body:
You know, the solution to this is so easy. File systems have dealt with
multiple namespaces for a long time. Here's how you do this
(are you reading this Brion). I deal with this crap in File System
design all the time and the NetWare file system had to solve this
problem with namespaces.

1. When a user is created, you create a unique NUMBER (like a file
directory number) and associate it with a NAME from the name space in
which it was created.
2. The database for the various languages (as, nv, chr, en, nl, etc.)
all store this number and associate it with NAMESPACES stored somewhere
in the database. If someone created an English name, then you store the
name in the EN database along with the number. If someone logs into
another language wiki and there is no text name for that namespace, your
REFERENCE the default name.
3. When someone creates a new name on another wiki they always have THE
SAME DIRECTORY NUMBER or USER NUMBER and then you associate this name as
an ALIAS.

Easy to implement and easy to track. USER NUMBERS should be tied to IP
ADDRESSES and IP ADDRESS RANGES with the autoblock detection in
MediaWiki, but instead of blocking, USE IT TO RESOLVE THEIR DEFAULT NAME.

Jeff

David Gerard wrote:

>On 21/12/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>In your options below, you forgot the main argument GerardM has
>>expressed in this thread: that the problem faced by the English
>>Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear *because* of SUL.
>>
>>
>
>
>How will the problems disappear?
>
>e.g. how does the problem of admins on a given language Wikipedia not
>being able to read usernames in unfamiliar scripts disappear with SUL,
>rather than get worse? GerardM has declared that adding a user-ID to
>the username is utterly unconscionable for no well-defined reason, so
>the only option that leaves is that all Wikipedia admins must be able
>to read all scripts used on any Wikipedia (and have the fonts and
>browsers to be able to do so) to be admins. I can only presume you and
>he hold that a superior option from a usability point of view.
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
 other communities


list: foundation-l

body:
If you need some C code to instrument this, I will write it over the
holiday. In essence,
you create numbers for users, and they are THAT NUMBER. What NAMES THEY USE
then becomes irrelevant. Its simply a mapping issue to map the names to
a single numerical
record.

For examples on how this is implemented in the Native NetWare File
System, please go and look at the
source code for this FS. You can download it from HERE:

ftp://www.wolfmountaingroup.org

under the NWFS file system. I have to do this to support multiple
namespaces when I wrote the original
NetWare File System for Novell SMP 10 years ago. This other code on the
WMG servers was the open source
clone of the NWFS for Linux and Windows.

Take some time to look at it. Particularly HASH.C

Jeff

Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>You know, the solution to this is so easy. File systems have dealt with
>multiple namespaces for a long time. Here's how you do this
>(are you reading this Brion). I deal with this crap in File System
>design all the time and the NetWare file system had to solve this
>problem with namespaces.
>
>1. When a user is created, you create a unique NUMBER (like a file
>directory number) and associate it with a NAME from the name space in
>which it was created.
>2. The database for the various languages (as, nv, chr, en, nl, etc.)
>all store this number and associate it with NAMESPACES stored somewhere
>in the database. If someone created an English name, then you store the
>name in the EN database along with the number. If someone logs into
>another language wiki and there is no text name for that namespace, your
>REFERENCE the default name.
>3. When someone creates a new name on another wiki they always have THE
>SAME DIRECTORY NUMBER or USER NUMBER and then you associate this name as
>an ALIAS.
>
>Easy to implement and easy to track. USER NUMBERS should be tied to IP
>ADDRESSES and IP ADDRESS RANGES with the autoblock detection in
>MediaWiki, but instead of blocking, USE IT TO RESOLVE THEIR DEFAULT NAME.
>
>Jeff
>
>David Gerard wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 21/12/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>In your options below, you forgot the main argument GerardM has
>>>expressed in this thread: that the problem faced by the English
>>>Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear *because* of SUL.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>How will the problems disappear?
>>
>>e.g. how does the problem of admins on a given language Wikipedia not
>>being able to read usernames in unfamiliar scripts disappear with SUL,
>>rather than get worse? GerardM has declared that adding a user-ID to
>>the username is utterly unconscionable for no well-defined reason, so
>>the only option that leaves is that all Wikipedia admins must be able
>>to read all scripts used on any Wikipedia (and have the fonts and
>>browsers to be able to do so) to be admins. I can only presume you and
>>he hold that a superior option from a usability point of view.
>>
>>
>>- d.
>>_______________________________________________
>>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
>
>
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
 affects other communities

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>On 12/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>The SUL is almost a year late as it is. All issues have been discussed
>>>at length at the time. Postponing it now it not really an option. There
>>>is also no capacity to come up with a technical solution. There is even
>>>no consensus as to what the problem is.
>>>
>>>
>>So you really are saying that your only answer to the concerns raised
>>is "fuck you"? That's disappointing. How do you plan to get every
>>en:wp admin to go along with you?
>>
>>
>
>
>That escalation into vulgarity was unhelpful.
>
>

AGREED.

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


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Main Page Featured Article

body:
On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Chris Picone <ccool2ax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > ...except admin. Why can't trusted users handle admin? It's not like
> > admin is a big deal, so we should hand it out more liberally.
>
> Adminship is a big deal. You may not want this to be the case but it is.

Remember that the issue at hand is main page/featured article template
vandalism, and there are ways to deal with that that don't require
this can of worms to be opened, let alone answered, first.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: bbatsell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] issue with an admin refusing to allow me "right to
	vanish"

body:
On Dec 21, 2006, at 3:15 PM, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> rootology?

http://tinyurl.com/yb2jfk

A discussion on the block of User:XP, including administrators who
reviewed the evidence to support the block, is available here:
http://tinyurl.com/ydkfor


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy
	affects other communities

body:
2006/12/21, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk>:

> As I understand it, the current en: Latin-script-only policy is a sad
> necessity caused by the need to fight the continual stream of vandalism
> directed at en:, combined with the limitations of most en: editors at
> distinguishing and remembering non-Latin names in general, rather than a
> manifestation of cultural imperialism imposed for social reasons.
>
> This is also a policy that other wikis may be forced to adopt at some
> point in the future, for the same reason, when they get large enough
> that their level of vandal account creation gets sufficiently high (for
> example, can most readers of Arabic read Chinese, or vice versa?)

No, but why would such be a necessity? One can check a person's edits, roll
them back and block the user without once having worried about what the Thai
characters in their name would mean. Blocking bona fide users because you
cannot remember who they are doesn't seem like a help in fighting vandalism
at all.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Automatic username transliteration for SUL

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 21/12/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> > So, if the homograph attack and idiot user problem
> is largely solved,
> > the main remaining problem appears to be
> accommodation of users who do
> > not have the right fonts installed.
>
>
> Note, by the way, that you can't even cut and paste
> a lot of Unicode
> reliably, as I found out recently trying to write an
> Uncyclopedia
> article (using the Wikia version of MediaWiki, which
> is pretty close
> to Wikimedia's) which contained a burst of
> deliberately-gibberish
> Unicode in the middle of Latin text [1].
>
> This was on Seamonkey on Windows XP, and I had to
> experiment with
> cut'n'paste to get it to work at all without
> stripping high bits or
> turning the lot into "???????". I eventually did it
> by cutting from a
> text box and pasting to another text box.
> Copy-and-paste from the
> rendered wiki page did not work on this system.
>
> Any solution must be able to accomodate system
> configurations that
> make up a noticeable fraction of the userbase, even
> if they are
> hopelessly broken by design, e.g. Windows XP
> English. A tooltip won't
> make it possible to *use* the username, only to view
> it. And despite
> GerardM's claims otherwise, we can't reasonably
> demand all en:wp
> admins run something sensible like Ubuntu because he
> claims user-ID
> numbers working would be dehumanising.
>
>
> - d.
>
> [1]
>
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/UnNews:Supreme_Court_declares_global_warming_unconstitutional
> ___________________________

I did a large amount of copying and pasting of all
kinds of fonts about a year ago when repairing the
broken links from the WS split. [1]  I never had a
problem with getting a usable link.  What exactly was
the problem you encountered?

Birgitte SB

[1]  An example edit. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yu_Fu&diff=prev&oldid=32504511

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Crediting images inside the article text

body:
On 12/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Images shouldn't have a special status.  The attribution of the
> > authors should be part of the article too.  That's what the GFDL
> > requires, not that the attribution be "a click away".
>
> You've not actually read the GFDL have you?
>
I've read it many times.

