from_name: Simon Blandford

body:
I'm a little unclear on this from reading Wikipedia's policy on libel.

It seems concerned only with libel of individuals. What is the policy
with regards to organisations? In the UK the libel laws cover
organisations as well as individuals.

For example, what happens if an article is being used as a front for a
religious hate group? Would whether the "religion" was mainstream or
quite small make any difference?

Thanks,
bksimonb

IMPORTANT NOTICE
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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

>Michael Snow
>
>
>>As Anthere has alluded to, some of the results still need to be
>>organized, discussed further, and agreements reached. The board retreat
>>did not decide every course of action for the Wikimedia Foundation for
>>all time. Much more will be shared and discussed with various people in
>>various forums as we go forward. But we cannot recreate the entire
>>retreat for everyone who wasn't present, or produce a three-day-long
>>video for you to watch it all unfold.
>>
>>
>Michael, you seem to say that I and maybe others are overasking.
>
Others more than just you, Erik, and I chose not to respond to your
message directly because I didn't want to single you out. But I was a
little disappointed to see people responding to Oscar's effort in
creating his report by commenting that it "says nothing" and in other
ways calling it inadequate.

>What I did plead for was to share analysis, conclusions, priority lists, in
>short structured and condensated results, like SWOT and priority lists are
>meant to be, so that others can be informed and provide feedback before
>these are turned into decisions.
>
This is understandable, like Anthere I'm mostly asking for a little more
patience, as much in people's tone as in whether they have additional
requests or not. Most of the important conclusions were already in
Oscar's report. The analysis that went into it, Anthere has now posted
the SWOT list, and some of the rest we may be able to put together and
share as well. A few specific things, especially dealing with legal
concerns, need to be kept confidential.

Also, not everything we discussed was necessarily finalized, even with
respect to the small group that was present. Three days was good, but
hardly enough to tie up every loose end in such a very loosely
structured organization. For example, we worked on drafting a formal
vision and mission statement, but still had some wording issues to deal
with. I suggested that those be put forward for adoption by the
community in a referendum, and I'm looking forward to Board releasing
them in their final form.

--Michael Snow


list: wikimedia-l


list: commons-l

from_name: Fastfission

subject: [Commons-l] PD-UN template

body:
On 10/23/06, Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
> On behalf of a user who asked a question on Commons:
>
> Question about [[s:en:Template:PD-UN]]
> <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/en:Template:PD-UN> and
> its Chinese and French versions hereto. When
> Wikisource was a multilingual site accepting all
> languages, it had so many UN Security Council
> resolutions posted by various users unaware of UN
> copyright. As the UN Headquarters is subject to the
> same USA laws, works published there are copyrighted
> in the same way as works published in the USA.
>
> Works published in the USA between 1978 and 1 March
> 1989 without copyright notices and without subsequent
> copyright registrations are in the public domain in
> the USA, but should subsequent copyright registrations
> be validly made, the works become copyrighted. I would
> like to ask if these works are acceptable here. This
> is critical as most, if not all, images at
> [[:Category:Stamps of United Nations]] may be indeed
> copyrighted.
>
> ----
>
> I thought I ask at the mailinglist, see if anyone can
> provide an answer...
>
> / Fred-Chess

This basically seems to be saying that the UN's materials are subject
to US copyright laws. Which means they don't really fall into a
special copyright category and should be treated as any other
copyrighted material (and we probably shouldn't have a PD-UN template,
which implies that UN material is uniquely PD for any particular
reason, in the way that works of the U.S. federal government are PD).

The UN seems to consider themselves a regular copyright holder as well
(http://www.un.org/copyright.htm), which I admit somewhat surprises me
(I guess they just want the right to control it, since I doubt they
are trying to turn a profit). In any cases, the reasoning on the
template looks correct, but all it basically says is "this isn't PD
unless it is PD for some other reason", which probably means that the
template is misleading at best for most people.

FF


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject:
[Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced to
	MediaWiki

references:
<ac81562b0610221134w35928eb6ve38f1d289befde20@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAELDJBAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<ehtvmv$ljv$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 10/27/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Except, for some reason that hasn't been specified (or I didn't see it),
> only half the change was made. Instead of simply placing the edit link
> after the section header's text, as it is both recommended by the study
> *and* already implemented by the German Wikipedia, you placed it before
> the section header's text in the source...

I did specify: "It might be better to have the edit text as de-wiki
has it, but that's not a decision I'm willing to commit to by myself;
people are bound to object to a perceptible change to the status quo.
If someone like Tim or Brion agrees, that would certainly make the
solution simpler, but I'm not doing it myself."  People are going to
complain about not getting consensus, etc.


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] CC-BY-SA suitable for Wikipedia?

body:
On 10/27/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> The CC licenses 'solves' the legally unclear boundary of derivative
> works by claiming that anything which includes the work which doesn't
> meet their criteria of collective works is derivative:
>
> "or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or
> adapted, except that a work that constitutes a Collective Work will
> not be considered a Derivative Work for the purpose of this License."
>
> I'm not so sure that doing so is wise: The boundaries of a derivative
> work are created by law, not the copyright holder.  So while we can
> pretend to declare what a derivative work actually is, should our
> definition disagree with the law we will lose that argument every
> time.

It clearly says "for the purpose of this license," meaning that this
is what it is referring to when it talks about derivative works in the
rest of the license. I think you are misreading it.

> Their definition of a collective work is similar to the GFDLs:
>
> Compare
>
> "in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form, along with a
> number of other contributions, constituting separate and independent
> works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole."
>
> with
>
> "A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate
> and independent documents or works"

The full quote from CC-BY-SA-2.5 is:

"Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology
or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form,
along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and
independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective
whole. A work that constitutes a Collective Work will not be
considered a Derivative Work (as defined below) for the purposes of
this License.

Which is pretty clear, and gives some pretty practical examples.
That's what I mean by "more clear". GDFL gives no real indication what
it is referring to when it says "compilation".

> Notice the words 'separate and independent' ?  This is the key
> criteria used define collective/aggregate works in both the licenses.

Right. Except that one is much clearer in its use of them than the
other one. The CC-BY-SA-2.5 clause makes it pretty clear what the
authors of the license have in mind -- it is a nice mix of legalese
and readable text. The GDFL clause does not make it very clear -- it
is legalese. That's all I'm saying.

> This is, in part, a stylistic difference between CC licenses and some
> other licenses. The CC licenses are written in a way which combines
> non-binding narrative in the body of the license proper while most
> other licenses provide such content in separate documents or as part
> of a preface.  The inclusion of such materials makes the license
> appear more friendly, but it could be argued that doing so may result
> in misunderstanding.

I fail to see how articulating the intentions of the license will
create more misunderstanding than resorting only to terse legalese,
but I suppose this is a different of opinion.

FF


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bill Knapp's slaughter

body:
On 10/28/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> I'm finding the new spam speedy, is it G11 or G12, really contentious.
> I can't work what is meant by blatant advertising.  Some people seem to
> be taking the view that it's simply having an article on a company.

Have people forgotten PROD? It's a relatively non-confrontational,
simple method to allow many pages to get deleted with a minimum of
fuss. Speedy deletion is only for a limited number of pages.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Story about Wikipedia response to subtle vandalism

body:
On Oct 28, 2006, at 6:26 PM, Keith Old wrote:

> Well done to those involved in correcting this misinformation.

Unfortunately, the Chronicle article goes on to state that the
Halavais added, as an anon, an article on communication theory within
his area of expertise, and it was swiftly gutted.

Sadly, that article isn't mentioned, making it harder to identify
what went wrong there. But we ought take caution, once again, about
[[WP:BITE]] - the anecdote of "I corrected this information but it
got changed back to wrong" or "I contributed an article on topic X
that I'm a clear expert on but it got gutted"  is getting too common.

-Phil


list: textbook-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity logo

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:
> the wikiversity mailing list is listed at
> http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ - I've no idea why - and
> personally, I'd also prefer if all Wikimedia lists were listed
> together. I don't know who can carry out such tasks, or if it's
> possible to "merge" two lists.

This is a funny quirk of the configuration; hopefully I can get it
worked out.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Domain Names

body:
On 10/28/06, Heimermann, Asher <resourcesofsheboygan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am not sure who to talk to, but I would like to set up some domain names that would redirect to www.wikimedia.org.
>
I think Delphine handles this: dmenard  at wikimedia dot org
>   Also, I would like to order an item from Wiki Store, but I can't order stuff on-line, is there a order form I can get from somewhere?
>
>
You've seen http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia ?
Michael
>   Yours Very Truly,
>
>   Asher Heimermann
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Low, Low, Low Rates! Check out Yahoo! Messenger's cheap  PC-to-Phone call rates.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Domain Names


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comscore claims Wikipedia had more visitors
	during	September than Amazon, Myspace or Youtube

body:
"Gregory Maxwell" wrote

> On 10/28/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Less. Our vistors likely don't stay as long.
>
> Your statement is not refuted by the AOL search data: Lots of people
> clicked through to Wikipedia on a broad spectrum of search keywords,
> but many continued searching afterwards.

Makes sense.

