from_name: Alex Powell

subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgEnableScaryTranscluding

body:
Hi,

I was noising thru the source, and noticed this variable:

$wgEnableScaryTranscluding = false;

Does this feature actually work properly? Obviously its silly name
makes me think it hasn't been finished (and I couldn't see any docs on
via google), but then one of the other functions was called
getContentWithoutUsingSoManyDamnGlobals, and used everywhere...

The way I understand it it should allow for templates to be pulled in
from other wikis, am I correct?

Kind regards,

Alex


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 16/08/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:29:29 +0100
> "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > The perennial proposals to run article forks seem to me to embrace
> > pathological behaviour. Most articles really aren't problematic.
>
> Sure, most articles aren't problematic. They're just unverifiable
> nonsense vanity cruft ;)
>
> But I *promise* you that you won't ever find a good solution for
> shit like libanon-israel or circumcision or - you name it - without
> making signed forks, where different (sets of) people can write
> multiple coherent articles about the same thing, instead of
> forcing everybody to mess with the same one.

You keep writing suggesting this. But the fact is, intentionally
POV-forked articles are simply never going to exist on the Wikipedia
project. The culture just won't accept it; the basic operating rules
just won't extend to it. If you feel it is so essential, please feel
free to take the database, fork it, and go work on another project.

But continually harping on about forked! articles! solution! to! all!
problems! achieves nothing.

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


list: commons-l

from_name: Joakim Larsson

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
whoho I'm the 24 most active admin on commons, I would love to see the same
numers for sv.

Gr?n

2006/8/14, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de>:
>
>
> --- Cary Bass <bastique at bellsouth.net> schrieb:
>
> > Fred:
> >
> > Please don't take Paddy's answer as an indication of the responses
> > from any of the rest of the project members.
>
> True, maybe I should say in every sentence: "My opinion is..." to make
> clear that it is only the way I feel about the issue. Nevertheless I
> know that no admin was informed about this so how can they state their
> opinion on the issue? No matter if I am legally right or if I am just
> wrong, no matter if there are statistics about my activities somewhere
> else the point is it would have been polite if people would have been
> asked. I personally feel better if I can decide which data of me is
> made public and which is not and also how the data is put into graphs
> or statistics. If this data would be relevant for the wikimedia
> commons project I would say OK. But it is not so I do not. I prefer if
> people would not publish data or statistics about my activities
> without asking period. And please do not tell me that it is legally
> possible and that that there are other statistics about me and how I
> must feel about them. Just try to respect my feeling and wishes aswell
> as my person and everybody can be happy.
>
> > Based on every single response he has to this email list, I question
> > his entire motivation for participation in the project at all, and I
> > doubt he has any interest in constructive cooperation.
>
> You are right there. Thanks for your understanding.
>
> greetings
>
> Paddy
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail:
> http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi Julien,

> I totally rewrote the compiler to works with the XML format of
> download.wikipedia.org.

Sounds good, and I really like it having the top 10 languages.

I think _maybe_ though it could be useful to have two variations of the Analyzer (like you have two variations of TcpQuery - one
that uses DiskQuery, and one that uses MemoryQuery). With Analyzer though, it could be good to have one that connects to MySQL and
gets the data directly from the database, and one that uses the downloaded XML dumps. This way, people can use whichever one is most
appropriate for them. For example, for someone running a big MediaWiki site who wanted to look at the possibility of using
suggestion searching, they probably wouldn't want to create an XML dump, then run Analyzer on the XML dump (this would be too slow,
and too many steps, and take a lot of disk space). Rather, if possible, in that situation it would be nice to create the compiled
files directly from the database.

To try and help with this, I've modified a copy of Analyzer.cpp to add basic importing (but just of the article names, not redirects
or article counts) from MySQL (i.e. does not use any downloaded files). The rough file (which still needs work for redirects +
article counts) is here: http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/MysqlAnalyzerCmd.cpp
Please note that I have not used C or C++ in a _very_ long time, so if looks like I have done something silly then that is almost
certainly correct. :-)

To use compile and run this, on a Debian/Ubuntu system, I did this:

# Install required MySQL libraries
apt-get install libmysqlclient15-dev
cd cmd
# Compile:
g++ -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I../expat/lib    -g -O2 -O3 -MT MysqlAnalyzerCmd.o -MD -MP -MF ".deps/MysqlAnalyzerCmd.Tpo" -c -o
MysqlAnalyzerCmd.o MysqlAnalyzerCmd.cpp
# Link: (Note: needs " -lmysqlclient" parameter)
g++  -g -O2 -O3   -o MysqlAnalyzer -L../tools -L../serialization -L../analyzer
MysqlAnalyzerCmd.o -lanalyzer -lserialization -ltools -lexpat -lglib-2.0 -lmysqlclient
# Run (change hostname / username / password / database-name params as required) :
./MysqlAnalyzer localhost wikiuser FakePasswd wikidb

If it is working, it should print out something like this:
-----------------------------
Connection success
Found 12345 articles
-----------------------------
Then use the .bin files as per usual on TcpQuery.

Also there is a small diff for WSuggest.js to fix a small problem in my autocomplete stuff. For example, suppose the user typed
"Aer", then moved the text cursor back to be between the 'A' and the 'e', typed 'm' (to make "Amer") then typed 'p' (to try and
spell 'Amper'). However in-between typing the 'm' and the 'p', the cursor position will jump to the end of the text box to try and
autocomplete "American", so the result of pressing 'p' will be 'Amerp', not 'Amper'. To prevent this, will now only try to
autocomplete if the cursor position is at the end of the text field. Diff is here:
http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/WSuggest.js-0.4-autocomplete-update.txt

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] What *should* WikiWYG do if you hand it wikitext?

body:
On 8/16/06, Dan Li <dto at dev.java.net> wrote:
> That mode already exists: http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/index.php/Testpage
> (first enable wikiwyg from the toolbox on the left).

No, I mean, a wysiwyg mode where wikitext is interpreted as wikitext,
rather than being interpreted as text to be escaped. That would
probably offend someone's paradigm though.

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
According to Wikipedia, Fair use is "limited use of copyrighted material
without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for
scholarship or review." Brazilian copyright law have only a few subjects
that authorizes utilization of copyrighted works with no previous permission
request (you can try a Google translation from [1], in the section "Cap?tulo
IV Das Limita??es aos Direitos Autorais", "Art. 33" and "Art. 41" to read
more about it)

[1] http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Leis/L9610.htm (trademarks and
softwares have specific laws)

On 8/16/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/8/16, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com>:
> > Citing someone is authorized in so much more legislations. Brazilian (my
> > contry) copyright law don't have anything related to fair use or
> educational
> > use, but, authorizes citations.
>
> That depends on how you define 'related to fair use'. To me allowing
> citation is something like fair use, thus when Brazilian copyright law
> allows citations, it does have something related to fair use, namely
> right of citation.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/16, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com>:
> Citing someone is authorized in so much more legislations. Brazilian (my
> contry) copyright law don't have anything related to fair use or educational
> use, but, authorizes citations.

That depends on how you define 'related to fair use'. To me allowing
citation is something like fair use, thus when Brazilian copyright law
allows citations, it does have something related to fair use, namely
right of citation.

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


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2007 - get ready for the third edition.

body:
Dear all,

Wikimania 2006 just closed its doors a week or so ago, and it is
already time to think about the next edition.

As happened in 2005 and 2006, the city hosting Wikimania in 2007 will
be chosen among whichever candidate cities dare/deign/want to
participate in the "hosting Wikimania" contest.

All information concerning how to launch a bid for your city/location
can be found on meta:

*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007
*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids
*http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Official_requirements_for_bidding_cities

Please follow the instructions on that last page to build your bid.
The Wikimania 2007 organizing team stays at your disposal for any
questions you might have concerning the bidding process and/or the
bidding requirements.

Happy bidding!

Delphine

PS. I have removed all red links to non-existing unoffical bids.
Please only add a link when there is some kind of content to the bid
and make sure the bid is classified with the name of the city, not the
country.
PPS. Dear translators, thank you for translating this message and
sending it to your respective home lists.
--
~notafish


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2007 - get ready for the third edition.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 8/16/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Is there any reason not to handle Wikiversity like the commons, and
> > allow any license so long as it's free?
> >
> >
> Well, isn't the clutter on Commons due to all these licenses a good reason
> to you ?
>
In what way do you think there's a clutter on Commons, and why do you
think it has anything to do with the number of licenses?


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: James Hare

body:
You can also get ill from inhaling the steam of the shower water.