> ...
> I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and add
>    to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and
>    publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page.  If
>    there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one
>    stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as
>    given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified
>    Version as stated in the previous sentence.
> K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications",
>    Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all
>    the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements
>    and/or dedications given therein.
>
> In any case, the technological nuance of Wikipedia's user interface
> isn't really a matter for the licenses.. It is normal on wikis for
> attribution to be kept out of the working document.

Then it is normal on wikis to not follow the GFDL.  The section
entitled history *is part of the document*.

> To claim that the
> license wouldn't permit it would be equivalent to claiming that every
> page or even every chapter in a book had to relist the authors.
>
No, I haven't made that claim at all.

> The CC attribution (2.0) terms used on the flickr images which have
> caused this discussion, which are simmlar...
>
> "If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly
> digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective
> Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and
> give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You
> are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of
> the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to
> the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if
> any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless
> such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing
> information for the Work;"
>
> "reasonable to the medium or means" Which is exactly what the image
> page is intended to be...

Obviously not everyone agrees with you that it is reasonable.  The way
I see it the image page is for internal use, not part of the work
itself.  So I'd say no, it isn't reasonable.

By the way, you cut out the end: "and in the case of a Derivative
Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work
(e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or
"Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit
may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that
in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such
credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit
appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable
authorship credit."

Is the credit being displayed for the image in the same place as the
text?  No, it isn't.  Is the credit for the images at least as
prominent as the credit for the text?  Once again I'd say no.


from_name: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
Heh, if I didn't know better, I'd say you were new to WP. Don't you know
"insane" is par for the course for some of our contributors?

The Cunctator wrote:
> This is insane. Noone would EVER EVER EVER consider this a copyright
> violation.
>
> On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:54:03 -0500, "James Hare"
>>> <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Case in point: Captain Jean-Luc Picard(r).
>>>>
>>> So a caricature of Picard would be forbidden?  Really?
>>>
>> It might count as fair use under certain conditions. A painting of
>> Patrick Stewart would probably be a safer bet although there would be
>> other issues with things such as in the US at least the Right of
>> Publicity.
>>
>>
>>> I am honestly
>>> confused here.  What about, say, a painting of an aircraft?  Is that
>>> unfree by virtue of the manufacturer's rights, or the airline's logo?
>>>
>> It could be under some conditions and depending on the country it is in.
>>
>>
>>> I have a friend who is a commercial artist, that is not an idle
>>> question.
>>>
>> If they want legal advice they should talk to a lawyer.
>>
>> --
>> geni
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 12/21/06, Iain Huxley <iain at mindspike.com> wrote:
>  >Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
>
>  >I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
>  >contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
>  >edit history.
>
> This could have the effect of greatly reducing the images available
> for use, particularly those of high quality and/or limited availability.
>
> I recently have been up against such an issue when trying to find
> some good photographs of whale images for the sperm whale and blue
> whale pages (the blue whale page has resorted to using a postage
> stamp as its main image).
>
> It turns out any underwater photos of these creatures - let alone
> good ones - are in very short supply.  After a while of searching I
> found the stock agency http://seapics.com which has many fantastic
> pictures you'd have trouble finding elsewhere (while not a fair
> comparison, to get an idea try searching for sperm whale or blue
> whale at seapics.com and then try the same at images.google.com).
>
> I'm now writing a letter to seapics (snail-mail still has an extra
> value sometimes :) to try to obtain explicit permission for use on
> wikipedia.  These folk sell images for tens or even hundreds of
> thousands of dollars depending on use (some info at
> http://seapics.com/information/clients/pricing.html).
>
> Due to the high exposure, allowing just one of their images to be
> used in wikipedia would be a significant donation to wikipedial; to
> be honest I don't think I have a particularly good chance of success here.
>
> **But** if I couldn't guarantee credits where used, I could be pretty
> sure my chances would be nil.
>
I'd say your chances of getting a stock agency to license its images
under any free license is pretty much nil.  You might get
Wikipedia-only permission, but that's not good enough.

> My understanding is that we currently accept images with credit
> required when used, so changing this policy would also mean a massive
> amount of work.
>
> I'm strongly in favor of allowing credits inside the article, but
> discouraging it - favoring images where the copyright holder has no
> such requirements.
>
I agree with this part completely.  And I back this up with what I do.
 When I get people to license images under a free license, I always
try first to get permission under Sharealike 1.0, which has no
attribution requirement at all.  But barring that kind of permission,
I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution
within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.

Anthony


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 12/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> There are those that have pointed out that practically all of the users
> will be respectable users from other language projects
[snip]

Why do we use speculation and paranoia rather than data?

I thought folks on this thread might find this list useful.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/nonalphausers

Obviously it does not count users who were blocked before they could
"contribute".

It would also be fun to take Brion's automerge data and calculate the
distribution of projects the typical user edits on...


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
>
> Obvious question: How do we fix it?

Obvious answer; it's not broken, and it doesn't need fixing. I'm not
sure why you would need to "note" this point anyway.

Jay.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> You do not have to make it a requirement as it is their option to
> upgrade their system with better font support. As there is a reasonable
> solution that is open to people, it is unreasonable to expect others to
> accommodate them by insisting on having a transliteration, a Latin nick,
> having people appear to be a number.

"Wikipedia: The encyclopedia any linguist who has system access to add
fonts to their computer can edit!"

I don't see why being able to enter a numeric ID for a username you
don't have an input method for is so intrinsically offensive, except
that it's being proposed by a native English speaker.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
>
No, it isn't.  Fair use is not a violation of copyright...

> Leaving aside the baseless allegation of trolling,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Anti-Star_Trek_Cabal_logo.png is
> possibly going to be deleted for that reason.
>
Is fair use still banned in the user namespace?  If so, that would explain it...

Anthony


body:
On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 21/12/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> >> And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
> >> user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
> >> recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
> >> It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
> >> straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
> >> squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom left,
> >> and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
> >> middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")

> > Obviously, with SUL any en:wp editor who does not learn to read all
> > other scripts used on Wikimedia is simply being a cultural
> > imperialist.

> There is at the moment a big row brewing over the way the Internet
> insists on having URLs in Latin script. People who do not write in Latin
> have to use Latin to be able to use the Internet. This notion of being
> able to enter URLs in your own script is really intuitive. When this
> change is going to be implemented you will still be able to access the
> websites that will no longer be available with a Latin script.
> It will be a big change when it happens, this issue raised about the
> insistence of the English language Wikipedia is a harbinger of many more
> issues that will come.

This does not appear to answer either message above.

You're not explaining your point in terms other than appearing to
automatically dislike any suggestion from native English speakers on
this thread, so it's hard to see what you're putting forward as any
sort of solution to the problems raised other than "fuck off." Is that
your actual intended message? Or will you at some stage answer this
thread with something that acknowledges and addresses the problems
raised?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

references:
<40mjo2hhv72id9ha0abu13vtppmfupne1j@4ax.com>
	<43348cda0612201654u25e8484epf519645bfd8816d5@mail.gmail.com>
	<ndmko2p08g7namllslvr7slv25h9rr598j@4ax.com>

body:
On 12/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:54:03 -0500, "James Hare"
> <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Case in point: Captain Jean-Luc Picard(r).
>
> So a caricature of Picard would be forbidden?  Really?

A caricature of Picard would likely be a derivative work, since Picard
is a copyrighted character.  Of course, it would also likely fall
under fair use, as it would likely be a highly adaptive derivative
work with little potential impact on the original.

> I am honestly
> confused here.  What about, say, a painting of an aircraft?  Is that
> unfree by virtue of the manufacturer's rights, or the airline's logo?

A painting which incorporated a copyrighted logo would be copyrighted
as a derivative work.  If the use was so insignificant as to be fair
use/fair dealing in just about any jurisdiction, I'd still call it
free though.

> I have a friend who is a commercial artist, that is not an idle
> question.
>
Commercial artists rarely care about what is free/unfree, focussing
instead on what is legal/illegal.

Anthony


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > This is insane. Noone would EVER EVER EVER consider this a copyright
> > violation.
>
> You must be kidding. Please see:
> http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/notice.cgi?NoticeID=7
>
> Generally we avoid the problems of derivative illustrations because
> they are not encyclopedic. This doesn't mean that such issues don't
> exist.