> A while back I did a list of the most popular search keywords which
> lack articles and we found a couple of gaping holes in our coverage.

It is largely in the 'long tail' where we really score, surely. I think about this when adding obscure bibliography. Book titles with invented names, for example.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
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body:
On Oct 28, 2006, at 7:25 PM, Keith Old wrote:

>
> Further to the excellent points made by Sam, this anon address had
> already
> submitted wrong information on a number of topics. People would be
> rightly
> suspicious of material put forward by this IP.
>

Not true - the previous information was, my understanding is, made
under a username.

> In addition, the problem is often with material submitted
> anonymously. What
> we often see is material from IP x not from Professor X in which
> case it is
> harder to take it on face value without reliable sources shown.

Yes. All the same, deletion of accurate material is unfortunate. We
need to aspire to a level of sensibleness in demanding sources and
especially in removing material. An article that is accurate but
lacks sources is an article in need of sources, not an article in
need of gutting.

-Phil


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

body:
Yes, it was a username, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:AlHalawi.
That user didn't create any articles, or even make any good edits, however.

On 10/28/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Oct 28, 2006, at 7:25 PM, Keith Old wrote:
>
> >
> > Further to the excellent points made by Sam, this anon address had
> > already
> > submitted wrong information on a number of topics. People would be
> > rightly
> > suspicious of material put forward by this IP.
> >
>
> Not true - the previous information was, my understanding is, made
> under a username.
>
> > In addition, the problem is often with material submitted
> > anonymously. What
> > we often see is material from IP x not from Professor X in which
> > case it is
> > harder to take it on face value without reliable sources shown.
>
> Yes. All the same, deletion of accurate material is unfortunate. We
> need to aspire to a level of sensibleness in demanding sources and
> especially in removing material. An article that is accurate but
> lacks sources is an article in need of sources, not an article in
> need of gutting.
>
> -Phil
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)

references:
<4543AB58.3070205@earthlink.net>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNOEMEDEAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<ei0kj6$i9j$1@sea.gmane.org> <ei0t4c$547$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 10/28/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> *legal (16)

I find this very very interesting.

I've always been an advocate of being extra-diligent on legal
matters... but not because I believed our situation was precarious.
Rather, I believe it is important to be diligent in our patrolling of
libel because libel has the risk of hurting people, and I believe it
is important to strictly conform on copyright because our mission is
strongly oriented around Free Content.

Unless there is a law change in the US we have a pretty strong
position legally in both those areas.

Of course, law changes are always possible but with over 2 billion USD
recently invested by companies into 'user submitted content' sites
(youtube and myspace) which would both be far more hurt than us by a
substantial change in the law... I just don't see it happening.

Although, I also didn't foresee the outcome of the Napster case... so
perhaps my crystal ball isn't very good.  But as I said, I see plenty
of non-legal reasons to be careful with our actions.. I'm just a
little surprised to see 'legal' named as the highest threat.


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)


body:
On 10/28/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I fail to see how articulating the intentions of the license will
> create more misunderstanding than resorting only to terse legalese,
> but I suppose this is a different of opinion.

Yes it is, but for the benefit of the audience the argument against
mixing non-binding text with binding text goes something like this:

Consider two people:
Person A: No ability to understand the legalese at all.
Person B: Able to understand the legalese without difficulty.

Both A and B are going to reprint a highly enhanced subset of a free
encyclopedia where all the articles have been edited for accuracy.

We'll consider two licenses:
X: "Collective Work" means a work, such as a periodical issue, anthology
or encyclopedia, in which the Work in its entirety in unmodified form,
along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and
independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective
whole.
Y: "Collective Work" means a work in which the Work in its entirety in
unmodified form,
along with a number of other contributions, constituting separate and
independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective
whole.

Lets assume the free encyclopedia is licensed under Y.
Person A reads Y, decides he can't understand it.. and either gives up
or consults an attorney.
Person B reads Y, understands it, and realizes this section is not
excusing him from conformance.

Now lets assume license X.
Person A reads X. sees the word encyclopedia and can't understand the
rest. He is either mislead into thinking that since he's printing an
encyclopedia he's a collective work and doesn't have to distribute the
whole under the terms of the license... Or he worries that he didn't
quite understand it, and consults his attorney.
Person B reads X, understands the legalese, and gets it right.

So the argument is that the explanatory language doesn't help the
clueless because they are insufficient to covey the complete meaning
of the license, so you must still always understand the rest and that
the existence of null effect language can create confusion.

Of course, the world isn't so black and white and people exist on a
continuous spectrum between A and B. There are pros and cons to each
style, and either kind of language could be selected by a rational and
informed license author.

In any case, I hope I've cleared up any confusion brought by The
Cunctator's inaccurate claim about the GFDL as there isn't a material
difference between the CC-By-SA and the GFDL in the permissions
granted with respect to aggregations.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Bill Knapp's slaughter

body:
On 10/28/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> By entering into a respectful dialogue.

Right.. Like leaving a message on their talk page... Which is what was
done in this case.

In the majority of cases where a new user has dropped a new article on
our lap they don't hang around long enough to answer such notes.

If the user who discovered the suspect article doesn't place some sort
of tag on it at the time he finds it, then there will be nothing to
cause the article to get cleaned up later unless he logs it in some
sort of personal todo system, and nothing to stop a half dozen other
users from wasting their time on it while it's still on the first few
pages of special:newpages.  This point takes me back to my initial
comment on workflow automation.

You might argue that the note that was left could have been more
helpful, but because of our limited workflow automation we needed to
put some kind of deletion notice on the article... and it wouldn't be
respectful at all to ping the author with questions but fail to
mention that the page was tagged for eventual deletion.


body:
On 10/28/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes. All the same, deletion of accurate material is unfortunate. We
> need to aspire to a level of sensibleness in demanding sources and
> especially in removing material. An article that is accurate but
> lacks sources is an article in need of sources, not an article in
> need of gutting.

It's often easier to write an article from information, then it is to
take a written article and match sources to pre-written information...
The is especially true when working with dead-tree resources because
searching dead-trees for facts in random orders is so slow.

We're not feeling the pain yet, but false source vandalism is bound to
become a notable form of intentional vandalism which we will have a
difficult time preventing unless we make some difficult changes to our
sourcing policy.


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Password reminder from Wikipedia spam

references:
<op.thqdcdo1r18sbe@mainframe.lan> <ehi2si$jki$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ehtvap$jma$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
"Timwi"
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> I've just implemented a per-user limit on password reminder emails. By
>> default, 24 hours must elapse from one password reminder to the next. I
>> figure if you've just been sent one password reminder, you don't need
>> another one, assuming your mail was working.
>
> And there you've already highlighted a grave problem with your approach.
> Suppose you didn't receive the mail (for whatever reasons). Then what?

You will likely press send password' again but the second one would probably
don't arrive neither. Or maybe it's just the first who is arriving too slow
so the second one (the first one won't work then) will take a while too. I'd
tell them "We really sent you a message, please wait" is probably ok.
However i don't mind setting the limit lower.


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l]  Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

body:
Michael Snow
> As Anthere has alluded to, some of the results still need to be
> organized, discussed further, and agreements reached. The board retreat
> did not decide every course of action for the Wikimedia Foundation for
> all time. Much more will be shared and discussed with various people in
> various forums as we go forward. But we cannot recreate the entire
> retreat for everyone who wasn't present, or produce a three-day-long
> video for you to watch it all unfold.

Michael, you seem to say that I and maybe others are overasking. So let me
explain further what prompted me to ask for clarification.

I made an ironic remark myself about the Big Brother house setting,
implicating by stating the opposite that really, I am not asking to watch a
real life soap. Part of the dynamics of this meeting were obviously on an
interpersonal level. That requires intimacy. I fully respect that.

Even for the pure exchange of opinions I am not asking for a verbatim
account.

What I did plead for was to share analysis, conclusions, priority lists, in
short structured and condensated results, like SWOT and priority lists are
meant to be, so that others can be informed and provide feedback before
these are turned into decisions. After that who cares. That is the crucial
point.

I've already assured that this is still going to happen, but since you seem
to think I have extreme demands, I'd better explain in this mail.

Erik Zachte


body:
I've already assured -> I've already been assured

Erik Zachte


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT

body:
Strenghts
23 people
15 mission/vision (Jimmy in particular-3)
15 outside perception, recognised brand, market leader
13 organisation
11 multiculturalism/lingualism
9 content
6 technology
5 financial - donations easy and reliable
less reflection as an organisation
less communication

Weaknesses
24 lack of structure (management not adapted)
15 poor processes/delegation/decision making
13 communication
8 lack of trust
6 unfocused direction, lack of planning or strategic vision
6 finances, donor relationships
divided opinions on board members
lack of responsability
volunteers
reflection of organisation

Opportunities
18 money
9 internet penetration (more users coming)
7 good will
7 free culture mouvement success
6 educational penetration
6 global village
5 support of free culture mouvement
4 media and political interest
4 content liberation
3 technology
2 hiring pool

Threats
16 legal
12 unmanaged growth
9 fragmentation of the general organisation
6 financial stability
6 competition
internal communication

---------

Numbers represent number of people who listed this (or something
approaching)
Reminder: this is the SWOT of the WMF (not of a project)


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 10/29/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sadly, that article isn't mentioned, making it harder to identify
> what went wrong there. But we ought take caution, once again, about
> [[WP:BITE]] - the anecdote of "I corrected this information but it
> got changed back to wrong" or "I contributed an article on topic X
> that I'm a clear expert on but it got gutted"  is getting too common.