On 8/16/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> SJ wrote:
>
> >Damian Finol writes:
> >
> >
> >>unsafe). Cancun has a lot of hotels and there are a lot of Flights
> >>coming and going, plus it's in a central location for people in the
> >>Americas and Europe (Most people from Europe will connect in Miami or
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Cancun would be interesting.  How many Wikipedians are from around
> >there?  (nudges Jair to check it out)
> >
> >
> >
> Flights to cancun are relatively inexpensive and hotels are very
> reasonable as compared to Australia. The ruins there
> from the Meso-American Culture are truly awe-inspiring. There's also
> diving and crystal clear water and a lot of
> beachfront (probably boring to folks from Florida).
>
> Just make sure to provide lots of bottled water to avoid microsflora
> issues from drinking from the local
> water supplies. Other beverages I am certain will also be heavily relied
> upon to by many of the attendees -- limes
> included... :-)
>
> Jeff
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:26:56 +0200
"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 8/15/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Somebody mentioned Wikinfo, which IIRC splits its articles
> > according different general points of view. That's at least
> > workable and in extreme cases might resemble our /draft method,
> > but ultimately the goal is integration according to NPOV.
>
> I think the quality of two separate articles written by
> anti-circumcisionists and pro-circumcisionists would be a hell of a
> lot worse than a single article fought over by both groups. At least
> we force them to engage with each other and find a tiny bit of common
> ground.

Disagree. An article is an argument (a presentation thereof)
and two people editing the same article is like two people talking at
the same time, never letting the other ever talk.

With two separate articles, there is of course still interaction -
but now, the two people are trying to outdo each other who has the
better article. Think about THAT.


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:29:29 +0100
"David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> The perennial proposals to run article forks seem to me to embrace
> pathological behaviour. Most articles really aren't problematic.

Sure, most articles aren't problematic. They're just unverifiable
nonsense vanity cruft ;)

But I *promise* you that you won't ever find a good solution for
shit like libanon-israel or circumcision or - you name it - without
making signed forks, where different (sets of) people can write
multiple coherent articles about the same thing, instead of
forcing everybody to mess with the same one.


body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I think I'm the someone (:-), and as long as a) it's switchable and b)
> it defaults to off, I wouldn't have any problem with it.
>
> I think Simetrical is right, though (mark that down, willya :-) --
> anything the WYSIWYG *can* do, the wikitext should not be interpreted
> for (italics, bold, headers, etc).  Things like template calls and
> parser functions can, for all of me, always be 'hot' -- as long as the
> editor colorizes them or something so the editor can *see* that there's
> something special about them.

Sounds ok. What if there was a kind of "compatibility" mode where
typing ' twice invoked italics (and removed the ''), and typing a
third ' changed to bold instead. Just pondering...

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/16/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm really not convinced that examples like this warrant throwing away
> NPOV. I really think NPOV is Wikipedia's secret sauce. Not just the
> wiki editing model - NPOV is the radically new thing Wikpedia does in
> terms of the actual content.

Probably articles involving the Israel-Palestine conflict will never
settle down because no article could ever exist that would be
perceived as neutral by the entrenched editors of either side.
Different perceptions of reality I guess...

Steve


from_name: Rotem Liss

subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgEnableScaryTranscluding

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

Alex Powell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I was noising thru the source, and noticed this variable:
>
> $wgEnableScaryTranscluding = false;
>
> Does this feature actually work properly? Obviously its silly name
> makes me think it hasn't been finished (and I couldn't see any docs on
> via google), but then one of the other functions was called
> getContentWithoutUsingSoManyDamnGlobals, and used everywhere...
>
> The way I understand it it should allow for templates to be pulled in
> from other wikis, am I correct?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Alex
>

You are right, and that's exactly the purpose of this feature. It seems
to work, but is disabled by default, also in Wikimedia sites. There is a
request ( http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4547 ) to enable
such transclution from Commons in Wikimedia sites.

- --
#define Name RotemLiss
#define Mail mail-AT-rotemliss-DOT-com
#define Site www.rotemliss.com

#define KeyFingerPrint 4AFD 8579 A449 4267 BED9 38E5 6EF8 5B1F EBDE 7AC0
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE40VqbvhbH+veesARAl9zAJ9tpDrm1VNf5cSMQtVNVP4bsgaOzwCg0+fM
cI+R7JcwDBDdmTebmA+WDi0=
=Syeu
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
I was talking more generally about doing previews in an editor, not
the suggest - ideally you'd want to call the server to render the
preview thru MW, then you'd be guarenteed you had interpretted it (and
any extensions installed on the server) correctly.

Alex

On 8/16/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Alex Powell <alexp700 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One issue I have with developing all of these is the speed of MW
> > startup. It cannot really be used to make AJAX type requests in its
> > current form, as pages often take seconds to render. Not sure the best
> > way to speed this up. The parser seems to be the slowest point in most
> > of my profiles, but simple too much code to run thru
> > for AJAX requests at the moment.
>
> Doesn't Julien's program run independently of MediaWiki itself?  That
> is, I got the impression that the client wasn't sending a request to
> index.php, it was sending it to Julien's program, so startup time for
> MediaWiki doesn't matter.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>
>
>>Once a "citation needed" tag is in place, there's no need to do
>>anything in a hurry. The reader is adequately warned, other editors
>>are informed.
>>
>>
>In many many cases, this is true.  But not in all.
>
>The one that is absolutely imperative for all editors is to recognize
>that "If this claim would be libellous if false, it is absolutely not
>acceptable to simply put a 'citation needed' tag and hope for the best."
>
>It is extremely painful to see those.  "Lord John Doe was a porn star in
>1943. <citation needed>"  In such cases, being a citation nazi is the
>right thing to do.
>
>That is not the only case, but that is the one where it is absolutely
>imperative.
>
The fallacy in this presentation is that it leaves the impression that
the situations requiring urgent action dominate.  Libels against living
persons clearly need urgent action, and even comments that would bring
disrepute onto the deceased should receive swifter action despite the
fact that one cannot legally libel the dead..  I'm sure that there are
also other areas which require such attention as well, but let's not
blow them out of proportion; they are a minority of situations.

We would do better supporting a relaxed atmosphere in the general case,
and limitting urgency to enumerated situations.

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Addendum:
> subpages.
> subpages are enabled in the project (Commons) and user namespaces.
> This means when you create User:page/foo or Commons:page/foo, it will
> have an automatic 'parent link' to Commons:page. And you can also use
> Special:Prefixindex to find all the children pages of Commons:page.
>
> Subpages have not been enabled in the template namespace. This is why
> template:PD-old/es doesn't contain an automatic parent link. If
> subpages are not enabled, then the slash is nothing special, it is
> just another character.
>
> AFAIK, besides the fact that templates can take parameters, pages can
> be transcluded in the same way as templates, the only difference being
> that they need the namespace prefix. So
>
> {{Commons:Welcome}}
>
> is the same as
>
> {{Welcome}} if Template:Welcome has the same information as
> Commons:Welcome. So if you don't need to use parameters, then using
> pages in the Commons namespace has the added advantage of automatic
> parent links.
>
> Just wondering if we can incorporate this into a new design somehow......
>

One of the things that surprised me about the way Commons handled
deletion was that subpages aren't used; they've been used on *FD at
en.wp for, um, a long time...

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

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from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Cary Bass <bastique at bellsouth.net> skrev:

> Fred:
>
> Please don't take Paddy's answer as an indication of
> the responses from any
> of the rest of the project members.  Based on every
> single response he has
> to this email list, I question his entire motivation
> for participation in
> the project at all, and I doubt he has any interest
> in constructive
> cooperation.
>
> Cary Bass
> aka Bastique
>
>

[[User:Kotepho]], who first created the page --
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kotepho/admin
-- (on my suggestion at
[[commons_talk:Administrators]] ) didn't want to
maintain it after the objections by Paddy. Someone
needs to make a list and be prepared to update it once
every month, if this idea is going to become
something.

/ Fred
Fred-Chess


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler wrote:
> > The obvious question this raises is (as Elian has already asked):
> > "where do we draw the line?"
>
> I think this is the wrong way to look at the question.  The whole point
> of NPOV is that it is not about line drawing.  It is about a social
> approach to collaboration.  We draw the line at the point where we have
> consensus among virtually all reasonable people that the material is
> neutral.
>
> > We could orchestrate, for example, a policy that says "Wikiversity
> > will not host materials that endorse a particular world-view". But
> > then, we are excluding all religious material (and not all religious
> > material is bad). It could well be argued that much of what most
> > people consider to be appropriate educational material espouses a
> > particular world-view, such as that of free-market economics,
> > feminism, whatever.
>
> It could well be argued that this is one of the things which is deeply
> flawed about proprietary texts... the passing off of propaganda of
> whatever kind as being educational materials.
>
> > This is a difficult issue that we can't simply dismiss out of hand.
>
> Certainly, we do need to discuss it in detail.  But I think it would be
> a tragic mistake to dismiss NPOV out of hand based on arguments which
> fail to draw on our deep experience with how it works and what it means.
>
> --Jimbo

I think part of my reaction to the word "neutral" in this discussion
is due to the fact that I don't really know what it means :-). Joseph
Reagle, in fact, gave an interesting presentation on the word/concept
of "neutrality" at Wikimania (see:
<http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/06/neutrality.html>). This was, in
fact, straight after your insightful comment about NPOV being a "work
of art, which we fill with meaning" (I hope I've quoted you correctly
there). Both of these have brought me to a better understanding than
what we have at [[WP:NPOV]] - but still, I have my doubts :-)

You're right, of course - we deal with these complexities on a daily
basis - and we constantly strive to develop ways of going beyond
academic or political bottlenecks in areas which cause far more strife
outside than they ever will inside Wikipedia. And yes, we have a role
to play in educating the world about how to go about doing that. We
can create material on Wikiversity which does this - just as we have
done on Wikipedia - and that should obviously be our aim.

