subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Paid editing

body:
On 3/12/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing

I really don't like this. The only people who will be affected will be
those who bothered to have a conscience and find out that there even
was a rule. These rampant PR companies that we're apparently so
worried about will simply disregard it - if they even know it exists.

I think one reason I don't like it is because it blatantly breaks
"Assume Good Faith". Rather than assuming that people will behave
responsibly when money and editing are combined, we assume that they
will attempt harm.

This goes way too far: "This includes any editing of any Wikipedia
article done for pay, gifts, favors, fees, donations, barter, promises
of anything of value, or the chance to win anything of value." For
starters, I've already broken it on several occasions. I edited [[Safe
Speed]] as an exchange with Guy (JzG). I edit as a favour to Wikipedia
and to future generations. I created [[Kate McTell]] in exchange for a
promised reward of $20 (never paid, but that's another story...)

This is wrong too: "You should be contributing to Wikipedia because
you have an interest in the topic, not because you have an interest in
the outcome" - I don't edit because I have "an interest in the topic",
I edit because I like editing. And everyone breaks this rule all the
time anyway.

Here are some examples of editing which you have effectively banned:
- A university history department paying a staffer or outsider to
improve coverage of some aspect of history
- A PhD student paying a researcher to research a field of interest
and write up the results as a Wikipedia article. They might still do
the work, but we don't benefit.
- A philanthropist who wants to improve coverage of some of our most
needed topics, but, only having 24 hours in the day, "outsources" by
paying others to work for him.

And conversely, you're saying it's ok for people to write articles
about their employers, blatantly in contradiction to WP:COI.

Steve


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Almeda University paying for positive Wikipedia edits

body:
On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> But when a company pays someone to write articles about them, that's
> PR however you slice it.

Yes. Now, suppose we made the following rules:
1. You can't create the article yourself - go through AfC.
2. You have to notify us before you edit the article, and tell us
which editor will be making the changes.
3. We can and will block that editor if we feel that the changes are
not in conformance with our policies.

Would that not reduce the problem?

I'm not necessarily opposed to banning all "PR" editing, but I wonder
if it would be more effective to tolerate it and monitor it, rather
than forcing it "underground".

> It would be nice for companies to fund people just writing stuff. I
> suspect it would take an intermediary so the financial effect of not
> writing nice things about the sponsor would be buffered suitably.

Yeah. And to be honest, I don't think a small amount of COI is that
major a problem. If Microsoft wants to fund someone to thoroughly
document all sorts of parts of Windows that we have scrappy coverage
of - and in the process make themselves look good - well, is that so
bad? For many companies, a well-written, comprehensive, spell-checked,
roughly neutral article about themselves is probably a reward in
itself, regardless of whether it meets their PR goals. Currently, if
there's a really crappy article about a company, it doesn't sound like
there's any real way they can improve it. They can post requests on
the talk page, but if no one follows them up?

> I'm viewing this 'no paid editing' article as another way of phrasing
> existing rules.

WP:COI barely touches on paid editing. What other "existing rules" cover this?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] 10 Things You Did Not Know About Wikipedia

body:
On 3/11/07, Michel Vuijlsteke <mvuijlst at gmail.com> wrote:
> How about "Nothing you write is ever lost?" (or: erased)

And conversely, "You can't delete anything that's already there." (in
small print: We can. You can't. :))

Steve


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.9.3 ImageMap Extension Errors and bugs

body:
Hi Tim,

Bugs in the extension and/or an interface problem between the chair and
keyboard on my end.
Directory structure matches that described here:

 http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap

Configued in LocalSettings.php as:

require_once( "$IP/extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/Cite.php" );
require_once( "$IP/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap.php" )

Directory Structure of extensions installed in MediaWiki 1.9.3 is:

[root at gadugi en]# find extensions/
extensions/
extensions/README
extensions/Cite.php
extensions/ParserFunctions
extensions/ParserFunctions/Expr.php
extensions/ParserFunctions/ParserFunctions.php
extensions/Chr2Syl.php
extensions/Cite.i18n.php
extensions/Citation.php
extensions/HTTPRedirect.php
extensions/Purge.php
extensions/Tidy.php
extensions/tidy
extensions/tidy/tidy.conf
extensions/ImageMap
extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php
extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap.i18n.php
extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap.php
extensions/ImageMap/desc-20.png
extensions/ImageMap/desc.svg
[root at gadugi en]#

error logs report:

[Mon Mar 12 17:20:32 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
/wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on line 71, referer:
http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Main_Page
[Mon Mar 12 17:21:12 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
/wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on line 71
[Mon Mar 12 17:23:07 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
/wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on line 71, referer:
http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Main_Page
[Mon Mar 12 17:26:01 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
/wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on l:

Jeff


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN: [20304] trunk/phase3

body:
On 12/03/07, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
> Would it be a good idea for a more detailed user statistic to introduce
> new magic words like {{NUMBEROFBUREAUCRATS}}, {{NUMBEROFSTEWARDS}},
> {{NUMBEROFCHECKUSERS}}, {{NUMBEROFOVERSIGHTUSERS}},
> {{NUMBEROFDEVELOPERS}}, {{NUMBEROFIMPORTUSERS}}, {{NUMBEROFBOTS}}?

Er, no...

* What's the point in having thousands of magic words?
* You can't rely on those groups existing

I still prefer the idea of splitting things up into a table, but
perhaps we could preserve one or two of the existing wiki text
messages as introductory text - the individual projects can easily
customise them, and usually respond to things like that quickly, but
we could always crosspost a quick announcement to wikipedia-l and
foundation-l, if you're worried about that...

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] cache images once for everybody?

body:
On 11/03/07, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
> Just curious about ways to maybe save bandwidth for little mediawiki
> installations as well as wikipedia:

MediaWiki isn't designed to run on crappy old hardware serving a few
users. It's a wiki engine designed to scale to meet the needs of
millions of users; billions of requests, on modern hardware.

There is a lower limit at which MediaWiki stops being the best choice.
Allowing other people to hotlink images from our sites is not an
option. If your web server can't handle the load of a few images, then
you probably need to upgrade from a PDP-11 running lighty on 56k.

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
On 12/03/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyways, what do you all think? Comments? Flamebait?

What's the problem with using the existing token mechanism, salted
with a particular value, e.g. for watchlists? The salting code is
there and it's all available.

Watchlist data isn't "private" in the sense that we need to protect it
at all costs; if it *does* leak out, no-one's going to care that
much...you're not really gaining access to anything hideously
confidential, are you?

Rob Church


body:
On 3/12/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
> If we were to tolerate paid editing to any extent, we'd run the risk
> of having WP:OWN situations developing.
>
> Volunteer editor: Stop inserting that statement about Michael Jackson
> being a loveable, friendly, fluffy ball of joy.
> Paid editor: I'm paid to do this. This is my job. STFU.
> Volunteer editor: Oh, okay. I'll just leave you to it, then.

Volunteer editor: Stop inserting that statement about Michael
Jacksonbeing a loveable, friendly, fluffy ball of joy.
Paid editor: I'm paid to do this. This is my job. STFU.
Volunteer editor: Exactly. See [[WP:PAID]]. I've asked you to stop
once. If you continue you may be blocked.

Steve


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
On 12/03/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:

> Already exists. Go to ?action=history and look at the sidebar. :)

d'oh!

- d.


body:
Rob Church wrote:

>On 12/03/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>[Mon Mar 12 17:20:32 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
>>Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
>>/wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on line 71
>>
>>
>[snip]
>
>What version of PHP?
>
>
Version
 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

This wiki is powered by MediaWiki, copyright (C) 2001-2007 Magnus
Manske, Brion Vibber, Lee Daniel Crocker, Tim Starling, Erik M?ller,
Gabriel Wicke, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason, Niklas Laxstr?m, Domas Mituzas,
Rob Church and others.

MediaWiki is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

MediaWiki is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for
more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA. or read it
online

* MediaWiki: 1.9.3
* PHP: 5.1.4 (apache2handler)
* MySQL: 5.0.18

>
>Rob Church
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 12/03/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> > >On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> > >>If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite
> > >>different from "I edit Wikipedia."

> > >Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a
> > >Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they
> > >mean? How do you think most people interpret it?
> > >Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".

> > Any renaming we do is unlikely to affect the practices of the Wall
> > Street Journal.

> So if we refer to our article writers as writers instead of editors, the WSJ
> will continue calling them editors? I have my doubts.

I'd still call it their problem rather than ours. Most Wikipedia edits
are much more akin to "subediting" rather than "writing." This is a
project that really does have thousands of *editors* - it's the right
word for what they do.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Trust vs. Credentials (was Re: Accountability:

body:
On 12/03/07, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:

> they invented the trolls and are trolled by Scientology to a more
> significant degree than Wikipedia (when was the lest time you
> heard of User:Anon.penet.fi being sued by the Church of
> Scientology on the wiki?)