Let's think about why this is getting more common.

1. We are getting more rigid about demanding sources/citations for new
material.  This is necessary.  I expect most academics who contribute,
being used to being judged by their qualifications/reputation, will
not cite and reference their work in the way Wikipedia demands.
2. We're getting more efficient at working out when these demands are
not being fulfilled.  This is also necessary.
3. We're getting more prominent and more people are making such
attempts.  This is a by-product of our success.

So let's not leap to damning ourselves here.  I'm not saying that we
haven't got improvements to work towards (we most certainly have), but
we must not go too far the other way and pay deference towards
academics for their qualifications rather than their contributions.

--
Sam


from_name: Keith Old

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comscore claims Wikipedia had more visitors during
	September than Amazon, Myspace or Youtube

body:
G'day* folks,

SDA India reports

Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, and eBay took the top positions, however relative
newcomers Wikipedia and YouTube are making a rapid climb up the World Wide
Web (WWW), as per the monthly Internet snapshot, released by Comscore.
Wikipedia had 154 million visitors in September, while YouTube came in
number 14 with 81 million visitors.

http://www.sda-india.com/sda_india/psecom,id,102,site_layout,sdaindia,news,13123,p,0.html

More in story.

(Hmmm. If Youtube was worth 1.6 billion, and we have nearly twice as many
visitors how much would we be worth but I digress)

Amazon had 133 million while Fox Interactive Media (presumably mostly
Myspace) had 118 and Ask 112 million.

Regards to all.

Keith Old

* Shamelessly stolen from Mark Gallagher. I hope it wasn't copyrighted


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity logo

body:
On 10/28/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > the wikiversity mailing list is listed at
> > http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/ - I've no idea why - and
> > personally, I'd also prefer if all Wikimedia lists were listed
> > together. I don't know who can carry out such tasks, or if it's
> > possible to "merge" two lists.
>
> This is a funny quirk of the configuration; hopefully I can get it
> worked out.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Nice! Cheers, Brion :-)

Cormac


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [Foundation-l] Board officers elected; Anthere is Chair!

body:
On 28/10/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> ...which
> means, not centered on one person, not dependent on one person, but a
> fully functioning *organization* with many leaders and a healthy culture
> for the growth of new leaders over time.

A great move for the Foundation. Hopefully this will increase the
validity and accountability of the board, allowing it to serve
projects better.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
> vision and mission statement

Why?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)

references:
<4543AB58.3070205@earthlink.net>	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNOEMEDEAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<ei0kj6$i9j$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Hmmm, this was unsufficiently explained. With the help of other
participants, here is a more complete explanation of what we did.
One of the methods we used at the board retreat to try and define
strategic actions was a SWOT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT)
analysis, as Oscar mentionned in his report.

The idea was to answer a set of questions to help identify the
Strengths, the Weaknesses of the organisation (internal level) and  the
Opportunities and the Threats that the organisation faces (external
level). and then combine all of these to define strategic objectives.

All participants were asked to list what they identified as SWOT for the
organisation and we then compiled all answers to try and identify those
which came under different forms but actually tackled the same subject.

These are the topics that came out of this analysis.

Numbers represent number of people who listed this (or something
approaching), no numbers means that these came out of the general
discussion afterwards. They were for some points listed by one person
and were accepted by the group as worth mentionning.

Reminder: this is the SWOT of the Wikimedia Foundation (not of a project)

==Strengths==
*people (23)
*mission/vision (Jimmy in particular-3) (15)
*outside perception, recognised brand, market leader (15 )
*organisation (13 )
*multiculturalism/lingualism (11 )
*content (9)
*technology (6 )
*financial - donations easy and reliable (5 )
*less reflection as an organisation
*less communication

==Weaknesses==
*lack of structure (management not adapted) (24 )
*poor processes/delegation/decision making (15)
*communication (13)
*lack of trust (8)
*unfocused direction, lack of planning or strategic vision (6)
*finances, donor relationships (6)
*divided opinions on board members
*lack of responsability
*volunteers
*reflection of organisation

==Opportunities==
*money (18)
*internet penetration (more users coming) (9)
*good will (7)
*free culture mouvement success (7)
*educational penetration (6)
*global village (6)
*support of free culture mouvement (5)
*media and political interest (4)
*content liberation (4)
*technology (3)
*hiring pool (2)

==Threats==
*legal (16)
*unmanaged growth (12)
*fragmentation of the general organisation (9)
*financial stability (6)
*competition (6)
*internal communication

It is difficult to convey here the exact meaning that is put behind
these words that may look random at first, as they were the result of
discussions and brainstorming but it was a starting point for us to go
on with strategic objectives. These are part of a process that is long
and implies lots of discussion and should not be taken at face value. In
order to be able to list the strategic objectives, the participants are
then asked to cross the different categories (Threats with Weaknesses,
Opportunities and weaknesses for example and come up with a set of
strategic objectives.

As Oscar mentionned, we then compiled the strategic objectives into  7
categories: ''organizational, operations, finances and fundraising,
program development, public relations and messaging, technology, and
legal''.

The strategic objectives were then detailled and presented as
recommandations to the board from the group, which the board needs to
review and reassess, confronting them with the reality of things, the
ressources and manageable timelines, so as to present their final
strategic objectives and their course of action.
The final strategic objectives will be the last part of the report, and
they will take a little time to put together. We also need to agree on
which information to publish and which not to publish. Do not expect
final outcome tomorrow, nor in the following days.

Again, please be patient.


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United States,
we are required to have a mission statement, because we are accepting  money.
People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that is  laid
out in the mission statement.

For instance, Wikimedia cannot decide to spend 100,000 euros on  sending food
to Darfur because--even though it is a worthy cause--it lies  outside the
scope of our mission. This helps to ensure to our donors that the  money they
give us us used specifically for the development and spread of free
content/knowledge.

Danny

In a message dated 10/29/2006 6:48:38 AM Eastern Standard Time,
geniice at gmail.com writes:

On  10/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com>  wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 10/29/06, Michael Snow  <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> For example, we worked  on drafting a formal
> >> vision and mission statement
>  >
> > Why?
> >
>
>  Because.
>

The problem is that that is what I'm rather worried  the answer would
be. We appear to have got on okay without one and I tend  to feel that
haveing one would risk giving rule lawyers more  aminition.

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


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)

references:
<4543AB58.3070205@earthlink.net>	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNOEMEDEAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>	<ei0kj6$i9j$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ei0t4c$547$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0610281842s58dca58craf1d998e6148c7b6@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Although, I also didn't foresee the outcome of the Napster case... so
> perhaps my crystal ball isn't very good.  But as I said, I see plenty
> of non-legal reasons to be careful with our actions.. I'm just a
> little surprised to see 'legal' named as the highest threat.

You have to be careful about how you interpret those numbers... that
high number has to do with more people naming it as *a* threat, not that
we as a group overall felt that it was the *highest* threat.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)


body:
G'day folks,

Government Computing News reports on a story of how an assistant professor
posted incorrect information on Wikipedia to see how long it would take to
get picked up. It is reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education. All the
fabrications were picked up within three hours.

http://www.gcn.com/blogs/tech/42433.html

This week, *The Chronicle of Higher Education* reported on how an assistant
professor<http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?%20id=z6xht2rj60kqmsl8tlq5ltqcshc5y93y>deliberately
posted a number of errors in Wikipedia in order to see how long
it would take for them to be noticed.

<snip>

"The fibs that professor Alexander Halavais slipped in were deviously
subtle: that abolitionist Frederick Douglass, lived in Syracuse, N.Y. for
four years, and that the Disney film *The Rescuers Down Under* won an Oscar
for film editing. Both are false, but would you have doubted these
"factoids"?

Halavais hypothesized that the obscure errors would "languish online for
some time," the *Chronicle* reported. Instead the Wikipedia volunteers
eliminated all the fabrications within three hours of being posted. And the
volunteer checkers even admonished Halavais for making stuff up. We've
written about both the potential
power<http://www.gcn.com/print/25_25/41673-1.html?topic=technology_products%20wikis>of
and the uncertainties
surrounding <http://www.gcn.com/blogs/temin/41869.html> group-led network
projects before, but this Halavais' little experiment certainly does bode
well for the form."
Well done to those involved in correcting this misinformation.

Regards to all.

Keith Old


from_name: Simon Blandford

body:
Forwarding to list on request of Fred Bauder.

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the response.

I would be grateful if you could please clarify the last two sentences
since I am not sure if I am reading them right.

Are you saying that Wikipedia is poorly equipped to deal with a hate
group against a small cult without "unequivocal reliable sources"? What
is impossible with a major world religion? That Wikipedia is impossibly
poorly equipped to deal with a hate group or any hate group would find
it impossible to abuse Wikipedia?