But I just can't get away from the fact (and, again, Birgitte has
pointed this out) that we are dealing with a model of education in
Wikiversity that is more than simply providing dynamic material. We
are also attempting to provide for a community of learners. While this
community learns, I think we need to be flexible enough to allow for
open and critical thinking - providing thought-provoking, sometimes
POV, material - and simply asking "what do you think?"

So, if there's a conclusion to this mail, it would be: I'm not arguing
for a simple dismissal about all we know and have learned about NPOV.
I'm simply saying that it will not _always_ be a useful policy to
impose throughout the process of learning. I'm yearning for a better
concept - or perhaps we simply have to invest NPOV with new meaning in
order to tailor it to Wikiversity's particular identity.

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 09:50:57 -0700
Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

By the way, when we're talking about other wikis
and whether or not their policies are superior:

Uncyclopedia is tagged as satire. Therefore it is
relatively safe from legal problems regarding
libel and slander. These legal issues, I believe,
are the #1 threat to Wikipedia, or rather, the
foundation. Continuing like this, it is
just a question of time.

It might be worth considering calling Wikipedia
satire just to avoid legal problems. A lot of
people call it worse things already, none of
which gives WP legal advantages.


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
Sue Reed wrote:

> There is something strange and geeky about me mentioning the
> World Science Fiction convention on a wikimedia email list, but it
> fits the situation.
> Sue Annesreed1234 at yahoo.com

It's not as if beeing a Wikimedian is less geeky than being a science
fictiona fan. :)

Ausir (both)


from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] Rethinking [[COM:DEL]]

body:
"Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Wednesday, August 16,
2006 8:13 AM

> If you have ideas for improvements, I suggest implementing a model
> with 5 or so fake debates in a user subpage, and again share the link
> so we can compare it to the current model.

What about having one page per day, discussing the deletion requests on the
talk page of the image and collecting them by using a template on the daily
page? Just an idea:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Flominator/Deletion_proposal

Regards,

Flo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Financial Times column on open content

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
>> On 8/15/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> maru dubshinki wrote:
>>>
<snip>
>>>> He would. There's a reason Dante located the exit of Hell and the
>>>> mountain of Purgatory in the Southern Hemisphere...
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Hmmm! Dante (1265-1321), Galileo (1564-1642). ;-)
>>>
>>
>> Are you accusing me of not knowing my Dante?
>>
>> "The two poets escape by climbing the ragged fur of Lucifer, passing
>> through the center of the earth, emerging in the southern hemisphere
>> just before dawn on Easter Sunday beneath a sky studded with stars."
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_Comedy#Purgatorio
>>
>>
> I hadn't thought of it as an accusation, but if you want to take it that
> way you have that option.
>
> There is considerable doubt that Dante's reference to the other
> hemisphere is to the southern one.  That strikes me as inconsistent with
> the state of geographical knowledge in the early 14th centure.  The
> suggestion that Dante's exit from hell would be in Antarctica has not
> basis in fact at ball. Where in the text do you find evidence for this.
> Antarctica was not discovered until much later.
>

You're trolling again. He never said /anything/ about Antarctica.

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation's position on non-free images

body:
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz wrote:

>Tisza Gergo wrote:
>
>
>>There is an ongoing debate in the Hungarian Wikipedia community about
>>image license policies. I didn't find anything about the Foundation's
>>position on the issue (except for the rather vague [[m:Foundation
>>issues]]), so I'll try to ask here:
>>
>>
>The same is on Polish :-) I think there should be an official Foundation
>policy about it. When we were asking people from Foundation around 1
>year ago, the answers where different from one person to another, and
>then two groups of users (pro fair-use and anti fair-use) were using
>these diffrent answers as a key argument. Finally, someone asked simple
>  question: do we really want to make Polish Wikipedia to constantly
>break Polish Law?
>
I very much disagree that there should be a single policy on this that
affects all projects.  There is too much variation in the laws of
different countries, and in the needs of different projects (not just
Wikipedias).  It should be up to each project to find its own level of
comfort in this, as long as it is carried on in a general atmosphere of
copyright respect.  The question of whether or not someone is "breaking"
the law is rarely very clear.

Ec


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 16/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   Two questions: Do any decent editing tools exist, specialised for
> editing wikis, and in particular, mediawiki wikis. Such a thing would
> have to be capable of browsing, but let you do editing in some kind of
> more sophisticated, enhanced way - whatever that is.
>
> Secondly, if such a thing doesn't exist (possible since I haven't
> heard of one), are there any real obstacles to it happening? Why has
> all the discussion of WYSIWYG wiki editing been focused on server-side
> implementations. With the exception of querying the database, why
> can't all this be implemented locally, allowing a possibly richer user
> experience by using native Windows (for example :)) calls, rather than
> the limitations of javascript.

One of the ideas I had a few months ago was to expand the external
editing concept and make it more useful. Erik's initial implementation
was good enough, but it could be made much better. I envisioned
multiple editors spanning various platforms, interacting with
Wikipedia via a standardised editing API.

That idea is still in the depths of my skull. But like many ideas,
that's where it's stayed. I would still love to see a nice
Windows-based editor, and then we can port something to Unix and the
Mac.

Rob Church


body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> But what do you do when you typed ''' but meant ''... and it's gone
> now?  :-)

I'm not sure "you" actually wanted: italics or two apostrophes? If you
wanted italics, then you simply backspace the change to bold, and try
again. If you wanted apostrophes, you backspace the change to bold,
disable whatever that mode is, then type two apostrophes...

</straightface>

Steve


body:
On 8/16/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> Backspace.  That's the convention in word processors for when it
> magically converts something you typed to something else.  For
> instance, if you type a URL-looking thing in Word, then hit space,
> you'll get blue and underlining.  If you immediately hit backspace,
> the blue and underlining disappears, but the space you entered
> remains: no actual character is erased, it reinterprets the key as
> meaning "undo the last automatic conversion" if that's applicable.

Yeah, very commonly happens to me with ellipses (...) and various
niceties like 1st, TM, (C) etc.

> I think you can no longer do that as soon as you hit any other key,
> though.  It has to be immediate.

Undo (Ctrl+z) still works. All those things are basically autocorrect,
so it's called "undo autocorrect".

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> 3. "X is Y"<2> --- we assert the claim, only this time, the source is
> the Weekly World News (a tabloid of perhaps questionable authority).
> Very bad.
>
> 4. "According to the Weekly World News, X is Y" -- less bad, but
> probably still awful in most contexts

How about,

5. "According to the Weekly World News, a pro-X newspaper<1>, X is Y<2>"

Steve


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 16/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> > The one that is absolutely imperative for all editors is to recognize
> > that "If this claim would be libellous if false, it is absolutely not
> > acceptable to simply put a 'citation needed' tag and hope for the best."

> *THAT* is the sentence that needs to be at the top of WP:LIVING, not:
> --
> Articles about living persons require a degree of sensitivity and must
> adhere strictly to Wikipedia's content policies. Be very firm about
> high-quality references, particularly about details of personal lives.
> Unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons
> should be removed immediately from both the article and the talk page.
> Responsibility for justifying controversial claims rests firmly on the
> shoulders of the person making the claim.
> --
> That sentence up there is actionable, workable and simple enough for
> all editors to understand. We can even simplify it further:

I believe I tried rewriting WP:LIVING in that manner, but it seems to
have become long-winded and didactic - and hence bloody useless -
since then. Could people please hack at it with a guide to *ease of
use*? Thanks ever so much.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> The one that is absolutely imperative for all editors is to recognize
> that "If this claim would be libellous if false, it is absolutely not
> acceptable to simply put a 'citation needed' tag and hope for the best."

*THAT* is the sentence that needs to be at the top of WP:LIVING, not:

--
Articles about living persons require a degree of sensitivity and must
adhere strictly to Wikipedia's content policies. Be very firm about
high-quality references, particularly about details of personal lives.
Unsourced or poorly sourced negative material about living persons
should be removed immediately from both the article and the talk page.
Responsibility for justifying controversial claims rests firmly on the
shoulders of the person making the claim.
--

That sentence up there is actionable, workable and simple enough for
all editors to understand. We can even simplify it further:

Any claim about a living person that would be libellous if proven
false must be referenced with a high quality source or removed
*immediately*.

Can we do something to elevate this above the normal "everything
should be verified" and "be sensitive with living people" yada yada?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 16/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > One of the ideas I had a few months ago was to expand the external
> > editing concept and make it more useful. Erik's initial implementation
> > was good enough, but it could be made much better. I envisioned
> > multiple editors spanning various platforms, interacting with
> > Wikipedia via a standardised editing API.
>
> Where is Erik's implementation? Do you have any notes, plans, design
> etc anywhere?