The link therein referred to " various photographs of STAR TREK elements".

Whole different ball of wax.


from_name: Jerome Banal

body:
2006/12/21, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> David Gerard schreef:
> > On 21/12/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
> >> user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
> >> recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
> >> It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
> >> straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
> >> squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom
> left,
> >> and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
> >> middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")
> >>
> >
> >
> > Obviously, with SUL any en:wp editor who does not learn to read all
> > other scripts used on Wikimedia is simply being a cultural
> > imperialist.
> >
> >
> > - d.
> Hoi,
> There is at the moment a big row brewing over the way the Internet
> insists on having URLs in Latin script. People who do not write in Latin
> have to use Latin to be able to use the Internet. This notion of being
> able to enter URLs in your own script is really intuitive. When this
> change is going to be implemented you will still be able to access the
> websites that will no longer be available with a Latin script.
>
> It will be a big change when it happens, this issue raised about the
> insistence of the English language Wikipedia is a harbinger of many more
> issues that will come.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

Hi Gerard,

Sorry just a short comment, maybe I misunderstood your statement.

Actually (or at least, it was the case a year and a half ago), you can have
URL in non-latin scripts. I have spent some time working in Seoul and all my
colleagues were daily using URLs written in hangul (the local script). It
was indeed a big surprise for me as I thought it was not possible, and I was
glad they had this capability.

Cheers,
Jerome


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Translations fundraising.wikimedia.org

body:
Me too. Without context translation is impossible. A dictionary entry
gives you a several candidates - two or three. Sometimes over ten.
Over twenty. So "with merely a dictionary" have no sense in mose
cases; without context we cannot decide which of those ten candidates
appropriate in our case.

Jusists may not face such situation, since they are already given
implicit context. Technical terms are normally free from such. But it
is not our case.

On 12/21/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/18, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:
> > Most of it
> > should be possible to translate with merely a dictionary.
>
> I must warn against this attitude. Hardly anything can be translated
> with merely a dictionary, lacking context. If one tries, one ends up
> with a certain percentage of errors which sometimes just look a little
> funny and sometimes look very bad.
>
> /habj
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


body:
On 12/21/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/21/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2006/12/18, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>:
> > > Most of it
> > > should be possible to translate with merely a dictionary.

/* in a soft voice */
Oh, one of translation coordinators work is discouragement young
aspirant people who can help translation because he got a dictionary.
Sometimes their translation is worse than machine's. You don't know
probably because they are simply speedied. (And if you are not
Wikimedian, you may not know what means "speedied" exactly - you know
the word and its context, speedy deletion on a wiki by a sysop, not
merely blanking etc,  so you needn't a dictionary here). There are so
bad translation that no other translation can make a good work on that
basis and simply need to ignore. I daresay if you need always a
dictionary to read something, you are not ready to translate it. Just
Danny said, you need to have a competence in both languages. "Ask a
dictionary and it's okay" causes disasters so I friendly ask them to
go back their home wiki ;)

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


from_name: George Herbert

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric policy affects
	other communities

body:
On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> This is also a reply to David Gerard.
>
> George Herbert wrote:
> > On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> >
> >>Hi,
> >>
> >>In your options below, you forgot the main argument GerardM has
> >>expressed in this thread: that the problem faced by the English
> >>Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear *because* of SUL.
> >
> > SUL does not make the problem go away.  Nobody has posted any
> explanation of
> > how it would.
>
> Yes, one big part of the  problem goes away: that to find out if the user
> is a vandal or a known user on some other wikis.
> If I understand GerardM's explanations correctly, it will be possible to
> easily find out on which wikis this user has edits, so you will know if
> it is a new account or not.
>

That is somewhat useful, but doesn't address the concerns we have stated
with it.

Dedicated vandals are banking sockpuppet accounts, creating them constantly
and doing "good" edits from them to get them to be known user IDs, getting
past the "new user" time period and minimum edit counts to be taken
seriously, etc.  The long-term vandal who's been placing penis pictures on
the featured article of the day, for example, has been using sockpuppet
accounts that they started accumulating well before they launched their
first known attack, if I understand it correctly.

Someone could easily use any of the other wikis to do that with under SUL,
and nobody would know there was a problem until the account showed up in
enwiki and started getting the similar-looking user in trouble.

This policy on enwiki was put in place to deal with vandals who are, in some
cases, very persistent, very nasty, and very evasive.

Just implimenting SUL as currently planned does not help us, at all, with
this problem, and does introduce a head-on collision between one of the
preventive mechanisms on enwiki and how SUL works in the first place.

I do not know for a fact that if we strip that mechanism away, it will get
exploited.  But as a rule, flaws that exist in the security regime overall
are being actively exploited at a low rate by persistent high-grade vandals.

SUL neither helps nor hurts some of the higher-volume vandalism issues,
which are generally not as expertly prepared as the high-grade vandals.

The worst problem with the high-grade vandals is that they're often
vandalizing because they specifically have a particular issue with an
individual admin or small group of admins.  One or a small group of
persistent, smart vandals can do an incredible amount of damage, both to the
wiki and to individual editor/admin targets via harrassment or
impersonation.

If these are not affecting your local project yet, be thankful, don't go
around acting like en.wiki's people are paranoid nationalistic chauvinists.
We have a lot of real problems, and our problems are going to be your
problems as your userbases grow larger.

en may not have ended up with the best way to deal with these problems, but
we've developed coping mechanisms which are at least keeping things to a
steady tolerable rate of problems.

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


body:
On 12/21/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> geni schreef:
> > On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Yes, one big part of the  problem goes away: that to find out if the user
> >> is a vandal or a known user on some other wikis.
> >> If I understand GerardM's explanations correctly, it will be possible to
> >> easily find out on which wikis this user has edits, so you will know if
> >> it is a new account or not.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Sleeper accounts are a common tactic so age means little.
> >
> >
> >> Beside that, don't you think that the English Wikipedia is not the only
> >> wikis in which most of the users can't understand non Latin scripts?
> >>
> >> Actually as the English Wikipedia is much more international than other
> >> languages wikis, it is propably the opposite, i.e. there are many
> >> editors on the English Wikipedia whose mother tongue is not English,
> >> compared to other European languages where there are very few editors
> >> whose mother tongue is the language of the wiki.
> >>
> >> But yet no other Wikipedia has created or applied such a policy.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > No other wikipedia could survive the level of continious attacks en
> > has to deal with for a non trivial length of time.
> Hoi,
> No other WMF project has as many resources as the English language
> Wikipedia does. No other project gets as much attention from the
> developers. No other project does as well as a result. No other project
> can therefore withstand the constant abuse from vandals as successfully.
>
> However, this does not mean that might is right. It also does not mean
> that arguments used that are in opposition to some of its policies can
> be ignored as is currently happening. There are many things I do not
> care about. Having people decently treated is one. With the improvements
> that have happened like the prevention of mixed script user names and
> the upcoming the SUL the arguments for the practice of blocking non
> Latin users on sight have been largely removed. It is sad that this is
> not acknowledged and that discussion has deteriorated into little more
> than denial and name calling.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM

You keep saying that these things fix our problems, but you aren't
showing how they do, and from where I can see they don't.

Just asserting that they do over and over again is not helpful.
Please explain how you believe they do.

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


from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
Bravo.  I'm all for this idea.  Although again, someone who registers
under a transliterated ID and later joins TE and wants to have their real
name as an alias / userpage should optimally be able to do so as well...
without registering a second time and implementing a redirect.

--SJ

> What about setting things up so that to create a SUL username with say,
> Tegulu characters, you *must* register at TE, no other language's
> registration form will accept it. That will significantly cut down on vanity
> and vandal usage of the such characters.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:50:33 -0500
> From: Stephanie Erin Daugherty <stephanie at sosdg.org>
>
> This is especially true when abusive users have deliberately taken advantage
> of this fact in order to make the lives of administrators and of other
> Wikipedians as difficult as possible, and it's also true for those handful
> of users that will mix character sets to "look cool" at the inconvenience of
> others.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
On 12/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/24/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> > Whether the copyvio is an inward or outward bound one in each case is
> > sadly beyond the scope of my programming skills, so I leave that to
> > you.
>
> I don't think this is a programming program -- its a conceptual problem.
>
> A good copyvio bot -- one which doesn't waste one's time with false
> positives or outward copyvios -- would be one which monitors NEW
> additions and did not try to parse previously existing material. If
> someone says, "This is new, original text" but it gets Google hits, it
> is almost certainly copy-and-pasted (whether that makes it officially
> a copyvio still needs to be decided, but it is a vastly simpler
> problem than the previous one).
>

This is already being done

> Trying to go through the entire database by finding random pages and
> taking random lines seems extremely hit-and-miss to me, and if you
> have to worry about mirrors and false positives then I can't see how
> that would possibly be productive. The odds of finding a copyvio are
> going to be quite low, and the amount of time needed to sort through
> them is going to be quite high.