What would qualify as "unequivocal reliable sources"?

Thanks & regards,
bksimonb

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: [WikiEN-l] Libel of organisations or just individuals
Date: 	Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:32:01 -0600
From: 	Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
To: 	English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
CC: 	Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>, Simon Blandford <simon at bkinfo.net>
References: 	<45434B0E.9060709 at bkinfo.net>

On Oct 28, 2006, at 6:20 AM, Simon Blandford wrote:

> I'm a little unclear on this from reading Wikipedia's policy on libel.
>
> It seems concerned only with libel of individuals. What is the policy
> with regards to organisations? In the UK the libel laws cover
> organisations as well as individuals.
>
> For example, what happens if an article is being used as a front for a
> religious hate group? Would whether the "religion" was mainstream or
> quite small make any difference?
>
> Thanks,
> bksimonb

A policy is being developed at Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing
enterprises

We are against libel regardless of who it is directed at. As to
religious hate groups, I would say we are poorly equipped to say that
is the case without unequivocal reliable sources even in the case of
a small weak cult. With respect to a major world religion, it is
impossible.

Please forward this to the list wikien-l at Wikipedia.org as otherwise
they will not receive it.

Fred

IMPORTANT NOTICE
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body:
Phil Sandifer wrote

> Unfortunately, the Chronicle article goes on to state that the
> Halavais added, as an anon, an article on communication theory within
> his area of expertise, and it was swiftly gutted.
>
> Sadly, that article isn't mentioned, making it harder to identify
> what went wrong there. But we ought take caution, once again, about
> [[WP:BITE]] - the anecdote of "I corrected this information but it
> got changed back to wrong" or "I contributed an article on topic X
> that I'm a clear expert on but it got gutted"  is getting too common.

Quoting the piece:

'Shortly after Mr. Halavais's career as a troll ended, the professor ? this time posting anonymously ? contributed another article to Wikipedia, a piece on theories of communication, his area of expertise.

"It got shut down pretty quick, and I think there's just a small piece of it left online," he says. "Some other professors I talked to said the same thing happened to them: They were experts in their fields, they wrote something well in their area of expertise, and it got cut up." '

Let's bear in mind that the piece has no clear idea of the difference between a troll and a vandal. The original prank edits were made all of two years ago (2004). This may relate also to 2004, therefore. We can't trust the article to know the difference between anonymous and pseudonymous edits. Under current conditions an anon cannot start such an article.

We also cannot trust the article to know the difference between a serious copy edit and the removal of trustworthy stuff. There may have been existing coverage: many new articles end up redirected or merged. We cannot know whether it was written in encyclopedic style, or was a personal essay/lecture notes style of submission.

In short, besides this being anecdotal and time-expired data, the source seems iffy and the report scanty.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
On 10/29/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/29/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Sadly, that article isn't mentioned, making it harder to identify
> > what went wrong there. But we ought take caution, once again, about
> > [[WP:BITE]] - the anecdote of "I corrected this information but it
> > got changed back to wrong" or "I contributed an article on topic X
> > that I'm a clear expert on but it got gutted"  is getting too common.
>
> Let's think about why this is getting more common.
>
> 1. We are getting more rigid about demanding sources/citations for new
> material.  This is necessary.  I expect most academics who contribute,
> being used to being judged by their qualifications/reputation, will
> not cite and reference their work in the way Wikipedia demands.
> 2. We're getting more efficient at working out when these demands are
> not being fulfilled.  This is also necessary.
> 3. We're getting more prominent and more people are making such
> attempts.  This is a by-product of our success.
>
> So let's not leap to damning ourselves here.  I'm not saying that we
> haven't got improvements to work towards (we most certainly have), but
> we must not go too far the other way and pay deference towards
> academics for their qualifications rather than their contributions.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

G'day folks,

Further to the excellent points made by Sam, this anon address had already
submitted wrong information on a number of topics. People would be rightly
suspicious of material put forward by this IP.

In addition, the problem is often with material submitted anonymously. What
we often see is material from IP x not from Professor X in which case it is
harder to take it on face value without reliable sources shown.

Regards to all

Keith Old


from_name: Stephen Forrest

body:
On 10/23/06, Julian Fleischer <mediazilla at warhog.net> wrote:

> > Sure they are easy to filter out, but we can't let spammers have free
> > reign like this. If there is such a "throttle" feature it needs to be
> > activated ASAP (how many times a day does the average user forget his
> > password?). If nothing else all these mails are a unnessesary strain on
> > our mail system. Pluss some users have "threatened" to report it to
> > SpamCop and such, and we don't want our mailserver blacklisted now do we?
>
> wouldn't the whole problem be avoided it the user had to fill in his
> e-mail-address (which he hopefully hasn't forgot...) when asking for the
> password reminding email?

As another attempt at a solution, it would be useful (and maybe even
sufficient) to make the user complete a capcha before the reminder is
generated.  This would at least avoid bots sending out hundreds of
password reminders.

Steve


body:
On 10/29/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
> >> vision and mission statement
> >
> > Why?
> >
>
> Because.
>

The problem is that that is what I'm rather worried the answer would
be. We appear to have got on okay without one and I tend to feel that
haveing one would risk giving rule lawyers more aminition.

--
geni


from_name: J JIH

subject: [Commons-l] Commons-l Digest, Vol 17, Issue 14

body:
>
> On 10/23/06, Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> wrote:
> > On behalf of a user who asked a question on Commons:
> >
> > Question about [[s:en:Template:PD-UN]]
> > <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/en:Template:PD-UN> and
> > its Chinese and French versions hereto. When
> > Wikisource was a multilingual site accepting all
> > languages, it had so many UN Security Council
> > resolutions posted by various users unaware of UN
> > copyright. As the UN Headquarters is subject to the
> > same USA laws, works published there are copyrighted
> > in the same way as works published in the USA.
> >
> > Works published in the USA between 1978 and 1 March
> > 1989 without copyright notices and without subsequent
> > copyright registrations are in the public domain in
> > the USA, but should subsequent copyright registrations
> > be validly made, the works become copyrighted. I would
> > like to ask if these works are acceptable here. This
> > is critical as most, if not all, images at
> > [[:Category:Stamps of United Nations]] may be indeed
> > copyrighted.
> >
> > ----
> >
> > I thought I ask at the mailinglist, see if anyone can
> > provide an answer...
> >
> > / Fred-Chess
>
> This basically seems to be saying that the UN's materials are subject
> to US copyright laws. Which means they don't really fall into a
> special copyright category and should be treated as any other
> copyrighted material (and we probably shouldn't have a PD-UN template,
> which implies that UN material is uniquely PD for any particular
> reason, in the way that works of the U.S. federal government are PD).
>
> The UN seems to consider themselves a regular copyright holder as well
> (http://www.un.org/copyright.htm), which I admit somewhat surprises me
> (I guess they just want the right to control it, since I doubt they
> are trying to turn a profit). In any cases, the reasoning on the
> template looks correct, but all it basically says is "this isn't PD
> unless it is PD for some other reason", which probably means that the
> template is misleading at best for most people.
>
> FF
>

Please explain how the template is probably misleading at best for most
people. The content of [[s:en:Template:PD-UN]] has been based on USA
copyright law and prolonged discussions at English Wikisource when so many
UN Security Council Resolutions have arised the copyright concern. If you
can think of better content, please be more specific. Users outside the USA
must also be aware of the laws in their countries as countries that are party
to <http://www.unesco.org/culture/copyright/html_eng/ucc71ms.pdf> Protocol 2
of the Universal Copyright
Convention<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Copyright_Convention>done
at Paris on 24 July 1971 require copyright protection for works
published for the first time by the United Nations.

Jusjih
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subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)

references:
<4543AB58.3070205@earthlink.net>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNOEMEDEAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<ei0kj6$i9j$1@sea.gmane.org> <ei0t4c$547$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0610281842s58dca58craf1d998e6148c7b6@mail.gmail.com>
	<4544AEBF.8030705@wikia.com>

body:
On 10/29/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > Although, I also didn't foresee the outcome of the Napster case... so
> > perhaps my crystal ball isn't very good.  But as I said, I see plenty
> > of non-legal reasons to be careful with our actions.. I'm just a
> > little surprised to see 'legal' named as the highest threat.
>
> You have to be careful about how you interpret those numbers... that
> high number has to do with more people naming it as *a* threat, not that
> we as a group overall felt that it was the *highest* threat.

I guess thats obvious, but I missed it.  Thank you, it makes a lot
more sense to me now.


subject: [Foundation-l] THE SWOT (the return)


from_name: Simetrical

references:
<op.thqdcdo1r18sbe@mainframe.lan>
	<200610232232.24351.mediazilla@warhog.net>
	<2ea1ace50610290847v20051f9axd9c2b21a42703f3e@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 10/29/06, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> As another attempt at a solution, it would be useful (and maybe even
> sufficient) to make the user complete a capcha before the reminder is
> generated.  This would at least avoid bots sending out hundreds of
> password reminders.