The current external editing interface is Erik's implementation. A
sample script which uses it can be found in Subversion;
trunk/extensions/ee.

More of the conflict detection and handling need to be dealt with
server-side; client applications implementing a standard editing API
should be able to do so without too much duplication of logic.

Rob Church


body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> If you wanted the wikimode that '' gives you, and inadvertantly type
> ''' instead, optimally, backspacing should return you to '', rather
> than eating the 'token' altogether, since 'civilians' don't know from
> 'tokens'.

I'm kind of totally confused. I was pretty much presuming that for
normal "civilians", typing '' would give them '' - two apostrophes,
which would be escaped when you save. If you're in some fancy mode
where giving '' actually gives you italics, and ''' gives you bold,
well, you can probably figure out why
apostrophe-apostrophe-apostrophe-backspace gives you nothing at all.

Steve


from_name: Amgine

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 16-Aug-06, at 12:00 PM, Cormac Lawler wrote:

> So, if there's a conclusion to this mail, it would be: I'm not arguing
> for a simple dismissal about all we know and have learned about NPOV.
> I'm simply saying that it will not _always_ be a useful policy to
> impose throughout the process of learning. I'm yearning for a better
> concept - or perhaps we simply have to invest NPOV with new meaning in
> order to tailor it to Wikiversity's particular identity.

As you're aware, I'm extremely bothered by this approach to defining
Wikiversity. It seems to me to say "let's not put any strictures on
Wikiversity, no requirements or expectations, but let it grow
organically." This sound nifty in theory, but results in nothing
because there are no expectations, no hurdles, nothing to accomplish.
You can't even measure if it has accomplished this nothingness.

Wikversity should have goals. They should be measurable. The project
needs to meet the minimum standards of the Wikimedia Foundation;
fundamental in this is a commitment to avoiding support of any one
POV, to be verifiable (where this is an option) and to be free.

Throwing crap at a wall until some of it sticks means you deal with a
lot of crap. Let's be a bit more discerning than that, please.

-------------- next part --------------


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Tisza Gergő

body:
There is an ongoing debate in the Hungarian Wikipedia community about
image license policies. I didn't find anything about the Foundation's
position on the issue (except for the rather vague [[m:Foundation
issues]]), so I'll try to ask here:

1) Which copyright law should be followed? The Hungarian law, the law of
the United States or both? (And what about France and the Netherlands,
where IIRC some of the Wikimedia servers are hosted?) This is an
important question, as Hungarian copyright law is a lot more restrictive
(there is no fair use, and works made by the government remain
copyyrighted).

2) What are the rules, if any, for non-free images? Should we follow
[[Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy]], or is every community free to create its
own policies about non-copyleft media content?

3) Is it acceptable to use, in a way similar to fair use, images which
are illegal in the strict sense, but safe to use? (Eg. under the
Hungarian law, logos or book covers probably cannot be used without
proper permission, which is often impossible to obtain - the copyright
holder cannot be contacted, or doesn't understand a problem, or just
doesn't care. On the other hand, it's obvious that no one will sue
Wikipedia for advertising him or his product, especially when that
advertising would be legal in most countries.)

Tgr


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
Hi all,
  Two questions: Do any decent editing tools exist, specialised for
editing wikis, and in particular, mediawiki wikis. Such a thing would
have to be capable of browsing, but let you do editing in some kind of
more sophisticated, enhanced way - whatever that is.

Secondly, if such a thing doesn't exist (possible since I haven't
heard of one), are there any real obstacles to it happening? Why has
all the discussion of WYSIWYG wiki editing been focused on server-side
implementations. With the exception of querying the database, why
can't all this be implemented locally, allowing a possibly richer user
experience by using native Windows (for example :)) calls, rather than
the limitations of javascript.

Has no one tried?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> It sounds as if you do *not* mean "embedded in a browser".
>
> Do you, in fact, not mean that?

I guess I'm probably thinking something external to a browser - but
almost certainly with browsing capabilities. However, much of what I'm
picturing could possibly be carried out with some sort of enhanced
browser, even using a lot of greasemonkey, for instance.

So, yeah your three possibilities would be:
- embedded in a browser, using javascript or something similar to
provide more power
- extending a browser, say by using mozilla to produce a custom wikibrowser
- embedding a browser, using either a native windows (or possibly java
based cross-platform windowy thing) application that interacts
directly with the user, but also embeds some kind of browser component
to render HTML and allow the user to, well, browse.

If that doesn't answer the question I'll try again. I'm trying to
avoid imposing a solution to the general problem...

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 8/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> One of the ideas I had a few months ago was to expand the external
> editing concept and make it more useful. Erik's initial implementation
> was good enough, but it could be made much better. I envisioned
> multiple editors spanning various platforms, interacting with
> Wikipedia via a standardised editing API.

Where is Erik's implementation? Do you have any notes, plans, design
etc anywhere?

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 8/16/06, Ron Hall <ron.hall at mcgill.ca> wrote:
>     I don't know if you were soliciting comments or not, but I suspect
>     that the first alternative is likely the most attractive - IMO, but
> don't
>     even begin to ask me how one actually builds such a beastie.

I'm definitely soliciting comments. Why is it more attractive?
Consider that the user would have to install an extension. And I
suspect that javascript can't do that much within an edit control.
Perhaps it could replace the edit control by something different
altogether? Someone correct me?

>From a couple of greasemonkey scripts I wrote, I found it's pretty
easy to manipulate elements of a webpage, moving stuff around and
adding new controls. But I don't think you can alter the way a button
behaves, for instance - it's just a button, and you get told when it
gets clicked on, released, or hovered over...but not sure how much
further you can go.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/16/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe I tried rewriting WP:LIVING in that manner, but it seems to
> have become long-winded and didactic - and hence bloody useless -
> since then. Could people please hack at it with a guide to *ease of
> use*? Thanks ever so much.

Maybe our policy pages need to be divided into "policy" and
"discussion". The policy bit, which should never be more than a page,
should say "do this, and don't do that". The discussion can have the
reasoning why, the special cases, and all that other crap that always
gets in there.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialised wiki editor?

body:
On 8/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> The current external editing interface is Erik's implementation. A
> sample script which uses it can be found in Subversion;
> trunk/extensions/ee.

So we have an external editing interface just begging for an external
editor? I'm pleasantly surprised.

Steve


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dajoo: a Java-based offline editor/viewer

body:
On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 09:54:51AM +0800, mingli yuan wrote:
> Dajoo is a sourceforge project try to build a personal wiki-based
> platform to help people manage their knowledge. It was designed to own
> a plugin system in the kernel by which we can develop various tools
> for different purpose.
>
> The markup it adopted is compatible with Mediawiki, and now
> interoperability with Mediawiki is under developing. On my personal
> computer, now it can access Wikipedia freely. I will release the next
> version with the interoperability features in September.

You might want to take note, if you didn't realize it already, that
there's a project underway to formalize the very wikitext grammar with
which you're compatible.  I know someone posted a pointer last week,
but I don't have it handy; I suspect they'll chime in.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Steve Summit

body:
Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ...there's a project underway to formalize the very wikitext grammar with
> which you're compatible.  I know someone posted a pointer last week,
> but I don't have it handy; I suspect they'll chime in.

("ding, dong. ding, dong.")

There's <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Markup_spec> which is a
prose description, with several more formal BNF descriptions
hanging off of it as subpages (see <http://www.mediawiki.org/
wiki/Special:Search/Markup_spec/BNF/> for a list).


from_name: Ivan Krstić

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> there's a project underway to formalize the very wikitext grammar with
> which you're compatible.

There are efforts to produce something formal-like for some subset of
the wikitext syntax. To my knowledge, no useful formal grammar can be
produced for the complete syntax.

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


from_name: Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz

body:
Tisza Gergo wrote:
> There is an ongoing debate in the Hungarian Wikipedia community about
> image license policies. I didn't find anything about the Foundation's
> position on the issue (except for the rather vague [[m:Foundation
> issues]]), so I'll try to ask here:

The same is on Polish :-) I think there should be an official Foundation
policy about it. When we were asking people from Foundation around 1
year ago, the answers where different from one person to another, and
then two groups of users (pro fair-use and anti fair-use) were using
these diffrent answers as a key argument. Finally, someone asked simple
  question: do we really want to make Polish Wikipedia to constantly
break Polish Law?

>
> 1) Which copyright law should be followed? The Hungarian law, the law of
> the United States or both? (And what about France and the Netherlands,
> where IIRC some of the Wikimedia servers are hosted?) This is an
> important question, as Hungarian copyright law is a lot more restrictive
> (there is no fair use, and works made by the government remain
> copyyrighted).

On Polish Wikipedia it was decided that due to:
a) vast majority of contributors live in Poland
b) we don't want to give an impression that Polish Wikipedia ignores
Polish law

we have to strictly follow Polish law.