Daniel Brandt managed it.

--
geni


from_name: xaosflux

body:
It's hard to tell.  I've deleted User Talk pages before, but have also
declined to delete them before.  I've never had a problem deleting User Talk
pages for newer users who want to 'quit', especially if all thats on their
page is welcome messages and/or orphanbot notices.

X
----- Original Message -----
From: "MacGyverMagic/Mgm" <macgyvermagic at gmail.com>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2006 11:50 AM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] issue with an admin refusing to allow me "right
tovanish"

> Sounds reasonable, but how do we make the distinction between
> 'indispensible' an 'of interest'? Should we leave a note on the page that
> an
> admin is willing to retrieve info from deletion should be be needed?
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 12/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> > It's the hidden from non-admins part that is a problem.
>> > If you did any significant editing, the discussions on your talk page
>> could
>> > be of interest to other editors even after you leave. It could be
>> > tagged
>> as
>> > belonging to a left user, it can be protected from trolls, and it might
>> even
>> > be blankable, but it cannot be deleted.
>>
>> In general, I do not agree with this approach.  Allowing people to
>> vanish, including deleting their user and user_talk pages, is often the
>> best way to part company with dignity.  "Could be of interest" should
>> not be the standard, I think, but rather "Is indispensable to the
>> functioning of the encyclopedia."
>>
>> There can be exceptions, of course.  If a user repeatedly joins and
>> deletes (perhaps sockpuppeting), causing a lot of disruptive demands to
>> delete their userpage, we could just ignore it if that seemed like the
>> best way to deal with it.
>>
>> But in general, I see no reason to have a general policy of keeping talk
>> pages around that make someone who would like to leave us unhappy.
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > > that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> > > USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
> > >
> > No, it isn't.  Fair use is not a violation of copyright...
>
>
> According to what I understand, fair use is a defence for copyright
> violation -- thus it assumes that copyright violation has already occurred.
>
You're half right.  Fair use is a defense for copyright violation.
But if you successfully defend against a charge of copyright
violation, it means the copyright violation hasn't occurred.  Copying
may have occurred, but not a copyright violation.

For an analogy, insanity is a defense for murder.  And if the accused
successfully defends against a charge of murder using the insanity
defense, it means a murder hasn't occurred.  Killing might have
occurred, but not murder.

But don't take my word for it.  Just look at Title 17, section 107,
which encodes fair use into law:  "the fair use of a copyrighted
work[...] is not an infringement of copyright".  Doesn't get any more
clear than that.

Anthony


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> When you get ?????? it makes sense to install more fonts. The use of IPA
>> is problematic because it is often done incorrectly and most people have
>> not had training to do IPA correctly. It takes a lot of training to do
>> this correctly. My name for instance is notoriously difficult to
>> pronounce for people who are not Dutch while even a name like "Bob"
>> should be written in many ways when you consider in how many ways it is
>> pronounced.
>>
>
>
> Indeed. But we're not going to be able to make it a requirement of
> editing en:wp that users install more fonts on their (arguably broken)
> default-install Windows box.
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
You do not have to make it a requirement as it is their option to
upgrade their system with better font support. As there is a reasonable
solution that is open to people, it is unreasonable to expect others to
accommodate them by insisting on having a transliteration, a Latin nick,
having people appear to be a number.
Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> David Gerard schreef:
>
>> On 21/12/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
>>> user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
>>> recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
>>> It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
>>> straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
>>> squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom left,
>>> and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
>>> middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")
>>>
>>>
>> Obviously, with SUL any en:wp editor who does not learn to read all
>> other scripts used on Wikimedia is simply being a cultural
>> imperialist.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>>
> Hoi,
> There is at the moment a big row brewing over the way the Internet
> insists on having URLs in Latin script. People who do not write in Latin
> have to use Latin to be able to use the Internet. This notion of being
> able to enter URLs in your own script is really intuitive. When this
> change is going to be implemented you will still be able to access the
> websites that will no longer be available with a Latin script.
>
> It will be a big change when it happens, this issue raised about the
> insistence of the English language Wikipedia is a harbinger of many more
> issues that will come.
>
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
>
>
Gerard,

You might be surprised to hear that I'm one of the many people working
on that particular problem. The sub-problems needed to be solved in
order to implement native-script display for all of the components of
IRIs in a way that is secure, interoperable, and reliable are
non-trivial. Sorting out Wikipedia usernames is a relatively trivial
problem when compared to IRIs.

-- Neil


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
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Hash: SHA1

George Herbert wrote:
> Dedicated vandals are banking sockpuppet accounts, creating them constantly
> and doing "good" edits from them to get them to be known user IDs, getting
> past the "new user" time period and minimum edit counts to be taken
> seriously, etc.  The long-term vandal who's been placing penis pictures on
> the featured article of the day, for example, has been using sockpuppet
> accounts that they started accumulating well before they launched their
> first known attack, if I understand it correctly.
>
> Someone could easily use any of the other wikis to do that with under SUL,
> and nobody would know there was a problem until the account showed up in
> enwiki and started getting the similar-looking user in trouble.

An account registered off of enwiki wouldn't do them any good on enwiki
until they started *using* it on enwiki, at which point it'll appear for
the heuristics the same as if they'd registered it on enwiki at that time.

> Just implimenting SUL as currently planned does not help us, at all, with
> this problem, and does introduce a head-on collision between one of the
> preventive mechanisms on enwiki and how SUL works in the first place.

It neither helps nor hinders. No such collision exists.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 21/12/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> And, as I keep on saying, the addition of the correct fonts to the
>> user's browser does not magically grant the ability to read or even
>> recognize characters in scripts that a reader is unused to. ("His name?
>> It's three little boxes, and in the boxes there are a lot of little
>> straight lines, apart from the ones that are like little hooks or
>> squares. In the leftmost box, there's a bit of a gap at the bottom left,
>> and then there's a sort of hooky bit hanging out at the right of the
>> middle box, which has a few less lines, and then...")
>>
>
>
> Obviously, with SUL any en:wp editor who does not learn to read all
> other scripts used on Wikimedia is simply being a cultural
> imperialist.
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
There is at the moment a big row brewing over the way the Internet
insists on having URLs in Latin script. People who do not write in Latin
have to use Latin to be able to use the Internet. This notion of being
able to enter URLs in your own script is really intuitive. When this
change is going to be implemented you will still be able to access the
websites that will no longer be available with a Latin script.

It will be a big change when it happens, this issue raised about the
insistence of the English language Wikipedia is a harbinger of many more
issues that will come.