And blind people from sending out one.


from_name: Toira

subject: [Wikitech-l] Need a developer for a Kabyle wiki -- CORRECTION

body:
Thanks for the correction mark ;-)

Thanks for spending so much time Neil :-)

Yes I agree with your choices, the conversion from tifinagh to latin should be
done all in lower case (otherwise it would be a pain in the eyes).

BTW, I've corrected the mistake about cyrillic, I apologise for my ignorance,
I have replaced it with greek alphabet (epsilone and gamma are greek letters).

Just one question Neil, are you actually developping the kab wiki? because I did
not get it yet.

And oh please, can you give me the link to the chinese wiki? just to see how the
conversion work.

Toira.


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Toira wrote:
> Thanks for the correction mark ;-)
>
> Thanks for spending so much time Neil :-)
>
You're welcome.
> Yes I agree with your choices, the conversion from tifinagh to latin should be
> done all in lower case (otherwise it would be a pain in the eyes).
>
> BTW, I've corrected the mistake about cyrillic, I apologise for my ignorance,
> I have replaced it with greek alphabet (epsilone and gamma are greek letters).
>
> Just one question Neil, are you actually developping the kab wiki? because I did
> not get it yet.
>
>
No, I'm not. But you are posting to the right mailing list for dealing
with technical questions about multi-script Wikipedia editions.

I'm sure someone here can point you at the right place for formally
requesting the creation of a new Wikipedia. They might want to hear if
you have any other people ready to edit it, or if you are willing to set
up a small trial Wiki in that language before going live with a full kab
Wikipedia.

I suggest that you ask for the kab Wikipedia to be set up in the Latin
script at first, because that's quite the easiest option, but make clear
that you:

a) later want to use the multi-script interface software, and
b) that it is a simple transliteration issue, rather than a complex
set-up like Chinese, and that
c) you already have Unicode assignments and a transliteration table
ready to go...
> And oh please, can you give me the link to the chinese wiki? just to see how the
> conversion work.
>
> Toira.
>
>

Chinese Wikipedia (main entry point):

http://zh.wikipedia.org/

Chinese Wikipedia main page in traditional Chinese script (as used in
Taiwan):

http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5&variant=zh-tw

Chinese Wikipedia main page in simplified Chinese script (as used in
mainland China):

http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E9%A6%96%E9%A1%B5&variant=zh-cn

Regards,

Neil


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] How-to guides and OR

body:
Earle Martin wrote:
> What's the best procedure to follow when encountering an article like
> [[Bugaboo Spire]]? It doesn't seem to be copied copyrighted material,
> but more likely original research, and at the very least a how-to
> guide[1] for climbing certain mountains. Simply chopping the material
> in question out seems a little brutal.
>
>
All but the most obscure or recent climbs have an authoritative climbing
guidebook that is the right source for details of route descriptions -
you won't find original research on WP unless first-ascenders start
reporting their adventures here rather than in the climbing journals.
The prescriptive rather than descriptive style is typical for routes,
descriptive style tends to be clumsy. Given that WP is a compendium and
not the whole library, I think the right approach is to prune each route
down to general description and highlights, and refer readers to the
climbing guidebook for full details - climbers printing out WP articles
to take along seems just as undesirable as surgeons printing out
articles on their way into the OR... :-)

Stan


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libel of organisations or just individuals

body:
On 10/29/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Simon Blandford wrote:
> > I'm a little unclear on this from reading Wikipedia's policy on libel.
> >
> > It seems concerned only with libel of individuals. What is the policy
> > with regards to organisations? In the UK the libel laws cover
> > organisations as well as individuals.
>
>  From what I remember last time libel was a hot button issue, there is
> little regard given to UK laws as there are no assets in the UK. I was
> told people weren't overly worried about the UK law, only US law as that
> is where the servers are held.

There are US laws regarding defamation of organizations too.  In fact,
several US states even have laws against defamation of food.

Anthony


from_name: Peter Ansell

body:
On 29/10/06, Simon Blandford <simon at bkinfo.net> wrote:
> Forwarding to list on request of Fred Bauder.
>
> Hi Fred,
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
> I would be grateful if you could please clarify the last two sentences
> since I am not sure if I am reading them right.
>
> Are you saying that Wikipedia is poorly equipped to deal with a hate
> group against a small cult without "unequivocal reliable sources"? What
> is impossible with a major world religion? That Wikipedia is impossibly
> poorly equipped to deal with a hate group or any hate group would find
> it impossible to abuse Wikipedia?
>
> What would qualify as "unequivocal reliable sources"?
>
> Thanks & regards,
> bksimonb
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject:        Re: [WikiEN-l] Libel of organisations or just individuals
> Date:   Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:32:01 -0600
> From:   Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> To:     English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> CC:     Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>, Simon Blandford <simon at bkinfo.net>
> References:     <45434B0E.9060709 at bkinfo.net>
>
>
>
> On Oct 28, 2006, at 6:20 AM, Simon Blandford wrote:
>
> > I'm a little unclear on this from reading Wikipedia's policy on libel.
> >
> > It seems concerned only with libel of individuals. What is the policy
> > with regards to organisations? In the UK the libel laws cover
> > organisations as well as individuals.
> >
> > For example, what happens if an article is being used as a front for a
> > religious hate group? Would whether the "religion" was mainstream or
> > quite small make any difference?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > bksimonb
>
> A policy is being developed at Wikipedia:Articles about ongoing
> enterprises
>
> We are against libel regardless of who it is directed at. As to
> religious hate groups, I would say we are poorly equipped to say that
> is the case without unequivocal reliable sources even in the case of
> a small weak cult. With respect to a major world religion, it is
> impossible.
>
> Please forward this to the list wikien-l at Wikipedia.org as otherwise
> they will not receive it.
>
> Fred

I bought this issue up a few weeks ago on the BLP talk page as I did
not know about the Articles about ongoing enterprises page at the
time. I agree that some sort of policy should exist, however, the
specifics I am not sure about.

Peter Ansell


subject: [Wikitech-l] Attention to all JS/CSS writers

body:
Currently most of the existing classes and id's used in the interface
can conflict with user-specified classes and id's.  Unless there are
objections, I will be changing over all of them to begin with a
reserved prefix "mw-", as is the current practice for adding new ones,
and add a check to stop content id's (particularly for headers) from
beginning with "mw-".  I may also consolidate some id's that are
different in different skins and change some that are otherwise
inconsistent or weird.

When I finalize the changes, I'll post a full list of them here and on
enwiki VP:T a few days to a week before committing them, so that
people have a chance to update their scripts and CSS.  Okay?


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 10/29/06, J JIH <jus168jih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please explain how the template is probably misleading at best for most
> people. The content of [[s:en:Template:PD-UN]] has been based on USA
> copyright law and prolonged discussions at English Wikisource when so many
> UN Security Council Resolutions have arised the copyright concern. If you
> can think of better content, please be more specific. Users outside the USA
> must also be aware of the laws in their countries as countries that are
> party to Protocol 2 of the Universal Copyright Convention done at Paris on
> 24 July 1971 require copyright protection for works published for the first
> time by the United Nations.

I think most people who see something that is a PD-UN template will
assume that there is some special reason that the UN material is PD.
As the template explains in a round-about way, this isn't true. You
might as well not have a PD-UN template, or have it say very
explicitly "UN material is subject to US copyright. Please see
such-and-such a page about US copyright law to determine if this is in
the public domain."

Having PD templates seems to imply special PD categories -- 90% of
them say, "This work is PD because of this reason." It's better, in my
opinion, to not have PD templates which say, "This is PD because of
one of the four reasons, none of which have anything specifically to
do with the UN." It makes it hard for anyone else to know WHY it is
PD, for one thing (which reason is it?), and it is probably extra-hard
on people whose English isn't that great (since it is a rather
complicate way to explain, "UN material is the same as any other
copyrighted material in the US."

Just my take on it, but I'm not leading any campaign against it.

FF


body:
On 10/29/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United States,
> we are required to have a mission statement, because we are accepting  money.
> People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that is  laid
> out in the mission statement.
>

You can legally have informal ones (that is what Michael Snow's
comments suggest exists at the moment)?

--
geni


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
>> vision and mission statement
>
> Why?
>

Because.

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

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body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
>> vision and mission statement
>
> Why?
>

Because.

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

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body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
>> vision and mission statement
>
> Why?
>

Because.

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

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body:
geni wrote:
> On 10/29/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>> For example, we worked on drafting a formal
>> vision and mission statement
>
> Why?
>

Because.

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

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from_name: Steve Block

body:
Simon Blandford wrote:
> I'm a little unclear on this from reading Wikipedia's policy on libel.
>
> It seems concerned only with libel of individuals. What is the policy
> with regards to organisations? In the UK the libel laws cover
> organisations as well as individuals.