In fact, no matter where the servers are placed, when you contribute to
any webpage from Polish territory, you have to follow Polish law. You
are making copyright violation by sending from Polish territory pictures
or text - no matter where is it going to be published. So, the question
is where you are - not where is the server.

In Poland something similar to fair use is allowed, but using it in any
encyclopedia requires:
a) only educational purposes (Wikipedia can be used for non-educational,
even strictly commercial purposes)
b) documented attempt to obtain the copyright's owner permission

Therefore, technically, fair use in Wikipedia circumstances is rather
useless if you want to follow Polish law, and therefore we have decided
not to allow any fair use materials.

--
Tomasz "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Polimerek
http://www.poli.toya.net.pl/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/pl/TomaszGanicz.html


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/16/06, Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> wrote:
> There are efforts to produce something formal-like for some subset of
> the wikitext syntax. To my knowledge, no useful formal grammar can be
> produced for the complete syntax.

Out of curiosity, why not?  What bits of markup screw over the project?


body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 11:15:34PM -0400, Ivan Krsti?? wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > there's a project underway to formalize the very wikitext grammar with
> > which you're compatible.
>
> There are efforts to produce something formal-like for some subset of
> the wikitext syntax. To my knowledge, no useful formal grammar can be
> produced for the complete syntax.

I suspect this will be circular:

How complete a spec you can produce will depend on how much you're
willing to change when you find out you can't specify it completely.

How much such a spec will be permitted to prescribe change will depend
on how much change it needs to prescribe.

I don't know how useful it will be to have wikitext specified strictly,
and I don't think we'll be able to tell until we see how far off we
are, and what might need to be tweaked.

It wouldn't be *completely* necessary to have a flag day for all
possible changes to wikitext...

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
Simetrical wrote:
> Out of curiosity, why not?  What bits of markup screw over the project?

A better question is which bits don't ;)

Eric?

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


body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> I don't know how useful it will be to have wikitext specified strictly,
> and I don't think we'll be able to tell until we see how far off we
> are, and what might need to be tweaked.

This was discussed at hacking days. Brion's pronouncement is that the
current syntax will admit essentially no backwards-incompatible changes.

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


body:
On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I don't know how useful it will be to have wikitext specified strictly,

Well, obviously the idea is to feed it to yacc or something, so as
much as possible would be good.  But we might be stuck with a couple
of extra passes in the PHP, or manually coded into the C parser, if it
turns out to really not be usefully specifiable.  (But hey, C++ and
Perl can get away with grammars that aren't LALR(1), why can't we?)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] New SVN committer

body:
Rod A. Smith (rodasmith) added to do some work w/ WiktionaryZ & extensions.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Unclean UTF-8 in dump, due to stale templatelinks

body:
When I download the dump
http://download.wikimedia.org/svwiki/20060808/svwiki-20060808-templatelinks.sql.gz

and uncompress it, I find violations of UTF-8 (apparently
remainders of ISO-8859-1) in these records:

0xf6 in    (141524,10,'F\xf6rfattarstub'),
0xf6 in    (154217,10,'Geografistub-Gr\?f6nland'),
0xe4 in    (147111,10,'Japanskt_L\xe4n'),
0xe4 in    (145703,10,'Motorv\xe4gar_i_Sverige'),
0xc4 in    (125122,10,'RA\xc4'),
0xe5 in    (146360,10,'Sk\xe5despelarstub'),
0xf6 and 0xd6 in  (160822,10,'S\xf6dra_\xd6sterbotten'),
0xe4 in    (145703,10,'TrafikplatsLandsv\xe4g'),

I could still import this SQL dump into mysql (4.0), but when I
open the SQL dump file in GNU Emacs (22.0.50) it doesn't go into
Unicode mode as it does for a clean UTF-8 file.

I've found no errors in some other files I've looked at.

This is a total of 9 violations in 8 records referring to 7
different pages (page ID 145703 appears twice) out of 330,000
records, so no real reason for panic.  These seven page IDs are
not present in the page.sql dump, so apparently stale link records
that should have been removed from the database.  If I run the
inner join:

  select page_namespace, page_title, tl_namespace, tl_title
  from page, templatelinks where page_id = tl_from;

the result is clean UTF-8.  But the result is 2076 rows shorter
than the templatelinks table:

  select count(*)
  from page, templatelinks where page_id=tl_from;
  328349

  select count(*)
  from templatelinks;
  330425

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/16/06, Tisza Gerg? <tgergo at inf.elte.hu> wrote:
I cannot speak for the foundation but I deal with copyright stuff
rather a lot on en and from time to time other wikis

> 1) Which copyright law should be followed? The Hungarian law, the law of
> the United States or both? (And what about France and the Netherlands,
> where IIRC some of the Wikimedia servers are hosted?) This is an
> important question, as Hungarian copyright law is a lot more restrictive
> (there is no fair use, and works made by the government remain
> copyyrighted).
>
United States law must be followed. Following other more restrictive
laws appears to be the choice of individual project (the works made by
the goverment thing is a red herring works made by the US goverement
are still PD and works made by almost any other goverment are not).

> 2) What are the rules, if any, for non-free images? Should we follow
> [[Wikipedia:Fair_use#Policy]], or is every community free to create its
> own policies about non-copyleft media content?
>

As long as the policy stays within US law it appears communities are
free to do what they like. That said the foundation retains the right
to remove any image at any time.

> 3) Is it acceptable to use, in a way similar to fair use, images which
> are illegal in the strict sense, but safe to use?

As far as US law goes no. Outside that I think the choice reverts to
the indivdual project

--
geni


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
On 8/16/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:

> So it's not the version of MediaWiki, but rather, a standard feature that
> you have to enable in the config file?

It is partly the version since it was only introduced in 1.5, but it
can be enabled by adding something like $wgEnotifUserTalk = true; to
the LocalSettings file (see the mediawiki-l list for more details).

Angela.


from_name: Virgil Ierubino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save draft button

body:
Users would accept the fact that edit conflicts might arise. I accept it
anyway when I'm making a large edit (e.g. a massive article expansion) and
for those users who edit offline (there are many), they certainly accept it
too. I think the point here is that, people make huge edits anyway, and this
would only make it easier. Especially if a "Finalise" feature could also be
implemented in the draft page.

If this could be implemented now, using JavaScript, I would like to see that
(I'd certainly use it). It would possibly be better as opt-in anyway.

Another function this would provide is something like a manual AutoSave. If
you're making a large edit the last thing you want to happen is for your
browser to crash and lose it all (and yes I even use Firefox :P). It would
be reassuring to be able to "Save" the page in progress without having to
wait till you're completely done, and without disrupting the actual article.


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<44DC5C85.7030405@wikia.com>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKPDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<44DCD134.5030800@yahoo.com>
	<38a7bf7c0608111207j5f37fd52h6847e3e2d87a196f@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCE1B4.5020101@wikia.com>	<44DCE4DC.5070309@wikia.com>
	<38a7bf7c0608111333i2e002033sba9c53ad136c1736@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebivm4$lf4$1@sea.gmane.org>	<44E297BC.2020300@verizon.net>
	<44E33F21.9030204@wikia.com> <44E34D6E.20403@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Jeff V. Merkey wrote:

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>
>>Michael R. Irwin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>1.  The Wikimedia Foundation is not independent.  It has a stacked Board
>>>designed by Jimbo to allow him to maintain personal control.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>This is an insult to the board.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>Adding two more seats will forever destroy this inaccurate and
>misleading perception.
>
Check the email archives for a few months prior to the date of the final
foundation paperwork.

You will find emails messages self allegedly from  Jimbo's  email
accounts stating the intent  to  stack the Board and discussing
specifics of how he proceeded to do so.

The perception is neither inaccurate nor misleading.

Two more elected rather than Jimbo appointed seats will permanently
alter reality according to the bylaws.  Whether perceptions, misceptions
or urban legends change depends of course upon individual and corporate
memories and the long term stability and reliability of our community's
electronic records.

>I have heard it from several
>other folks who are external observers to the Wikipedia phenomena and
>its "urban legend" type of talk -- not based in fact --
>and not based upon any emperical observations. I believe the root of the
>misperception is how the by laws are worded.
>If it were me, I would appoint these two additional positions from the
>Foundations major financial contributors or foundations
>supporting Wikipedia's fine work to balance out the various
>representation and views.
>
>Jeff
>
>
>
My empirical observations were personal and not based upon glib
dismissal of alleged hearsay from apparently distrusted sources.

Perhaps you should check privately with Anthere.  As I recall she was
participating frequently on the applicable list and stood for election
in the formation of the first Board.   Did Jimbo really stack the Board
or merely state publicly he was going to and proceed to write it
unilaterally (perhaps with some assistance from nonexistent cabals or
personal advisors) into the original foundation charter?

A fact is an insult to nobody unless they perceive it so.   If the
allegedly stacked Board Members or appointed trustees do not feel the
Board was stacked; perhaps they should feel insulted that Jimbo
announced on the mailing publicly that he felt it was comfortably
designed to be stacked.