I'd point out that quite a few of us who edit Scientology-related
articles have *already* had quite a selection of legal threats from
the Churh of Scientology in the past ;-)

(None so far. And I even put a piece of OT III on the wiki.)

- d.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Jake Nelson" wrote

> No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr
> they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement,
> and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that
> takes us.

Disagree. That isn't a strategy. What would be a strategy? Certainly (a) encourage corporations and others to post GFDL material about themselves, and (b) err... we need a more explicit mechanism for harvesting GFDL text and adding it to WP, but we never get to this, because people seem to think that we have to discuss 'paid editors', not the mission. But anyway we can perfectly well set up pages for listing available online GFDL text about corporations, and perfectly well allow PR people to list things on such pages.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


body:
On 12/03/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Disagree. That isn't a strategy. What would be a strategy? Certainly (a) encourage corporations and others to post GFDL material about themselves, and (b) err... we need a more explicit mechanism for harvesting GFDL text and adding it to WP, but we never get to this, because people seem to think that we have to discuss 'paid editors', not the mission. But anyway we can perfectly well set up pages for listing available online GFDL text about corporations, and perfectly well allow PR people to list things on such pages.

Call it HypeWiki! (No?)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 12/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/13/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> > subeditors too). We have editors. Who are the writers? It would be

> Ugh, I'm tired. I meant, "If you say that we are all editors, then who
> are the writers?"

Do we really have regular contributors writers who do no
editing/subediting at all? A few maybe. Not many.

In any case, "editor" is IMO the right word for what most people do on
Wikipedia most of the time.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

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

Jochen Magnus wrote:
> I am so sorry, but my inevitable question after five weeks without fresh
> dumps goes: When can we expect recent dumps?

The last one was two weeks ago. Next one will start in a couple days.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF9ZrqwRnhpk1wk44RAh5qAKDUbfZ7dA2TkFTKmKe+8oOJCwpNcACgpmZU
DGMwazLbFrzPPAezjl1om4Y=
=52g4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 3/12/07, Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
> Just curious about ways to maybe save bandwidth for little mediawiki
> installations as well as wikipedia:

How does this save Wikipedia bandwidth?

Steve


from_name: Gwern Branwen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks

in_reply_to:
<3856.69.21.252.114.1173711561.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	(Jeff Raymond's message of "Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:59:21 -0400 (EDT)")

body:
"Jeff Raymond" <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com>
writes:

> Steve Bennett wrote:
>> On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> That's a *great* idea IMO and quite easy not to make a COI.
>>
>> Oh incidentally, I wanted to point out that one weird
economical thing
>> about the mechanical turk system is that workers are in
   oversupply,
>> and work is scarce. And people find these tasks *fun*. People
actually
>> carry out these pretty mindnumbing tasks for ridiculously low
   rates,
>> like $1 an hour. So we could probably literally buy sources for
   10c
>> each, and get other jobs done (like categorising, copyediting
   etc)
>> even cheaper.
>>
>>
http://www.salon.com/news/cookie756.html?URL=/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/
>
> Also, [[Amazon Mechanical Turk]].  It's a cool idea, I heard
about it when
> some anon kept putting a link to it in [[The Turk]] while I was
rewriting
> it for FA - they apparently have a large amount of people who
will make
> images and graphs, from what I hear, which could be useful.
>
> -Jeff

Yeah. And surprising amounts of work could be done for fairly
cheap, though it adds up. For example, at a cent a link, every
page listed on [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] could
be done once for only $1243.3 or so. (Obviously if you want
another Turker to doublecheck, that's another 1243.3, but since
they'll be checked when the edit goes live and hits someone's
watchlist, I don't see the point).

So, anyone got a spare 1k and the technical chops to actually set
it up?  :)

--
Gwern
Inquiring minds want to know.


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>[Mon Mar 12 17:20:32 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
>>Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
>>
>>
>
>The ImageMap extension requires PHP 5's DOM module; as far as I know
>it's included by default, but your particular configuration might be
>missing it.
>
>If compiling from source, compile with --enable-dom instead of
>- --disable-dom (and/or ensure that XML libraries are present on the
>system). If installing from operating system packages, check if there is
>a separate package for this module (for instance 'php5-dom' or similar
>name).
>
>

Thanks Brion,

I'll get it configured properly and update the
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps
page on meta with an explanation of the problem on Fedora Core5 and
Fedora Core 6.

By default, FC5 does not appear to load or include this module in the
PHP setup.

Jeff

>- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
>Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
>iD8DBQFF9cwkwRnhpk1wk44RAg81AJ0dAsUjgQFdpvyBh3lJszvH+n1M/QCeOT9d
>WQsfIcOlVmTKCopRZlQXvX0=
>=MULj
>-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I'm not sure where you get off to characterizing what I'm saying as
"see! I told you you'd be punished". This goes for Gerard's message,
too.

If you think I was somehow delighted by the solutions you have
presented, you are very wrong. I have things I would have much
rathered to have happened which I shall not outline here. The idea of
a "cleanup" (cleanup of what?) or of the possibility of an eventual
merger are not ideal to me. But in the spirit of compromise, I accept
them.

What neither of you seem to realize so far is that this is not just
tiring, it is useless at this point. Nobody is listening to anyone
anymore, so it would be wise, I think, for ALL of us to say "I will
not write any more messages to you on this topic unless you provide
NEW information or come up with a NEW idea for a compromise solution",
because this is really only marginally better than the previously
existing shouting match between MO proponents and MO detractors.

Obviously you guys don't pick either "side", if you did, things would
be much different (if you picked anti-MO side, it would be gone
already, if you picked pro-MO side, it would not be locked anymore and
questions about its future would be closed)

The only reason I have jumped in here is because neither Liviu nor
Jacky seems to be listening to you and I felt it might help if someone
rehashed what you had said in more concise, clear terms. Obviously, it
has not.

So it is for that reason that I am going to retire from this
discussion. If you want to reply to what I have said here, fine, I am
willing to discuss that, but I am not willing to discuss the actual
Moldovan Wikipedia in this or any thread anymore as long as you four
keep repeating yourselves over and over because frankly, it is not
worth my time anymore (and there is a lot of complete and utter crap
that is, in fact, "worth my time", because I have quite a bit of time
on my hands).

I think everyone else here should do the same because this situation
has not changed (let alone improved) since the very beginning of this
thread. If you want to continue your futile discussions off-list, all
the more power to you, but they no longer seem even slightly
constructive so I am hoping you don't keep them up here, because I
know I will not be able to keep myself from reading them (it's like a
train wreck - you can't stop it, but you can't stop watching it either
even if you want to)

And Gerard, a transliteration system is already very technically
feasible, Bogdan Giusca had a system set up and working for
demonstration, although it was very poor (apparently he was unwilling
to make the necessary improvements so that words would be spelt
correctly in Cyrillic) and did not convert round-trip, this could be
done with our existing software.

The issue is not technical but human - as both you and B?rto have
stated repeatedly, it is currently unlikely to be supported by the
ro.wp community.