 From what I remember last time libel was a hot button issue, there is
little regard given to UK laws as there are no assets in the UK. I was
told people weren't overly worried about the UK law, only US law as that
is where the servers are held.  Whether the position has changed, I
don't know, but I've argued before that there are certainly aspects of
publicity that may be of concern here, and also that European Union ties
may mean assets held within the union may be seizable under a UK ruling.
  But I'm not a lawyer and I think a UK libel lawyer would be the best
person to work all this out.  I would assume the foundation are up on
this and I think the policy on libel really has to come from the top
down.  On the issue itself, I guess if that's the law in the UK, then UK
editors are going to have to be really careful about what they edit and
remove anything they feel may leave them open to a prosecution whenever
they edit a page.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.17/505 - Release Date: 27/10/06


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comscore claims Wikipedia had more visitors during
 September than Amazon, Myspace or Youtube

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/28/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
  > If anyone would be interested in seeing a list of the most popular
> search strings and articles where users came to Wikipedia but then
> continued searching... I could make one.  Perhaps there are places
> where we should switch which of several articles is at [[name]] vs
> [[name (disambiguation)]] or a redirect change, or an intro rewrite
> might make sense.
>
> A while back I did a list of the most popular search keywords which
> lack articles and we found a couple of gaping holes in our coverage.

I wouldn't mind seeing these lists, even if I'm the only one.  I was out
looking at the ones we have on the site the other day, but they're
hideously out of date now.

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.408 / Virus Database: 268.13.17/505 - Release Date: 27/10/06


subject: [WikiEN-l] Bill Knapp's slaughter

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On 10/28/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> I'm finding the new spam speedy, is it G11 or G12, really contentious.
>> I can't work what is meant by blatant advertising.  Some people seem to
>> be taking the view that it's simply having an article on a company.
>
> Have people forgotten PROD? It's a relatively non-confrontational,
> simple method to allow many pages to get deleted with a minimum of
> fuss. Speedy deletion is only for a limited number of pages.
>

I do use prod.  The trouble is, I can't work out what this speedy is
getting at.  Some of the articles being speedied I would not even prod,
they're just ordinary stubs.  I get that we don't want to be abused, but
there seems to be a grey area on the line of a resource of the sum of
all human knowledge and obvious spam.  Some of these speedy tags are
becoming a little too subjective.

--
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Checked by AVG Free Edition.
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from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] How-to guides and OR

body:
I didn't read the article, but how-to guides belong at wikibooks.

On 10/29/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> What's the best procedure to follow when encountering an article like
> [[Bugaboo Spire]]? It doesn't seem to be copied copyrighted material,
> but more likely original research, and at the very least a how-to
> guide[1] for climbing certain mountains. Simply chopping the material
> in question out seems a little brutal.
>
>
> [1] cf. [[WP:NOT]]
> --
> Earle Martin
>             http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 10/29/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Downside:
> This comment indicates that it was tried and does not work:
>  // Yes, the headline logically goes before the edit section.  Why isn't it there
>  // in source?  Ask the CSS people.  The float gets screwed up if you do that.
>  // This might be moved to before the editsection at some point so that it will
>  // display a bit more prettily without CSS, so please don't rely on the order.
>  $head[$headlineCount] .= ' '.$headline.'</h'.$level.'>';

Correct.  As it turns out, the CSS people are fine with it, it's the
Mozilla and Microsoft people who've screwed up.  Basically they seem
not to want to evaluate already-drawn text for possible redrawing when
drawing floats, so if they encounter a float that's not at the
beginning of a line they bump it down a line.
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50630>  So no, that's
not going to happen.

I tried out tables, but the insurmountable flaw *there* is that for
some reason the CSS people (it actually is their fault this time ;) )
said that only line boxes compress for floats, nothing else.  So any
floats from the previous section overlap the headers horribly.  I'm
agreeing with Timwi at this point, the only way to solve all this is
to just put the links right next to section headers, and any wikis
that don't like it can deal with it how they like.  I'm still going to
ask Tim or Brion before going ahead, though, because this will
certainly result in complaints.


from_name: Ivan Krstić

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikimania 2007 Hacking Days call-for-help

body:
Tian-Jian "Barabbas" Jiang at Gmail wrote:
>     * Wikimania 2006:
>           o http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Days
>             (Schedule MindMap is missing......)

I've restored the schedule PNG.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Chris Lüer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Story about Wikipedia response to subtle  vandalism

body:
Here's Halavais' corresponding blog entry:

http://alex.halavais.net/online-chat-on-wikipedia-in-the-academy/

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Halavais and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Halavais.

	Chris


body:
At 06:17 PM 10/28/2006, Sam Korn wrote:

>1. We are getting more rigid about demanding sources/citations for new
>material.  This is necessary.  I expect most academics who contribute,
>being used to being judged by their qualifications/reputation, will
>not cite and reference their work in the way Wikipedia demands.

Giving references is the one thing about writing an encyclopedia
article that academics are used to.

         Chris


from_name: Delirium

body:
Chris L?er wrote:

>At 06:17 PM 10/28/2006, Sam Korn wrote:
>
>
>
>>1. We are getting more rigid about demanding sources/citations for new
>>material.  This is necessary.  I expect most academics who contribute,
>>being used to being judged by their qualifications/reputation, will
>>not cite and reference their work in the way Wikipedia demands.
>>
>>
>
>Giving references is the one thing about writing an encyclopedia
>article that academics are used to.
>
>
That's true, but it depends somewhat on the context.  When writing
textbooks or tutorial material, often references are left out, and
instead the correctness of the material relies on the authority of the
writer.  References creep in more and more as the material gets more and
more like research---graduate-level advanced textbooks have more
references than intro textbooks, and monographs reporting novel results
have even more.

It may just require some gentle acclimation into the Wikipedia
culture---academics may be perfectly capable of providing references at
will, but simply not know that Wikipedia would prefer references even
for intro-level material that's commonly known in the field.

-Mark


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Sunday 29 October 2006 19:22, Simetrical wrote:
> On 10/29/06, Stephen Forrest <stephen.forrest at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As another attempt at a solution, it would be useful (and maybe even
> > sufficient) to make the user complete a capcha before the reminder is
> > generated.  This would at least avoid bots sending out hundreds of
> > password reminders.
>
> And blind people from sending out one.

Blind people could set "[X] I cannot use captchas" in their options. (When
that is implemnted)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sun Oct 29 19:54:26 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law. Right
 now, any professor can show a complete movie in his classroom without
 paying a dime - that's fair use. What is not fair use is making a copy
 of an encrypted DVD, because once you're able to break the encryption,
 you've undermined the encryption itself." - Jack Valenti

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

iQEVAwUBRUT5GXcLPEOTuEwVAQJ/SQf/SQJjXsXrZx1dHpDRWYV48zqsY9/9/GT3
r8Ae/Cynn3Nt5FChLCj2DaT+KV8MewZcRiUHurGgcyOVNca/Fc3ojg54tHUYWC1g
whCNMoRfKwL9OsaBPF6UIVKW4aSuLDteMEk8YXN+sl42+wDwEObJ8xJhcA6DH72K
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=0xF2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 10/29/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
[snip]
> It may just require some gentle acclimation into the Wikipedia
> culture---academics may be perfectly capable of providing references at
> will, but simply not know that Wikipedia would prefer references even
> for intro-level material that's commonly known in the field.

It's sometimes hard to convince someone that we're not trying to be
mean when we tell them they must cite sources because when the look
around Wikipedia they find homogeneous swaths of it uncited or poorly
cited.

We have parallel problems with copyright violations and other areas
where the active community has thoroughly agreed that Wikipedia should
do X while most of Wikipedia still does Y.

I don't know of any magic solution to this but I think it's useful to
point it out so folks keep it in mind when they remind people to
conform to standards which differ from the implementation of many
articles.


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] How-to guides and OR

body:
What's the best procedure to follow when encountering an article like
[[Bugaboo Spire]]? It doesn't seem to be copied copyrighted material,
but more likely original research, and at the very least a how-to
guide[1] for climbing certain mountains. Simply chopping the material
in question out seems a little brutal.

[1] cf. [[WP:NOT]]
--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 	 2006

body:
At 02:13 +0200 26/10/06, oscar wrote:
>i forgot to put the links in, but here is the article:
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Report_from_Frankfurt_-_October_2006 (it has
>a discussion page ;-)
>
>grtz,
>oscar

A picture worth a thousand words...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fuzheado/277257859/

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Felipe Ortega

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump recovery robust against errors?

body:
During a massive dump import proccess (with mwdumper), which involves the top 10 wikipedias,  I've found some 'odd' errors like, for example, this one recovering itwiki latest dump (2006-10-21, reports as OK):
.....
478,834 pages (154.138/sec), 4,603,000 revs (1,481.718/sec)
ERROR 1062 at line 2955: Duplicate entry '103-Matematica' for key 2
479,091 pages (153.95/sec), 4,604,000 revs (1,479.44/sec)
.....
.
 From that point on, the recovery process fails and no more data gets into MySQL database..

I've made a little check out method to test if the total number of pages and revisions fits with the online hints in the web page, but sometimes I don't know how to manage this errors in other way than downloading the next dump backwards, till one of them works fine (because all dumps report to be OK).

If you're not very careful you'd think that the import process did its job, because an aprox. 85% of pages was in the DB... Any way to solve this non-config errors?

BTW, I don't chase Brion at all.... He does his best with the dump process and mwdumper.