If you wish the specific URLs and you wish me to do your research for
you then drop me a data request at my Wikiversity talk page.   My time
kibitzing here is almost over.   We have active URLs with fine print
defining another prototyping period.   Fun stuff.   Let's all do some
work and then cancel again for lack of discouraged participation.

Sincerely,
Michael R. Irwin


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Anthere

body:
Damian Finol wrote:
> Jeff V. Merkey wrote:
>
>>Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 8/16/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Wikimania 2006 just closed its doors a week or so ago, and it is
>>>>already time to think about the next edition.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Actually, it was time to do that about six months ago.  We really need
>>>to be planning these things more aggressively.  In my opinion, we
>>>should know where the next year's Wikimania is going to be before we
>>>start the planning for the current year.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Good Point,
>>
>>Greg mentioned this this morning as well this was a hot topic of
>>discussion that needed addressing.
>>
>>A few suggestions I'll put on the main site:
>>
>>Polynesian Language Institute, Hawaii
>>Sidney, Australia. (great place but very expensive for a lot of folks)
>>Vancouver, BC (vansterdam)
>>Salt Lake City, Utah (UofU)
>>Mexico City
>>Cayman Islands
>>Dussledorf, FRG
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
> Greetings,
>
> I love those cities a couple of comments though:
>
> USA: Doing it in the USA is great, however there is a VISA issue when it
> comes to people not from the WAIVER Program (Mostly non-europeans). This
> year Berkman and Harvard where really good and provided an invitation
> letter that helped many people get their Visa (Although in most of Latin
> America appointments for Visa interviews are given within 5-6 month of
> calling)
>
> The one I like the most of all those cities, Is Mexico City, although I
> think some place like Cancun would be better (Mexico City is a great
> city and all but it's really, really overcrowded and maybe a bit
> unsafe). Cancun has a lot of hotels and there are a lot of Flights
> coming and going, plus it's in a central location for people in the
> Americas and Europe (Most people from Europe will connect in Miami or
> DFW). Not to mention, Cancun is Mexico's tourist city so many hotels and
> locals can speak English.
>
> I would love to say Rio De Janeiro In Brasil, but Americans will need a
> visa to enter Brasil.
>
> Either way, I think just like the World Cup and the Olympics, Wikimania
> should jump continents, Last year it was Europe, this year was North
> America, next year should be either Asia or Latin America.
>
> Regards,
>

Good point. Kelly is right as well that we should be planning ahead.

Ultimately, choices will depend a lot on the quality of the bid.
It will also help that the organisers of the first two wikimania are
involved in the choice of next city, as they are primary sources of
information to identify what was best in both locations.

Just after Wikimania, a discussion took place to identify the good sides
and the bad sides of Wikimania 2006. Obvious important points to
consider for the future are the visa issue, the cost of travel for most
participants, the easiness to reach the city (international airport) etc...
More specifically, whilst Boston was identified as a very pretty place
where it was real cool to hang out, it appears that the participants had
less opportunities (or did not identified these opportunities) to hang
out together than in Frankfurt. Amongst reasons, the fact the conference
took place in two different buildings, the dorms were in yet another
place, the "village pump" was not clearly labelled as such etc...
Good points were the common breakfast/lunch area, in that big room where
people could chat.

Next Wikimania should be particularly careful to choose locations where
people can stay together and have full opportunities to "bump" in other
editors every minute. By the way, we suggested a wall where pictures of
participants could be pasted as the conference proceeds (to facilitate
recognition between participants).

A big point in any cases will be to identify the "size" of the audience.
One does not have the same requirements and the same timeline for a
conference of 400 people or 1000 people, or even more. We will need to
see how we want that to evolve.

Last, as for the past two years, an important point in selecting the
city was to check whether there was a local team of very motivated
wikipedians on the spot, to help organising. It is not so obvious now
that this should be amongst a primary motive to select a city. It may be
that we choose to outsource more of the organisation (as opposed to
heavily rely on volunteers).

In any cases, the organisation is not an easy task, kudos to those who
did the job this year. But it all begins with bids :-)

ant


body:
Good question.

Two resolutions were proposed on this matter by some contributors.

Let me copy them below, as well as the outcome.

-----------
Resolution:NDNC
Proposed by : contributor, copied by Anthere

Motion to vote: Angela 05:06, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
Motion Seconded: Anthere

The Wikimedia Foundation aims to promote free and collaborative content
Non-commercial and non-derivative licenses are not compatible with the
notion of free content supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and the
Free Software Foundation, as defined at freecontentdefinition.org

In order to clarify this situation, the Board resolves that:
Content under "non-derivative" or "non-commercial" licenses is not
sufficiently free to allow use on Wikimedia projects. Content dual
licensed under one of these with a free license continues to be acceptable.

Outcome: The resolution dropped was dropped at a meeting 5 aug 2006. The
conclusion was essentially that the board should not get involved in
that (not a policy) but that recommandations would be suitable. It was
concluded that Jimbo would blog about it.

----------

Resolution:Fair Use
Proposed by : an editor, copied by Anthere

Given that fair-use content has been widely tolerated for historical
reasons on the Wikimedia Foundation's projects
Given that fair-use content is, by essence, non-free
Given that the Wikimedia Foundation objectives are to promote free
material in the whole world, not only in the United States of America
where the fair-use can apply
Outcome of the resolution: Given that free content is now widely
available for all the Wikimedia's Foundation projects through Wikimedia
Commons
The board resolves :
	? 	That starting from today (insert date), no fair use content shall be
added to the Wikimedia Foundation's projects
	? 	and that the existing fair-use content shall not be deleted until
replaced by free content

Outcome: the resolution was inactive for two months with no motion to
vote. It was consequently dropped.

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

I think this resumes pretty well the position of the Foundation on the
issue :-)

I will actually say it more plainly.
I think the projects are not (should not be) managed by the Foundation.
The Foundation supports the projects, which is very different. Jimbo or
others may provide some guidance, but it is not the role of the
Foundation to say "fair use is allowed" or "fair use is not allowed".

Ant

----------Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz wrote:
> Tisza Gergo wrote:
>
>>There is an ongoing debate in the Hungarian Wikipedia community about
>>image license policies. I didn't find anything about the Foundation's
>>position on the issue (except for the rather vague [[m:Foundation
>>issues]]), so I'll try to ask here:
>
>
> The same is on Polish :-) I think there should be an official Foundation
> policy about it. When we were asking people from Foundation around 1
> year ago, the answers where different from one person to another, and
> then two groups of users (pro fair-use and anti fair-use) were using
> these diffrent answers as a key argument. Finally, someone asked simple
>   question: do we really want to make Polish Wikipedia to constantly
> break Polish Law?
>
>
>>1) Which copyright law should be followed? The Hungarian law, the law of
>>the United States or both? (And what about France and the Netherlands,
>>where IIRC some of the Wikimedia servers are hosted?) This is an
>>important question, as Hungarian copyright law is a lot more restrictive
>>(there is no fair use, and works made by the government remain
>>copyyrighted).
>
>
> On Polish Wikipedia it was decided that due to:
> a) vast majority of contributors live in Poland
> b) we don't want to give an impression that Polish Wikipedia ignores
> Polish law
>
> we have to strictly follow Polish law.
>
> In fact, no matter where the servers are placed, when you contribute to
> any webpage from Polish territory, you have to follow Polish law. You
> are making copyright violation by sending from Polish territory pictures
> or text - no matter where is it going to be published. So, the question
> is where you are - not where is the server.
>
> In Poland something similar to fair use is allowed, but using it in any
> encyclopedia requires:
> a) only educational purposes (Wikipedia can be used for non-educational,
> even strictly commercial purposes)
> b) documented attempt to obtain the copyright's owner permission
>
> Therefore, technically, fair use in Wikipedia circumstances is rather
> useless if you want to follow Polish law, and therefore we have decided
> not to allow any fair use materials.
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>James Hare wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>We can develop Creationism instruction material as well as Science
>>>>instruction material, can't we? As long as we have interested parties?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Information that lets people learn, neutrally, information _about_
>>>Creationism, sounds great.  Courses advocating creationism, no.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>The obvious question this raises is (as Elian has already asked):
>>"where do we draw the line?"
>>
>>We could orchestrate, for example, a policy that says "Wikiversity
>>will not host materials that endorse a particular world-view". But
>>then, we are excluding all religious material (and not all religious
>>material is bad). It could well be argued that much of what most
>>people consider to be appropriate educational material espouses a
>>particular world-view, such as that of free-market economics,
>>feminism, whatever.
>>
>>This is a difficult issue that we can't simply dismiss out of hand.
>>I'm genuinely interested in finding a usable concept that we can apply
>>as policy - fwiw, there's already a page on NPOV on Wikiversity for
>>anyone who's interested:
>>http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Neutral_point_of_view
>>
>>
>>
>The serious scholar is not deterred by the fact that a subject is
>controversial, and that he must fairly explore areas that many would
>fairly consider POV.  The integrity of research is not well served by
>putting it in the hands of True Unbelievers who are more satisfied with
>polemical than with reasoned approaches.
>
>
Perhaps not.   Where does the serious scholar get his/her data if they
are not interacting somehow with the true believers?