Mark

On 12/03/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hoi!
>
> > We are quite capable to say what we have to say.
> Sometimes I feel we are not :) I get the recurrent impression that whatever we say both sides just hit the "reply" button and copy back what they had said before...
>
> So, for all who are blind/deaf: I have said it and will repeat it all over again: no consensus = no nothing. We will not go and impose a new script on a place where a civil war just ended simply to make the nerves of a couples of extremists happier. If and when there is a clear signal that the communities as a whole are in favor of the merge we can start to talk about tech details.
>
> This "clear signal" includes stopping idiot mumbling about why any of the two sides has no right to exist and how you are going to tell the teacher that my mom was a nazist/communist if we don't buy you candies. We all have been kids and we all know what blackmailing is. Well, it won't work.
>
> Just as it won't work hiding behind someone else and shouting "see? I told you you'd be punished!" (this one's for Mark, in case it's not clear). Since lots of people behave as 4 y.o. kids, I'll try the language lil' babies usually understand.
>
> IS THAT CLEAR NOW? Or should we publish it in a multimedia hyerogliphic text with the Bangles playing underneath??
>
> Now I switch my waiting mode on and keep waiting for a message beginning with:
> "My constructive position is <add MO-RO ideological crap here>".
>
> B?rto 'd S?ra
> Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of GerardM
> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 10:14 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)
>
> Mark,
> It is not helpful if you
> repeat after us. You make it seem as if we agree with a side in this affair.
> We have not considered if we would accept it as a new project. What is at
> issue here is very much that the mo.wikipedia is an existing project, there
> are some people who care for it and the arguments used for its closure are
> not really acceptable.
>
> The optimal solution from our pov is that the mo.wikipedia is cleaned up and
> that the data of both ro and mo are merged. The first step for this to
> happen is to coexist peacefully. Your behaviour does not help.
>
> There is the option of a transliteration engine. This is however not
> available at this time. Optimally it should allow for round trip conversion.
>
> Thanks,
>      Gerard
>
> On 3/12/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Perhaps you have not been following this list.
> >
> > Do you think Gerard or B?rto really care who it is making these
> > arguments? To them, you and Liviu may as well be the same person
> > because you are saying the same things. Over and over.
> >
> > They have said over and over that the position that they have already
> > described is FINAL. They did not "misunderstand" anything, they did
> > not miss any of the facts or the evidence.
> >
> > Just because they do not agree with your personal interpretation of
> > reality does not mean they need you to "tell them the facts". They
> > have already heard what you have to say, and it has already been
> > evaluated. Many times.
> >
> > The suggestion was, originally made to Liviu: Go to ro.wp and start a
> > poll there about adding an option to convert to Cyrillic. In the mean
> > time, stop complaining. Their idea is that eventually such an option
> > MIGHT exist, but only if ro.wp community successfully integrates it of
> > its own free will, NOT on the decision of some random single user.
> >
> > If you can get the majority of Ro.wp'ians to agree to a converter in
> > the style of sr.wp (meaning that content may be edited and added in
> > Cyrillic as well), then this discussion may proceed. If you cannot, it
> > is over.
> >
> > Nobody wants to hear any of this anymore. Haven't you understood that by
> > now?
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 10/03/07, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > Concerning your invitation to work, which is
> > > insulting:
> > > 1. Don't you working guys have civility rules around
> > > here any more?
> > > 2. Does your work consist in giving uncivil answers to
> > > messages you didn't read, sent by a user that did not
> > > send messages on this forum in the last 3 months?
> > > Because both you and GerardM answered my message
> > > without reading it. Or, if you read it, it may be
> > > useful to interrupt working for thinking a bit.
> > >
> > > Dpotop
> > >
> > >
> > > --- Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hoi!
> > > >
> > > > > My constructive position
> > > > So... It was told to Liviu, it gets told to YOU. It
> > > > will be duly copied to
> > > > all of you, as an auto answer.
> > > > 1) WHO of you spammers has found the time to call up
> > > > a regular vote on
> > > > RO.wiki on becoming fully bilingual and giving
> > > > warranties of acceptance of
> > > > articles by the Transdnistrian minority?
> > > > 2) Who of you will prove clever enough to do that
> > > > BEFORE littering our
> > > > mailboxes with your carnival?
> > > >
> > > > Until you answer to that ANY Moldavian position (pro
> > > > Cyrillic/anti-cyrillic/Acyrillic or whatever) will
> > > > be just low quality
> > > > toilet paper for my house. Or do you guys seriously
> > > > think that we want to
> > > > start a big internal war in RO.wiki just to please a
> > > > couple of hysterical
> > > > kids?
> > > >
> > > > You want to make a change in someone else's house.
> > > > You go there and ask the
> > > > landlord for permission, before coming up here with
> > > > your emotional scenes.
> > > > It's called "respect" and "private property" in case
> > > > you aren't familiar
> > > > with the terms.
> > > >
> > > > All the tears in the universe won't make a
> > > > difference. GO TO WORK! No work,
> > > > no consideration.
> > > >
> > > > B?rto 'd S?ra
> > > > Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time
> > > > (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> > > >
> > > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > >
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > ____________________________________________________________________________________
> > > No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
> > > with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
> > > http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks

references:
<b8ceeef70703112146k55cc4728p427d224e02b97bdd@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140703120131j1904cb3ewa386196e7cb113c4@mail.gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70703120717h557517bu9a4bdae2111de4b2@mail.gmail.com>
	<3856.69.21.252.114.1173711561.squirrel@www.internationalhouseofbacon.com>
	<86lki2pama.fsf@elan.rh.rit.edu>

body:
Gwern Branwen wrote:

> Yeah. And surprising amounts of work could be done for fairly
> cheap, though it adds up. For example, at a cent a link, every
> page listed on [[Wikipedia:Disambiguation pages with links]] could
> be done once for only $1243.3 or so. (Obviously if you want
> another Turker to doublecheck, that's another 1243.3, but since
> they'll be checked when the edit goes live and hits someone's
> watchlist, I don't see the point).
>
> So, anyone got a spare 1k and the technical chops to actually set
> it up?  :)

This may be a question more for the Foundation folks, but one wonders if
we couldn't get Amazon.com to donate $1000 or so to the Foundation and
then specifically earmark that for the Turk program.  An agreement like
that would certainly be beneficial for both projects, methinks.

-Jeff


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
The only problem, AFAIK, is that someone on #mediawiki said that our current
token generation mechanism (User::generateToken( )) is teh crap, and
suggested a better way. Otherwise, my original idea was to use the existing
token mechanism, like email confirmations use.

It isn't private as user.user_realname should be; however, it still can be
kept reasonably private by having a mechanism to generate a new token, even
if an existing one already exists.

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Church [mailto:robchur at gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 6:16 AM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

On 12/03/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyways, what do you all think? Comments? Flamebait?

What's the problem with using the existing token mechanism, salted
with a particular value, e.g. for watchlists? The salting code is
there and it's all available.

Watchlist data isn't "private" in the sense that we need to protect it
at all costs; if it *does* leak out, no-one's going to care that
much...you're not really gaining access to anything hideously
confidential, are you?

Rob Church


body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>The ImageMap extension requires PHP 5's DOM module; as far as I know
>it's included by default, but your particular configuration might be
>missing it.
>
>
>
Brion,

FC5 requires the following YUM updates in order to enabled php-dom on
the default distribution. FC6 appears to
have it already preconfigured if you update php-mysql. For FC5, the
following update are required in order to support
MediaWiki 1.9.3 with the ImageMap extension:

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
php-xml i386 5.1.6-1.4 updates 92 k
Updating for dependencies:
mysql i386 5.0.27-1.fc5 updates 3.3 M
mysql-server i386 5.0.27-1.fc5 updates 10 M
php i386 5.1.6-1.4 updates 3.5 M
php-ldap i386 5.1.6-1.4 updates 32 k
php-mysql i386 5.1.6-1.4 updates 81 k
php-pdo i386 5.1.6-1.4 updates 60 k

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 6 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)
Total download size: 17 M

Jeff


from_name: Christof Sperl

body:
On 12/03/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> They do all the hard work. We get the benefit.

I like your train of thought :D


list: wikimedia-l

from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Translation Commitee's meeting report (2007/03)

body:
Hello all,
first Kudos to Christophe for his detailed reports and devout
engagement. Thanks.

On 3/12/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Plenty of good stuff here. And in reading this specific part, I was
> wondering if you should not discuss this with Sandy as well so that it
> be part of the other reform she is working on for communication issues.

Yes, it will be nice for us all to have Sandy as participant to this
discussion. I expect she subscribes it, and let her idea in the next
week (she is now am 3 or 4 on Monday, I suppose).

> I do not know if it is a good idea to do a transwiki. It has positive
> and negative sides. On the positive, it will be probably much easier for
> you to organise. On the other hand, less visibility to recruit new
> volunteers. Dunno.

Yes, there are both bright side and dark side. Through the discussion
on translations-l, however we found several points we want to improve.
They will be reflected to the ongoing reconstruction of
[[m:Translation requests]].

Since there are already a lengthy thread on translations-l, I expect
all of you follow the thread on translation-l for readers'
convenience.

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] AJAX and .aspx as technologies for MediaWiki?

body:
> > > page (barring bugs) unless escaped somehow, in which case a null edit
> > > still won't trigger them.
> >
> > Here's at least one way to get a null edit to change something, in 3 steps.
>
> Thence the "barring bugs" bit, you know?

Fair enough.

Here's another null edit with minor side-effects that I came across by accident.

Step 1: create and save an article with this wikitext:
-------------------
#
a

name = blah
#
b

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

Step 2: Make a null edit to section 1 (heading "a").

Step 3: Observe that the null edit has added some extra line breaks:
-------------------
#
a

name = blah
#

b

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

Whether that qualifies as a bug or not, I'll leave for others to decide. It certainly
matters though if the hash has syntactic meaning (e.g. if it's marking the start of a
comment line in a config file that's being stored on a wiki).

All the best,
Nick.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying for
	positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
On 3/12/07, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I agree fully.  If I were to somehow arrive at a large pile of money I
> didn't need, paying people to edit Wikipedia is one of the first things
> I would use it for (along with paying people to code on a few choice
> Free Software projects, most likely).

Yeah. For a bit of fun I was just investigating the idea of using
Amazon's mechanical turk (mturk.com) to pay people to carry out boring
work on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, I don't live in the US so can't
actually it out. But maybe someone else would like to. The idea would
be something like

1. Submit a "human interaction task" like "find an unsourced article
and add one web based source which backs up the material in the
article".
2. 100 users perform that task once each.
3. Each user submits the diff of their work to prove what they did.
4. Each successfully-performed task earns the worker 10c, and costs
the submitter 11c.