Thanks,
     GerardM


body:
--- George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is also a reply to David Gerard.
> >
> > George Herbert wrote:
> > > On 12/21/06, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>
> wrote:
> > >
> > >>Hi,
> > >>
> > >>In your options below, you forgot the main
> argument GerardM has
> > >>expressed in this thread: that the problem faced
> by the English
> > >>Wikipedia upto now will nearly disappear
> *because* of SUL.
> > >
> > > SUL does not make the problem go away.  Nobody
> has posted any
> > explanation of
> > > how it would.
> >
> > Yes, one big part of the  problem goes away: that
> to find out if the user
> > is a vandal or a known user on some other wikis.
> > If I understand GerardM's explanations correctly,
> it will be possible to
> > easily find out on which wikis this user has
> edits, so you will know if
> > it is a new account or not.
> >
>
> That is somewhat useful, but doesn't address the
> concerns we have stated
> with it.
>
> Dedicated vandals are banking sockpuppet accounts,
> creating them constantly
> and doing "good" edits from them to get them to be
> known user IDs, getting
> past the "new user" time period and minimum edit
> counts to be taken
> seriously, etc.  The long-term vandal who's been
> placing penis pictures on
> the featured article of the day, for example, has
> been using sockpuppet
> accounts that they started accumulating well before
> they launched their
> first known attack, if I understand it correctly.
>
> Someone could easily use any of the other wikis to
> do that with under SUL,
> and nobody would know there was a problem until the
> account showed up in
> enwiki and started getting the similar-looking user
> in trouble.
>

I do not understand what this has to do with non-latin
usernames.  This threat is just as real for *all*
usernames.  A sockpuppet can be built up on it.WP and
do this same damage.  But en.WP does not block italian
usernames on sight.  Only non-latin usernames.  How is
a non-latin username a greater threat to be a sleeper
vandal than a latin username?  I really do not
understand the problem in this regard.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Nicholas Moreau wrote:
> What about setting things up so that to create a SUL username with say,
> Tegulu characters, you *must* register at TE, no other language's
> registration form will accept it. That will significantly cut down on vanity
> and vandal usage of the such characters.
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 22:50:33 -0500
> From: Stephanie Erin Daugherty <stephanie at sosdg.org>
>
> This is especially true when abusive users have deliberately taken advantage
> of this fact in order to make the lives of administrators and of other
> Wikipedians as difficult as possible, and it's also true for those handful
> of users that will mix character sets to "look cool" at the inconvenience of
> others.
>
>
Stephanie,

Character set mixing within usernames is no longer allowed, at least on
en: -- that is to say, each username must contain characters from only a
single writing system, in order to prevent cross-script homograph
attacks, and cannot contain any characters that are not associated with
a human natural writing system (such as math characters, symbols, line
art characters, and so on...)

When SUL is rolled out, this restriction will need to be applied to all
wikis.

I like Nick's idea of only being able to register name at a wiki that
has the script of that name in common use: this would mean that
registering abusive nicknames in wikis that do not understand a
particular script will easily be caught, and aid the socialization of
new users into the appropriate communities.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, theProject <wp.theproject at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 12/20/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > > > that one may not upload a small, low resolution line drawing of the
> > > > USS Enterprise? without violating copyright?
> > > >
> > > No, it isn't.  Fair use is not a violation of copyright...
> >
> >
> > According to what I understand, fair use is a defence for copyright
> > violation -- thus it assumes that copyright violation has already occurred.
> >
> You're half right.  Fair use is a defense for copyright violation.
> But if you successfully defend against a charge of copyright
> violation, it means the copyright violation hasn't occurred.  Copying
> may have occurred, but not a copyright violation.
>
To change the topic slightly, I was quite pleased to see that the
Wikipedia article on [[Fair Use]] dispels the myth that fair use is a
defense and not a right (a myth that seems to be spread by many
Wikipedians).  From the article:

---
The frequent argument over whether fair use is a "right" or a
"defense" [2] is generated by confusion over the use of the term
"affirmative defense." An affirmative defense is simply a term of art
from litigation reflecting the timing in which the defense is raised.
It does not distinguish between "rights" and "defenses", and so it
does not characterize the substance of the defendant's actions as "not
a right but a defense." The First Amendment, for instance, is
generally raised as an affirmative defense in litigation, but is
clearly a "right." Similarly, while fair use is characterized as a
defense in terms of the litigation posture, Section 107 defines fair
use as a "limitation" on copyright law and states clearly that "the
fair use of a copyrighted work ... is not an infringement of
copyright."
---

Fair use is a defense (*).  It's also a right (*).  And fair use is
not an infringement of copyright (*).

Anthony

(*) in the US


body:
I would like to say they even have no need to install fonts ... just
turning their "browser" language encoding setting from US-en or
Latin-1 (iso-8859-1) to UTC-8. Sometimes font installation is
necessary, but in most cases tuning browser setting is adequate, I
found it from my experience.

On 12/21/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/12/21, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> > Is this the Wikimedia
> > Foundation that allows people to edit its project anonymously ? Does
> > this whole idea not reek of bad faith ? How hard is it to have people
> > install fonts if they object to having to see ??????
>
> A minor point, but...
>
> What about the people who edit from computers on which they can not
> install software? Public computers, computers at work, the parents' or
> boyfriends' computer. Lots of people do this from time to time. Then
> we have people like me. I've tried a couple of times to get Japanese
> characters in my box simply because I think it would be cool but I
> have failed, maybe because my OS is old and stuff is not supported any
> more - maybe because I just did it wrong. (No info on how to do that
> in this thread, please. I promise you, the first three things you'll
> tell me I have already tried - and it does not belong on this list,
> anyhow.)
>
>
> /HB
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> The link therein referred to " various photographs of STAR TREK elements".
>
> Whole different ball of wax.

"These rights are protected by numerous copyrights trademarks in both
the programs themselves and the characters, sets, and other elements
appearing in those programs."

It is common for rights holders to go after the authors of
fanfiction/fanartwork with the argument that it is a derivative work.
They are successful, although sometimes the courts decide the use is
fair use (esp with respect to parody).  For us, because we are not
engaging in parody, our claim of fair use will be stronger if we use a
photograph of the actual show.

In any case, I wasn't claiming to like it or that I thought that we
were in some great legal peril .. only that such complaints to happen.
 I went to google and typed in "fanfiction star trek infringing" and
smacked I'm feeling lucky.  I have no doubt that you can find no
shortage of similar cases.


body:
On 12/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The SUL is almost a year late as it is. All issues have been discussed
> > at length at the time. Postponing it now it not really an option. There
> > is also no capacity to come up with a technical solution. There is even
> > no consensus as to what the problem is.
>
>
> So you really are saying that your only answer to the concerns raised
> is "fuck you"? That's disappointing. How do you plan to get every
> en:wp admin to go along with you?

That escalation into vulgarity was unhelpful.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is it true...

body:
On 12/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The link therein referred to " various photographs of STAR TREK elements".
> >
> > Whole different ball of wax.
>
> "These rights are protected by numerous copyrights trademarks in both
> the programs themselves and the characters, sets, and other elements
> appearing in those programs."
>
> It is common for rights holders to go after the authors of
> fanfiction/fanartwork with the argument that it is a derivative work.
> They are successful, although sometimes the courts decide the use is
> fair use (esp with respect to parody).  For us, because we are not
> engaging in parody, our claim of fair use will be stronger if we use a
> photograph of the actual show.
>
{{citation needed}}.  Most fanfiction/fanartwork is parody, but that
doesn't mean that parody makes for a stronger claim of fair use.

In fact, if anything, I'd think that a work which infringes on a much
smaller portion of the work (such as a caricature) would have a
stronger claim of fair use than a work which infringes on a much
larger portion of the work (a photograph of the actual show).

> In any case, I wasn't claiming to like it or that I thought that we
> were in some great legal peril .. only that such complaints to happen.
>  I went to google and typed in "fanfiction star trek infringing" and
> smacked I'm feeling lucky.  I have no doubt that you can find no
> shortage of similar cases.

Have any of them actually been litigated?  The whole point of
"chilling effects" is that these are examples of threats of litigation
which anyone with a real knowledge of the law knows would never hold
up in court.

Anthony


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
I noticed that some people add credits of photos inside the articles,
saying that CC-BY requires attribution.

Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?

I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
edit history.

AFAIK, there's no policy disallowing photo credits, but there should
be one clear policy to discourage that -- it would also be a place
to point people when asking about that. :-)

(I'm not referring to photos by famous photographers who have their
own articles, but to photos uploaded by users or found on Flickr)


body:
On 12/21/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I think it's perfectly acceptable for an author to require attribution
> > within the work itself, and not on some click-through page.
>
> It depends whether you count "the work" as being the single article,
> or the encyclopedia as a whole, doesn't it?
>
Not to me.  If an author wants the attribution to be directly attached
to the image, and not somewhere else, I still think it's perfectly
acceptable.

Now, if you're asking instead what the terms are of CC-BY-SA, for
instance, that's a whole different ball of wax.  But then again, if
you're going to claim that the entire encyclopedia is a single work
and not a collection of independent works, then you can't use CC-BY-SA
anyway, because the entire work is not under CC-BY-SA (parts are under
GFDL).

> Printed books often have a photo credits section or the like.
>
And the author of the printed books usually get explicit permission to
use the photos, or else they use them under fair use.

Anthony


from_name: James Hare

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
C'mon, how not? People with too much time have the time to improve
Wikipedia!