Thanks, all the best.

Felipe.

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

LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com


from_name: Puppy

body:
And I see David Gerard gave him penance - kudos, good idea.
-kc-

Chris L?er wrote:
> Here's Halavais' corresponding blog entry:
>
> http://alex.halavais.net/online-chat-on-wikipedia-in-the-academy/
>
> See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Halavais and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Halavais.
>
> 	Chris
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] broadening the scope of hooks

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-10-26 at 11:45 -0400, Travis Derouin wrote:
>> Both seem sort of messy. Are there any plans to broaden the range of
>> hooks other than by just adding more instances of hooks?
>
> I don't think so. I don't think the idea of modifying the profile stuff
> is a good idea, since the hooks that work now take (sometimes
> modifiable) arguments, which don't get passed to the profiling commands.
>
> I'm interested in expanding the scope of hooks, so suggestions for
> places to put them are very welcome. Are there places that you think
> there should be hooks, that they don't exist?
>
> Eventually I'd like every "function point" in MediaWiki to be hookable.
> But collecting the most important actions that require hooks will
> probably be useful.

The problem is that MediaWiki changes. If you add more hooks, then more of
them will break between versions. As a core developer, I don't want to have
to fix dozens of checked-in extensions every time I make a change, or to
break all the externally maintained ones. There are "good quality" hooks,
which have had the same functionality since hooks were invented, and can be
expected to retain that functionality for the forseeable future. And there
are bad hooks, which have been broken since the time they were introduced,
and will be removed ASAP. You both seem to be suggesting that we should add
many more of the latter kind.

If you want to make a change, and you don't mind if it's broken by the next
minor release, why not just make a patch? I think I would prefer it if we
tried to make hooks a stable extension API rather than the runtime
equivalent of a source patch.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] How-to guides and OR

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

>Given that WP is a compendium and
>not the whole library, I think the right approach is to prune each route
>down to general description and highlights, and refer readers to the
>climbing guidebook for full details - climbers printing out WP articles
>to take along seems just as undesirable as surgeons printing out
>articles on their way into the OR... :-)
>
Why not?  If you get lost during your trek they can be very helpful for
starting a campfire.

Ec


from_name: Tian-Jian "Barabbas" Jiang@Gmail

body:
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good day. I am Mike Tian-Jian Jiang (
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barabbas ), a team member of wikimania 2007.
I'm trying to arrange Hacking Days currently, here's some rough plan
that needs your precious suggestions.

We would like to invite experts like you to provide speech and to
encourage hackers involving MediaWiki/Wikimedia
development.

Please let me know if you have any advise to these outlines. For
academic professionals, we will also hold a
Conference for oral and poster paper presentations.

Also please forward this mail to whom may be interested in.

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,
Mike

Hacking Days Agenda plan:

    * Wikimania 2006:
          o http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Days
            (Schedule MindMap is missing......)
          o http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Days_Extras
    * Wikimania 2005
          o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005_hacking_days or
          o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005:Hacking_Days

    * MediaWiki API Introduction?as web 2.0 trend...
          o Query API
          o http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/API
          o Python Bot Framework
    * MediaWiki API application contest?a contest likes Google and
      Yahoo!'s, tries to attract hackers.
          o Wikipedia Gadget
          o Wikipedia Yahoo! Widget
    * MediaWiki enhancement
          o Wikiwyg
                + Ingy's AJAX version
                + Flash version
          o Collaboration editing/versioning
          o Site searching (Is there any plan to make Lucene available
            for other languages besides English?)
          o Improving Simplified-Traditional Chinese conversion
          o Audio/Video processing/streaming
          o Community: from "Talk" page to forum/bbs with more a
            flexible reputation system.
          o Spam/Captcha
    * MediaWiki system administration
          o Large scale data processing; please refers to
                + http://radar.oreilly.com/tag/database
                  <http://docs.google.com/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20http://blog.ijliao.info/archives/2006/05/07/2267/>

                + http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html
                  <http://docs.google.com/%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20http://labs.google.com/papers/bigtable.html>

          o Load balancing
          o "The great wall" problem
    * Wikipedia content applications
          o (Crosslingual) search: especially for
            translation/transliteration of named entities from Wikimedia
            contents.
          o (Crosslingual) question-answering: CLEF 2006 already has a
            pilot task WiQA.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Pat Gunn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LSS

body:
Hello all,
At the start of this month, I started to summarise the foundation-l
mailing list. This weekend, I'm starting to summarise wikipedia-l as
well. You may find the summaries at:

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

---
Pat Gunn
mod: csna, bmcm, bmco, cooa, cona, clpd, coom
http://dachte.org
When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if
it is called "the People's Stick"
	-- Mikhail Bakunin


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced
 to	MediaWiki

body:
Simetrical wrote:
 > I'm
> agreeing with Timwi at this point, the only way to solve all this is
> to just put the links right next to section headers, and any wikis
> that don't like it can deal with it how they like.  I'm still going to
> ask Tim or Brion before going ahead, though, because this will
> certainly result in complaints.

This is how German and Swedish Wikipedias have customized it; it's
probably fine though I'm not sure I like it... I keep having to wander
around to find the link, which is no longer in a consistent clickable
position.

We'd want to announce such a change a few days ahead and make sure
everybody can whine and complain and be prepared to fix their
Monobook.js/css :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special page names case-insensitive and localisable

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Hard-coded special page names in messages should be changed simultaneously
> when the special page names themselves are changed. Special page names are
> language-dependent, not site-dependent, so there should be no need for a
> {{SPECIALNAME:xxx}} function.

Tim, can you clarify what you mean here?

If special page names are dependent on the content language, then
messages absolutely must *not* hardcode the *localized* special page
names or you'll get broken links when using a non-default UI language.

As with namespaces in links, a message should either use the canonical
form (which will always work) or a magic variable which will be replaced
with the proper localized form.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Story about Wikipedia response to subtle vandalism

body:
 "Gregory Maxwell" wrote

> It's sometimes hard to convince someone that we're not trying to be
> mean when we tell them they must cite sources because when the look
> around Wikipedia they find homogeneous swaths of it uncited or poorly
> cited.
>
> We have parallel problems with copyright violations and other areas
> where the active community has thoroughly agreed that Wikipedia should
> do X while most of Wikipedia still does Y.

Not a great comparison. Copyvio strikes at the legal viability of the whole project. Referencing - well, read Kenneth Clark's book on Gothic Architecture where he talks about writing as if the Ph.D. examiners were looking over his shoulder. We are not good in getting this in proportion.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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body:
So the Havalais article as posted started off like this:

"Some have suggested that the very common practice of beginning a communication theory class with an attempt to define communication and theory is a flawed pedagogy. Nonetheless, it is difficult to begin a study of the theories of communication without first having some grasp, however temporary and tenuous, of what sorts of phenomena "count" as communication, and what kinds of ideas about those phenomena constitute "theory" or, more specifically, good theory."

(From http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Theories_of_communication&oldid=5449504)

As I rather suspected, far from encyclopedic style. In fact the epitome of pompous academic wind-up (as in 'listen to 15 minutes of this and then I might tell you something').

Charles

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from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject:
[Wikitech-l] major accessibility problem recently introduced to
	MediaWiki

body:
> On 10/27/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > Except, for some reason that hasn't been specified (or I didn't see it),
> > only half the change was made. Instead of simply placing the edit link
> > after the section header's text, as it is both recommended by the study
> > *and* already implemented by the German Wikipedia, you placed it before
> > the section header's text in the source...
>
> I did specify: "It might be better to have the edit text as de-wiki
> has it, but that's not a decision I'm willing to commit to by myself;
> people are bound to object to a perceptible change to the status quo.
> If someone like Tim or Brion agrees, that would certainly make the
> solution simpler, but I'm not doing it myself."  People are going to
> complain about not getting consensus, etc.

I'm not certain, but I think what Timwi might be saying is that perhaps instead of this:
=============================

[edit]  X

=============================

The HTML source could perhaps be:
=============================

 X [edit]

=============================
(I.e. the headline span before the editsection span, inside the header tag).

Upside:
 * When copy-and-pasting the web page into a text editor, instead of getting "[edit] Section Title" (which is what happens at the
moment), it would probably give "Section Title [edit]", which corresponds to the rendered output we see.
 * Related to this, maybe it'd be better for screen-reading software?

Downside:
This comment indicates that it was tried and does not work:
 // Yes, the headline logically goes before the edit section.  Why isn't it there
 // in source?  Ask the CSS people.  The float gets screwed up if you do that.
 // This might be moved to before the editsection at some point so that it will
 // display a bit more prettily without CSS, so please don't rely on the order.
 $head[$headlineCount] .= ' '.$headline.'</h'.$level.'>';

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

body:
Hi!

> If special page names are dependent on the content language, then
> messages absolutely must *not* hardcode the *localized* special page
> names or you'll get broken links when using a non-default UI language.

Yet another argument against non-default UI.

> As with namespaces in links, a message should either use the canonical
> form (which will always work) or a magic variable which will be
> replaced
> with the proper localized form.

And add 20% overhead to page execution on default installs.