This kind of thing is actually *very* easy to set up. I would be very
keen to hear if someone is interested in trying it.

Steve
PS I hope this doesn't turn into the worst case of WP:BEANS ever :(


from_name: Avi Wiki

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 44, Issue 105

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
  Do we have any logos NOT condemned to burn for eternity in the fires of Hades? I'd rather link to those.

  :P

  - --Avi
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32) - WinPT 1.2.0
  iD8DBQFF9didy6A/RnheoikRAo61AJ9cDYSzsRsF5FhLwaqV8YOIZzmDOwCfSymi
uE0+WAl8rEe9kk9l/xEGCaU=
=G7j6
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

wikien-l-request at lists.wikimedia.org wrote:
  From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:24:33 +0000
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

> Does the Foundation get many requests for logo use?

Too many. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Contact_us directs
people to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press , which
expressly says "yes you can use the damn logo for press coverage."

- d.

---------------------------------
Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection.
 Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta.


subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
On 3/12/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyways, what do you all think? Comments? Flamebait?

Why restrict it to watchlists? Perhaps we could do some kind of group
thing by allowing public RSS feeds of interesting groups of articles.
Allow people to kill off changes from the RSS feed by "approving"
them.

<dream>
Imagine a sort of "watchlist ticker" that scrolls across the bottom of
your screen while you're working, showing the actual changes that
people are making to articles you care about. Every now and then you
see the word "penis" scroll past. You click the little red X, sigh
contentedly, and keep working.
</dream>

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
I just saw the link to Planet Wikimedia in Meta's sidebar and thought
we could take it one step further.

Wikimedians, like all internet users, use a host of different services
and sites, some of which are community driven. How about a page
listing those user groups? Or perhaps a page with links to
wikimedia-related tags at various sites? Or both. ;)

Think Wikimedia(ns) on Flickr, Last.fm, Orkut, LinkedIn...

* http://flickr.com/search/?q=Wikimedia
* http://www.lastfm.pl/group/Wiki (Polish users' group)
* ...

What do you think?

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


references:
<45F5A30E.6040602@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45F5CC25.2070303@pobox.com>
	<45F5C28E.6050906@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Brion,

I got ImageMap.php working and updated
http://meta.wikimedia.org/Data_dumps with the procedures
for FC5/FC6 with MediaWiki 1.9.3.

I still, however, see some errors on MediaWiki formating (and of course,
svg still does not render -- not certain
this is a MediaWiki problem on the svg images though -- may be another
FC5/FC6 specific problem).

You may want to look at this page. I do have tidylib installed and running.

http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Sun

Note the tabs at the top of the screen are skewed and the font size
suddenly gets smaller. May be related to the interwiki links not resolved
properly at the bottom (the latest wikipedia-interwiki.sql is still not
updated with all of the language codes in the dumps).

Jeff


references:
<45F5A30E.6040602@wolfmountaingroup.com>	<45F5CC25.2070303@pobox.com>	<45F5C28E.6050906@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<45F5CE79.7010709@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Brion,
>
>I got ImageMap.php working and updated
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Data_dumps with the procedures  < -- corrected the URL
>for FC5/FC6 with MediaWiki 1.9.3.
>
>I still, however, see some errors on MediaWiki formating (and of course,
>svg still does not render -- not certain
>this is a MediaWiki problem on the svg images though -- may be another
>FC5/FC6 specific problem).
>
>You may want to look at this page. I do have tidylib installed and running.
>
>http://en.wikigadugi.org/wiki/Sun
>
>Note the tabs at the top of the screen are skewed and the font size
>suddenly gets smaller. May be related to the interwiki links not resolved
>properly at the bottom (the latest wikipedia-interwiki.sql is still not
>updated with all of the language codes in the dumps).
>
>Jeff
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jason Calacanis

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Mechanical turks (was: Re: Almeda University paying
	for positive Wikipedia edits)

body:
> > Can anyone else here see a problem with this idea?
> Possible PR issues? "Wikimedia, which ran a donation drive only X
> months ago, is already throwing money at Amazon..."

Frankly, using funds to improve editorial is a great direction for the
project to go in. This dovetails with the credentialing discussion:
what if we outsourced (or hired freelancers) to process Jimbo's opt-in
credentialing system?

best j

---------------------
Jason McCabe Calacanis
Entrepreneur in Action, Sequoia Capital
Mobile: 310-456-4900
My blog: http://www.calacanis.com
AOL IM/Skype: jasoncalacanis


subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
On 12/03/07, shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:

> How set up another languages? how keep open (like wikipedia)?

For a list page, it could just be an editable page on Meta.

The Planet Wikimedia feed is not as wide-open as Wikipedia, but Erik's
keeping an eye on it and adding feeds.

Open Wiki Blog Planet (in English) has a config file on en:wp that
anyone with an account 4 days old can edit.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


subject: [WikiEN-l] Unusual articles in the wikipedia store

body:
On 12/03/07, Ben Yates <ben.louis.yates at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/03/07, Ben Yates <ben.louis.yates at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > I've made some merchandise for the cafepress store based on stuff in
> > > [[Unusual articles]] -- http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/2480654 .
> > > Let me know what you think.

> > How can you not include [[Xenu]]'s space plane!

> Potential for incurring scientology's legal wrath? :P

Use the version without the Sea Org logo and you're definitely in the Clear(tm).

- d.


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 12/03/07, Bartning at aol.com <Bartning at aol.com> wrote:
> The readers don't hold the purse strings like in a regular encyclopedia,  and
> that's one area where I see a major conflict of interest in the format of
> Wikipedia as a source of information.  There's less incentive to write for  the
> readers, and certainly it's deteriorated as far as I'm concerned.  I'd  say
> that Wikipedia hit its peak sometime ago right now, not that it's  necessarily
> in permanent decline, mind you, but it's going to take taking things  more
> seriously or justice or something to correct the fall right now,  IMHO

You are wrong on two counts. You are wrong to say that our readers
don't hold the purse strings since we rely on our reader's donations.
You might respond that traditional encyclopedia's more rely on
customer satisfaction since proportionately more readers pay larger
quantities of money to read the encyclopedia (although many will do so
free of charge in public libraries), but ultimately if readers aren't
satisfied enough to donate, we collapse.

Secondly, this kind of feed back quality control that traditional
encyclopedias matters less to us since it is our readers who edit our
content. Almost all of our readers are able to correct a mistake if
one is seen. It seems that our model ensures that content is written
to our reader's satisfaction because it is our readers who create our
content.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Gary Kirk

subject: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

body:
It's faked though...surely not legal?

On 11/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/03/07, Slim Virgin <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=441432&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=
>
> I love the graphic.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
On 3/12/07, ?ukasz Garczewski <lgarczewski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikimedians, like all internet users, use a host of different services
> and sites, some of which are community driven. How about a page
> listing those user groups? Or perhaps a page with links to
> wikimedia-related tags at various sites? Or both. ;)

Well, Planet Wikimedia exists to facilitate communication about the
Wikimedia Projects. A last.fm Wiki group exists to listen to music
together. I don't mind such things being listed on Meta, but I
wouldn't put them in the sidebar.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.

"An old, rigid civilization is reluctantly dying. Something new, open,
free and exciting is waking up." -- Ming the Mechanic


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
On 3/12/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> Could Categories be used for this?  So you 'watch' the Category, and
> vicariously are also set up to watch all articles in that category.

Well that would be less flexible than what I suggested. But probably a
lot easier to implement :)

Steve


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Jake Nelson wrote:

>My thought is to require a central list, and anyone who's being paid
>to edit Wikipedia needs to be registered on that list with username,
>who's paying them to edit, and the reason that they are being paid to
>do this.
>
Such a proposal is more characteristic of someone who wants building a
mind-numbing bureaucracy to be more important than building an encyclopedia.

>No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr
>they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement,
>and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that
>takes us.
>
Who would be so damned foolish as to register under those circumstances?

Ec


body:
Jeff Raymond wrote:

>Jake Nelson wrote:
>
>
>>No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr
>>they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement,
>>and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that
>>takes us.
>>
>>
>This is the best possible solution, I think.  Encourage people to be open
>about it, and we'll run into far fewer problems.
>
What's encouraging about it?

The clear need to be cautious about corporate behavioue should not
translate into anti-corporate paranoia.  Most of the stuff that will
come from corporations will probably be fairly middle-of-the-road and
informative.  We already have plenty of rules for dealing with the bad
actors.