On 12/21/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Trying to go through the entire database by finding random pages and
> > > taking random lines seems extremely hit-and-miss to me, and if you
> > > have to worry about mirrors and false positives then I can't see how
> > > that would possibly be productive. The odds of finding a copyvio are
> > > going to be quite low, and the amount of time needed to sort through
> > > them is going to be quite high.
> >
> > Daniel Brandt managed it.
>
> Daniel Brandt is an obsessive with way too much time on his hands, it
> seems.  Not a practical solution to the overall problem.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> 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 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> By the way, you cut out the end: "and in the case of a Derivative
> Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work
> (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or
> "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit
> may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that
> in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such
> credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit
> appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable
> authorship credit."
>
> Is the credit being displayed for the image in the same place as the
> text?  No, it isn't.  Is the credit for the images at least as
> prominent as the credit for the text?  Once again I'd say no.

Yes, I omitted an extra half paragraph which I felt supported my
argument, I thought I'd already made my point.

I thought the image page as as prominent as the history page, if not
the other way around (after all you often must go through many pages
of history to find the actual primary authors of a popular article
because of the flood of vandalism)...  I'd certainly support changes
which make image attribution and text attribution more accessible and
equal, so long as such changes don't preclude a professional
appearance of the documents or create inappropriate incentives to
'contribute'.


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/19/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/19/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All these things are sliding scales. It's easy to objectively say "all
> > the victims were women". It's just *harder* to objectively say "all
> > the papers supported notion X". Maybe it's ok. Maybe it isn't.
>
> For one thing, if a source exhaustively lists all X, it's a definitive
> claim that can be sourced.  Stating that all of them have something in
> common is simply a collation and editing function, IMO.
>
> A database search like that described is different; it's not
> definitive and not a single source that can be cited.  It's headed
> into original research to deem the results definitive and decisive;
> there is no guarantee whatsoever that the results have to be
> exhaustive and complete.
>
> -Matt

Well stated; there's also another difference -- the contents of databases
change. The printed list of serial killers will always be the same in that
particular book; the database search may yield different results next year.
As for availability, I don't know about HeinOnline, but there are different
subsets of LexisNexis and most folks other than lawyers and law students
don't have access to the really good and expensive one.

Two more notes: I don't know if there's specific protocol for legal
databases; generally one cites a DB search with the name of the database,
date of search, and your search string: "(au=brown) and (wd="serial
killer*")". As for the not-finding-anything search... notoriously hard to
prove or do definitively, yes. A very similar question was given to us in
library school as homework :)

-- phoebe


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
Sounds reasonable, but how do we make the distinction between
'indispensible' an 'of interest'? Should we leave a note on the page that an
admin is willing to retrieve info from deletion should be be needed?

Mgm

On 12/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > It's the hidden from non-admins part that is a problem.
> > If you did any significant editing, the discussions on your talk page
> could
> > be of interest to other editors even after you leave. It could be tagged
> as
> > belonging to a left user, it can be protected from trolls, and it might
> even
> > be blankable, but it cannot be deleted.
>
> In general, I do not agree with this approach.  Allowing people to
> vanish, including deleting their user and user_talk pages, is often the
> best way to part company with dignity.  "Could be of interest" should
> not be the standard, I think, but rather "Is indispensable to the
> functioning of the encyclopedia."
>
> There can be exceptions, of course.  If a user repeatedly joins and
> deletes (perhaps sockpuppeting), causing a lot of disruptive demands to
> delete their userpage, we could just ignore it if that seemed like the
> best way to deal with it.
>
> But in general, I see no reason to have a general policy of keeping talk
> pages around that make someone who would like to leave us unhappy.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Andre Engels

body:
2006/12/21, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

> Indeed. But we're not going to be able to make it a requirement of
> editing en:wp that users install more fonts on their (arguably broken)
> default-install Windows box.
>

And they don't have to. You can still edit Wikipedia just fine while seeing
boxes or question marks instead of the names of some of the other
contributors, just like you can edit it just fine while seeing these instead
of the titles of interwiki links.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 12/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/21/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > By the way, you cut out the end: "and in the case of a Derivative
> > Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work
> > (e.g., "French translation of the Work by Original Author," or
> > "Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author"). Such credit
> > may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that
> > in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such
> > credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit
> > appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable
> > authorship credit."
> >
> > Is the credit being displayed for the image in the same place as the
> > text?  No, it isn't.  Is the credit for the images at least as
> > prominent as the credit for the text?  Once again I'd say no.
>
> Yes, I omitted an extra half paragraph which I felt supported my
> argument, I thought I'd already made my point.
>
> I thought the image page as as prominent as the history page, if not
> the other way around (after all you often must go through many pages
> of history to find the actual primary authors of a popular article
> because of the flood of vandalism)...  I'd certainly support changes
> which make image attribution and text attribution more accessible and
> equal, so long as such changes don't preclude a professional
> appearance of the documents or create inappropriate incentives to
> 'contribute'.

I think we're relatively in agreement, then.  I especially like your
suggestion of an editable credits section.  The current history
information suffers simultaneously from lacking some information that
should be there and from containing too much information that
shouldn't.  With an editable credits section, we can get rid of the
repeats, we can attribute people with their real names instead of
their username if they want, we can attribute people who aren't in the
current history but still deserve to be credited, and we can remove
attribution for people who make insignificant or reverted changes.
And possibly best of all, we don't have to repeat the same names over
and over again.

Anthony


from_name: Gianluigi Gamba

body:
That's the current policy for signatures on it.wiki.
Usernames can be written in any script, users are kindly invited to put
some Latin characters in their signature (because Italian uses Latin
script) in order to make it easy to locate their contributions in a talk
page by using the usual in-page-search functions (besides, we have
several users in love with Japanese culture whose signatures are
kanji/kana+Latin).

Of course it's an invitation, not an obligation, and nobody will ever
get banned on sight for signing their edits with non-Latin scripts.

Months ago, a vandal created fake accounts using the cyrillic letters
looking like the Latin ones, but the trick has been discovered rather
quickly.

Bye all,
G. (aka Paginazero)

habj ha scritto:
> I understood the suggestion as people should be able to have a
> username with any kind of characters in it on any wiki, but they
> should be asked to add something - not into the actual username, but
> in some field that we currently do not have - in some kind an alphabet
> understandable on the local wiki, or similar, for easier
> identification. It is similar to Brigitte's suggestion of displaying
> the user number, but with something more easy to remember than just a
> number. GerardM's reactions make me wonder if i misunderstood.


from_name: Tomasz Sienicki

body:
[2006-12-21 04:12] Neil Harris wrote:

> Thus, the only requirement for all users would be the need to recognize
> strings made from the symbols "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9", which is about as

We already can render all usernames with just the symbols "0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D %"

[[user:tsca]] = [[user:%54%73%63%61]]
[[user:?????]] = [[user:%D0%98%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%84]]
[[user:??? ?????]] = [[user:%E1%83%9A%E1%83%98%E1%83%90_%E1%83%97%E1%83%9D%E1%83%93%E1%83%A3%E1%83%90]]

;)

--tsca


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/22/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > I do not understand what this has to do with
> non-latin
> > usernames.  This threat is just as real for *all*
> > usernames.  A sockpuppet can be built up on it.WP
> and
> > do this same damage.  But en.WP does not block
> italian
> > usernames on sight.  Only non-latin usernames.
> How is
> > a non-latin username a greater threat to be a
> sleeper
> > vandal than a latin username?  I really do not
> > understand the problem in this regard.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
> >
>
> Information is the first principle of controling
> vandles. If there is
> a username you can't read that is an edge you have
> lost.
>
> --
> geni

We would have a better edge on vandalism if we
required confirmed email adresses before allowing a
user to edit.  But the goal of Wikipedia is not
prevent vandalism at all costs.  I really don't
understand the particular problem with non-latin
vandals.  More inforamation is always better but why
is this information needed for vandal-fighting?  I
have never had to type in any username to make a
block.  Everything is dome by clicking through links.
Click on  a diff to confirm vandalism, click on block
to block the user, click on contribs to cleanup the
mess.  For a major vandal; paste the link to the
contribs on IRC to solict help.  Whether the username
is english, bosian, or ????; I am not sure how it
would make a difference.  What do vandal fighters as
en.WP do differently than that makes non-latin
usernames a significant problem?

