. The
Chinese government is in a position to conduct an exhaustive end-to-end
timing attack on Tor, allowing them to trace Tor traffic from a
compromised destination server or network back to its origin. See the
Tor FAQ, section 7.9:

http://wiki.noreply.org/noreply/TheOnionRouter/TorFAQ#head-0b1add301f9743cd3b08d188ab286566e2e13c20

Perhaps this is why the Chinese government has not yet blocked Tor --
the false sense of security it gives may well make repercussions more
likely, rather than less.

Tor is even easier to attack in small countries with few Internet users.

That's why I say: Tor doesn't have the moral high ground. A low-latency
anonymous network allows juvenile bad behaviour but is useless to
protect against government snooping. To hide from the government, you
need a high-latency network.

Of course, hiding from the government carries negative ethical
connotations as well as positive ones. Witness the use of Freenet for
the dissemination of child pornography. It's a controversial matter, I
for one am not convinced of the overall value of unassailable Internet
anonymity.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
On 9/28/05, Markus.Herb at de.trumpf.com <Markus.Herb at de.trumpf.com> wrote:
> If you discourage me to use mwsearch, how can I have such a fulltext search with wildcards in combination with mediawiki?

You could always ignore his advice and try to get it running anyway.


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why am I being blocked?

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>
>> If that doesn't work, do our best to block individually and revert
>> the damage. Innocent people shouldn't be blocked for a month because
>> of what one person did.
>
>
> He was able to get new IPs every couple of minutes; at one point he
> was blocked over a dozen times in a couple of hours.  Individual IP
> blocks weren't working.
>
Well, that sucks for the vandal fighters. I understand your frustration
at this, and the desire to just make it go away. But blocking an entire
range of IPs, I think, is not an acceptable solution.

Geoff Burling wrote:

>
>Note: I am not condemning Jay for his actions:
>
Oh yeah, definitely. I think what he did was rather inappropriate, but
not something to get really huffy about. My point is just that a 1 month
block on an entire range of IPs is quit excessive and should not be done
ever*. If we can all agree about that, then the issue is pretty much
resolved, as far as I am concerned.

- Ryan