Ec


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 3/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 3/11/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>If you say "I edit the Wall Street Journal" it means something quite
> >>different from "I edit Wikipedia."
> >>
> >>
> >Exactly. However, if the Wall Street Journal writes "Daniel Smith is a
> >Wikipedia editor", what do you think it means? What do you think they
> >mean? How do you think most people interpret it?
> >
> >Rename "editors" to "writers" or "contributors".
> >
> Any renaming we do is unlikely to affect the practices of the Wall
> Street Journal.
>
> Ec
>

So if we refer to our article writers as writers instead of editors, the WSJ
will continue calling them editors? I have my doubts.

Johnleemk


body:
On 12/03/07, Ben Yates <ben.louis.yates at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've made some merchandise for the cafepress store based on stuff in
> [[Unusual articles]] -- http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/2480654 .
> Let me know what you think.

Very nice work. Never bought Wikimedia merchandise before, but I'd
happily pay for any of those designs. Particularly like Arbre du
Tenere (pretty picture!) and ISO 3103.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

body:
On 12/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's faked though...surely not legal?

Does the Foundation get many requests for logo use?

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:

>"Jake Nelson" wrote
>
>
>>No matter what, people will be paid to edit. The questions is whetehr
>>they'll bother to tell us.... let's make a registration requirement,
>>and ban the hell out of anyone who violates it, and see where that
>>takes us.
>>
>>
>Disagree. That isn't a strategy. What would be a strategy? Certainly (a) encourage corporations and others to post GFDL material about themselves, and (b) err... we need a more explicit mechanism for harvesting GFDL text and adding it to WP, but we never get to this, because people seem to think that we have to discuss 'paid editors', not the mission. But anyway we can perfectly well set up pages for listing available online GFDL text about corporations, and perfectly well allow PR people to list things on such pages.
>
We need to get corporations on our side, not to be in a perpetual state
of war with them.  There is great value to what you propose.  Many
corporate documents are protected by copyrights.  Where a person is paid
to edit on behalf of a company he presumably has the right to act on
behalf of the company when he releases these documents on a page that is
covered by the GFDL.  This frees up material whose use under copyright
law might be uncertain.

Paying attention to the GFDL issue is more far-sighted than wallowing in
allegations of conflict of interest.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 12/03/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> IIRC, there is a difference between an editor and a subeditor or
> copyeditor.
> It's one thing to make minor changes to text; it's another to approve
> ideas
> for articles and suggest major changes. Traditionally in the print world,
> the former is the role of the copyeditor, while the latter is the role of
> the editor, isn't it?
>
> Johnleemk

Indeed there is a difference between those two. But on Wikipedia the border
between the two is blurry most of the time. Sometimes on subjects that don't
really interest me personally, or when I don't have enough time to write
something bigger, I'll just copyedit an article. Other times when time isn't
an restricting issue I will write new paragraphs and such things which are
more in the realm of a "real editor". So while people sometimes behave as
copyeditors, subeditors and/or editors, the thing they all have in common is
the editing.

So I think editor is a perfectly fine name for the thing we do.

Regards,
Christof Sperl a.k.a. Aetherfukz


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

body:
On 12/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:

> > It's faked though...surely not legal?

It's clearly faked, so would be an "illustration".

> Does the Foundation get many requests for logo use?

Too many. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Contact_us directs
people to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press , which
expressly says "yes you can use the damn logo for press coverage."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

body:
On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > It's faked though...surely not legal?
>
>
> It's clearly faked, so would be an "illustration".
>
>
> > Does the Foundation get many requests for logo use?
>
>
> Too many. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Contact_us directs
> people to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press , which
> expressly says "yes you can use the damn logo for press coverage."

Ah, thanks for clearing that one up on both counts.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 3/13/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>My thought is to require a central list, and anyone who's being paid
>>to edit Wikipedia needs to be registered on that list with username,
>>who's paying them to edit, and the reason that they are being paid to
>>do this.
>>
>>
>I would keep the requirements not too onerous. We *want* them to
>disclose what they're doing, because they're going to do it anyway. So
>ask them nicely to register themselves. Then quietly keep on eye on
>them, and just revert them whenever they violate our policies,
>politely.
>
I've been around too long not to be worried about those of our
colleagues who believe that firing squads are a pre-trial solution.

>The whole idea here is that when they turn some crappy stub into a
>longer article, it may certainly be slanted towards their viewpoint.
>But it's a lot easier to just deslant it, than it would have been to
>write it from scratch. So we let them build it slanted - and when
>they're finished, we just gently nudge it upright. They do all the
>hard work. We get the benefit.
>
There's a lot of perfectly neutral information that companies can give
us: Who's on the Board of Directors, where they have facilities, what
they produce, technical specifications of their products, ...

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Joan Finney photo - final appeal

body:
On 3/12/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> It's a terrific photo, and I think it would look great on her Article page.
> My question is: couldn't someone just go ahead and upload it - and if there
> are issues down the line - they can be dealt with then?

No, you can't do that. You need to know all the requisite sourcing and
licencing information before you start using the image.

However, even if you can't definitively determine the source and
copyright status of the image, you may still be able to use it, as I
explain below.

On 3/12/07, Ron Ritzman <ritzman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > 1) I contacted the person who originally uploaded it to the Find-A-Grave
> > site, and he said he thought the photo wasn't copyrighted.
>
> A shame that "assume good faith" doesn't apply here.
>
> To use a photo under "fair use" do we have to know for a fact that a
> photo is copyrighted  and by whom or can "fair use" be used for images
> where the copyright status is undetermined?

No to the first part of your question, yes to the second.

Since copyright is automatically acquired on creation of the work
(this is the case in all relevant jurisdictions), it can be presumed
that the work is copyrighted unless there is evidence to show that the
copyright has expired (evidence of the date of creation) or that the
work has been released into the public domain or freely licenced
(evidence of such a release or grant of licence).

In the absence of such evidence, we must presume the work is copyrighted.

Because it can be presumed that a work is copyrighted until it can be
confirmed otherwise, it is ok to simply state that the work is
presumed copyrighted, and then approach it as one would any other
copyrighted image.

Keep in mind that the image, and the use of the image, will still need
to meet all of the fair use criteria. Given that Finney was a very
high profile public figure, it may be difficult to meet criteria #1 -
notwithstanding the fact that she is dead - given that there is a good
chance that there is PD material available (pictures of her by the
federal government may exist) and there is also the possibility that
one of the many people who took pictures of her would be prepared to
release their picture under a free licence.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
stevertigo wrote:

>On 3/11/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 3/12/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>Volunteer editor: Stop inserting that statement about Michael Jackson
>>
>>
>>>being a loveable, friendly, fluffy ball of joy.
>>>Paid editor: I'm paid to do this. This is my job. STFU.
>>>Volunteer editor: Oh, okay. I'll just leave you to it, then.
>>>
>>>
>>Volunteer editor: Stop inserting that statement about Michael
>>Jacksonbeing a loveable, friendly, fluffy ball of joy.
>>Paid editor: I'm paid to do this. This is my job. STFU.
>>Volunteer editor: Exactly. See [[WP:PAID]]. I've asked you to stop
>>once. If you continue you may be blocked.
>>
>>
>Volunteer editor: Stop inserting that statement about Michael
>Jacksonbeing a loveable, friendly, fluffy ball of joy.
>Paid editor: But it helps balance out the child molestation stuff.
>Volunteer editor: [[NPOV]] doesnt support that view.
>Paid editor: But its ATT to his mother.
>Volunteer editor: Its an opinion by his mother. See [[WP:WWIN]]
>Paid editor: STFU!
>Volunteer editor: Exactly. See [[WP:CIVIL]].
>
There's plenty to hang these guys with before we even get to the
question of their being paid editors.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

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

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
> [Mon Mar 12 17:20:32 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
> Class 'DOMDocument' not found in

The ImageMap extension requires PHP 5's DOM module; as far as I know
it's included by default, but your particular configuration might be
missing it.

If compiling from source, compile with --enable-dom instead of
- --disable-dom (and/or ensure that XML libraries are present on the
system). If installing from operating system packages, check if there is
a separate package for this module (for instance 'php5-dom' or similar
name).

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF9cwkwRnhpk1wk44RAg81AJ0dAsUjgQFdpvyBh3lJszvH+n1M/QCeOT9d
WQsfIcOlVmTKCopRZlQXvX0=
=MULj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Jochen Magnus

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
I am so sorry, but my inevitable question after five weeks without fresh
dumps goes: When can we expect recent dumps?

Thank you

Jochen


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
Hi!

> Brion, Tim: does this have >0 chance of getting into the Wikimedia
> wikis?

Nobody asked me, but I'll still intervene with my defeatist denials.

The main problem here is that RSS immediately changes access
patterns, so people instead of clicking 'watchlist' when they need
it, would do that periodically.
Though we could try increasing indexing efficiency for the task (and
we already run a dedicated database server for it), RSS refreshes
would be pain to handle, and may require serious data rearchitecting.