This was perceived by some (i.e. at least me) as a large problem early
at English Wikipedia.   It got damn irritating trying to play peacemaker
or mediator between lynch mobs and unpopular editors.   Their non NPOV
data was frequently deleted entirely while I was trying to NPOV it to
provide a basis for discussion and mediation in compliance with the
published recommendations and policies of Wikipedia itself.    I quickly
gave it up as a complete waste of my personal time.

An effective learning institutution should have a means available to
interact with true believers and assist their learning processes while
gathering data from them.    How do you propose to do this if their
material is always promptly labeled and lynched without discourse as
"not   NPOV"?

Further.  Should I personally choose to study creationism further I
would rather study it from/with an honest advocate than a dishonest
debunker.   Likewise if I choose to further study thermodynamics
concepts from dis/honest creationists or dis/honest engineers..  A
comparison and study of the diverging views of closed systems and a
discussion of the same with either of the above parties is a pretty
excellent test case for sorting the honest intellectuals from the
mislead, dishonest, or less technically literate.

This discussion is more appropriate to the Wikiversity  list.

>My own brand of atheistic spiritualism is not consistent with
>creationsm.  If creationsim as a theory or doctrine must fail it must
>fail of its own accord, and not in as a part of freeing itself from a
>heap of mindless invective.  If someone wants to teach a course on
>creationism that puts that doctrine in a favorable light, I have no
>objection.  The introductory page should probably note prominently that
>the subject is very controversial. Those enrolled could then proceed at
>their own risk, but with eyes wide open.
>
>
Excellent.

>I would like to see the creationsit emperor without his clothes.  In the
>light of day he may not be as powerful as either the supporters or
>detractors would have us believe.
>
>
Sometimes I am lacking in abstract reasoning from basic principles.
For me it has always helped to have suitable materials from all alleged
emperors for personal comparison and analysis against previously
personally understood materials.   This makes arbitrarily empowered
deletionists personally irritating.

It is easy to see why NPOV is a foundational issue for a targeted high
quality summary reference source.

I see less justification for rapid deletion of large chunks of people's
notes, lesson plans, examples, etc. donated for use in learning
discussion with others.    Clearly pure propaganda or extreme POV will
not stand alone long in an effective learning environment.   Our future
participants at Wikiversity can be trusted to dissect it and present
some effective analysis for discussion with others.

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call) Beyond membership

references:
<ebn66u$nrt$1@sea.gmane.org>	<20060815144942.62050.qmail@web36214.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<ebtrar$1fp$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
This thoughtful analysis is consistent with my own views.  Another
Wikipedian has gone so far as to apply the undiplomatic term "stacked
board".  It is not constructive to treat that view as an "insult"; it is
simply not difficult to arrive at that perception based only on the
current by-laws as they are written.

Two important points by Brad that sunk in at Wikimania are that the
Foundation is distinct from the community, and, even more importantly,
that most of what we are doing is leading us into uncharted legal
territory.  If we are to go forward into that uncharted territory we
need to abandon any preconceptions about how an organization runs, and
give ample consideration to all the details that we are likely to
encounter.  There is no need to blindly accept corporatist assumptions.
It is also an acute observation to point out that WMF is a foundation in
name only.  As I have always understood that term, a foundation is set
up for the sole purpose of managing a pool of funds to other charitable
organizations who in turn perform the good works.  These foundations
often begin with an impressive contribution, as has been the case with
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  WMF now has a cash reserve in
the bank which it did not have at the beginning.  Since then the
contributions have been from thousands of individuals who believed in
the underlying projects (mostly Wikipedia).

Membership is about belonging.  It's about believing that one's fifteen
minutes of fame was worth something.  Michael Snow rightly pointed out
that an exercise of the legal rights provided by Florida law would have
ridiculously little chance of success.  I suppose that it's a by-product
of legal training to look at rights with gavelled glasses.  If it ever
got to that we would be in much worse shape than we are now.  Contrast
membership with with the proposed reference to the "Community".  To me
that clause in context pats everybody on the back, and says, "Good job!
Now let the experts take over."  Some of us have had our fill of
experts, and believe that experts share a great deal of the
responsibility for creating the proprietary mess that we seek to
remedy.  We need proper membership.

Some interesting ideas have arisen about who should be a member.  Simply
basing it on paying a membership fee would likely be
counter-productive.  Perhaps it could be an option for some people, but
I doubt that it would ever account for a significant protion of our
membrship.  Using it as a way of involving people who are not on line
makes no sense since the nature of what we do depends on being on line.
Our existing by-laws provide for one of the elected directors to
represent paying members, but that discussion became bogged down over
who should become a member at a reduced rate.  I don't see any will
anywhere to repeat that mistake.

Using a person's total edits on all projects as a qualification  may be
a workable idea.  This should work more easily with a single sign-on
scheme.  I would suggest a minimum of 200 edits in the past year.  This
should be enough to weed out sockpuppets and one day wonders..  Once a
person has  reached eligibility he would need to opt in.  Eligibility to
renew membership would follow the same lines.  A person who is
ineligible at renewal time  could be dropped from the membership roles.

I have no particular problem with having my name in a membership list
somewhere, but I realize that others do.  I would want to know more
about the Florid Statute before committing myself to a position on this.

Ec

Anthere wrote:

>Birgitte SB wrote:
>
>
>>I find the conversation about the benefits of having
>>members of the Foundation really interesting and it
>>has me thinking about the opposite scenario.
>>
>>Lets examine what *is* the WMF if it does not have
>>members.
>>
>>According to the Bylaws update:  A group of at least 5
>>trustees where at least 2 are brought in from the
>>community at large.  These (at least 2) community
>>members are voted on by the community where the
>>"dates, rules and regulation of the voting procedures"
>>are set by (the at least 5) trustees of the WMF.  This
>>vote is overseen by two people from the community
>>chosen by the (at least 5) trustees.  The other
>>trustees not run through some form of community vote
>>are chosen by a vote of  the (at least 5) trustees.
>>
>>
>>A cynical view of this set-up is that it could become
>>easily self-selecting by a very small group.  Even the
>>trustees elected by the community can be pretty much
>>controlled by setting "dates, rules and regulation of
>>the voting procedures" in a certain fashion.  There
>>are not even any requirements for the advertising of
>>such an election.  I will enumerate all the ways this
>>could allow a corrupt board to have a large hand in
>>picking the (at least 2) trustees from the community
>>as there are more than a dozen tactics.
>>
>>Also notice that any of trustees elected by the board
>>to fill a vacancy remain until among other things
>>their "removal from office".  Now a vacancy can be
>>created by anything including expansion of the board.
>>This means any new non-community elected board members
>>can somehow be removed by board.  There are no
>>specifications of limits on how they would be removed,
>>so any resolution that passes would probably do the
>>job.  This could be a board expansion seat, Tim's
>>replacement, basically any future trustees not from
>>the community elections.  The significance of this is
>>people could believe they are leaving the WMF in good
>>hands by ensuring a particular replacement or
>>expansion of the board, however any new trustees
>>elected by the board can be easily removed by any
>>future board even ten years later.  This could one day
>>apply to *all* non-community elected trustees simply
>>due to mortality.
>>
>>After looking at this with a cynical eye, I do not
>>think these are a good set of bylaws to govern the
>>future of WMF.  It would be just too easy for a couple
>>of corrupt people with a little bit of patience to
>>effectively take control of the board at some point in
>>the future.  It has been pointed out that having
>>members would be an effective legally mandated way to
>>have a final check against such a possibility.
>>However it would be much better to write the by-laws
>>with internal checks and balances rather than to rely
>>on a last resort vote of the membership.  If it really
>>ever came to that vote the corrupt board could do a
>>great deal of damage by passing various resolutions
>>while the membership is being marshaled.
>>
>>My personal opinion is that we should develop some
>>satisfactory by-laws to protect the WMF and its
>>mission.  After such protections have been drafted as
>>bylaws we should then examine what benefits would then
>>be gained by having members.  Right now membership
>>looks good because the by-laws are not.  I don't know
>>that once we have a good set of by-laws membership
>>would still be worth the hassle or the divisiveness
>>that it would entail.  However I am strongly against
>>the bylaws being modified to remove the membership
>>clause without other significant changes being made.
>>
>>
>>BirgitteSB
>>
>>PS None of my concerns are regarding any current
>>trustees.  I am simply imagining worst case scenario
>>here.
>>
>>
>
>I agree with much of what you write above.
>
>I think it is also the job of current trustees to look at the worse
>scenario.
>
>One important provision to add to the bylaws is a duration of term for
>appointed members. For example 2 years, just as elected trustees (and
>the fact no one can vote for his re-election).
>
>It is however not sufficient to ensure a take-over of the Foundation
>could not occur.
>
>I would be curious to know how this is ensured in big NGOs; does anyone
>know ?
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>On 8/16/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>
snip