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/21/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Are there any en.WP editors who believe blocking users
> on sight based on their font is not a useful enough
> process to be worth breaking SUL for other editors?
>
> Is there anyone outside of en.WP who believes that SUL
> is not a useful enough process to be worth creating
> bad blood between wikis?

Hang on now.  This is a gross oversimplification of the problems that
this issue is caused by.

Firstly, SUL is a *good thing*.  It will make contributing to
Wikimedia easier and more convenient.  I am certain that the *vast*
majority of people agree with this and totally support its
implementation.

However, there are issues that it raises.  No-one wants good editors
from, say, the Arabic Wikipedia getting blocked from en.wikipedia
because their usernames are incomprehensible to other users of the
wiki.  But, on the other hand, there are many Wikipedians who can only
read the Latin script (let's face it, this is the vast majority).
Should they be expected to identify a username with a user when the
username is incomprehensible to them?

I can't read Chinese, Japanese, Arabic or Thai scripts.  I would find
it *extremely* difficult to tell the difference between a user I knew
and a vandal if their names were in one of these scripts.  This is
obviously a big problem.  You can't dismiss this in the manner of "oh,
those English Wikipedians, they should get over it."

This is a serious problem, and other wikis will suffer from it if they
get the same concentration of vandalism as the English Wikipedia.  It
must not be dismissed.

So let's try to satisfy both the need to implement SUL and the
problems that this raises.  The current en.wikipedia policy uses a
sledgehammer to crack a walnut, that's true enough.   But rather than
ignoring these concerns, how about looking to make this policy
unnecessary?

--
Sam


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] English Wikipedia ethnocentric
	policy affects other communities

body:
On 21/12/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Matt R wrote:
> > Perhaps the software can be set-up so that users with non-Latin-script names
> > can specify a transliteration of their username for en?
> >
> The transliteration will be useful for more than en: - ru: editors are
> also more likely to recognize Latin transliterations of ja: .
>
> And before anybody screams about "Latin charset imperialism", note that
> all the nations of the world have long agreed to include Latin versions
> of their names on their postage stamps, in addition to any preferred
> native scripts (UK gets to omit name entirely, as the first to issue
> stamps), for the benefit of postal clerks who are not expert linguists.
>
> Stan
>

Okay, that situation screams the remains of british imperialism
through and through? Wait, was that just an introductory evidence
stage!

Peter


body:
Thursday, December 21, 2006, 6:46:56 PM, Jeff wrote:

> I disagree.  It's a reference regarding where the infomation comes from,
> and it's similar - similar, not identical - to adding a source for a
> direct quote.

So you think it would be ok for me to make a bot which spams my name in
the 200+ articles which use my photos? ;-)


from_name: Zoney

body:
On 21/12/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> I noticed that some people add credits of photos inside the articles,
> saying that CC-BY requires attribution.
>
> Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
>
> I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
> contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
> edit history.
>
> AFAIK, there's no policy disallowing photo credits, but there should
> be one clear policy to discourage that -- it would also be a place
> to point people when asking about that. :-)
>
> (I'm not referring to photos by famous photographers who have their
> own articles, but to photos uploaded by users or found on Flickr)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Of course there should be some method of attributing major authors inline
(incidentally, as far as copyright goes, those making minor edits which
don't substantially change the content, aren't creating a "new work", so we
would only need to credit major authors). This would be work, but it's not
particularly acceptable to be lazy with regard to copyright just because
content is licensed under a free/open licence. Besides, having such inline
attribution would make reuse of Wikipedia content a lot less awkward and
more legally sound, e.g. for print.

As far as I can see, Wikipedia as an entity is a serial copyright infringer,
even of content licensed under GFDL. It's all a bit of a house of cards -
and eventually the project will be caught out by some litigious contributor.

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
> From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
>
> On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
>>> the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-
>>> complete)
>>> absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
>>> impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
>>> less a positive result...
>>
>> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the
>> same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one
>> has
>> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you
>> happen
>> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
>
> If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.

A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can
easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.

I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example,
let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online
catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the
Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of
Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be
offline but it was available a few years ago).

You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is
not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link
to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't
seem very different to me from a citation.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
Giving people credit for their contributions on the page itself would
encourage [[WP:OWN]] violations. I think keeping all credit on the
appropriate history/image page is best.


body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/22/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > We would have a better edge on vandalism if we
> > required confirmed email adresses before allowing
> a
> > user to edit.  But the goal of Wikipedia is not
> > prevent vandalism at all costs.  I really don't
> > understand the particular problem with non-latin
> > vandals.  More inforamation is always better but
> why
> > is this information needed for vandal-fighting?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Listusers type
> in various swear
> wods to start searches.
>
> > I
> > have never had to type in any username to make a
> > block.  Everything is dome by clicking through
> links.
> > Click on  a diff to confirm vandalism, click on
> block
> > to block the user, click on contribs to cleanup
> the
> > mess.  For a major vandal; paste the link to the
> > contribs on IRC to solict help.  Whether the
> username
> > is english, bosian, or ????; I am not sure how it
> > would make a difference.
>
> Because I can't glance at recent changes and tell
> whcih of the half
> dozen ????? are problem users.
>
> >  What do vandal fighters as
> > en.WP do differently than that makes non-latin
> > usernames a significant problem?
> >
>
> Some of our vandles have trademarks. It is also very
> hard to come up
> with large numbers of legit sounding names in a
> short timeframe. The
> result is that mayn vandles resort to nonsense
> names. If they can hide
> that by useing japanses characters I have lost a way
> of picking them
> up.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

You are dragging this away from my original question.
A refresh of where this converstion came from

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012499.html

Are non-latin usernames a problem for fighting
high-calibre vandals who use sleeper sockpuppet
accounts?  This has been stated as a concern and I do
not see where latin/non-latin has any significance.

Birgitte SB

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR

body:
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
> Lawyers' opinions
> are still just opinions no matter how many of them are given.  A
> single
> unappealed decision by a low-level judge would be a precedent that
> could
> throw all 20 scholarly opinions out the window.

If I correctly understood what a first-year law student once told
me... and if _he_ correctly understood what _he_ was told... even a
Supreme Court (of the U. S.) ruling is just a set of opinions about
an individual case... and all cases are different.

So, when a lawyer says "thus-and-such is the law because of thus-and-
such Supreme Court ruling," this is shorthand for saying "if your
particular case were taken to court, the lawyers would probably point
out to the judge that there was a Supreme Court ruling in a somewhat
similar case.  I predict that the judge would think the opinions of a
Supreme Court justices are legally sound. And I your case is similar
enough that the judge will feel that their opinions pretty much apply
in your case. Therefore I predict that it is very likely that the
judge will rule thus-and-such way in your case."


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising FAQ

body:
???
????????????Aphaia???
????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????????????????
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

??
WMF?????FAQ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Erik????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????????

????
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising FAQ


from_name: Andrey

body:
I wanted to post this on Village Pump but, after Bogdan's query, I will
ask this question here. Is it appropriate to indicate in image captions the
website from which a photograph is taken? The way it is done on [[Nestor
Kukolnik]] or [[Taganrog Museum of Art]]? It seems to me odd to advertise
image copyright holders in Wikipedia articles. Andrey

On 12/21/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
> I noticed that some people add credits of photos inside the articles,
> saying that CC-BY requires attribution.
>
> Shouldn't photo credits be allowed *only* in the image description page?
>
> I don't see why images would have a special status when compared to text
> contributions, the credits for which are found also a click away, in the
> edit history.
>
> AFAIK, there's no policy disallowing photo credits, but there should
> be one clear policy to discourage that -- it would also be a place
> to point people when asking about that. :-)
>
> (I'm not referring to photos by famous photographers who have their
> own articles, but to photos uploaded by users or found on Flickr)
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising FAQ

body:
Oh sorry, wrong destinaion. Just ignore it,
* brush *

Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * Nessuna poesia prima di noi *


subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising FAQ


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

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

>Guy Chapman wrote
>
>
>> The problem here is that we cannot tell the difference between an
>>
>>expert and an "expert", and we don't necessarily know if the editor is
>>pushing a personal agenda.
>>
>>
>You don't. But starting off with an overly suspicious attitude is fairly useless, also. In the perspective that Wikipedia articles aim to get readers up to speed quickly in an unfamiliar area, rather than be definitive or authoritative, a certain amount should be taken on (provisional) trust.
>
Very much so.  There's also a need to distinguish between experts and
expertise.  Too often sceptics deal with alternative views of science
with the weasely phrase "scientists say ..." instead of directing their
attention to the science.