So, the question is, do we really need it? ;-) (I know I'll be
scolded for this evil attitude, but by limiting watchlist usage in
some ways we actually removed huge bottlenecks in past).

I for one really welcome any external service, using IRC feeds and
putting them into 'my personal watchlist rss' service.

BR,
--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Jochen Magnus wrote:
>> I am so sorry, but my inevitable question after five weeks without fresh
>> dumps goes: When can we expect recent dumps?
>
> The last one was two weeks ago. Next one will start in a couple days.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)

The last image dump at
http://download.wikimedia.org/images/wikipedia/en/ is from 2005-Nov-27,
any chance that could get refreshed soon? Since the image metadata
tables are kept up to date with the rest of the text dumps I imagine it
must be fairly straightforward to rig up something to download the
matching images direct from the live site, but I also presume this would
take rather a long time and waste a lot of server resources.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rename admins to janitors

body:
On 12/03/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jimbo, et al would still have to pick a term to use when explaining WP to
> the press. Our policy/guideline/etc. pages would also have to decide on one
> term. As nice as this idea sounds, I don't think it's very practical.

I have no trouble explaining it. "We have 1000 administrators on the
English Wikipedia. They're like message board moderators - they're not
senior editors, they do nuts-and-bolts stuff like deletions, blocking
vandals and so on."

They do the job the title reflects, it's just we have rather a lot of them ...

(And I know they frequently are 'senior' editors, or highly
experienced ones ... please excuse the slight oversimplification.)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal for a new logo for policy pages

body:
A discussion about a possible "official policy seal" for our policy
pages to replace the green tick mark:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
WP:VPP#Proposal_for_a_new_logo_for_policy_pages

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] UK's Mail on Sunday article

body:
Fair enough :)
Like to know what Edwina thinks of it though...!

On 12/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/03/07, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12/03/07, Gary Kirk <gary.kirk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > > It's faked though...surely not legal?
> >
> >
> > It's clearly faked, so would be an "illustration".
> >
> >
> > > Does the Foundation get many requests for logo use?
> >
> >
> > Too many. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Contact_us directs
> > people to http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press , which
> > expressly says "yes you can use the damn logo for press coverage."
>
> Ah, thanks for clearing that one up on both counts.
>
> --
> Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Want to Begin by Complaining about Suspected
	Sockpuppet Account

body:
On 3/12/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

> >"meat puppet"
>
> Worst neologism ever.

I have mixed feelings on this one. While it's annoying to have a bunch
of people drop out of the sky (here or anywhere else) and take the
opposite side of a debate you are involved with, to label someone a
meatpuppet comes close to "assuming bad faith".


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump status

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Jochen Magnus wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I am so sorry, but my inevitable question after five weeks without fresh
>>>dumps goes: When can we expect recent dumps?
>>>
>>>
>>The last one was two weeks ago. Next one will start in a couple days.
>>
>>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
>>
>>
>
>The last image dump at
>http://download.wikimedia.org/images/wikipedia/en/ is from 2005-Nov-27,
>any chance that could get refreshed soon? Since the image metadata
>tables are kept up to date with the rest of the text dumps I imagine it
>must be fairly straightforward to rig up something to download the
>matching images direct from the live site, but I also presume this would
>take rather a long time and waste a lot of server resources.
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
I have torrents available. I am finishing up the torrent files.

Present size of enwiki images as of 20070206 is:

[root at gadugi wikipedia]#
[root at gadugi wikipedia]# ls -l
total 208410848
drwxrwxr-x 25 apache apache 4096 Mar 9 17:19 en
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 213204285440 Mar 11 01:39
enwiki-allimages-20070206.tar
[root at gadugi wikipedia]#
[root at gadugi wikipedia]#

The torrents files go up later tonight after the hashes build and verify.

ftp://ftp.wikigadugi.org/

I am using enchanced-ctorrent.

Jeff

Jeff


from_name: Bryan Tong Minh

subject: [Foundation-l] The community

body:
There is also a Commons group on flickr.

Bryan

On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > How set up another languages? how keep open (like wikipedia)?
>
>
> For a list page, it could just be an editable page on Meta.
>
> The Planet Wikimedia feed is not as wide-open as Wikipedia, but Erik's
> keeping an eye on it and adding feeds.
>
> Open Wiki Blog Planet (in English) has a config file on en:wp that
> anyone with an account 4 days old can edit.
>
>
> - d.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] The community


body:
On 3/12/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Another very important exception is a work which was not copyrightable
> in the first place.

Of course, but the work in question is clearly capable of being
copyrighted, and I didn't think it was worth complicating a long post
any further :)

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Gregory Szorc

subject: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists

body:
The token need not be globally unique.  It just needs to be sufficiently
random, since the token will accompany the username in the URL.  Arguably,
this is less secure than a globally unique token, but even Google's
"private" feeds have the username in the URL.  A sufficient "random" token
can be generated by performing an MD5 against of the current time and the
user id, which I have done with WikiFeeds.

Greg

On 3/12/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The only problem, AFAIK, is that someone on #mediawiki said that our
> current
> token generation mechanism (User::generateToken( )) is teh crap, and
> suggested a better way. Otherwise, my original idea was to use the
> existing
> token mechanism, like email confirmations use.
>
> It isn't private as user.user_realname should be; however, it still can be
> kept reasonably private by having a mechanism to generate a new token,
> even
> if an existing one already exists.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rob Church [mailto:robchur at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, March 12, 2007 6:16 AM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] RSS feeds for watchlists
>
> On 12/03/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Anyways, what do you all think? Comments? Flamebait?
>
> What's the problem with using the existing token mechanism, salted
> with a particular value, e.g. for watchlists? The salting code is
> there and it's all available.
>
> Watchlist data isn't "private" in the sense that we need to protect it
> at all costs; if it *does* leak out, no-one's going to care that
> much...you're not really gaining access to anything hideously
> confidential, are you?
>
> Rob Church
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] [daily-image-l] 2007-03-12

body:
On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 12 Mar 2007 04:00:06 -0000, Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Day
> > > <daily-image-l at lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> > > > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Sanfranciscoearthquake1906.jpg
> > > > Copyright status: Public domain as a work of the Old organisation.
>
> > Where is that claim made?
>
>
> The licence template is {{PD-old}}. I would guess slight
> non-robustness in the daily-image-l script.

Yes, don't worry, I noticed too... as Greg has noted before, the PD
license categories are not easy to neatly enumerate.

As for the claim, note this was made a FP back in 2005 and it is not
hard to guess standards were less stringent then. Because of the
decision to only host FP/QI as POTD, some quite old nominations that
were never made POTD, are now showing up.

AFAIK no one checks on a regular basis, that the copyright claims of
POTDs are actually reasonable.

I eventually found it:
http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/arch_results_detail.jsp?&pg=1&si=0&st=b&rp=summary&nh=1
(search at http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/basic_search.jsp for '531006')

it's been cleaned up a lot, but also FLIPPED! wonder if that was intentional?

It was created by the DoD.

regards
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise & d-i-l script tweaker


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good
	idea

body:
On 3/12/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sioux_Lookout%2C_Ontario&diff=next&oldid=102936206
> http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/03/12/sioux-lookout-brochure.html

Sometime in the near future. Informational brochures in the lobby of
Atlantic Records will contain nothing but the words "YOU SUCK" in big
blue letters.


list: textbook-l

from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

subject:
[Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies on
	Wikibooks?

body:
Dnia Mon, 12 Mar 2007 08:40:20 +0100, Milos Rancic napisa?(a):

>> NPOV is a global policy across all projects and is older than the
>> foundation or wikibooks.  It is non-negotiable from the start.
>
> But, where to put something like "Impressionist analysis of Orwell's
> 1984."? This is useful for learning about a book, but this is
> inherently POV.
>
> So, where to put such papers?

The problem with essays is that you can find many people having different opinions on the same topic and therefore able to write different essays covering this topic. These essays can contradict themselves. Wikimedia projects were created to provide readers with accurate knowledge; you can always correct factual errors in essays but you cannot correct personal interpretation of the facts. There will always be fundamental conflicts between various essays, people may argue about them endlessly and I think it's not what we want. Prohibition of expressing personal point of view in Wikimedia projects is a protection against self-promotion of amateur authors and nonsenses in their writing.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 3/12/07, Piotr Derbeth Kubowicz <derbeth at wp.pl> wrote:
> The problem with essays is that you can find many people having different opinions on the same topic and therefore able to write different essays covering this topic. These essays can contradict themselves. Wikimedia projects were created to provide readers with accurate knowledge; you can always correct factual errors in essays but you cannot correct personal interpretation of the facts. There will always be fundamental conflicts between various essays, people may argue about them endlessly and I think it's not what we want. Prohibition of expressing personal point of view in Wikimedia projects is a protection against self-promotion of amateur authors and nonsenses in their writing.