>>>This is a difficult issue that we can't simply dismiss out of hand.
>>>
>>>
>>Certainly, we do need to discuss it in detail.  But I think it would be
>>a tragic mistake to dismiss NPOV out of hand based on arguments which
>>fail to draw on our deep experience with how it works and what it means.
>>
>>--Jimbo
>>
>>
>
>
>I think part of my reaction to the word "neutral" in this discussion
>is due to the fact that I don't really know what it means :-). Joseph
>Reagle, in fact, gave an interesting presentation on the word/concept
>of "neutrality" at Wikimania (see:
><http://reagle.org/joseph/2005/06/neutrality.html>). This was, in
>fact, straight after your insightful comment about NPOV being a "work
>of art, which we fill with meaning" (I hope I've quoted you correctly
>there). Both of these have brought me to a better understanding than
>what we have at [[WP:NPOV]] - but still, I have my doubts :-)
>
>You're right, of course - we deal with these complexities on a daily
>basis - and we constantly strive to develop ways of going beyond
>academic or political bottlenecks in areas which cause far more strife
>outside than they ever will inside Wikipedia. And yes, we have a role
>to play in educating the world about how to go about doing that. We
>can create material on Wikiversity which does this - just as we have
>done on Wikipedia - and that should obviously be our aim.
>
>But I just can't get away from the fact (and, again, Birgitte has
>pointed this out) that we are dealing with a model of education in
>Wikiversity that is more than simply providing dynamic material. We
>are also attempting to provide for a community of learners. While this
>community learns, I think we need to be flexible enough to allow for
>open and critical thinking - providing thought-provoking, sometimes
>POV, material - and simply asking "what do you think?"
>
>So, if there's a conclusion to this mail, it would be: I'm not arguing
>for a simple dismissal about all we know and have learned about NPOV.
>I'm simply saying that it will not _always_ be a useful policy to
>impose throughout the process of learning. I'm yearning for a better
>concept - or perhaps we simply have to invest NPOV with new meaning in
>order to tailor it to Wikiversity's particular identity.
>
>
>
Excellent!  I agree with you both.   NPOV or "objective" reasoning and
materials will obviously be quite valuable and useful as long as it is
not used as an extreme bludgeon to delete all other notes, data, honest
advocacy, etc. necessary to reasoned lines of discourse and learning at
Wikiversity.   Not to mention our raw data.   Wikiversity is intended as
learning processes and learning materials, not a concise summary of humn
knowledge.

Probably this discussion should be on the Wikiversity mailing list since
the majority of the foundation membership probably has little interest
in nitty gritty Wikiversity policy and procedures.

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] First post

body:
Gregory,

I got both messages fine. IIRC, there's an option for the mailing list to
not have it mail you your own messages...perhaps it's set for you.

-Rich

On 8/14/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Did I submit this correctly, yesterday?  At the time, it seemed like my
> first post, because my earlier, true "first post" hadn't yet appeared in
> the
> mailing list.  I'm waiting on this important post to show up now, but I
> don't want to re-submit and create havoc in the queue.
>
> Greg
>
> On 8/13/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I have just completed an updated Talk page for the account MyWikiBiz.  I
> > would very much like to see an intelligent, civil discussion of the
> whole
> > "Paid to edit" issue that MyWikiBiz.com seems to have set off.  I have
> > constructed what I think is a good format for that dialogue at:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MyWikiBiz
> >
> > I believe that this is an excellent opportunity to determine what is
> truly
> > best for the Wikipedia community, then to put it before the Arbitration
> > Committee and Jimmy Wales.
> >
> > Kindly,
> >
> >    Greg
> >
> > P.S.  I hope that this post gets through moderation.  If I've done
> > something wrong, please let me know.
> >
> > --
> > Gregory Kohs
> > Founder, MyWikiBiz.com
> > thekohser at gmail.com
> >
> > Cell: 302.463.1354
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 8/16/06, Guillaume Paumier <guillom.pom at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 8/16/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Is there any reason not to handle Wikiversity like the commons, and
>>>allow any license so long as it's free?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
Yes.   The GNU FDL is a fairly widely well understood copyleft or
"viral" license clearly intended to grow the current and future commons.

The wide range of various languages claiming to be "free" with
definitions ranging from public domain to close to standard commercial
copyright have the potential to alienate and confuse potential contributors.

English Wikipedia clearly benefited early from committing to the FDL on
the submittal form and we would like Wikiversity to gain the same rapid
benefit.  Particularly since the Board has chosen for us a short leash
or "beta" period of six months.

Personally I thought the last year was all about putting the prototyping
into the proposal for a yes or no authorization.  Another six month
evaluation period seems to me a lot like another serious maybe or
stall.   Possibly detrimental to inspiring many to invest a large amount
of volunteer effort at Wikiversity.   Might be better to wait and see if
Wikiversity is simply quietly canceled or fades out again.

regards,
mirwin


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-17

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 413 of 429 tests (96.27%) FAILED!


from_name: Eric Astor

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ivan Krstic [mailto:krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2006 11:21 PM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Cc: Eric Astor
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Dajoo: a Java-based offline editor/viewer
>
> Simetrical wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, why not?  What bits of markup screw over the project?
>
> A better question is which bits don't ;)
>
> Eric?

*sighs* Well, that's my cue. My sincere apologies for when this starts to
ramble and lose coherency - I'm a bit tired today, and I've been focusing
mostly on other things since the Wikimania Hacking Days.

Let's see here. Please consider this an incomplete, unreliable list, meant
solely as an indication of the basic problems encountered when attempting to
formalize MediaWiki's wikitext... And I'm no expert on parsing, except in
that I've spent a large part of the summer constructing parsers for
essentially unparseable languages. Basic point, though, is that MediaWiki
wikitext is INCREDIBLY context-sensitive.

Single case that shows something interesting:
'''hi''hello'''hi'''hello''hi'''

Try running it through MediaWiki, and what do you get?
hihellohihellohi

In other words, you've discovered that the current syntax supports improper
nesting of markup, in a rather unique fashion. I don't know of any way to
duplicate this in any significantly formal system, although I believe a
multiple-pass parser *might* be capable of handling it. In fact, some sort
of multiple-pass parser (the MediaWiki parser) obviously can.

Also, templates need to be transcluded before most of the parsing can take
place, since in the current system, the text may leave some
syntactically-significant constructs incomplete, finishing them in the
transclusion stage...

Beyond that... *pulls up his mostly-aborted attempt at a parser*

Indefinite lookahead is required in some places, particularly in headings
and magic variables - and for almost any other multi-part markup, if we want
to do what the current parser does (ignore incomplete markup, treating it as
if it had been properly escaped). This even holds true for bold and italics,
since you need indefinite lookahead to be able to tell whether the first
three quotes in '''this'' should be parsed as ''', ', or . The
situation gets even worse when you try to allow for improper nesting.

Other places require fixed, but large, amounts of lookahead... freelinks
require at least 9 characters, for example. Technically, I'll admit that a
GLR parser (or a backtracking framework) could manage even the indefinite
lookahead that I mentioned... but it's still problematic, since the grammar
is left ambiguous in certain cases.

Oh, right - and we'd need to special-case every tag-style piece of markup,
including every allowed HTML tag, since formal grammars generally can't
reference previously-matched text. This also applies to the heading levels -
we'd need separate ad-hoc constructs for each level of heading we wanted to
support, duplicating a lot of the grammar between each one.

There are other complications as well - again, this list should be
considered both incomplete and, possibly, inconsistent with reality.

In summary, for most definitions of formal, it is impossible to write formal
grammars for most significant subsets of current MediaWiki syntax. I had
significant success with a regex-based grammar specification (using Martel),
backed by a VERY general backend capable of back-tracking and other clever
tricks (mxTextTools) - but the recursive structure is virtually impossible
to handle in a regex-based framework.

- Eric Astor

P.S. As indicated above, I honestly feel that the difficulties aren't
insurmountable - if you're willing to build an appropriate parsing
framework, which will be semi-formal at best.

P.P.S. When possible, in my *copious* free time (</sarcasm>), I'm hoping to
take another frontend to mxTextTools (SimpleParse, to be specific), modify
it sufficiently to support all the necessary features, and then build
something capable of parsing the current MediaWiki syntax (although I might
have to drop support for improper nesting). I've no idea if or when this
might happen, but I'm considering it a long-term goal if the current
situation doesn't improve.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.10/419 - Release Date: 8/15/2006


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 8/16/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I think the projects are not (should not be) managed by the Foundation.
> The Foundation supports the projects, which is very different. Jimbo or
> others may provide some guidance, but it is not the role of the
> Foundation to say "fair use is allowed" or "fair use is not allowed".

I'll state for the record my disagreement with that. I think copyright
policy should be made on the Foundation level in cooperation with the
projects. The current situation is an unsustainable mess.

Erik


body:
On 8/17/06, Eric Astor <eastor1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
> [snip]

XML, anyone?  ;)