Ec


body:
On 21/12/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Giving people credit for their contributions on the page itself would
> encourage [[WP:OWN]] violations. I think keeping all credit on the
> appropriate history/image page is best.
>
>
People who contribute on Wikipedia still own copyright to their content,
they are merely licensing it under GFDL (and so others can use/modify/copy
it, subject to the new work being under GFDL).

I understand the point of WP:OWN - but it's not an excuse to avoid crediting
people for their work. Having the GFDL notice and history page is certainly
good faith, but it doesn't really seem like particularly good or useful
attribution. Most of the history page can be viewed as "spam" if you're
looking at it with an interest in attribution - as the bulk of it is usually
minor edits (formatting/language/style/accuracy tweaks) and
vandalism/reverts. The more major the article is, and longer history it has,
the more useless the history page is in this regard.

Zoney

--
~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...


body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/22/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> > You are dragging this away from my original
> question.
> > A refresh of where this converstion came from
> >
> >
>
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-December/012499.html
> >
> > Are non-latin usernames a problem for fighting
> > high-calibre vandals who use sleeper sockpuppet
> > accounts?  This has been stated as a concern and I
> do
> > not see where latin/non-latin has any
> significance.
> >
> > Birgitte SB
>
> It makes it imposible to pick up bot generated or
> common theme names.
>
> --
> geni
> __________.

If the vandals George Herbert is concerned about could
be picked up by their use of bot generation or common
themes they wouldn't exactly  qualify as "getting past
the "new user" time period and minimum edit counts".
Is it safe to say dedicated sockpuppet sleeper vandals
are not a concern regarding non-latin usernames?

Birgitte SB

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from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright Violation Bot

body:
On 12/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Trying to go through the entire database by finding random pages and
> > taking random lines seems extremely hit-and-miss to me, and if you
> > have to worry about mirrors and false positives then I can't see how
> > that would possibly be productive. The odds of finding a copyvio are
> > going to be quite low, and the amount of time needed to sort through
> > them is going to be quite high.
>
> Daniel Brandt managed it.

Did he do it by using random pages? It strikes me that it would be
something most easily done if you downloaded a copy of the database
and then ran it off of that systematically (you could filter out short
articles while you are at it).

FF


body:
On 12/20/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> The policy  does exist, and the vigilante group that tries to enforce this
> is quite succesful in doing so, because they have admin rights on
> en:wikipedia, so people who do not keep to it get blocked from English
> Wikipedia.

This is more of the "big, bad English Wikipedia" mentality that
pervades this discussion.  En.wikipedia does not have vigilantes who
want to block all people who use usernames in foreign character-sets.
En.wikipedia has very dedicated vandal-fighters who sometimes cross
the line in how aggressive they can be.  This is unfortunate.
However, there are real concerns that you are completely ignoring.

--
Sam


body:
On 12/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Please, have a look at http://www.wikipedia.org

This is in large part a question of philosophy.  Is en.wikipedia (or
ru.wikipedia, or fr.wikipedia, or ar.wikipedia or... you get the
picture) a project in its own right or merely a section of Wikipedia,
a trans-lingual project?

The answer is, of course, "both".  A compromise must be sought to
manage both the idea of a global project and the specific needs of
individual projects.

> So, rather than saying the complaint is ill-advise, I rather recommand
> that we work together trying to set up a compromise which will be
> acceptable by all parties. Saying "your name is not valid because I can
> not read your language, so you can't edit Wikipedia" is not what I would
> call a compromise.

No-one is actually saying this other than those who are maligning
en.wikipedia.  This thread was started as an en.wp-bash and it has
remained that way, not looking at the issues but rather flinging dirt
at a particular project.

I am sorry, Anthere, that you are doing exactly the same.

--
Sam


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/12/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> The SUL is almost a year late as it is. All issues have been discussed
> at length at the time. Postponing it now it not really an option. There
> is also no capacity to come up with a technical solution. There is even
> no consensus as to what the problem is.

So you really are saying that your only answer to the concerns raised
is "fuck you"? That's disappointing. How do you plan to get every
en:wp admin to go along with you?

- d.


body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/22/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > If the vandals George Herbert is concerned about
> could
> > be picked up by their use of bot generation or
> common
> > themes they wouldn't exactly  qualify as "getting
> past
> > the "new user" time period and minimum edit
> counts".
>
> Unless of course they find a way to dodge our tests
> by registering
> names in some form of nat latin alphabet.
>
> > Is it safe to say dedicated sockpuppet sleeper
> vandals
> > are not a concern regarding non-latin usernames?
>
> No.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
>

Are you just trolling?  The concern was specifically
about vandals who *are* dodging your tests.  How can
you answer that with "Unless they find a way to dodge
our tests"?

Birgitte SB

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from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 185

body:
> From: jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com>
>
> On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > > From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> > >
> > > On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >>> A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author.
> One of
> > >>> the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-
> > >>> complete)
> > >>> absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's
> almost
> > >>> impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search"
> much
> > >>> less a positive result...
> > >>
> > >> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all
> the
> > >> same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently
> no-one
> > >> has
> > >> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you
> > >> happen
> > >> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
> > >
> > > If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
> >
> > A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can
> > easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.
> >
> > I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example,
> > let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an
> online
> > catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the
> > Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of
> > Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be
> > offline but it was available a few years ago).
> >
> > You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is
> > not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link
> > to the search or a description of how to do the search. This
> doesn't
> > seem very different to me from a citation.
>
> No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated
> elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library
> is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems
> so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would
> claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics,
> and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your
> theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the
> Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.
>
> Jay.

Jay, I don't agree with everything Daniel and Steve have written
about this, but I also find your reply quite problematic.  Surely
the library catalogue is the most reliable and verifiable source
for what is in the library.

Concerning negative information, consider "John Smith's latest
murder novel Killers of Wiki did not reveal the identity of the
murderer."  Can't I cite the novel for that?  Anyone can get
the book and verify the information, so it is reliable and
verifiable. I don't think it is necessary to wait until some
third party makes this observation about the book.  (Obviously
it would be a different matter if the claim needed some actual
thinking or analysis beyond mere looking.)  It seems to me that
citing a library catalogue as a source for saying that a book
is not there is fine.  I can't think of why one would want to do
that in a Wikipedia article but I don't think it is illegal.

Zero.

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from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] The boundaries of OR (contd)

body:
On 12/21/06, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > From: "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com>
> >
> > On 12/21/06, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> A while back I wrote about a self-publicising vanity author. One of
> >>> the details I'd liked to have note was the complete (or near-
> >>> complete)
> >>> absence of his books in public library catalogues, but it's almost
> >>> impossible to actually find a way to cite a "negative search" much
> >>> less a positive result...
> >>
> >> Indeed, that would end up being OR - quite simple OR, but OR all the
> >> same. It's annoying when you know something that apparently no-one
> >> has
> >> published, but there isn't much we can do about it. (Unless you
> >> happen
> >> to be an expert on the subject and can publish it yourself)
> >
> > If that is OR then WP:NOR is a broken rule.
>
> A citation is essentially a very simple piece of research that can
> easily be reproduced by anyone without specialist knowledge.
>
> I don't see what that can't be broadened just a bit. For example,
> let's suppose a library has an online catalog... let's say an online
> catalog that's accessible to anyone. (Two that come to mind are the
> Cornell University Library, and the 16,000-volume public library of
> Bergen-op-Zoom in the Netherlands... well actually it seems to be
> offline but it was available a few years ago).
>
> You can't prove a negative, but you can certainly say "his book is
> not in the Cornell University Library" or whatever, and cite a link
> to the search or a description of how to do the search. This doesn't
> seem very different to me from a citation.

No, you absolutely cannot do that, for reasons eloquently stated
elsewhere. The claim that it is not in the Cornell University Library
is a novel conclusion based on your own original research; this seems
so trivially obvious to me that it astonishes me that others would
claim otherwise. You might as well promote a novel claim in physics,
and point people to the calculations you have made to prove your
theory. If a reliable source says "the book is not found in the
Cornell University Library", then quote them. Otherwise, move on.

Jay.