I completely understand why NPOV is nearly perfect for any kind of
something which we call "objective knowledge". And there is no
question about NPOV inside of factographic descriptions of anything.

However, POV analysis of art are very usable for art studies.
Actually, there is no such thing like NPOV art critics. (But it is
possible to have NPOV book about art critics.)

My point is that I think that we need, for example, "Dadaist critics
of South Park" -- for educational purpose because:

- Dadaism is not live cultural movement and it is not so obvious that
there will be some dadaist who would do so. However, it is possible to
imagine dadaist critics of South Park.
- If Wikibooks and Wikiversity want to have complete courses for some
art field, there is a lot of needs for improvisation. If there is no
some art critique which we need because of educational purposes, we
should make it. In other words, if we want to have a *real* free
source for complete education, we need a lot of things which are not
NPOV nor NOR.

So, there are a couple of solutions:
- Wikibooks and/or Wikiversity allow POV and OR for art analysis. This
is the best solution because we will have one community. Also,
realization of the goal "free education" will stay inside of the
projects which aim to work on this goal.
- Wikimedia makes another project for such purpose (something like
"wikiartstudies"). This is something like a "middle solution" because
we will have de jure one community, but de facto two. Realization of
the goal "free education" will be outside of Wikibooks and
Wikiversity, but inside of Wikimedia.
- The worst solution is to try to find a solution out of Wikimedia
(i.e. Wikia or anything else) because we will have both de jure and de
facto different communities. Realization of the goal will be outside
of both -- projects and Wikimedia.


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 12/03/07, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> [Mon Mar 12 17:20:32 2007] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] PHP Fatal error:
> Class 'DOMDocument' not found in
> /wikidump/en/extensions/ImageMap/ImageMap_body.php on line 71
[snip]

What version of PHP?

Rob Church


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Audio file sizes

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

Delirium wrote:
> It might depend on the codec, but FLAC for one is much *less*
> CPU-intensive to encode than most commonly used lossy codecs, such as
> MP3.  Since it doesn't have to do all the frequency-domain
> psychoacoustic analysis that lossy codecs do, it's a much simpler
> algorithm, both to implement and to execute.

I misspoke. When we're serving the audio files, the computation
processing the Wikimedia foundation would have to do is re-encode them
in a lossy codec such as OGG, to save bandwidth on both ends. Our
storage format would be FLAC for disk space reasons, as WAVs can get big
pretty fast.

I'd hate to see this discussion die out without some sort of judgment
from the developers. Brion, do you think this sort of implementation is
possible? Perhaps if we had a dedicated cluster for performing the audio
encoding, and queued the stuff up so that while the lossless version
wouldn't be available immediately, it would show up eventually?

Also, regarding anonymous FTP, I believe SourceForge has a similar setup
for uploading release packages, so I think if we made it write-only
(i.e. the list directory command returns no entries), only allowed
established users to upload, and did regular housekeeping, it might be
viable.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF9fUXqTO+fYacSNoRAiH+AJ9JHLGeSXJnmxQ11g/SfOxHvAkKywCfctRX
fbW5yktWxy3prKvFKCL6Iv0=
=h5WC
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image slideshow extension wanted

body:
On 3/11/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/11/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Would someone else oblige... I'm willing to pay, and the resulting
> > > extension would remain under GNU and freely available to everyone.
> >
> > GNU?  Why not MIT or BSD (something more business friendly)?*
>
> Mediawiki is GPLed.

As is, apparently, the JavaScript thingie he found, and being as he
was asking for someone to incorporate it into an MW extension,
anything that fulfilled his request would certainly have to be GPL (at
least partly).  Of course, whether GPL JavaScript includes require the
including page to be GPL is an interesting question . . . I've always
wondered how we glue together a GPL interface and GFDL content on
Wiki* anyway.  Not to mention interface messages, which are GPL but
whose modifications are ostensibly GFDL.

Bah, the FSF should make them compatible anyway.  ;)


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conspicuous only in its absence (was Moldavian)

body:
Mark,
We are quite capable to say what we have to say. It is not helpful if you
repeat after us. You make it seem as if we agree with a side in this affair.
We have not considered if we would accept it as a new project. What is at
issue here is very much that the mo.wikipedia is an existing project, there
are some people who care for it and the arguments used for its closure are
not really acceptable.

The optimal solution from our pov is that the mo.wikipedia is cleaned up and
that the data of both ro and mo are merged. The first step for this to
happen is to coexist peacefully. Your behaviour does not help.

There is the option of a transliteration engine. This is however not
available at this time. Optimally it should allow for round trip conversion.

Thanks,
     Gerard

On 3/12/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps you have not been following this list.
>
> Do you think Gerard or B?rto really care who it is making these
> arguments? To them, you and Liviu may as well be the same person
> because you are saying the same things. Over and over.
>
> They have said over and over that the position that they have already
> described is FINAL. They did not "misunderstand" anything, they did
> not miss any of the facts or the evidence.
>
> Just because they do not agree with your personal interpretation of
> reality does not mean they need you to "tell them the facts". They
> have already heard what you have to say, and it has already been
> evaluated. Many times.
>
> The suggestion was, originally made to Liviu: Go to ro.wp and start a
> poll there about adding an option to convert to Cyrillic. In the mean
> time, stop complaining. Their idea is that eventually such an option
> MIGHT exist, but only if ro.wp community successfully integrates it of
> its own free will, NOT on the decision of some random single user.
>
> If you can get the majority of Ro.wp'ians to agree to a converter in
> the style of sr.wp (meaning that content may be edited and added in
> Cyrillic as well), then this discussion may proceed. If you cannot, it
> is over.
>
> Nobody wants to hear any of this anymore. Haven't you understood that by
> now?
>
> Mark
>
> On 10/03/07, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Concerning your invitation to work, which is
> > insulting:
> > 1. Don't you working guys have civility rules around
> > here any more?
> > 2. Does your work consist in giving uncivil answers to
> > messages you didn't read, sent by a user that did not
> > send messages on this forum in the last 3 months?
> > Because both you and GerardM answered my message
> > without reading it. Or, if you read it, it may be
> > useful to interrupt working for thinking a bit.
> >
> > Dpotop
> >
> >
> > --- Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Hoi!
> > >
> > > > My constructive position
> > > So... It was told to Liviu, it gets told to YOU. It
> > > will be duly copied to
> > > all of you, as an auto answer.
> > > 1) WHO of you spammers has found the time to call up
> > > a regular vote on
> > > RO.wiki on becoming fully bilingual and giving
> > > warranties of acceptance of
> > > articles by the Transdnistrian minority?
> > > 2) Who of you will prove clever enough to do that
> > > BEFORE littering our
> > > mailboxes with your carnival?
> > >
> > > Until you answer to that ANY Moldavian position (pro
> > > Cyrillic/anti-cyrillic/Acyrillic or whatever) will
> > > be just low quality
> > > toilet paper for my house. Or do you guys seriously
> > > think that we want to
> > > start a big internal war in RO.wiki just to please a
> > > couple of hysterical
> > > kids?
> > >
> > > You want to make a change in someone else's house.
> > > You go there and ask the
> > > landlord for permission, before coming up here with
> > > your emotional scenes.
> > > It's called "respect" and "private property" in case
> > > you aren't familiar
> > > with the terms.
> > >
> > > All the tears in the universe won't make a
> > > difference. GO TO WORK! No work,
> > > no consideration.
> > >
> > > B?rto 'd S?ra
> > > Personagi dl'ann 2006 p?r l'arvista american-a Time
> > > (tanme tuti voj?otri)
> > >
> > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > >
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> > No need to miss a message. Get email on-the-go
> > with Yahoo! Mail for Mobile. Get started.
> > http://mobile.yahoo.com/mail
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Almeda University paying for positive Wikipedia edits

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> What's encouraging about it?

More, better content?  More detailed articles about organizations that
may not get written otherwise?  A more comprehensive encyclopedia?
>
> The clear need to be cautious about corporate behavioue should not
> translate into anti-corporate paranoia.

Yet that's mostly where it comes from.  Maybe not from you, but it's
certainly rooted there.

 > Most of the stuff that will
> come from corporations will probably be fairly middle-of-the-road and
> informative.  We already have plenty of rules for dealing with the bad
> actors.

Right, so why be so firm about trying to discourage it?

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "I was always a fan of Lisa Loeb, particularly
	because you kind of get the impression she
	sang every song either about or to her cats.
	They seem to be the driving force in most of
	her creative process."     - Chuck Klosterman


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate Donors - Status?

body:
On 12/03/07, Bartning at aol.com <Bartning at aol.com> wrote:
> There's been a lot of talk about paid editors, but what about conflicts of
> interest with Wikipedia when it accepts donations from corporations?   There's
> already belief that the organization gives large companies a lot of  perks,
> e.g. allowing them to upload their logo, even mentioning them in an  article,
> but how do donations from them influence Wikipedia?