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


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Sep11Wiki cleanup effort closed;
	wiki locked again

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Thanks to the amazing efforts of many volunteers -- Fang Ali,
>Timichal, Timrem, Draicone, Lorenzarius, Ore4444, Trodel, Cool Cat,
>and possibly others -- the Sep11Wiki has been pushed into a shape that
>I think it can be published independently as a static website,
>including a new logo. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Merkey has
>volunteered to host it at sep11memories.org. Hopefully, the wiki will
>be moved in the next few days; it is now again locked for editing.
>
>
Erik

The new wiki and domain can be brought online immediately as soon as you
direct
me to do so.

I am ready to receive the content and will post the newest dump. Please
let me know
which XML dump to post and I will move and maintain the site
indefinitely. Also,
I will mail the WikiSysop passwords to Danny, Brad, and yourself and you
may appoint
others at your discretion to oversee and manage the site remotely if needed.

Jeff


from_name: Robert Leverington

body:
Yeah, that would definitely help standardise everything.

On 29/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Currently most of the existing classes and id's used in the interface
> can conflict with user-specified classes and id's.  Unless there are
> objections, I will be changing over all of them to begin with a
> reserved prefix "mw-", as is the current practice for adding new ones,
> and add a check to stop content id's (particularly for headers) from
> beginning with "mw-".  I may also consolidate some id's that are
> different in different skins and change some that are otherwise
> inconsistent or weird.
>
> When I finalize the changes, I'll post a full list of them here and on
> enwiki VP:T a few days to a week before committing them, so that
> people have a chance to update their scripts and CSS.  Okay?
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Robert (aka Lcarsdata),

Protect your digital freedom and privacy, eliminate DRM (Digital
Restrictions Management) -- learn about the dangers at
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm


from_name: Liz Kim

subject: [Wikitech-l] templates: javascript+html?

body:
Nope.. that did not work out either.
I wonder if there is a variable I need to enable in Localsettings?

On 10/27/06, Dan Li <dto at dev.java.net> wrote:
>
> On 10/27/06, Liz Kim <lizkim270 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > template try:
> > <nowiki>{{{LINK}}}
> >
{{{TEXT}}}
</nowiki>
>
> Try <nowiki>
> href=javascript:showhide('{{{ID}}}')">{{{LINK}}}
>
 id="{{{ID}}}">{{{TEXT}}}
</nowiki>
> (untested).
>
> Regards,
>   - Dan Li
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Domain www.sep11memories.org has been reactivated.
Site has been fully upgraded to MediaWiki 1.8.2 and is active. I will
post the
XML dumps identified by Erik at the next pass of the database dumps.

Jeff

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>
>>Thanks to the amazing efforts of many volunteers -- Fang Ali,
>>Timichal, Timrem, Draicone, Lorenzarius, Ore4444, Trodel, Cool Cat,
>>and possibly others -- the Sep11Wiki has been pushed into a shape that
>>I think it can be published independently as a static website,
>>including a new logo. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Merkey has
>>volunteered to host it at sep11memories.org. Hopefully, the wiki will
>>be moved in the next few days; it is now again locked for editing.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Erik
>
>The new wiki and domain can be brought online immediately as soon as you
>direct
>me to do so.
>
>I am ready to receive the content and will post the newest dump. Please
>let me know
>which XML dump to post and I will move and maintain the site
>indefinitely. Also,
>I will mail the WikiSysop passwords to Danny, Brad, and yourself and you
>may appoint
>others at your discretion to oversee and manage the site remotely if needed.
>
>Jeff
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Simetrical

references:
<7c2a12e20610281547o11f246b6ka2670dc592b08b19@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKAEHOJCAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610291525u3cc07870p4fcc21ab75f2c0a@mail.gmail.com>
	<4545BA2D.4040509@pobox.com>

body:
On 10/30/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> This is how German and Swedish Wikipedias have customized it; it's
> probably fine though I'm not sure I like it... I keep having to wander
> around to find the link, which is no longer in a consistent clickable
> position.

I've noticed that too, which suggests that the edit link should
perhaps go *before* the header text.  (It could then actually be
floated with just CSS, for those who wanted that.)


body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

Database import of the 10-29-06 XML dumps completed. Image
Synchronization and import completed.
MediaWiki import and setup completed.

The sep11.wikipeda.org website has now been fully mirrored and an active
mirror is up at:

www.sep11memories.org

Jeff

>Domain www.sep11memories.org has been reactivated.
>Site has been fully upgraded to MediaWiki 1.8.2 and is active. I will
>post the
>XML dumps identified by Erik at the next pass of the database dumps.
>
>Jeff
>
>
>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>
>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Thanks to the amazing efforts of many volunteers -- Fang Ali,
>>>Timichal, Timrem, Draicone, Lorenzarius, Ore4444, Trodel, Cool Cat,
>>>and possibly others -- the Sep11Wiki has been pushed into a shape that
>>>I think it can be published independently as a static website,
>>>including a new logo. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Merkey has
>>>volunteered to host it at sep11memories.org. Hopefully, the wiki will
>>>be moved in the next few days; it is now again locked for editing.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Erik
>>
>>The new wiki and domain can be brought online immediately as soon as you
>>direct
>>me to do so.
>>
>>I am ready to receive the content and will post the newest dump. Please
>>let me know
>>which XML dump to post and I will move and maintain the site
>>indefinitely. Also,
>>I will mail the WikiSysop passwords to Danny, Brad, and yourself and you
>>may appoint
>>others at your discretion to oversee and manage the site remotely if needed.
>>
>>Jeff
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
James Hare wrote:

>Jeff, thank you very much for doing this.
>
>
You are most welcome. The next few weeks I am integrating the new
grammar rule architecture
for wikitrans for swahili. Lots of work to do and catch up on ...

:-)

Jeff

>On 10/30/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>
>>Database import of the 10-29-06 XML dumps completed. Image
>>Synchronization and import completed.
>>MediaWiki import and setup completed.
>>
>>The sep11.wikipeda.org website has now been fully mirrored and an active
>>mirror is up at:
>>
>>www.sep11memories.org
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>Domain www.sep11memories.org has been reactivated.
>>>Site has been fully upgraded to MediaWiki 1.8.2 and is active. I will
>>>post the
>>>XML dumps identified by Erik at the next pass of the database dumps.
>>>
>>>Jeff
>>>
>>>
>>>Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Erik Moeller wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>Thanks to the amazing efforts of many volunteers -- Fang Ali,
>>>>>Timichal, Timrem, Draicone, Lorenzarius, Ore4444, Trodel, Cool Cat,
>>>>>and possibly others -- the Sep11Wiki has been pushed into a shape that
>>>>>I think it can be published independently as a static website,
>>>>>including a new logo. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Merkey has
>>>>>volunteered to host it at sep11memories.org. Hopefully, the wiki will
>>>>>be moved in the next few days; it is now again locked for editing.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Erik
>>>>
>>>>The new wiki and domain can be brought online immediately as soon as you
>>>>direct
>>>>me to do so.
>>>>
>>>>I am ready to receive the content and will post the newest dump. Please
>>>>let me know
>>>>which XML dump to post and I will move and maintain the site
>>>>indefinitely. Also,
>>>>I will mail the WikiSysop passwords to Danny, Brad, and yourself and you
>>>>may appoint
>>>>others at your discretion to oversee and manage the site remotely if
>>>>
>>>>
>>needed.
>>
>>
>>>>Jeff
>>>>_______________________________________________
>>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>foundation-l mailing list
>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Domas Mituzas wrote:
> Hi!
>
>
>> If special page names are dependent on the content language, then
>> messages absolutely must *not* hardcode the *localized* special page
>> names or you'll get broken links when using a non-default UI language.
>>
>
> Yet another argument against non-default UI.
>
Maybe, but it is very much the friction that exists between function and
functionality. When the function, MediaWiki, prevents functionality it
is certainly not a good thing either. There is a need for non default UI
in our projects with Commons as one of the more prominent ones. Here you
have a situation where the size of the content starts to prevent the
discovery of what is looked for. Certainly having English as the default
UI is a good thing, but it does not help a seven year old French girl to
find a picture of a "cheval".
>
>> As with namespaces in links, a message should either use the canonical
>> form (which will always work) or a magic variable which will be
>> replaced
>> with the proper localized form.
>>
>
> And add 20% overhead to page execution on default installs.
So it does cost but is there an alternative, an alternative that
provides us with the required functionality ??

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Report from Frankfurt - October 2006

body:
At 07:51 -0500 29/10/06, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>Actually, we have always had them. As a not fo profit in the United States,
>we are required to have a mission statement, because we are accepting  money.
>People have a right to know what they are giving money to, and that is  laid
>out in the mission statement.
>
>For instance, Wikimedia cannot decide to spend 100,000 euros on  sending food
>to Darfur because--even though it is a worthy cause--it lies  outside the
>scope of our mission. This helps to ensure to our donors that the  money they
>give us us used specifically for the development and spread of free
>content/knowledge.
>
>Danny

Same in the UK. Charities must have set of objectives (called "objects").

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

http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/

Gordon

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///