Experience suggests that the *attention* helps improve their articles;
they suddenly become an organisation of much more specific interest to
the community, so a lot of people who are already working on Wikipedia
are motivated to improve their articles.

But then, the same effect would appear if they announced they were
suing us. It's not so much the nature of the donation as the profile
of it!

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


from_name: Robert Horning

subject:
[Textbook-l] NPOV and NOR as a local or a global policies on
 Wikibooks?

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> I think that it is better to have strong Wikibookian communities with
>> a lot of fiction on Wikibooks then much smaller communities without
>> fiction on Wikibooks.
>>
>
> Fiction is absolutely not appropriate for Wikibooks.
>
> --Jimbo
>

For en.wikibooks, this has been official and enforced policy for well
over a year now (nearly two years).  While this user/contributor may be
wanting to change that policy and is certainly free to express that
opinion, there doesn't really seem to be that much support to modify
this policy.   Even with a major discussion to substantially revamp the
"What is Wikibooks" policy, this has not even been a point that was
raised at all.

And I would agree with you here... fiction is not appropriate for
Wikibooks.  It is far too easy to have somebody contribute random stuff
and get into a major edit war and cause all kinds of other mischief.
Besides, the Novella Wikia does a pretty good job and has taken other
formerly Wikibooks fictional content.

-- Robert Horning


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I don't consider that individual projects were "inspired to inherit them".
>
> Wikipedia was never the "Wikipedia Textbook project".
>
> --Jimbo
>

That was an honest typo.  Wikibooks was originallly at
http://textbooks.wikipedia.com/ (a no longer valid URL, BTW) and it was
called the "Wikipedia Textbook Project", at least based on some very
dated pages I've seen.

Still, I would have to agree with Garrett that many of the policies on
Wikibooks were inherited from Wikipedia... some so much that the name
"Wikipedia" remained for as long as two years on some of the pages.  I
don't know of any that remain like that, but it was an issue in the
past.  And Wikibooks has things from Wikipedia like the VfD pages that
Wikipedia no longer does.  In addition, we are debating things like fair
use policies due in part because of inherited philosophies on that topic
as well.

But at the same time, Wikibooks certainly has chartered an independent
course from Wikipedia on many policies.

--Robert Horning


body:
On 12/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> That's a *great* idea IMO and quite easy not to make a COI.
>
> Can anyone else here see a problem with this idea?

Possible PR issues? "Wikimedia, which ran a donation drive only X
months ago, is already throwing money at Amazon..."

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why cutting'n'pasting from Wikipedia is not a good idea

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sioux_Lookout%2C_Ontario&diff=next&oldid=102936206
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/03/12/sioux-lookout-brochure.html

- d.


body:
On 3/12/07, jf_wikipedia <jf_wikipedia at mac.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> WP:VPP#Proposal_for_a_new_logo_for_policy_pages

A non wrapped version...

http://tinyurl.com/yu2lfj


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Paid editing

body:
Hi, folks. Thanks for the many interesting comments on this.
Unfortunately I just got pulled into a new client project, so I don't
have time to reply to them all in the detail they deserve, but I'm going
to try to address the broad themes. Apologies in advance for the monster
post, but I'm hoping that putting it all together is less irksome than 6
or 8 semi-overlapping replies in various threads.

My basic notion is that rather than being open to paid editing and see
where it goes (which is the general spirit of Wikipedia) we should
forbid it generally and make specific exceptions where we see a clear
need to let it happen. For you router geeks, it's "default deny" rather
than "default allow". I know this is the opposite of the way we normally
do things, but I think there are important reasons to go against the grain.

The first one is that for-pay editing will introduce a new sort of
systemic bias. We're already biased toward the kinds of things that
first-world, computer-savvy people are interested in. Allowing paid
editing will introduce a new bias, which is toward information that
people can profit from having the public believe. Given that
advertising, marketing, and PR account for $500 billion annually in the
US alone, there is a lot of information like that.

The second is that I believe it will be a substantial net loss of
volunteer time. We already spend a fair bit of time cleaning up after
vandals and spammers, and a lot of energy is wasted on arguing with
kooks. Any information or resources that commercial interests have to
offer can happily be put on the talk page, where a neutral editor can
use it to fashion an article. I think any additional value gained from
paid conflict-of-interest edits will be outweighed by the cleanup and
eternal argument that professional PR and advertising people will generate.

Third, even the suspicion of distorted coverage will harm Wikipedia's
image. This is a lesson that journalists, academics, and politicians all
get to learn on a regular basis, one scandal at a time. We should take a
page from their books and adopt firm rules to forbid even the appearance
of systematic distortion of our articles.

Fourth, we have a one-time opportunity to prevent the emergence of
people who make a full-time living from spamming Wikipedia. All of the
major Internet-borne waves of spam only really took off when people
started to do it professionally. Once they had a foothold, they had a
platform that let them stay just far enough in ahead in the arms race to
survive and keep up their Porche payments. By adopting a firm stance
against paid editing now, we remove the gray area that will spawn our
own Sanford Wallace or Scott Richter.

Fifth, eliminating the gray area will save a lot of headache for all
concerned. That $500 billion a year is spent on professional POV
warriors. The good ones are just as tenacious and tricky as lawyers,
except they aren't constrained by any certifying body or serious
professional code of ethics. I say this with no disrespect; I have
friends who do sales, PR, and marketing for a living, and it's amazing
to watch them work. But they will not get what we are about here, not
when they are being paid not to get it. Any gray area will be room for
endless argument and struggle.

And the biggest reason I have a bee in my bonnet about this is that that
given modest funding, I believe I could successfully game the system
sufficiently to justify high client fees. Per WP:BEANS, I'll keep quiet
about how, but as somebody who does a fair bit of vandal patrol and
keeps an eye on contentious articles, I'm pretty sure it's doable and
sustainable. This is the only way I can think of to keep the market
small enough to avoid that.

Now I know people have a few specific objections, all very reasonable.
Let me quickly reply to them:

 From charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com: "We need to get corporations on
our side, not to be in a perpetual state of war with them."

I don't think it has to be war. Most companies understand and respect
the ethical barriers that constrain journalists. If we draw a similar
line while providing them with similar opportunities to give us
information so that we can tell their side of the story fairly, they
will accept that. There will be exceptions, and we will deal with them
like we do with other transgressors: first with velvet, then with steel.

 From Steve Bennett: "There is a world of difference between someone
attempting to expand or improve a subject field, for remuneration, and
someone repeatedly working on the perceived bias of one particular article."

I agree, and I think that if we are especially clever, we can find
specific exemptions that allow the former while forbidding the latter
without any room for gaming. The mechanism I proposed is having all
money go through the Wikimedia Foundation, letting them serve as what
journalists call the Chinese Wall, preventing conflict of interest from
flowing along with the money.

 From Jeff Raymond: "Right, so why be so firm about trying to discourage
[paid editing]?"

For the same reason that journalistic codes of ethics forbid anything
that might hint of a conflict of interest, even when it is innocently
given and innocently received. Because it is the top edge of a very
slippery slope, and because even the appearance of a potential problem
reduces public trust.

 From Steve Bennett again: "The only people who will be affected will be
those who bothered to have a conscience and find out that there even was
a rule."

I disagree. I think that's a false dichotomy.

On one end of the spectrum, we have people who have a solid
understanding of fairness and NPOV, people who are incorruptibly
scrupulous about avoiding conflicts of interest. On the other end, we
have the bottom-feeders and scoundrels. You're right that a no-pay rule
harms the first set (because they could be trusted anyhow) and doesn't
have much effect on the second set (because they are irredeemably bad).

But this is really aimed at the vast number of people in the middle.
They come in all sorts: people who haven't thought it through; people
who could use a few bucks; people who could be fooled by an Almeda
University into seeing us as the POV warriors; people who will fool
themselves if there's money to be made; people who think something is ok
as long as there isn't a rule against it; and especially, people who
tell themselves, "I'm just doing my job."

By consulting at a variety of companies and meeting people at
conferences, I get to talk to a lot of people about why they do what
they do. I'm convinced that most people fall into that middle. I don't
want them to have to wrestle with the subtleties of NPOV and COI when
somebody is paying them to not worry about it. I want them to have a
clear, easy-to-understand rule: don't do it. And I want it just as clear
for the people tempted to pay them.

And from a few people: "I don't like X about your proposal."

Then please do fix it! Even if you don't like the idea much, it's in all
of our interests to have the best possible proposals on each side. I'll
certainly be helping on both sides, and I'd love to see as much input as
possible both on the no-pay one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editing

and on the pay-is-ok one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Paid_editors

Thanks,

William

P.S. My sincere thanks to the people who waded all the way through this.

--
William Pietri <william at scissor.com>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:William_Pietri